My group (3 of us) came back to a Live server from TLP, and decided to play up 3 new characters (SK, Beastlord, Berserker). We run 3 mercs (healer and 2 dps). SK = Level 86 (was a heroic character) Beastlord = lvl 80 Berserker = lvl 81 We heroic'd the SK thinking we would need the extra benefit of heroic gear, AAs, etc for tanking. None of the other characters are heroic. We are currently trying to play through the House of Thule content doing the quests for each zone in order. Here's the problem. We are in the first zone, Feerott the Dream, and if we get more than 2 lizardmen on us at a time, the SK goes down pretty fast. It's a close call if we have 2 mobs, but we can handle 1 mob pretty easily. Even with the beastlord casting slows on the adds, the mobs are eating the SK like he's nothing. First and foremost, I am absolutely sure it is something we are doing wrong. The thing is, I don't know what it is that we are doing wrong. So, I'm here asking for advice. Are there certain activatable AAs, combat abilities, spells that the SK needs to have in rotation? What is a good rotation for the average SK in any given fight? Should we be doing Seeds of Destruction instead of House of Thule? I would have thought that a level 80-86 group could start doing House of Thule. I especially thought this was the case seeing as the tank was a heroic character which basically starts you off in The Dream. Am I wrong? Do we need to invest in specific gear we can buy from the bizarre for the tank? Are there specific augs that we need to go farm for the tank? By the way, the merc healer is the tank's merc, so that it is a journeyman tier 5 level 86 mercenary. Do we need to run two mercenary healers?
In every expansion, when starting out, my SK can never tank 2 at a time to start with. Once I gear up in the new expansion two or three are no problem. Having said that the problem is not your gear, it is the 2 at a time. You are a SK, you can snare flop and pop to pull singles all day, do this. OR, one of you roll a chanter or bard and box him. I box a bard a lot. He just stands there twisting until I need a mez, then I pop over, hit ONE hotkey and he casts AE mez, then pop back to SK. Honestly boxing a bard is amazing even if you only use him in this capacity.
On my SK I do AC tap, HP Gain tap, then tap tap tap tap tap. I don't bother worrying about DPS, I just want to make life as easy for my healer as possible.
Skip dream, go to HoT and get the heroic aug quests done. Thats like 30 ac per aug per slot. Thats huge! Then learn to pull singles and find a safe spot to sit and kill. Hero gear is ok, but there is room for improvement. When items drop dont look at the +hp look at the AC value and if its more than current use it. Once ya get a good strat/rotation down on dic’s spells off tank with bst pet then go back to the dream. Don’t forget the j5 mercs also.
you also might want to consider a second healer merc. Healer mercs can be lackluster - and when you are fighting named/missions you might need some backup
Use two healer mercs, one on Reactive, one on Balanced. Both should be J5's. This makes trash mobs easier and named mobs possible. Heroic gear is basically like T1 HoT group gear, so you can do that content in it, but it will be challenging. Make sure the BL is slowing everything if you are tanking multiples. Between that and two mercs you should be ok. Definitely do any aug quests you can in HoT, these will be huge. It may also be possible to do CoTF HA's for Marks of Valor to buy augs there which are much better than HoT. Not sure about level restrictions on them though. Are you using auto-grant? If not, do Combat Agility, Combat Stability, and Natural Durability, Physical Enhancement, etc. But I would recommend using auto-grant, at this level there are so many you need and they are really important to have.
I also had problems in Feerott, for some reason it is harder for new players to that zone than when it first came out and older players experienced there. Esp heroic characters. Con the mobs first, most of them seem harder than normal. Took others advice at the time and did this: look for those snakes that con blue to you but have the message "looks relatively weak". They are near the guys holding torches. Fairly safe. When I got tired of those I moved to HOT right at the entrance and did the kills rotdogs, snakes etc. Gradually I moved on to the grounds. Do quests and stuff as that also helps your exp and can get you some goodies. Then I came back to Feerott and did the lizards and finished that zone off.
Thanks for the advice everybody. That all makes a lot of sense. I think we might go on to HoT and pass up the Dream for now since it seems like an over powered zone. We were doing it first only because we were trying to do the progression in order. If we can skip it for now and get augs to make it easier later, then we will do that. Also, someone asked if we were auto-granting AAs. Yes. That's what we are doing.
Update... Our group skipped Feerott the Dream, and moved on to the House of Thule zone as was suggested above. This made a huge difference for our group. House of Thule is much more forgiving than Feerott. We are also running a second healer when we know we are going to pull a named mob. If we run a second healer on Reactive all the time, that merc just empties all of his/her mana, and then is out of mana for when we do get a rare mob. Therefore, when we know we are going to pull a named mob, I swap out my dps merc with my 2nd healer merc, put him on Passive. When the named mob is pulled, I switch that second healer merc to Reactive. That seems to do the trick for us. Thanks again everybody.
Glad to hear you are doing well. But the expansion you are in is 85 to 90 not 80 to 85. That probably explains why you were having issues. It doesn’t help that the expansion right before it was considered way too hard for its level range so it’s usually skipped.
One thing you did not mention is if you did the J5 merc quest on your SK. Technically you can do it on the other characters also but they will have to do the old J5 quest which probably is not worth it at this point. I would just wait until they are level 85 and do the one in Feerrott. If you are still using A mercs this will make a huge difference vs J mercs. This needs to be a top priority imo for your sk over anything else if you don't already have your J merc. As mentioned doing progression in HOT and Feerrott will grant your sk augs as rewards (the aug rewards are for heroic characters only). If you can knock out some of the progression it should give you some nice augs that will stay with you for a good while. As an alternative you could also try doing HA's from COTF for marks of valor. If you go to raidloot.com you can search gear that you can buy using marks of valor and filter by class, stat, slot and so forth. It might be well worth doing some of these to get some easy upgrades and decent xp.
Heroic characters don't get J5 mercs. They still have to do the quest either the old one or the new one in Feerrott the Dream unless they changed this recently. He mentions his mercs running OOM which leads me to believe they might be using all A mercs because only on rare occasions have I ever had my J5 healer merc run OOM.
I should have explained better. The heroic SK did the J5 merc quest in Feerott the Dream. I just don't think of it as a quest you have to do because we always do it on every character we heroic, so I failed to say that we did the quest to get him his J5 merc. As for the merc that is running out of mana fast, that is the berserker's healer that is not a J5 merc because he is not level 85 yet to run the quest in Feerott (I have no desire to do the old quest for J5). I hope that clears things up a bit.
my advice is to set the SK as puller and pull singles - it takes longer to FD and get that single but it takes time to come back from a wipe. Check the tank forums for the buffs a SK needs and AA's to get to tank. yes HOT quests give AC augs for doing the quest if heroic character.
Have you tried just the J5 healer merc and have the other two mercs as dps? There is a big difference between the lower level mercs and if keeping your sk up is the issue this might solve a lot of problems. Also are you using your taps as fast as they refresh? I have all my taps keybound to one key. I have my hate spells on another key. Basically pull, cast some of my hate spells to establish agro and then just spam my taps. Dont be afraid to use some lower level taps also as long as they don't share a timer with your current level taps. You want to keep as many loaded as you can burn through while having one available at all times. Other sk's might have a different opinion but for me this has worked well. This in conjunction with other discs and such should help out. If you don't have your epic yet this will help your cause.
