So started back few weeks ago and have been doing the various HA from Teek in POK. Started doing them at 93 on my SK with a 90 Mage (J5 healer merc and j1 melee merc). Was doing just fine until today. Now everything is hitting stupidily hard and killing my SK within a few seconds. Someone in game said the patch yesterday might have buffed the enemies? I have tried two different ones thinking maybe I just got a hard one. Tried Dead Hills and then tried a Bixie Warfront and same result. Can't take a single pull without dieing. This is also fully buffed with high lvl buffs I got from guild lobby. What happened? Did it get buffed or does the enemies have a steep increase in power going from level 95 to 96? I would be glad to get more armor but only armor I can find is the lvl 92 bazaar stuff and every thing is level 100+. All the vendor armor requires raid currency which I don't' see happen. There is some lvl 95 armor I can buy with HA currency but they are labeled priestage and not that much of an upgrade. I would rather save the currency to buy a set of level 100 gear from the same merchants. My SK is 96 now and Mage is 94. Have all the new spells on both of them and both have auto grant AA going.
Hello Argu, HA scale in power based on the level of the highest level of the character in your group. Once your SHD leveled to 96 they got a power spike (probably bigger than the 94-95 gap) because ) 96 means you are RoF/CotF certified. After spending the currency on the CotF gear you should be good. The only advice I can give, altho I have done it on a TLP server on era and coming from TDS group BiS gear so others could give better counsel about powergearing latecomers, you need to look for Remmants of Tranquility tradebale currency (TBM group gear) and gear your chars with that. TBM gearing is weird compared to previous exp, but results into a lot of AC (buy base item and the AC aug for it and the slot 5 augs for stats).TBM AC bump from group gear is HUGE, and it'll carry you. Good luck.
I looked at TBM gear and the only stuff I have access to is the level 75 stuff. Looks like to unlock other tiers have to run content I am unable to run such as the TBM progression quest and/or faction grind with the revamped Plane of Fear/Plane of Hate raid zones. All the COTF gear is priestage except the level 100 gear. The level 95 gear isn't that much better than what I have now anyways and wouldn't want to waste what currency I have on it. EDIT: Yea double checked COTF lvl 95 gear it would actually be a downgrade to what I am using for most slots.
I have a 97 SK, 97 Enc, and 96 Zerker with one J5 cleric, and 2x J5 melee mercs. I ran the Hills are Alive task and the worst part was the two names I had to kill in it. Both of them stunned the SK and murdered the enc and zerker, but after I got unstunned the SK carried through on both of them. I'm in a mix of RoF/VoA/Hot (all HoT nonvis) stuff with heroic augs.
No, the TBM items are nearly equivalent Raid gear at the bottom end. You buy the base or get an item drop, then buy the slot 5,6, and 9 augs in Plane of Health. You’ll be able to upgrade every 5 levels.
At lvl 96, purchasable chest armor (top 3 choices) Regal Dreadguard Cuirass + Transcendent Chest symbol of Hate (tradeskilled) = 285 AC, 2361 HP chest by craftsmen Boreal Brestplate of the Revenant (CotF lvl 95 currency armor) = 277 AC, 2315 HP chest from CoTF currency Preserving Protector's Breastplate + Regal Sulstone of the Valiant = 216 AC, 3181 HP chest from TBM currency There are variations with better stats, which require no-drop loot items. At 100, Castaway (TDS) chest has 350 AC, 2967 HP, Latent Etheric (CoTF) chest has 328 AC, 2778 HP, TBM chest has 230 AC, 3520 HP , and tradeskilled August + Boundless chest has 374 AC, 3131 HP. In between one attunable lvl 98 RoF random drop: Pestilent Breastplate 277 AC, 2148 HP. I went with tradeskilled option when leveled. And yes, at 96 CoTF HA's become much harder than at 95.
The HA scaling has been messed up for 3 years and they’ve shown little interest in fixing it. The damage is too high, the scaling to the max level of a group makes it so 2 level difference renders the lower level character ineffective.
