Just hit 80 and thinking about completely revamping my class layout

[Ellay]

Whew! well I hit 80 and had a blast doing it with my current combo, but I'm just not satisfied with how everything is panning out for the group and am sort of expecting more out of some of my classes.

Guardian so far is disappointing in holding hate, I know my gear is pretty bad just being 80, but I'm only grouped with myself and just not happy with it :P I easily lose aggro from my Wizard who I have moderate on which reduces hate gain by 33%!
Their AoE tanking ability is horrid at best heh, especially if it's not an encounter.
Warden, while a very effective healer it seems - I have heard/read that other types of healers require a lot less focus to be just as effective. Thinking about giving another class a shot in this position, possibly a Mystic.
Wizard, while the damage is nice it comes in bursts and many others on the orums here mentioned they swapped over to a Warlock. I think I plan on doing the same.
Illusionist - quite possibly the only class I truly think is awesome sauce, their DPS is decent- they CC VERY well and the group buffs are essential.

So now that I have had a full run through the game, I'm beginning to see what is needed and what can be improved upon, leaning towards a new set up of Shadow Knight, Mystic, Warlock, Illusionist. I'm not sure if I should just make them fresh or mentor down yet. Still up for grabs on that one.
Any thoughts on that layout? also my current characters have about 120-125 aa each so I've seen what they have to offer in that realm.

[Herc130]

When you start a fight, how do you do it?

1) All of your characters start fighting at once?

2) Your tanks hits mob followed immediatly by all your other characters fighting nuking?

3) Your tank begins the fight and gets a good combat round or 2 in, anger/taunting blow before any other character attacks?

I use to do #1, since I have a key that will have all my characters fight at once. My summoners pet usually ends up being the tank through most if not all of the fight. I still do #1 on easy stuff, because it doesn't matter really matter since stuff I am doing now are green to low blue. However, when I do heroric mobs, I always do #3 and my tank gets agro without having to fight over it with my other characters and keeps it pretty easy. Sometimes I do #2 by accident and my guardian has to fight harder to get agro back, but usually does. But yah, when I approach a fight and not rush all my characters into the fight and allow my guardian to set-up agro, he keeps the mobs attention no problem.

[Frosty]

Shadow Knight, Mystic, Warlock, Illusionist.
I don't have any agrro problems with my SK, but I can tell you, tanking is different than a Guardian.
I've been finding that my Inquisitor's reactive heals, and my Defiler's wards are usualy enough for tanking 3 blue heroics with no heals.
But I also have a Warden in there for extra healing umph, if things do go bad.
I haven't started min-maxing my DPS yet..stuff dies fast enough for me to be happy.
At a later time I might change out one of the healers if I find that I have too much in that area...but I'm finding EQ2 to be a little different in that each class can do decent damage.

[Ellay]

I have all my taunts on a key, and the other characters use the same key for debuffs. So the tank will spam out 3 or so taunts and the other characters will throw in 1-2 debuffs, then I switch to nuking and after about 10 seconds I re-taunt the abilities that popped up and go back to nuking.
It goes smoothly for the first 10-15 seconds and then it just breaks down.

[Frosty]

Ah, that's your problem, debuff = aggro..sometimes huge aggro. :P
I have 2 keys set up for building aggro on my SK. First key is a normal taunt by itself.. all other toons have this key set to assist the tank..nothing else.
Key 2 is my oh-crap-get-aggro-now key. It contains anything that can increase hate, and then some other AoE stuff too, just in case. All other toons have a macro with any spell/ability they can use to dump aggro.

[Khatovar]

SK, Warlock and Illy are all part of my current group, I'm very pleased with them. I dropped my mystic for a defiler since there's a lot of synergy between the def nox debuffs/dam and the SK and lock nox damage. But since I'm a 6-man group, I was more interested in her debuffs than heals. I also liked the Defiler AA tree over the Mystic AA tree. But, as I said, I'm a full group, so healing was a secondary consideration for that slot. As far as I can tell, thier healing "oomph" is about the same, with the mystic having more damage attacks vs the defiler having more debuffs.

