Hi All, I went solo with my ranger from 85 (heroic) to 110, the character has ~19k AA and Conflagrant gear from RoS. 105 - 110 happened in FM (EoK), headshotting goblins and sarnak but the xp really dried out when he finally hit 110. The question is, are there places in RoS, TBL or ToV where decent xp can be gained in headshotting solo mode or am I dreaming too big?
There are zones in some of those expansions that you can headshoot. The issue is, those mobs have a whole lot more HP and so when a headshot or critical headshot procs, it doesn't take down the mob's HP bar as fast as you are used to seeing on mobs in older expansions. FM is the zone where the perfect balance of the HP amount of mobs versus the amount of damage headshot procs do, exist. FM is really efficient. In the newer expansions, it still takes some time even with headshot to kill them. The other issue you have is you won't be able to headshoot in ToV much until you are 115. Until then and until you have a whole lot more AA, I would forget about ToV. So your options are EoK, GMM and RoS. You better get your Hdex up to about 1700 at least as well. Use FM when you have a lesson up. If you know how to headshoot efficiently, you can keep Fort Syldon on cooldown by yourself. No merc needed. By the time you finish inside the fort, the drillmaster groups are just starting to spawn again. I see rangers in a full group that are 115 killing stuff in FM slower than I kill them alone. Those are probably rangers that rushed to 115 and have no power or Hdex or AA. So make the most of your abilities and use them correctly. You need to get max AA at 110 for archery stuff, so you are doing decent DPS in between procs if you are going to go headshooting in GMM and RoS. You need to get the AA for the extra spell slot so you can mem two heal spells along with all the spells you need to be doing this kind of stuff. If you are only 19k AA at 110, stay at 110 and get more AA. If you haven't done group progression in TBM, EoK etc., do those as some of them give good AA rewards. At 110, you should be able to do everything but missions solo up to EoK. AA is the true power of the class, not the level. If you are at 115 with 19K, you will not be doing very well DPS wise. 110 rangers with max AA and high Hdex will be taking you to school on DPS. The level is only needed to get more AA and to headshoot mobs in higher level zones.
If you're looking just for regular xp to get to 115 (and not looking for AA as well), I'll share how I got my rogue from 110 to 115 without ever leaving the lobby. He was 68% into 110 and is now 25% into 115...and I never took him out to grind regular xp (I did do some AA grinding). I did do all of this during a bonus xp period, so take that into consideration. - If you have ToV, try and get task adds to the 4 missions. My rogue got taskadds to the GD and Velks missions and went from 110 to about 30% into 112 just from those (not sure if the bonus xp affected this or not). - Run Overseer quests as often as you can. If you run the right quests (Research quests gives the most) as often as you can...and get lucky with the critical successes...you can make upwards of 10% regular xp per day. With the bonus exp, I was seeing over 7% xp from a single quest on a crit...which means sometimes I got around 15-20% per day. If you're willing to pay for early completion, you can probably get a whole lot more xp as well. - Complete as many collections as you can. From TDS onward (no idea why RoF and CotF aren't included...complete those for the AA), collections give 2% xp, no matter your level. During the bonus xp, they were giving 4% upon completion. I'm not saying this was the best way to do it, but 110 to 115 solo is very possible. I would also advise getting out and actually fighting stuff when you level to keep your melee skills maxxed.
I never found gmm too great, ros, pretty much anywhere where you can find sarnak. Overthere, or if you can get a group in sathirs tomb for the second and third room, there are a lot of sarnak and the kill rate would be very fast. I usually keep my chars in ros to 111 or 112 then do missions/quests in tov to get to 115.
the XP awards for finishing Merc/Partisan/Heros in ToV will pretty much cover 90% of the xp you need to get to 115. Dont waste your time on anything else until you get to 115. At 115, the entrance to Ry'Gorr mines can be headshot solo with no merc (requires some skill) but the AA xp flys by there 2-5 AA's per kill
He's soloing or moloing. Unless he is getting TAs for those that can be TA'd. He is not likely to get those done at 110 with 19k AA. If he is wanting to grind solo or molo, then he should max his AA for 110 at least for archery and then grind away. If he wants 115 the easy way, then yes, join a group doing progression or get TAs when available.
