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Devor posted:I'm thinking of rolling up a bard and shaman to catch up with my 66 monk... A solid trio if you round out with, say, a wizard, cleric, and tank merc. As a guy with a lot of bard mileage under his belt, even today they aren't well understood. It still feels weird to me to not have to twist (not that I am complaining), but people don't realise still what bards can do. With a shaman you probably won't care, but bards can slow 55% or so and can also Malo/Tash, so they can be a prime slower if you don't have one. Slowing is still important even if it isn't as all-powerful as it used to be. Basically, bards are the ultimate 6th man in any group. Even with an enchanter, they are still quite useful. Their personal DPS isn't stellar, but what they give to others makes up for it. Now that manual twisting is a thing of the past, you can do a lot with them without much effort. Also the bard 2.0 click is insane, though the fact that it is not instant-cast is boggles my mind.
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Dec 7, 2012 05:11
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I started a bard up last year, I really enjoy it, but its not dynamic enough to keep my interest, works better as a boxed character for the songs. Really been enjoying the necro, almost 95, and about 2500AAs. going to finish the pet AAs and get everything else maxed before the push to 100.
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Dec 7, 2012 07:42
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Boola posted:I'm playing as Beep (85 ranger), Cling (70 Monk), and Zing (72 bard) on Luclin very sporadically. I *think* I did my early 70's in Plane of Tactics, killing those ogres that are super easy around the pit and in the basement, then I think I went to Paw in the mid 70's. Pon de Bundy posted:I hate all of you. Every single loving time I read this thread, oh man it sounds fun and BAM, as soon as I log in, I hate myself.   . At least nowadays you can log in for free as a F2P account so you don't have to pay $15 for two minutes of play time and disappointment.Just yesterday I excitedly did a /testcopy, wandered around PoK for 5 minutes, realized that the server population is next to nothing (8 monks online in the entire game for example), and /camped. Eh, maybe in year or so. I'd like to roll up a new 3-box crew, but I dunno, I feel like I've close to completed the game with my lvl 95 characters. It's been a good run.
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Dec 7, 2012 10:23
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Pon de Bundy posted:I hate all of you. Every single loving time I read this thread, oh man it sounds fun and BAM, as soon as I log in, I hate myself. Once you get into a group and kill poo poo you remember why EQ was fun.
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Dec 7, 2012 12:02
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Pilsner posted:Although it could exist, we've previously discussed several reasons why Paw rocks, for example: Few patrols As long as you don't go to that one spot...lawl. It has like, what, 10 patrols that all cross at one spot? It can be fun though, as it's like a really long rear end battle set on auto-pull.
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Dec 7, 2012 14:29
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Neurosis posted:Once you get into a group and kill poo poo you remember why EQ was fun. I've been playing EQ on and off since 2002, and I've been trying to that nostalgia back ever since then. No game will ever capture that terrible magic. Now we've finally did it, there is a level 100 cap. I don't know what to say about that 
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Dec 7, 2012 15:42
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Neurosis posted:Once you get into a group and kill poo poo you remember why EQ was fun. We all know it's not possible to get into a group.
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Dec 7, 2012 16:22
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RCarr posted:We all know it's not possible to get into a group. I wish they would implement some sort of cross-server group finder kind of thing. I realize this is a pipe dream since we JUST got offline banking, but still. Basically everyone I know feels compelled to box, the servers are cliquey as gently caress, and it's absolutely brutal for new players once they hit that, "welcome to VoA" roadblock. I managed to make a few friends when I was playing daily and did most of HoT/VoA with them, but after they moved on and my playtime became sporadic, groups just were ridiculously difficult to ever get into. It's kind of hilarious on FV because I've played every other year or since 2005, and the exact same 2-3 groups of people are always still there, still playing, and still in the same tight groups. I've taken to calling one of them "The crazy cat lady clique" and I know that no matter how long I stay away, they'll be there when I get back. Meow Tse-tung fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 17:01
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I played EQ hardcore from around 98-03. I decided when I quit that I wouldn't hop on the WoW bandwagon, because I had wasted SO MUCH TIME playing EQ and I didn't want to get addicted again. Last year, I played the second MMORPG I ever played, which was Star Wars:TOR. It amazed me how simplified MMOs have gotten compared to EQ. People complaining that travel wasn't quick enough, that your "quick travel" had a 30 minute cooldown. I remember the hour long boat rides in EQ, much less teleporting anywhere you wanted to go. It also surprised me how much more complex EQ was. In SWTOR, there was no real choices as to what you wore for gear and weapons. There was "Best in slot" items at the endgame, and no real variance. In EQ, there were thousands of items to choose from at every level. No penalty for death, no penalty for PVP loss, it's really crazy. I understand that no one has time for the MMO timesink anymore, so all the games cater to the casual, but I think that's part of the "magic" that EQ had back in the day. We actually felt like we ACCOMPLISHED something when we hit 50. When we camped a rare item, we were the only ones that had it. Races had advantages, and when AAs came out you had to pick pretty wisely because there was no refunds... I really don't think that kind of game would ever happen nowadays.
