Hi all. I returned to the game a few months ago after stopping playing after raiding till end of Cotf I think it was Now I have slowly got my mage to 115 and started gearing up with t2 and t3 cov group gear and also AAs I'm wondering if its worth doing the achievements in quests and missions I have missed. For the heroic flags and stat boosts in the expansions while I have been away from the game Will this help my dps any ? Or are they not relevant now Thanks
If you don't do them you'll be dead or in the wait channel most of the time on ToV or CoV raids. After the 3rd or 4th combat rez we pretty much give up.
It depends what you're referring to by "them," but nothing granted by mission or quest achievements post-CotF is necessary or even impactful for survivability in raids as a Magician. The OP mentioned heroic flags. The cumulative HP gain from maxing Heroic Vitality is 1,950. Hero's Resolution gives 195 additional stamina at max rank, which should yield 780 additional HP. The latter is affected by Natural Durability (not sure about the former), but nonetheless going from no Heroic AAs to max will yield less than 1% HP. Other progression rewards post-CotF are similarly negligible from a raid survivability standpoint. They include: Trophies. I choose trophies by spell damage, but from a survivability standpoint they cumulatively yield 6,250 HP and 212 H-Sta (another ~3,000 HP). Forgotten Gemstone (less H-Sta than modern Type 5's) Jann's Veil, which gives 1,000 HP and reduces incoming spell/DoT damage by up to 500 (~0.1-0.2% of modern AEs). Winter Jackalope Saddle (mount buff) - 3,500 HP. Ice Bound Ulthork (familiar buff) - 1,100 HP. Acquiring all of those, along with the Hero AAs, is going to net something like 4% more HP total. There are gains to other Heroics that protect from melee damage, but casters shouldn't be tanking anything in raids. You might get one extra spell/DoT shielding mod2 rank, which again isn't overly impactful. Type 5 augs are probably worth working on, though again the cumulative impact of going from TBM Type 5's (the currency for those are tradeable, so those should be the baseline) to CoV Type 5's is not huge. A lot of Mages survive raids with H-Int Type 5's; H-Sta Type 5's from TBM would provide nearly the same amount of HP (CoV purchased Type 5 H-Int augs have 37 H-Sta, vs 32 for TBM augs). CoV TS group gear is more than sufficient to survive ToV raids. It should be mostly fine in CoV raids too, but acquiring ToV raid gear is useful there. The largest determinants of survivability, though, are following event mechanics, keeping Shield of Destiny up, and making sure guilds are properly stacking up/AE healing rather than having casters out in the middle of nowhere (with some mechanic-specific exceptions). In terms of DPS (the OP's question), nothing listed above matters for DPS. There are a few things that matter a little bit (though, still, they aren't overly important): Luminous Restless Ice (from Paragon of Torment of Velious) - adds 7% effectiveness to spells. Proc Augs (from Challenger of Torment of Velious / Challenger of Claws of Veeshan) - the CoV aug incorrectly shares a lore group right now, but having a ranged proc aug / two higher damage 2h proc augs is decent. That said, the total DPS gains from these are not that high vs more easily acquirable CotF-era proc augs. Evolving Items - these require a lot of time, but the Type 18/19 proc augs are somewhat impactful DPS-wise, as is the charm proc aug granted by the ToV earring quest line. Nothing in the above list will increase overall DPS by more than 5% by itself, though cumulatively they can create a notable gap in DPS. Most things relating to one's character in EQ beyond the basics do not have very high returns, and you can perform better than the vast majority of raiders with a character that's lacking progression achievement rewards. They're certainly not bad to have, and there is something to be said for EQ being a game of inches. That said, ultimately how you play is a much larger determinant of DPS or survivability.
Hi, Thanks for the replies , As you say sancus i been looking into it myself and i dont think the time sink is worth it now if i had progressed through them expansions then yes guess would have been some use. I think ill work on earring and artisans and just work on AA and trying get as much cov T3 gear as i can and take it from there
Yes, Velium Empowered Gem of Freezing. I keep it in my charm given it's a 25 SD upgrade relative to the best charm aug otherwise available. That said, the important thing is to keep it in a slot other than your range, as you should have Complimentary Velium Infused Gem of Striking in your range.
Curious what raid casters, or group for that matter, are stacking for type 5's? I always assumed H-Int but this has me wondering.
Depends on what you run out of more. If you are dying more on raids, HSta. Generally otherwise HInt, although mages have fewer mana problems than other caster classes due to the pet reclaim hack. If you go HSta, you can go back and get the 15% Spec augs from CotF to help on mana.as well. It's one of the (many) issues facing casters...type 5 aug choices don't matter that much (well, really any aug choices cause spell damage does so little, clarvoyance is a joke, etc. except for just hp/mana gains). And then the proc changes this patch...
Thanks, as a group geared, it's seems I'm more of a mana manager than a dps'er and was curious what the raid game looked like.
Then I would definitely look at the Specialization augs from CotF. Here's a list of all CotF type 7 augs: https://items.eqresource.com/itemsearch.php?searchid=7480 Some of the no stats listed ones are weapon augs, but at least you can get a sense of which mission groups they drop in. Drop rate isn't great so it may take a bit. But can be a thing you do first logging in or last before leaving each play session. Eventually you will get the ones you want.
There seems to have been a switch in the past several expansions for magicians to lean towards stamina instead of intelligence. Not everyone has followed suit; I, for example, am mostly intelligence but I do have 2-4 stamina augments that are best in slot for the current expansion. And even then, I am not sure if that is really impacting things as much as it is. My theory is this- on a raid, I am only OOM after a in combat death. And even then two mod rod clicks, conversion AA, even a potion gets me going within seconds of a rez. So raid mana, for the most part, is generally a non issue. As far as HP goes, if I die it is not because of any lack of stamina augments. If a named attacks us we are probably one rounded, maybe two rounded. I cannot see how an extra couple thousand HP is going to save myself in any raid situation. What does save me is AOE heals, geomantra, Shield of <insert current expansion self rune name>, etc. In the group game, I don't get hit in the overwhelminly majority of situations- that is the pet. What does happen, though, is that if I am pushing hard I may go OOM. In which case having a bigger mana pool lengthens how long it takes me to go OOM. And what increases mana pools? Heroic intelligence type 5 augments. So in my mind, the only time where I run out of something in normal situations is group mana. Hence why I choose that. I am sure Sancus and other magicians have a different perspective, and that is fine- it is nice to have options!
Thanks, I actually have the splinter of prophecy on two characters but because I'm a glutton for punishment I started another wizard and will need to pick it up. Thanks for the reminder!
The gains on the heroics are not that huge but they are permanent so I'm slowly going back through content I missed and picking them up. I'm also leveling another alt while doing it to make it a little more worth doing.
