TOV - Pulling Mobs to ENT
 

Good evening,

I am posting this thread in hopes of getting a definitive answer on the legalities of our server rules.

As you know, pulling most Raid bosses to a zone in has been a big no-no on our server due to the issues it can cause for other raids zoning in (i.e. training, petitionquest, etc).

The reason I bring it up is because on Live this was a very common scenario due to the ease of fighting certain mobs (i.e. Aary, Ikky, Eashan, Dozekar to zone in for raid forces). Most guilds did follow these strategies due to how it assisted with the ease of clearing trash for true FTE races on Live.

I'd like to get some clarification from the server staff if this will be a viable option for all guilds who engage these particular dragons in such a way.

Thank you very much for your time and all the hard work you put in to our wonderful server,

Kiixx <Taken>

ell oh ell

I think what actually needs to happen is the raid leaders and officers of raiding guilds on P99 need to make a thread in Raid Discussion and iron things out.

1. Where can we camp out? Zone in only? Aary prep spot/Zlandicar prep spot/Yelinak prep spot or will those simply be Mage CotH races? -- Typically it was always zone in, but Zlandicar and Yelinak will just turn into huge derptarded CotH races with 10 poopsocking mages per guild if that is what is decided. I'd favor allowing campouts for NToV to be allowed at prep spot and the other two dragons allowed nearby their location to prevent the requirement to compete being 4+ mages sitting there for an entire window waiting to CotH people (also this will depend on whether they applied horrible variance to mobs unclassicly)
   
2. Where can we pull? Tormax was almost always done at zone lines for example, but such a pull leads him through half the zone - albeit a half not often camped cause armor doesn't drop there. What about NToV? Or Klandicar/Sontalak... Do these have to be fought at their spawn or will factioned mages CotH a tagger to them, aggro and pull to the SG zone line or somewhere else as a stall? Or will people camp in DN/ToV and zone out and whoever has more SSDs engage first? -- The only mob I can think of that has a pulling restriction was Venril Sathir, I expect a case by case basis for Velious mobs.
   
3. Exploiting Geometry/LoS for Tanks/Melee. Is this strategy allowed, where your melee or tanks can hit a raid mob though they don't have true LoS on said mob, which allows them to avoid all LoS based AEs? Is this classic? Is it kosher on the server? -- As it stands there are some locations you can tank certain dragons like Zlandicar and quite a few in ToV, where your tank isn't getting hit by any AEs... Fears, DDs, stuns, etc. But he is still capable of meleeing, proccing and holding aggro. Same deal for your entire set of melee DPS standing in this location and tank standing somewhere else. Allowing you to still DPS but not deal with the AEs at all. For healers this was certainly a strategy. Hide behind wall because heals don't require LoS. However tanks and DPS still being able to hold aggro/melee AND being able to avoid AEs... I'm skeptical this was classic or allowed.
   
4. Sim repops, no bag limit in Velious and its all FFA I'm guessing? Do bag limits still apply to Kunark? Are they necessary in Kunark with Velious out?
   
5. Faction tagging was a common practice. You hit a raid boss that another guild is killing at 5% and get a faction hit. On P99 though interfering with other raid's mobs is against the rules. I have no doubts someone who has a grudge will file a petty petition over a certain guild or players doing this even though it's classic. Those petition filers really need to just be DT'd and corpse moved to a random place in PoMischief.

The question is a lot bigger than NToV. There are a lot of mobs and they're split in a lot of zones. If you want to say anything can be pulled anywhere you will end up with people pulling Zlandicar to entrance and Velketor to the entrance.

As much as I'd like a conversation to happen, I am not holding my breath. I think Velious will launch, people will walk in gray areas, petitions will be filed and certain strategies will be banned, and certain guilds will have 1 week suspension from Tormax.

What are current variances on beta? Higher variances = more poopsocking with little advantage and massive disadvantage. Low variance means guilds can be more ready around spawn times of specific targets; if Velious turns into a massive CoTH poopsock on all raid targets, the guild with the most mages wins.

If targets have 16 hour variances, many of them will simply go to whoever can field the most mages for 16 hours at a time. If a window is only 3 hours, it still comes down to who has more mages, but the poopsock of who has more mages for the most amount of time goes away.

