Guild progression routes these days

[Gloriana]

re-posted from the Crucible

Ungkor

With all the abundance of Oow targets + DoN loot that is near or above VT quality nowadays, I guess it just started to occur to me that many guilds, I bet, are progressing via routes that are probably non-traditional, if you started back at the beginning of EQ.

The Kunark > ToV > VT > PoP > GoD route is not necessarily the only way to go anymore. That much is pretty obvious. But, I wonder, what parts are still required for guilds that want to, say, beat OMM one day?

For instance, we are currently progressing in both GoD (txevu atm) and MPG trials (3 down), and DoN (circle down, rikk down, all lower stuff down), but I'm wondering if we'll hit a stumbling block, if, and when, we break into Anguish?

What got me worried was attempting to predict what my gear would look like by the time we reached Anguish. For instance, could we skip Tacvi and beat OMM?

One thing I noted, was the the sum total of all MPG trials, and the sum total of all DoN stuff below Kess, resulted in only 2-4 upgrades for me (if I wanted to maximize foci).

Whereas, if we completed Tacvi before, or alongside a progression to Anguish, every single slot I have would be upgraded to 250hp+ items.

Any thoughts on how the last three expansions interplay in terms of progression and loot?


7ekno

Heh, tough question in this day and age!!

MPG trials are quite strategy dependant, and I know a well geared Time / Qvic guild can get thru them

MPG trials also offer quite decent gear upgrades, while you are focusing on getting to Anguish ....

If your goal is to beat OMM, then you are going to need MPG / Anguish / DoN / Tacvi farming (to gear people up quickly) ...

But if your goal is to get to Anguish and gear there, then you could probably skip having to learn the Tacvi / Txevu encounters and gear up on MPG trials / DoN / Anguish ....

Lots of directions a guild can head in this day and age ... Once you know the encounters, it's not unreasonable to spend 1 night in Anguish, 1 night Tacvi, 1 night DoN dragons, 1 night MPG trials, etc )

Samanna

Well, before I started raiding seriously a couple of months ago, I was in one-groupable gear, and frankly, other than a few focus effects, my gear was on par with elemental gear.

What this says, to me, is that a guild can have its members get to approximately elemental gear level from one-groupable content, and then make a push for the less difficult GoD and DoN content - and get 1.5s.

I don't think it's worth any new guild's time and effort to mess with PoP flagging (unless they can 85 people in to loot flags), let alone VT keying, with the options available nowadays.

Fandele Longtooth

Heck, in theory, if you had skilled, determined players, you could equal time gear or better with one-group content. I could even imagine a sort of 1-group progression via:

various Luclin named
BoT towers
Barindu trials
Kod'Taz
Ikkinz trials
Yxxta primals
MPG trials
Feratha/Chailak

Add in the occasional piece of DoN cultural to fill in the gaps. We have a guild warrior in almost a full suit of the stuff who buffs to around 12-13k and 2300 AC

Vigdis

One of the main reasons the normal progression works is that it produces huge amounts of decent loot for even the semi inactive and lazy players after a while.

If you had a small guild with dedicated and skilled players, you could progress anyway you wanted, basicly.

Grokii

Traditional method is good. There is more to progression then gear upgrades, the guild is still going to have to learn how to raid and VT can teach that.

We've been pretty lazy in Ssra just trying to get the commanders to drop key pieces for the emp key. We have about 2 groups flagged and about 2-3 more working on it. We didn't have enough to give the emp a try so we went for the arch lich. Whoops, the encounter actually takes a bit of strategy. Which ones can be mezzed, which ones need to be off tanked in the jail room, when to move, etc. Took us a bit learning it on our own before someone alt-tabbed out to read up on what was going on.

Moral of the story, just because your guild has the gear/numbers they still need to learn encounters and raid strategies. VT can do this in a much more relaxing environment then gearing up in single group content in DoN/OoW and then having to learn good raid praticies on the less more difficult raid encounters

Beafly

OoW Tier 1 armor/spells and DoN augs (think focus effects for casters, hp/ac for tanks) should enable a guild to completely skip VT and move directly into PoP progression. I wrote a rough plan for that progression a few months back. If anyone is seriously interested I'd be happy to share via PM.

