How hard is Velious, really?

[bOONDOGGLE]

Recently I was looking at some of the Velious loot and it seemed really, really overpowered.

So, having never played any of the Velious content (I was on classic EQ since pre-kunark, but I was horrible at the game - still am), I brought up the topic in guild chat; basically asking how loot this good will not completely break the balance of the game.

The responses I got were essentially, "Dude, Velious is pretty freaking hard."

Can anyone here elaborate on this? I'm just curious.

[myxomatosii]

"Dude, Velious is pretty freakin' hard."

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Basically imagine Kunark but with frostbite. Ever tried to game with cold fingers? Exactly.

9/10 monks die pulling Lord Dirigible because they stop to type his name.

Many other problems.

[Norathorr]

Some of the upper end loot is pretty insane, but the raid mobs in Velious are ALOT harder than those in Kunark. Having said that if you bring enough of the right class it will trivialize most things. I think AoW will be a very good test for even the most decked out guilds though.

[Tecmos Deception]

Originally Posted by Norathorr [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Some of the upper end loot is pretty insane, but the raid mobs in Velious are ALOT harder than those in Kunark. Having said that if you bring enough of the right class it will trivialize most things. I think AoW will be a very good test for even the most decked out guilds though.

I get the impression, looking at Velious gear, that basically the only stuff that is truly jaw-dropping is the stuff from ToV and Sleepers and the quests involving those zones. You aren't going to be tanking kunark bosses on your necro just because you have a drop from velketor or doing 130 DPS on your rogue just because you upgraded your offhand or maxing all your melee stats because you're wearing armor you quested in thurg, etc.

A lot of the pieces of class faction armor are big boosts from current gear, and aren't really far behind drops off vindi or something. But when you look at, like, jewelry gear? Those "OMG EVERY VELIOUS ITEM HAS 25 AC AND 100 HP and 10 ALL RESISTS AND 0 WEIGHT AND IS ALL/ALL" pieces of gear are basically all from the high raids. Weapons seem the same, imo; there are hardly any upgrades from the likes of paladin epic or tranquil staff or ragebringer.

[Byrjun]

Originally Posted by Tecmos Deception [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

there are hardly any upgrades from the likes of paladin epic

Natures Defender, which is way easier than the paladin epic (and thats not even that tough).

or tranquil staff

There's the Efreeti Ice Staff, but yeah, not quite as good as Tranquil Staff.

or ragebringer.

Yeah, hard to replace Ragebringer. The closest thing was Mrylokar's Dagger of Blood from Vulak. Now, I can't tell you the original stats on this weapon because it has an interesting story. Fires of Heaven posted the item details for this dagger on their website, and apparently people were so appalled at the "insane stats" that Verant ended up nerfing it soon after. So after that almost all raid guilds (FoH, Afterlife, etc.) decide to stop posting stats of new drops. I'm sure this has made Velious development a pain in the ass.

Anyways, what I can find for Mrylokar's Dagger of Blood is a 12/16 ratio, so that would be an offhand weapon and not really a replacement for Ragebringer. I assume that's the post-nerf version so I'd be curious if anyone has found the stats on the version that got nerfed.

Mrylokar's Dagger of Blood eventually (post-Velious I'm quite sure) gets replaced by Mrylokar's Dagger of Vengeance which is 15/19. I have no idea if that was the original damage/delay on the pre-nerf Dagger of Blood, but it would make it an upgrade for the Ragebringer for at least a week or two before it gets nerfed.

Anyways, I went on a bit of a tangent there, but I did have a point. I see Kunark as the "weapon expansion" and Velious as the "gear expansion." Kunark provided a huge upgrade for all classic weapons, and instantly devalued all the old uber weapons like Short Sword of the Ykesha. Velious doesn't provide quite a huge shift upwards in weapons, but it definitely does so for gear. And having weapons that proc Avatar is pretty sweet.

Edit: There's comments on Mrylokar's Dagger of Vengeance from about a month and a half before Luclin release, so I guess there is eventually a replacement for the Ragebringer.

[Swish]

Originally Posted by Norathorr [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think AoW will be a very good test for even the most decked out guilds though.

Too many Donal BPs around, I dunno... :/

[Byrjun]

It'd be a huge mistake to allow Donal's on the server for even a second after Velious launches.

[Fael]

weapons advance a decent amount as well, but certainly its all about the HP and resist gear increases.

Velious is just raid heavy. It really is the first raid centric expansion.

Mob hit points were multiplied by as much as 10 times, and their dmg increased quite a bit as well. You just need a lot of good gear to compete.

That said, a few of us have experimented in WToV and with zlandicar with our current gear sets and have done all that with 6-10 people. I'm interested to see how much harder it is on p99, with all the differences between our code and the emu.


Dolic

[Orruar]

Most Velious content is pretty trivial on a stable server. The hardest part about keeping a tank alive back in 2001 was dealing with the inevitable lag spike + subsequent tank death. This server is far more stable and people have much more practice in maintaining a ch chain. The only real challenge will be fights where ch chains are difficult to maintain due to fear/gflux/etc.

[Tecmos Deception]

That seems like a really good point, Orruar.