Delving Missions for Casuals

[Kirchenmaus]

The new effects (AOEs) of the enemies in delving missions are absolutely fun-free for casual players. I've been playing LoTRO for about 10 years, I used to accompany raids in World of Warcraft as a main healer and I know when to run out of ground effects. But the basic lags and the speed at which really every enemy throws ground effects around is just beyond anything I understand as challenging fun.
I would love to at least equip my 140 chars with 470 (purple) equip, but with the adjustments that have recently taken place in the delving missions, it's not fun solo or duo. And I'm only talking about T4 here. I don't even want to know how abysmally hard it gets above that.
And how will players who are real casuals and maybe don't really know their classes master these new challenges?

I would like to see some 'Let's play's' on YT or elsewhere, where Developers actually master T4+ Delving missions alone or in pairs with normal gear (no Raidgear!). Can you please make some recordings and make them available to us 'normal' players? I would like to learn how to handle this new madness with my toons.

Anyway, I don't have fun with the Delvings anymore. If this doesn't get rolled back, I'm done with it. And with that, there's currently nothing for me in the endgame since I'm not raiding or interested in instances. I'm a solo/duo player....

By the way, I don't need comments from over-equipped raiders who want to tell me here that I'm probably just too stupid for my classes. So save your time and let it go.

[istvana]

LOTRO is not, in general, and should not be, an "action combat" MMO where player reflexes and vision and internet connection are critical and how well the character is developed and equipped are secondary.

Ground effects that can hurt or even kill you if you are not paying attention are fine. Ground effects that force you to move constantly with maybe an occasional opportunity to actually use one of your skills are not fine.

My guess is that the developers created what they thought worked well for group play - and maybe their judgment was good - but did not adequately consider how it would work for solo play where there was no one else around to heal the character and where classes and trees not focused on damage dealing would need to spend more time than redline hunters actually killing the enemies. Time they might not have with constant death circles all around.

[auximenes]

I would like to see some 'Let's play's' on YT or elsewhere, where Developers actually master T4+ Delving missions alone or in pairs with normal gear (no Raidgear!). Can you please make some recordings and make them available to us 'normal' players? I would like to learn how to handle this new madness with my toons.

I feel your pain. My captain main had abyssmal gear (pre-Gundabad) when the CardoSwan and the Delving-activated Missions launched. I had trouble doing a T2 Delving solo at first and even T1's were tough. I worked on doing lower tier delvings on my own, did some T4s and a smattering of T7's with a friend and bartered for a few ember boxes. All of my gear is now purple with a few teals at ilvl 470+ and I normally do T4's without much trouble.

I did a couple T4's last night after the malices changed and was expecting to get slaughtered but I was *carving through the enemies ('carving' as a captain not the same as other dps'ers). Yes the puddles suck, they always do for a melee. If you're forced to fight multiple enemies at once try to get them to drop all their puddles on you at once, back out of the spot, and make your stand there. It's the same way I had to deal with fire puddles last week, and disease clouds prior to that. You have to give yourself an out, somewhere you can back up to.

[Kirchenmaus]

I have tried to kite the enemies from the ground effects. The problem is that many enemies are connected to each other. Which attracts more groups as soon as I move too much to run out of the puddles on the ground. Consequently, more and more enemies come and more puddles. That being said, some enemies can seemingly keep producing new puddles without CDs, so I'm constantly on the move - like I used to be in a heroic raid (WoW). But we're still talking about T4 Delvings here, which I also managed with effort until just under 2 weeks ago, without the additional ground effects. That worked alone or in a duo.
Meanwhile, my buddy and I are dying multiple times in the delvings.

I thought that the delvings are supposed to be there so that players who don't want to run instances or raids can also equip themselves...

[willowbrook]

The new effects (AOEs) of the enemies in delving missions are absolutely fun-free for casual players.

Totally agree about the difficulty of the Delving missions. I thought the idea was to provide solo and casual players opportunities to get better gear. I understand that higher tiers are supposed to be more difficult, but should not be impossible. I managed to climb up to Tier 9 and even completed a Tier 10 once, but now, after changes, it is impossible and the fun and enjoyment has decreased dramatically. Furthermore, I have a very well geared hunter. Even with potions, food, morale boosts and so forth, the bosses now at Tier 10 are so fast, drop various puddles and spawn one or two mobs after dying, making it impossible to recover. It's crazy and definitely not fun. Even Tier 9 has become very difficult. My poorly geared alts won't even try. We need more solo questing options at higher levels.

