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

I'll assume this is somewhat of a troll right. I have no doubt that Mage pets probably make decent tanks but can they really out tank say a properly group geared warrior with a full set of augs at 95 with max aa's? If the answer is truly yes then warriors are broken.

*edit*

offer help and get called a troll lol. good luck on your adventures

For single pulls, a mage pet with EM13 or higher will likely handle level 97 content. However, there was a stealth change to mage pets in the last patch, which appears to be a shielding issue. Whereas they took advantage of 44% shielding prior to the patch, it now appears to be only 35% shielding being used. The problems were quite noticeable and I doubt very much that current mage pet would tank a multiple pull as well as your warrior.

With a real (albeit boxed) healer, yes, a Mage pet is going to tank a level appropriate HA. Pets have never scaled well with gear/AAs (especially since they nerfed the hell out of foci), so it's definitely a lot easier to get up to speed than a warrior. But a warrior that does have the requisite augs/AAs/gear/etc will tank circles around pets, especially when you fight multiple mobs.

To the OP. It's never easy to start fresh and try to be relevant for current end game. It seems like the way the game is designed, it should takes many many months if you did it alone. I highly recommend that you make some friends that can assist you in power leveling and power gearing.

Also, as a side note, have you looked into any of the TLP's ? They are a great start to progress the game when starting fresh. Currently the 3 new TLP's are pre Planes of Power which is easy to get raiding ready. But, if you want an in between, there is also Fippy Darkpaw. I currently play Fippy and although a low population we do raid current era (for us RoF) raids with success. We generally try our best to help new people get raid ready and gear people somewhat quickly. We always need more dedicated players since we generally never fill a full raid (which we supplement with a few box characters). CoTF is not set to launch on Fippy until July so there is a month of RoF prep you can do to catch up if you are interested. Hope you find what makes this game enjoyable for you.

good luck.

FV is a good place to maybe get raid gear from 1 to 2 expansions ago and once 105 you have a decent chance to really go through some trial and error with the harder tasks such that it is overall rewarding and enjoyable. I see darkwater visibles for 2 to 4 mil each. That's not crazy unreasonable for what you get. You don't need a whole set. SK\Pally\War from the plate class or decently focused mage army's supplied with a real cleric healer can go far.

The main thing is are you having fun?

EQ has tons of content to keep someone returning busy for quite a bit of time. While some stuff can be skipped other stuff will be beneficial to return to and get done, like the DoN progression and MPG trials for example.

Don't be afraid to try new things, unorthodox approaches and win a fight with one character left! Just try to progress at any rate, be it small or a huge gain. The more work you put into your character, the more they become you, and the more hooked you become.

Raiding for the most part is simple, understand instructions, have awareness around yourself and whats going on, execute instructions, work on improving your abilities and provide feedback when asked. Running raids is another story.

Gear and aa can be acquired, attitudes rarely change. I'm rarely on besides raiding lately, but I'm on Bristlebane shoot me a tell if you have any questions. In addition, Eyashusa is a walking database on any ranger related topics as well as most the game as a whole.

Ruven

You didn't make a terrible choice it just takes quite a bit more effort than say a mage focused box crew to be effective. Once your guys are leveled up to 105 and have a substantial amount of aa's they will be formidable. However, not nearly as formidable as a raid geared warrior plus group geared ranger and shaman. That's something you might want to keep in mind.

I do know that there are many raiding rangers on bristlebane and eq in general and it may prove difficult to secure a regular raiding slot as a ranger. I highly suggest you research any raid guild you join on BB before committing to one. There are guilds that massively recruit and have many players that are perfectly content to sit on benches living off rotting raid gear. You don't strike me as this type of player.

To the original poster and post: Dont level up in TBM. Level up in the The Darkend Sea. If you are boxing your way hang in Brother's Island. Drink lots of exp pots. Wait for the exp. bonuses that usually come around the holidays and you will be 105 before you know it. Stop trying to kill stuff thats just wiping their butts with you. Here is a trade secret for your ranger...the "brothers" on brothers island are all headshot targets. You can rinse and repeat there pretty quick, while pulling ph's and getting namers to work through your box tunes stuff. (The faction you lose is no big deal, and you become lovingly with sirens which help you in the Caverns though TDS progression.) If for some reason you have to have Brothers faction (which I havent needed) you can kill sirens to get it back. Just a heads up, seems like you are not in the expansion you should be at your level.
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TBM has the word "broken" in the middle of it - should be more than enough information to tell you to stay away. Do your dailies, all 3 Gribbles and you should be max level with decent AAs in a month if you play wih a consistent basis. Buy a Krono and buy TDS t1 or Crafted. Use your CoTF currency to buy aug or other goodies.

In my opinion, a new expansion that boasts "scaling gear" and "scaling content" should indeed scale correctly all the way down the lowest level allowed for the content, regardless of the fact it is the newest expansion. If the HA trash mobs are completely feasible but a named mob or boss is hitting for 90k+ on a lvl 95 character then something is wrong.

A lot of the people here have provided very good ideas for leveling up quicker/more efficiently, but that does not take away from the fact that the content is not working as intended. Will any of this ever get fixed? Doubtful at best, however we can possibly hope that if Daybreak continues with the scaling content in future expansions that they might actually put some effort into making it work properly with the knowledge they learned from TBM.

