Asuryan's Flames

Several months ago, when I first started running Lost Vale we ran into a huge issue. It was not lack of skill, my group was compromised of some of the best players in their class, but there is a point in this game where skill no longer means anything and gear takes over as the primary deciding factor as to advancement.

Those of you on destruction know how the scaling goes, you run Bloodwrought and think that Bilerot will be cake, until you get to the first boss, or trash mobs that are harder than bosses. Bloodwrought can be run without any wards very effectively, Bilerot you need some to be successful, but by the time most start running these zones they have a lot of their annihilator set so it is really negligible. The first real test is Lost Vale.

Lost Vale is the panicle of pve right now, and it is difficult for new groups in it, but it gets greatly easier with the more wards that you have, in fact, so much so that it is the only determining factor for success in the zone. I have to ask what happened to the game where "wards" of for that means any zone specific items where not required to complete content. As it stands now skill and determination don’t mean anything, in fact any armor piece that does not have a ward on it is almost worthless because of how tied this game is to the ward system

You can’t fight a king effectively without ward; you can’t do forts effectively without wards and so on. This type of gear grind is a killer in games, more over it effectively limits the amount of content people see, although as it stands the pve path provides the easiest gear progression for anyone seeking it.

I think the way that this can be fixed is by scaling the mobs correctly and removing wards completely. If people "beat" the game sooner rather than later, it means that you need to add more content plain and simple. By putting an artificial cap on progression you really kill people who want to see more of the game but are on time constraints.

Ultimately this is how I see this is wrong; coming from playing 2 toons in full sentinel, annihilator, and most of Bloodlord with very unlucky drops in LV so no DP. I think that gear progression sucks, I think that forcing people to rely on wards kills the creativity and forces people to be the same, instead of using items that are better stat wise, you are wearing warded items for the "chance" encounters.