Help with an epic mob in The Living Tombs

[Captive2]

I gave Urzyd another try this past weekend. I re-specc'd my whole team, since I'd just recently hit level 70 and could therefore allocate 70 points per area instead of 50. I didn't make any huge changes, but did correct a few mistakes I'd made along the way. I read some suggestions on EQ Flames for each class, and I think those suggestions were very helpful.

I set up in a spot where I thought I wouldn't get bounced around by the knockback. I was wrong. I stil got bounced around a bit, and by the end of the fight I was spread all over. But I did manage to win. I lost the illusionist, and by the end both healers were no longer in line-of-sight due to all the knockback (but their heals somehow continued to work).

I ignored the adds per the suggestion above. My guardian is specc'd with the Agility line that gives some AOE auto-attack potential, and I tried to use my "blue" AOE damage on the guardian whenever it was available. The adds are not grouped with the epic mob, so only AOE damage hurts them. By the end, there were probably 10 adds still alive, plus a few grey mobs that I'd accidentally tagged.

I think the big difference is I focused more on keeping wards up - in addition to the HOTs from my warden. I've gotten more into the habit of using single-target wards even when my health is still full; I need to look at those as the preventative device they are. With non-epic mobs I rarely even need to heal, so I've gotten a bit lazy and inefficient in my healing practices. With an almost-constant flow of HOT ticks and wards, my tank rarely dipped below 50%. I would use group heals when necessary to pick up the other team members and pets.

Overall, it went pretty well and was VERY satisfying.

I still need to refine my tactics, and figure out how to better use the special abilities like "turtle". A good example of where that might be handy is the Lockjaw fight. He's a 62 x4 mob, and has some kind of horrible AOE attack when the battle starts. I've killed him twice, and both times on my initial try that AOE virtually wiped out everyone except my guardian ( a few deaths immediately; everyone else's health in the red). When I rez and try again, he doesn't use that ability - so it must be on some sort of timer. After that initial wipe, he's fairly easy.

Last night, I ran through a raid zone in the Pillars of Flame. It's that one that uses the same zone layout as Shimmering Citadel. I killed three of the four tower bosses, and all but 4 of the named mobs total. The toughest was a 65 x4 - he took a LONG time to kill but wasn't all that difficult. I got stuck when I ran into a double-pull kind of mob that requires some coordination to immediately pick up 3 runners while tanking the main epic mob. I couldn't pull that off, and it was getting late so after I wiped I just logged.

Still, it was very satisfying and enjoyable to get that far into the toughest zone I've tried. I think the re-spec of my AAs helped, as did focusing on keeping my wards up in addition to HOTs.

Once I hit level 72 and can wear the next level of MC gear, I'm going to convert 100% of experience to AAs and enjoy the Kingdom of Sky expansion. I'll also try to periodically hit reasonable raid zones. This will help me build up some financial reserves to pay the ghastly cost of expert level-70+ spells (masters are outrageously expensive), while also moving toward 200 AAs.

I'm hoping to enjoy every expansion with this team, but may skip one if I'm already maxxed at level 80 with 200 AAs by the time I hit it. I definitely want to do a Kunark-based team, so I'm going to leave some of that content for that team.

Thanks for all the good advice here. I really appreciate it.