Returning Player Gear Threshold - Requesting Advice

So I gave in and made a coercer, since that seems to be the least played support class. Its okay, I like it, but I have a problem that frustrates me to the core.
I'm having a huge problem getting groups and its not because of a class. I'm a returning player, no idea on what gearscore I need to have for instances, I literally get turned away constantly and its getting t othe point I'd rather just not play a game with people who cant come to terms that people need gear to get into the threshold or to where they are.

Besides my little rant there, what can I do? I very much dislike Adv. Solos, I've always been a group-oriented person and would rather be with others.

Could you link your toon please?

Maybe find an active guild that doesn't care what your gear is?

Unfortunately the Adv Solos are part of the progression, so maybe keep doing those until you have at least mostly Cryptic gear gemmed out. If you aren't full on the rare purple runes, at least it gives you something else to get along the way that you can keep. Cryptic gear upgrades nicely to the blue gems too, so its not like its totally wasted time.

Find a partner to duo the Adv Solos, they go insanely fast with another live person, then you can whip through a bunch in no time and makes it a little more fun.

As suggested, linking your gear could help us give you some suggestions.

I dont have a profile, dont really want to create one, either. However I pretty much going through the very end of the questlines. I know nothing about gemming, either. Is that required?

You don't have to create anything as your toon already exists. What is it's name?

Look on eq2 university, and go to search. Enter your charas info, and that's your profile.

Without info, no one can tell you much of anything.

The only thing we can guess is you are above level 90 since you talk about advanced solos. You have given nothing else so we can't offer anything other than general advice.

Level to 95, get your aa's , do at the very least the solo TOV quest line for gear and preferably do some of the advanced solos to get some the better upgradeable gem gear from there. I've been told you can do the first couple of heroic zones without having geared out in advanced solos. Do dailies & weekly quests for Etyma so you can afford to buy or have gems made. Outside of that, find a guild, make some friends. Friends and guildmates tend to be more forgiving with gear and will take you places PUGs won't, as long as you are willing to pull your weight & make an effort to upgrade on your own as well (advanced solos at least sometimes).


Looking your character up on EQ2U and Dragon's Armory can help as well.

EQ2U will give a large amount of general information about your character and you can search for upgrades for slots. There is a tab for Gear Report, that will give you information about which items you ought to look at upgrading.

Dragon's Armory is also quite good. Look your character up and you can mouse over all your stats and see where you stand in regards to the cap, particularly useful for the blue stats. You can also click the 'optimizations' tab and it will point out spots where you are missing adornments & what not.

First easy step would be to join a helpful casual guild.

We can't give you specific suggestions unless we can see your character's profile on EQ2U (you can see mine if you click on my signature picture below). After that, we can tell you what spells need to be expert or higher, what AAs you might pick, what adorns you should be wearing (white, purple), what gear you need to upgrade, etc.

Generically, you need the overland quest gear to start doing the advanced solos (with a friend or merc hopefully) to get cryptic gear. Gem those out and get arcane gear. Gem those out and get potent gear. As you do heroic zones, you'll pick up different sets of gear faster.

You can do easy zones in your overland quest gear/cryptic gear: Nexus, Highkeep, Fractured Hive. After that, you'll be wanting arcane/potent for Halls / Labs / Chamber / Stratum, and full potent for VD. Cryptic armor drops in Halls / Labs so I'm guessing you could probably do those in some cryptic with a good group. Fabled zones, I'm not sure, probably a mixture of all types; I have seen a warden soloheal with a pally/zerker successfully through Fabled Vaults in overland quest gear so the fabled zones are probably not that bad for some classes in overland quest gear.

If not yet level 95, then groups will be rare and far between. It's pretty much the nature of the game now.

Learn about adornments.

Someone with no adornments at 92+ either doesn't care or isn't very clever. Neither encourages people to group with you.

Adorning adds significant stats to your character.

I forgot i posted this topic. Did a toon switch, playing my swash now..
http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/446678873789

You have 0 adorns in your gear. That is a big problem honestly, even the super cheap low quality adorns are way better than nothing. Your weapons have different delays which needs to be changed for you to be able to time skills with your auto attacks properly. Your block chance charm is completely useless to you and a quest charm would be better. Armor itself could have better choices imo (less max health). DPSmod will improve with better gear, but should really be at 600 minimum

if gemming is anything like WoW, it would be useless for me to buy/use them if its just being replaced immediately imo. I only have block charm till i find a decent dps one and its not my fault rng is rng concerning the arcane armors.

I know its advice, but it feels like I'm just being torn down by elitism >.>

You're a level 95. Get your gems. Seriously. It's not a maybe, it's a must. You can pop the valuble adorns out if and when you change gear. Reforge gear now, get your stats and such better situated.

No one is tearing you down, and elitism isn't a factor in common sense advice. But running around at 95 without adorns makes you look like you either don't care or that you're really badly informed, and no one wants to give off that impression. Plus adorns aren't that expensive, really.

