Dungeons: Are You Ready? The Details

Expert Rifts (Malformed Souls Required)
* 5 Man Rift content.
* Unknown reset
* Lures crafted from normal high level dungeon drops. Turns a Major/Minor tear into an expert
* 50 Toughness / Focus / Hit Required
* Drops blue and epic items.

Tier 1 Expert Dungeons
* 5 Man dungeon
* 1 day reset
* 50 Toughness / Focus / Hit Required
* Some folks reccomending one DPS have a healing offspec for boss fights with AoE damage.
* Blue gear dropped.
* Tokens dropped for gear purchase.

Tier 2 Expert Dungeons
* 5 man Dungeon
* 1 day reset
* 100 Toughness/Focus/Hit Required
* Necesity to have an offhealer for boss fights
* Blue gear with purple end boss gear
* 4 Tokens per boss dropped per purchasable gear

Raid Rifts (Corrupted Souls Required)
* 10 man rifts with loot reserved for group opening the rift
* Unknown reset
* Have been reports of greifing even on PvE servers
* Requires a Husk and 10 Corrupted Souls. Combine these to make the lure.
* 100 Toughness / Focus / Hit Required
* Rewards purples and shards that are as of yet unspendable

Instanced Raids
* 20 man instanced dungeon
* 1 week reset
* 200 Toghness/Focus/Hit Required
* item drops from bosses as rewards'


The Gaiscioch Family is going to use a new Character Classification system you will need to Edit your characters to activate. This will be called Grade

Level 0: Warrior - < 50 Toughness / Focus / Hit (Default)
Level 1: Champion - 50-100 Toughness / Focus / Hit
Level 2: Elite - 101-200 Toughness / Focus / Hit
Level 3: Hero - 200+ Toughness / Focus / Hit



» Edited on: 2011-04-25 13:06:35

What's the deal with the new 10-mans in 1.2? If I read it correctly, it sounds a lot like the "enter a rift" idea they were bandying about? Of course, now that I'm looking for it, I can't find where I read about it... =\

You will need to buy a new Ascended skill at the planar merchant that allows you to see Slivers. This is level 50 content. You can fight inside the Slivers. That's all I know so far.

You will be able to buy an new Ascended ability called Omen Sight. Trion has cryptically said you can 'see things others may not be able to see' but more importantly, it will let you open the new 10 man raid instance the 'Gilded Sanctum'. It doesn't look like this is a Rift but a dungeon, most likely a bridge between the 5 man experts and the 20 man raids. Some additional addendums to Fog's post above: Expert Rifts: 5 Malformed Souls + Planar Husk from Faction vendors in Sanctum. You must have Decorated with the Planar Faction to buy Husk. There is no lockout, you can open as many Rifts as you have lures. Mostly blue T1 quality items, will drop the occasional purple. Since the new patch, will drop Corrupted Souls also. Raid Rifts 10 Corrupted Souls + Planar Husk from Faction vendors in Sanctum. You must have Honored with the Planar Faction to buy Husk. Drops epic loot that is on par with some T2 gear. Since the new patch, will drop Corrupted Souls also. Rewards 1 purple shard per person in raid that can be redeemed at the Faction vendors in Sanctum. Tier 1 Dungeons 1 Plaque of Achievement per Boss. Bosses will drop mostly blues and the occasional purple. Trash will drop some Bind on Equip purples. If your group is new into T1, you should always have an offhealer in group to ease the strain on the main healer. Entry level tanks take alot of damage and entry level healers haven't gotten big enough heals yet to compensate. Also, if your group has CC (crowd control), use it to limit unnecessary deaths on trash pulls. Once your gear improves, things get easier and the need for offhealing and CC diminishes. Tier 2 Dungeons 2 Plaques of Achievement per Boss. Bosses will drop mostly blues and the occasional purple. Trash will drop some Bind on Equip purples. Once again, if your group is new into T2, you should always have an offhealer to help even in trash pulls. Even when you are geared up, most bosses will always require an offhealer. Tier 2 dungeons require a longer time length to finish, so give yourself plenty of time necessary to complete the dungeon. Greenscale's Blight and River of Souls 150 Toughness for tanks - (0% chance to be critical hit) Each boss will drop 4 items. Note: On Toughness/Hit/Focus requirements, these are numbers which are estimated to be needed for either lowering the chance to miss with physical attacks (Hit), lowering the chance to miss with magical attacks (Focus), and lowering the chance to be critical hit (Toughness). When you are at the requirement for dungeon/raid, then there is no additional benefit otherwise so don't continue to stack them unless you're going for the next level dungeon/raid. Just as importantly, having x amount of Toughness/Hit/Focus does not automatically mean you are geared enough for the encounter. Tanks who lack proper mitigation (HP and AC) or avoidance (Dodge, Parry, Block) but have enough Toughness will still struggle. Same concept applies for Physical DPS (AP and Physical Crit) and Magical DPS (SP and Magical Crit). While there are no real gateway stats for Healers, you should be stacking Spell Power and Magical Crit also. Initially, stack Spell Power to increase your healing power but as your gear improves, start stacking Magical Crit instead. Since Chloromancers need to DPS to heal, you will need the required Focus for the encounter to be effective. I'm sure I forgot something lol. If you have questions, then send me a tell in game. :)

