Is it time to retire T1+W1?

[Sidar]

I'd strongly disagree with the argument that raid drops should always be significantly better than group drops.

Yes, raiding requires coordination between more players, so there should probably be some kind of reward for doing so.

But group encounters can be designed to require more of each individual player than raid encounters since, when designing raids, you do need to take account of weakest link issues. Granted, not all games to that, and in many MMOs (say, WoW) groups are a mere stepping stone in order to get ready for raids. But this is not what AoC has gone for - in fact, it didn't do so even before Khitai / T3 (just think of what Xib HM required of each player in the group back in the day, compared to T2).

But the main issue is that, given the fact that FC have chosen not to increase the level cap, giving people viable loot from dungeons actually allows new players to get ready for endgame raiding in a reasonable amount of time. If they had to go through the traditional raid progression (T1-T2-T3-T4), we'd have even more of an issue with player separation than we have already. And the one's who'd suffer the most from it would probably be the guilds that guys like you raid in, since recruiting players who are ready for endgame would become even more difficult.

For these reasons, it is perfectly sensible for a game like AoC to hand out competitive gear for doing 6-man dungeons. Where AoC does fail, however, is in providing rewards that are adequate to the challenge. You can grind easy dungeons like KK and get pretty much the same rewards which you would get from doing harder stuff (say, Paikang). But this isn't a question of rewards from group dungeons being "too good". It's an issue that follows from the tokens system, which rewards people for grinding instead of going for challenges.

I never meant that 10 minutes of raiding should be better loot then several hours of HM's to make that clear, man It could even be a system where Raids = survival gear and HM's would focus on DPS, kinda in the same line as all the diff HM's sets

However I disagree on HMs fuction as to break the progression. Its correctly done on pretty much everywere (including aoc) by increasing the rewards from the lower tiers (like they did) on the old days there were no simple tokens thing, and you can pretty much buy a T1 small piece per week.

[Rathothis]

However I disagree on HMs fuction as to break the progression. Its correctly done on pretty much everywere (including aoc) by increasing the rewards from the lower tiers (like they did) on the old days there were no simple tokens thing, and you can pretty much buy a T1 small piece per week.

Not sure what you mean by that... if dungeon gear does not "break the progression", then the best dungeon item will always have to be worse than the worst raid item.

If that is what you mean, I'd disagree. And I think that the guilds that would suffer the most from it would be hardcore raiding guilds, since they'd have a much smaller pool of players to recruit from.

In my view, the best dungeon loot should be about equal to the second highest raid tier available, in order to avoid too much of a separation of the player base.

[Sidar]

Not sure what you mean by that... if dungeon gear does not "break the progression", then the best dungeon item will always have to be worse than the worst raid item.

If that is what you mean, I'd disagree. And I think that the guilds that would suffer the most from it would be hardcore raiding guilds, since they'd have a much smaller pool of players to recruit from.

In my view, the best dungeon loot should be about equal to the second highest raid tier available, in order to avoid too much of a separation of the player base.

There can be parallel sets. same as khitai.

In the old days, The raid gear was the Best survival gear ingame, but we also had crafted set wich most people would actually get cause in some cases it proved to be a viable DPS option, even better then t1/2 in some cases. This is called something like parallel progression.

In my point of view the best dungeon loot can be at same level as best tier raid, just have a completely different function, that is CLEAR on that gear stats, simple example, 6mans set would be like a Tiger set for DPS, where the raid one would be something like LL or wolf.

[cins]

When raidbosses require every player to have a lot of health and defense to survive their regular attacks while dungeon bosses are all damage races that need next to no health/defense from anyone (or the opposite of this), completely different focuses for items will be logical. But raids and dungeons aren't fundamentally different like that so we can't have that paralel progression thingy. The only difference is the number of players involved. Sadly since basically both raids and dungeons need same things (health/mitigation for tanks, damage for everyone else), it makes no sense to have "paralel" item progressions that focus on different stats.

The "paralel" items we currently have don't really work. How many dps use anything other than their Brittle Blade sets in raids/dungeons? Has anyone ever used the "+tap" set of their class? Why do the evade/immunity sets even exist? Only tanks get some sort of "choice" in this matter, which is simply trading a bit of defense on raid items for critigation on Khitai sets (until they get T4 and lose even that tiny little choice).

