What the title says. There has been a lot of talk about how difficult it is to develop a tank in today's EQ. Obviously, with infinite plat this is not a problem because defiant->othni/cultural->HoT/cultural->VoA T1/cultural->RoF T1/cultural is a simple and efficient path to current content. All it requires is patience bottom feeding on the lowest of low blue cons till you have the AAs and gear to go back and farm AC augs, after which it's smooth sailing. Getting your epic 2.0 at 90ish also isn't a bad idea and is easily achievable solo for a knight in RoF T1 gear. But new/returning players don't have infinite plat, and not all servers have vibrant economies for doing plat farming. To which end, my question is this - Do you think it's viable to gear up a tank solo/molo in today's EQ without the bazaar? This involves having to fight and camp the gear you need at each step to move to the next step. Thus, while defiant gear is simple enough - just kill a lot light blues - the steps past that aren't because the difficulty leap is pretty large even with a merc. In case your answer is no, state which equivalently leveled support class makes it doable, provided the tank is doing the tanking. Don't say make/box a mage because then it defeats the purpose of evaluating whether the tank is capable of performing his function all the way up.
Before defiant, I made my own cultural. The first War was a Wood Elf, same as my already GM Smith Ranger, so that was easier, quicker, but I made a second one on a different server and leveled up Sham to the 50s first to make potions to save money, and have them (bazaar is woefully barren of low level potions). The second War was an Iksar and I did the cultural to 60s, same as the Wood Elf one. It took longer, 'cause I had to learn the skill and redo all the quests and stuff, but it's a way to go, and is doable. And cultural isn't bad gear, and actually great AC gear, just missing the mod2s and mod3s of defiant. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but those that truly love playing a tank, can do it, and enjoy it. It's probably easier, to do as you say and make a box to farm and help out, and even easier to use a merc to start with and just a be looter for the fodder that drops to keep up the merc, and build up some cash. My Iks War spent alot of time farming to get money (tradeskills are expensive to learn, even when farming the majority of materials). As a new player, vendor fodder is the most likely way to go, as the other ways to generate income take some insight and time; Like being a middle man in the bazaar, takes time, and you have to know what you can get out of stuff. Once you get to higher levels, it'll be more difficult to do solo, as tradeskill drops often require grouping to get the level of items you need, unless you're already better than culturally geared. This is the whole paradigm to the game though, and always has been, other than they keep making it easier / solo-friendly for lower levels, increasing the level range as the top level raises. It's why raiding is still popular. Without grouping or raiding or other collaboration, it'll be very tough, as it always has been to solo current content, and you'll have to spend most of your time grinding lower level content, and hopefully selling what you don't need to make some money. And you'll probably want the bazaar in such a case. I don't really see, a non-difficult way to get end group game, solo, as a tank, without the bazaar. Not that it isn't possible, just not easy and time consuming. I don't think I've ever known a purely solo tank at end game. Rangers, Mages, Necros, Druids, sure. Some other classes too, that weren't 100% solo. I guess, you could kit as tank with procs / potions / etc. and get away with soloing current content, it'd just be very very slow. I don't think anyone wants the game made so easy that a tank could solo completely to the end game without difficulty though. If they do, they should play something else more solo friendly. Yther Ore.
You never could. Not in current content for the level your at. Find a guild, friend, nitch or whatever you want to call it if you do not want to box. If you are open to boxing (even on a free account) roll a shammy with your tank. Buffs/Slows/Heals/Support dps. Shammies are a tanks best freind.
^ this. I don't want to take away form the OP's question, but tanks are so defined by their gear and the best gear has almost always required a group, or better yet pickup raiding, I'd call it impossible. With a group defiant->othni can be done. The problem is the next step. If you are 75-80 Fabled, Solteris, and TS/Lastblood is going to take you a raid. And the difficulty jump from Othni to Abtuse if you don't want to or can't raid, is fairly high. Augs aren't an insurmountable problem, but even with Warleader's Pearl and Coleoptera being obtainable using Loyalty tokens there still 9 augs to get from Dreadspire's Keep just to get a basic foundation. And the Dreadspire augs will need replacing in 5 levels. Gearing up a tank is a lengthy group quest. The thing is if you want a decent Cleric, utility class, and a couple of DPSers that works well together, they are a group project too. Best to join a guild IMO.
