Archaic Plate armor set

[Dore]

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/itemlist.htm ... haic+Plate

The new Warped Steel set of SoD? Level 85 foci and same placement of foci as SoF, bene haste on feet, magic focus on head, cleave on arms etc. Has Infusible tag also, probably upgradable with SoD's equivalent of steam cores and essences? Arms only have Cleave II while Warped Steel arms have Cleave III, someone might have to ask Merloc to fix his wtf itemisation again.

Also found a new pal usable shield, might be an alternative to Battered Shield of the Fallen Guard from TSS for those without Crystallos squire shield? Anguish raid shields still have more AC, though.

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=105538

[Huurgh]

Looks more like upgraded Defiant armor in my eyes.

[Dore]

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=140850

Thread says that they only dropped from named mobs in the SoD preview zones, so they are SoD Tier1 stuff, equivalent to SoF Warped Steel stuff for plate classes.

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=105558

New pal/sk 1hs for group content, but seriously worse than Yarnhilted Longsword, not even a Rune III proc or any proc at all. Seriously, BoFF from Ture is still better than either of these swords.

[olts]

thats probably because ture is a raid mob. try 1grouping ture with the group you hunt in softier2 or sodtier1.

i agree, some wep ratios need to be better, but i fail to understand why ppl think just because anguish is 5 years old the weps from new group content should be better than the weps from a - way way harder - raidzone. i can see top sod group weps being on anguish ratio maybe. but definitly not from mobs many ppl can solo without even breaking into sweat.

c.

[Kruzar]

Doesn't look to bad to me, but compared to the Gnollish stuff I have it is not an upgrade in the slots I have taken a look at. I am very interested in seeing what the new path for progression is from Tier 1 to Tier whatever... I am hoping maybe some of the upgrade pieces will be buyable/tradeable instead of only droppable.

I am definetly looking for new weapon upgrades that are shammy useable. I am currently using the very easy 1hb from Dragonscale on my shammy alt and the Range item from the Valdeholm pit.

[Carmaris]

BB/LGuk gear spell mods start to decay over level 80 though.

But yeah, don't see myself swapping mine out for archaic anytime soon.

[Gorblimey]

[shiftie]

it should be on par.

Who is going to raid GoD and anguish to gear someone so they can tank zones we stopped grouping in - a few years ago. The only way to bring new players into the game is to give them gear when the log on. Try cramming 10 years of a game into your first week back. Do you really expect someone to start out with cloth and make the natural progression that the rest of us made. They'll catch up in 1 year and a half maybe more to where we were. Constantly chasing a moving target that they will never hit. Lguk gear is the equivalent to 1pp per ac bronze armor that's just the reality.

You have to agree with what the devs are trying to do or the wheels will fall off.

[olts]

no, i dont have to agree with what the devs are doing. i can accept giveaway gear like elaborate and guk stuff, but i cant accept that soe is rendering all old raid content obsolete. my guild did good progression through por and tss when sof came out. the mudflation pretty much killed us. and not only us, on my server alone a few guilds almost died to that - or died. and i know for a fact that this is true for many other guilds on other servers.

one reason to keep raiding older content was weps and augs. if they take this reason away too now i see my guild just die - and many others too. raiding and grouping have to be balanced - and id say that soe is already doing it wrong again, this time from the groupers end. granted they focused on raiders too much for a long time.

and, on a personal note, it really makes me sick that ppl expect gear from mobs i can solo in 2 hits being better than gear from anguish (can i solo ture in 2 hits? no, i cant). the whiners are not here, granted. but soes board is full of this crap again already. weps on par with tss raid lvl weps from ocean green.... sure

c.

[Brohg]

The problem with your pronouncements is how subjective that limit is. TSS was level 75 raiding content. Should Jeldorin have been disallowed because it's better than Ghoulbane? Should Cudgel of the Oppressor have been vetoed because it dared to blow away the level 60 knight raid 1h ... Emerald Bastardsword of Purity? If you're wearing 470-500hp armor and accessories on every slot (Crystallos), you should expect to get weapons better than those dropping from mobs that have 300hp loot.

The reason to raid old content is mostly for fun, just to say you'd been there. A little bit also for the rare unique rewards, like heal/nuke clickies from Tacvi, or some cool PoTime stuff, or the augments like you said. When you beat it, you move on, and raid current content. If your guild refuses to progress with its members, it should die, maybe to be resurrected with a new vision.