[RiverBirch]

I'm a casual solo player and have decided to just do T4 and T7 missions. I'm accumulating tokens and very occasionally getting some nice drops. Sure it's gonna take me longer to accumulate enough to buy something, but that's fine. And if a week's malices are just outrageous, I skip that week. So far, I've been using this approach on my hunter, brawler, and RK. I have enough to get something for two of them, so will probably swap them out for other classes.

As a casual solo player, I don't expect to be able to do the hardest content in the game. As long as I'm able to keep myself geared well enough to keep doing new content, I'm happy!

[Dagobert]

Totally agree about the difficulty of the Delving missions. I thought the idea was to provide solo and casual players opportunities to get better gear. I understand that higher tiers are supposed to be more difficult, but should not be impossible. I managed to climb up to Tier 9 and even completed a Tier 10 once, but now, after changes, it is impossible and the fun and enjoyment has decreased dramatically. Furthermore, I have a very well geared hunter. Even with potions, food, morale boosts and so forth, the bosses now at Tier 10 are so fast, drop various puddles and spawn one or two mobs after dying, making it impossible to recover. It's crazy and definitely not fun. Even Tier 9 has become very difficult. My poorly geared alts won't even try. We need more solo questing options at higher levels.

I was doing T10s until I realised how quick you could bang out level 7s. Yes they give less writs, but you spend way less time when it comes to "writs per hour" and they have a decent drop rate on gear.

Also there are some missions just to be totally and utterly avoided such as that flame one with the water sprites, and seige of carnost. Leadership Direction in Herne is another one to avoid solo. I have done them duo on 10 (but wouldn't like to try them now with new puddles) and found them a waste of time. At this stage I just cherry pick the ones I want to delve, and bang out the others on level 0 for the 45/45 weekly embers.

[Arnenna]

I was doing T10s until I realised how quick you could bang out level 7s. Yes they give less writs, but you spend way less time when it comes to "writs per hour" and they have a decent drop rate on gear.

Also there are some missions just to be totally and utterly avoided such as that flame one with the water sprites, and seige of carnost. Leadership Direction in Herne is another one to avoid solo. I have done them duo on 10 (but wouldn't like to try them now with new puddles) and found them a waste of time. At this stage I just cherry pick the ones I want to delve, and bang out the others on level 0 for the 45/45 weekly embers.

T1 is more or less the same as T0 for those embers, just get 10 writs for each one, on top.

[Dagobert]

T1 is more or less the same as T0 for those embers, just get 10 writs for each one, on top.

You are correct in that, but I generally just do the level zeros to finish off the 45/45, I'm generally capped on 10/10 delving, and the other thing is I'd be afraid that getting an armour/essence reward on T1 might affect the drops rate on Level 7+ afterwards for winter essence, armour, and cloak threads.

[DroboTheDwarf]

Completely agree with the OP I have 470 gear on my champ, I have been trying to run T4-5 delving's and they are ridiculous. I am not even going to really bother with them expect to use the sites as additional missions and not running the delving aspect of them. Unless you are some try hard raider with a group they are not even feasible at higher levels by solo players.

[Kirchenmaus]

I also noticed that some boss enemies that used to have about 3 waves of adds can suddenly spawn endlessly. You don't even get to kill the boss anymore because they spawn wave after wave of adds, making it impossible to complete these missions.

In the meantime I have 470er (purple) equip on some Chars, nevertheless some T4 missions are no longer playable alone...

[Halphast]

I also noticed that some boss enemies that used to have about 3 waves of adds can suddenly spawn endlessly.

I'm new to Delvings and ran into this- something is definitely strange. Of course at high tiers these extra enemies often killed me, but sometimes it reset the boss and sometimes I got to keep going after a respawn. The waves (and deaths) seemed endless until suddenly the boss just stopped calling new allies and it was finally just a one-on-one fight.