Could use some help on a new char

Returning to non-TLE server. Hardcore raided as a pally tank until I think the third or 4th expansion then moved onto greener pastures.
I'm planning on playing with my spouse who is mostly interested in fury/warden and possibly warlock. Ideally we'd like to be able to duo somewhat successfully and then get into light raiding in the future.

The challenge that we're encounting is the overwhelming amount of spells and abilities and most of the information/guides are very, very outdated. I started a necro at 1 and we've been duo-ing with mercs until the 30s and that's gone by pretty easily as we hit familiar content. Then we tried the heroic upgrade and I picked a wizard- 15 freakin pages of spells. There's just no way I can absorb all of that much less have 18i3^8 hotbars to cover all the spells and abilities.

Can someone recommend a class or style that makes this a lot more manageable, or point to a somewhat recent guide with a rotation or something importable? DPS for now.

Thanks,

Uh. I don't think there's any such thing as 'light raiding' these days. You're either totally committed, or you're out.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings!

Also, you don't need to use all the spells at once! Many of them are only for specific raiding scenarios - not usually used for general/heroic content. Sure, you should be familiar enough to know what each one does and when you should be using it, but you don't need to use all of them, all the time.

Hit sort button on the spell book, its at the bottom in the middle and click Max spells make sure that is checked. That should lighten the load enough! Doing this on my wizard took it from 17 pages on spells to 5. Hope that helps!

I've played off and on more recently than you, but I definitely feel you as I've been mostly rocking the TLE's the last few years. What I do is stick to classes I know (in my case, druids), stalk other players on EQ2U to get a sense of what abilities they focus on (ie Elementalist later on), live and breathe EQ2i, try to use ACT although it's not great when I have apprentice spells, and most importantly - take a breather and realize as long as the mobs are dying and I'm not, I must be doing something right lol.

Hopefully you'll have better luck than me in finding a helpful guild, if nothing else ask questions in general and usually people are pretty nice about advice. Overall, I wouldn't sweat rotations and stuff until you're 110 and done with the Chaos Descending sig line and ready to group. Or at least, that's how I'm doing it. This game is insanely hard to come back to on the surface, but so far I'm able to kill what needs to be killed utilizing free upgrades the game gives you.

Okie dokie. There's your first huge problem. Start a new character, and DON'T use a mercenary at all until you're level 30. That's how you actually learn what spells do which things. At low levels, the mercenary is wiping the floor with every foe, not you. You learn what the class does, by level 30 you have pretty much your full set of spells/abilities.

Open the Knowledge Book (press K). Go to the Spells tab (mages and priests) or the Combat Arts tab (fighters and scouts, crusaders and maybe some other classes may have BOTH tabs) Sort that tab by Max Spell Level. That should remove all the abilities that are outlevelled from view.

Now, READ the full spell description for every spell you have. You should discover that you have related groups of spells.

Take the warlock, for example. Warlocks have some single target, direct damage spells. They have some green-icon-background AOEs. There are several spells that help you lose aggro (important in a group at times!) There are spells for rooting or slowing a foe. There are spells for refilling mana and even some health. Tanks start out by taunting and hitting a mob. Healers have some spells they cast on a tank right before a pull, some that heal individuals, some that heal a group. Etc.

KNOW YOUR CLASS. Each group of spells is used situationally. In a raid, you will never use the root/slow things, for example, because they do not work at all on epic mobs (and the spell description will say that).

HOTBAR MANAGEMENT

BUFFS: All classes have some spells that persist until they are cancelled and grant some benefit, otherwise known as buffs, which may affect only you or may affect you and your group. These do not have to be on your hotbars, but you DO have to know what they are because some foes will remove your buffs during a fight and you need to know what to put back up.

I usually devote one hotbar to buffs. Since I have more buffs than will easily fit on that one hotbar, I make little macros (press O to open that window) and put two buffs in a macro, then put the macro on the hotbar. I group the self-buffs together, and then I put group buffs together. I personally like to have buffs visible on the hotbar this way because it makes it easier for me to see if something was debuffed. YMMV, some people don't do this and just remember what buffs they have.

DAMAGE: Whether it's a spell or a combat arts, every class has some abilities that allow you to do damage. Some work very well. Some are just completely worthless. You need to experiment with them and see what's working. Often a spell that does a relatively low amount of damage but refreshes very quickly can do more damage than a big nuke that takes a long time to cast. AA will affect certain spells, and will actually give you some additional spells. When you get to level 100+, you get to learn Ascension spells, which adds new twists.

You can use a tool such as Advanced Combat Tracker and a Guild Hall Training Dummy to figure out spell casting orders by trial and error.

You can also use a spreadsheet such as Excel to calculate spell efficiencies. Different people use different formulas for doing this. This requires you to grab data from your Knowledge book spell descriptions. You will need to take into account cast time, minimum damage, maximum damage, if the spell has a DOT component you need the minimum damage per tick, the maximum damage per tick, the duration of the DOT, and how many ticks per second.

