Paikis

It takes 5% of your health every time you use a CA or spell. You cannot take it off. One of three things is going to happen:

1. You drain your healers power and reduce their DPS* because they're always healing your sorry arse.
2. You burn for 10 seconds and have to stop or kill yourself. Thus reducing your DPS anyways, so why bother?
3. You burn and the healer misses a heal or has to rez someone, or an AE lands, or someone turns the mob and you get riposted and then you die.

*This ofcourse assumes that your healers aren't the kind which refuse to do DPS because they 'might need the power for heals later' or because they're 'healers and not DPS'.

I've never yet been in a raid where using it hasn't either killed me, or reduced my DPS, or the group's overall. Maybe in your guild your healers expect it, maybe the 10% extra DPS on spells and CAs is worth it for your guild. In the raids I attend it will either kill me or be a waste of time anyways. FAIL.

__________________
'The bait isn't supposed to eat the fish!'
Paikis, Troubador of Venekor.
Veritas Aequitas

Acappella

You're assuming you're the only one in the group using it. The true efficacy of the item shines through when multiple people are using the choker in the same group. For a fury to use 1 group heal every so often or a mystic to preward your group doesn't cost them a ton of dps and if you have multiple people in the group, their lost dps is more than made up for by the others using it. Hell, a Fury giving you Salve can counteract enough of it to save you.

I have been using it exclusively on trash and very easy named. Sure, I have gotten low and had to stop a couple times, but all-in-all, the item is worth the risk if used properly.

Safia

Yeah you're great Avaela..no one is as smart or skilled as you.

Maybe you'll be able to sleep better tonight, now.

Needy people..sheesh.

Paikis

I can certainly see your point, a whole group using it like that would certainly make sence. The problem will be getting a whole group worth of people willing to farm the damned thing in a faction. I can name maybe 10 people who would be willing to put the effort in, and thats accross 4 guilds which we pull our raiding members from.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that the exiles are right. I've known it for a while now, but its little things like this which really highlight it. Faction raiders DO suck. Exile most certainly is easy-mode raiding and giving us all classes will absolutely make things easier... but its not going to be nearly enough.

My own raiding (/cough) guild is currently stuck on the Zarda duo in Temple of Kor-Sha. I think we've got the strat down, we just need more DPS. So these two will die in another week or four. The one thing we really lack is people paying attention, people willing to farm for those items which will only add 3-4% DPS (such as the choker) and people who pay attention (did I already say that?).

Case in point: The spider queen in Thuuga.

Our strat is this (bearing in mind that we're probably only pulling 30-40k DPS): one person (me last time, but I digress) is the MA and has a macro with /tar sac, /tar spiderling and /tar spider-bitch in it. If there's no sacs, we kill spiders, if there's no spiders, we kill queenbitch. Sounds simple right? have everyone targetting through the MA and just kill it right? Well last time, we had bruisers standing next to sacs, while there were spiderling adds, and they were throwing knives at the queen.

Now there are two problems i see here.
1. Those 2 bruisers were not targetting through the MA.
2. Why the fuck were they throwing knives anyways? if you're a bruiser and you decide to ignore the raid-strat and burn the name, shouldn't you be in meleeing anyways?

Stupid shit like this is why i believe this raiding alliance will never get past T2. Certainly having access to all classes would make it easier and maybe if we'd had a templar and a couple Illies we would have been able to kill the mob even through n00b shit like that, but it sure as hell isnt going to get us into VP. Having gear would also help, but again, its not gonna be enough.

So there you have it folks. A factioned player saying to the exiles, 'Hey, you were right all along'... but we were too, sort of :P All classses and gear you've been farming for months will certainly help, but stupid people aren't going to kill anything.

__________________
'The bait isn't supposed to eat the fish!'
Paikis, Troubador of Venekor.
Veritas Aequitas

Borias

Last time we kept our guildleader sacked during the boss just to lower his DPS. That was lulz.

Throbbin

You have 2 bruisers in the raid? I think I see the problem.

firamas

We've known this was the case all along. We've patiently tried to explain this, in excruciating detail, while dealing with hordes of city faction raiders who refused to take responsibility for the fact that a large portion of their raiding core were scrubs, and thus they never had a chance from the start. Sometimes we lose our patience, after trying to talk to idiots who just won't listen, and we break down into a bit of name calling... but the underlying truth was always there.

The most compelling argument that I can think of here is to make a comparison to PVE servers. The fact remains that only 2-3 guilds on each PVE server are in VP; with the rest of the raiding guilds falling back into a similar span of progression as Nagafen. Does having access to all 24 classes help out a bit? Yes, of course it does! But it's completely irrelevent in the face of everything else that has to be there first for a raiding guild to succeed.

aeeron

go ask dejanaa or resurrect how they heal myself(conjuror), nonok(wizard), and cerium(illusionist) with it on all 3 people in one group.. its not tough at all and skilled healers know to just cast one group heal omg 5% of there life there you go... cleric reactive what 7 ticks of 5% of your health, hibernation is like 2k or so thats like 15%..20%. Should i go on?

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Borias

You might have to. Apparently faction guilds don't get the whole healing thing either.

firamas

I've said it before and i'll say it again: Kraken or Onyx could put together their best possible class mix for a raid, log themselves out just inside the VP door, publicly post the named mob abilities & strats, and have 24 Eternal or Purity members log into those toons on their corresponding classes... and they still wouldn't be capable of clearing the zone without months and months and months of work.

It's not the classes... although that helps. It's not the gear... although that helps to cover up a few mistakes here and there. It's the people behind the toons, and the fact that Kraken or Onyx can bring a raid force to bear on a target that has 24 people (well, at least 22 or 23 ;p) who completely understand their class, the classes around them, and will be able to execute at about a 99.5% level of perfection during these tough fights. You simply cannot have anyone slack or make continuous mistakes on fights like Nexona or Druushk and expect to EVER beat it.