Help with starting TOV progression

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Shibi, Dec 15, 2013.

  1. Shibi Member

    I just returned tot he game after 2 years, started a Channeler but didn't like him so returned to my old raiding Illusionist from DoV days. I can play my Illy, my skills didn't rust that much ;)

    But I am having some difficulties understanding the current progression, hopefully someone knows something I have missed that might be more obvious if I had of done the two expansions I missed.

    I've hit 95, gotten 340AAs and done the questline as much as possible to get basic gear.

    I've Adorned the gear with Crit crystals to the minimum then swapped to increase other stats I believe I want.

    I've started running the "Advanced Solos" and can Clear Nexus, Hive and Pickwhatever upper by myself, I have the gear I need from those. I would have thought the next Advanced solo to work on was depths - but those 20 gobbies take me out before I can even hit the spells to mez them.

    The other Advanced Solos are also too hard for a single little cloth wearing Illy. Sure, I can handle everything to the last boss with ease, but come that last boss I hit a brick wall from being undergeared.

    So, here is the issue I hope someone can advise on: The rewards from the sub-bosses in Advanced Solos is a joke, who needs adornments of lesser quality than I can make. The final bosses are too hard (outside of the three I mention) to get the gear.

    I am hoping someone can tell me where I have gone wrong, what obvious thing I have missed in order to complete these advanced solos. Dying so many times and only getting a few piddly adornment chests is *not* fun.

    Thanks!
  2. murmur Member

    Sounds like you are running them without merc, so grab a healer merc or find some other player to go with you, AS zones allow two players in them.
  3. Shibi Member

    So, they are not Solos as was the case in the DoV solo?

    Honestly Merc's are more of a hassle than not. They are too dumb not to draw too much agro and they will and do die before you can blink. I'd accept taking a friend if the rest of the zone wasn't so trivial and the rewards on sub-bosses were better. To find then take along a friend for only the last boss seems to waste everyone's time. (Population to find friends willing to help on solos seems to have really fallen through the floor in the last 2 years!)

    As a constructive suggestion to SOE: make the rest of the bosses harder and drop useful items, call it a Duo, if that's the case! That or make the end boss soloable.

    Taking Fherin as another example in halls of the betrayer. Stat is burn down the 2 souls then the boss. Trouble is the boss breaks his chains too easily meaning he is soon hitting on myself and pet as we try to take the adds.

    As a constructive suggestion to SOE: make it so that one of the illusionists prime skills, crowd control, works on all the end-bosses. Same with each class, if you are going to overtool the end boss in a SOLO then each class should have an ability to use to beat it.
  4. Errrorr An Actual EQ2 Player

    They are 'Advanced Solo'. Which basically means:
    • Solo if overgeared
    • Solo + Merc if reasonably geared
    • Duo if Undergeared
    You can take friends/guildmembers etc in these zones and still get the same amount of loot each.
  5. Shibi Member

    Ahha I found out the issue: Wewt!

    You can reset them and not wait the three days between each trivial run. What 2 years absense from the game can make you forget.

    Now I can run the three I can do, over and over until I get the etherials. Yay! >.>

    Thanks though everyone. Silly me. Reset the Advanced Solos and run them 20 times a day. Who'd have thunk it!
  6. Jrral Active Member

    Rather than grinding those 3 over and over for the rare Ethereal it'd probably be more productive to run missions and get enough etyma to put yellow gems in the Cryptic gear you're getting to upgrade it, get purple adornments to boost your power level, and get to the point where you can start running the next instance. Look up the "ToV Gear" page on EQ2i to get a list of what armor slots are given by each advanced solo instance and an outline of what missions reward how much.
  7. Kari Well-Known Member

    The ideal would be to run them with another player. It will go much faster, and you will each get your own chest at the end, so by running them faster you will both get more rewards in the same length of time.

    Also make sure you do the daily and weekly solo missions in addition to the individual dungeon missions.
    If you are a crafter make sure you complete the crafting quest line, then you will be able to do a daily crafting mission for 1 etyma and the weekly for 10 etyma.
  8. Rotherian Well-Known Member

    Just curious. Is the advanced solo to which you are referring Highkeep? And is the particular named to which you are referring the non-aggro Chef?

    If so, don't attack him and none of the goblins in the dining hall should attack (they shouldn't be able to be attacked either). Just go past the dining area to where the final named is. You'll still be able to get the ornate chest at the end.

    If not, please be more specific about which zone it was - and what part of the zone - so that we can give you targeted advice.
  9. Shibi Member

    Good advice!

    I do currently have 4 level 95 crafters and they are doing the weeklies and dailies. I am bringing up another 9 level 95 crafters to help support my Illy.

    I am making yellow gems and of course my white and purple adornments using mana that I get from grinding out SS. I've also been looking at the top raiding illies to catch up on current ideas gear and adornments. So far no "square" purples, but soon. I've bought what I think are fairly good greens for my rings and necklaces. (Pickclaw Trickster's Gemstone +6- with 30 MA when maxed - and that will be a pain haaa)

    I do think most of my issue was forgetting the lockouts (doh) I was looking at what I could do and thinking ok, 3 days between each run >.< and getting frustrated with a seemingly unclimbable progression hill. Now that is eased I am back in the grovve of things and progressing again. 90 minute lockouts remove the disgust of sub-bosses dropping cruddy items. Silly thoughts of 3 days lockouts and then only seeing cruddy chests was bad.


