Thoughts on DoDH Raiding

[Discordant]

Without giving any spoilers, I feel the need to post some first impressions about raiding in DoDH. Feel free to critique or add to this thread.  Its never a bad thing when you get some ideas from the community to possibly pass on to the devs to make the game better.

Good Things

• Multiple Targets - Sony had it right in creating so many targets to raid with the instanced zones.  After DoN, its nice to have more than four raid targets to do.  Granted, DoN was not meant to be a raiding expansion, but I personally feel DoDH is more complete, in terms of what an expansion should be, as compared to what expansions usually are.
• Itemization - So far, hand clap to Sony (cept for that BST only range) for doing a way better job this time around of itemization.  There are actually very nice alternatives to Anguish armor from DoDH.
• Challenge - Sony finally gave guilds what they wanted in making encounters harder and more challenging.  Question is, did they overdo it? I'm in the middle of the road here.  Some raids are perfect, others are a bit too hard (which is fine), and then others are at the point of being so hard/long that its almost pointless to ever do them again, once you've done them.

Bad Things

• Difficulty - As I stated earlier, this seems to be a two-edge sword.  It sorta reminds me of prenerf GoD at the moment.  Some of the encounters that are designed are frankly not fun at all.
• Lack of Rarity - It seems Sony has run out of ideas for making encounters unique.  If I am counting correctly,  3 of the 6 raids for Demi Plane have DTing mobs, 2 of the 6 have silences, and one has the exact same AE from Vish (which yes Sony we know about because you forgot to rename it until a few patchs ago). It almost feels like VT all over again.
• Class Requirements - A major gripe from one of the Community Gatherings was the fact that Sony seemed to be introducing the trifecta requirement back into raiding.  Even more so than some of the previous expansions, you have to have a certain number of two or three classes, to even think about raiding in DoDH (warriors especially).  Its annoying to have to wait on a chanter or a warrior to log on to do an encounter that 48 other people are waiting on.

Suggestions

• Change Abilities, Keep Difficulty - Alot of the gripes I've seen is the fact that some mobs almost do too much for a raid to handle.  In my opinion, Sony needs to make mobs more unique, while keeping their difficulty level where they are.  If that means substituting a mob's ability to AE DT, give it something that will set it out from others. Vule is a perfect example of what Im talking about.  He might be hard (at first) but the encounter around him his pretty damned unique, and fun to boot.
• Time - This mainly goes for the Hive Queen.  Kudos to the Dev that designed that event.  Its original, I'll give you that.  But its redudant and takes too much time to do. I don't see any reason to go back and do her after getting flagged for Demi-plane.  The event would have been perfect if the devs didn't overdo it on the event.
• Drithnak - Get rid of this mob, please.  All it does is frustrate raids in Dreadspire and Demiplane, by killing a few people and making it take longer to start raiding. Its only purpose is to frustrate and piss off guilds.
  

[Gudaman]

Have the zone wide ae's removed when leaveing said zone would be nice.

[Oiingo]

Drithnak - Get rid of this mob, please.  All it does is frustrate raids in Dreadspire and Demiplane, by killing a few people and making it take longer to start raiding. Its only purpose is to frustrate and piss off guilds.

Though I don't mind Exiled, my biggest complaint about The Nest are a) the see invis that randomly spawn on the bridges (we had two last night) and b) the lack of rez room at the Nest/Dreadspire zone line.  All it does is lead to a bunch of people hanging out at the Nest entrance while a batch of folks get rezzed up and zone in, then everyone trains up to the stone and repeats the process.  It's a time sink on a whole new level.

I believe in risk vs. reward, but the reward in this case is in a completely different zone.

One thing I would like to add to this thread, however, is to express my pleasure in some of the raid encounters.  Sisters and Hatchet are both fun, Thulli isn't bad once you get it down (heck, it was downright fun the last time we took him down), and I'm sure Redfang won't disappoint once they get it fixed.

[Tastian]

Zone line is a real pita for various reasons and reminds me a bit of old HoHB raiding(/sigh). 

They have talked about adjusting the zone points a bit to help with the issue, but I'm not sure if they'll do much else at this point.

Some of the encounters are solid, but I'm not a fan of DT as a play mechanic personally and the zone wide AE could use a couple tweaks as well imo.  *shrugs*  I just hope itemization stays decent throughout as so far most of what I've seen hasn't pissed me off.  8P

[Discordant]

At least in designing Uqua2.0, they did not include the ever present mobs spawn when someone dies.

[Kanan]

oh thank dear god.. that was prolly the largest factor in why I'll never re-enter uqua ><

[Discordant]

Having been in Demiplane for a good three or so months now, and near completing it (Performer almost down), I'd like to share a few more of my observations on DoDH raiding as compared to my preliminary observations that I posted a few months ago.

Time still seems to be a factor, some of the tier 2 events are long, but not horribly so.  Nothing like the marathon that was the Hive Queen.  One of the events in Tier 2 is long only because of faulty design (everyone whose there knows who I am talking about), and even then, it doesnt take too long to beat the encounter.  But lately, we've been able to clear Tier 1 + Tris in one night.

Difficulty hasn't seemed to be an issue with the exception of the previously mentioned mob and that stupid damn bat.  Once we beat the bat, it was smooth sailing to the Performer.  But the Bat, until you learn all of the mechanics, is ridiculously hard.  The other Tier 2 encounters not so much, but again, the faulty design of one of them frustrates raids.

I still believe that Sony ran out of ideas on some of the encounters.  Some of them are too alike in mechanics, but Tier 2, after the retardedness that was Tier 1, has some interesting encounters.  Tris was a breath of fresh air.  Roley is boring and makes me fall asleep. Performer is crazy.  Devlin is LAME.  THE WORST EVENT IN EQ EVER.

All in all, my examinations after the fact, I will say this.  Demiplane is extremely hard and challenging for those just.  I thought the difficulty was jump plain stupid when we first started (the events have subsequently been changed some, and have negated some of that difficulty).  However, once you've been there a while, its not as hard as you'd think.  Its one of the first zones in a long time that requires your raid to actually pay attention most of the time, rather than just one encounter.  I still don't like the zone (too much buggy crap like random summoning, falling through the world, gfluxed from the top of the dining room to hatchets room (that one was interesting), but its not the horrible zone I railed against 3 months ago.

[Dummkopf]

I have to say i still enjoy it. Yes, some tier 1 encounters are kinda boring and now way too far gimped down. Tier 2 was ok til they decided to gimp Tris and Devlin works like a charm for us. Of course you have to keep in mind that the whole expansion was developed with audio triggers in mind and you have to use them (either via a log parser or ingame trigger). Roley is kinda longish and yes, i tend to get bored there, it can be a fairly short fight however if the RNG is nice to you. Performer is just plain fun and a very intense fight at the end, dps is all you need basicly apart from enough tanks (our knight team just rocks). MM is a fun event but too easy in my opinion, especially after you beat the first couple minutes its just a stroll in the park until you come to the last few minutes. It took us only 2.5 weeks after we killed performer to kill MM and that is just too fast, not to mention it was 2.5 weeks over the holiday season where we didnt raid much at all (we usually raid only 4 to 6 days a week).