A civil discussion about leveling up in, and the difficulty of TBM.

Omg thanks for the advice about no time to bleed, for some reason I was thinking that it wasn't available until 100. That should help a lot. To give an idea about how I run my box crew on a given mob goes something like this.

Pull and or split mobs with he ranger, snare the inc mob.

Warrior picks up the mob on incoming and hits stout defense, commanding voice, field defender champions aura etc. I then smash my mash key that has all my activateable aa's and quick disc's such as taunt, bash, gut punch, knee strike, sneer, banestrike, shield topple, roar, and a couple others.

I then switch to the shaman and hit his hot key that casts in order, counterbias slow, Lynx/lion, group HoT and the other group HoT.

After I hit that hotkey I quickly switch back to the ranger and fully engage and dps with him. When mobs hit the low 20% I head off to pull another mob.

Usually my merc setup is 2 rogues and a cleric but I guess I can try out the casters...

I mean if leveling up in old content is the equivalent of some right if passage I can be okay with that. And doin the CoTF quests and tasks to get the character upgrades is something I will definitely start doing at 100.

It just sucks that the TBM 95 gear is better than latent ether gear at 100. Mentally it's just hard for me to gear up with inferior gear because the scaling seems a bit over clocked in TBM. Like I said I'll keep trying some of the other HA's in TBM and see how they fare. Maybe it's just a couple that are too hard who knows?

To the person who said they had no problems leveling up in TBM from 85 on I'm interested to know how you did it. What kind of box crew? What kind gear did you use? Any advice? Maybe you could write a quick guide with some tips. How did you kill the namers? Were there some you just could not do? I'm genuinely interested.

I did not level up in TBM. I ran TBM tasks regularly for currency and gear drops. I wound up with a mix of level 90, 95 and 100 TBM gear at 105 (added slots at current level rather than replacing existing augs as I got more currency). Experience in the TBM HAs sucks for leveling.

Look at is as doing the old levels is a right of passage and the appropriate zones for those levels just happens to be where you do those levels. New content is for top level players. You'll have plenty of time to do the current content at 105. Lots of people complete it all within a month. Otherwise, you'll hit 105 and already be done with current content. What will you do then?

You have a warrior. For three or fewer mobs (most modern content will not have density/aggro range that will yield more than three), you're likely ok with just running up to them and killing them in place. Splitting just takes extra time. Get two wiz mercs and watch them die fast as you tank them.

Unfortunately... group geared warriors are terrible. I have shelved mine entirely and don't even bring him to raids to gear up because he's so stupidly outclassed by full raid gear warrior or group geared knights. He's a liability and it makes me sad. Before a troll jumps in, yes, I have a firm understanding of the class and know what I'm doing. They are still awful until they get raid gear or a full set of TBM group gear w/ augs. Mine is in full TDS t3 visibles and TDS non-visible rares, and was full spec'd slot 7 dex/hp/ac augs prior to the stat consolidation. He was playable, but far, far outclassed by similarly geared knights. The day one of our raid healers made a joke about my scaled and tailed warrior taking too much effort to heal while she was trying to eat is the day Gotwar began collecting dust on the shelf.

That being said, they are "ok" as box tanks. You can hotkey a lot of their stuff (if you do it properly) and quickly swap to hold aggro and stay alive. As others have stated, however, they are *highly* gear dependant and that 95-100 grind is absolutely punishing. I hope you stick it out because screw knights, warriors forever, but its not for the faint of heart or the weak willed. Ask your local pro-warrior raid tank for tips on tanking group content and be sure you're using your abilities properly. If you have TBM you'll soon get the NTB upgrade and life will be easier.

To address your specific questions, yes, TBM can be difficult at lower levels, particularly with certain setups. Boxing is, in my opinion, even worse as this content should really be played with your friends. That being said, not everyone has that luxury. Some tweaks, based on your posts:

- Grab caster dps mercs. Start fights on balanced and swap them both to burn when you have some aggro built up. They are far superior to the melee DPS in terms of damage output. Get Mystic Destruction merc AA's for even more fun. Remember to take them off burn or they'll just get merc'd on your next pull.

- Your shaman should be stacking dots to high heaven on every target. Malo/slow first, then fast dots, then curses, then your anguish lines. Are you AA'd? Shaman DOT dps is kind of in the gutter right now, even with max dot crit aa's, but its a whole lot better than nothing. Scope out the shaman class AA's for other useful tools, their spell utility feels somewhat limited (to me) but when AA'd they can be incredibly useful. Use those abilties! gain, boxing complicates this... but get your macros down right and it can be done.

