CD timeline done, now what?

Thanks all for the replies.

Snikkety - I absolutely get where you're coming from. If no direct solution exists then a workaround is needed. I genuinely believe that a solution should exist. People should be able to go from the timeline straight into contributing to heroic dungeon crawls without being carried by 5 other players.

I guess as it stands it's the only option available to me so I'll get my illy into an active guild as soon as possible and hope they're nice people who could take some time out to help me get some gear.

DBG need to look at this though, it seems ridiculous to me that under the current set up returning players are unable to met the requirements of running heroic dungeons.

DBG PLEASE ENCOURAGE AND INCENTIVISE PLAYERS TO RETURN NOT ALIENATE THEM!

You're kind of late to the party and it appears you want an I win button instead of putting the work to get there. If you put the work in, you should be ready for the next party (if you're on time) By the way, almost all of my characters are in MC gear and have no issues.

See this is just it. I don’t want a win button, I want to put the work in. That was exactly the point of the thread, What can I do to be ready for heroics.

I’m being penalised for returning to the game and to insinuate I want loots without earning them is quite frankly insulting.

A new player can't solo his / her way into heroics. You gotta have friends or guildies. People to share the ride up to running heroics when "all" of you are under-geared. We came back in April or so. It took our guild several months to get guildies to the point of not having our collective buts handed to us in even T1's.

Or, you'll need friends who have made that ride to max gearing and are willing to drag you along to get gear. You'll die (over and over) and you won't do any damage...until you get better geared.

You cannot "buy" enough gear on the regular servers to outfit yourself. You need friends or (as has been mentioned) a stint on the Isle of Refuge Server and Krono or 2's worth of plat to outfit yourself to be ready for heroics ans maybe..even the next xpac.

Thanks Raff for telling it like it is. I’ve decided to cancel my subs, I might come back for the new expac but I doubt it.

I literally cannot fathom a game that hinders returning players from being able to quest gear that sets them up for heroic grouping. It’s completely nonsensical!

You were given the tools necessary to succeed, but after three days of "effort" you've decided to throw in the towel because you weren't handed things that everyone else had to work for. Sorry (not sorry) you didn't get your easy win button.

All the tools being:
1) Get friends to drag you through dungeons cos your gear means you can’t DPS anything- that sounds like fun!
2) Go and spend real money to gear up on Isle of Refuge - nah, you’re alright.

That’s about it isn’t it?

The key word here is "Friends". If you had them or made them along the way of your signature solo sojourn, you would likely have found a path forward. Even if it is just joining into map chat and becoming "known"? Though finding a guild would have been better. Our Heroic pugs have been taking lowbie players from all of our guilds through heroics for gear for months. On AB there is a Pug raid every Friday night that helps a lot of people get raid gear.

If you had joined an active guild, you might have found that out.

That's not actually true. You can get enough Resolve with just Mastercrafted armor to get into regular heroics. What you cannot do is get enough Resolve to do the Expert Heroics needed for the ethereal event. So yeah, there you will need to get friends to carry you.

This is reaaalllly simple math:

• Solo encounters have no resolve requirements
• Heroic Tier 1: 1050
• Heroic Tier 2: 1260
• Raid Tier 1: 1310
• Raid Tier 2: 1610
• Expert Heroic T1: 1620
• Raid Tier 1 Mythic: 1725
• Raid Tier 3: 1790
• Expert Heroic T2: 1910
• Raid Tier 2 Mythic: 2032
• Raid Tier 4: 2112
• Raid Tier 3 Mythic: 2273
• Raid Tier 4 Mythic: 2395

Mastercrafted armor and jewelry is 60 Resolve per piece, and you have 21 slots in which to use it. 60x21=1260. Gear from solo collections runs about 50 Resolve, as I recall, so you can get it a little higher fairly easily.



The thing that makes it hard to get into regular heroics is low Potency. So, you want to infuse every piece of infuseable gear to the hilt, using plat infusing, crafted infusers, and looted infusers. You can boost Stamina, Potency, Crit Bonus, and Ability Mod. I wouldn't worry much about ABMod at first, and I recommend prioritizing Crit Bonus over Potency.

Remember, Fervor > Crit Bonus > Potency > Ability Mod.

Next, you want good white and orange adorns (you want blue ones too, but you get those either from grinding Return to Guk collections or from heroic or raid Achievements), such as:

• Player-Crafted White Adorns
  • Celestial Adornment of Increased Criticals -- +26.1% Crit Bonus, +5 CB Overcap
  • Celestial Adornment of Raw Power -- +109.8% Potency
• Player-Crafted Orange Adorns
  • Celestial Rune of Championship [VII] -- +2.9% Ability Doublecast, +631% Potency, +260% Max Health, +492,000 ABMod
  • Celestial Rune of Glory [VII] -- +286% Max Health, +142 Crit Bonus Overcap, +361,000 ABMod
  • Celestial Rune of Juxtaposition [VII] -- +2.9% Ability Doublecast, +631% Potency, +80% Weapon Damage, +56 Overcap Fervor, +160 Overcap Weapon Damage
  • Celestial Rune of Witness [VII] -- +2.9% Ability Doublecast, +674% Potency, +19.2% Fervor
• Panda Quests
  • Tol Ren Set (Greater Primus of Tol'Ren, Greater Foundation of Tol'Ren, Greater Firmament of Tol'Ren, Greater Ascension of Tol'Ren)
    • (1) +54% Crit Bonus Overcap
    • (2) +250,000 Ability Modifier
    • (3) +732.6% Potency
    • (4) +3% Fervor

Solo instances WILL give you upgraded Celestial orange adorns for the set runes (Aniquilacion, Paixao, Pingyuan Diqu, Zou Kunnen), and junk loot to salvage to get fragments with which to make infusers, or transmute to get materials to make celestial white adorns.