[olts]

i am aware that i am subjective - but so are the ppl that ask for tss qualtiy weps drop of easy group mobs. in the end its a decision of the devs we all will have to deal with. but imo raid gear has to be balanced against group gear - and group gear went already through the roof with sof and made a lot of raid gear obsolete. raid gear, that ppl actually are raiding for. i can see that group stuff should be better than anguish or demi, but tss raid loot from tier1 group mobs? no, thx. imo group gear should allow the grouper to do the hardest group content in the game. now what kind of gear do ya need to bring down squires in crystallos?

this mudflation is especially a problem for raiding guilds that can not raid sof or solteris. and this is hardly only true for my guild, because many different ppl from different servers bring up this problem again and again on soe boards. and this has nothing to do with refusing to progress. many guilds just dont have the ppl, simple as that. the big guilds are cannibalizing the smaller guilds, this always happend, and there is nothing wrong with it in theory - but these days the smaller guilds cant get enough new apps to counter this cannibalization at all.

in your words all the guilds that are hit by the bloody mudflation just deserve to die, because they can not counter this trend by raiding solteris or sof - and soon sod. well, if the smaller guilds die, and they do already, this will hurt the bigger guilds in the end. and the current mudflation is the last nail to the coffin for many lower to midtier guilds. i am not in sod beta, but i was in sof beta - and ppl all over the place, from groupers to midtier guilds to high end guilds, warned soe about making the gear too good. soe didnt listen though. can have hopes they understood now.

c.

[Tanot]

Yeah I just don't see where you are coming from olts. You really think it is for the good of the game that people have to raid stuff from 5 expansions ago to get decent ratios on their weapons? I can see keeping it so that you have to raid the last one or maybe two expansion's content to get geared up for the new one but making people do years old content just because other people had to do it back in the day is just stupid.

Although it is a nice idea in theory that people have to go through the whole progression, it is a fact of life that people like to do the new "shiny" stuff. If EQ is going to stand a chance of staying commercially viable going forwards in what is a very competitive market place these days, it needs to cater to all it's players and not just elitist raiders. I have seen people on the SOE forums saying that they are worried about lack of content in the expansion because the zone where this stuff drops will be trivial and what are they going to do after 1 month when they hit 85. Well guess what, most people aren't endgame raiders with the ability to kill mobs "in two hits" and so this sort of zone will be a challenge to them.

I've been playing since 2000 (with a few breaks in between, last one was a long one and I've not been back that long) and I'm not near to max level yet. I think it is great that I'll actually be able to go to a zone in the new expansion and actually get some upgrades - I can't remember the last time I was able to go to a new EQ expansion relatively soon after it comes out and feel like I might be able to contribute to a group (always been a bit behind the curve in EQ ).

WoW has many faults and I'm not sure I 100% agree with the idea of a total gear reset every expansion, but it is a great idea in the sense that it brings the whole community together again and they can all enjoy going through the content with each other. I was raiding in WoW when the last expansion hit and had fallen into the old guild/other raider only groups habit because, let's face it, gimps like me only slow you down. It was a real breath of fresh air to be suddenly back in the field, where everybody was useful again and it didn't matter if a_random_mage didn't have the great staff of uberness because he could still contribute to the group with new equipment that he had got since the expansion hit (Contrary to popular belief, there wasn't a vendor giving them out for free as soon as you zoned in, you still had to do some work!)

Now I 100% realize that groupers don't need raid level equipment - of course they don't as they don't fight raid level mobs; there does need to be a clear distinction between group and raid. However, the mobs in new content will be tuned around the fact that people do have raid equipment, so when somebody turns up with a weapon with a worse ratio than a raid weapon from five expansion ago they are at a bit of a disadvantage.

I agree with Brohg that old content (certainly of that age) should just be there for flavor, somewhere to go for a bit of fun and to relive old times - it shouldn't have actual upgrades on current content apart from the odd clicky or unusual aug.

[olts]

[frocus]

Anguish equiv weaps were dropping in Crys i can see anguish ratios on sod tier 3 and maybe demi level ratios on sod tier 4 but people expecting tss and tbs ratios on lower tiered sod content are asking to much the mudflation in hp is no reason to have group gear with 500 hp having same ratios as raid gear with 500 hp. Hell i still use dawnlight to solo and am still hoping on an open anguish raid to see a boff shield or decent 2 hander drop for dps but wouldnt want to see it drop in the lowest tiered zone. This is assuming theres 4 tiers in sod like in SoF.

Edit All though I disliked seeing the sod tier one armor have same req/rec levels as sof tier 2 stuff with sof tier 1 level HP and about praetorian level ac. The req/rec levels on it need to drop to sof tier one levels or the stats need to be adjusted slightly or noone will really want the lower tiered sod gear excepting maybe caster for a critical focus who cant manage to get a higher tiered sod zone group.

[Tanot]

I think that Rytan posted that they are going to drop this stuff to 70 req 75 rec as people couldn't understand why gear that is worse than LGuk/BB had a higher minimum level. Makes sense to me as I see the progression as Elaborate->Archaic and 10 levels is a long time to wait for an upgrade.