I had my first CD group today and it was quite the eye opener. I didn't play much in PoP but in KA I was pretty good dps. But today I was only doing about 500m dps which turned out to be only 1% of the parse for my group. My necro has 1228 resolve and 55k potency. The only thing I could think of was my fervor was too low at only 150 while the rest of my group appeared to be at 225 fervor unbuffed. They also had Ancient tier Ascension spells and all GM'd normal spells which I don't have the money to buy myself. So how do I raise my fervor? Do I need to pay for two accounts to heartbound another 30 fervor? What else? In b4 get gud.
Your potency is what's too low. Fervor multiplies the total spell/combat art damage after all formulas, and has a hard cap of 230. Potency is a multiplier to spell/combat art damage or healing, and so far as I know, it has no cap.
Just like PoP, the CD mobs appear to have hidden 'potency mitigation'. If you have less than the magic number, you're hitting the mobs with wet noodles. As soon as you get above it you're punching them in the face.
You need to have over 60k pot to parse in T1, and I believe it is around 75k pot to parse in T2. What I had to do to raise my potency above 60k - I harvested around 30 rares from those coral reef looking nodes and refined them. I lost about 1/3 of the rares during the refining process. I then had a crafter make me a full set of mastercrafted jewelry and gave him the rest of the rares that weren't needed. I experimented on each piece until it was visionary, with all five experiments going toward potency. I then plat infused the jewelry and reforged it into potency.
It took one evening to harvest and one to experiment, and got me into heroics, which my T4 raid gear wasn't good enough to do. I find harvesting relaxing and enjoyable with a nice glass of wine, but I didn't like the evening of experimenting at all!
Within Chaos Descending the hardcap of fervor is in the area about 350 (depending on the group) CB drops because a lot of new item have no CB and not DC You will get a 55 fervor rune and a celestrial spell after finishing all T1/T2 zones This is a huge boost
Don't forget to go back to PoP's Coliseum of Valor and buy the Celestial Gate off the adornment merchant if you don't have it.
Just as a note, since not everyone on Maj'Dul has been aware of this (going by General chat discussions): You can also experiment on mastercrafted gear that someone else has made for you or that you bought on the broker. I won't do experimentation for someone else because of the risk of loss, although you can get a number of boosts to experimentation that make success more likely.
I wish items that used purified rares had a different name. On broker it shows as the same name, so somebody who put a lot more effort into making a 3k potency preinfused wrist item for example, gets lumped right on in there with the base 2.7k potency guy. Of course the guy who did the refining had higher expense going into it - yet on the broker his item LOOKS like all the others so if he prices it higher it doesn't sell as well. That just encourages everybody to do the lowest common denominator that is the cheapest to do.
take a deep breath. what you're experiencing is normal for coming back to any history-rich game. if it was trivial to catch up, it means it's trivial to play, so noone would be playing since there are way better trivial-by-design games to play. look at the bright side - when you have so many things needing improvement, you're in for a long and exciting journey ahead of you where you'll be seeing yourself visibly progress each day; every long-time player is jealous of your current position, trust me; enjoy it. Lets break down your predicament, without throwing hands up in the air: - you just came back to the game. you're behind in everything you've mentioned yourself and other things people already said. your crit bonus is likely at 3k if not lower and your doublecast is probably effectively-0, in addition. so yea they have a year of accumulated better gear and spells on you. you dont need a 2nd account to Heartbind with, tho that's certainly a way to do it; find a friend. - while CD is one of the sharpest gear resets in memory, not all old gear is trash. in addition, several PoP runes are valuable that you probably dont have and of those available on TishanBox did you spend considerable time choosing ones that make sense or default your way to pseudo-victory? - spells and ascenscions did not reset. good news: it's easier than ever to catch up on ascenscions without p2w'ing it. i didn't mean easy, but certainly way more doable. it'll take time to accumulate the plat for it, enjoy the process of improvement. bad news: a heroic boss with a powerful group is usually ~1-2m affair. Which is the perfect duration for it to be a predominantly ascenscion/assassinate spamfest. If, by the sound of it, you somehow fell into such high-voltage group, you're bringing a knife to a gunfight with your crap ascenscions. - i'm skeptical of the stats you quoted - if you were 1% of your group dps at 500m, it means ur group did 50b. it's not unheard of, but i'm skeptical you'd accidentally find urself in such group at the current junction of the xpac. i can believe that quote on something like a quick AE trash pull with dragonfire and couple daggerstorms in a currently-avg group.... maaaaayyyyy be. yes couple of abilities/classes are way broken atm, necros are not beneficiaries. i don't believe your stated stats as the predominant case on all named fights you had in that group. - and yes, get gud. you most likely have no idea what you're doing on your toon, as many things have changed since KA and taking a break does that on its own even without that. Xpac been out less than 2 weeks. Even if you were good at some point, 2weeks is way not enough time to remember how to optimally ride this bicycle. basically, you're behind by about a factor of 10x of where you probably should be. and while, yes your bait-y titular problem is a factor, it's only one of many. combined, they'll get you to within some distance of that 10x target. but, you got a lot of room to grow and that should be exciting!
