I understand why 30s are reluctant to play with 29s in the hard raid. Many times I've tried to complete the raid on hard, though all but one of my tries have been with a full 29 team and we never made it past the confluxes. While I didn't expect much from the beginning in these raids, the performance of a majority of 29s were honestly rather pathetic. There would usually be one or two of us that were holding our own and everyone else would only get 5-15 kills per death, which when a majority of the enemies are goblins is kind of a letdown, even if you're a level below the enemies.
These people were responsible for a majority of our wipes, either they all died and the remaining players were spread too thin or they couldn't kill the enemies fast enough while defending a confulx. I was shocked at how these players would see their poor results in the darkness screen time and time again yet still think that they completely had what it takes to complete the hard raid all the way through. They simply refused to believe that they weren't good enough to do it.
So the next time a 30 rejects you for being a lower level, don't take it personally, they've probably just had bad experiences with 29s in the past and don't want to risk repeating them.
Disclaimer: Level 30s, this is not an excuse for you to be dicks to the lower levels, lets keep it civil guys.
[b][u]Note: I get that level is not an indicator of skill but the difference in damage/defence between a single level is enough to make an average player a bad one and vice versa.[/u][/b]
Edit: Guy's I'm not saying level 29 = bad, I'm just noting that from my experience there are more bad 29s than good 29s and going on that I can understand why some people wouldn't accept level 29s into a hard raid. I personally have no problem with having 29s in the group so long as then can hold their own.
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The lowest number of 30s ive ever beaten the hard raid with is 2 on my team.