That said, you'll "need" to bring up a new tank and healer if you change your group. You can betray the Wizard to a Warlock and you want to keep the Illusionist, so you don't have to start those two over. However, mentoring will go very fast and the new ones will be lacking on AAs for a while unless you lock adventure xp. My newbs are around 90AAs at 78. My other toons are all around 120. On one hand, mentoring will let you fly through 1-70, and the 80s will be insanely OP against everything. On the other hand, you will probably blow past a ton of AAs and having to redo the 70-80 stuff is a real drag when only half your team is actually doing the quests. You'll also get a small boost to XP on each toon for having an 80 on the account. So it'll depend on how fast you want to get back to 80, which boils down to "fast" or "very fast".

Also, you can swap shards on your account. I have been doing the daily shard quest in LS on my 80 team and dropping the shards in the shared bank for my replacement toons. I'd highly suggest doing this while you bring up your new team. The daily part takes like 20 minutes {most of it travel time} and can be done in a group.

[Lyonheart]

Ellay, did you mostly quest to get to 80? I am just starting out really, i have SK..troub..Warden and Warlock. I'm thinking about just heading to 80..adding two accounts ( second healer/illusionest ) and mentoring down. Second time around i will work tradeskills/run dungons more..ect

[Ellay]

Thanks for the advice Khatovar :)
I actually thought about that some prior and decided to just roll 4 new characters up, trying to think of names that tie in with the Aelli theme so I can swap them out whenever but playing 4 new classes will make it a lot easier to see what others have to offer.
I'm going to probably level up SK / Mystic or Defiler, leaning towards Defiler after what you mentioned / Warlock / Troub.

Now to what Lyonheart mentioned, your composition is pretty much what I planned on possibly having at 80 since the Warden is an extremely strong solo healer, I just haven't played any others so I don't know what they can do, how do you like the synergy of that group?

For your question though, I quested through all of Timorous Deep, Butcher Block, and Enchanted Lands and I didn't quest after that point until hitting Kunark and doing Kylong Plains / Kunzar Jungle and the other one.. it's not ringing a bell, I had just started Jarsath Wastes when I dinged 80 with about 110 AA's, the rest or I should say most of the time from 1-70 was doing the dungeon crawls, which is probably the area that I liked the most because it helps you learn how to play the classes you picked the best. Currently about 3 days later after hitting 80 I'm at 125 AA ~ ish on all of them and I have so many places to quest, which I feel is a pretty comfortable spot to be in for AA's with the amount of time it took to hit 80.

So formulating all of that together..! I plan on doing about the same strategy with the next set of classes and then when I hit 80 I can just mix and match whenever I please. Seems simple enough hehe :)

[Ellay]

1 thing Khat, I keep looking through the trees, the spell lists etc. What makes Mystic / Defiler good with Wards / Heals, it seems 'decent' but I guess it's one of those things were you have to try it for yourself, my friend tried a Tank/Healer combo dual-boxing with a Mystic and was ranting and raving about how amazing it is, on paper though it just doesn't seem the same.
Would a Inquisitor or Templar fill that role even better?

[Ellay]

Bahh 1 more thing before I go to sleep haha,
Mentioning upping to 6 from 4, I've thought about this as well, but I love grouping with other players - it's half the fun in the game. At the same time playing 6 ( and this is something that was mentioned a ton when I was first researching on here) is that if you do build a 6 man group. It can be "perfect" and it is a LOT easier to find the synergy your looking for. Taking that team as you suggested and adding a Illusionist and a secondary healer.. your golden. It's pretty much perfect, you just can't make perfect groups like that normally - though if some 80 boss fight requires some additional attention it can be quite hard, but perhaps the synergy of the group can just surpass that point.

[Khatovar]

Chain healers {def, myst} use wards as a first line of defense. Wards absorb damage. Plate healers {temp, inqu} use reactives. Reactives heal for X amount on damage for Y amount of triggers. For example, the top tier spell :

Chain - Ancient Aegis - Wards target against 1575 points of all damage
Plate - Vital Intercession - Heals target for 394 - 481. Grants a total of 5 triggers of the spell.

