And no I'm not going to betray to Zerker or reroll a SK. Little bit of info first. I'm level 80 and have a mix legendary/fabled of RoK equipment. I have yet to get my Epic or Mythical weapon. Most of my skills are Adept 3 with a few Masters and a very few apprentice level skills. Odds are I will not be MT when on raids. My guild has a number of level 90's ahead of me. I want to be able to contribute as much as possible as an OT. Ok having just came back to the game from about 4 months off, I find myself playing catchup with all the changes in the game. Prior to my break I found myself playing less and less, I bought TSO, but never really did much with the expansion. With the Miragul's Phylactery being one of the only zones I had visited for a grand total of 7 Void shards. Ok here's some questions for everyone. CA's that are master of a previous level have better stats on paper than the replacement adept CA's of the next level. Is there a reason I should upgrade even though the skill on paper looks worse? Armor wise, do I need to work on Shard armor or is the SF armor drops better? In the mean time I take it that it's best to upgrade my RoK Armor for SF pieces as it's best to have armor of the tier you are adventuring in? I.E. Even though a piece of armor has 600 mit, it's reduced because I am a tier above that mob wise. I see all these new stats for armor. From what I understand Toughness is for PvP, which I'm not doing. Besides Mitigation and Resists, which stats should I be looking for? Should I continue to work for my Epic weapon or are they being replaced? If so, should I go for my Mythical? With the changes to primary stats. Should I be focusing on only STR or is AGI and STA still important? While being an OT, should I dual wield or use a 2-hander? I'm sure I'll have tons more questions as I get back into the game. Any additional information will be appreciated.
Raahl wrote: Hi and welcome back Raahl There has been a lot of talk about this through out the forums. I did a fair bit of raiding with my guard and have mostly masters and adept 3’s. Most of the Adept 3 upgrades for the new tier are not as good as the masters from the previous tier. However the answer is still yes, you should upgrade. But you don’t have to do it all at once. Remember you have the researcher there. Get at least a few adept 3’s made so that you can then start researching the masters. I am running around in mostly t3 fabled and I haven’t seen any good guard armour drops yet from the new zones to replace it. Nor have I done much with the tokens I have collected from the new zones. If anyone knows of a good website that shows the new armour please link it. I used to use http://www.mmorpg-info.org/eq2/the-...id-shard-armor/ but of course it only displays the void armour. To answer your question though, I think it is probably not worth doing shard runs. Check out the master crafted gear, it might be an upgrade but most people have grumbled about it not worth upgrading to. Not sure if that is the case. They were going to but failed to implement armour degrading as you levelled up to a new tier. Don’t discard the toughness or the battlegrounds armour. It is actually great armour for solo, group or pvp play. It is however missing the Crit Mitigation which is a must for raiding. Make sure you get your epic weapon! At level 81 you can begin a simple quest line that will allow you to absorb the powers of your weapon. The great thing about this is once complete you get a permanent buff that is equal to your class’s mythical weapon. So there is no pressure to complete your mythical quest line. You only really need to concentrate on two stats – STR and STA. Wisdom is a bonus for resists and AGI a bonus to dodge but don’t go out of your way to get them if it will mean taking much away from the primary ones. As an OT, you can afford to dual wield, unless of course you are in those fights where you pull mobs off the primary tank. However make sure your shield or shields are hotlinked so that if you do pull agro or the primary tank goes down, that you wont quickly follow because you didn’t have a shield ready. I think the most important thing is aa’s. Make sure you respect to take full advantage of the new lines. The more aa’s you have the more effective you are! DPS is still important but have found the new end line aa ability that moderates your group to be fairly effective, unless you are with other fighters that is. In which case that doest get applied to them from memory. Also I am often in groups/raids with either Dirge, coercer, swashbuckler or assassins and in that case I generally don’t have problems keeping agro and speck out of that aa line. Good luck
KolatTDSt41p wrote: Thanks for the reply. One question here, in order to have the masters show up on the researcher, do I need the adept 3 versions already scribed? Is there a way to get them to put the newer CA's on the list to research?
Yea, you have to have the ad3 version to research the master version. So, if you want to research a level 87 master spell... you need the ad3 first.
The token armor performs much better then the T8.3 armor vs T9 mobs. Yes your mit and avoid will go down but the actual tear is high making the armor better. I haven't done any T8 raids in it but I suspect the critmit from T8.3-4 will be need them. I myself wasn't a believer in this untill I got tired of all the tokes stacking up in my bags. So used them on some jewls from SF and armor and jewls from SH put them on and went and ran some zones. I notice right away I did not take near as much dmg as I did in my T8.3 4 mix and my dps is about 1.5k plus higher.
Raahl wrote: I wish you luck.....really But sadly I think your in for alot of frustration. The only Guardians that are progressing now are the ones that stuck with it thru TSO and were in guilds that stuck with them thru TSO. Trust me I know, I benched mine due to total frustration with TSO and while I still have my Guard for doing duo boxed runs of easy instances to farm masters I do not dare try to use him to tank for a actual group or any SF raids. I can only imagine how rough it would be trying as a Guard to start now 10 levels low, now myth and no shard gear. I dont mean to sound discouraging but i hate for people to endup where I did around Aug of last year.
Don't give up hope as you can still have alot of fun with your Guard! Yes Guards are certainly a challenging class to play and generaly much harder to balance compared to most. With the right aa speck and gear though you can easily do the more challenging group and raid instances. Even in TSO, with the right gear and a decent combination of classes, guards could successfully MT and or OT group and raid instances. Of couse getting the gear and classes was sometimes extreemly frustrating. Saying that it has gotten much better since the new expansion. Check out the sumary responce from Wauna towards the bottom of page 7 http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=90&topic_id=475325 I suggest running alot of the newer group zones to get tokens and dropped gear. Slowley work your way up through the tougher ones and make sure that you have at least a dirge and possibly either a coercer or swashy with you. They will make an amazing difference!! I havent yet tried it myself, but I believe that their is a new x2 raid instance. If it is anything like the x2 raids from TSO, it is a great place to gear up before you take on the harder x4 content. Cheers
Thanks Gaylon, I totally understand the frustration. I'll be assisting on raids and leveling my Guardian to 90. I'll get my epic and do my best to get some halfway decent armor. I have no illusions of becoming the MT for our raids, I'll be happy tanking for groups as I level up. Once I hit 90 I'll work on leveling my Dirge. He's around level 76. My hope is to use the bonus exp to level my many alts, to give me a good selection of classes to play. Toranx, I'll look into the Token armor. I too expect that having T9 will be better than T8. If I ever do end up tanking a raid, I will need to get Crit Mit as high as possible. Thanks. Kolat, I won't give up. I find my enjoyment level with my Guardian ebbs and wanes a lot. So I'll have other characters to play when I just don't want to have to think. Thanks Rhatmattata, I went out harvesting with no luck getting the rares. Thanks everyone for the great infomation. Keep it coming.
