Help with starting TOV progression

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

  1. Kalika Well-Known Member

    My paladin almost never heal himself, you get two passive heal items doing the outdoor quest line + tanks all have
    such very hig mitigation and avoidance + self heals or extra life or immunities etc ...

    The main reason to take a mercenary as a tank is to get free cures. I prefer to pay stamper 20 gold tha to burn 2 pp of potions.
  2. Shibi Member

    I dispute that these are not for gearing in solo fasion to step into a heroic group. I base that on the name "Advanced SOLO"

    Surely one should progress with:
    • Complete quest chain to get base 95 gear.
    • Work through the advanced solos AS SOLO to get get cryptic gear
    • Step into Heroics with Cryptic gear to get Arcane gear
    • Step into raids with Arcane gear.
    If that's not the progression what is? Sure I can buy gear on SLR and cheat, Sure I can arrive to a heroic in my partial quest gear and make my group suffer. But my style of playing is to earn your stripes, so I do not intend to cheat. I don't want to buy gear and I don't want to run 2 people in an instance stated to be tuned (and rewarding gear) for 1 person.

    If you can't expect to complete the SOLO instances until you are heroic geared... and given that they only reward cryptic: Why bother? They should be for gearing, they should let you run solo through them until you are geared in Cryptic.

    Maybe as a suggestion to the Developers. If these are not meant to solo. Rename these as Advanced Duos and increase the rewards to suit 2 people?
  3. Malleria Well-Known Member

    The only difference between the quested armor and cryptic armor is the gem slots. If you don't upgrade (if you intend to run heroics you shouldn't bother, save your etymas) their stats are identical.

    If you run the Adv Solo with 2 players each one gets a chest at the end, so yes, the loot is suited for 2 players. And you're completely missing the advanced part of the name apparently. If it was intended for anyone to solo they'd just be called solos.
  4. Atan Well-Known Member

    As others stated, the quested heal over time item helps alot. Then having your deathsave complete heal, spec'd for max dragoon reflexes, and carrying around both lifestone clickies goes a long way. Also specing to survivability, 2nd dragon line, etc. Cycling your short terms is huge, you reach a mitigation point that between the passive heal over time, and other things you take very little damage for periods of time.

    All in all, I found guard to be one of the easier ones to do, but I've got the most keyboard time on it as well. I plan to do illusionist next and I think for my personal skillset it might be one of the tougher ones so should be fun.

    Oh, I should add, just in case people are still missing it. I can not emphasize how important it is to exchange your quest gear at the merchant to get the best set for your class to solo with. In general, one of the sets with max HP is going to help you more in these solo's than going with say a pure dps set.
  5. Kalika Well-Known Member

    This is probably true for enchanters, but healers and tank archetypes can solo any advanced solo
    in overland quested gear. You may need to exchange gear before. Only issue is that it takes longer than with a dps class.

    Note that they changed some instances :

    The dwarft do not call as many gobs as before (in A solo ?, i have not done it since the change).
    Instead of 5 pack of 4 drakes there is only 3 now in Hall of betrayer.
  6. Shibi Member


    This is the information I need!

    Although I have reforged as much as possible, it's not ideal. Where is this merchant!? I don't recall any crumbs/letters leading me to such a person.

    Also good information. Thanks Atan. I will take this on board and spend a few days to beat this solo endboss. As my gear improves I will progress to heroics and grouping, but I will not make my group put up with me being undergeared or underskilled.

    I was feeling down and looking at other games again for something that was fun/achievable. All of these suggestions give me hope again.
  7. Dulcenia Well-Known Member

    When mercenaries were released with AoD SoE began to assume that players would be using mercenaries. Therefore, when "Solo" zones were released they had to allow 2 players to enter, or ban mercenaries from the zones. Banning mercenaries would have caused quite an uproar, so the zones were tuned to be run with 1 player + 1 mercenary. With 2 actual players the zones go MUCH faster than with a merc, and the rewards are set so that each player gets a crate at the end of the zone.
  8. murmur Member


    There's only one wave of goblins now instead of five waves (might been even more in the beginning of ToV, I remember that fight was nerfed once before)
    At the start of ToV Bolgin was imo hardest AS encounter that there were.
  9. Mermut Well-Known Member

    Too true. The default set for tanks has no mit/block gear. I've run into tanks that have less mitigation then my warden because they're running with all dps gear. This makes for a deplorably squishy tank.
  10. Deago Well-Known Member

    New monk merc (you know the one from dragons...) can almost solo the solo dungeons... On any healer they are zzz easy I can literally just toss a heal and position myself on names (those that require.)

    Most of the time it is just a matter of knowing the strategy. Hive is easy but I avoid it unless part of weekly just because I dislike the honey named. Easy to beat but I am lazy... :D
  11. Atan Well-Known Member


    There is a kneeling droag near the broker in VI. He sells an item for 5g that when used on a quest item will basically melt the item, return all adorns on it, and provide you a coin.

    He then sells multiple versions of every quest piece that you can purchase with that coin. For tanks for example there is a full hp/mit set, a full hp/block set, a full potency spec, and a pure melee dps spec. Depending on your tank class you probably want to start with the full hp/mit or hp/block set, personally I went mostly mit and 2 block pieces initially. The mit generally paid off better, but I just couldn't stand seeing block around 80% so took a couple of those.