The wards prevent damage from getting through, whereas the reactives your target still takes damage. With a large hit on a tank, a ward will absorb most if not all of it. A reactive, the tank will essentially take the damage and regen a limited number of HPs. So, a hit for 1600 would eat the ward and spit out a small amount of damage to the tank, leaving your tank "naked" untill you can recast the ward {via the 6sec cooldow or alternate wards}. The same hit on the tank with a reative would do 1600, heal ~450 and continue to heal ~450 the next 4 times the tank gets hit, so if the tank gets hit for less, the reactives could feasably "catchup" the HP defecit {especially if you layer your reactives}.

With certain tanks, monks and SKs come to mind, I personally feel wards are yummy. SKs lifetap enough that by the time a ward is broken, it's up again and any damage that gets through has been regenned through a number of other means {SK spells, melee procs to group heals, involuntary healing debuffs and wards}. Monks are avoidance tanks, with less for mitigation should they get hit. Wards absorb damage that they would take instead of having them "go against their nature" and needing to be hit to make use of reactives.

Basically, they are different ways of healing. Plate healers can work just as well as chain, especially if you can get some other forms of HP regen going. It's mostly about what you feel comfortable with...being able to negate steady damage at a consistant rate {reactives} or being able to void out a set level of damage at a fluxuating rate {wards}. Being able to both is why I run 1 plate and 1 chain.

As far as 6 v 4, technically, I'm 5 +1. My husband covers all the tanking stuff, I take care of the rest. We do anticipate that at some point, our friends from WoW could come back to EQ2 with us. We also anticipate that any other member that we add to our groups will be DPS. We have tanking, healing and utility covered, DPS is easy enough to mix and match while still keeping a good amount of synergy. We haven't done too much with the high-end dungeons, but I imagine that it's a lot like WoW...know what's comming and set it up beforehand. Other people coming along only makes it easier for me with less to micromanage. Having all the best buffs at hand is the hard part, and having the core of that by picking up the classes other people don't like to play {but make my 6 team ideal} resolves that issue.

[Zamok]

I do not have to much trouble with my guard and agro even in unlinked encounters. Not sur on what line you went for AA's but I found with Warrior AAs, I took my AGI line to the AE ability, then strength for the hate gain and haste from INT or WIS (cant login to check atm). Then I focused on Guardian AAs for doubles attack and then went on the debuff lines as I find debuffs tend to stick a mob to me near as much as dps.

Putting my agro reduction on the biggest agro threat helps to of course and I have hate transfer from Bard. I might be wrong but dont Wizards have a hate transfer also.

A lot of DPS also have some sort of hate reducer also which I tend to mix in with their dps macros.

Standard ae fight for me with on guard is.

Make sure hold the line is buffed.

AE taunt > Reinforcement > Assault > AA AE attack > Taunting assualt > Guardian Sphere. Rinse repeat.

You can fairly much nuke AE with your other toons from the Assualt as if they rip agro your Reinforcment should re prioritise you on the threat table with the AE attacks.

[Ellay]

Encounter based AE is not a big deal, it's when you have adds outside of that. I also went the Agility line, and the AE Auto Attack is nice, but just doesn't feel like enough, you don't have time to hope it procs in certain situations, you need the aggro now. The best ability I could find for this was a combo of Reinforcement -> Assault line ( Siege at final skill ) which is basically an AoE non encounter based aggro snap. With AA's it's stll limited to every 2 min 10 sec.

[Ellay]

I'm thinking about the encounters where the initial Reactive is not enough, when a boss punctures through a Ward or a Reactive heal, which class is able to keep a target alive based on their pure healing skills after that? or is it mostly equal?
I see the SK as being more effective with a Inquis/Templar on paper, because say they are getting hit for 700 a swing, the reactive heals for 500~ and a lifetap heals for 300, meaning they are constantly topped off. Granted though the SK would have less dips in HP with Wards on if you are able to keep them up long enough.