Chutoi

I'd skip the hell that is VT access, and move on to some serious OoW farming. You'll lose some clickies and focus effects, but chances are they're outdated anyway. Understand that you'll also lose some raiding experience, which may be a bad thing depending on how versitile you, your raiders, and your raid leaders are.

I wouldn't overlook Tacvi, though. If you can field an Anguish capable force, then you should easily be able to get into Tacvi in a matter of 2-3 raids. The strats are out there. Many of the items in Tac contain level 70 focus items, and near-Aguish hp/mana levels (equivalent to mpg).

By the time you get most everyone in your guild MPG trial flagged, you're going to be having some pretty serious saturation on MPG loot. Sure, there will be a few pieces you want more of, but still. The problem is that with current itemization, each of Anguish, Tacvi, and MPG trials lack certain classes/loot spots--ie, wizard shoulders, or shaman neck, etc. Anguish and Tacvi are actually pretty good for complementing one another, imo, to fill in those extraneous slots that the other doesn't have very many of.

There is also the number of loots involved. If you kill all of Anguish, you get 3 x loots for each of Harrier, Ture, Jelvan, AM, and Hanvar. You also get 3 globes for epics, but I'm not going to count those as (a) not everyone does them, and (b) some of the epics kinda suck for certain classes. So you get 15 loots for an anguish run.

Tacvi, you get what, 8 x 3 (or is it four for tunat?). Anyway, at least 24 loots. That gets you ready for OMM that much faster.

Further, given the lockouts, you are faced with a similar issue anyway. After the last patch, it's 4.5 days to reset, so call it every 5 days for a clear of Anguish. Our guild raids 3x a week. Typically one of those days is spent on Anguish (less OMM), one on Tacvi, and one on either OMM or Vishimtar.

Not only does pursuing access to both give you a chance to increase loot and prepare faster for the hard encounters, it also gives you something to do between lockouts!

I'd question your target on OMM though. I think, given the relatively equal difficulties, you're probably better off learning to kill Vishimtar. You get Don AAs AND some really nice loot, as opposed to just loot. Heck, both mobs qualify as bragging rights, imo!

Kyriaki

VT really is a great Risk vs Reward zone once you get in it. 1 clearing will give you about 30 armor drops plus a half dozen or so Ancient spells.

Drops from DXXT onwards to AHR are comparable to elemental gear and the FT, clickies, etc are quite nice. I am still wearing a bunch of VT gear and probably wont replace it till Time+.

Vigdis

I never got into VT, and I regret not having seen it. Root ring, dispell bracer etc

Samanna

There is always use for clickies. It's just whether or not the time to get them is a good enough investment for the return.

Personally, I'd have preferred a few more Emp/HP drops. VT was nice, but I only ever got to maybe one loot-dropper past Blob1 before I stopped going there.


Exeley

There's a lot to be said about following the traditional progression path. The guild I'm an officer for (Sua Sponte on Stromm) moved into Luclin just after I joined. For many of our members, including myself, this is the first time in a raiding guild and many are on our first toon in EQ.

When we moved into SSRA to start working towards VT, many of us were inexperienced raiders. We learned to deal with rampage, to deal with adds, how to set up offtank/mezzing groups, etc. As we worked through the chain in SSRA our skills got better and better and raids became smoother and smoother. Moving into VT was a whole new ball game again. Up until then, we'd never dealt with the sheer number of mobs in camp. Our first time into VT, I lost count of how many times I died, but it was a lot. Now when someone dies during a VT raid, it's usually because of something stupid like a ninja afker.

Now we're into the elementals, and soon PoTime and the skills we learned in SSRA/VT have had as great an influence on our success as the gear has.

