bob the builder wrote on Jun 17
th, 2016 at 2:37pm:
You've been catered to. Heroic Elite today is what used to be Normal when the game came out. Normal and Hard in both Heroic and Epics and Legendary is a joke.
Elite in heroic is a joke as well. Epic Elite isn't much better... tough to solo on wrong build, but six average builds can make it through without a designated healer.
Lol - I've been in groups that barely made it through EH {and I've been the last to die too so no it wasn't because I'm so bad - There are plenty of players actually playing the game at my level AND below!}.
There's a vast difference between you and the average DDO Player - You're just too stuck in your own Elitist Mindset to realise it!
Thanks mainly to Champions but also to other reasons too Hard and Elite are much tougher today than they were back in 2010.
And back in 2010 people were still running mainly Elite - The reason Elite is the main difficulty has absolutely fuck all to do with it being made easier to supposedly cater to anyone {in fact the opposite has happened and it's been made significantly harder....especially in newer quests!}, it's because the Player Base simply refused to run any other difficulty!
The reason for the Player Base's refusal to run other difficulties is threefold:
1) Favour!
The Devs made a rod for their own backs here - Tying Favour Rewards {inc. TP} to Elite in the first place!
Players were expressly told that they were basically expected to run Elite rather than Elite being kept only for those capable of running it!
2) Loot!
In the main Turbine have been pretty good with Loot being available to those running Normal and Hard too but the problem here is that in places where you do have to run Elite to have any real chance to get the Loot you want well if you're already capable of Elite you don't need that Loot!
Elite should have had other Rewards not tied to Character Power because then we get into the ludicrous situation we're in where Elite is giving out Loot that basically makes it a Cakewalk once got.
Then you get people asking for a new higher difficulty but they want better Loot to go with it - LUDICROUS!
There's far more Loot today than there was when this game came out - The difficulties have not got any easier but the availability of better gear has gone way up!
Meanwhile some Loot is now as rare as Hen's Teeth so it isn't all one way here either.
A Newbie today can pull a Vorpal at Lvl 3 but can't find a Ghost Touch weapon to save their Lives unless they own Catacombs and defeat the End-Boss {a Wraith} without one!
And that same Newbie has no choice but to use The piece of shit Club of the Silver Flame in Delera's even if he's a fully X-Bow Specced Arti or a now uncentered Monk cos Pure Good doesn't appear on RNG anymore and Holy no longer breaks their DR!
3) XP - The Devs tried to fix this in Epics but as usual went way way too far in the opposite direction!
BB was a massive mistake!
EN VoN 3, Spies, WK etc. was if anything an even bigger mistake!
Not that those quests {well apart from WK} give out too much XP, I'd say that VoN 3 and Spies are just about right now.
But that so many other Higher Level Epic Quests, Most Heroic Lvl 17-19 Quests on Elite and literally every Epic Elite Quest outside of the big XP dailies gives out too LITTLE!
Yet the Devs simply refuse to fix the XP in these other quests - 50k per quest in E-Orchard on EE is just a joke!
16k for EN Snitch, 24k for EH and 30k for EE - Do the Devs not want us running this quest?
At Lvl 20 we need 600,000 XP to hit 21 yet E-BB IQ and DD give like 15-20k each, High Road, Storm Horns and Amrath about 30k each on average {yes I know What Goes Up gives a lot more}.
The Quest per Level Ratio is massively off!
So people just run EN VoN 3, Spies etc. because they're so much easier when you can get Lvl 30s to join you!
Lvl 17 is in an even worse spot because everyone and his dog knows not to take 19 till they're ready to take 20!
So Lvl 17 Quests simply don't get run!
I ran Heroic Elite ToEE last night on my Lvl 30 Pure H-Orc Barb and guess what it was easy!
It's not easy at Level though and not even on a Warlock could I guarantee surviving Pt 2 at Level.
Sometimes we make our own difficulty!
If EN is too easy, DON'T run it!
You have that choice!
There is no choice when a difficulty is too Hard however!
I'm just hitting the point now where on some Characters I do have a choice whether to run EE or not.
On some characters I'm willing to give it a go, on others no.
I ran LH Shroud the other day on my Pure Warlock - Died 7 times {unfortunately the most in the group though I think only by one death}.
Yesterday I ran it again, this time on a far weaker character - my Lvl 30 Int Based Picklock {18 Warlock/2 Rogue} and died one less time but did far less damage and frankly may have helped the party more if I'd just piked the entire raid.
In the meantime....In that second run I saw a Legend Monk hit 7 deaths by Pt 3, complain multiple times that he/she wasn't capable while the Leader and others in group were like "it's fine, no worries" and then Rage Quit {in Pt 3}.
Again - There's players actually in-game, plenty of them, at my level and below.
AND The only reason I even joined those Groups in the first place either time was because I was asked to!
I then chose to run EH/EN Two Toed Toby even though I was after Jibbers Blade on my "Picklock" because I didn't consider him EE capable Solo even though he's Lvl 30 and because I wasn't willing to wait who knows how long for an EE group that could have just as easily ended up with a couple of people expecting me to be able to do all the work as with an uber who could clear the entire quest for me or somewhere in between.
EH wasn't too difficult but difficult enough that I know I wouldn't have got through EE on that Character Solo.
If I'm not capable of soloing a Quest on EE there's no way I'm putting up an LFM for it unless there's already at least one other person in Group, Same goes for higher Level EHs and LHs.
I wouldn't want to join a Group where the Leader was looking to be carried so why should I expect others to carry
me as the Leader of a Group?
This was actually a big problem for me when BB first came out because at that point I was not capable of soloing Elites even in Heroic at BB level {most Heroic Elites I'd run 2,3 or sometimes even more levels above}.
My Epic Characters were also incapable of Soloing EN at that time - I had to run E-Tharashk on E-Casual a couple of times!
But it didn't take me long to LEARN to Solo pretty much any Heroic below Lvl 16 on Elite BB and all ENs.
Because I had NO CHOICE - If I couldn't solo the Quest and couldn't guarantee anyone would join my Group I had to learn to Solo it!
Getting to the end fight of a quest that I know I could fail in said end-fight with an LFM still up is still annoying!
So most of the time I avoid EEs and a lot of the time I stick to EN.
Someday I'll get there and EN will be a relic of the past but something tells me that won't happen while EN is the Default difficulty that everyone runs on!
To cut a very long story short:
It's the Player Base that decides what difficulty becomes the Norm and not the Devs!Elite was ALREADY the Norm when I started back in 2010!
The ONLY thing that has changed that is the change to XP ransack when Epics came about and the ability to run ENs daily for huge and easy XP!
On Heroic Elite is STILL the Norm!
On Epic it's EN.
The Devs may as well just get rid of Casual entirely now {maybe leave it in for Lvls 1-4}.
And on Epics I think EN needs Champions - There's still too big a difference between EN and EH.
Players going into Epics should certainly be used to Champions by this point.