    Stratwise though, Bolgin in Pickclaw Depths will be my nemesis and thoughts for this day as I bump my doables up to 4. That rush of gobbies as he is lobbing barrels needs to be worked out. yesterday my skills jumped quite a bit though so it's possible my mez will now hold on that crown where previously it was far too weak and broke.
  10. Regolas Well-Known Member

    If you have the merc feature, just bring along a cleric merc set to protect only. He'll hopefully keep you healed and cured through the hard fights and will just follow you to move away from scripts as he's not attacking anything.

    That's if you must solo. Because the nexus, hive, high keep and stratum heroic zones are good to run in a group for more gear. It's quick and you will be fine in a group setup with quested gear in those zones.
  11. Jrral Active Member

    Another thing: if you get items from a set you don't want, keep them. There's an exchange merchant on Test for advanced solo and heroic gear that works similar to the one for the quested gear, and I expect it'll be showing up on the live servers before too long. 7 items from a slot will give you enough exchange tokens to buy the one you really want for that slot. If you're having problems getting the set you want, just keep accumulating the undesirable ones (DO NOT upgrade them with gems, just keep them) for when you can do an exchange.
  12. mague Active Member

    Another thing is, we now can have more then one merc. You might think about swaping merc on certain encounters. The Lycan Pally is quite tough and helps a lot on certain encounters. He heals a bit and if you dps like mad he ll cast amends on you. There are even some encounters that require you to have a OT.
  13. Shibi Member

    Maybe I will run a merc, but until I know I can solo each boss in these Solo instances then I won't feel good enough to join a group to do heroics in them.

    Hive is a very simple script and instance, as is Nexus. The top of pickclaw, with the Admiral at the end (end boss after skipping the cook) is a DPS stop check, you need to get him fast down before you run out of mezzing spells. I can do that now, he dies very very fast.

    The depths seem impossible for a solo instance as an Illusionist - maybe someone has worked out the trick and can inform? Web doesn't seem to say much apart from take out the goblins.

    I've found so far that moving into the bigger room and diagnoly away from the Dwarf means his barrels don't hurt at all, most miss if you stand behind the overturned table there. It also means that you have a good amount of time to target the gobies to mez one group as they run in. But the 10 unmezzed gobbies kill you too fast.

    Devs: Maybe it's time us Illusionists get better mezzing spells? Another encounter mez would be handy for this boss for sure.

    Still, today was ok, I ran myself up to 550 crit and 100MA and 600 DPS thanks to weapon and secondary drops in Nexus.

    Bolgin Seralis is my nemesis.
  14. murmur Member

    Have you done Soliddar's quests in Droumlunds? Wrist and ring that you get from his last quest are really handy when you solo, wrist does pretty nice aoe damage and ring heals you some. With those items goblins should be easier and faster to kill. And remember that you need to have done Mark of Awakening in KoS to get those quests.
  15. Jrral Active Member

    Bear in mind that these zones were designed to not be soloable until you're overgeared for them. I doubt you're going to be able to solo them until you're kitted out with a majority of Arcane or better gear, and you're going to have to join groups to do heroics to get Arcane gear. Beginning gear for heroic groups is the overland quest-reward gear or Cryptic (advanced solo) gear with white adornments and maybe some gems or select purple adornments on it.
  16. Rotherian Well-Known Member

    Just a note -

    Lycan:
    [IMG]

    Lujien:
    [IMG]

    Calling one by the other's name is kinda like seeing a Tier'Dal and calling him or her a Koada'Dal*. Sure, you might live through having done so, but it is never a good idea - especially if you do so within earshot. :p
    ______________________________________________________

    Other than completely misidentifying the species of the merc, though, the post is mostly spot on. :D

    * I mean, heck, Lycan and Lujien don't even have the same number of toes** on each foot. :eek:
    ** Lycan have four toes. Lujien only have three.
  17. Regolas Well-Known Member

    Bolgins strat is pretty simple, but whether you can do it solo as a cloth wearer is debatable. You will need cure pots for a start.

    He has adds first, 10 I think now, and then when he starts attacking there's a number of things you need to do.

    1) Cure quickly if your screen goes red, failure to cure is a fail event death

    2) Move him if he stoneskins

    3) Stop attacking him when he emotes (yellow text) that he's drank too much potion. If you keep hitting him, adds will spawn.

    He does 2 & 3 about 3 times in a fight, with 1 happening 1-3 times.

    In theory a stack of cure pots and maybe some heal pots means you can do it solo, but much easier with a merc healer in tow. Especially for a cloth wearer who will take significant damage from his bodyguards and the adds.
  18. Atan Well-Known Member

    I don't really agree on this. So far I have solod them with the following classes using nothing but quest gear:
    Guardian
    Paladin
    Beastlord
    Templar
    Defiler
    Troubador

    If you feel there is a particularly harder class to do them with let me know. I'll quest that one up next. The templar was by far the worst but that's cause even in DPs spec, its still very slow and forces you to execute the scripts for quite a long time,

    If you understand mechanics, the scripts and carry a full supply of consumables they are all very soloable IMO.
  19. napu Member

    what do you use to heal yourself for the non healer classes? Pretty impressive that you managed it with a guardian from my experience.
  20. The_Cheeseman Well-Known Member

    All a decent tank needs is the quested charm and ring for healing, really. So far I have run a monk, inquisitor, and necromancer through the entire sig line and never felt the need to use a merc. The necro was by far the fastest, blowing everything up with the caster pet and just face-tanking everything. I will probably try a beastlord next. Granted, these are the strongest solo classes in the game, but you definitely don't need to be overgeared to beat the instances.