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Dec 7, 2012 17:21
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JustJeff88 posted:A solid trio if you round out with, say, a wizard, cleric, and tank merc. What level should I start looking at swapping out a merc tank for wizard if I'm just looking for dps? I figure duoing up from level 1 will mostly be the 2 merc tanks killing poo poo.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:37
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The "magic" of Everquest was the sense of exploration, the unknown, and the incredible danger. It's basically "Back in MY day, we walked 15 miles uphill in the snow, barefoot." It's all nostalgia, anybody who was there in the day can remember how infuriating the game could be sometimes. Dying a bunch of times and losing your corpse, all your items on the corpse so you can't even fight, and you have to find a necromancer/pay a necromancer to summon your body, then find a cleric to resurrect your bodies. . . Everquest is like a very attractive person jerking you off really roughly but sometimes its so rough you just explode all over them. Yeah, that sounds right.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:39
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Pon de Bundy posted:Everquest is like a very attractive person jerking you off really roughly but sometimes its so rough you just explode all over them. Yeah, that sounds right. I hate to have to tell you this, but you could stand to work on your metaphors.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:49
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I don't think it's just a matter of nostalgia and getting older though. Dark souls sucked me in and gave me that same feeling of wonder and amazement that old school eq did, and I plugged countless hours into it. I realize it's not an MMO, but I think that's exactly what the problem is. It's that MMOs have stagnated and become an entire genre of wow clones over the last decade (with a few rare exceptions like EVE). I've played just about every MMO and they all feel like bland, soulless wow clones now and don't innovate or capitalize on the stuff that made EQ fun for me (A great example is guild wars 2. There is pretty much zero communication or socializing in that game. You just join a zerg and run blindly from A to B to C.). I think games still have potential, but as long as they just continue to knock off the wow model, we'll feel the same way because it's essentially the same game over and over and over. I think wow did a lot of awesome stuff in 2004, but MMOs essentially stopped innovating after that.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:32
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Devor posted:What level should I start looking at swapping out a merc tank for wizard if I'm just looking for dps? I figure duoing up from level 1 will mostly be the 2 merc tanks killing poo poo. When just using a tank merc starts to suck. quote:We all know it's not possible to get into a group. This is part of why I dislike low-pop servers. Grouping at the mid levels when you really need to start grouping is hard enough on the "high" population servers that going to test/fv/zek/trakanon is just awful. quote:It's all nostalgia, anybody who was there in the day can remember how infuriating the game could be sometimes. Dying a bunch of times and losing your corpse, all your items on the corpse so you can't even fight, and you have to find a necromancer/pay a necromancer to summon your body, then find a cleric to resurrect your bodies. . . EQ hated you and actively wanted to make your life worse. Now it's more of a passive-aggressive resentment. The first zone in RoF has the main town with quest NPCs and such built around a huge hole in the ground. If you fall in that hole, you are dropped into the inner sanctum of the end zone from the last expansion, surrounded by see-invis mobs. If you don't move, you're safe to gate out. If you move, you will die to a huge train in about 2 seconds. Welcome to Everquest. Edit: As soon as I saw that hole in beta, I jumped in.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:46
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JustJeff88 posted:I hate to have to tell you this, but you could stand to work on your metaphors. I could stand to not play EQ either, but once again I find myself wanting to subscribe.
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Dec 8, 2012 00:48
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Pon de Bundy posted:I could stand to not play EQ either, but once again I find myself wanting to subscribe. I can't justify paying a monthly fee (I work long hours), but now that my computer is working properly again I'm tempted to open another Silver account on Luclin and start that wizard/enchanter/shaman/ranger I've always wanted. You have my unlimited commiseration.
