Stonewood Bow Staff IdeaFollow

Is everyone else having issues in Plane of Earth with guilds camping the treants blocking others from progressing? Could it be possible that old school "unwritten rules " of getting the item you need and handing over the mob spawn point to another person is really gone? its really a shame to see the way people get when a whole guild can have a zone on lock down like they do.Is there a way to make the Stonewood Bow Staff used in the flagging of PoWar castle quest LORE and No Drop ( just for the quest). Changing the bow to something like that may relieve alot of the BS and make things run smoother for all. Just an idea....

I agree something needs to be done, but they did make at least one very important change on the emergency patch: the named spawns of The Judicator no longer warp to each other if more than one is up at a time now. Before this, if one was left up (due to a wipe or something) and another group spawned one and engaged it, the other one would warp over, forcing the group to have to deal with two of them! And even with a fully geared raiding group, one of those spawns is no joke. While the bottleneck is unfortunate and is bringing out the jerk in some people, I like the content. It is challenging and doing what so many people have been crying for for a while: forcing a return to cooperative grouping. I have seen and been a part of so many more groups now, and have not been seeing many box armies dominating the landscape, especially once you get attuned for the inner part and the castles. Even though only one of my characters is currently beyond the Field of Strife, I love it!

I know they should change the flagging quest to require a no-trade item from the golems in pofear???


*ducks for cover*

Dont worry , I wont be throwing anything lol

Yeah its poor foresight by the developers imo, as they could have created a quest item specifically for the POW access quest and use a mob other than the Treants in POE.. Or if short on developer time atm, just make any other useless item from a different mob the quest item and leave the highly sought after Stonewood Bow Staff alone.

The availability and price of the Stonewood Compound Bow has already gone up on my server because the bottleneck for that trade skill item because it is now needed for the access quest.

While there is only one other item for tribute with more favor points and easily available for those who use tribute : The Primordial Driftwood Compound Bow = 50K favor/tribute and that has gone up as a result of the shortage of the above mentioned Staff for the Stonewood Compound Bow.

It used to be (a week or so ago) from 6-8Kpp for either tribute bows to as high as 25 KPP on my server. Any higher and one might as well use platinum at 1:1 (plat to tribute ratio) to buy favor from the Tribute Master as the prices are now getting too high for a tribute item.

After years of not using tribute I had started back a few months ago on my Necro and the cost per 10 minutes is high from lvl 95 onwards...

At lvl 95 it costs him 220 tribute per 10 minutes = 1320 tribute per hour or 31680 tribute per day played ...That's why 50K tribute is nothing much at the higher levels anymore..

I hope they make an intelligent fix for the issue, as it is creating unneeded conflict amongst the player base...


Edited, Apr 8th 2014 8:02am by hexeez

I'm kinda honestly trying to figure out what anyone's using tribute for. It does not stack with any spell effects, and the effects are relatively tiny anyway. Plant your character in the GL for 30 minutes and you'll gain more for free than you'll get with any amount of tribute turned on.

And even if someone is insistent, there are much easier ways of getting tribute items. I get that a single 50k item is great, but for the time spent farming it, you could have probably gotten twice as much sweeping through Veksar. Several items there tribute for 10-20k IIRC. And it's like level 50 mobs. I literally have hundreds of thousands of tribute on a couple characters just from hunting there. And that's prior to starting to just sell the items to folks in the bazaar. Cause the cash is far more valuable than the tribute (for me at least).

For a necromancer no gear focus beats the focus that Twinge of Pain (or Affliction haste tier 10 =33% haste to casting dots vs 18% on the group gear focus) and Visions of Suffering (affliction efficiency tier 10= 25% decrease in detrimental spell mana cost vs 17% on the group gear focus ) tribute focus gives.

For a Necro it lets him lay the dots much faster than even raid gear focus as it checks against the gear focus and uses the highest one.