The above advice is sound. Also, if your coercer was like your swash...the very first (and often only) thing that a prospective group will see is sub 300k health. Find a way to get your health up over 300 asap. That's going to cause some groups to bump you immediately as it's a clear indicator that your gear is very low end for a 95.

The charged adornments you get from the AS zones are not great but on the other hand they are free. If $$ is an issue, by all means use them. You really want to try to get cryptic gear to start (at least) in all of your main slots. On the swash you should be focusing on the gear set that was weapon damage bonus as part of it's stats. On the coercer, I THINK you'd want potency/CB type gear but I've seen people who also are proponents of the WDB items. (Most mages it's the potency gear you want.)

One very nice feature of the expansion is that you can indirectly recover most of your etyma invested in the yellow and blue gems. I'll use cryptic as the example. Each cryptic piece can hold 4 yellow gems. Have a crafter make them as they only cost 4 etyma each in that case. If you have a cryptic piece with all 4 gems and then loot an arcane armor piece for that same slot you can purchase a conversion item from the main etyma vendor right in the middle of the VI merchant area. (Between the broker and the banker.) That conversion item costs you 10 etymas. You use it on your now old 4/4 cryptic item and are given a blue gem which you can put onto the new armor piece. So, for 16 + 10 etymas you obtained a blue gem. That same blue gems costs 25 etyma for a crafter to make. In other words, it only cost you 1 extra etyma in the long run and in the meantime you had greatly enhanced gear. Oh, one other side benefit of that conversion item is that it gives you back all the adornments you had placed on the gear too. You can just move them right onto your new arcane item and you are good to go. Long story short, upgrade your gear.

Best of luck. There are a lot of people on these forums willing to offer advice. I wouldn't hesitate to ask more for any specifics in the appropriate class forums.

I apologize if what I said came across as elitism, however you asked for advice on why you are turned away and I told you.

I know you said in your original post that you dislike the adv solos; but they are, well not a mandatory step in gear progression, but getting at least some cryptic gear will help you not be insta kicked if someone inspects you.

Ok about adornments.

They are normally super cheap to buy on the broker, 1 or 2 plat max for the cheap ones. There are 2 white slots on every piece of gear, and a purple on some. The purple will give you raw damage stats, (crit bonus, potency, flurry) while the white adorns will give you other things (agility, cast speed, dpsmod, etc.) The purples can be bought off the broker but are normally relatively expensive, however you can buy them, or get them crafted for etyma, 15etyma ea when crafted. These are a cheap way to help fill in the gaps on your gear and are pretty much mandatory for anybody.

When I was refering to your armor and being able to have better choices, I wasn't referring to your arcane armor, which is decent. I was point out your quested armor. There is a merchant in Vesspyr (Veasna) that will sell you an item that will let you break down the quested gear and get something else instead. cb/pot/casting legs for example could be turned into cb/dps/wdb.

Here are the ones I use on my assassin which should be similar, I use the slightly more expensive ones but since your gear is changing rapidly, I agree, I wouldn't put the best in there until you are sure the gear isn't going to change the next day. That said, as others have pointed out, once you get Cryptic, Arcane and Potent, that will pop the gems automatically when upgraded, I would go ahead and get the better gems for those, white and purple. Definitely use those free ones you get for Adv Solos, here are some other suggestions:

I have a mix of purple potency and critical bonus, you'll probably want more crit bonus.
For whites:
Swift Casting (ability casting speed - reforges nicely) - Back, forearms, charms
Agility - Head, shoulders, leg, charms
Weaponry - chest, wrist, neck
Increased Criticals (crit bonus) - weapons and range
damaging (DPS) - waist, chest, neck
Critcal Chance - these you can use almost anywhere, if you're lacking in crit chance needed for the zone, use these in rings or ears primarily or really anywhere if you need them

If you're going to have multiple max level toons, you may want to consider working on the adorning tradeskill, it will save you a ton of plat.

Looks like quite a few people are providing you with some tips and you've been responding in line.

I just wanted to let you know I've changed the title from "Frustrated" to "Returning Player Gear Threshold - Requesting Advice." That should help. Keep your titles in mind whenever creating new threads.

The quest gear can be converted to a token from Veasna that also pops out your adornments. So even the quested gear can be adorned with really good adornments and then reused when you upgrade the slot.

The only time when you can't get them back is when using a conversion gem to change a fully gemmed piece to a single gem of the next tier (ie 4/4 cryptic to an arcane gem or 4/4 arcane to a potent gem).

So you can upgrade your gear to 3/4, adorn it, and then when you get a better piece, upgrade it to 4/4, which pops out the adorns, then use the conversion gem to convert it to an upgrade gem. Then equip your new piece and add the adorns back in.

Also, for 15 loyalty points you can get a purple adornment dislodger, and for 5 points I think you can get a white dislodger, if you had accidentally put your adorns on a 4/4 piece and want them back.

There is NO EXCUSE for not adorning based on cost. You buy them once and never need to replace them again (for the armor pieces)

Actually, those conversion stones DO give you the adornments from the gear you turn into a gem.