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Dec 8, 2012 02:06
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JustJeff88 posted:I can't justify paying a monthly fee (I work long hours), but now that my computer is working properly again I'm tempted to open another Silver account on Luclin and start that wizard/enchanter/shaman/ranger I've always wanted. Silver accounts are terrible. You can't use any good items. Everquest did free 2 play totally wrong.
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Dec 8, 2012 02:31
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Pon de Bundy posted:Silver accounts are terrible. You can't use any good items. Everquest did free 2 play totally wrong. You can use plenty of items til like level 80..then you start to become limited with augments. Enchanter sounds like it might be fun if their DPS isn't awful..And mezzing isn't as important as it once was (at least pre-80)
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Dec 8, 2012 02:38
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I played an enchanter up to 85 and in groups they can have amazing dps by charming
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Dec 8, 2012 02:42
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Pon de Bundy posted:Silver accounts are terrible. You can't use any good items. Everquest did free 2 play totally wrong. They are, but I don't have the time or the desire to grind on mobs that hit for the GNP of Belgium to get past 80, so it doesn't matter. I spent a couple of hours this past week testing the game because I had been trying to fix a serious PC problem, and I had a ball just running through the revamped Freeport (wow is that different), Ro, the Commonlands, and Ocean of Tears. I think the revamped zones look really good (though I have some reservations about Freeport). It's such a huge world and it's just fun to muck about and see things. Plus it's just gratifying to be able to curb stomp mobs that used to hand you your rear end, like Kunark dragons and Avatar of War. I know that everyone will turn on me for this, but I still wish that they would just let people with higher-level characters start at about 60 or something. Whenever I say this, everyone says "It doesn't take that long to get a character up to 60 RABBLE RABBLE RABbLE!", but it's still a few dozen hours wasted to me and it goes a long way to make me not want to start new characters. I'd kind of like to have a character of every class, but I just don't have the patience to keep going through those tedious early levels.
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Dec 8, 2012 03:51
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JustJeff88 posted:I know that everyone will turn on me for this, but I still wish that they would just let people with higher-level characters start at about 60 or something. Whenever I say this, everyone says "It doesn't take that long to get a character up to 60 RABBLE RABBLE RABbLE!", but it's still a few dozen hours wasted to me and it goes a long way to make me not want to start new characters. I'd kind of like to have a character of every class, but I just don't have the patience to keep going through those tedious early levels.
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Dec 8, 2012 21:44
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Pilsner posted:If you multibox, you can "invest" in a few power levelling-capable classes and make it downright fun to plvl a new char up. It doesn't take more than an SK and a druid or magician with damage shield. I must be very thick - I have a 80 druid and an 80 SK. I know that there is some technique with damage shields that one can do to PL the holy hell out of toons until about level 50, but I don't know enough about it.
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Dec 8, 2012 22:41
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JustJeff88 posted:I must be very thick - I have a 80 druid and an 80 SK. I know that there is some technique with damage shields that one can do to PL the holy hell out of toons until about level 50, but I don't know enough about it. If it works like it used to Back In The Day, all you do is take your druid, put a regen and DS on your lowbie, and send them into the field. When the game capped at 50/60, a max-level DS would kill any attacking mob very quickly up until like the 20s or something. You just get the first hit in, the mob kills itself hitting you, and the regen takes care of any damage you take. In the teens, most mobs will die in 2-3 hits anyways.
