It's painfully slow, when you don't have any achievement rewards to obtain. It's almost a penalty to be a completionist on a character. I used a 100 Heroic token to make a Wizard, and after hitting 110 (currently 113) it just became ridiculously slow. Good thing, they added 3 decimal places to experience gains. Please, give Personas an xp boost or a way to claim the achievements again or experience sharing when not in use. Overseer is the only thing that will make noticeable gains for the day.
While I agree that a way to reuse the gained achievements on a persona would be ideal, there are ways to mitigate the grind somewhat. The mercenary tasks in both NoS and LS are repeatable for xp and yield about 1%. With enough dps you can do the Heroes Forge mecenaries in 15 minutes, gaining about 4% including the xp from the kills, which is not too bad. For making this a viable way, they would have to add xp to the mercenary quests in ToV, CoV and ToL as well.
Interesting I didn't know there was Exp on merc quests in NoS. RoS also needs exp adding to merc quests.
Speaking in terms of AA, the NoS merc task give 17 and the LS ones give 22 AA when setting slider to 100% AA.
At least you were able to use the 100 token (which I'm guessing is their plan for everyone to buy these for APs). Imagine starting from level 1! They should remove the level restrictions for APs, so if you want to group a level 1 AP with a level 125 char, go for it. And let the level 1 get the xp!
For starting at 1, these aren't horrible to level through that early stretch. It'll be even easier when the Hero AAs get corrected, I suspect. A level 1 with no gear, the current LS mount buff, badger familiar, and Jann mask has nearly 8K hp/mana and I'm not sure how long the melee mitigation wins out from the aforementioned buffs, but you won't even take melee damage for a while. The stretch from 70 to 95 to be able to group with max and then from 110+...
The best current solution if you just want to hurry up to max level is to group with your max level friends after 95 and let them carry you for a while doing max level stuff. Having said that, it is my impression that Daybreak's goal with Personas is to make something very grindy--to invent something time consuming to do with your main character for live players who don't want alts and "finish" an expansion after a couple months (many of whom just quit until next year from what I hear).
Ive started to think that DB doesn't have as many goals with something as we assume. AP were a good idea, so they made it. The structure of the game makes it hard and grindy. They didn't plan that, it just worked out that way. To change it would involve alot of work from a diminshed dev team that can't even make 3 group missions.
Adding XP to Mercenary quest repeats is not only good for personas, it would be helpful for a higher level character helping friends catch up (not PL service, actual grouping with friends). Being able to get XP, even in a very thin trickle, would make it more attractive to do older content with newer players since everyone could benefit.
I tried Personas in beta and the low level personas were a lot of fun and very overpowered. I had a level 1 mage with over 6K HP and mana, level 1 spells were hitting for 127 damage, mobs have what 50HP? Kill rate was very, very fast and I never ran out of mana. With 6K HP and Mana you wouldn't have to get any gear until what level 65 ish? With 8K you could go even longer. Melee was a little more difficult with the DS from Janns Veil, but once I was hitting more often it went pretty quick, just need to make sure you get a hit on every mob and they don't die to just DS. My leveling up path will likely include doing DoN for faction so she has the AAs from that as well. Things will be tougher when I start on a new TLP, so I think picking the base char to get the first set of gear will be the key to that. Most likely to be a shaman.
Jann's Veil is great for adds or wading into a swarm that are 20+ levels higher than the baby persona. Even if 10% die to the DS only, that's still a benefit and, in my opinion, absolutely hilarious.
The quest leveling system just needs to be retooled itself. I agree that leveling in currently expansion should be the ideal path, but once that expansion passes they just need to reduce penalties. Let the XP reduction hit at 120 forcing players to do LS progression -> Once next expansion level cap then LS becomes "normal" xp gains -> 125 becomes new Quest leveling tier and the new expansion where you gain the XP from. Much better system to not punish catching up or persona's, and allow a more open way of hitting the current expansion level tier. You can even honestly leave the XP gained from achievements there as well.
They expliticly have taken it away before when they have and said they are only supposed to have coin rewards. Probably get patched out in January. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/game-update-notes-january-18-2023.288241/ https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/game-update-notes-february-11-2020.263070/
Yea with my alts ill level them with my ranger til like 111 then its like a brick wall then its overseer slow but eventually you get your levels.
The merc tasks in DLC are a special case, as they give faction instead of xp. Taking away xp from merc tasks in LS would contradict their own recommendation to use repeatable quests to level personas.
I wouldn't hold my breath. My advice to everyone is to utilize the merc tasks as much as you can in the next few days because there is no way they leave them as they are now.
Why do some players think they are entitled to a max level/max AA persona 30 days after release of the feature? Have some patience. We all knew that it was going to take a long time to get a persona current. Yet many seem to be in a rush to have it ready today. Patience is a virtue, where there is a will there is a way, all that stuff. Enjoy the journey, stop worrying about the destination. Someone in guild has a 113 they have leveled since 1. It can happen if you put forth the time. Just feels like nowadays many don't want to put in the time (myself included, 36 missions and counting for a neck).