Your sk is the all access - does he have Bastardsword of Horrifying Impurity? Think that is what I went with off the West Karana 95 group vendor. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=101721 How are your augs? Your AA? You have mentioned your current armor is better that what others have suggested - what armor do you have? While I am not a fan of the TBM armor matrix, I am a fan of the augs that drop in those zones. I have never done anything in Fear/Plane of Hate areas but have amassed many of the augs that have 250 to all stats and more. Not prestige. I found demiplane of life and those other zones to actually be easier than Dead Hills, Bixie or Marla etc. You should be able to do the progression there - the first few are simply running around and stuff like that. Many are repeatable. As far as currency goes - you will never spend all your marks of valor as there is nothing else to spend it on besides armor for your mercs - you did get that? - and stuff for you or to hang in your house. You also will never spend all your remnants of tranquility from TBM - but at least those are tradeable
I never did get armor for my mercs. I started TBM progression and got to the point I had to run a HA for the mayor and it proved too much for me. The armor I have now is the plate you buy in the Bazaar that starts at level 92 and is recommended 95. The BP is pestilence breastplate. I have Kalkek 1h blunt weapon and shield. Don't have a 2h figure I need the shield for the extra defense? I have all access right now but it runs out in about a week. I have been trying to level as fast as possible to gain those free AA's so his AA are maxed right now. Looking at the remnants on the AH they are 100pp each and those augs take a ton of them. I think I have around 18 right now just doing the starter point of that progression quest. So I buy the level 75 armor and upgrade it until its level 95? Checked both POT and plane of health TBM merchants and the only thing they will sell me is the armor. I can't see any of the augs on there. From what I have ready have to either continue progress through the overtuned mayor HA and/or grind plane of fear/plane of hate faction.
Ok so think about this. Go back to Tainted West Karana and check out Merchant Nyvan. He will sell you armor for your mercenary's and it is not prestige so don't have to worry about that. Use the marks of valor. You can get the ones with high mana for your healer and whatever fits on the other one. If you do that then your mercs have some more oof to them and can last longer etc. If you have enough marks left then check out that sword. I tried a lot of combinations since I had a lot of marks. Doesn't hurt to try. You can buy remnants of tranquility in the baz. Or ask in chat. Someone on our server has thousands of them every week for 20 plat each. But like I said, I am not a fan of TBM armor thing...too much messing around with put this aug in and whatever. But this was the best write up I have seen on it: https://www.almarsguides.com/eq/quests/TBM/GroupGear/ This is my bible for non prestige stuff and lots of it is good for All Access http://eqshadowknight.net/showthread.php?t=8817 Finally the other thing you can do to level up in the time you have left are the daily's from Franklin. These are not the HA but are just kill 5 mobs in some zone he will tell you. Get the 80 & 85 & 90 & 95 and go kill in those zones. You will get the bonus exp along with some plat and armor you can sell. I discovered some new hunting grounds others had not mentioned when I was looking - Valley of Lunayen is good for your level too
Given the rate of XP between 85 and 100, even players living in COTF HAs will not acquire enough marks to get close to a complete set of armor in each tier. For Lucid (HoT - 90) it is 6,720 marks, Grandiose (VoA - 95) 7,686 marks, and Latent (COTF - 100) 20,160 marks. I am not sure how well someone could survive in TBM after 100 without being geared in CoTF on the way out.
I will give the merc thing a try but it does not usually run out of mana. Will also look at trying some different places. Ashame I was really enjoying the different HA's.
My paladin tanked HA all the way to lv 103 with ROF non prestige gears (fear touched, pestilence BP) and it seems fine as long as you don't touch certain HAs such as Skulk's. I don't think I ran into any trouble in those bixie warfront quests but I haven't done any HA since the patch. I don't think you need TBM gears to tank COTF HAs and the lv 100 non prestige COTF gears should carry you to lv 105 with no problem as long as you stick with COTF HAs. However I 3-box my team (pal, bard, monk) with 3 mercs though (healer + healer + melee dps). Only my paladin is all access (though I just cancelled it).
Tiny correction: HAs scale to the highest TIER and EXPANSION of the highest level in the group. So if you have a level 101 with a group of lvl 91s, the HA tries to scale to the latest expansion in the lvl 101-105 tier (EoK). HA scaling is completely broken. They know it. They know it's going to take weeks of work to undo the damage. And they know trying to back out of the many changes will cause even more issues. It started off as a fairly innocuous idea: stop people from farming Gribbles. But the changes were quite far-reaching. As HAs stand now, players endure more risk (an expansion's worth of additional difficulty) for the same reward as it was before. As Kraken stated above, they have shown an appalling lack of will to fix it.
When I was referring to scaling off the max level of the instance I should have been more clear that it was in reference to the mob levels. The trash is typically +2-3 levels about the max character and elite/special/rare mobs are +4 levels. So, it really limits the effective that can group together. Definitely can’t have the tank be the lowest level class or your crowd control. Anything more than a 2 level spread between group members is going to render the lower level character to near zero value.
