Epic Chains of Flames needs two minor revisions

[voodoogroves]

They are fun, just not AS fun.

At least OOB is fast.

I ran into a guy a while back that was soloing Wiz King (epic). He did it every few days, then towards the end invited folks in to tackle Ray.

ME: How long does it take you?
HIM: I kinda go slow ... about 4 hours.


.... 4 hours ...

[TheDearLeader]

They are fun, just not AS fun.

At least OOB is fast.

I ran into a guy a while back that was soloing Wiz King (epic). He did it every few days, then towards the end invited folks in to tackle Ray.

ME: How long does it take you?
HIM: I kinda go slow ... about 4 hours.


.... 4 hours ...

My longest Wiz King completion was 5+ Hours. I joined an hour in, so for those that were there the whole time, 6+ Hours. That's knowing the meaning of paaaaain.

[Sarisa]

My longest Wiz King completion was 5+ Hours. I joined an hour in, so for those that were there the whole time, 6+ Hours. That's knowing the meaning of paaaaain.

I had a similar experience with Wiz King, though I joined at the 4 hour mark. Just Raiyum was left when I joined. We kited him all the way to the entrance foyer, for appropriate cover. Raiyum got Heal Scrolled to death by me and a Sorc, between Manyshots from the one useful AA (the other two could not do anything due to everything being broken, and having poor equipment to start with) in the group. Total completion time was nearly 6 hours, and it was a skunk chest.

My duo run in u7 on my Cleric with a friend's Wizard ran just a hair over 90 minutes (and this had double HP trash, no Implosion/Undead to Death, but a better Firewall). Most of my 3-5 person runs average 60-65 minutes (a bit faster post-u9, pre-u9 was 70-75 minutes on average). Fastest run, with 3 monks with Mabar wraps, a Barb with a 3Pos maul, me healing, and a wizard was 35 minutes. Not bad for 8 chests, including a Marilith Chain and a Staff of Arcane Power seal (but no shards).

Wiz King in an average group who don't know all the tricks should run 60-90 minutes, and is easy enough (aside from Raiyum). It could definitely bear having a shard drop rate increase, and 2 tokens would be nice but not necessary.

All of the desert quests should give better rewards than they do. Better rewards mean more people would be willing to run them, and more people willing to challenge themselves to doing real epic quests. Much of the hatred of the Desert epics comes from the grind involved with the pathetically bad drop rates, not the difficulty.

Challenges, with their ridiculous token/hour rates, and completely different mechanics than standard epic quests, are just demeaning to the value of epic quests.

[Tinco]

The original epic dungeon and reward system is completely broken and eCoF and the desert in general are just two of the shining examples. They are so broken that a simple adjustment in dungeon tokens will not cut it and development resources should rather be invested in a complete revision of how 'standard' epic gear is acquired especially in comparison to the extremely predictable way of obtaining (the statwise largely superior) challenge gear.

[sweez]

Challenges, with their ridiculous token/hour rates, and completely different mechanics than standard epic quests, are just demeaning to the value of epic quests.

Well, most people that planned to buy desert already bought it - they still have to sell the challenges.

[Carpone]

The original epic dungeon and reward system is completely broken and eCoF and the desert in general are just two of the shining examples. They are so broken that a simple adjustment in dungeon tokens will not cut it and development resources should rather be invested in a complete revision of how 'standard' epic gear is acquired especially in comparison to the extremely predictable way of obtaining (the statwise largely superior) challenge gear.

Minor tweaks like the two I suggested would require minimal effort: Updating the loot table percentage shard drop rate from 0.10% to 10.00% and setting epic_chest_fragment_reward=200. The hardest part about these changes is getting someone's attention at Turbine.

[voodoogroves]

My longest Wiz King completion was 5+ Hours. I joined an hour in, so for those that were there the whole time, 6+ Hours. That's knowing the meaning of paaaaain.

I rarely have a 5 hour block to spend.

If I do, I'd rather hit a quick ADQ / eDQ and like 10 other things instead of just.one.quest.

Well, most people that planned to buy desert already bought it - they still have to sell the challenges.

I still want my back-in-time sands epic explorer area. They could sell that. That'd be awesome.