Unless there's a good amount of content that forces players to specialize into strange stats (such as with weird mechanics like anyone below 6k stamina/mana will die here or must have 20% evade rating to enter), paralel progression will be hogwash and everyone will always use their "best" items.

[Sidar]

When raidbosses require every player to have a lot of health and defense to survive their regular attacks while dungeon bosses are all damage races that need next to no health/defense from anyone (or the opposite of this), completely different focuses for items will be logical. But raids and dungeons aren't fundamentally different like that so we can't have that paralel progression thingy. The only difference is the number of players involved. Sadly since basically both raids and dungeons need same things (health/mitigation for tanks, damage for everyone else), it makes no sense to have "paralel" item progressions that focus on different stats.

The "paralel" items we currently have don't really work. How many dps use anything other than their Brittle Blade sets in raids/dungeons? Has anyone ever used the "+tap" set of their class? Why do the evade/immunity sets even exist? Only tanks get some sort of "choice" in this matter, which is simply trading a bit of defense on raid items for critigation on Khitai sets (until they get T4 and lose even that tiny little choice).

Unless there's a good amount of content that forces players to specialize into strange stats (such as with weird mechanics like anyone below 6k stamina/mana will die here or must have 20% evade rating to enter), paralel progression will be hogwash and everyone will always use their "best" items.

well I agree with you, But making Raid stuff require raid stuff, would fix this.

[Yawgmoth-VDN]

while i agree that evade/immunity sets are useless, pure dps sets are not always the best...

there are some encounters where everybody can get a lot of magic damage, like argo-satha or the general in ai district... try to go there with low protection, and at the 1st mistake you're dead...
and also there are cases where tanks has to switch aggro very often, so raid gear (that has minus hate) helps to do more dps without pulling aggro...

so, if you want to do more advanced content, and not limit yourself to the basic stuff, you need to have more than one set...
unless you want to gimp yourself on purpouse, of course...

[Argantes]

...
there are some encounters where everybody can get a lot of magic damage, like argo-satha or the general in ai district... try to go there with low protection, and at the 1st mistake you're dead
...

ah, ol´good Argo-satha, probably the first and only encounter I could go full bananas with SC set, pure DPS gear and build/perks on my necro (even pre-nerf)

Gotta agree that even when there are 5 Khitai sets for everyone and not every single one of them is that much useful, there is still a lot of choice to be made.. tanks with their phys. mitigation/protection/DPS sets are probably the most obvious, but then there are healers with HR set/dps set/mix of them and DPSers can also choose from survival/DPS/protection sets. Majority of those sets are now inferior to the best gear available aka T4, but this is how it should be. Also keep in mind, that T4 gear is still out of reach for the majority of AoC playerbase (as even those few best (semi)PUGs stop after Imp), so the Khitai and T3 (and even lower) gear still got it´s fair share of use.

Ah, and just a short remark about the useless immunity sets.. before I´ve got my Black Dragon set on DT, I used to tank demo boss on first T3 encounter in the LL protection/immunity set and it was a nice minichallenge to try to resist as many DoTs as possible (supported by double tap sideways). Switching to BD set changed the style of tanking a bit, but since the dot has been nerfed to oblivion with the T3 changes, it´s kinda irrelevant now... just a piece of memory

[Yawgmoth-VDN]

ah, ol´good Argo-satha, probably the first and only encounter I could go full bananas with SC set, pure DPS gear and build/perks on my necro (even pre-nerf)

scarlet circle set for casters has protection...

[Argantes]

scarlet circle set for casters has protection...

yes, but iirc those few % are barely noticable.. I´ve got probably more protection just from the supreme lich buff alone (but atm I can´t remember the type of dmg A-S is dealing, so I guess unholy)

[Yawgmoth-VDN]

according to what one of our tanks said last time we did it (saturday evening), bot a-s spells and corpses aoe does frost damage...
btw, a full epic sc set gives 400 protection... not too bad i'd say...

and i think the pure-dps set for casters is not sc, but bb...


but the point of the thread was: is tier 1-2 gear still useful?? and in my opinion it's still nice to have under some circumstances, and it's still a nice way to "introduce" new players to more advanced content...
it would also be nice to give some better rewards to dungeons like xiba & iron tower, 'cos they are the 1st places where it starts to be important to look at castbars, and fights are not just tank & spank...

so, i strongly disagree with the op: content must no be removed!! it's the opposite: people should be encouraged to do it, to learn the basics of the game in a more "friendly" environment...