1) What tier or tiers did you play?
My guild played T6 exclusively until we went heroic a couple weeks back, with the exception of a single T5 between our last T6 and our first heroic (to manage tickets while approaching our scheduled heroic)
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
We are currently at 129m gp, but we vacillated in the 105-118m gp range until we completed heroic.
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
In T6, JTRey, Thrawn-led troopers, NS, and various mix-and-match teams. In heroic, I run JTRey, Kenobi Swamp, Chex Mix, and NS; with some troopers if there is enough p2 left, and whatever zerg teams I throw together.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
T6: The primary motivation was getting to heroic. It was also about churning the T6s and trying to keep people in my guild motivated. However, there were definite demotivating factors. The T6 slog, with basically never a day off, was a little difficult to get pumped for. I was routinely the top scorer in my guild, putting up around 50m points a raid, but the rewards were generally lackluster. When the rewards were reworked, I was actually happier about them, because while they were a little worse for me, there was more GET, which was nice, plus at least the other people in my guild were getting some better gear. Overall, however, the rewards did not really match the effort, which was a demotivating factor.
T5: The T5 raid was a bit of a breath of fresh air. It flew by for us, and was a nice little rest before the heroic attempt. The rewards still weren't great, but given that it didn't require a ton of effort for us, the rewards seemed fine.
Heroic: This is definitely the best of the raid experience (though there are issues that will be gotten to). Getting the heroic rewards is the motivation. Traya shards, full gear pieces, and presumably whatever this new gear that is coming, is all the motivation you need. Plus, as long as you're doing heroic, you're getting some time off between raids!
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
Mechanics: I like that there are a number of different, and new, mechanics with the raid. Each phase brings something different which is nice. There are a couple of caveats to this, though.
- In P1, there are (rare) occasions where Nihilus has annihilate up and doesn't use it. That can create a problem with unbreakable will timing. His mechanics I like -- part of the strategy is figuring out how to force him to use annihilate when you want through buff manipulation and the like, but it is a problem when you do that and the AI for whatever reason skips annihilate.
- In P2, managing pain is a straightforward and good mechanic. The mechanical issue here is that Sion has a random chance to gain pain, and there's no way to remove it, so you can't manage his pain. Not having a mechanism to deal with that implements a MAJOR rng component to runs -- if Sion gains stacks quickly, you might as well just reset your run.
- In P3, non-heroic, the only thing that isn't particularly nice is the inability to remove isolate. However, I can see the design reasons for that. In heroic, the big issue is the sheer volume of RNG involved in setting up Chex Mix. I get that Chex Mix is a very exacting team in the setup, but it's amazing seeing the sheer number of attempts that have to get scrapped because of layers of mechanics. In non-heroic tiers, this isn't a big deal as Chex Mix is not actually an idea team to run, but in heroic, this becomes a very tedious activity. Some of this could be alleviated by a "restart" button that allows you to just restart your run instead of retreating and reentering and watching the animations again and again and again.
- In P4, the only mechanic that doesn't make sense is when Traya absorbs DN/Sion. I've had times when I've gone in and Nihilus is at say 2% left, and he takes a turn and then is immediately absorbed. I've had runs where Nihilus kills off the last person in my group, and then gets absorbed. It seems a little too random.
- Overall, the mechanics do eliminate a lot of styles of gameplay, with the stacking tenacity. Maybe something as simple as having tenacity down just reset the stacking tenacity could reintroduce some gameplay functions.
Rewards: As I mentioned, the heroic rewards are pretty awesome. The T6 rewards are lacking, and really the lower tiers probably are as well. Now I want to make it clear that I don't believe Traya shards should be rewarded on any tier below heroic, but I do think the rewards should otherwise be bumped up. T6 rewards should be close to heroic rewards -- maybe not quite the same chance of full gear, but definitely more pieces and a better chance than currently exists. T5 should be closer to what T6 is currently, and so forth.
Guild Impact. This is the unavoidable consequence of this type of new content, but the impact on guilds sucks. For those guilds close to, but not quite at, heroic, it's easy to lose good members and it's difficult to recruit good replacements. This will probably get exacerbated when JTRey returns and a lot more guilds get to heroic.
Capital Games Team
