Every raid MMO has its own vibe to the raids. EverQuest’s was huge raids with so many people that specific classes had squadron leaders that would coordinate their own parts to the raids. Back in the day, there was no limit to the size of raids in EQ. As many people as could fit in the zone…
WoW’s raids require add-ons that instruct you what to do at any specific moment, and at least when I played, you had to build your character in specific ways to go. Final Fantasy XIV has huge raids with a lot of telegraphing.
Ship of Heroes… I’m going to need to study this one, a little bit.
Arch Invasion
All Ship of Heroes raids can be tuned by the raid leader to be more or less difficult than normal. In today’s test, the devs let us play it through three times — at the super easy mode, the base mode, and a 2x difficulty mode. Those of us not at level 20 were “sidekicked” to level 19. Me, I was only level 8 at the start of the raids, though I leveled up during. So, yes, you can gain experience while being mentored.
Arch Invasion is triggered under the huge arch outside City Hall. Portals open up, dropping waves of Nagdelian invaders into the ship. I vaguely remember Nagdelians as being isolationist, hive-mind aliens who see the generation ship Justice as a personal affront-slash-existential threat.
As the raid progresses, more portals open that must be destroyed, and, Billy Goat Gruff-style, the Nagdelians get taller and more dangerous. The final one continually blasts AEs that are super fun for a melee DPS character, but my one death was due to a squad of Nagdelian snipers who wanted me to take a quick visit to my bind spot. This happened after the raid had tossed up a score card.
So yeah, you raid — you’re getting graded. I was fourth or fifth DPS consistently, which wasn’t too bad considering I was having to run around everywhere.
Confused!?
My twin sword’s main attack is a melee swing. If I’m not up in a mob’s face, swinging, I am not doing my max dps. I have two powers that let me close distance, a power that adds a bleed dot, a PBAE spin, and a short term buff.
I was just button mashing through the first raid, but took the time to go through my powers and be clear what I should be doing. There doesn’t seem to be a defined rotation at this level, which is unusual in this day and age. Hit the melee attack and throw in bleed occasionally, everything else is situational.
I was having real trouble finding enemies to kill before they were killed by someone else. Standing near the portals, aliens dashed past me. I think I was supposed to be using travel powers during the fight to help keep in the fight?
I’m sure all the elements are there; I just need practice.
Comparing to FFXIV
Final Fantasy XIV raids love cut scenes introducing their bosses and giving some context to the raid. This raid would have been improved with some sort of NPC introduction. Raid bosses don’t telegraph their attacks, so it’s tough to dodge them when they come. They might be, like old EQ, time based, requiring you to count seconds for the dodging.
One thing I really like about EverQuest and FFXIV raids is having defined raid responsibilities. The raid was very chaotic; as in Guild Wars 2, I’m not certain who is doing what or what I should be doing, though raids in GW2 use telegraphed attacks so that, at least, I can not die to standing in the fire.
The raid was fun, and the chat with the devs was super informative. I’m not intending to be a big raider (unless I join a guild that does raiding), but when I do raid, I want to be able to focus, not always trying to figure out where I should be.
Here’s the hour or so video of my time in SoH today. The game crashed at the end during the big fight, and when I managed to return, it was all over.
