Feedback on Plane of Tactics

[peterigz]

We finally managed to complete the Plane of Tactics this week and kill Rallos Zek. It was pretty satisfying especially as there's not a great amount of other guilds that have done it. Firstly, a big thanks for a great zone that's been a lot of fun and rewarding to complete! The challenge of the zone has been a bit of a contentious issue, specifically the Rallos fight itself, so now we have finally managed to do it I thought I'd give a little feedback based on our experiences.

Firstly I do think the Rallos fight is about right, I know that it's been made easier since the zone was first introduced and we never attempted it at that difficulty level, but it feels about right. We basically needed a 24 man raid to bring him down which isn't at all far fetched for any serious raiding guild. We have a few donator weapons here and there where their clickies would make a difference in DPS (3 Rog, 1 Mag, 1 Zerker, 1 Mnk) but no Chest or leg items. What was key I think, was that we had 2 Druids, so we could keep him perma debuffed with the epic 2.0 and Dark Prolongation focus.

His loot is great and worth the effort (was our main motivation), but I do think it'd be a great idea to make him drop 1 or 2 of the Tactics class spells as well as an extra reward; most other Tier zone end bosses do this so I think it'd kinda make sense even though they're quested for. One other thing other thing I would suggest is that the Eye of Rallos Zek has Ancient Thunder, rather then True, to put it in line with the rest of tier 6.

The quest "Battle of the Blood Raven", results in a reasonably nice item, but again you might consider increasing the focus to Ancient Savings for the same reason. That'd make it a lot more desirable considering you can put an upgraded Sol Ro aug in it and have 2 Ancient focuses in one item. It's a long quest and requires a lot of patience considering you have to bring down the big man himself.

The Vallon and Tallon Zones:
The drop rate for the Spheres that you combine to make the augs could be increased slightly I think. It just feels like we'll be long done with the zone before we've managed to loot enough to create any of the final Augs you get from them. Maybe 6%? Considering you've got to wait for the right colour to drop as well.

I don't think it'd hurt for the other loot table to be increased either, still haven't seen a pouch of tactics yet. Speaking of which, maybe the Arrow of Tactics could be put more in line with the Arrow of Fear and have 16 damage, or even 17. I know it's purpose is pretty much just for creating the Dark Arrow of Tactics but I don't think it'd hurt.

With regards to the priests of these zones, they're quite selfish I'd make them heal their comrades as well so there's a little more strategy to taking down groups of them maybe even make them mezzable in that case. It'd make things feel more "Tactical", and ultimately more fun.

Vallon and Tallon Zek.
These are great fun fights, the difficaulty of which is on par with anything in VP, and maybe even tougher, however the loot seems to be of tier 5 quality for the most part. I think any item that has only a slot 8, could just have a slot 16 added, and any true focus effect, upgraded to ancient. And there could even be an item in there that's like a Ring of the Constable, or a Vultrans Necklace, you know, one of those items that gives a unique perk that you can't get anywhere else: Constable ring from PoA has the dodge buff, vultrans necklace off of Vulak has a deaggro buff etc. Veteran's Battle Charm would be a good one to change, at the moment it has invisibility, not even improved invisibility that you can get from Crushbone

You could just make it an improved version of vultrans necklace (it even looks the same), for a -12% aggro modifier (Vultrans is 8%). Or alternatively, a 12% increase in aggro for tanks perhaps.

Anyway, they're just my thoughts based on my time in the zone (a lot of time! ). In summary, my changes would be:

Rallos Zek Loot:
Rallos Zek to drop x1 or x2 of the Tactics Class Spells as well
Eye of Rallos Zek: True thunder upgrade to Ancient Thunder

Quest Rewards:
Feather of the Blood Raven: True Savings upgraded to Ancient Savings

Vallon Zek Loot:
Visor of Endless Sight: Add Slot 16
Furous Hammer of Zek: Add Slot 16
Girdle of the Tactician: True Bile Upgrade to Ancient Bile, Add Slot 16
Resplendent War Maul: Add Slot 16

Tallon Zek:
Battle Staff: Add Slot 16. Maybe increase damage to 52?
Tallon's War Charm: True Quickening upgrade to Ancient Quickening. Add SLot 16.
Veteran's Battle Charm: Replace Invisibility with an agro modifier buff +/-12% or some other "Easter Egg" type unique buff. Add Slot 16
Warmaster's Recurved Longbow: Add slot 16
Earing of Tallon: Personally I'd reduce the recast to 1 min

Trash Loot:
Increase drop rate for the Spheres to 5/6%.
Increase the drop rate for the pouch of tactics to 5/6%.
Increase damage of the Arrow of Tactics to 16/17.

