Feldon Drunder and Critical Mitigation
The Shadow Odyssey introduced Critical Mitigation, a stat needed by players to survive the heavy hits of raid bosses and enemies. Sentinel’s Fate upped the numbers, but it was Destiny of Velious which rolled out Critical Mitigation to all group zones and even overland solo content.
The three new Drunder dungeons, new Citadel of V’uul x2 raid, and three new Drunder x4 raid zones are no exception and set alarming new standards for the amount of Critical Mitigation needed even to do heroic content.
Adding to the concern is that while mobs can be examined to see their Crit Bonus buff, this number has been traditionally 30-50% lower than the amount of Critical Mitigation actually needed to survive their attacks.
The high Critical Mitigation needs of Drunder are hardly a surprise as there was a lengthy thread on the Testing forums. Now that the Drunder zones are live, the discussion is playing out in two threads on the EQ2 forums.
After the jump, Kander and Gninja respond to player concerns and indicate that the number displayed when inspecting mobs will be adjusted to show the real Crit Bonus amount that players will need to gear up for.
From Gninja:
You are able to progress within Drunder with the end Kael [Drakkel] gear if properly adorned and everything. You do not NEED raid gear to do anything in there although I imagine it would make things easier.
As far as what gear you should have before attempting Drunder, from Gninja:
As far as what gear you should use to get enough crit mit/crit the Ry’gorr armor + Temple of Zek [breastplate] with crit mit adorns will get your crit mit high enough to enter Drunder.
You might need to use the crit mit [adornments] exclusively at first till you get a few upgrades then you can start switching them out for DPS (ma, etc) adorns as you upgrade. Survivability should be what you start with then branch out from there.
As for how much Critical Mitigation players need to run Drunder, from Kander:
The new heroic stuff starts at 140 and ends at 160.
Players quickly pointed out that these numbers do not include the 30-50% innate crit bonus that many mobs seem to have. Kander responded:
NPC’s use the same crit bonus multipliers as the corresponding player classes. A bruiser mob has 50% crit bonus on melee while a wizard mob has a 50% crit bonus spells. The base is 30%. The number we post on the buff packages is their additional value. This is a guideline to get their crit damage to normal levels. If you want to completely negate crit bonus you will need 30% to 50% more than the buff reads.
and later Kander said:
So after discussing this, we are going to make changes to all the heroic content so that the number displayed for Crit Bonus will take into consideration the 30% natural bonus.
So 140 Crit Bonus displayed will be 110 addtional + 30%.
To change it to reflect the real number on only heroic content is just going to cause unnecessary confusion. Either change it for both, or neither I say.
Putting the full crit mit required makes sense as its not obvious mobs have different values.
While Crit mit I guess is a real target to get past (I actually like them in a game, WoW used to have them when it was good) I’d like to see the crit itself as more optional.
It probably will be hard to achieve in this expansion, but a game where a crit is something special to do would add a lot more spice, rather then SF’s game of having crit >100% all the time.
Too funny. All you need is the Ry`Gorr gear and the BP from Temple. WELL DROP THE DARN GEMS PLEASE!!! SOOOO tired of rehashing the same zones (including contested KD) and getting the SAME DARN ROUGH EMERALD!!!!
I read that they supposedly increased the drop rates for the Citrine and Jaundice gems with GU60. I wont hold my breath………….
Not funny at all this vision is new, SF, TSO, Kunark was way better.
You dont get bored to always be lfg for same zone over and over ?
in past : Lfg DB, OV, Lib, Palace, ZUA, RH, Cella, Lab, Vig 1&2&3 (locked SR, Conservatory)
Now : Lfg drunder
sure quicker to write, but less interesting for sure. With all item look exactly same.
Any way to change thing back before we switch in wrong dimention ?
Where is the diversity ?
Critical mitigation is way to much important for group. Why apply raid rule to group ?
In heroic content the critical hit for heroic mob is stupid.
You get 139 crit mit mob have 140 then you take insane amount of damage.
You get 140 you r ok unless mob use cheated CA that need 170 for counter.
Why so many heroic mob have several different crit bonus ? One mob = one crit bonus for all his CA ! (for 99% of heroic mobs) but no was too simple 🙁
Bunch of craps, i hope next xpac will be done by another team.
I love EQ2 but gear makes the player not skill at this point , doesnt matter how great you are at pressing the buttons if you dont have the gear that you have to farm from zones over and over again then your screwed. Its like having bralwer gear drop in raid and not one brawler is even in your raid , what a waste and the people killing the mob have to wait another 4 days to kill the mob they need upgrades from to even see new content.
So called smart loot is non-existant they need to either drop 4 items per chest fighter/scout/mage/priest or shorten the reset timers on zones imo. At the current drop rate if you raid a zone twice a week thats say 4 pairs of boots , at that rate takes a month and a half to gear IF you dont have repeat drops for classes that either already have or dont even exist in your raid force. At least make it where we are not wasteing time with gear that no one needs.
ever since velious came out i’ve had no time for my alts . done 50 pq’s not one breastplate ever . then go do fortress hard to get a group and even if do can it even get to the last boss at all . i’ve spent all my time since velious came out more or less trying to get one peace of armor as a tank who gets hit by epic’s every weekend it’s jest depressing . and now you wonna make heroic mobs tuffer when i can’t so far even get one key piece of armor not on a faction merchant that i grinded for weeks even a over a month to get the faction .
I sure hope new people take over. So far I’m very unhappy with velious . takes forever to get a piece of armor i can get in BG in two days . and the gems do drop alot better now after me and many others sent feedback for over a month.
I dont mind needing HIGH CRIT MIT but tbh was totally shocked at the trash loots from the new x2. We gathered up some of our top raiders ( most of us have at least 220 crit mit and 260 plus crit bonus, and off we go! YAY new LOOTS FOR ALL! NO more like trash alt loots? I would say something is very seriously wrong when u need the nice raid gear we have to kill mobs that are harder than the current raid mobs, and get trash alt loots for the return 🙁 I must say this entire expansion has been a total disappointment from my beloved eq2… But this was really a let down… the instances are the same. Raid loot I have now = better than the crap trash loots in zones… infact most dont even bother to do them.. cuz the loots are naff. It leaves us little to do and bordom. At least in sf the zones had a few items from at least a mob here an there that were really rare but SO COOL u would still wear it for even HM raiding! So far I have replaced any zone items, with raid items, and no need to return to an instance cuz the gear from them arent rare enough to make a raider want to bother. I am slowly loosing interest in anything this expack has to offer.. its a let down. I hope they realise we need more to keep us paying an playing.
They did state they wanted to put more challenge into game, and we got it. Currently there is enough growth room to keep most of us busy until next expansion, which was not the case in SF. People were done with SF in just a couple of months. Remember there is still maybe 8 months to next expansion, so we need the room to grow.
They need to make the mitigation display the same for all content though.
I predict the next expansion will be either May 2012 or November 2012, most likely November.