I could see skipping it if you have an experienced group of raiders, but, there's so much to learn otherwise. We would have had a much more difficult time making it through PoP otherwise.

On the other hand PoP flagging is a friggin PITA, I don't think I'd EVER want to go through that hell again.

Maitz

My guild skipped whole Ssra/VT mess and went straight to PoP progression ....farming Time/Qvic now.... all you need is determined folks

RedChief

VT and Time are very similar. Once you do the prep work (Keying, FLagging, lvling CoH bots), there are no other zones that can match them on the RvR and the loot per time spent. Both zone take about 4 hours to clear and net 30 to 45 loot.

Colal

For a guild of 45 to 50 raiders to go from 0 emp keys to A dead Aten Ha Ra will take between 30 and 45 days of concentrated focus work. Vex Thal loot is good, but for less effort, you can get better. But like others have said, the sheer amount of loot you can get in a single clearing can't be ignored. There are two types of people who can be found in pretty much any average to large size raid guild. Core people and non-core. Core poeple are the ones who are self reliant and provide their own gear, their own groups, their own clicky toys, get lots of aa points, and they use raid loot to enhance an already solid base of equipment. The non core are the ones who rely on the guild to get upgrades for them. They may have 98% raid attendance, but you can be sure that they make no effort outside of raids to gear themselves up. It really depends on how many core people you have, as to if you should skip vt or not. There is a lot better gear to be had, but it will come slowly if your people rely on raids to get it. If your people are self-sufficient, it might come faster than waiting on VT.

But honestly, the question is completly irrelevant in my opinion. I didn't join a guild so i could improve my stats, I joined a guild so that I could enjoy more of the game. VT is a neat zone, you will get tired of it, but its cool for a while. With enough effort any tool can get into a high end guild, it happens every day. If all you want is the best possible equipment, why start your own guild, why join a guild at the VT level? Just join one of the millions of cookie cutter guilds that are at the loot farming stages. If your choosing your raid targets based only on what gives the best gear choices, then your missing a really big part of the game. Loot provides a major motivation for a great many people, but it doesn't provide anyone motivation to play the same game for 6 years. At some point you have to come to the conclusion that doing and seeing new things is equally if not more important than gaining new loot. Otherwise, as soon as anyone in an uberguild became the best, they would retire. If you were the best equipped player at the end of kunark, you might still be the best equiped player today, but I doubt anyone in that situaiton palyed eq for 5 years so they could stay the best. They had to have done it because doing and seeing new things is fun.

As far as learnign how to raid is concerned, its really sad how it is now a days. VT is pretty strait forward, you kill thousands of weak hitting mobs, and then kill bosses who do nothign but melle you for low damage and have a billion HP. VT is a good place to practice some raiding skills, but you could learn more in 1 clearing of NToV than you would in 6 months of farming VT or anything else. The problem is that NToV is so easy now , regardless of gear levels, that you can't really take advantage of it anymore. You could almost say the same of old school PoFear.

Trevurg

VT is a good team building experience for sure, and you need to kill the emperor, and HIS drops are very tough to replace with bazaar loot. I still want a torque and we'll probably never do him again.

By the time your entire guild has all their shards and all their orbs and their emp keys and can find their way around most of luclin blindfolded, you will know each other like family.

So I think it's still worthwhile, even though dedicated people can gear themselves past the VT level easily. For a comparison you can click the links in sig, bard is VT geared with about 30 runs under his belt and warrior is all-single-group geared + 1.5

XeroOmega

well, the old way was to start in Luclin and move from there, because luclin has alot of "mid-range" raid bosses that are great for developing and learning raid strategies.

however, the gear upgrades they provide are easily surpassed today, so it is completely possible to skip VT altogether.

what I would recommend is getting everyone into OoW tier1 & DoN merchant gear to start out.

this will bring Equipment levels in general to mid-range PoP levels. then start on PoP progression up to time.

once you hit elementals, farm them for upgrades, start on GoD and work towards Time.