Thanks for all the replies everyone. I'll definitely get to work doing what's been suggested. Yes I was grouped (carried more like it) with a bunch of raiders. But at least I know I can get my pot over 60k. They almost need to list that as a requirement next to the resolve check.
I read Twisty's post hoping that he might provide some useful information to those of us who are having problems with the new stat mechanics in the new expansion. Unfortunately, it was a smug, long-winded post that provided no information at all. Thanks for that.
Check yourself. There were no questions asking how which mechanic works. There was a mildly-hyperventilating, mostly fact-exaggerating post asking "how come I'm not good". And while encouragement is not my strong suit, I did my best to say "it's ok - here's why", with the hopefully self-evident sub-text of how to get better in each problem area. Now, if you'd like to politely reword your first attempt at asking for help with mechanics, and work continues to be a non-starter today, we can may be take that up.
Check yourself? Are you 12? He gave his stats and asked what he can do to raise his fervor so that he can run heroics better. Your long-winded response provided no useful information whatsoever.
It's pretty straightforward: Solo encounters have no resolve requirements Heroic Tier 1: 1060 Heroic Tier 2: 1334 Raid Tier 1: 1512 Mastercrafted gear comes with 60 resolve. If you have 21 pieces of MC gear, that's a Resolve of 1260, which is more than enough to get you into heroics. The solo overland collections rewards have 40 Resolve. The solo instance collections have 50 Resolve. The problem is that as you were getting all this Resolve, chances are very good that your other stats, Potency in particular, dropped like a rock. Try to get your Potency back up to 60,000 or better. As you're trying to raise your Resolve, typically the new gear has less Potency. Ways to achieve this goal: AA lines and Ascension Forms were changed with this xpac to replace Potency buffs with Fervor, so carefully reevaluate your AA. White Potency Adorns Potency Infusers (you can use infusers from from Thalumbra forward, many can be crafted) Deity Infusing (aka plat infusing) Better gear that has both the Resolve and Potency values you need (which we probably won't see until we're getting heroic loot) Other stats to consider. (Note, I'm using cap values that were accurate during PoP, and I won't swear they haven't changed): Ability Mod should ideally be half of your biggest hit. Reforging, adorns, and infusing can boost ABMod. Crit Chance 2,500 or better. Crit Chance is how often you will critically hit with spells, CAs, and/or physical attacks. This value is often heavily debuffed based on the specific monster or zone. You need 100%, plus however much is being debuffed, so if the mob is debuffing 2000% crit chance, you need 2100% to get a crit hit every time. Crit Bonus 4,500 or better. Crit Bonus is a multiplier to the damage done on a critical hit or healing on a critical heal. The hard cap, as far as I know, is ~4266. Fervor multiplies the total spell/CA values after all other formulas have been applied. The hard cap is 230. Reuse and Recover Speeds both hard cap at 100. Casting Speed is how fast you can cast spells/CAs. The soft cap is 100, anything over that adds to Spell Doublecast. Doublecast caps at 100%, however if you look at the buffs on Named mobs, they often have a buff that increases their Doublecast Avoidance, which means you need 100+that avoidance number vs. that mob. For PoP T1 raid mobs, their Doublecast Avoidance was typically 80, so you'd have needed 180% Doublecast to actually doublecast every time. DPS Mod affects the damage of physical attacks. It has a soft cap of 600. Haste affects the speed of physical attacks. The soft cap is 200, anything over that value adds to Flurry. Flurry affects the chance of hitting multiple times on a physical attack. Accuracy adds to the contested formula (weapon skills and level vs. defense skills and level) to hit a monster. This is not used against the target's parry, dodge, shield block, or deflection. There is no cap. Strikethrough is the chance to prevent a monster from parrying or dodging an attack. Multi Attack affects the number of weapon swings per physical attack. It has a soft cap of 200.AE Autoattack (AE Auto) is the chance for physical attacks to hit multiple monsters. It has a hard cap of 100. Weapon Damage Bonus is bonus damage applied to all weapon autoattacks including melee, ranged, and spell weapons. It has a hard cap of 300.
Yeah, you can also see that the potency is higher. That requires somebody to specifically look for refined though, which means clicking through pages of listings, looking for one that is refined and has higher potency. Most people - in my experience - go for the cheapest listing if all the items have the same name. They never notice that on page 4 where the price is 100k higher that one of the listed items has 300 more potency for example. If it had it in the item name - 'Refined xxxxxx item' there's a higher chance people would actually search for that term, thereby driving up the incentive to make refined gear to put on the broker.
Thank you for your helpful post. After checking the AAs of others on EQ2U to make sure mine is right, and having all of the gear from quests and potency adorns possible, it pretty much boils down to having to infuse your gear to get to the required level to run heroics. This either means running many solos and PQs to get enough, selling krono to plat infuse, or buying premium infusers in the cash shop. I still can't figure out how to get more fervor though. This is almost as ridiculous as having to run Proving Grounds in KA.
