Hi All, I wanted to post some questions about PoP in the lead up to its release on Mangler. For background, my brother and I have our small group — 5 now as my brother got a 3rd box — comprising Warrior / Monk / Druid / Shaman / Necromancer. Monk and Druid have their epics, everyone but the Necro will have about 100-140 AAs each by mid-Feb, and everyone is very geared as far as tradable items go. Looking ahead to PoP from what I’ve read, it doesn’t look like we can progress too far into the planes without a guild. Realistically, as this 5-man, what are we looking at in terms of doing? I feel like we’re pretty strong.. strong enough for Plane of Justice trials, but a number of planes either look lackluster or too difficult, or behind a boss-kill flag. What zones should we target and try to progress to and farm? Bastion of Thunder? Cazic Thule?
PoP is one of the best expansions to be a casual raider in simply because of how the gear is tiered. But if you don't wanna join a guild BoT is the best spot early on, but you won't be able to get flags the first week or so simply because Plane of Storms named giants are gonna be perma camped. At the start of the expansion do a Justice trial for your Storm flag. Then i would farm any of the Tier 1 zones for spells or you can go hang out in CT if you want. Later on the in the expansions life guilds will often start selling/giving away EP flags other then Air. The EPs also have plenty of stuff to do and named worth farming for non-raiders.
Your group can easily do a Justice trial to get into PoValor. Keep a lookout for pickup raids for Behemoth (PoInnovation) as that will open PoTactics which is the best spot for your group for a while. Around 1 month into the expansion, guilds will start selling PoFire flags. These will start quite expensive but one call of hero later and your characters will be flagged for PoFire. Your group can kill all the groupable targets in PoFire which drop pretty good stuff. All Tier one flags are pugable in a raid so if you want to try out more of the zones, it's very doable and just keep a lookout for the pick up raids.
While that is true, they should also look for groups needing more to do the giants and the occasional rot. Guilds will start hosting open/plat raids for PoP that anyone can join. That helps the guild back flag their members and gives groups like this a way to get them as well.
You can also look at the alt-access quests Grimror Plaguebringer in PoDisease gives a quest to flag a group for CoD https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=2213 Grenic Drere in PoValor gives a quest to flag for HoH https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=2247 Wembly the Forlorn in PoStorms gives a quest to flag for Tactics https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=2292
Just a note, if you're not racing raids or guild raiding at the start, do not kill any halls of honor mobs until you consider this quest. it gives a cloak that's roughly Elemental raiding gear level, but you cannot ever complete it if you screw your HoH faction. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=127454
The CoD alt access quest is nice because the one who completes it (all group members get flagged, only 1 gets the reward) is an insta click +50 DR
Once attrition kicks in a lot of guilds will run open flagging raids as part of recruitment drives. PoP is a long slog, and having a player base that isn't able to access the EP's becomes more of a hassle.
After taking another look at those named giants, I'm not really sure that we could 5-man... I think our DPS is there, but I'm not sure how the warrior can tank an unslowable mob that dominates for 1k max hits. He can probably last a bit with his disciplines, but I don't think he can last that long!
Let us know how you get along with Justice trials. I thought I could breeze through them with a 5-box group. Turns out, I couldn't box it. Too much going on in Executioner trial with the 4 mobs spawning at once. I couldn't disintegrate mobs, etc. because I had too much going on just trying to keep everyone alive. As a result, my DPS suffered dramatically and I was ineffectual. I consider myself a pretty good boxer but had to hang my head in shame after failing Executioner 4-5 times. I forget which TLP server this was on but it was a couple of years ago so I doubt it's changed much. It could be that your 5-man group with 2 human players hits the sweet spot, though.
To be honest, at the start of POP, especially if you're coming into it with only group gear, it will be really challenging for you to even do a POJ trial. Not that you can't do it, it will def be a challenge. I'd also recommend leveling and grinding a bit of AAs before attempting BOT key quest. All the guilds will perma camp postorms for the first 2-3 weeks at least... But getting bot key quest will be a good challenge for you. Once you get into BOT you can start killing named and getting ornate drops, and you can do the tower key quest. You may eventually be able to get tower named mobs with a 5 man group . I'm not sure how much more you can do in POP without raid gear.
High security area in PoJ would be good, decent amount of spaced out mobs (kill the prisoners in the side rooms too) with fairly quick respawn. as a bonus they drop decent cash loot items and spell turn in parchments too.
Plane of Justice for sure. Maybe more competition there since no one goes to CT but there is a good reason for that, the mobs there are mean for their level range, have more hp and are highly social.
In the comments on the quest page for that item, someone in 2018 claimed the faction issue was corrected. Has anybody done this quest on a TLP server in the past year to confirm if killing in HoH ruins your ability to do this quest?