Farmers that make the 48Kish tribute bow are always there in POE farming the same exact treants exasperating the flagging bottleneck even more = developer oversight (imho) when picking that staff and resulting bow as the quest item for the POW access quest.

Gbaji... But these days I'm too lazy to go and rummage through Veksar and some of the POP/OOW zones for the other good tribute items.. Rather spend the Plat at this point in time from the farmers in bazaar


Edited, Apr 8th 2014 11:47pm by hexeez

I just visited the tribute master for the first time in a long while and I'm not impressed. The only thing that could be worth using is indeed Twinge of Pain II which reduces the cast time on my dots, for example, Chill of the Visionary, which I already had dropping from 3.0 secs to 2.3 secs with a worn focus, drops further to 2.0 secs. That's certainly worth having, altho not exactly game-changing. The HP and Mana buff items still max out at 350 hps and at level 100 a nasty mob does 350hp damage to you by just glaring at you. LOL

The real limitation on tribute is the max of 5 items to be selected. The cost is low enough that I'd buy everything that raises heroic caps but, unfortunately, you have to pick and choose. And, as with the campfires, there are so many utterly useless options. Does anyone today use tribute to obtain enduring breath or 2pts of extra CHA?

I think tribute usefulness is also limited to just a few classes anyway (such as those for whom layering dots as fast as possible is beneficial). Even then, I suspect it's not as huge a deal as some might think. I suppose if you're right at the edge of what you can manage, it's worthwhile. But I'm thinking that if you really need that extra benefit in order to succeed, you're probably fighting mobs well past the time/exp efficiency point (ie: You'd be better off taking on less difficult mobs at a higher rate).

To me, that makes it situational as something you'd only turn on when you need the extra boost when you're hunting for an item drop, completing a difficult mission, etc. Probably not so useful for leveling and AAs. Which in turn means that if you're running around with it on all the time, or while grinding exp, you're probably just wasting the tribute.

And frankly, on the classes I play, I have yet to find *anything* that's worth turning on. They really ought to revisit the whole system to either take it out, or make it useful for more than a couple classes.


Oh! And if you're buying the tribute items, you kinda can't complain about the farmers for that item.

in my view, the current tribute effects (and mod2, and focus effects...) should all have been turned into AA ages ago. I do prefer gear with the more D&D classic stats and not a huge list (like buying a car) though.

Tribute, again to me, would have made far more sense to be something you do to gain favour in a particular city and/or diety. To allow you to homebind in Neriak for example you have to buddy up with the tribute person to unlock the benefits of that city. They could even have extended it further to have global implications, for example bring back the warring between "good" "evil" races on Norrath and have the tribute counts influence some zones/events.

As far as the staff being the only key to the new zone pieces... not the soundest dev decision to do it that way I will agree.

Agreed, I'd like to see more involvement of factioning in game play. I'm a traditionalist, as anyone who has read at least two of my posts can discern and I do have a fond memory for the early game where faction had such a big impact on what you could or could not do in the game. I never forget when I had trouble doing the druid epic 1.0 because I had unknowingly trashed my Kaladim faction by kiting dorfs. Being a typically lazy Halfling, I hired a dark elf shadowknight to pharm Crushbone belts for me so I could turn them in to fix my Kaladim faction. I wonder if that shadowknight ever realized she was trashing her own faction by killing CB orcs, since they're allied with Neriak in some classically complicated and confusing "classic EQ" fashion. LOL

Edited, Apr 9th 2014 5:06pm by Sippin

Its not a really big deal..But I'll tell you why I find it good for the Necromancer class.

When I initially tried the very same tribute focus on my then young Necro main about 7 years ago, before I really learned how to effectively kite multiple higher con mobs reliably and safely for xping. I found then, that it was not worth the investment of time to farm the items or buy in Bazaar as I was plat poor and did not yet learn certain basic techniques to multiple kite to make this worth it in a LOD situation..