Yes, that sounds confusing and difficult. But other people have done this already, for example, there's a pretty helpful Warlock DPS Efficiency worksheet you can download. You can look at his formulae and figure out how he's calculating spell efficiency and use that to make efficiency calculations for other classes.

Once you calculate spell efficiency, you can see numerically which spells aren't worth the time it takes to cast 'em, so don't put those on your hotbars.

BAUBLES: Especially if you raid, you will need to be able to quickly cast cure potions, buff potions, temp adorns, Overclocked Mana Stones, and other various clicky things that you need during a fight. Lots of us have those on a hotbar somewhere.

SOCIALS: Another thing people use hotbars for are various social responses, anything from an emote like /thumb to a scripted LFG message to a greeting to your guildmates. If you're overwhelmed by hotbars, don't use socials on your hotbars, just learn the slash commands for what you want.

That's pretty much why I don't recommend the "heroic upgrade". Filtering the spellbook to only show the highest Tier help a bit but it still may be overwhelming. Anyway leveling on "Live" servers as a duo - even without mercs - is fast and easy (Ok, maybe not so fast with a Defiler/Guardian combo )

Most "old" guides are still accurate until you get your Ascension's spells then your class/AA DPS spells are just "fillers" anyway. I hope the next Xpack will change that.

For your duo if you want to play a DPS, I'll recommend Fury + Warlock (if you don't use an Upgrade ! ) Very strong duo, you'll never run out of Mana and "Bonus point" if one of you has "Track" as a racial trait, In short : If the mobs can't one-shot you, you'll probably win the fight. And this duo would be an easy-sell for most "light raiding guilds".
If Casters aren't your type, Warden + Ranger isn't bad either or Warden + Beastlord.

This is very true with mercs in EQII. When I got a healer merc in EQ1, it buffed, healed (and often rezzed) me. When I got a healer merc for my 34 Bruiser in this game, I could barely get a hit in before the merc smoked all the mobs. If I agro three mobs while running by the time I realize it the merc has wiped them. Great for quick xp and loots but you don't learn your character skills. You're just a spectator.

If you want to use a merc you can set the merc so all it does is follow you. Set 'Protect' and 'Assist' to none, and leave 'Follow' on you. Also click on the icons on the merc window to turn off actions such as 'attack anything that attacks you'. Also important to turn off the 'attack anything that attacks the merc' action because if a mob uses an AE spell that hits the merc, it'll defend itself and wipe the mob fast. If the icon is small, that means it's activated. If its large, it's deactivated.
That way you can take on mobs by yourself and learn how to use your spells and get your weapon skills up. The merc will just stand and watch. If at one point you realize you've bitten off more than you can chew, or an add comes when you are almost dead and with no power left, you can click on the red crossed swords button to tell the merc to attack the selected mob and even a healer will smoke it pretty quick. That's normally how I use them.

If you are a healer with a merc you can get good experience as a healer if faced with a really tough mob or a bunch of heroics.

Thanks for the responses. Unfortunately I probably asked the question the wrong way. What I should have asked was, between ascencendcies and regular spells, which class has the simplest rotation in a group/raid environment.

I can read spell description, but I lack context to which ones are worth keeping on a hotbar and overall utility, especially for those on a multi-minute recast.

Multiple skills are just the way it is in EQ2. At end game, your going to have 8-10 spell bars..and one for entire bar + a couple of cells for ascension only. Not to mention the all the buff. cure / heal potions & travel filled cells.

There are other games that use 10 skills...EQ2 is not one of them.

That said, I think my swashie probably has the simplest rotation and the most empty cells in his hotbars.

Ascension spells are very slow to cast, though they may do tons of damage. They improve if you upgrade those spells (scholars can craft them for you, you need Planar Energy and for Adept, Master, and Ancient you'll have to get the Illegible Pages needed), but if you calculate your spell efficiencies, you will find you still have some profession spells that do better DPS than Ascensions.

There is no class with a "simple" rotation. You do have to apply some thought as to what works best in a heroic group against fairly quick-to-kill mobs, vs. a long raid fight, single foes vs. grouped multiple foes, etc.

Going back to the warlock, most warlock spells cast kinda slow, so you want to identify the ones that cast fast for use in those short fights, even if they don't do overwhelming damage (better to hit it with several lower damage spells than to try to cast one big nuke that can't get launched before everything is dead). If you are in a zone where the mobs are close together and/or extremely social (like the new Fabled Kael zones), you will have to avoid using blue-background AOE spells such as Rift (for a warlock) or the various blue Ascensions in tight spots where you might pull multiple groups.

I think I explained in good detail how you figure this stuff out a few posts above. Calculate spell efficiencies.You mentioned you have a warlock, I gave you a link to a pretty darn excellent warlock spell efficiency calculator. Use it. Plan on recalculating when you get new gear, when you get an upgraded version of a spell, when your fervor goes up.