[Zerocool2024]

Sorry if I missed it Ellay, but what server are you on? I thought most of the boxers here were doing Nek?

I played around with the game last night, got to 11 in a couple of hours or so with my brother-in-law (he is staying with WoW, but it just doing to burn time in between raids).
I see how easy it would be to box (macros are nice, only, a little odd) and I was going to 4 box it as well, but might go to 5 and have my brother-in-law take up the 6th.

<-- not leaving WoW, just want to try something else for a change. And it looks like EQ2 is hella easy to level now (RAF) and exp/game mechanics are a lot better from when I last played the game (2004ish)

[Ellay]

Heyo :) I'm playing on Crushbone, had a couple of RL friends that already had characters here when I moved over. If anything Nek would be my next choice :)

[Zerocool2024]

Alright, cool, was/is playing on Nek for right now. I know of a few other boxers here that I have converesed with on the Forums through the EQ2 posts, so I was going to their server in hopes of running into them or something at some point. I have not started my team, so my options are still open.

Hrm... never really played with another boxer (less I ran into him in BG's in WoW against, or with). I know they work well in 10 mans, 25mans and so forth (more than one boxer that is).
So, since this is EQ2 and I don't think they have 10 mans, 25 mans, it's all one group type thing, less a full scale raid, in which I forgot how those work in EQ2 (EQ1 was get as many as you could without crashing the Dungeon).

[Ellay]

EQ2 is 6 man groups with up to 24 in a raid, for raid content you don't have to fill out all 24 on the easier zones, it's totally doable to have a bunch of multiboxers clear em out :)

[Zerocool2024]

<---- *Gives and evil grin*

Horde or alliance? errr... good or evil, lol.

[Ellay]

In the end it doesn't matter, I don't even visit the cities anymore. Your guild hall has everything you need.

[Zerocool2024]

Hrm, alright, cool... Then, you mind having me around on that server (and maybe we can putz around in end game raiding or something?)

[Ellay]

I don't mind, the more the merrier :P

[Khatovar]

Ellay, the direct heals are about the same. I think the shaman classes come out slightly ahead with cast times, but both plate and chain dish out some good chunks of health once the first line of mitigation is passed.

[Ellay]

Aye, thanks for the info - exactly what I wanted to hear :)
I'm all set now - will be working on a Paladin/ Mystic which I will betray to Shadow Knight / Defiler, because High Elf is too sexy not to be, and a Warlock / Troub - just because I want to get a feel for a few other classes and see how they work. I have a feeling the only class I will stick with out of this group is the SK but that's fine, it's good to know how other classes work.

[Lyonheart]

Ellay, I'm assuming when you dungon crawl, you do it with a friend? Or do you do it with your 4 as well? I can do a lot of stuff in the dungon i can go to now ( WC ) I'm only 16 atm hehe. But when i get encounters that are my level ( white con ) with a 3up in the mix, my healer has a hard time keeping me up. Its times like that that I want another healer. And If i had another mmo addict friend like myself, i would gladly do it that way. When I play ( too much ) There seems to not be anyone available. I just joined a guild, so maybe that will change though 8) I am on Nek server.

[Frosty]

As soon as I get done with some of my bathroom remodeling, I'll be on more... but I'll probably still be AFK. :pinch:

[Ellay]

Ya I dungeon crawl with my friend or I just pick up some random players, that's when you learn a bunch from others and provides good chatter.

As for the dilemma, I can see why I didn't pick up on the Troub, melee is just not my choice when it comes down to it. Warlock seems alright >< but Wizzy perhaps seems more powerful in that situation.. I'm just going on here thinking my thoughts through as I type :)

[Zerocool2024]

Ellay, I will prob pick up what you don't get, in terms of classes so if we were to do dungeons together (raids), we would have the best of all worlds.
I will prob play multiple classes to 80, so it really wont matter in the end I guess, but at least we would have most classes covered for raiding.

Still not sure if going 6 or 4, or maybe 5 in case my brother-in-law comes around...