This. This is why live is blech. If you're lucky, you're in an active guild of people willing to drag your "late to the party" butt around, but this is a rare occurrence. You are passed over for PUGs - or there simply aren't any - and the options for obtaining gear are stuck behind begging or a pay wall. The progression from A to B to C does not flow. Quested solo/dugneon gear should get you into regular heroics. Regular heroic gear should get you into experts. Experts should get you into raid. This expac does not do this. It's a big shame, and it leads to them putting a magic box at the beginning of new expacs to even the field again.

The issue here isn't how the gear works in the grand scheme of the game. The issue is the players. Gear that is obtainable solo is perfectly usable in heroics. Gear from heroics is perfectly usable in raid. The problem is that the people running the zones have raid/expert gear and it is a waste of time for most random 5 person groups to pick up someone with gear asimilar to their own. Early in the expac there were no issues with gear progression, the problem comes from everybody already having done the content that someone would need to progress.

Translation: I will only listen to things that validate my cynicism.

So I always need a little help. I spend most of my time doing crafting lines or leveling as fast as I can to make those lines easiest as possible on my alts.
I was helped by someone the other day that showed me how to get 90 resolve gear by doing solo missions and after I finish the sig line, pq's. I say in chat, please someone help me kill percent target named and help is there and much appreciated. I think I am going to not play all my alts anymore. I'm getting too old to be keeping up with 29 characters and 4 servers. I was doing much better with 9 and 1 server. I just got too greedy, no agnostics was fun until they nerfed it. So I had so many by that point. Now even clicking plants is a 2 hour ordeal, even 2 boxing. Plus switching I make a friend and they forgot me by the time I cycle back to that character.Atm I had to leave another great person helping me because my fan died on my laptop. I ordered a new one and it will be here on the 30th. Bleh. Just when I started having fun. I like the signature line even though I need help with some of it.
Keep in mind I am in pain too so I do my best and I usually have to be dressed better than you to be okay. There's no way I can do any of this in the freebie gear but you all could. So the requirements are lower than what I would really need to be wearing.You can get the gear I mentioned though and people are willing to help sometimes.

This is exactly the problem, we’ll summed up Carynn. I want to carry myself, not be carried by others.

It's an MMO. Everyone carries someone at some point and everyone gets carried at some point.

You could easily buy all the MC gear you need from the broker, but you don't want to. You could put in some effort to craft that same gear for yourself, but you don't want to. You could join a guild that helps out new players, but you don't want to. You don't want to put in the effort. That's fine, but don't expect people who have put in the effort to have any sympathy for you.

I know this is falling on deaf ears, though. You were put off by reading a "6 page thread crawl" that gave you the specific information you needed to succeed. Sigrdrifa distilled that down into one post. You still aren't interested. Again, that's fine, but this isn't an MMO where you can just show up and go straight to endgame. If that's what you're looking for in an MMO, then you have made the right choice to move on. If at some point you get bored of the MMOs that hand you the easy button, we'll still be here playing and enjoying the fact that we overcame challenges. We'll also be happy to help show you ... again ... how to succeed.

Relax Dude, you’ll give yourself an aneurysm.

I realise that returning to this game was a mistake for me. I just wanted to log on run some dungeons and have a bit of fun. Clearly this isn’t how Everquest 2 is in 2019.

I didn’t appreciate that so many hurdles were needed to be jumped over just to get to a grouping situation and I don’t have anything like the time required to make this game a success.

It’s no surprise that this game has a dwindling population under the current rule set.

This is simply bad information.

If you have status and are able to sink enough time to get three pieces of the 90 resolve ethereal gear, then maybe the above statement is somewhat true.

However you can only fill three slots with that gear.

For the rest, the only way you will meet the resolve and potency requirements to start grouping is to get mastercrafted gear. If you decide to snub mastercrafted gear, then you will have to rely on charity of friends or guild to run you through content you aren't geared for- of course the benefit to that is it's a fast way of getting geared, since many can easily handle the content with fewer than a full group.

I'm surprised by your attitude that you weren't successful in this game. Completely shocked. I know 6 pages is a lot to read. It's rough. This is definitely not the game for you and it's not really DBG's fault.

Imagine showing up 10 months late to an expac and complaining that other people aren't equally late.

I'm not surprised you couldn't make it through a 6 page thread because it seems you couldn't even muster the willpower to read any of this one either, unless it just affirmed your lazy opinion.

Thanks Snikkety for another delightful reply. You’ve been an absolute joy to converse with here.