As far as your tank goes, if you are going to be focusing mainly on group content with him I would strongly suggest an SK or Paladin. They are recently buffed classes with a slightly softer dependency on gear. The self healing of the knight classes offset the loss of mitigation in a big way. Warriors are strictly gear and augs through and through. Switching now or in the near future would not be too difficult once you hit 105 as xp comes much quicker with a max level and decently geared box team. If you want to keep the warrior then try to find someone to sit down and teach you what they can about them. Stacking the right combo of discs and AA's can make a huge difference. Either way, good luck and welcome home to EQ =)

Playing a ranger and an SK/Pal would be difficult without 3rd party software. I think the war is fine, just need to stay away from TBM

Just wanted to chime in here...
This post (from the eqfreelance forums) on warrior hotkeys is a great starting point, but for the love of god WARRIORS, do not rely on this alone. Understand *why* his hotkey setup is done the way it is, learn what the discs do, and create your own setups. Use it for a while and then tailor it for your own use. Don't just spam hotkeys and assume you know your class because someone else told you it was the 1337 setup. Even if you decide his setup works best for you (and many will), it's better to know why it works.

This actually goes for all classes, but I feel tanks are one of those archetypes that *need* to know wtf is going on or they'll wipe their entire group/raid.

It's also worth noting - this setup he is running is specifically for raid tanking. It works for group setups as well but lacks utility and options for a couple reasons. For one, you can easily split your snap aggro abilities into 3 or 4 hotkeys with 2-3 discs/abilities each, each on 2 minute cooldowns, and snap aggro off raid geared rogues and zerkers until the end of time. Before I end up turning this into a "how to warrior" post, I'll stop there, but just remember - never take someone's setup as law. Figure out why they do what they do and then make it work for you. Most of the times you'll likely agree, but at least you'll know *why* its the best, as opposed to just taking it as scripture.

Learning is fun. Do it. dooo it.

I agree with this(beaides switching to SK/Pal). For names, I use chanter's AA EC to charm tank names and focus on wizard burns. When the charm is almost dead, I rotate SK in for the last 30 seconds if needed. Too much effort to try and tank and Burn with second character.

TBM is very difficult and makes no sense really, you have scaling gear from level 75 up when there's little chance of people at that level or anything other than max level ever touching the content.

As a person currently doing the exact same thing OP is doing I can only give my input on what I/we do - chanters are really OP so my girlfriend tanks most times (you can essentially solo tbm missions on an enchanter) we used pets with taunt on (3 pets total) and 2 healer mercs...we've not run into any content at 105 we can't succeed in (i'm almost done with hunter for example) but the missions are a very high gear, skill and knowledge check. We barely killed the coffins, but we are also several thousand AA short of max.

TBM missions and such seem tuned for "finished" characters, kind of like fluff content I guess. You get some extra stats and a nice aug for finishing.

I guess that's what I was figuring tyrrany. If they are making all these claims about scaling content at least give people a fighting chance at completing most of it. Instead we have names that pretty much one round tanks and mission bosses that don't even drop loot basically death touch.

I definitely plan to keep my warrior. No time to bleed has changed my life. I may actually look to join a raiding guild with my warrior unless I can actually find a guild who's looking for a ranger. I pretty much never see anyone anywhere seeking rangers for anything. There must just be too many of them to go around, I can understand why tho. They are a very versatile class that really can push out some good dps. Who knows?

Almost level 98 now and done with this no man's land between 95 and 100. If there's double exp weekend I'll be 105 by the end of it. Any guilds on Bristlebane looking for a dedicated legit raiding warrior or ranger? Heck I'd even play my shaman if I had too. Just gotta do my epic

TBM 'scaled' content is horribly tuned for anything under level 105. In the HAs the mobs hit really hard but it's doable, where you get completely smoked is the named in those HA if they pop. I posted about this a while back when i was doing this whole leveling thing in TBM. It's unfortunate, because i've enjoyed TBM for the most part, but they DO advertise this as the "scaling" expansion yet it's so badly tuned... lol laughable really. Group missions for achievements are also way too challenging. You know it's bad when a group of 6 actual players has issues doing missions (and fail them). Way to drive whatever player base you still have left, to play other games or go to TLP because there is nothing fun about wiping over and over with other people cause some of the missions are over the top hard.

Some of the HA named scale just fine. Others seem like they were not scaled at all and hit like the 105 version even at 85. They are broken. Otherwise, the HAs seem to scale just fine and are easily beatable at any of the scaled levels (at least from 85-104). Considering how broken much of this expansion was/still is, it's impressive the task scaling works as well as it does.

The group missions are not too challenging. There is basically one per zone that is moderately difficult. All the rest are easy, even in group gear. What's wrong with having four (not counting Grummus) missions that can push people a little bit? It's a game, it should present a challenge and most often fails to. Having some content that most people will require a real group and no mercs for is not bad. Having something that people fail a few times before figuring out is not bad. The game should not be designed for everyone to one shot and roll through all content.

Challenge should be in raiding, not in group content. That's only my humble opinion though.

There should be some end game single group content for raiders. However, most of it should be for non raiders. Shouldn't have named hit as hard or harder than target player's raid content.