blackout

I played every patch hard until max/near max gear. The best era by far was 4.0-4.7. Most and best PVE end-game. Think about how many sets you can farm and work amazing for end-game; Ancient Coin, Lunatic Modor (runadium), Sauro Commander, Bastion set, Brazen Aegis (IO/RST), and Hyperion.. That's 6 sets that work for end-game, coming from 5 different instances, and you can still run shit like Danuar Mysticarium (sillus solo instance), Silona instance (void cube), Pradeth (anybody run this?:)), steel rose and a bunch of other stuff. The PVP is also pretty good out in the open world because blood mark camps have people out at all times of the day doing stuff.. There is Kamar and EOB for pvp along with all the arenas and dredge.. A lot of shit to do. 1.5 - 1.9.. no, just no. Not much to do, siege times initially were random iirc. I used to farm a quest that was like kill 49 calydon mobs and receive 10 platinum coins.. rinse and repeat until you have 2,000 coins.. Or you could farm guards/enemy faction and get ap gear. End game was dark poeta and steel rake.. and Grogget was damn near impossible to kill and DP never dropped a gold item. I mean, out of like 30 runs I think I saw 2 gold items drop and the run took forever when everyone had blue gear at 50. 2.0-2.7.. 2.7 was cool when the arena came out. Sieging on land was actually fun but the distance between gelk/inggison was horrible. Even if you kisked properly it just felt shitty, like if you died before you dropped a good kisk spot or forgot. It's not WoW long of a run/flight but it takes forever to get back into the pvp action there, and Silentera was usually empty because there was no point to it.. If they made silentera kinda like tiamaranta eye would have been awesome. End-game was Besh, and while I look back on Besh with fond memories, I can't go back to farming it.. I tried it on another private server and its just so piss easy anymore, and even when its not, it just isn't fun. One good end-game instance vs 4.0's 8 (or at least 6). You could run udas, but that wasn't end-game and really, 2.0 patches were a solo guy's world. Roll a cleric, farm bosses and sell loot rights. Short man or solo Esoterrace for AP.. Naah, i'll pass, I don't wanna play solo all day again just to become a boss thug, 4.0 encourages group play. Skills did start getting a lot better and more interesting this patch. 3.0-3.5 Good patches. Tia eye was awesome.. a lot of people cried about zerging in the eye, but the eye was one of the best things to ever happen to Aion. They put good rewards in a medium sized arena and let players go ham on each other. Can't tell you how many times I had someone gank me while I was on a keymaster and vice versa, good times taking the enemies shit (and sometimes your own faction). End-game was getting better.. we now had 3 end game instances instead of 1 (Rentus, Tiamat Stronghold, DLR). Although Rentus, imo, was total shiiite, the weapons were still awesome and it was worth running (plus mount could drop). So good pvp, decent pve, and sieges all the time! 4.0-4.7. Won't repeat what I wrote above, just a lot of shit to do both pve and pvp. 4.8 wasn't terrible, getting rid of katalam and danaria pissed a lot of people off because they were nice areas, but I did understand it also. They wanted a smaller map (Levinshor/Kaldor) so that players could find pvp more easily. It made sense, but I think they really just messed up the bloodmark camps there, because many classes could no longer solo (or at least efficiently solo) the camps, and so it became very group oriented, which isn't a bad thing but sometimes players just want to log in and get shit done.. Danuar mysticarium (sillus instance) changed and become total shiite this patch, but Linkgate foundry (a new solo instance) was introduced. It wasn't that great, but it wasn't horrible either. I think the introduction of the plume and +20 enchanting were the two things I liked least about these patches. With each iteration of Aion additional power creep is introduced in the form of new items or ways to enchant.. Like in 4.8 you could go to +20.. Why? +15 was enough (hell +10 was enough). Or also enchant gear granted +1 attack and +4 magic boost in 4.8.. which was completely ridiculus and even further separated players who could +15 their gear and those who could not (even in pve). Overall 4.6 is probably the best patch in the history of Aion. 5.0 terrible, but better than 6 and 7 6.0 dumpster fire 7.0 Haven't tried, I assume as bad as 6.0

Good shit. I used to make tons of charts like these when I played on official, but most of that stuff was lost to aging HDDs and was info I thought I'd never need again. Although I do appreciate the post I find its rather incomplete (it may be good for your own use but still you post it on the forum).. For example, you have Ice Harpoon III but not IV, to draw a good conclusion we'd need more levels of the spells. You did not list flame harpoon, and while you did recommend searing bolt in place, a comparison would be good. Also, cast speed doesn't affect charging skills like searing bolt, in which case with gloves, scroll, and vaizels up, flame harpoon may be better (haven't tested)--but either way we wouldn't know by the chart. Also, a quick searing bolt will require another skill behind it before weaving freezing wind, whereas you can always weave fw perfectly behind flameharpoon every time if vaizels is down. Also, the DPS numbers of the higher stigmas may be in small increments but they are getting multiplied by a players magic boost. Whether its worth it or not is up for debate but as an example my Flame Spray 6 has a dps of 4,504 (yours is listed at 1560 so we are then assuming base damage with no boost?) when hitting a mob at MB cap (this is not including any cast speed items). I think a list of DPS @ certain magic boost levels, or at least at cap would be useful. You have a start here, but it needs a lot of work.

