Thordan EX is fun. They took the book (of every mechanic we've seen before) and threw it all into one fight. And once again going in blind made it pretty enjoyable to figure out things on our own. The fight just re-enforces my personal preference -- that I love the primal fights, and they're my favorite fights in the game. I guess I'm also not as disappointed with the music as some other people. And as other people have mentioned, Thordan is a forgiving fight in that no one failure spells automatic wipe. There are plenty of chances to recover so long as not too many people go down or as long as it wasn't a certain class going down during a mechanic.
Diadem is fun if you have a good group + people in the zone will work together. I think we should rename Diadem to Jurassic Park. If the thing gets more active/crowded in the coming days/weeks, it's going to be hunts again. In one of our last Diadem Normal missions, groups were already yelling at each other over not calling out Level V or Star ranked mobs. Also groups would send out scouts to find other groups doing the work to clear mobs to trigger "NMs" and then swoop in to get credit after just sitting idle. Some groups would get upset at that since they did the leg work to trigger the NM, when the other groups dropping in at the last minute to cash in on the NM could have been helping clear the trash. I view it like hunts - nobody bitches when people do the leg work to spawn an S rank and the whole server zergs it. They'll complain if they missed out, sure, but the peopel who spawn it don't usually cry about so many people showing up (unless they don't get credit for some reason).
I want to try out Hard Mode tonight if it becomes available to see what the difference is, but otherwise I think I'll swing into Diadem once a week to try to get gear for my classes.
Haven't touched Verminion yet. Will probably look into it this weekend or at least after I've cleared Thordan EX.
Did one of the two new dungeons. Need to run it again because I was falling asleep through it, but some of the mechanics I was conscious for seemed neat/different, like the poison spewing boss with poison spewing adds. The dungeon looked pretty, though.
Void Ark was decent. It seemed pretty easy, maybe easier than any of the Crystal Tower parts for a first time run. I'm hearing horror stories already though, but I mean, there are always horror stories. Wiping to the first boss of any part of CT was a real thing. I still think World of Darkness was the best, so Void Ark is a bit of a let down. The gear at least looks nice and the free twine drop every week is super quick and easy to get.
Which, in turn, renders Hunts less important than people were whining about. As somebody who endured The Hunt grind each and every time, I'm a bit relieved it's not a the forefront once again. I'm sure some people will still zerg it in the name of catching up and getting all i210 gear, but it's not necessary. For most anyone who was stuck at A3S or any of the earlier savage turns, you likely only need 3-5 twines to upgrade all your left side gear. That's 3-5 weeks of Void Ark. Given how long people have spent on savage, another few weeks to get easy upgrades to increase their chances of success doesn't seem too unreasonable. Hence, I feel hunts are merely a supplemental option and people won't be as gung ho about it. I could be wrong, though. Once people start finishing up the new content in the coming days, Hunts might be a hot topic again, but I really doubt it.
Have only done one story quest. I didn't skip the cutscenes. Will resume it probably tonight, as well as trying out Pharos Sirius HM. I also haven't had a chance to see how nice the PVP EXP increase is because pvp is beyond dead at the moment (Flames queues were 40+ mins, and even that was for 8v8v8). I'm hearing that the EXP increase overall to PVE leveling is amazing though. Glad I held off on trying to race every class to 60 before 3.1. Now I have a bunch of things I can work at in 3.1 over time to keep me occupied until 3.2. Finish leveling up all my jobs and remaining crafters and gearing up those jobs.
But anyway, I feel like moreso than previous odd number patches, this one provides a lot of options to catch up if you're trying to clear raid content and/or just want to be decked out in max level gear. With enough grinding you could have BiS for all gear without ever stepping foot in Alex Savage, sans the weapon of course. And even that might happen in 3.15 with relic depending on their stats.
