The Epic & Legendary Beasts have been around for about a month now. In some ways I like the concept, in some ways I don't.
I'll begin by saying I have killed the epic beast three times, and come close to killing it and the legendary beast a couple more times.
Glitchless seems to believe that the strongest players and beast hunting teams get the kills. While that does appear to be true sometimes, it certainly has not been true two of the three times that I have killed the epic beast.
For my first kill, I was grouped with Roguetiger and Concede. Both are very good players. I won't deign to put myself in their class. We did significant damage to the beast. Roguetiger died, and Concede was close to death. The beast hadn't really attacked me yet, so I was near full health. Concede and I finished it off, and Concede received the TC reward.
For my second kill, I was grouped with a brand new level 85 and one of his lower level alt characters; not a strong team by any stretch of anyone's imagination. The beast still had a fair amount of hit points when we entered combat. Both my partners died very quickly, and then, and this is the strange part, the beast seemed to quit attacking, and no, it wasn't trying to use escape potions (I have seen it do that in other battles). I just kept shooting it, and hitting it very hard. The beast seldom fought back, and did little damage when it did. I was at nearly full health when the beast died. As the sole survivor, I received the TC reward.
My third kill was the beast in Goblin Swamp this morning. I was grouped with an ok caster, and an ok tank; again, not a particularly strong team. The beast had a fair amount of hit points remaining when we entered combat. And again, for some reason, the beast barely fought back. All of our hits did significant damage, and the beast rarely fought back. All three of ended the combat at nearly full health. Long live the machine gun effect of the Soul Thief Bow. I got in the killing hit, and received the TC award.
My point with this story is that two of these three kills were by teams that were not very strong, yet we did significant damage to the beast, and in the third case, took practically no damage to any member of the team.
There have been other examples of weak teams beating the beast. As much as I like Rakar, no one would call his team of three players in their mid 70s at the time he was the first player to kill a legendary beast as strong.
Killing either of the beasts does seem to depend a lot on your queue position. For example, Killda is a very strong tank, but he does very little damage (I've fought him dozens of times in the arena). A couple weeks ago my team left the epic beast nearly dead, a team went in after us and died immediately based on the time of their death spam in the chat window, then Killda got a solo kill. Good for Killda, but I seriously doubt he would have killed it if it wasn't nearly dead when the battle begin; he had the sweet spot in the queue.
The very next epic beast, a team died, and no sooner did the next battle begin than the winning team announed in civil chat that their pets had killed the epic beast before they even had the opportunity to click the attack buttons. Again, the killing team had the sweet spot in the queue.
Chasing these beasts around the map hoping to time the queue right is getting boring, and frankly doesn't seem like a very good way to allocate legendary weapons.
The current system is ok for players who to hope they get the sweet spot in the queue. But how about a totally new system as well?
The epic beast would be a heroic level 95 boss mob, which no one has soloed if I'm reading the tops list correctly. The legendary beast would be a heroic level 100 boss mob, which only a few groups have soloed. The beasts would have a random chance to appear in any zone with any fight (to include grays). The starting odds would be 1:10,000, multiplied by the level of the lowest mob in that zone. So North Lake would be 86:10,000, while the Abyss would be 100:10,000. As for the Docks, the odds would remain 1:10,000.
The fight would be treated like any other mob fight. If you escape combat, the fight is over, and the beast goes way. Same if you died. You can certainly call for reinforcements, and if they reach you in time, and the beast dies, then the current beast killing rewards are used. If the whole group dies, well, again, the beast goes back to where it came from.
Perhaps a base chance of 1:10,000 is too low, since that would actually produce a 1:100 chance in the Abyss. The frequency should certainly be pretty rare, but at the same time, giving the beasts the characteristics of the heroic bosses should make the chances of killing them pretty rare too, even when they are encountered.
The bottom line is I like the general concept of the epic and legendary beasts, but I don't think the strongest teams are necessarily the teams that are killing them. A lot does seem to depend on having the right spot in the queue. Even relatively weak teams and individuals can kill the beasts when that happens.
Some Thoughts about Epic & Legendary Beasts