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Dec 8, 2012 23:55
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[pre-emptive edit: Something about this seems off, because I think riposte does count for damage done. But there definitely is a "pull everything in the zone and let SK take hits and get full exp from level 1" method that we used. I Forget the exact process because I wasn't playing the SK, but I think it requires the lowbie have some sort of AE attack to tag everything once, basically pull the entire zone with SK and let the high level riposte everything until dead. I got to level 70 in about 6-8 hours clocked PLing 3 characters with a friend. The wizard/mage PBAE spells with no upper limit on what they can hit was what we were using. iirc it relies on SK proc stuff on ripostes not counting for damage done to the mob, so it's like, "pull everything in zone -> click spell --> gain 15 levels in a pull". Curse of frailty(?) also didn't count for mob damage, so you can have the low level hit it for 1hp of damage then destroy it with curse for full exp. Meow Tse-tung fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Dec 9, 2012 |
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Dec 9, 2012 00:00
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The SK shouldn't be riposting, he needs as many DS buffs as possible and a Fire Beetle Eye in his primary so he CAN'T riposte. Only DS damage doesn't count for xp, ANYTHING else an SK can do to cause damage counts and will strip the xp from the noob. Buff the SK up with his self DS buffs, pots, mage/druid/bard, whatever DS you can stack on him, then run him around the zone, scoop up every mob you can, then run back to your noob. Plant the SK's back in a corner and let everything beat itself to death on him while the noob AEs them. As long as the noob does 1 point of damage, he'll get full xp for every mob that dies. Beo and I took a pair of new characters 1-80 in 3 nights doing this. Up until 60+, you spend more time moving from zone to zone than you do actually leveling. 1-60, one SK pull generally works out to 3-5 levels on the noob. If your SK is only 80, you may need to keep a cleric merc out once you start hitting level 40+ mobs because even lowbies will crunch through an 80 SK's hp pool pretty fast. It wasn't really until I hit 90 on mine and had 70k hp that it became "Pull zone and go AFK for 5 minutes" level of easy
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Dec 9, 2012 00:32
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I use a bard for powerleveling, and a riposte does count for damage for the player riposting I'm sure. In fact, to prevent it, it's best to gather up the enemies without any weapons to keep from doing that. Basically you start up a huge train without doing any damage to the mobs (super easy if you're a bard at least), then run over to your low level PLer, and let them hit the mobs with a point blank AoE (the blue spells). It has to be the point blank ones, because the other AoE spells, while a hell of a lot safer to cast, seem to have a cap on how many mobs they can hit, like 4 or 5 I think. Since your new toon probably is going to suck at casting, and since aggro management is tricky with so many mobs, but to just let them fire off their lowest level AEs. I level them up this way til they're about level 60ish, then switch to my 93 rogue. At that point, I group him with the PLer, pull a poo poo ton of humanoid mobs and fire off assassinate like it ain't no one's business.
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Dec 9, 2012 00:32
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Through the DS trick, I (with help from MrTheDevious) got a Bard to lvl 60 with 8 hours /played.  I did lvl 1-50 with my Monk actually. I DS'd him with my Magician, pulled loads, let them whittle themselves down on the DS, and did a little AoE song witht he Bard. Bards are so easy to PL this way since they can spam the AoE song easily from lvl 2 or something. In the end though, it got too difficult without some threat management, of which the monk has none, so we teamed up and MrTheDevious's SK did the job. SK's have an AoE taunt that does no damage, which makes all of this much easier.
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Dec 9, 2012 00:46
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The way I've been doing PLing lately is that I'll have my bard play his 300 point DS song, have him pull a whole bunch of mobs, put him on duck so he can't riposte, then let the mobs hit him and take damage. Make sure the character you are PLing is in a separate group and have him tag each of the mobs (a weak AE spell works great here in order to not get too much agro) in order to get the XP. I've been doing the Great Divide and Velketor's Labyrinth to get them from level 25 to about level 60 in the matter of an evening or two. It's probably not the fastest or most efficient method, but it works with what I've got. It helps to have a cleric merc who can rezz in your group because inevitably your toon will die once or twice from gaining agro. It takes some time to get the hang of it, but once you get going you can really level up fast. On another note, one of the other things I tried doing the other night was killing Lord Nagafen with my level 51 monk and his warrior merc. He of course couldn't do it by himself because he has crappy gear, but I put him in my group with my level 73 ranger and his cleric merc. I put the warrior merc on MT and my ranger on puller (this way the cleric merc will stay with the monk and warrior). I kept the ranger out of the agro range of Naggy and let his merc just heal the monk and warrior until Naggy died. Naggy won't banish higher level mercs so it was about a 10 minute fight until he died. Kind of a neat thing to do if you're bored.
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Dec 9, 2012 00:58
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I am downloading EQ right now. Is the goon guild active on Luclin? Who can I contact for an invite once I've gotten myself in game? I've already bought a gold account or whatever and I have the next 12 hours to dead head myself into a mid-level situation. I want to be level 100 and I need your help!  Race/Class undetermined. I think I'll flip a coin once I narrow it down to two choices.
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Dec 9, 2012 01:07
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Rainbow_Horse posted:I am downloading EQ right now. Is the goon guild active on Luclin? Who can I contact for an invite once I've gotten myself in game? The most important thing is to /autojoin serverwide.gchat:fygm and then /join the channel. I believe the goon guild went under because of seasonal drop offs in people playing, but you can always join Black Dragon Legion, which is a pretty huge guild full of people who are relatively helpful. My characters are in that guild (and I'm an officer, but that doesn't really mean anything) so if you just go in the lobby and ask in general or send a random member a tell, you can get an invite no prob and have access to guild bank/portal/etc.
