Crabbok

What do you think the best and worst EQ2 expansions are and why?

Best - Kingdom of Sky - Introduced AAs, Introduced Crits, had a really good adventure pack,(if you count Fallen Dynasty as part of KoS), and had gorgeous zones and amazing looking mobs. Tarinax is the best looking raid mob to date IMO.

Worst - Desert of Flames - I just didn't think there was enough content here. DoF did include that one day where everything dropped masters though. Only really good thing about DoF was the Djinn Master fight - historically the most difficult fight released.

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docpaulpur

Best : EoF :

While the zone design was partially uninspired (lfay : run around a labyrinth to make the zone look big, Gfay : omg what a mess with the walls + trees+ ladders ), The introduction of raid mobs that are finally not always tank and spank, and the introduction of a long ass raidzone.
Also very nicely balanced around Solo, group and raid

The slightly low overall content can be argued with a non -lvl raise argument

Worst : RoK

Ugh..it made me quit my account. Nice zone graphics though, but the generation of hollow big zones just to make them look "big" was the opposite step from compact eof zones. Soe just can't make up their minds and can't find a middle ground. Raid messing up mid-expansion, gear revamps, aa revamp...add that to the solo-to-80-or-quit approach and there's my reasons.

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Hazazal

Best TSO

I love the difficulty of the fights and that they made some of the zones scale.

Worst ROK
Same reason as above.

Corto

Best (or "good"):

KoS
EoF

Worst (or "bad"):

TSO
DoF
RoK

In that order.

Comalv

Best: KoS: Challenging and overall balanced, Introduced some new stuff that made the game more interesting (AAs), Soloing was easy and feasable, Instances were balanced, Raid content had a decent progression (only flaw was AoAx4 with random spawn of Talendor/Gorenaire which was fixed after). Contesteds were actually much stronger than any instanced stuff, and Adventure pack had Mythical Items that made it worth spending a lot of time on. Mitigation Tanking ftw.

Worst: TSO: While heroic content is probably the best up to date, a lot of things made this expansion sink even before it got released, from AAs that require you to spend other AAs in other trees first (what's the point of customization then?) and which prowess is inconsistent between the different classes (no news here), to Itemization being at its worst (from Avatar loot >>>>>> instance loot > raid instance loot, to Raid instance loot >> Avatar Loot > Instance loot, to Anashti/Ykesha/Zarrakon loot >>> Avatar Loot >> Rest of the loot).
A lot of mechanics were introduced that needed to be held back:
-Critic hits/heals were fine as in KoS, a small amount of chance to see big number. In EoF this became a problem as the values were getting towards the cap. In RoK with VP gear people could cap Crits solo buffed, hence in TSO they decreased the crits on most classes gear (talk about PROgression), and god knows what they will do in the next expansions...probably put diminishing returns on it
-Double Attacks were introduced in EoF (on gear at least) and in RoK and TSO they got the same treatment as Critics (with added nerfs to AAs)
-CA/Spell DMG was also a good idea to balance out critics (for ppl with higher hitting spells against ppl with dots), altho it's been changed so many times (spell dmg at least) that now even a casual can cap it on at least a couple of spells (if mage, melees have it a bit more difficult) that people no longer bother to check it. What are they gonna do with next expansion?
-Base CA/Spell DMG was introduced with SoF (Choker) and once again was a brilliant idea as long as it was on a couple of items only. With TSO and high-end loot i forsee people managing to get 100% before the end of the expansion, yes that will probably raise CA/Spell DMG cap but still.
-Crit Bonus now was added to make crits hit harder, and i foresee that in a couple of expansions it will get the same treatment as crit chance
-Critical Mitigation is the worst joke ever, it's just an excuse to make people wear gear that otherwise wouldn't be an upgrade from RoK, and it's also used to render Avoidance tanking useless (which in EoF and then RoK was used after the nerf of Mitigation Tanking). What's in next expansions, Double Attack Mitigation? Bonus Critical Mitigation?
-Mitigation Increase, this one is fine for now, not too overpowered (even if someone says viceversa), yet not useless.
-Accuracy % because after melee skills cap and you still hit on autoattack for less than 75% of the times on a yellow con mob, Aeralik's assassin really needs a way to hit more
-Flurry same of DA, just worse.
-Spell Double attack, same as flurry.
Not even talking about HASTE/DPS Mod since they're capped in groups since EoF

