Last night I'm having to crawl through all of Veksar to get to the slaves for the Daily Hotzone, cause just about everything had see-invis. And man the fights took quite a while to get through even though I'm mostly in the 59 req defiant gear and weapons. 3-5min avg on single targets. It took nearly an hour to get to the slaves back in the caves. But then I realized, perhaps modern MMOs have changed my perspective on this game after 14+ years. Where soloing was the norm, EQ wasn't really meant for that was it? That I'm essentially soloing what used to require a group due to gear power-creep. Or am I just a crappy BST doing something wrong? (Note I was using a J1 Cleric merc to keep the pet-tank up while I dot/nuked)
I would say a little bit of both. You are taking on alone what a group used to do and a lot of beastlord damage comes from melee. The pet does have a hard time holding aggro a lower levels but hang in there, it gets easier with playing possum AA at 85
I was meleeing, but using my mana for maintaining the AC debuff and dots with some ice nukes when I felt I was good on mana. Usually fighting from behind the mobs to prevent parry and riposte while the pet-tank did his thing. he was holding agro for the most part, that wasn't so much of an issue. The combat just felt like a long grind where I sit there letting auto-attack do its thing between dot refreshes. Beyond taking maybe a melee merc and hoping I could maintain heals on the pet, I'm not sure there was any other faster way to molo kill the mobs.
Ah okay. It sounded like you were just standing there casting, which I have seen a lot of people do even after pet tanking changes years ago. Beastlord is kinda meh until you get your crit AAs and 71+ spells. You will see a huge difference when your nukes start critting over 2k
If you have the tank and heals, a dps merc could/will improve things a lot. One way or another, I'd find a way to incorporate one. Use the cleric whenever you need to beat on a deep red mob for 6 minutes.
On a rare occasion I'm getting 1k crits from the ice-nuke, but it's not reliable at 62. My poison dot does a lot of dmg, but dang if a lot of stuff seems to resist my disease and poison dots. What I wouldn't give for some other elemental dot types. Even a cold class dot would be nice in a pinch.
Your power vs mobs will continue to diminish. Your going to have to start hanging out in the previous lv ranges hotzones longer.
The best XP is based on speed not level. You want to find mob that you are able to kill quickly. Killing yellow con offer more xp but take longer to kill. if you can kill blue con faster over time you will make more XP for time spent.
Different hot zones/tasks differ. If it takes most of your night to get to the mobs you need to kill, you are better off not doing it. It generally makes sense to peg Teek for 3 tasks: in your case, 55, 60, 65, maybe even 50. The xp chunk you get on completion is nice. See which you can knock out fast. I.e. lvl 60 being Veksar it is a pain to get to, target mobs hard to reach. Lvl 65 task is I think pirates on Barren Shore. A real short trip from Paineel stone and pirates real easy to get to. Though they are clumped in groups of 2-3 but I drag along a chanter. Giants in BoT, diaku warriors in Drunder are also very easy to get to. Current lvl 70 task is Arcstone, real short walk from where guild hall teleport places you and elder whirlwinds are very accessible and single pullable. By comparison task in Blackfeather you need to do small quests to unlock higher islands, but only once. Are you getting buffs before heading out? At 62 you are still not in range of top level buffs. It is a pain. But if you ask in guild, I am sure those hanging out in PoK can buff you.
