1) Rank 2 Spells- On Bristlebane a select group of people buy anything that's cheap and bump it up to 25000-50000. I was able to get Minor, Lesser Dream Fragments at bargain prices but rank 2's for 90-100 seem ridiculously priced. I was told the 101-105 spells would be about 400k+ or higher from a returning 105 player. I checked Firiona Vie and the spells are three times cheaper. I don't really want to buy krono and my knowledge of plat farming is limited at best. I made about 6k killing mobs for my black chaos breastplate in RSS, and I get a 3-4k split from 3 Gribbles. I used my loyalty points to buy the bags, probably a mistake in hindsight. I do horde the tradeskill items instead of /barter, it seems like the prices vary too much on there and its just the same people stockpiling it to sell it for triple the amount in bazaar I think. 1a) Do most people use rank 2 spells all the way up or do some people level with rank 1 spells? As it is I'm skipping some spells, should I be buying all of them? Example: Hit 92 on necro, bought only the pet and the swift dot. Was sub-1200 plat. 1b) What level would it be safe to farm the alaran cantrips/dreadmotes or am I better off leveling and acquiring currency (marks of valor/remnants)? I box a bard or enchanter both 92. 2) I was advised to save my marks of valor, but I have some concerns about my gear relative to the mobs we are fighting. At 85 a 3-4k hitter with 5k was the norm. At 91-92 the mobs hit has gone up to 9k. I do my best to not get hit but sometimes it happens. On my first 90s I used the marks to fully equip a warrior/sham in HoT t4 from the Level 90 vendor. I was told this was a mistake. I'm slightly worried about aoe's, rampages, mod rod/lifeburn low life agro. Would fighting in TBM alleviate the gear concern, I calculated the gear cost of 85-90 to be around 570 remnants per item when I bought the type 5? and type 9? augments. I did into the temple (b) and I only have a few rems. We're going to try the lxavnom, defense of health etc soon but I haven't done it yet. Fear Touched - a few resellers control this market, anything cheap gets bought by them and put for a high premium, the tunic was 200k, gloves 70k. Obviously if I'm having trouble with spells I won't be able to acquire these. I'm aware on some servers this gear is given away freely but since I just joined my guild not too long ago I don't want to ask them for too much. Already got help on necro 1.5 mob in noble's causeway from a 105 warrior.
Do dailies from Teek, a lot of the 85-90 spell frags drop from trash in grounds. Cantrips not so much. Shards landing is a good place to hunt with a group in the 90s and trash can drop both spell dreadmotes and gear pretty often. This is slower maybe and low impact rather than edge of seat, but you can settle in have fun chat and work on gearing up. Do the kill tasks while you are at it for a bit of added xp.
1) For most spells, the difference between rank 1 and 2 is so minor that it's not worth spending significant effort to upgrade. If you find it cheap in the bazaar or it drops while playing, great. Otherwise, don't worry about it. 2) If someone actually advised you against gearing up your tank, they are giving you bad advice and you should stop listening to them.
My main excuse for using rk2 spells is that they can be cheaper than the rk1, so I always check the Bazaar before buying a set. This stops being viable after HoT, which as said above, drops like the gentle rain from Grounds trash.
Also note that many spells can be obtained by research. On Bristlebane Msliz is my skilled alt crafting spells of all levels except 101 through 105 where no recipes have been created. In addition, I have an alt in high level training to make tomes. If there is a posted recipe or if I can intuit what the recipe is, we craft on request at modest prices.