» Edited on: 2011-04-26 10:19:49

I had a different question about Toughness, but a trip to the forums found the answer to that and I thought I'd share. Each tier has a percentage of damage cap on crits - that's why Toughness is said to be capped at certain levels. You can't get below 0% bonus damage (I'll give an example later, because I know that is poorly worded) so your best bet as a tank is to gear your Toughness according to the tier then focus on your other stats. For example, we're going to go with a T1 dungeon like Iron Tombs. The cap for Toughness is 50. For ease, I'm going to say that a typical hit is 1000 damage (I know it's more and mitigation plays a factor, etc) Tank A has 0 Toughness. When he gets hit regularly, he will get hit for 1000 damage. When he gets critically hit, he will take 2000 damage (1000 plus the 100% bonus damage) = 2000 damage. Tank B has 25 Toughness. When he gets hit regularly, he will take 1000 damage. When he gets critically hit, he will take (1000 damage plus 50% bonus damage) = 1500 damage. Tank C has 50 Toughness. When he gets hit regularly he will take 1000 damage. When he gets critically hit, he will take (1000 damage plus 0% bonus damage) = 1000 damage. Tank D has 75 Toughness. When he gets hit regularly he will take 1000 damage. When he gets critically hit, he will take (1000 damage plus 0% bonus damage) = 1000 damage. However, when Tank D goes into a T2 dungeon (where mobs cap at 200% damage) he will only take 1500 damage if the normal hit were to be 1000. I hope I'm not the only one who didn't understand why Toughness was so important and yet going over the "cap" was unnecessary.

» Edited on: 2011-04-26 11:57:32

More specifically Els, each point of Toughness reduces Critical Hit damage by 2%. By doing the math, this means that: A Tier 1 Boss has a 200% Critical Damage Modifier. 50 Toughness (50 x 2%) = 100% damage reduction on critical damage. Take those 2 numbers Boss Crit DMG Mod 200% - 100% (50 Toughness) = 100% or in other words, normal damage. A Tier 2 Boss has a 300% Critical Damage Modifier. 100 Toughness (100 x 2%) = 200% damage reduction on critical damage. 300% - 200% = 100% or just a normal hit again. A Tier 3 Raid Boss has a 400% Critical Damage Modifier. 150 Toughness (150 x 2%) = 300% damage reduction on critical damage. 400% - 300% = 100% or normal damage again. Now for the effects of having less than optimal Toughness for an encounter: Take 25 Toughness in a Tier 1 - Boss Crit Dmg Bonus 200% - 50% (25 Toughness x 2%) = 150% damage on a critical hit. When you consider how much Boss mobs hit for, 50% extra damage is a very significant amount. Let me reiterate that Toughness alone does not make you good enough for a particular encounter. It gives you the bare minimum necessary to survive but your mitigation, avoidance, and resistance stats all must be in order also. There is a common misconception that having enough Toughness/Hit/Focus automatically makes you good enough for whatever Tier dungeon/raid. If you are not sacrificing other stats to accomplish these goals then that is true. However, if you are sacrificing large amounts of mitigation and avoidance so you can barely meet the Toughness limit, then you are still too squishy for that tier and will likely encounter difficulties.

I'm wondering if you could get some sort of numbers for healers? It's not about ranks for me but more what I should be ready for. Looking at the gear available for vendors, I'd guess T2, as on average my gear is slightly above the T1 gear I could buy, but it would be nice to see some stats to be sure.

I don't know what healers need exactly for T1 and T2, but as far as classifying a piece of gear as T1/T2/T3 this is generally how I do it. Corrections are welcome as I am on a laptop on campus which can't run Rift, so the name of the vendor and plaque cost is sort of a guess. T1 - (Consecrated Merchant in Tavern?) 40-80 plaque cost or epic equipment dropped in T1 dungeons(/expert rift?) T2 - Elder Merchant in Tavern, requires 120-200 plaque cost or epic equipment dropped in T2 dungeons(/raid rift?) (I actually call the raid rift epic gloves I got T2.5, as they are almost as good as the T3 merchant gloves) T3 - Class Specific Merchant in Tavern, requires a T3 Token and 80-120 plaques or epic equipment dropped in T3 dungeons In general I would say that the epic dungeon drops are better than the vendor items of the same tier, this may be changed with v1.2 though.