Gearing up a tank strictly in the group game (any of the three tank classes) would be quite the chore. You have to be real meticulous and go after every single measly 1-5ac/20-50hp upgrade that you can. You simply cannot skimp on gear and augs as a tank. You have to always go after and get the biggest and best gear/augs that are available to you. A tank class is not an easy class to bring up in this game. Dont get me wrong, its not impossible at all, in fact, far from it, however, its going to be a chore and a bumpy road. Tanks in EQ are very very high maintenance. You are constantly min/maxing and tweaking their gear and augs just so you can squeeze out that extra 20HP or 5AC. All of THAT doesnt even mention the fact of how many AAs a tank class needs to be able to do their job well. Shadowknights for example, since I know the class inside and out, would take around 8k well spent AAs (yes 8000 AAs) to be what I considered "spot on" in terms of effectiveness. In the end, at some point, you'll likely wonder why you even made the class once you hit a certain frustrating choke point. So yeah, join a guild and raid. I RARELY see any "true pure grouper" tanks anymore on my server. They are a rare breed these days. The tanks that dont raid, are usually alts of someone from Fu or RoV. tl;dr version: Tanks are a lot of work
8k is a bit high IMO, I would say closer to 5-6k. Aside from that, it would be ALOT of work to gear up a tank not using the bazaar.
For an SK, 5-6k AAs is barely even the base now. But yeah, its in the same-ish ballpark. I said around 8k AAs, so some give or take there. However, once you start talking about maxing CA / CS / Shield Block / TOTC / SA / MC and the numerous other important AAs that we get that defines us, the stuff starts adding up reallll fast. A lot of our key class AAs have gotten up there in #. This doesnt even get into key archetype AAs and whatnot So in a way, I think around 8k is kind of generous considering that max AA for an SK is 11.5k these days.
Warriors with 7K AA were fine given they didn't even have 9k AA? They total AA for a warrior versus knights was pretty big at one point wasn't it? Anyway, the total # of AA to be useful is probably lower than 8K but get to 9K+ to be really useful would seem to make sense....for a knight Warriors will need less AA than a knight...unless the AA totals have changed a lot recently.
in all honesty nearly all (but not all) classes require help to get UPGRADES. which is wexactly what ou're askign about. you dont solo/molo upgrades unlessy ou're a pet class, sorry, tanks jsut NEED those upgrades mroe than the other classes generally. and if you have an sk at 90 without his 2.0, you're probalby not going to have solo/molod your way TO 90 very well without ahving made some use of the bazaar at least.
I know I do epics at 65 and 70 for 1.5 and 2.0 if possible. Most of them can be done molo, and what few fights can't you can ask for help or keep an eye out in /general for people raiding / rotting orbs for 2.0. But of course, I have at least defiant level gear, if not better by then also, and a good deal of AAs. Yther Ore.
Contrary to most of the above, I say yes. When the Vox server came out I made a clone of my real pally and molo'ed up from 1 to 90 before I got bored. I followed the hero's journey for gear, including doing the TBS hand aug (and it's associated defiant upgrade visibles) before the achievements even unlocked. As soon as I dinged whatever level (70?) I had a full suit there. I built on that with a mix of SoD / SoF items until about 83, when I was strong enough to solo some of the easier tasks in Feerrott (for currency). Then I bought a full suit of that non-visible armor from the vendor and killed off the nameds I could handle in T1 to build that gear. I did not buy gear/augs in the bazaar. The only real issue is how willing you are to put in the effort. Without a group, though, you get stuck in a loop like I did because I couldn't do missions without bribing someone to join my group long enough so I could trigger an instance. Additionally, I have spent the vast majority of the last dozen+ years soloing on my real pally, so I knew what I was doing. It would be quite different if you didn't know the ins and outs of the class before you attempted this sort of project.