These were all nice bonuses that would have been leet if they remained rare on items (yes even on contested gear) and buffs. If it worked something like (for example on crits): at the end of EoF Casual raider: 10% crit chance, HC Raider: 15%, at the end of RoK: Casual raider: 20% HC Raider: 30%, we would have classes and mobs more balanced, same goes for all the other kind of buffs. Same also applies for the crappy idea of Avoidance Tanking and Crit Miti.

Other reasons that TSO sucks the most imo? Shard Armor mechanic, soloing being a pain in the ass with quests that are longer than a step of Journey is Half the Fun, Raid Sets being worse than VP sets and still unbalanced between different classes (specially bonuses), 2nd part of fighter revamp if it ever goes live. Just to mention a few. oh and 99% of raid mobs having a: if one of your raidmemebers doesn't do Action XYZ in 5seconds after he gets this effects he wipes the raid, and ofc damage shields with -600% crit chance, crit bonus, base CA Dmg hit % etc.

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Ranja

Best:
EoF
TSO

Worst:
DoF - not even close. The least content, the worst itemization, the worst quests (minus peacock) and the worst harvestables. This whole expansion was a mess and people that level alts dont even go there. The

Kall

Best: KoS

Most of the AAs actually meant something instead of what we get now where we get to enhance damage skills that do 1% of your zonewide by 3%....and that's one of the better AAs.

Sanctum and Palace were also the 2 best non instanced dungeons to date.

Bonemire in its prime was the best overland zone to date.

Labs was a pretty cool zone for pickup raids and had decent loot.

Before the time that the philosophy of adding retarded damage shields like control effects and shit that lowers your DPS to 0 on mobs was a good idea.

Introduction of > 1.6s delay dual wields - GDH.

KoS was far from perfect and had its problems like claymore being unfinished on release, severe lack of raiding dual wields, dull raiding content, and itemization failures but every other expansion had those same problems.


Worst: RoK

Itemization sucked. No progression through gearing up. Thuuga and Pawbuster were painful to do each week. Breaking Venril/Tangrin for weeks at a time. VP trash sucked, especially if you were in the MT group with Wing Buffet. Most Avatar loot were downgrades from their T7 version. Most Avatars were copy/paste from the EoF version with minimal changes.

Introduction of unmodifiable procs. Introduction to unmodifiable AEs. Introduction of global resist increase. No new AAs. Epics being delayed and unbalanced. Races being revamped and unbalanced.

Lag was horrendous for the first few months.

Excessive usage of control effects on the "revamped" Avatars.

VP mobs being revamped deep into the expansion.

The whole expansion was pretty bad.

Only fun zone was CoD trash after they fixed hit rates and PR for plat runs. SoH was a bright spot, too, except for the screwed up trash mob resists and Avatar plus quality loot like the Rune Etched Helm and Sprinkler Gloves dropping off a mob that you can 4 man.

Thelounge

I haven't played TSO, so going from what I know.

KoS = best

RoK = worst

EoF = Honorable mention for worst, it dumbed down raiding in eq2, and imo started the never ending chain of death strokes to hardcore raiding within the game.

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Kall

Crafted STR/AGI ring, BCG, Mystical Orb of the Invoker, Planar Orb of the Wanderer, Mark of Awakened, DT haste item, GDH, Wurmslayer, Grizzfazzle's Walking Stick, Gown of Glory, Brock's Thermal Shocker.

KoS itemization was so ass backwards but at least it made main switching pretty easy!

Crabbok

Don't forget they added flowing thought 2 to nearly every item in KoS!

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