We cleared the entire place in close to 3.5 hours. The pace was pretty relaxing, with occasional 5 minute breaks and discussions of strategy and plans. I would consider our entire group experienced and very capable, but that's just an opinion, I'm sure there are top guilds who would consider us a bunch of casuals while others, very casual players, who would consider us really hardcore. So I'll go into a bit more details about us, to give others better idea what to expect based on your own group experience and abilities.
7/8 of us ran about 10 HM before and had about 1/2 Epic (purple from HM, dailies and Tionese vendor) and half leveling gear, we could generally clear an HM with 0 or 1 unlucky wipe. About 2 nights before, 4 of us ran The False Emperor for the first time and wiped twice, once on HK and another on the last boss, who I won't name to avoid spoilers. The 8th person was less experienced, with only 2-3 HM runs and mostly leveling gear. Still he was a capable DPS who could do his job well. I guess this can give a general idea on how capable my group was, so readers can compare their own experience and know better what to expect.
I really loved the loot system. The way it works is that every character has a chance to get a drop that is meant for his class and tied to him. Meaning that either the boss gives you an automatic appropriate gear drop or he doesn't. There's no master looter, no gear drama, no DKP, no rolls, no ninjas, no competition between similar classes. Once a boss is down, you either get an item or you don't, nobody in the group has any affect on it. I think this is a great design choice, no more "he's the GM friend so he'll get priority", no more "damn! 3 others in the group with my class primary attribute, I won't get any loot", no more "he has so much more DKP than I do, it's pointless for me to join". Everyone gets equal opportunity to get gear, regardless of composition or any social aspect or system. Personally, I got 3 drops, 1 I already had from HM and 2 great upgrades. Great job Bioware removing one of the biggest drama causes and frustration games like WOW had in raids.
The encounters themselves were really well designed, every boss felt very different and unique and at one point or another each aspect of the group abilities and even every group participant were tested. If your group has really bad DPS, the healers and tanks won't be able to cover for you, if your group has very low healing, the mechanics made sure you won't make it. Of course the better geared and skilled participants can help the lower ones, but it's impossible to carry completely under geared or low skilled people, the mechanics make sure that every aspect of your group and every character has to do his job reasonably well at least.
Another thing I liked is that relative to most WOW raids, there was very little trash. Making almost the entire night composed of interesting boss fights and no repetitions of similar trash groups that feels like it's there just to make the raid take longer. This goes great with SWTOR general design of less time sinks and more content.
Overall I think Bioware did a great job with the Eternity Vault operation. It's interesting, it's fun, it's unique and it's rewarding. The challenge level of normal mode is very reasonable as the next step after HM FP. Each boss mechanic is interesting and different. There is another operation for us to try and of course hard and nightmare mods operations, so there are still challenges ahead.
Tomorrow I'll go in greater details into the boss encounters themselves, I found the mechanics really interesting and the way the design made sure tanks, dps and healers are all doing their job well was really fun and interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment