So then just do the progression? It doesn't take very long at all to do all the ToV progression except TOFS. (which can be the fastest or slowest depending on keys/key mobs) Tell them to get in groups instead of moloing it all. 50AAs/hour sounds slow even for solo/molo, but for a group it's absolutely dreadful. Should be pulling down 150+ if everyone is at their keyboard. Not to mention you don't need anywhere near 30000 after autogrant to get everything that's good. You'll be well into garbage territory by then.
Play on a server with 25 active players & just 2 tanks in your time-zone then tell me how long it takes to get everyone through the progression. Right now I am just taking a break until Phinigel is given its transfer/merge window, once I land on a live server which has a decent population I'll see whether I can find the motivation to play & the groups I will need in order to progress again.
I done Tov merc / part.. with a Bst / chanter and Bst / Cleric and Bst /necro. you don't need a real tank unless your trying to run the Missions.
What is your group makeup and zone/mobs that you are cycling for 150+ AA/hr? Remember the group includes returning players who's characters are pretty much starting from zero. Its not like we're rolling with the perfect sk, shm, bard, zerk, zerk, zerk all with raid weapons.
Yeah several pet-class players are doing fine, I just completely lost interest after encountering a quest that's supposedly been fixed a bunch of times yet over a year later is still broken as hell, and yeah I bug reported it. Only thing that had been keeping me playing was the ability to be somewhat self-sufficient but that had been eroded in the past few expansions so it has eaten away at what was keeping me anyway. I had been losing motivation in EQ & disliking the direction it has been taking since TBM if I am honest, so it wasn't even just one thing but a succession of annoying experiences that have made me decide to take a break, the broken quest was just the icing on a long rotting cake and an accumulated sense of dissatisfaction with the TLP concept & the journey to live in the later eras has unbalanced the pain/pleasure ratio in the wrong direction for me.
Whoosh! That's the sound of the point going over your head by the way. I clearly meant you gain more XP from logging in to do your daily overseer tasks than you would playing the game a few hours if you were just XP'ing without doing missions/progression and that this to me is a crazy situation, actually playing the game even IF it's just killing some mobs should be more rewarding than some poxy log-in game. If you disagree then that's fine, EQ is for you, my opinion is that this situation is not the direction I think the game should have gone in.
Sounds like you would be in a much better position if tank mercenaries weren't absolutely awful to rely on the way healer mercenaries aren't. It really blows my mind how balancing mercenaries isn't a pretty high priority every expansion since so many people rely on them to complete content since 6-character groups are pretty uncommon outside of 6-boxers and static fellowships.
A long time. But at least on Povar there seems to be a massive overabundance of tanks. Maybe not lots of wars, but every guild seems to have an extra dozen SKs laying around. Once you move to a normal server and find a decent guild, getting through progression shouldn't be a struggle. If you land on Povar hit me up and I'll help you get through it. Wurm cave in GD (non-instanced) Pally, Bard, Cleric and whoever wants to join us a lot of times it just ends up being a box druid who just leeches AA unless we get a named where the extra DPS would make a difference. If we get some good DPS we wind up having to move and do tizmak or dorf caves because the wurm cave doesn't have enough mobs. I will admit that we weren't getting 150AAs per hour 30,000 AAs ago. A lot of those AAs weren't gained straight grinding, they were gained helping guildies through progression. And FWIW all of us are returning players. I had a few thousand AAs when I came back to the game in September, and I'm over 46k now. The key is finding people to play with on a regular basis, and as a group figuring out what everyone needs and just working on it one thing at a time. I think our best lesson burn was just shy of 200 AAs, and these days we average around 180.
Yeah, that's definitely a part of the problem for me. I don't play a main which is a tank nor do I have one of the strong pet classes, nor are there many player tanks even playing still on my server during my time-zone so in my case it is merc tanks I have to rely on. While merc tanks are just about okay in 2 expansions ago content with current era gear items & current era levels of aa - in RoS upwards content in-era, even versus 1 mob they are bad even vs slowed mobs with 2 reactive merc healers it's common that if I am not spamming heals on a group-geared shaman on top of the merc healing the merc tank is killed. I have to be so careful to not get a second mob or I will usually wipe. The problem as I see it is that once you get into the EoK + content you have to already be max level & max merc aa to handle any of it with a merc tank, and that's a big problem in ToV where all the levelling xp is tied into the progression tasks - you effectively need the xp/levels FROM those tasks to be able to actually have a realistic chance of tackling them.
I'm on EU timezone (UK Player) so I plan on eventually xfer to Antonius Bayle since that's the only server outside of TLP with any significant EU/UK population but I do appreciate the offer. I am looking forward to at least being on a server that has more than 20-30 people in my timezone playing and seeing if that situation is a lot better, failing that at least on live I won't have Truebox restrictions so boxing will be a lot easier.. I might even start playing again once Truebox is removed from Phinigel & level up a Warrior (that I mothballed at L100 back in ROF) in preparation for the move to live, but I don't see returning to trying to progress to 115 on Phinny in ToV/CoV as being worth the frustration involved.
180-200 with lessions is 90-100/hr which is still quite a bit higher than what I'm getting in WW caves, where our group is getting around 60/hr. We probably should go back and check the older zones looking for the lowest level, dark blue cons that we can kill faster. Based on that observation Sathir's Tomb is likely to be a fast XP spot
ToV is one of the easiest if not the easiest of recent expansions. Shaman were soloing in Crystal Caverns and I'm not talking raid shaman either. If you are a Decap or Assasin class hit up Rygor Mines live side, you should be able to molo there if you have half decent gear and AA. EW as far as I can remember is the only zone with buggy quests (best to do it when no one else is running them), GD derv merc quest is now much, much easier now than it was, 9 hours to get 1 has now turned into 10 minutes to get all 9.
AB tips if you want a social guild hit up Jesters of Norrath, raid guilds either Age of Unity or Shadows of Doom. Hit me up if you need a hand with missions when you land on AB during Euro mornings.
Lessons is double XP for 30 minutes, so the amount you get during a lesson burn is a rough proxy for how much you would get per hour normally. Not totally accurate because you may have to take breaks during normal grinding that you wouldn't during a lesson burn. Is your group cycling through burns and tanking discs constantly? I've found a lot of people always want to save their big discs/aa's for just in case moments that almost never come. If you've got the whole group constantly cycling through all their abilities with longer refreshes you'll get a lot more done.
Totally agree. Crystal Caverns is easily the worst zone I've seen in the expansion so far. Mobs packed in, huge aggro ranges, no safe spots...
That's kind of where I am at. I'm still logging in 3-4 times a week but a lot of evenings I think, "Meh, don't feel like playing."
as a total noob and just returning to EQ (left start of RoS for a short break) then ToV on Phinny meant I needed 55% to get to 111... that was easilly grinded... the exp in ToV was amazing (hint bring a necro to burn a lesson for an hour) the 4 missions brought me to 4% off of hitting 113, doing all the quests(part/merc) brought me to 114 and 40% - collections and overseer accounted for the last 60% took like 7-10 days tops. I am not 115 and 20% into level and the odd overseer accounts for any deaths. is it annoying as heck that grind exp was nerfed? you bet... I'd take half the missions/achi exp for double the mob kill exp any day though... when not maxed and not doing actual achievements (where the exp is hidden) then you are better off keeping AA to 100% which is SILLY in a "grind to max level" situation
I took an alt from 110-115 and + 2000 AA's in under 3 weeks logging in twice a day clicking a few buttons for 20 min at a time. A billion times less tedious then grinding a million trash mobs. I never left the guild lobby once in that entire time. Ill take that kind of "Bothering" any day of the week and twice on Sunday to grind out half a dozen alts that are only relevant once they hit 115.
