So what are your thoughts on 12b?

[tornnomar]

So 12b has launched! What are your thoughts and experiences thus far?

[Ziek88]

I'd say mostly good. The price for the last tier of enchantments is rather insane but I scream my frustration in to my inventory bags and am noticing it echos now.

I do like that upgrading to a rank 10 enchant is very easy and all ranks beyond that, excluding the last, are also fairly reasonable.

I think Merchant's folly is a more enjoyable skirmish compared to past ones. It's short. Could easily be done in 5 minutes if everyone knows it. This is where the new 480 pants and shirt drop.

Random queue is a bit of a disaster in my opinion. I like the idea but needs to be broken down by tier. eLoL should not be in the same playslist as mSP.

As a tank class, the bonding nerf didn't hurt to bad. I had to make some minor adjustments to bring my defense back up to the cap. I do see this mod encouraging me to go back to a tactician build. Pre 12b the makeup was mostly 3 supports, sometimes 4. Into the Fray was really only buffing one person and my personal damage as a Conq outweighed the full party buff. Now that groups are being forced back to 1 tank, 1 heals, 3 dps, a tactician's buff very well may outweigh personal damage. A buffing tank was a much healthier playstyle.

[tornnomar]

Agreed with the elol and MSP. Its silly that a group that may have the min ilvl to enter FBI may get thrown into that run, or MSP for that matter! But since, weirdly, awkwardly, the Heroic level runs give more AD, I dont see too many Random Epics being ran/run.

However the downside of this is that newer players who may actually need the gear that can drop from some of these runs will suffer as there is no reward from them anymore. Someone may find an Elemental piece of gear an upgrade, but be stuck in a Q, or can't form a group because there is no reward for more experienced players to guide them through a run. Read that as carry, or what have you, but this is a disaster to newer players trying to gear up and earn a bit of AD.
Imagine a group of 12k players Q'ing for a Random Epic getting thrown into MSP. Unless they are good, there is no chance for completion. WHAT! Goes back to what Ziek said in his post.

The bonding fix/nerf I can deal with as well. It was a long time coming and I think it was a good choice (for once) on Cryptics part. But for me, its the new refine system that takes the cake:)
I have got all my enchants ready for the next level! Just from crap laying around in my bags...and speaking of bags, they are very light now:)

Lets see what others may add.

[Phelaia]

So the random Q thing...I've dug up my very dusty alts (i.e. an HR wearing Royal Guard!) to run random non-epic dungeons, and it's made me quite a pile of AD. I have not tried random epic yet, since I know there's no way I can finish. Meanwhile, I need up finally up my artifact and enchants. Speaking of enchants, the newest people might want to gear up by upping their enchants first and let the gear drop when they may.

[tornnomar]

I think thats a great way to go about it. Now that enchants can be raised relatively easily, do so now.

My only gate that I've encountered is the Ultimate Enchanting Stones which only drop from Chult bosses, I.E. The Skirmish or Tong, or the AH if you have the AD to buy them. But as with everything, as soon as more and more flood the AH, the price will drop radically.

Random Epics: Got thrown into FBI with a group that was barely over the min ilvl earlier today. Poor sods couldn't make the hill climb, so we did an abandon instance vote which saved us from the 30 min leaver penalty.
TBH, I'd rather just Random q a regular dungeon, more AD. I have no incentive to Random an Epic anymore. That FBI run was enough for me. I've been thrown into Tong, FBI, MSP all with groups totally unprepared, but, lol, get thrown into VT and the like with 15-16k monsters:)
So yeah, Random Epics are out for me.

[Ziek88]

Now that we're further in and I have had some time feeling out the mod, I think they did a great job on the grand scale. This mod brought a lot of changes and the only real shortfall I see is the random queue and even there, they idea isn't bad but they narrowly missed the mark.

1. Random queue needs to allow for private queueing
2. There needs to be at least a split in the epic queue between Tier 2 and Tier 3. Make it malabogs-CN in one queue and FBI-mSP in the second. When new endgame comes out slide TONG into the FBI group and just go like that. This would be perfect in my opinion.
3. Random queue needs private.... worth reiterating. The leveling dungeons as AD creates an unhealthy atmosphere for actually new people. I can crash through even the longest dungeon in less than 10 minutes with or without help. I'm running at least 5 of them a day for AD gains. There is no way I am stopping to show someone the ropes on what is essentially my brainless daily grind. I used to do this in a private queue so I didn't ruin the experience for others.

Overall I like the mod and do actually prefer random queue to before, that is, if it had these minor changes.

Rain, it is funny you mention the monsters getting low dungeons. My Gf is just shy of 15k now and I get eToS almost every day. My policy is, if I get a dungeon I don't want I quit and take my 30 minute ban. Move to dailies on an alt. I plan my random epics when I won't need my GF for anything for awhile.