- I know nothing about rangers. I like it when they MGB auspice on raids. Do you have auspice? Use auspice. Also, eat a DT now and then for the lulz. Go to the old planes in Classic and find a boss, eat a DT, then /ragedelete because you just won EQ, imo. They're also great pullers, CC'ers (*cougH* but stop )@(*^(@ with my Enchanter's far superior CC, dumb punt spamming rangers *cough*), and excellent box dps. Ask your local pro ranger for tips.

Lastly, TBM is, for some setups, hard. The early content is a breeze @ 105, but towards the end things get more difficult. I truly beleive it was meant to be ran with full or near full groups of players. Again, some classes and setups have an easier time than others, and certain progression tasks are very dependant on heavy DPS. Wizards, rogues, berzerkers, mages, and monks excel here and are even required in some cases. Since you have none of those classes in your setup... find some friends and have 10x more fun than boxing solo. Someone in this thread gave excellent advice on getting burnt out solo boxing HA's... that's not the way to play EQ, friend!

Good luck and have fun!

Im not sure if you have already done this, but i have put Ardent Light and Promised whatever heal on the blocked buff list. my reasons for this are ..

1- Mercs want to use Ardent Heal and Promised Heal 1st in any situation. For a ranger or a low HP toon thats a death sentence. they are obsolete heals that should not ever be used in any situation.

2- Blocking those heals will force your merc to use Remedys and group heals as their primary heals like they should be doing in the first place.

Now this isnt the answer to all your problems but it should help your toons stay alive a bit longer. Like everyone else says .. switch your dps mercs to casters. also use 3 clerics for the quest named or regular named and make sure 2 are on reactive and 1 is on passive, that way you get heals at different times.

Do you have a rune proc on your warriors weapon? that should help him take less dmg and generate agro in the process.

The AEs these mobs are doing could also have a range that your ranger and shaman can stay out of. AEs can also be directional so maybe face the named away from your other toons. these are things you should research on just about any named you encounter.

Thats all i can think of for now

Your best bet is to continue to grind levels and aa's in DH HA's as you can. Yes, many HA's are very poorly tuned and rather than continuing to beat your head against the wall vs poorly tuned content just do your best to grind past it.

I believe that others are right about your choice of 3 box. A group geared warrior is going to be relatively underpowered vs a raid geared tank and the shaman really needs attention to function well as a main tank healer. Not saying they can't do it but I'm not a fan of a shaman healer in a box setup. You want things that are simple with boxes imo.

I will offer some words of encouragement though since you do have a ranger in group. Once you hit 105 and get some key aa's under you (hello cheetah fang) then things will become much easier. The ranger will allow you to burn down named much faster and even an underpowered warrior should have little issue.

Also, here are a couple more tips that may prove useful. Make sure you always keep Ro's burning cloak on your ranger and have him "tank" the named just long enough to get a proc off. Ideally bulwark AA is best suited for this so, you don't have to burn WS. If the ranger probably can't tank well enough to not get 1 rounded then toss in protection of the spirit wolf as well.

Get grasping root aa and max hasten it. This is yet another great tool for pulling trash. It's the only solid root that a ranger has. Another great pulling tool is the use of blusterbolt and flusterbolt. You can actually use these back to back as long as you use the lower level version first. This is great when you really want to fling a trash mob far enough away to not be a problem. These spells are also amazing pulling tools. Just take care you do not punt a mob into other mobs.

Oh I agree with you on this, I was just referring to the static zones in general. I personally have never been a fan of how these HAs scale; especially if a named spawns which I don't think scales with level.

When I drug my beastlord through tbm stuff he could only be apart of certain stuff. No merc or partisans due to level. Pretty sure he was post 100 before he could do any merc quest in tbm. On the other hand he could do any of the hero stuff. Well sit there while my other toons did them. Unfortunately if all 3 of your toons are 95ish then you really can't get anything progression required. Duhbeast is right though. Pre-100 the shards of landing partisans gives like 50% of a level or something of that sort. Doing any cotf progression gives xp when completed and heroic aas. Those are def helpful. Plus you won't have to waist so many remnants on auging lower level gear and then replacing it 10 levels later.

TBM is one of the worst expansions (if you can call it that) in th history of EQ. Sad to say this, but trying to determine what is broken vs intended is a complete waste of time. Grinding Gribbles until you are at least 101 is the only realistic way to level efficiently.

Bugs are mechanics
Itemization broken
Mechanics are bugs

I agree with Ruven. If your goal is end game raiding you want all your heroic AAs, and augs. I would recommend starting your TDS progression soon, and other TDS quests. I think the tier 1 stuff (katta/TT) will be doable for you. I think doing CoTF and TDS quests/camping named will get your toons better faster than chain running gribbles (maybe not max level/AAed), I know its a lot more fun. I am on Bristlebane also if you need a hand or tips.

