Really? You don't think doubling the number of elementals and increasing their saves by 4 or 6 would make a difference?![]()
I think the loot issue Riddikulus brings up here is a more serious problem for what I suggested than I originally thought.
Currently, my understanding is that the loot table is tied to the level of the quest. While I am suggesting the level, or at least effective level of elite is increased, increasing the level of the chests is a very bad idea. Of course, we could just divorce the level of chest from the level of the quest. However, I don’t know exactly if that is a development problem.
Perhaps the best idea is to simply remove the level designation from hard and elite. They really do not communicate useful information anyway.
In my original post, I thought it useful to have a good definition of level. On average, a normal, untwinked level 14 group should find a level 14 quest challenging but doable on Normal. Given the approach outlined above, if the hard setting is set at level 15 or 18, does it mean it is really geared toward the normal, untwinked level 15 or 18 group? No, it is geared toward the level 14 characters in the middle and high end of the DoPS.
Thus, just remove the level designation. A level 14 quest has three settings: N/H/E. The loot for normal is set for a level 14 quest, and is boosted +1 for hard and +2 for elite. The actual difficulty of Hard and Elite will be set to attempt to cover the DoPS of the current players. As I’ve argued before this would increase the difficulty difference from what it is now. But there is no reason to try to pitch them as level 18 or level 22 quests. They are level 14 quests for the advanced set of level 14 characters.