    Each class has multiple options, and different classes are going to pay off with different sets. You can repeat the exchange process on the items you buy, just costs you 5g per item to exchange or re-exchange it till your hearts content.

    Generally, classes are going to need to go full survivable set with the quest gear, then open up more options as they get upgrades.

    I want to add, our hardcore raidforce cleared the first 4 mobs in AS wearing nothing but this quest gear, we cleared the next 4 with just a smattering of other gear, but probably could have done it in the quest gear as well. It was just a matter of making everyone take the defensive sets, use defensive aa builds and power thru the content.

    The potential from min/maxing the quest set is extremely high, and if you can kill raid content in ToV with it, you can certainly make it thru the solo zones if you've set yourself up well.
  12. Shmogre Well-Known Member

    My toons that had either finished the Vesspyr quests or at least started them [can't remember exactly] all got an in-game letter from the vendor, with a forearm attached as a "gift". That gave you a quest to talk with him, and he then walked you through the whole "add gems to upgrade" process. I was impressed with how it introduced both the merchant and the gem upgrades [plus it gave a forearm that was a little better than the quested one as a bonus :^) ].

    [I'll edit this with more details about the letter as soon as I can get onto my toon...]

    -----

    Got it: The letter is from Veasna [the kneeling droag merchant], titled "A gift, perhaps two". It starts with "I understand you did a favor for my dear friend Lepethida", so you have to at least have gotten a little bit into the overland questline to get the letter [which makes sense, since the merchant isn't useful until you have some quest items to exchange].

    Hope that helps...the devs really did try to point people towards the merchant and let folks know about the swaps and the gems, it's a pretty cool way they chose to do it.
  13. Jrral Active Member

    I think you get the letter from Veasna after completing "Sent for Savtek" for Lepethida which gives you the quested forearms.

    There's another trick: if you hail Veasna before you collect the item from the letter, he'll give you the forearms. After you've upgraded them, you can collect the item from the letter and get the un-upgraded forearms again. Unfortunately I don't think they're transmutable and they can't be sold for a gear-exchange token, so this isn't horribly useful.
    Shmogre likes this.
  14. Shibi Member

    Sadly it's too hard.

    I'm not a bad player but there seems to be no way I can use my skills and ability to beat 2 encounters of 10 gobbies that rush you at the start in this solo encounter.

    I even ground out a charm that give me a second mez, but that still can buy enough time to remove 20 gobbies, 2x10 encounters.

    Have fun guys, the game seems to be tuned to things I can't possibly do, even as a fairly good ex-raider. I guess the game has moved on and my skills just don't cut it any more.

    Anyway, that's it. I'm out. The game is too hard if I can't complete the 4th SOLO instance in the chain as a SOLO.
  15. mouser Well-Known Member

    The raiding experience may be hurting you more than you think. Soloing takes both a different mindset and a different skillset, and as everyone has pointed out, they aren't tuned for one character, but two. Truthfully there's no way they could design a dungeon that would be challenging to all class archetypes.

    Do some heroics to help you out. You're not "wasting people's time", you're "playing a game." Some people actually like to socialize in an MMO - I know, that's crazy talk!

    It isn't a straight Solo->Heroic->Raid progression anymore. They're all challenging and rewarding in different ways. If you want the best of everything, master them all.
  16. Dulcenia Well-Known Member

    They aren't SOLO instances, they are MOLO instances.
  17. Morfydd Active Member


    Bye, Shibi.
  18. Atan Well-Known Member

    Not really. Some of prefer the challenge of soloing them.
  19. Snowhaze Active Member

    It truly boggles my mind with how many repeated times you've been told they are NOT SOLO missions unless you are GEARED BEYOND what is required for the dungeon, much like raiders have always gone back and farmed older raid content. You still continue to underline the word SOLO as if its going to change to what you perceive it should be. Why do you keep missing the word ADVANCED in the front of SOLO? Everyone keeps telling you, but you refuse to listen.

    Devs have stated the definition multiple times in multiple places that I'm going to repeat to you YET AGAIN, ADVANCED SOLOS are designed and balanced for 2, you and a friend or you and a mercenary. In most cases, if you happen to be a raider or your gear is far beyond the ADVANCED solo, you can probably legitimately solo it all.

    Kudos to Atan that can solo everything, I would consider him an above average player, for the rest of us, we sometimes may require another player or mercenary for at least some of the encounters. Actually, I'm pretty impressed that you soloed up to that point with a cloth wearer. I just finished my 3rd run of the quest chain on my coercer (monk and inq previously) and I had some problems even though I knew the scripts very well and had a mercenary with me. Some of the scripts can be quite challenging to begin with, when you are learning the encounter, even if it is you and a merc.

    Atan has also pointed out some very important things about being prepared, go back and re-read them and do everything he is suggesting if you want to continue to ignore that they are designed for 2.
  20. Kalika Well-Known Member

    Some extra advices :

    The monk can heal you for 100%, i discovered it when i wanted to suicide myslef (i tried to skip mini named in the instance in which boss is a golem with 4 mini golems that buf him, evac was not ready). I threw a 100% heal on me when i was around 10%.
    ==> I don't know if it came with TOV or with the pre-order. Check your \claim, consume token, hit mercenary Pub ...

    You have 4 hour food/drink/potion that can really help.