Great to hear your mom had a successful surgery!  I will pray for a speedy recovery.

Thank you Sarth and Draca for all you do! Looking forward to a great 2025 for EZ and our friends and family here.

Hey guys, Kiri here.

As i was mindlessly farming SLS, I got to thinking, that there has to be a better way to farm SLS.

Currently, there are a few options..

1) Jaggedpine
2) Old Commons Wisps/Wisp Boss
3) High Tier Random Drops
4) Airplane Lightbringer Farm w/ Double or Triple
5) Reduce the SLS requirements for Strikes/Mana Neck -- Leave UW the same as it is "Ultimate" and SoA stays the same since it is 1 per level

The most common of which seems to be Jaggedpine wisp farming.  This is extremely tedious and even after talking to Draca the farm is such a common source of illegal botting that it requires its own monitoring script.

My thought is that since SLS is outside of the normal "gameplay loop" there should be an easier source, I'm not asking for SLS to be raining from the skies, but the several hour farm I just put in to get 21 SLS to get one of my characters caught up just doesn't seem realistic.

My suggestions are one (or more) of the following:

1) Increase the amount of wisps that spawn in Jaggedpine
2) Conservatively increase the drop rate of Greater Lightstones and/or full SLS from Jaggepine Wisps
3) Add a higher drop rate of SLS to the Airplane Lightbringer boss.
4) Sticking with the Airplane thought, give Nick Saban a guaranteed SLS spawn if spawned off of Lightbringer.

The main goal here is to give an avenue of easier access to farming SLS, which pulls you from the progression path.  The faster you can gather these items, the faster you can get back to progression.

I feel that the common arguement that will be brought up, is why are you racing to the end game? My answer to this is I don't think this change if implemented conservatively equals a race to the end game, it simple reduces the pain point of farming SLS and lets you get back to having fun with progression mobs rather than clicking a /tar wisp /stick macro and 1shotting wisps for hours on end.

Thanks Chief, I appreciate you!

These changes are great! Thanks guys!

I cant comment on tier 12 as I am currently working through T5.

However, here is my 2cents since you asked about what currently works/doesnt work/is a bit janky...

1) Group Scaling - I think the expectation that someone bring more than 12 characters is out of touch.  Personally, I think everything should be attainable (albeit not efficiently) completed with a single group of 6, maybe 12 at most.  A suggestion I have is to scale difficulty in personal instances based on number of players in the instance, if that isnt possible/isnt on the roadmap, perhaps balance around a group of 12.

2) Ramp up to current tiers.  The grind to get to T12 is too steep.  As someone before me stated, I get it, others had to grind to get to T12, but as tiers increase, the grind to get to current content becomes less and less attainable.  I think that tier 1-7 should be accelerated so that newer players don't get burned out.  Here are some ideas to lower the grind:

A) Time and LDON - Drop a page for every character that damages a boss
B) POD tier 2 increasing the drop rate of dragon class armor
C) HoH increase dedicated token drop rate for each avatar so that its easier to target farm tokens needed.
D) Airplane (T4) - Introduce a dragon class armor type drop to help shorten that tier
E) Abyss (T5) - decrease timed spawns from 30min to 15min, add all bosses to the random spawn pool and increase the random spawn rate to help speed up the grind.

3) What is Janky

A) Casters in general are complete garbage until later tier.  They need to be buffed at lower levels, i know in talking with Draca its hard to balance at lower tiers, but since those tiers are largely "throw away tiers" buffing these classes will really help to make them enjoyable to level
B) Mages - Honestly pet classes in general.  Pets randomly disappear, do terrible damage, they just feel like a burden to maintain.  On top of that Mages really dont come into their own until they get Shylo's Bolt, but that is gated pretty far into progression. Suggestion here is to introduce a summoned armor/weapon spell that increases by tier to drastically increase pet damage, perhaps something like appropriate ninjastrike aug level of proc damage for the tier.
C) Tank Variety - Warriors are exponentially better at tanking than any other class with the only other viable tank being an SK, but viable is a very very loose adjective.  I honestly dont know the answer here, but there has to be some opportunity to improve SK mitigation to bring them closer if not equal to a Warrior.  I hesitate to suggest making changes to Pally's since they are so strong as healers that they could become incredibly OP, but a 3rd option to tank would be nice to have some variety in the game.  Perhaps Beastmaster pets could get some buffs to make them viable tanks, this is probably a stretch, just thinking of trying to bring purpose to a rather rarely used class.
D) DPS Variety - Rogues are so far above other DPS.  Can we get some buffs to Monks, Beastmasters and Berserkers to bring them more inline with rogues. This would promote variety while maintaining optimization.
E) Shamans - Shamans feel like they dont really have a place, they are basically buff bots with a bit of melee dps, but they really struggle to find a place in a group.  Suggestion, revisit slows make them more effective perhaps this helps with making smaller groups more viable as slow could reduce incoming damage significantly enough to make up for missing a healer?
F) Ultimate Charm v1 quest is absurdly grindy.  Suggestion - Increase drop rates in LDON for the dedicated drop.  Right now there is no real way to target farm charmv1 upgrades and getting them on 12 characters is 100's of hours of grind for something that is off of the progression track.  Likewise increase the drop rate for v2 charm upgrades in HoH and/or add them to T5 drop pool.

What is working?

1) Epic progression is awesome, it's really fun to do the epic quests / upgrades each tier they feel meaningful for most classes.
2) Custom zones are a breath of fresh air compared to vanilla.  Very fun.
3) Custom quests - things like sceptor of time, illusion mask, pet sword, etc.. are really fun with good fun rewards.
4) Clicky toys - great utility, fun to use, wish there were more for other classes

I think that is my 2cents

Thanks,

Kirigami