TONG report from 6/14

[nmates]

Blue (OP) wanted to try TONG on Thursday June 14th. I (Benn, CW, Oppressor), Aratech (CW), Udo (TR) and Gina (DC) joined. 5 people, no experience in TONG before. All were 13-15K ilevel. We got to 1st boss (Orcus, redux) and wiped, twice. We knocked maybe 2-2.5 ticks off Orcus before wiping. Checking guides, that is a DPS race fight, where things get harder over time, and we had no chance anyhow.

Word on alliance chat is that 142+K power makes it doable, 242+K power makes it easy. I doubt we had more than 40-50K power at any point.

The current meta of 2xDC, GF, OP buffing a GWF is just plain broken in my opinion. Buffs multiply, while more DPS is merely adding. The GWF is the toughest DPS, and gets tougher in beast mode. Other DPS classes are fragile in comparison.

I'm not going to chase after the meta and rebuild things. The game has said a giant "screw you" to decent players with decent experience trying to do endgame dungeons (MSP, FBI are the same).

[Phelaia]

I've been in there once on my OP-Tank. The rest of the party was a 13k GWF, a 12k MOF CW, a 12k Tempt-lock, and a 14k DC. It was far from the supposed optimal party, but we got Orcus down to 35%. One of the problems was that I, as main tank, did not know which curse to take and how I was supposed to intercept those green balls of death with the curse on me. If what I just wrote sounds like gobbly-gook, watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yan44wx7CrA

I'm up for trying TONG.

[nmates]

After the run of FBI, *SVA, MSP, TONG, Cryptic has killed any desire to hit a recent dungeon. I've never finished anything on that list, and I've gotten to the point where I just don't care. Blue's in the same boat - never completed any dungeon introduced after the CN revamp. We're 3-4(?) year players, not hardcore, not weekend casuals either. And the game says "you are not welcome in all this content." And, I don't want to jump through all the arbitrary hoops to have a chance at winning.