[Ellay]

I just started powerleveling a SK and got that feelin.. *ugh* so I'm gonna log on my Guardian, make sure I have all adept 3's for my abilities and try again ;p

[Zerocool2024]

And the pling in EQ2... is it (high level stand out side the group and heal/buff lower level)?

Yeah, I understand with being lower amount of toons and start off slow, but with my nature, (started off with a Yamaha R6 and in 6 months jumped on my Hayabusa), so, lol, slow is a little bit of an odd word for me.

[Frosty]

As for the dilemma, I can see why I didn't pick up on the Troub, melee is just not my choice when it comes down to it. Warlock seems alright >< but Wizzy perhaps seems more powerful in that situation.. I'm just going on here thinking my thoughts through as I type
Last night in an instance, I placed my casters a little back, and moved my Troubador up closer to where I was pulling the mobs back too. It worked out very nice. :thumbsup:

I've still found my warlock to be more effective than the wizard, even in single target situations, but maybe I'm doing something wrong?




I just started powerleveling a SK and got that feelin.. *ugh* so I'm gonna log on my Guardian, make sure I have all adept 3's for my abilities and try again ;pNot sure if you "feeling" was about the ability to tank or going through the same content. :P
if it's the tanking power, it get's better!

[Khatovar]

My train of thought for 'lock vs. wizzy was simply that I have an SK tank. He's doing AOE, may as well help the mass destruction along.

My troub is really getting to be second nature. I think I might swap back to /follow tank for initating combat with the troub as well as the 'lock. That should keep my warlock in range for his PBAoEs and if strafing is working, make my troub a little more hands off.

I can't comment on the paladin, since I've not played one, nor has my husband. I don't even recall playing with one. I do know the mystic and defiler both felt like totally different classes on the damage end. Possibly just my perception, but something to consider prior to betraying them. You might find they are a lot closer to what you want as you level them and betray them.

[Zerocool2024]

Not to trying to hijack the thread, but I should be up and running this week Ellay :).
Going to be evil of course, lol, and 4boxing it as well. Taking some advice and using this word *Slow* which for some reason befuddles me, lol. Doing it all on one box, though I may spread it to two comps so I can ramp of the graphics a little more to make the game have just that much more appeal.

Not sure on the combo I will be using, but for some reason I keep looking at the SK/INQ/DEF/LOCK or WIZ.

Seems like a decent starter group just to get the ball rolling and see if I like it. I have 4 trials right now, so I guess I could putz around and see if I like it.
5 seems to be the max on my system (though, I still have graphics turned on) before the games starts having FPS issues.

Using Innerspace/Isboxer and swtiching between screens is hella fast just like WoW.

[Ellay]

Sounds good :) I took it slow from the get go so I could understand the layout of the game :) now I think I'm in my groove^^

As for the SK dilemma, I grinded out a few levels last night - at 30 with 7 aa.. lol ! need to betray to the evil side to become a SK. I jumped on my Guardian last night and ran through a few instances - it went a lot smoother.
Low and behold this morning though reading more information on SK's it appears I have no other choice than to play them.

The huge benefits that the Guardian can't touch with a 10 foot pole are as follows:
Fear Immunity - it's bad in WoW, it's bad here. Just straight up being immune is awesomesauce, the Guardian epic weapon has a proc chance of 1.8 times per minute which gives you immunity to pretty much everything but only lasts for 10 seconds. I'd rather have 100% always uptime.
I don't even know what the name of the spell is but it's massive overpowered... It's a self buff "Until Cancelled" with a recast time of 3 minutes which if you were to die in combat, plops you back at 100% hp. It's kind of like uh.. dayum? lol
My group is caster heavy which I seem to enjoy casters more than melee for multiboxing, and the SK gives 2% spell bonus power, and really high in the AA's offers 10% casting speed/10% reuse time that is always up. I'm a huge fan of always up buffs :) none of this 20-30 seconds stuff.
Besides the increase in damage which better suits a smaller array of characters - I consider 4 much smaller than 6 :P it allows me I think to diversify better if I am just playing solo (is that considered solo?)