Take bard/songweaver any day. They can do decent DPS at range while providing support in the form of heals and mana (and dispel, very important esp on KKM boss) as needed. Dunno what Zbigniew talking about, they are still definitely a support-type class. Chanter has sub-par dps, really only boosts group dps when they have 2+ dual wielding physical dps. Our main group will take a chanter if its a buddy but other than that we will never seek one out for anything we run except for PVP. Chanter is very good for group pvp (but bard is amazing for pvp too)

I got one. This is what it does:

I feel the same, but I can also understand why it is done. Players are funneled towards end-game and most of the other content is only there as a practicing ground to learn skill rotations and get at least a little familiarization with the class. The core gameplay has been designed by the original developers to speed players towards endgame. Hell, just look at patch 6.2 and later, even a casual can hit the end in a single day. This is because the game is designed around faction vs faction warfare and pvp raiding (real raiding). They don't want players meandering at lower levels not contributing toward content.. remember when they removed the xp death penalty to stop players from twinking? Personally, I'd like no starter gear either (or pink quest gear for that matter), the game is already quick enough. At least this way drops would matter more. As it is now, the only thing worth picking up as you level are balaur material (sells good right now), and manastones (crit and magic boost). Even a gold drop is just vendor food until its high enough to potentially turn into good enchant stones. The only gear drop that might be exciting are accessories, but aside from world bosses (think Andre) or instances, most accessory drops are junk. That being said, you would need a really large population to sustain slower leveling because people would be spread thin across all levels. Faster leveling means more people at 65, which is more players to run stuff with--and 4.x has a lot more endgame content than previous patches, so overall I think it was a good decision.

He is trying to load Gold Aion, not Euro Aion. SenSen97, that server has been shut down as of about a week ago. Here is the link with some info. http://forum.goldaion.com/index.php?/topic/2707-server-closure/

Petition for no Events (or only very SELECT events). Yes.. yes, I know some of you will be up in arms about this—but most Aion events are detrimental to the life of the game. Most events revolve around some sort of RNG mechanism with possible amazing prizes behind the door.. The problem is that as players build up a multitude of characters, many of these items are obtained and sold. When this happens many players are gearing up just by sitting in Panda or Sanctum instead of actually going to dungeons. This is bad game design. One notable, and popular example of this is the snowball event. We need to never have events like this. Another popular type of event that Aion likes to release are AFK events. Get ‘these rewards’ for staying logged in every ‘xxx time’. Now, I am OK with the first event we had for candy—I think it’s a decent way of giving players a small taste of the shop. However, what I am more referring to are events that give away items like enchant stones, manastones, and tempering solutions (holy serum I believe its called in EU). This is HORRIBLE. We had a long event like this before on Gold Aion and it was the final nail in the coffin for my legion (largest English speaking legion there). Why? Because it made no sense to go to instances anymore—we got more and better rewards by just afking.. and soon there was no point in playing the actual game. Lastly, there are smaller events that some of you love… hell, I Love them too. Things like code red for scrolls. However, these events are also very bad because they take away value from our crafters. Not everyone in this game desires to do just 1 thing. Some people love to craft and make money and when we have events that give away FREE items like this, then it really messes up the economy. I’ve also seen several PVP events on other servers I’ve been on. However, most PVP events are flawed because it only leads to players trading kills and the real PVP stops. The ONLY good type of PVP event is a tournament or arena (if moderated). The best event (and the only one I can recommend for the longevity of the server) is the birthday cake. It gives 300% xp, 300% drop rate, and attack/cast speed. This event encourages players to go out into the world and kill monsters, to farm, and to play the game. If anybody else agrees, please upvote and sign below. Blackout

You sound 'special.' Ignore this troll and move along.

Aion has amazing PVE content in 4.0. Anyone who thinks different has little other MMO experience. Just think about how many different ways you can most of the 4.0 instances and still be successful (bridge, tower, hyperion, DR, etc.). I've never played another game that allows for such a huge variety of classes to perform different roles either. Just take tanks for examsple--most games have 1, maybe 2 tank archetypes. Just in doing hyperion over the years I've seen a glad, templar, gunner, sin, and aethertech (5 out of 11) be chosen and successfully used as the main tank (yes, gunner really). And of course we also know other classes such as sorc tend to tank other easier instances. Variety in class set-up, variety in the way we run things. If you wanted a strictly pvp mmo, you picked the wrong one. To get geared in Aion, you will run a lot of PVE, so get used to it--the game was purposefully designed that way. In 1.x patches we ran upper forts (and farmed guards pve) for medals and AP, 2.x we ran Esoterrace and upper forts, 3.x we farmed keymasters in the eye and rifted to guard farm (satra treasure horde wasn't great), and in 4.x patches we run a crap load of bastion and do upper forts if we have them (at least until you get your gear). Most people, even the ones who deny it, spend more of their time in Aion doing PVE than PVP. If you out pvp the opposing faction bad enough, you get the good PVE--which in turn allows you to gear up better for PVP. That's the cycle baby. As someone who has raided in and pushed progression in several other triple A titles I'd rate Aion's PVE in 4.0 as amazing in variety and scope (in previous content patches it was good, but severely lacking in amount).

Don't worry, it took them a lot longer than 12 hours.