This is an interesting one because I acutally did this recently to see how hard it would be, about 6 months ago I created a SK on my wifes account and leveled it from 1-60 with a tank merc getting whatever craptastic gear dropped, but saved all the tradeskill stuff and leveled my tradeskills as I went. from 60-80 I used a cleric merc and worked AA as well and have around 1400. I farmed a bunch of the 15-25 hotzone ac augs and bought the ac augs that are 15+ from the guy in dsh with the loyalty points. I did the epic prequest and epic 1.5 at around 70, then did the epic 2.0 at 85, just got some guildees to group so i could get instance, and wow that was fun anguish was challenging again (used my cleric to heal simulating a merc, yeah only thing i didnt solo ) Then worked my way up to 86, 1400 aa, and hot cult gear from working my tradeskills. I have her swarming in thal, but got bored as its a cake walk till 95+ at that point. I can easily see doing the same thing with a pally, I currently have a 75 pally that has soloed her way up to there, havent played her in a long time so her augs suck. but from 75+ they start getting better spells and abilities to make molo'ing even easier. Wars i dont know, I have a 67 war that I molo'd up to that point, but got bored as not as much to do with a war. I would say with mercs, it is not at all impossible, just takes a long time.
I agree with Qbert. I did the same. Hero's journey for appropriate level defiant up through Sunderrock. Earned some okayish augs from Sunderrock, farmed whatever 10AC hotzone augs I could. Moved from there to the Hand Aug at 70. Finished that, got a great aug and a full set of better than defiant visible. From there it's hit and miss: UF gold currency boomerang weapon and boomerang/HoT currency nonvisibles with bazaar bots and afker's I found through /general. Tier 1 Abstruse from the bazaar or /general rot. Back to Ashengate for the Shield of the Otherworld aug. You should be able to molo most of the Bayle's Heraldic Crest. Grab some random help from /general for the 1 or 2 tougher missions. By then you should be able to get *a* group *somewhere* if you desire, or continue to *slowly* build yourself up with moloing. This was purely FTP. If you're gold you should be able to molo tremendously better prestige augs. Will your character be cutting edge, No. Will you have a lot of fun and enjoyment with a hobby you can manage on your own schedule. Absolutely.
There's two different endpoints being discussed. I know that you can molo along with something resembling gear for a lot of levels. I'm not totally convinced that will work out well from 1 to 100. RoF for example might be a bit challenging to get geared up in moloing with basic gear. Or you can aspire to be a better than a merc group tank and an asset in pickup raids should you choose that and have the opportunity. That's going to take extra effort.
You can easily get up to gear solo/molo up to 90-95, just take more time than grouping, from there on get a group and get gear, you can be a decent group tank at 95 from solo/molo, if you know what to do, and not spend money in the bazaar. After that in groups in ROF gear up on T1 gear then go to T2 then T3, all without spending any in the bazaar. The main question was can you do it without using the bazaar, answer is yes, you don't have to have all 40+ ac augs, you can have 30-35 ac augs and be just fine in the group game, makes it a little more challenging, but not impossible. and you can start getting the better augs with groups in ROF, "IF" you are skilled, and don't mind taking the time you could even gear up solo in ROF at 100 for t1 and t2 with the zonewide drops, your not going to be the best geared, but you can certainly tank just fine, just requires you to know how to play your class.
No way. It's barely viable to gear up a tank in a group that relies on a tank in previous tier gear. That's how EQ is designed. There's a reason folks use pets, mercs or raiders to tank for groups.
Yeah, I was also talking about max level AA. I guess it depends on what level someone is at when discussing a "base" AA wise.
Was tanking City of Bronze relatively easily in lucid at 92 (with about 3500 AA) - With a group... You don't need to move up 1 tier at a time - With a group. Though if you really want to solo/molo all the time and not use the Bazaar, perhaps you should be asking yourself why you're playing a massively multi-player online game. Possible to molo up in the world as a tank, without using the bazaar... Yes - Very long process and quite far from being ideal. If you wanted a support class recommendation... I suggest druid - It's all about versatility. They're solid healers, they're solid DPS, and they give ADPS to casters through their Auras and Shared Black Wolf. If things look bad you can evac. Ports, Spirit of Cheetah AA and Shared Camouflage make traveling to zones very quick... And don't forget crowd control (Through AE rooting) - Added bonus of druid over a cleric... You're more likely to meet healers, and everyone loves a good healer. Perhaps I am biased - Being a warrior who boxes a druid... With 2 caster mercs...