The ugh feeling yesterday was that I felt I was missing out at the 80 level but I also solved that problem, at least within my head :)
I can still work on getting void shards and only spend about 1-2 hours a day doing that, the rest of the time I can work on bringing the SK up since the void shards are transferrable between characters on the same account.
All in all, I feel I'm at peace now with my gameplan and the synergy between this combo is off the wooza, HoTs from Warden + Lifetaps from SK = 1.5 healers ^^, the casting speed improvements from the SK / Illusionist = omg wtf bbq caster group.

and that's that!!


Edit ** 1 more thing, just from reading the illusionists Epic weapon... it's insanely amazing !

[Khatovar]

I can still work on getting void shards and only spend about 1-2 hours a day doing that, the rest of the time I can work on bringing the SK up since the void shards are transferrable between characters on the same account.

We're already up to 20 from just the daily solo one. I love that they're transferrable and can't wait to start crafting pieces.


Fear Immunity - it's bad in WoW, it's bad here. Just straight up being immune is awesomesauce, the Guardian epic weapon has a proc chance of 1.8 times per minute which gives you immunity to pretty much everything but only lasts for 10 seconds. I'd rather have 100% always uptime.

My other half is debating on this one. It's kind of hard to want to go down for it since we have a Templar with improved Sanctuary, I suppose we'll just have to see how often we end up running across fears.

Glad to see you so excited about the new makeup. Soon all of us are going to have to start theory-crafting on AAs for the ultimate groups. :P

[Zerocool2024]

Already doing so, lol. :rolleyes:

[Frosty]

Soon all of us are going to have to start theory-crafting on AAs for the ultimate groups. Hurry up, my AA's are starting to pile up! :whistling:

[Khatovar]

Hurry up, my AA's are starting to pile up!

Don't worry, I finally got my guild hall and I'm running out of Tradeskillers to finish off...soon I'll have too much time on my hands. :p Unfortunatly that means wading through the crap on EQ2Flames *shudder*

[abodeofravens]

I saw over on eq2wire that they hotfixed the daily shard quest. I have not looked at the patch notes to see though personally...
-------
A Cleansing This Temple Needs (Shard of the Day Quest) - Players who
are not on the quest and not in Void Stalker form can no longer assist
with killing the void-touched invaders.
-------

[abodeofravens]

khatovar and I were going to get the t2 shoulders (most expensive piece first to get it out of the way) and work down from that. I actually wanted to ask you tweed...

which t2 armor set did you get for your shadowknight. I did some numbers on the two... Holy Bastion vs Void Knights Bastion...

armor 3278 3278
strength 290 152
stamina 153 181
wisdom 90 290
agility 30 86
intelligence 20 290
attack speed 7 0

melee crit chance 2 12
Heal crit Chance 0 12
spell crit chance 0 12
double attack 4 1
critical mitigation 10 10
Spell combat art dmg 205 0
damage per second 23 0

Shield Block 15 0
Armor Mitigation 0 10
health 1045 995
power 560 635
Defense 5 16
parry 0 10
focus 4 9

The holy set has +spell and combat art damage and two heals on combat spellcast vs the bastion having mitigation more. holy set also has another 15% block. knights has raw stats and crit. I am just curious what you chose and your reasoning behind it. some reading i have done on eq2flames suggests that 15% block = ~2% avoidance so i am rethinking that vs the 10% mitigation you pretty much get from void set.

