Rerfu wrote:Ornate, yeah that's always been the cruel joke of armor on the server.
Not worth the 5100p or the materials to craft them.
I'm of course bias toward the raiding route
The latter point is true; I think you've overlooked the route that smaller groups must take who cannot yet raid, are not willing to join a raiding guild and do not have the will or resource to box several groups; even given the fact that raiding is likely to be essential at a certain point on the server, the ability to prepare yourself both in equipment and mentally for that is essential for those of us who do not fit in the above categories.
Ornate is a nice upgrade for us and it's well within our difficulty range. Stepping up to TOV right now is possible for us but ornate will help us a lot more; plus there's no way we're doing the Emp without a raid force so getting as prepared for that as possible is important to us, perhaps not as important to those who are able to raid more readily than us.
Of course, if I were to level up another group of toons once I'd already gone past TOV (or if I had an advanced raiding guild to help me) then I'd skip the ornate route entirely. As it is, I'm skipping Kael armour entirely with two new characters to suit them up in Ornate. Why bother with the painful Kael quest when I can just get them straight into Ornate with no further crafting grinding required?
It's a good route for people who are not willing to join a serious raid guild and wish to get as prepared as possible for the Emp run (we intend to try this with some friends we've made on the server soon) and then TOV named.
It could use tweaking, though. I agree with this sentiment.
As for the items not being worth 5k, I don't agree; 5k = 30 minutes in Velketor (which also nets great exp at the same time). I think the 5k is by far the smallest bottle neck of the quest.
It's also a good ramp up for the learning curve as well; something I don't think has been considered here. Before joining THV I hadn't played the game for years so a lot of things are quite new to me. What might seem second nature to some, such as entering the likes of TOV to start raiding from Kael armour off the bat, would be quite a significant jump up in terms of knowledge for others.
Going from Seb/SolB to Icewell and then to Chardok provided a nice curve upwards. To then go straight to TOV would have been a significant jump in terms of boss mobs but PoFire has provided a smoother curve for us to familiarise ourselves with the requirements of handling tougher, unslowable boss mobs with higher hit points than previously encountered.
It's given us more confidence to handle bosses of 750-1m hitpoints, whereas before (from killing 300k bosses in Chardok) we were less confident.
As we've made our Ornate armour and improved our approach the General (550k hp) has become easier and easier to kill. He is a formality now. Looking at his stats when we'd just killed our first Queen, I saw it as a significant challenge for us. Compare that to the toughest boss we'd need to kill in TOV to get our armour (somewhat over 800k hp and hitting harder) presented a lot more of a challenge and I wouldn't have been confident jumping up to that point.
I am now.
Whether we actually have to get the gear is irrelevant (we have a lot of it already) because we've enjoyed hunting and exploring in PoFire and we're making nice progress at the same time. I am sure others would see it as a trivial zone, with trivial armour, but that is ignoring the play styles of others.
Is it too much of a bottleneck? Perhaps but then it is doable by a group and provides a nice jump in hitpoints and stats above Kael. Obviously, if we wish to get to a certain stage on this server we'll eventually have to raid but why not get prepared for it as much as possible in your own time and on your own first? After all, we don't see the point in rushing up and intend to enjoy all the zones we can on our progression; as we go up through the ranks slowly we make friends who are like-minded and we perhaps form a small guild to start taking on the emp and onto TOV (grouping or raiding).
That's our play-style and how we like to do things; PoFire lets us do that. Others simply form up or join an existing raid guild and jump straight up to TOV and beyond. That's their play-style and I respect that.
I was thankful when I discovered PoFire; it offered exactly the right level of step-up for us and I've enjoyed it. I do feel the drop rates should be increased for tougher trash mobs. I don't think the actual patterns need to be changed however (except for my thread in the items section, which I won't go into here).
Granted, I'll also get some chain for my other characters at the same time but then that means I must also invest a significant length of time farming the patterns for them, which I am pretty sure I am not interested in doing when I could just let them loot trash drops in ToV (much faster drop rate all around).