I would be shocked if the staff allows zone pulls. Even in VP, for example, the dragons must be engaged past the zone in. And many of these zones will have non-raiders there; I can't imagine you'll be allowed to drop Tormax's guards on some group factioning up with the dwarves near the bank (new strategy: untagged XP groups that petition when trained with raid mobs). The reality is that competitive EQ sucks. The mechanics simply don't work well with multiple raids in the same zone. I would say red would be better, but I think it's going to be hard to kill raid mobs when all the other side has to do is PK 3-4 clerics and port out.

I think the first monthish of Velious will simply be a petition shitshow. After everyone gets a little experience in terms of who can kill the various targets, where the XP groups tend to show up, where raid mobs can be pulled with minimal collateral damage and so on, I hope there will be some sort of relatively amicable meeting between the relevant parties that lays down some basic ground rules.

The other possibility is that once Velious is out and the major bugs are fixed, the staff finally puts some time into fixing the raid scene (i.e. major simultaneous repops with mobilization zones etc etc).

Pulling to zone in should definitely not be allowed. A 2 bag limit in velious would actually be fairly nice since smaller or more casual guilds would have opportunities to attempt mobs they otherwise couldn't. We can wait for the staff to make some rules for us, or we can attempt to make some for ourselves. Asgard would prefer the latter.

if the mob comes to the zone cleanly with no trains being dropped on people I dont see an issue, the only major difference between fighting a special mob at the zone versus a trash one is their name

if another guild has yellow text you know its not yours, and if the other mobs are controlled in a way to not affect other players - seems like that is par for the course here

Need people with raid discussion access to actually start threads then :/.

Pulling to zone ins is classic. HOWEVER, the way in which those pulls will be done on P99 is far from classic and those will tend to lead to training groups.

ToV I think pulling to the entry hallway (though not the zone in room) should be allowed (if VP you're allowed to pull to entry hallway, I think it parallels well enough with ToV that precedence has been set). At some point like half of NToV gets perma rooted and most of WToV. I forget when though, so until that happens guilds will be pulling either to the safe spot in NToV or entry hallway.

Kael... Any pull is going to screw with players in zone. Any guild who clears Giants on the way in will get leapfrogged. This will be a tough cookie I think. I always pulled Tormax to WL and the others to a corner of the Arena. But both of those pull paths will have normal groups grinding.

WW First Brood, should be fought at their spawn point but I have a feeling those will just be CotH races and stall runs back to your "engage area".

Dain... Everyone pulls him to well, which is out of everyone's way, I don't see any issues here. Even if your guild was one that fought him at zone in, that would be fine because the group's in Icewell won't be in that pull path.

Yelinak/Zlandicar are located such that any pull will either be an exploit (Zlandicar) or train the entire zone (Yelinak). So it will be a CotH race. But I can't imagine anything more retarded than requiring 4 poopsocking mages to contest these mobs as you CotH down 60 people. Really these mobs should be an exception and allow camp-outs near the mob. Let people compete by logging in fast to a batphone, not having 20 logged in pooping in a sock.

Velketor is going to be a cluster. For pure entertainment, you can log out at the beginning of the ice bridge and no CotHing allowed. Just to lol at people running across the ice bridge over lower dogs in a rush.

Tunare... I don't even want to think about this. The amount of leapfrogging and debauchery that are going to be involved here, will be staggering.

I wouldn't mind a 2 Velious and 2 Kunark lockout. But man,I can imagine some guilds complaining very hard that they cannot lock others out from getting ST keys from the first brood. Cause a 2 limit will force them to leave 3 up. Likely the hardest ones but still, casual guilds can band together and Zerg with the best of them.

All of the above are merely my personal opinions. But I will lobby hard for those Velketor rules. It would be gold Jerry!

Mobs with aoes do affect other players though, Kael seems like the only exception to this. I assume tov Ent will have ppl idling around regularly and I'm sure dn Ent will have ppl killing spiders and messing etc. I feel like you should have to kill every tov dragon inside of its wing (where inside doesn't much matter) but maybe I'm I'm the minority.

These should work just like Trakanon.

This should work just like CT.