Tier 6 with occasional heroics.
The difficulty of the raid is fine. It should be hard, and I don’t think the mechanics are too demanding. They can be learned. I do have two major issues with the raid as it stands, one of which I think must be addressed because of the harm it is causing to the game community.
Start with the easy one: the health for lower levels seems overturned. The guilds running these lower tiers often seem to struggle with participation because it is such a slog. Part of this is because of my second issue, but simply dialing back the health a bit would help.
The big one is the JTR requirement for Phase 1. Since there is really only one viable squad for this phase, and since JTR is also so good in other phases, guilds that want to run heroic have to essentially require members to have JTR. This is easy enough for large alliances, but if you are in an independent guild, and you have a mix of P2P and F2P who have played together a long time, you are left with two options: 1. Wait for JTR to come around for those who still need it and for them to accumulate the gear and ability mats for the squad, or 2. Boot those who don’t have her. I’m in a 120 million GP guild that fits the above description. We attempted an unsuccessful merge to deal with this dilemma. We wanted to keep playing with our friends but also wanted to take on heroic with those of us who have the squads. The failed merge cost us many longtime members and bad blood with leadership from the other guild. Speaking in shard chats, this seems to be a very common problem. This hard and fast JTR requirement is fracturing many guilds that are in the cusp of heroic.
Now, I don’t expect any old team to be viable in every phase, but there are no other phases in the raid where there is only one viable squad. The fact that it is locked behind a non-farmable character that only comes along every three or four months really makes it impossible on guilds that want to walk a line between loyalty to longtime members and attempting the toughest content. There are other tough farms out there like Death Trooper that are very good for the raid but at least obtainable.
The other problem with only having one viable squad for Phase 1 is that it destroys participation in lower level guilds. Phase 1 becomes such a slog without JTR in Tier 5 and 6 that those without JTR just can’t have any fun with it. So they are sitting out the phase, and you have more guild tensions because there are always those who want to clear it.
I think it is totally reasonable to have at least one other team composition that can be somewhat effective in Phase 1. Maybe you still need a good number of JTRs as a guild, but you at least give breathing space so guilds aren’t forced to make a choice between taking on heroic and booting otherwise active members that we would like to keep playing with.
Capital Games Team
