EtherMagix wrote:
Another thing is, when the first raids went to fear there was no real known tactic. It involved a *lot* of trial and error. We went in, wiped, grabbed a bunch of crap gear and magician summoned stuff, ran back in and died some more. Then we ask another guild to help out and they wipe as well. Days later...a third guild wipes trying to help us as well. I didnt go because i was refarming my gear. It was only after the corpses in pof numbered in the hundreds that the GM decided to help us out.
Yeah. But you can say the same about almost any raid zone the first time people attempted it. While I wasn't personally at that level when Fear and Hate were introduced, I don't think it really took that long for the basic strategies to evolve. How long exactly does it take to realize that trying to fight at the portal doesn't work? Sure. The first week, lots of folks died... horribly. But the poll wasn't just asking about how bad a particular plane was before people figured out how to manage them. It was about which one caused the most trouble overall. Honestly, how many people were raiding in Fear the first week or so it came out? Compared to the total number that raided it "back in the day"? Tiny percentage.
For those of us who did regularly raid the planes for a couple years or so, both pre-kunark, and later for epics, and even later still for epics and for some gear drops even as late as Luclin, the overal difficulty of the break into fear just really wasn't that bad. Once you knew how to do it, it was really pretty simple. In fact, due perhaps to a totaly bizaare set of luck, I've actually *never* died on a fear break. Not once. Admittedly, I was just plain lucky, but it really wasn't that high a risk. My first fear raid, I was 47th level. We did a ridiculous "north wall" break (I *don't* recommend this!). Even then, it worked. Lots of people died. Ton's of people "stuck" at the portal. I was basically lucky. I was in like the 3rd or 4th group, and had a pretty decent system, so I didn't get lagged out too badly. I ran to the north wall and camped with out getting a scratch.
The closest I *ever* came to dying on a fear break was during a west wall break, when we really didn't have enough people on (but this was a bit later so we figured we should be able to handle it). We ended up getting into some trouble on the initial break (we were actually doing a nibble/port break tactic this time). When our nibble group got a bit of bad luck (mezzer got ported by an eyeball, and by the time the group realized it, their porter had died. Just plain bad luck), we went with a quick west wall and camp break. Didn't go quite as we planned it, but it *should* have worked. It was a set of bad luck that jinxed it (which could technically be blamed on me depending on how you look at it). We got to the wall no problem. The few of us "tanks" were fighting a handful of mobs and the cleric camped. No problem. We had a FD SK watching (he'd survived from the first break group). After the cleric camped, the rest of us kinda made attempts to see if we could survive if possible. I'd ended up with 2 or 3 mobs on me, so I ran them out in a line along the wall and rooted them each. Then ran back to the "camp" spot and camped. Just about 5 seconds before I camped, I saw one of my roots fail (so at least one mob was barrelling towards me, but didn't make it back to me before I camped out).
Would have worked just fine except that the cleric, instead of logging in an alt and waiting for the all clear sign, just waited a couple minutes and then logged right back in with the same character. She didn't realize that there might still be mobs running around near the camp. She ended up logging in right into the mob(s) that had tried to get to me when I was camping out. Oops. Shouldn't have happened, but it did. Even then, we really didn't have any problems. Just got me back on, once the all clear was given. I rezzed cleric, SK started dragging corpses and we had a strong enough core group within 15 minutes to clear the portal and roamers and bring the rest in safely (not that there was much more at this point, I think we only brought like 3 or 4 groups total that time).
Point being that it really wasn't that hard or dangerous. You could *easily* recover if you kept your head. Fear breaks were usually made worse by having large numbers of people who didn't know what they were doing. Maybe my experience with fear is a bit different then others. Aside from that first one, we always did it with just a small force of guildmembers (that first one was an "alliance" raid, and someone else was leading it). We always had more success with 20-30 people who knew what they were doing over 50-60 people who didn't (which was the typical approach to fear).
Dunno. I just always found that the fear break, while it did cause death and mayhem, just wasn't a "headache" like other planes provided. Pulling in Hate was *vastly* harder then pulling in fear for example. Assuming a double-FD pull team in both cases, you could easily ensure no overpulls in Fear (big outdoor zone with plenty of visibility). It was not uncommon for the pull team in Hate to simply be unaware that they had agro on them. Hate also had that wall agro thing...
And of them all I still maintain that the PoSky corpse/rez/key thing was just more "painful" to manage. Sure. It didn't get you all at once. It wasn't as dramatic as dying to a horde of mobs from all over the zone. It certainly wasn't as dramatic as chain DTing mobs from across the zone either. But it was generally unavoidable, and the amount of effort it required in order to do it right was alot. And if you didn't do it "right", your entire raid could easily be over.
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I think the people who view fear as easy are the same ones who read strategies on websites of how to do it, and they were all level 60. If you wait a long enough time, every encounter becomes pretty trivial once the path is blazed for you. Perhaps 'old days' is too big of a lump of time, because after enough fear runs, it does become easier than pos I suppose. Its just those first ones that stick in your head so vividly.
I'll grant you that. I just had a completely different experience I guess. Again. I definately raided all of those planes well before level 60 (and before the level existed). What's even more interesting, is that while I had lots of experience raiding PoF and PoH before Kunark, the majority of my PoSky raids were *after* Kunark release. Certainly all of my PoSky experience where I was one of the people "leading" was well after Kunark release, so we had higher levels. That wasn't the problem. The plane was just so unforgiving if you made a mistake. So, I'm essentially comparing raiding Fear with all sub-50 characters to raiding PoSky with all 50+ characters, and I still think PoSky was worse...