Aion's Fire Temple instance drives me nuts. It doesn't help that most of the core guild group has RL issues of some sort, and are rarely around when I'm about. Instead, my latest invites to that area are via PUGs and/or a guild group whose members consist of staunch Achiever types who are out to get their 1% chance drop for a rare gold weapon off the big boss.
Perhaps it's an Oceanic/South East Asian thing as well, because we keep having to run super-optimized paths that skip past most of the 'trash' and woe betide you if you accidentally aggro a group or a patrol that you weren't supposed to aggro. Mutterings of 'noob' and 'if he aggros again, can we kick him?' over guildchat for a PUG guy who was unfortunate enough to do so.
Yea, well, some of us haven't run this instance 15-30 times each level for the past three levels either.
The templar tank and cleric who are most keen are level 37 and 35, whereas us shoddy interchangable DPS filler are only level 34 or so. Aion aggro radius shrinks as you get higher in comparison to the mobs, vice versa too - and I'm not sure if they realize that.
My heart pounds and I get super stressed out for fear of me accidentally aggroing something.
Why? I don't know. Maybe it's a carryover from RoD days. I need to be seen as competent? An ego thing?
Maybe because I sense the unforgiving WoW trained mindset of many of these random Aion players, who are quick to discard and label as trustworthy/valuable or otherwise.
Maybe it's just the reputation of the gladiator class that I'm trying to shake off. Bot class. Class for no-skill noobs. And so on. Doesn't make it any easier that we are so gear and consumable dependent - I'm not exactly rolling around in money for either of those, and I don't have a static group to keep me up either.
So anyway, I undergo major stress through this mini-instance trying not to aggro anything but the one mob we are supposed to be killing. On a class that gets a decent proportion (1/4?) of its DPS from AoEs.
A competent templar will help me out by moving the mob so that I can AoE safely, but I still have to watch out for mobs that are cc'ed too closely or neighboring groups that are positioned just a tidy bit too close. Oftentimes, because I simply can't judge safe AoE distance, I rather just not risk it, opting for a gimp little pause between my skills where only autoattack is hitting.
But skipping annoys me. Especially since a group of 6 can mow down these elites in a minute or less. But nooo, some templars prefer to run through and leave the rest to sink or swim as they please.
Then there's the 'straight to the final boss' skipping strategy that really irritates me. There are apparently 3-4 other caverns in here, with bosses that have a chance of spawning, and a chance of dropping gold weapons too. Not to mention, a boss that some of us need for a quest.
But nooo, the standard "FT" run is to make a beeline for the final boss Kromede, who is, naturally, guaranteed to be there (though potentially in two forms, one stronger, one weaker).
Kromede, however, has a VERY low drop rate currently. (Dungeon instance loot drops are being shifted up a little higher in the coming 1.5 patch, except we have no idea when that's coming, and I don't think these particular eager guys got the memo just yet either.)
But what the hell, that doesn't matter. Kill, rinse and repeat!
These fast FT boss runners have also evolved some sort of arcanely obtuse method of exiting the instance for the repeat portion.
I couldn't figure out exactly how the heck they were doing it, until I sat down to read a few forums. Apparently if you leave group and stay still for a minute, you get ported out automatically. Or something. Dunno, haven't tried it.
Makes me a just a teensy bit depressed. It would be fun with a good group that you could rely on, and where everyone trusts and forgives mistakes. Not to mention, where folks were inclined to wander off the beaten path a bit more and explore the fucking dungeon a little.
Past instances weren't so...automatic. They were always a little bit messy, a lot of tank-and-spank, and a bit of exploration as our groups went in for the first time. I quite like those sorts of slightly messy instances - except they can get a tide costly in death penalties.
But I don't know why, for some reason, FT has evolved this efficiency path where everyone blindly follows, and never goes anywhere else.
No comments:
Post a Comment