The damage spells that have very low efficiency, don't put on your hotbar. Debuffs which only debuff a tiny amount, get rid of them too. Buffs that buff something you don't need more of, ditch them.

I love my baby ranger, but raids usually don't want rangers as they don't have any utility/buffs to bring with their DPS. Play a ranger for fun, but don't be surprised if you can't find a raid slot for a ranger.

I do not have a warlock.
I said my spouse was playing fury/warden and was considering warlock. Ultimately she went with mage. I'm continuing on with the necro.

I do appreciate the help- It's just a lot to absorb and try to find info for.
At this point, I don't know if/what is good, but I have a spell rotation that appears to work

What would be a good resource on determining what to do next? We've boosted, used the ascendancy elixir, and started going through the merc-gear quests in the library. Is there a guide or resource that goes over what we should be doing next? Quest/gear lines, upgrades, etc?

Hi,

I published a Wizard Guide about a year ago. Although some of it is outdated most of the information is still good and certainly get you oriented to the class.



Wizards are not too difficult once you get the hang of them. Some general points:

As mentioned, sort your spellbook to only show max level spells. This will cut the spellbook down by about 2/3rds.

Another poster mentioned about calculating actual DPS of each spell. You can see my spreadsheet here to see what it looked like for me (it's slightly outdated but not too bad).

Generally speaking, Fusion, Rays of Disintegration, Ball of Fire, and Firestorm will be your most frequently cast profession spells. Make certain you get the class rune from the ethereal coins vendor, it is free. In that same vein, go to Coliseum of Valor and grab the Rune of the Celestial for free until you find something you prefer more. Unda Arcanus Spiritus, Eci's Frozen Wrath, Frozen Rain, and Ethernere Chains are important AA spells. Concussive Blast as well, for the stack building and the de-hate. As for ascension, most wizards pick elementalist, and there are lots of good elementalist spells.

On the flip side, there are many spells and abilities which are obsolete at this time. Solar Flare and Strike of Consistency are totally off my hotbar. Flames of Velious and Magma Chamber are extremely situational, limited use DDs. Glacial Wind and Storm of Lightning are extremely limited use AoEs.

Everything else is somewhere in between.

https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/EverQuest_2_Wiki:Main_Page

Particularly the 'Quests' section with signature timelines.

If you haven't done the Panda guy quests yet, you'll want to hit those up as well in Sentinel's Fate > Sundered Frontier > Wizard Spire. Very, very nice upgrades on him including the ability to level all of your ascended classes to 15. And the walk-through for those quests is on that wiki I linked above.

You should be able to use that same spreadsheet for any class, just insert your toon's spell names and plug in the values from your Knowledge Book.

Thanks. If I switch from Necro to wizard this would be quite helpful.

Ah, I must have misunderstood what you meant when you said that you picked a wizard with your heroic upgrade.

Apologies, I see the confusion I created.

I tried the wizard with the level 100 try-before-you-buy heroic character thing and found the spells and whatnot quite overwhelming. The playstyle didn't fit me so I abandoned it. Tried several other classes this way and found I enjoyed the necro that I was already leveling at around 40 to suit me better, at least so far.
I used the upgrade that came with the expansion to upgrade necro the necro to 110. Additionally, my spouse did the same thing for a wizard but her play is quite different from mine- she's content just to mash buttons. We also used the Ascension boost to 115 on respective ascensions.
We did the quick questline to give us access to the library and have just been poking around doing daily quests and the quests inside the various planes as those appear to have given upgrades to our current characters and some merc gear that its going to take us quite a while before we can use.
Other than that, we're kinda aimless.

Have you done the signature questline for CD? You could also go back and complete the KA and PoP questlines, the rewards are immaterial for you at this point but they are fun content in my opinion. The KA questline is important to do if you wantt o try to get the rare components needed to upgrade your Epic 2.0 abilities, as you need to have completed it in order to participate in the Obulus Frontier PQ. There are other ways to get it - I think by doing anchorage tradeskill quests - but I'm not 100% on that since I haven't needed to chase those down during this expac.

Check the Panda Quests and do them all, there are a lot of runes, adornments, and baubles that will be very useful for you. The gear from this year's version, which just completed week 2, is also probably better than the solo quest reward gear you are getting.

Once you have done the signature quests for CD you can find a guild and see about moving into heroic content. You won't be too strong at first but plenty of guilds will run you through a few times to gear you up.

I've not done any quest lines aside from the basic planes of justice which was required to access Myrist.
Also, this is a boosted character, so no epic/mythical etc.

Basically, if I can't fast travel there, I haven't been.
I've seen people in chat talk about panda stuff. I'll see about finding out where to start that.
At this point I think my focus is on gearing up and doing stuff in the current expansion unless older stuff still provides an upgrade. At some later point I'd like to go back and continue leveling through all the older content and questlines.

Here's my char for reference.