Our 5+1 team (khatovar does 5 and I play the SK tank) will finish up the outdoor stuff in kunark (finishing jarsath) this weekend and probably the outdoor TSO zone. after that we plan to start doing our epics for the team which will also help us gear up further through doing seemingly all the Kunark Dungeons and instances before we really try to push into shard instances.

we did make one quick stab at the first befallen instance (with the swarms of zombies). we wiped on a bug named in the tunnels due to not having experienced it before. when he went under ground we did not know his aoe damage would be so nasty and when we ran to get away from it it was too late to recover. it was a fun experience... I learned that i should definitely aggro radius body pull instead of spell pull... we had some very large pulls with 2-3 "groups" of the undead to battle through but it was a blast. definitely a good day to be a shadowknight that day. :)

I have a 30 zerker and 50 bruiser i am thinking of bringing up but for our play style i am unsure if either will be any better than my shadowknight. mostly thinking of powering one up to do the daily shard quest. Our focus is not on shards yet but the daily is a nice way to get a small stockpile for when we do start up shard runs. Epics and Kunark Dungeon progression first seems like the better idea for us at this point.

any thoughts from you all are always appreciated.

[Ellay]

I didn't do that trick for the daily shard quest, instead I just became one of those alien looking characters on all, and multibox killed them hehe :) takes a bit more time than that method but better than solo.

[abodeofravens]

yeah after playing a few days with the new build similar to your suggestion tweed I am leaning towards voidknight set. Khatovar and I did decide to get charm slot pieces first before the set armor... since we are just starting TSO and level 80 dungeons in kunark we were looking at our "most needed" slots and saw the 20 shard charm slot items... pretty sick upgrade from the 15sta hex doll I was using.

we started doing the daily group crafting missions hoping to get the books to craft our own shard gear and save a few shards. We tried the 2nd obelisk instance and could not get past the first boss... the one that randomly teleports members of your group in to the prisons... mostly the experience just sucked... as tank i got put in first on every attempt and then the templar would get put in one... as a boxer it was a pain in the ass and we took too long to dps him down. once we gear up a bit more we will make another attempt at that one.

we are definitely happy with the templar-defiler-illusionist-troubador- warlock set up with my as Shadowknight tanking. was worth leveling up and replacing the shaman/conjurer

[Emikandi]

Abodeofravens and Khatovar, how did you two fare in the Kunark dungeons? My wife and I are really looking forward to Kunark.
Our group makeup is
Me: Shadow knight, Defiler, Warden
Wife: Dirge, Illusionist, Warlock. The Illusionist is my wife's old main from when she and I played 3 years ago so it has all masters and fabled gear and level 70.

[abodeofravens]

Emikandi ('index.php?page=User&userID=25375')-

khatovar and I left eq2 when faydwer was released because there was not enough content for us so when i came back i was really looking forward to kunark. :) As far as dungeons go we have not done much dungeon crawling in kunark yet. we cleared karnors castle for the named and a few quests and we did a few dungeon crawls in sebilis. You and your wife have an almost identical group makeup to ours and I honestly think you will have no problems. Crowd control and speed of killing is really the thing and you should have both.

I am not totally satisfied yet with our DPS as a team but this is gonna be worked on and tweaked (macros) as we move forward. CC is no problem in the dungeons though i would suggest putting AA into reducing recast and making them harder to resist. In the end dungeons there are named that are 85^ ^ ^ so reducing resists is really going to be important. We also went into chardok once when we first got our Gwalnax (sp?) Brigade faction to get the quests. we were not high enough to go far but it was fun and challenging.

I don't know what your "plan" is but I will outline what our basic plan has been as far as our own progression and exploration of content.

1. do all the quests in all the kunark outdoor zones. there are a ton and there are some nice faction vendor items once in a while. We wanted to experience everything. this is why we have some minor experiences in the first 3 dungeons as stated above.

2. do all the outdoor TSO quests. again, we wanted to experience the area and get some AA (we are still doing this). We also are advancing the TSO Signature Quest as we go and obviously we pop into the odd dungeon here and there just to "test" ourselves.

3. we are going to start doing the epics for all of the team. this is a lot of questing and running around but all the epics require some dungeon runs in kunark and some older zones. We are going to do these epics and at the same time we will get to push ourselves through literally all of the kunark dungeons and story lines.

4. once we have some minimal set of "good" gear we will push into more TSO instances for the daily double shard missions and to keep advancing the storyline. at this point we really are not too geared to do them. We have had fun with the things we have tested so far though. I do like the kunark dungeons so far. looking forward to howling stones and chelsith and veksar.