after you get to Time, start farming more and start pushing for progression through GoD.

once you hit about Txevu, you should be able to do most, if not all, of the MPG raid trials..

farm Tacvi and Anguish simultaneously.....start on the DoN dragons (flags aren't really much of an issue in DoN)...the dragon order is already set for you...so have a run at them and have fun.

hasek

Getting VT flagged requires a lot of determination and focus. I watched my old guild crumble due to the constant ssra farming and people not having fun. Most of the guild ended up getting their emp key and stopped helping the others. Personally, I will never set foot in ssra again. Spending 5 hours, on more than one occasion, with no commanders spawning was an experience I don't want to relive.

The guild I'm in now ended their VT farming and were in the EP's right when I apped last year. Within a month or so I was EP flagged. After the dark days of december 2004-jan 2005 where 1/2 our guild went to WoW or other guilds, we rebuilt and made it to Time.

Many newer members were inexperienced raiders, and Time provided them with a crash course on proper raiding. We took our lumps in the beginning, but I was impressed as I watched our guild mature and learn to work as a team once again.

Grokii

Our guild is pretty tired of the snakes. Being a shaman doing the slow/Q/Leopard thing makes a commander group with just about anyone. So I'm trying to go back even though I don't need any drops. As long as there is a tracker in the group I don't mind, but without a tracker I'm really hate trying to get the commanders to spawn.

With the DoN recipies we're actually getting high level tradeskillers and/or plat farmers in the zone too. Most are being pretty nice about calling out commander pops since they know we're going for VT. Of course I want to strange all the people camping the assassin and leaving a commander spawned behind the locked door.

As for what Colal said about a self-sufficent core... how true. Unfortuantly I'm one of the people that is waiting on raid content for upgrades. You kinda put a mirror up to my face. At this point, should I spend my time helping people get their VT keys or spend my time getting gear upgrades that are on par with VT?

Not sure if what I'm doing is right or not, but I don't want to drag out guildmember friends away from Ssra/Luclin to work on OoW, DoN, or PoP content for a gear upgrade that'll be easily replaced once we get into VT. Or the other way to look at it, is I'm waiting for the guild to hand me gear upgrades.

Is the mob half slow'd or half un-slow'd?

Brohg

It's all about what pace is desired. If your guild wants to get to the endgame as fast as possible, Velious, Luclin and PoP are all a waste of time. You get further faster by one-grouping to Samanna's level of gear and collecting mad AA in the process. Epic 1.5s are huge, statwise and for the boost in melee dps.

Then you jump to the middle of GoD! You would have to pull out all the stops on discs & stuff to get past Ikk4/Barxt, no jokes. Once you do even once, though, then you're in Qvic. From Qvic & MPG one group stuff, a guild's main tanks can get to (about? haven't done this exercise in a couple months) 11500ish unbuffed, with like 20-some % shielding. Ikk4 and Uqua are suddenly farmable, everyone gets flagged; from there you're solidly into the modern scale of high end raiding.

...and then there are the people who want to see the game. The above plan would kill anyone not completely , solely, only, to-the-exclussion-of-all-else (etc) focussed on looting only the best items in the game.

My actual plan on progression, for folks that want to still have a guild when they get where they're going, is to mix it up. Have at least two days off a week because average aa counts and personal progression of members is a really underplayed factor in guild success. Moving everyone from 66-70ish with maybe 50some aa and, well, most of their spells... to all 70, with 400aa each, with all their spells, and hp/mana/ac/resist augs all over... really changes how the guild deals with the world. Spend two nights a week wiping on things you think are beyond your reach, but get closer each time. Spend your other nights collecting loot, and make sure it's upgrades. Spending a whole night learning Ssra mobs that drop things worse than folks can get soloing in Noble's Causeway, for instance, isn't going to be very motivating for your forces.