This is good stuff guys hopefully it helps people prepare for the beating they will receive in these dungeons.

Incidentally, from what I understand of the new Looking For Dungeon tool being introduced in 1.2 it takes Toughness/Hit/Focus into account (at least somewhat) before allowing you to queue for that content. If you have no toughness as a tank, it won't let you queue for a t1 (or t2, etc presumably).

oh, and drops are supposed to be improved with 1.2 - the final boss will be guaranteed to drop a purple I believe (maybe just a blue) - essentially one step above where they are now.

As I understand it, there are no hard-and-fast benchmarks for cleric healer readiness, especially for T1. I haven't leveled a cleric, so I can't say for sure, but I would figure having the gateway amount for the tier in SP would certainly be a benefit, if you don't want to struggle with your healing. Mage healers should meet the DPS requirements, since we have to damage to heal.

Effectiveness as healers depends largely on your spec and playstyle. While there are no gateway numbers like Focus/Hit/Toughness, there are approximate numbers that you want to shoot for. When you first get into T1 Dungeons, your gear is comprised mostly of blues from AP, CC, and Rare Planar Vendors. (Supplemented with the occasional crafted gear) Your Spellpower and Crit Rating will be in the 700's and 300's. Your Wisdom will be in the low 300's. Mages will naturally be lower in SP but higher in Crit. And their Int and Wis numbers will be switched. After you either receive gear from dungeon drops or you buy T1 items from the vendors, then you'll be close to 900 SP mid 300's Crit and your Wis will be approaching 400. Mages will have less SP but their Crit Rating will be alot higher. At this point, you're more than ready for T2 dungeons. At least gear wise. By the time you gear up fully in T2 drops/items, your SP will be pushing 1000 SP, 400 Crit, and mid 400 WIS. Now again, these numbers vary according to spec and playstyle. Alot of Clerics start sacrificing SP and WIS for a higher crit rate once they can comfortably do T2's. Some ignore Crit and focus very heavily on SP for larger constant heals. Casters are not as gear dependant as Tanks or Physical DPS so your playstyle can be a huge factor in how effective you are. The Gear Merchants are : Holy Relics vendor (There are 2 of them) - T1 Gear Consecrated Relics vendor - T1 Gear Elder Relics vendor - T2 Gear Major Relics vendor - T3 Gear (raid dungeons) My advice to you is to gear up with plaques for T1 loot and drops in T1 but then save your plaques for very specific purchases in T2. The increase in gear power between T1 and T2 is very minimal and you can get the same upgrade through drops in T2 dungeons. It's not worth paying 1000 plaques total to get a small increase. Save your plaques for something you really need or for T3 loot. Chloros are a different story of course and so are Bards. If you guys have questions, you can always send me a tell or ask me in vent. I'm always available for questions.

» Edited on: 2011-04-28 12:36:43

Bumping :)

Ok I'm so confused. How do you get toughness gear if you can't go to the raid/dungeon etc., where this stuff drops. I haven't yet gotten a drop of gear that provides toughness. Is this a catch 22 type thingy?

@Kaytlyn: The Level 48-50 regular dungeons (Abyssal Precipice and Chamers Caldera) drop Toughness gear. I'm not a tank but I have heard there are 3 or 4 pieces that give you 50 toughness if you equip them all. In addition there are rings you can get in Stillmoor (Order of Mathos rep) which give toughness. Thirdly, I bet you can get crafted gear with Toughness - check an Armorcrafter for details. And finally, there are runes you can apply to your gear which add toughness.

The quest items from AP and CC will get you pretty close to 50 toughness. Slap a rune on the BP and you'll be over 50 toughness. Crafted gear, while expensive materials wise, can be just as good as T1/T2 dungeon gear. The rings give +Hit I believe, not toughness but are still good things to get. The four slots that usually give toughness are BP, Legs, Feet, and Shoulders. Honestly the best place to buy toughness gear pre-expert are the Rare Planar Vendors in Stillmoor and Shimmersand. You need some blue shards to buy them but doing a few invasions will get you those pretty easily.

Soon we'll be rotating IPP, Shimmersand, and Stillmore every week. I suspect that will be very useful to those trying to get T1 ready.

And FYI guys, come patch 1.2, the difficulty of the expert dungeons will be substantially less. By a fairly wide margin too. So if you are curious and want to test yourself against the pre-1.2 experts then you only have a few days left to do it. Likewise, if you don't really like the difficulty level as currently implemented, you should give it a try after the patch. Things will be alot different.

» Edited on: 2011-05-06 12:05:54

cool (nevermind)

» Edited on: 2011-05-08 13:01:21