Again you should find yourself to be successful in these dungeons. sometimes it takes a few tries but most encounters can be overcome with strategy or honestly... awareness. Compared to our WoW team, these runs are more fun and more challenging. WoW was just stupid easy compared to this and more an exercise in patience and endurance.

i hope this has been informative in some way :)

[Lokked]

This post will be heading OT, I know.

About how much time is needed to invest in the raids involved in Epics? I played EQ1 religiously quite a few years ago and CANNOT handle 6-8+ hour Plane of Earth - Council style raids.

I immediately discounted any ideas of obtaining the Mythical Epics due to the above reasons.

Clarity?

[abodeofravens]

honestly looking over the quests its gonna take a lot of running around to get the team all of their epics. We wanted to do the outdoor solo stuff first so that we had a minimum level of gear since we leveled up without much dungeon drops. the legendary stuff we have is at this point fairly sufficient though so we will probably be getting everyone to their epics this weekend. i figured get everyone to the first dungeon encounter for their epic so we can double up on dungeon runs. we ran the first charsis instance last night because i know at least one of toons needs an update there. that last encounter sucks. bugged as hell.

first pull I pulled him down the stairs to near the door to put some space between him and the adds and we flopped it due to lack of knowing the encounter etc. so we tried again... we could not get him off the platform after that. he would hit the first step and reset. so we tried several times on the platform but there is only like 10 feet between him and the spawns so we could not box mez/root them fast enough or long enough. We finally got him down the stair again, literally after 20 tries of frustration and irritation and beat him but overall the fight sucked. When we tried him on the platform he would for some reason do random mem wipe on me and kill one of the dps or CC. i was well ahead on threat each time only to see it go to zero and watch him ignore my rescue abilities. very irritating. but at least we did it and know we can do it again. also found the eq2 wiki is wrong... the adds do not heal him to full... they heal him for 20% of health for each one that reaches him. so we were good as long as we beat him down 40% per skelly reaching him. its the only fight i have encountered with our group where i have run out of mana. The rest of the dungeon was cake with the only deaths coming from a boxed toon falling in a pit trap until i realized "hey they are mark on the map by the 'dark blurry spots'". everything else was easy loot.

[Lyonheart]

If your 80, why aren't you already chasing your epics? The heroic versions aren't that hard to attain. I try and make sure every 80 in my guild has their epic.

WOOT! Can't wait!

[Khatovar]

If your 80, why aren't you already chasing your epics? The heroic versions aren't that hard to attain. I try and make sure every 80 in my guild has their epic.

He and I are the extent of our guild. Getting 15 levels to get our guild hall, maxing my crafters and now working on getting the shard books has taken a lot of time and effort for me. It takes a long, long time to gather enough mats to grind TS rush orders to get 15 guild levels. Now that I've done that, I'm running 3 tradeskill dailies a night to get my books, plus my daily LS shard. I still need to get 340 gathering on 2 different toons to be able to do the epics. After spending about 9 hours a night doing that mindnumbing stuff while he's at work, all I want to do is go kill things.

Our RAF ran out last week and it was a long haul to get two new toons to 80 without it. I still need to revamp my specs and macros, farm for and craft AD3s and squeeze in my dailies, then try and find time to get 2 toons skilled up in harvesting. While something to work toward, it is not my main priority and I'll get to it when I get time.

[Frosty]

This post will be heading OT, I know.

About how much time is needed to invest in the raids involved in Epics? I played EQ1 religiously quite a few years ago and CANNOT handle 6-8+ hour Plane of Earth - Council style raids.

I immediately discounted any ideas of obtaining the Mythical Epics due to the above reasons.

Clarity?
I asked a similar question on our Guild boards and Tweedfu said:
"Depends on the raid zone and the people you bring. Usual end game raids run about 2-4 hours with the exception of the couple that take multiple sessions."

I remember wanting to get the Epic on my EQ1 mage.. getting to the plane of sky/air (can't remember) was a nightmare at the time.