In conclusion, I think when the zone first came out, in the context of all the other zones that were available the loot probably made a lot more sense, but in the context of how the server is today with the multitude of zones and tiers and gear I think these little tweaks would make sense and hopefully make the zone more popular than it is.

Thanks for reading and keep up the good work!

[Vaion]

Great feedback! We will look over everything and let you know of any changes that we make

[Sian]

Cool ideas indeed. Especially about loots. Just one thing about clerics healing more. I remember a feedback thread about this a year or so ago. It was very tough to kill mobs because clerics were healing a lot and very often, so Vaion reduced how often they were healing around to make it more doable.
I personally remember, at that time I had so much trouble killing them. Now I can't really compare because my dps is nowhere near what it was in the past (boxing 12 now and using MQ while before I was boxing less without MQ) and raiding in different zones now). I had far less problems with DSK trash than PoT. Now they are both the same to me.

Just keep in mind that this is supposed to be a t6-t7 zone and that you get multiple mob at the same time with healers to change that. That is just trash. It's hard to have more feedback because not many people are going there now besides bigger guilds maybe. Have to find an in-between too hard/too easy trash.

[Ydiss]

Our first attempt at the instances was when geared in t6, as Rigz said with some donator items. We found the fights challenging but doable. I think with the healers, all it really means is they have more hitpoints; they only heal once and it appears to be scripted. What Rigz is suggesting is to make them mezzable (or stun perhaps), so there's a tactical element to these fights. As it stands, there's not really much to it and it's just a matter of continuing to dps them until they die again. You can happily leave them until last to kill.

When we first attempted them we tried to time stuns but it doesn't seem to have an effect. We eventually realised the heal only fired once and we dismissed it as an issue and just accepted that they essentially have more hitpoints. So it has no tangible impact on the approach to the fight.

Now, of course, we are t7 geared and most of the time they die before they heal.

[Sian]

Ok then I agree on the mez/stun thing while they can heal themselves more often. Thought you just wanted to make them heal more often without anything else to do than being able to outdps them. In that sense, it's more tactical and interesting indeed.
I don't think they only heal themselves once though. It's just that you don't let them enough time to do it more often

[peterigz]

Well, when I mentioned about the priests healing, it wasn't about the regularity, I was just pointing out that they don't heal their allies. For example, in crushbone, if you attack a group of orcs and one of them is an Oracle, it will heal any other orc as well as itself who take damage.

Currently in the Vallon/Tallon zones you can pull a priest, guardian and wizard and it makes no difference which order you take them down in. Personally I take down the guardians first because they deal the most damage, but if the priests healed allies then this strategy wouldn't work as well, and you'd have to be careful about pulling a pack with 2 priests in it.

I'd throw in a new mob as well, called something like an Envoy of Rallos Zek, give it a load of hit points but make it vulnerable to zek weapons, then you could stick on the same loot but a much higher chance to drop. But anyway, I'm sure the devs are busy enough without a load of feature creep thrown their way

[Vaion]

The following changes are being made to Plane of Tactics:

o Rallos Zek now has a 100% chance to drop x1 of the Tactics Class Spells.
o Eye of Rallos Zek focus upgraded to Ancient Thunder
o Feather of the Blood Raven focus upgraded to Ancient Savings
o Visor of Endless Sight now has a type 16 augment slot.
o Furious Hammer of Zek now has a type 16 augment slot.
o Girdle of the Tactician now has a type 16 augment slot and focus upgraded to Ancient Bile.
o Resplendent War Maul now has a type 16 augment slot.
o Battle Staff now has a type 16 augment slot.
o Tallon's War Charm now has a type 16 augment slot and focus upgraded to Ancient Quickening.
o Veteran's Battle Charm now has a type 16 augment slot and clicky replaced with Improved o Invisibility.
o Warmaster's Recurved Longbow now has a type 16 augment slot.
o Arrow of Tactics now does 16 damage.

[peterigz]

Great Thanks for the changes!