You could get two types of items that were exclusive to this raid; Unique mask and unique weapon boxes. At the time these masks were superior to crafted ones (which made them worth seeking) and the weapons were ridiculously overpowered (also made them desireable).
Today however, these masks are obsolete and completely inferior to the crafted masks! Not to mention with the recent crafting update, big stats are all obtainable and not uncommon on crafted masks. These masks are overall pretty ugly and I think it is safe to say that people would rather where the crafted ones anyway.
The unique weapons on the other hand, are still useful, although not as overpowered as they once were (which is a good thing); they are still the best items to equip on your noob if you can where them. These weapons still hold some value because of this.
Now there is one more type of item to drop from these raids: catalysts.
Before we acknowledge the rewards; take a look at the process of getting them.
You need a ruvens token and a party to enter
Same as before, only now ruven's token are only obtainable in the item mall. Before you could obtain them ingame through the battleground quest as well as the item mall. Every member of the party that wishes to enter needs one...
The regular enemies do not drop anything
Even if they are yellow, the only items dropped are from the boss.
The boss only drops one item
Say you have a party of people that enter the raid. They all need a ruvens token which costs actual money, and look the boss you all took down drops 1 green powder!
Yes the boss drops catalysts but the few times of tried I've only gotten green or red powder drops. What kind of reward is that for a team of 200+ players?
But, who says you need a team?
The AI on the expert level bosses is absolutely terrible, it does not even deal damage
It used to Pre-Orlo, I don't what happened since then.
So if you really wanted to kill it, just drag it to the corner and melee it for several minutes (because it has a ton of hp) come back and pick up your green powder or garbage mask box.
Obviously these raids weren't meant for one person to solo it, if so then why would a party be required?
If a Ruven's token is mandatory to enter, thats fine. Just make it worth the effort. All of the enemies should give drops inside instead of only the boss. There is a limited number of enemies inside so the drops should be decent (from the regular ones) but any big drops should be rare, maybe even plutorunes or venarunes could drop from the enemies at a very low rate, players already need to spend item mall points to get inside, this will give them a reason to. I would say not the boss because well, you'd end up spending more money to get into the raid (a party) than you would buying a plutorune directly from the item mall.
I'm not really sure what the boss should drop; I don't want to see the unique masks overpowere the crafted ones again because that is an unstable cycle, but at the same time if they will be useless they shouldn't drop from the expert boss anymore (maybe the easy one?). If catalysts are to drop from the bosses, leave out the powders, they should drop from the regular enemies.
If these were to truely be improved new items should be dropped by the boss, but I really don't know what.
To top it off the boss should actually pose a challenge. Don't be afraid to give the expert level boss monstrous stats, look at how stong the players are. Give the boss some self buffs, and aoe with defense down, an aoe mute and even damage over time skills. Make the champ in full 15's cry if he has to fight it alone. I think it's possible to do without having it spam debuffs every 5 seconds.
And to prevent people from farming the hell out of it like before, put a 12 hour downtime for every raid.
Anyway leave your feedback.
Edited by Phish, 29 October 2010 - 10:10 PM.