Don't blame the expansion on personal skill level. I have had plenty of people get to 105 very quickly through grouping in TBM zones. The mobs in Crypt of Sul especially give a TON of experience in both normal & AAs. The keyword though is 'grouping', a term foreign to most. I suggest some people try it.

Thank you all for the responses and advice. There seems to be kind of a consensus that continuing in TBM at this point with any real expectations of getting a jump on progressing thru it seems to be a waste of time. I did do "In defense of Health" tonight and had a decent time. I ended up earning about 7 or 8% exp while picking up a new weapon and earring for the warrior.

After that I went back to CoTF and picked up no time to bleed for my warrior. I then doubled back to shards landing and did the stone of the crystal circle quest and got another nice aug for all three of my characters. Also I picked up the heroic daily for gribbles and knocked that out.

Ding 97 on the warrior.

My plan I guess is to just find a HA or 2 that I can handle in TBM in hopes of snagging some upgrades for the warrior. I'll continue to do the bulk of my leveling in gribbles and when I hit 100 I'll start on my CoTF heroic aa's.

My hope was that I could actually level and gear up in the newest expansion at the same time. That way I wouldn't be such a noob when I hit max level.
It looks like that's not a very reliable option so for the most part I'll let that dream die down a bit.

I've seen a couple people here mention that I may have a weak box crew. I felt at the time that warrior shaman ranger would make a pretty strong party. Is that not the case? I mean I know the warrior needs to be babied a bit while leveling up but I honestly thought war would be the number one option for being able to tank named and farm my own gear. Especially a warrior with a shaman for slows, buffs, and heals.

Did I make a terrible choice?

When I leveled up my warrior, I found the biggest issue to be AA. Particularly any AA dealing with aggro generation. I tanked just fine with so so gear when I could hold aggro. With the autogrant now at 95, that might be less an issue. I seem to remember things coming around somewhere around 93 or 94 and was able to keep wiz mercs on burn full time.

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Thanks again for the advice people. I switched over to caster mercs and I can definitely tell a difference in dps. Still too chicken to leave them on burn. Should I be?

Someone mentioned blocking some heal spells from my merc. What's the best way to go about doing that? Do I block them on myself and then they just won't land on me? How do I look up exactly what spells for my level to block? Do I just try to read the spells from my spell spam window? I don't want to screw something up.

If your goal is to be an end-game raider, then you really should focus on the expansion that your levels fall within.

You'll gain amazing experience by doing the progression quests and you might get lucky by getting some Augs just by killing in the zones.

Sub-100, do the RoF progression. After you tick over to 101, they nerfed the RoF xp into the ground. So get that xp while you can still. Then move to CoTF, TDS and then finally worry about TBM.

I know the gear can be vendor bought from TBM currency, which is convenient, but it's not really a true upgrade until you get higher level and can start stacking the Heroics.

biggest barrier to progressing through the 90s is frankly a lack of players on standard rule set servers . my level 92 warrior is rarely grouped and i spend most of my time messing around on lower level toons . mostly pre level 60s
you can try band aid a lack of players with boxing characters but that ultimatley leads to disapointment as you require more and more complex control the higher you go . and frankly you cant beat a full group of non boxed players
FV and is rules have ensured it has a decent population compared to standard rule set and isent in time those rules where applied accross other servers . the metrics dont lie . FV is healthy while other servers are struggling because people are trying to do content there under geared for.
the TLP servers are a fallacey , there populated with people cconcerned only with farming krono and making friends is the last thing on there mind as they kill lodzil for a shield they attempt to selll for 20 krono =p
i have kinda diversed from the real issue . lack of players to group with through level 90s and there needs to be a overhaul of server rule sets and probably another round of server merges and the probably need need group content to be more forgiving , this is because, like it not many people are forced into bandaiding with boxes and mercs and frankly its too difficult as things are .

just my ten cents
lelorn

-Adjust xp to AA for the war so he doesnt level faster: HAs scales to the max lvl in grp.
-Get your shm epic 2.0
-Buy currency then a full TBM AC/AGI auged items for your war. Update the augs when lvl permits.
-Check this http://forums.eqfreelance.net/index.php?topic=2973.0 for the war + learn how to dps / pull with rng. Make macros etc.
-Do dailies HAs and Hot Zones until 101 dicho spell then you can try to do TBM prog.

If your warrior isnt the super tank you had hoped, you should try a mage. The mage pet can tank anything with ease.

Yep, level 85 heroic mage, with no time / gear investment can just walk in and tank any named.
(sarcasm btw)