Observations on life in Norath - part 1
Greetings. I started playing EQ2 again a couple of months ago, after a long hiatus. I’ll just through out some random thoughts of things that have worked well, and the bits of good advice I received here.
My team is a guardian, conjurer, troubadour, warden, mystic, and illusionist. It’s a “good” team, based in Qeynos. I’ve been playing since level 10 with experience gain “turned off”, so I can maximize AA gain. I just hit level 42 last night, and have around 58 AA points per character.
Obviously, I pull and tank with the guardian, and try to make sure the mobs are in melee range of all characters. Since there is no “5-second rule” like in WoW, there is no real disadvantage to having your casters melee when not casting. I use the conjuror’s caster (fire) pet – more on that later.
I haven’t turned on experience since level 10, so my leveling has been exclusively through discoveries and quests. This has allowed me to see in detail all the quests and zones so far – Qeynos and sewer zones, Antonica, Thundering Steppes, Nektropos Castle, and now Zek the Orcish Wastes. I love the atmosphere and stories, so I really wanted to not blow through levels too fast. I honestly think I’ll keep experience turned off all the way to level 80 – there is just so much in the game that it’s staggering.
I’m running 5 characters with graphics on the lowest “Extreme Performance” setting, and my main character on the same machine with the second-highest graphical settings. That way, I can enjoy the appearance of the environments and character models without dragging my system to its knees. I have a quad-core Athlon 6600 processor, 8GM of RAM, and a fast drive, running Vista 64. While I hate Vista with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, the system runs fairly well in that configuration. I’m using InnerSpace Suite, again at the advice of other users here.
Some of the advice I received here when I was planning my return was VERY good. I’ll highlight it here for the benefit of newer players, along with observations of my own on what has worked well or not so well.
Dual healers (+)
I wasn’t originally planning to go with 2 healers. Wow – that would have been rough. 2 healers allow me to take on pretty tough encounters and not be so absolutely precise with my timing. The mystic’s wards combine with the warden regens to keep my tank upright in almost any circumstance. I will absolutely use dual healers in all future 6-man teams.
Power regen (+)
Between the troubadour and the illusionist, power regen is fantastic. I honestly haven’t run out of mana a single time, even on long encounters. Last night I got into a heated battle with Emperor Fyst in that orcish castle in the north end of Zek (I can’t recall the name). He kicked one of my healers down into the courtyard, and I still survived what turned out to be a very long battle with over half-power left on all characters. Simply put, the power regen from the troubadour and illusionist virtually generate more power than I can spend. I don’t even both with drinks – although the nicer drinks bestow stat buffs as well as power regen.
Varying travel speeds (–)
I have different races in my team, and I used RAF for the last 4 accounts (I already had 2 accounts from my prior playing time). The good news is that all 6 characters either have the RAF mount or the journeyman’s cloak – both of which give a good speed buff. The bad news is that my “leader” – the guardian – is a little faster than the mounted characters, so over time my team spreads out and can even break follow. It’s not game breaking, but is something I would try to avoid if I could do everything over again.
Fire conjuror pet
I was originally planning on using the air (scout) pet. But someone here – I think it was Khatovar – suggested the fire pet instead. I haven’t tested him quantitatively against the air pet, but my team is set up to maximize caster damage – so the fire pet is putting out some serious damage. He can’t take a beating at all – if he pulls agro he goes down in a few seconds – but I generally don’t lose agro with my guardian. The only real problems are when I jump the gun a bit on pulls.
Adept III vs Master spells/skills
In general, I try to get master spells for each class’s defining skills (taunts for guardian, damage & pets for conjuror and illusionist, damage for troubadour, heals for warden and mystic, and buffs for everyone). But in some cases, the master spell is either not available or is prohibitively expensive. In those cases, sometimes the Adept III spell can be had for a significant discount and is virtually as good. Since I have a good variety of tradeskillers, I can make my own spells for the scout (jeweler), and casters (sage). So while Masters are the gold standard, I can always get at least Adept III for any critical spell or skill.
Travel (+)
Between the bard’s run speed buffs and the item buffs from my mounts & cloaks, my run speed is fantastic. Also, I have the in-zone evac with both the troubadour and warden, so I have 2 separate evacs on 15-minute timers. I did the Splitpaw Saga quests enough to get that item that lets you teleport to the gnoll lair in Thundering Steppes. And I have 2 of the “Circle of” warden spells. So travel is extremely efficient. I rarely have to run for more than a few minutes – unless I’m going to a very out-of-the-way location like Nektropos Castle. In short, travel is a non-issue with this team.
Group invis (+)
The illusionist’s group invisibility spell is FANTASTIC. Even though many mobs see through invis, the majority do not. I only use it in dungeons, and it’s a very helpful time-saver to skip through junk mobs like those guardians in Ruins of Varsoon. Combine that invis with the scout’s tracking skill makes for some very efficient name farming. I can move through a dungeon from named mob to named mob, skipping all the annoying junk in between.
Heroic opportunities (?)
I used HOs continually when I played before – both solo and in my duo teams where I can individually controlling each character. With this 6-man team, however, I can’t keep track of which skill is necessary next – so HOs almost always expire when I trigger them. I would love some advice from other players on how you make sure these are triggered. Especially because I have most of my buttons on macros, they don’t flash when it’s time to use them – so I don’t know what step is next required. I know how helpful these HOs are – but I’m not taking advantage of them currently.
Lag when selecting targets / using assist (-)
Because of the lag involved in the assist command, it’s virtually impossible for me to target a mob with my tank, pull it, and trigger attacks with the rest of my team without spamming the “attack” button. The pets, especially, don’t pick up the targets fast enough for that first attack command. And when I spam the attack button, I’m continually turning off the attack on my tank. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked down on my tank’s display to notice that I have attack turned off. No timed attacks = less damage = less agro = stooped. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make this process smoother, I’d love to hear them.
(continued in part 2 - I'm being too verbose)