The Necro can aim to stack just enough dots asap that you already know will be sufficient to kill the mob before snare wears off (you do not want to have to re-snare) and immediately go to the next while ignoring that one in its wake as it rots in tow.. then the next and next and so on, while all are on tow. As the Necro is stacking dots he is already on the way to the next mob. This way the ideal number at any time is 3 while the 4th is already zeroed in on and tagged... just as the 1st one dies off the target window. With Death Bloom and RB AA's one can do this almost indefinitely by using the efficient 5 tick + dots primarily with a sprinkling of the Blood DD line of spell and have Life Tap DD up and just one Lifedraw swift dot up for situational use only (it is the most efficient swift dot for Necro's).

This process is faster than the numbers seem to indicate once the necro moves correctly.. Generally engage the mob from as close to max spell range as possible, then never be not casting a dot or spell while the gems are refreshed and only increasing distance from the mob(s) by moving away only when the gems are greyed out from a spell that was just cast. Then the necro slowly turns without moving for a split sec- while the next dot is being cast on the mob.. This process of stacking dots on multiple mobs is greatly helped by this...I know it sounds confusing but I see and feel the difference like night and day as a Necro. Think of it, if you use a 1-2 minute burn dot enhancing ability like Third Spire AA or Intensity of Resolute (vet reward) or Robe clicky etc when you already have 24 dots spread out over three mobs or even more dots and mobs simultaneously, how much more damage you are doing compared to one mob with 8 dots stacked.

This even in level appropriate content for a soloing lvl 95 Necro ie VOA t3 and t4 zones like Beasts Domain or City of Bronze..and in that scenario it makes an average of 20 AA's for me in a LOD. A difference of about +5-6 AA's per lesson burn in COB or Beasts Domain than when its off... At 95 solo, each kill gives roughly 1 AA while LOD is active. My Necro is well over the AA bonus cap and with focus, AA's etc the Necro's 5 tick dots actually last 14 ticks.

The biggest pain for this tribute system is forgetting to deactivate it and burning 220 favour per 10 mins while AFK.

I want to say sorry to the OP (Nalinee) for causing this thread to get derailed off your original topic by bringing up the tribute issue conflict with the staff and bow for POW access.. In hindsight 20/20 I should have opened a new thread.

Good luck and I hope the devs show some wisdom and fix the flagging bottleneck SOON and in a wise manner.


Edited, Apr 12th 2014 2:39pm by hexeez

Thanks.

Yes I hope they fix the problem like by tomorrow ..As the EQ forums are getting vexed in nature with tempers about to flare up from some disgruntled players and accusations etc.

Hate to see that, as it just riles and segregates the player base even more than it is already... Raiders vs Boxers vs Groupers vs Farmers vs rival Guilds..

Personally I never minded competition if it's reasonable. I remember the days when Vex Thal was THE raid end-zone and my guild would compete with our rival guild to be the first to get to the second floor of the zone so we could go after the boss, Aten Ha Ra. A guild had to be "on its game" in such situations, making sure that the raid force members were on time and it was especially fun when the server would re-set off schedule. We'd have members available during the day try to assemble a "skeleton crew" raid force to start the clearing, figuring we could CoHero the late-comers and thereby get a jump on our rival guild. Some more pacifistically-inclined members would suggest entering a sharing agreement with the other guild, alternating clears of the zone but I always felt that was wishy-washy. The game is one of martial competition, resolving issues with weaponry and my feeling was let skill and dedication decide!

That being said... in the first sentence I used the term "reasonable." Having Vex Thal be a keyed raid zone with a number of named spawns requiring a competent raid force to engage IS reasonable even if VT was a non-instanced zone that could---and would---lead to conflicts between guilds. How the stormwood bow is being handled in terms of being needed for all players to access areas that are NOT strictly intended for entire guilds to raid on a relatively infrequent schedule (Aten Ha Ra popped once a week, IIRC), that's NOT at all reasonable.