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Dec 9, 2012 01:18
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Pilsner posted:Through the DS trick, I (with help from MrTheDevious) got a Bard to lvl 60 with 8 hours /played. Thems were good times 
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Dec 9, 2012 02:00
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Thank you for the insights into PLing - I'll keep all of this in mind should I ever decide to start that new character. I'm hoping to put this semester to bed a week from today (Sunday, 16 November). I've never gone all the way through Sky, so for fun on the Monday the 17th I'm going to take my SK, bard, and druid with their mercenaries up through island 7. If anyone wants to join me, let me know. You never know - we might get some necro or mage 1.0 pieces out of the deal if anyone is interested. Edit: This is on Luclin
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Dec 9, 2012 21:29
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Have fun with all the Deathtouch mobs!
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Dec 10, 2012 00:30
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Re: people talking about grouping up above. I didn't really have the same problems getting a group people are talking about. Usually I could at least get a few people to kill trash mobs in HoT if nothing else. The problem disappeared once I could root rot the gorillas in the new Feerott, of course, because necros own.
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Dec 10, 2012 01:46
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MrTheDevious posted:Have fun with all the Deathtouch mobs! Why do you think I'm asking for other people to come?  In all seriousness, what's the rule now with Death Touches? Isn't it something like mercs can take them, but pets can't? Haven't had to deal with them much lately. I remember, back in early Velious, leading a weekend-long Sky raid. It was hellish but unforgettable at the same time - it literally took over 30 hours and we still didn't get past island 5 (though we farmed a Spiroc blade for each warrior before we left). The mages were furious at me even though I knew drat well that we didn't have the firepower for island 6. Anyway, I remember farming the Spiroc Lord on island 5 and people were so loose that they actually were arguing over who got to eat the DT. That's still one of my favourite EQ memories.
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Dec 10, 2012 01:55
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I fondly miss the goon guild, and the goon chat channel. As quickly as we came, we were gone.
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Dec 10, 2012 02:15
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You haven't powerleveled until you've had two shadowknights chain pulling zones.
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Dec 10, 2012 02:20
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JustJeff88 posted:Why do you think I'm asking for other people to come? Anyway, if you die from it, there's nothing to do about it if you're alone. A merc will never take a DT, and I don't think pets can either. If you're multiboxing it's simple, just send in your weakest char for him to eat it first, like the old raid days.  A way to solo it through all of this is if you're capable of dealing a lot of burst damage and have a cleric merc. You engage, get DT'd, and the cleric merc will immediately rez you. Accept it, get up, and engage the boss. Now the difficult part is that you must be able to do the 32k damage within about 20 seconds (I believe the DT refresh timer is 30 seconds), and you get ressed with 0 mana and endurance. My monk could do it by using a discipline that regenerates endurance, and then using some burst abilities. I guess a mana use could do it with a mod rod. Sky is actually rather calm and easy as long as you're multiboxing. A lot of islands have no KoS mobs, and the DT'ing mobs either don't patrol or are not KoS. The only island you could call chaotic is the Azarack island, with patrolling KoS mobs with hosed up pathing and warping, but those mobs are super easy and don't DT. Also be very careful on Spiroc island, as the Lord has a huge agro range. The ancient, amazing Plane of Sky guide remains online here: http://mysite.verizon.net/drexxell/eq/planeofsky.html. Cheers to a wacky zone that remains awe-inspiring to this day.
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Dec 10, 2012 02:32
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I actually have a very good "book knowledge" of Sky from having read that guide a few times. Since mercs can't take DT's (and I doubt that SK/Druid pets can either) and bard/SK invincibility will just cause the mobs to DT someone else, I'll make sure that I have a rogue and wizard merc so that I am sure to have enough DPS to kill any mob before it DT's a second time. My SK will tank and either my druid or bard will eat that first DT. It's rather nice having an AI-controlle tank, but my SK has max AA in all of the mitigation skills, so he takes a hit a hell of a lot better than a level 80 A5 merc. I realise that I am probably overthinking Sky mobs that are trivial by modern standards, but better safe than sorry.
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Dec 10, 2012 03:40
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Beo posted:You haven't powerleveled until you've had two shadowknights chain pulling zones. Fastest noob leveling of all time. We were a force of nature, sir.
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Dec 10, 2012 03:48
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