Exeley

Quote:
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Originally Posted by Brohg
Encounters where you're punished for screwing up is how a guild learns, imo.
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I remember some pretty punishing nights in SSRA. Like the night the patch healers all decided they'd prefer to dps on XTC and he ate through all the clerics after killing the Rampage Tank. Then the time we had HP down to 20ish % and ended up wiping because some people didn't pay attention to instructions and killed several of the off tank/mez mobs in the jail room.

The Emp was a pretty sweet kill for us once we got the encounter down. Took us a few attempts before we finally managed to get him down.

SSRA may not be the uber accomplishment it once was, but it provided plenty of lessons for us that will remain with us so long as we continue to progress. SSRA was nice in the fact that it provided several raid targets of varying difficulty all in one location. If you couldn't handle one, you just scaled things back, refined skills a bit and tried again when you felt you were ready.

I can see the argument for skipping it all. It is a pain to get everyone Emp and VT keyed, but, the nice side effect of that was it really helped to seperate out the chaff.

I don't regret our guild taking the VT path, it was the right thing for us imo. Really, I think that's what it comes down too, is it the right path for your guild and your priorities? Even though it worked for us, I'd never dream saying it's the correct path for everyone.

darkpaw

I have done every bit of content from kunark dragons up to time. If I were going to start a guild or lead raids for one at that level, I wouldn't go anywhere near VT. It takes too long to prep and kill emp, when you could be using that time to advance in the planer progression. Getting people to work on their emp keys and VT shards can be like pulling teeth (and can definately contribute to burning people out). At least now with the panther line, you can probably just toss all the melle with shaman and skip the stupid bane weapons.

I would say you'd be much better served spending that 2 months you'd use preparing for VT, working pop mobs. Doesn't mean you can't hit the non progression ssra stuff like cursed or velious stuff like AoW for specific drops.

Kilgaroz

I don't regret taking our guild through VT in the least. We worked PoP Tiers 1 & 2 at the same time, got some very valuable raiding experience working through VT and geared our toons up well. We just did our first Time raid last Tuesday and got to T4 with plenty of time to spare. Ended up wiping on TZ because of some lack of clarity on the strat, but went back and killed him and his brother on Thursday. I think VT is worth it for a guild to do, but they shouldn't just focus on working through that monster, but should keep it mixed up raiding PoP or DoN content as well. As far as VT being a laid back place to learn the strats, it's only laid back once you've gotten used to the size of the pulls. Even as low as the dps is on them, for people who aren't used to having 5+ mobs in camp, can think of a few pulls where we had 10, it can be chaos with a lot of people dying until you have your crwod control down to a science.

Grokii

Exactly Kilgaroz. Ssra is not forgiving if everyone doesn't do their job. Our guild has a lot of people that aren't used to some of the needed raid tactics, myself included. We are good with the main assist, attack when called thing. But Grummus isn't the only target in PoP progression. If we don't have people listening to kite adds and whatnot in a TT raid the whole raid wipes really fast.

With Ssra there is a little fudge room because they are lower DPS. If a 65/70 healer gets aggro they can take a couple hits before it gets taunted or mezzed, but in PoP progression if a non-tank gets aggro chances are they're pulp pretty quick. Esp if we aren't at VT gear levels yet.

Also, VT/Ssra drops more loot per kill so gearing up a guild will be faster once everyone is key'd. I'll talk to ya'll in 2 months and let you know how the VT path goes nowdays. : )

[fendaann]

SOF Expansion;
Since SoF came out- Some Demi-guilds have skipped DK and flagged for Crystallos and doing SOF T1 raids and started TSS flagging.

Fabled progression 2008:
yes, once a year the Fabled mobs will be up for one month but unlike other years this year of Fabled PoP was like no other. If you lucky enough to find PoP fabled up and were TSS raiding capable you could be lucky in TSS like weapon drops and max influx of loot. Will next 2009 have the same effect for raiders?

my guild got lucky we got
Hourlies:185 - Raids: 386 - Items obtained: 538!!! ! omgz! !
188 Confirmed Fabled Kills about 1 hour per kill!
That's nearly 3 loots an hour / kill!