Maybe just make mask land on Raid Only. After all how many people will invite random newbs for buff.
I feel pretty confident that the more generous members of the server would still do that as well. Either way, it's an easy thing to work around so I don't think it really serves the purpose. It also lets people actively buff their "friends" or low level favorites while the greater population doesn't benefit. In some ways I think it could be even more harmful in that regard.
Overall I don't really know that some of these fixes are going to accomplish a lot of what people are concerned with the most.
In my opinion, I would do the following and I think it would resolve a lot of the common complaints people have:
Regarding buffs- I think t1/t2 is way too easy with or without buffs compared to LDON/QVIC without buffs. When I was a new 70 and I was breaking LDON and QVIC I actually had to be careful and work at a moderate pace. I didn't feel that a 2nd time until I later entered T5. So, my suggestion would be the following, and it would be very simple: All levels of Crab and Steeloak only work on toons level 71+, and re-work t1/t2 a bit. Make the t1 dragons hit harder and have more HP and increase their mini spawn rate to compsensate. In t2, make them hit harder and have more HP, leave their mini spawn rates alone, but increase the dragon mold rates slightly on the bosses. There's probably a way t3/t4 could be made a bit more difficult as well but I haven't worked that out in my head, yet.
No arguments on not letting people use the SoA/UW etc until their tier. At the very worst, let them use their tier + 1 so that there's still a decent resale market available for essences other than people backfarming their UWs. I think people buying essences from 1 tier ahead from other players can be healthy for the economy.
RotA- Currently I'm a firm believer that level'ing the ring past around level 500 is a waste of AAs that would be better served on EotA (and selling rainbows for those GSOAs if you get ahead on AAs but behind on GSOAs). Past level 500ish, when you get the max rune buff, the ring suffers from severely diminished returns considering its % of your total HP as you progress through the upper tiers. Cap its advancement per level, but also try to match the stats of the ring to make sense vs. a person's total expected HP total at each level. A person who is fully t4 geared should have a ring that gets them, say, 100k HP, while a person who is fully t7 geared should probably be more in the 300-400k range. A person in QVIC gear should max out around 20-30k HP from their ring. If those levels line up to what Hate proposed, then it sounds good.
UW- Other than t9/t10 players alts, how many people have a UW past their tier? I can't imagine this really being a problem at all. I think the bigger issue with UW is that the jump from UW3 to 4 is OK, but the jump from UW 4 to 5 and 5 to 6 is pretty weak for the effort involved. Personally I'd prefer seeing the UW3 and UW4 decreased by about 25-35% and make up that ratio on UW5 and 6.
Regarding the mask- removing MGB I think is very bad. It hurts the players who box more than 6 players severely harder than players who only play 6. I don't think that's fair. How about just level requiring the buffs at each 100 levels? Level 71 for level 100+, level 72 for 200+, level 73 for 300+, etc, with uncapped at level 75 or 76.
Kathina (to those wondering where I am, I've been very busy in RL lately and will be for a few weeks. I'm not playing EQLive like someone asked me the other day. I'll probably be playing again in about 3 weeks after my vacation! Miss you guys!)
