Ok, I heard several people playing on the PTS say that they could take some raid bosses down duo or trio.
I've heard reports of people on live doing raid bosses with 5-9 person groups.
I've tried about 5 different raid bosses of varied levels with groups ranging from 3 to 9 people...and got our butts handed to us each time.
Some raid bosses that I've seen 4-5 parties take down before I've now seen eat 6-7 party raid groups.
Seriously, how do I tell which bosses are which now? Obviously there is a vast disparity in raid boss difficulty, but there doesn't appear to be a label.
If the difficulty of raid bosses is going to vary so much there need to be a "rating system"
Like:
Raid Boss lvl.1 - 3-5 people
Raid Boss lvl.2 - 5-9 people
Raid Boss lvl.3 - 1-2 groups
Raid Boss lvl.4 - 3-5 groups
Raid Boss lvl.5 - 5+ groups
And just have one of those above the boss's head instead of just "raid boss"
Why should it be made easier for you to see how tough the boss is? If you cant figure it out by his lvl, skills and possible minions then you deserve to get wiped.
Raidbosses are easy, and giving them a raiting of _how_ easy they are would spoil the hard work some have put into actually finding out the best ways to take some of them down. You dont know how many people you need to take down a mob, same applies to Raid Bosses, just on a bigger scale.
Some kind of rough indication would be nice. On one level 35 boss, we killed him in about 30 seconds and got 3k xp. The next level 35 boss, it took about 5 minutes and we got 100k xp. I mean, come on, these two aren't even close in difficulty, and there's no indication. We did the two bosses at angel waterfall too. One is level 59 and the other is level 55. The level 55 one is far harder!
So, since you dont want to bring that party to figure out how tough it is, you choose not to do it. Simple as that. You know how different lvls, and different skills/resists on mobs affect the party size. You know this because people have experimented by fighting them. A newcomer to the game does not know all that information, he has to learn it by trying or by reading it from somewhere.
Sounds to me that you only want to have easy pickings and get as much loot as fast as possible. If you're not willing to work for the drops, imho you dont deserve them.
Also, your thinking of how to deal with normal mobs is a bit flawed ;) White/Yellow 4x mobs are something that I take down in duo. And thats some fast killing right there. It greatly depends on the mob's skills and resistances how they work out. For example, the Swamp of Screams stakatos might look like something that you can solo, but if you dont know that they will run when at low HP and bring all their friends back at you, you're gonna get a nasty suprise. Same applies to Raidbosses, you think you might be able to do them but unless you try and learn from that, or hear from other people, you can only guess.
Look, your argument is silly. Whether you want to admit it or not, 90% of mobs in this game you CAN tell wether or not it is a good idea to attack them simply by looking at them.
This is not the case with raid bosses. And I seriously doubt that anyone is gonna want to put together a raid party just to "test" a raid boss.
Oh yeah, let's put together a 3 man part yand go get kill to a boss that requires 5 groups! Or even better, let's take al lthe time to gather 5 groups, then go PWN a raidboss in a bout 3 seconds that only required 3 people...either way, all the people there wasted a lot of time, possibly money, and possibly xp...and probably left feeling very frustrated.
And it's not like I can go up and whack the raidboss solo, or with an alt to test is difficult...you really NEED a party or parties to test it.
So I don't think it's very out of line to just give a general, VAGUE indicator of the relative power of a raid boss. No need to tell me all it's special abilities, or if my group can handle it well, just tell me in GENERAL terms it's difficulty.
Mobs have color ratings. Raid boss color ratings are generally worthless except for determining drop probabilities for a certain raid group. If a green raidboss requires 30 people, but a yellow one requires 3...my 9 man party would be better able to take out the yellow than the green!
Raid bosses are not only too vague, but generally misleading!
I think you're misunderstanding the nature of raid bosses. Raid bosses are NOT ment to be done with a small party. If you see people killing the boss with a small party, they figured out some innovative way that works for that particular boss. IE a boss weak to wind or dark magic and SH/Sorc using CDL to take it down while a tank kites it. These raid bosses are the exception, not the rule. Usually you need 3-4 parties to take out a raid boss.
Actually, NCSoft added some "scalability" to the raid boss concept with new "smaller" raid bosses in C4...or supposedly they did...they said this in several interviews and I think it was listed in a patch note somewhere...but I can't seem to find it now.
Actually, NCSoft added some "scalability" to the raid boss concept with new "smaller" raid bosses in C4...or supposedly they did...they said this in several interviews and I think it was listed in a patch note somewhere...but I can't seem to find it now.
Sounds familiar. I thought this is what the "mini bosses" became...
Yes, I thought that was a good indicator as well, that the old mini-bosses would the new "smaller" raid bosses...but this doesn't always seem to be the case, Premo Prime, for example, is in no way accomplishable by a small group...you'd need at least a full group, if not 2.