=( Returning Player, New Xpak...pain and suffering.

7K Potency + is tough if you don't raid. 5K Potency easily is doable, however, with Heroic content and completion of the sig line. Ethereals would help there too. I only managed one though. I don't raid, just solo and heroic groups. My Potency is a hair over 5K on my defiler and I'm soloing stuff (bug notwithstanding) now.

I don't kill anything in 10 sec though....but, such is the way of things for Shamans in general anyway.

I don't disagree with your last paragraph. The distinction I'd like to make though is that there is the solo content from the very beginning of ToT vs. the end which would include fabled nizara and zek. Right or wrong, gear went through a massive upgrade during the ToT expansion. I don't believe it is reasonable to expect that KA solo should be tuned to those still wearing the most basic gear available from the first few days of the ToT expansion. At least, I wouldn't expect it to be easy or fast which is what we have people running into now. I will say again, I suspect that those hanging their hats on the resolve bug fix are going to find themselves sorely disappointed if they are sitting between 1000 and 1500 potency on their characters. They will likely still have a heck of a time killing anything with those types of numbers.

Oh, I'm with you there. The end of ToT solo progression is Fabled Advanced Solo Nizara, which is where KA should begin. However there is quite a sizable gap right now between Nizara trash and Obulous trash. The Nizara trash actually hits a lot harder than Obulous trash; the Obulous trash just takes forever to die. Obulous isn't hard, Obulous is freakishly tedious.

I certainly don't think it's impossible with effort to get a pretty high level of potency as a solo player, but I just don't think it's what most solo players are going to have going into the the KA signature, and those are the players that the regular solo and signature will need to address. Naturally, advanced solo would require more, and those would be intended to attract the more advanced players, whether better equipped solo players or those who spend time between solo and easier group content.

My character had a bit over 2K potency going into the content last night and did fine other than it taking forever to whittle down the encounters. Got a bit more potency along the way and so eventually things should get easier. I just figured it took me forever due to being a healer, so even after the bug is fixed, I'm not expecting to zip right through anything.

But I don't think that heroic-geared characters are supposed to be the baseline for a solo questline either and would rather see more people having fun than otherwise.

Epic Repercussions required that you speak Draconic. Therefore it was manditory to go back and do that quest from very old content. That quest requires that you speak Giant, so that also was manditory for Epic Repercussions. Having the Epic Repercussions buff was (is still?) considered a manditory part of character progression.

If you wanted to do the solo quests from the Ry'Gorr fort in Eastern Wastes it was manditory that you go kill orcs to learn the orcish language. Being an evil player I didn't have orc colonies all over the place as I leveled through the starter zones, so I had to backtrack to old content to get the quest drops.

Historically there are many places where having completed things are manditory if you want to progress. Generally those things are/were something most players simply did while leveling. With character boosts and power leveling now, those manditory things are becoming more and more noticable as fewer and fewer players actually do them anymore.

That wasn't clear in Discord when I was scrolling through it, sorry for my misunderstanding. The question and reply were sequential with no other comments between them. Followed by another issue which you also replied to....so I guess the question about the mobs was not addressed at all.

Edit: Here's the exact sequence of the comments, including one about the vendor crates, so I think you can see how misunderstanding can arise:

Odur27 - Yesterday at 5:24 PM

So Broker crates are broken yes?

Frigidmist - Yesterday at 5:24 PM

i'm gonna upgrade cause i want a fire birdie, who is gonna take the blame when my husband finds out?

Tsurupettan - Yesterday at 5:25 PM

Do the outdoor critters have a resolve value in Obulus Frontier?

Kander - Yesterday at 5:25 PM

Yes, they are broken until Thursaday. Was a strange feature issue.

Starcloud - Yesterday at 5:25 PM

I will bug report it, but every time I zone I have to reload my mount

Kander - Yesterday at 5:26 PM

Starcloud, the new mount or any mount?

I've done all the gu100/101 stuff, have adv solo nizara gear, collection gear from there, fabled gear from ToT heroics

how do you explain seeing a 90% drop in my dps as soon as I zone into obulus as compared to nizara?

^^^ What he said...

It was not stopping leveling progress then or now. Here we have accession progress which is basically more character levels and requires completing the sig line.

I still feel there is a bug going on for a rare few of us that have experienced it. I'm no stranger to this game and have played since launch date 2004. I did take a break over the past few years but I can still tell the difference between a bug and a "gear not up to par" issue.

The bug hit me when I started.. I started with the calibis solo zone and got stuck on the Smithy (the fights before that point took forever). Somehow the bug cleared up (as explained earlier in this thread) and the exact same mob (Smithy) and exact same equipped gear, and he went down like butter a long with the rest of the zone.

Its not gear, there is a bug where we are doing 90% less damage as we should be. Combat arts were doing less then their printed values. I wish I had ACT installed. Perhaps when I go to play another character they might be bugged too..

I can't really argue anything here, as I haven't played the beta, except this: my defiler is sitting around 5.5-6k pot with solo gear, some of it crafted. Idk what you guys are getting at.

They don't know how to gear their toons is what they are getting at. So they cannot possibly fathom a player having over 7k potency from mostly solo gear. I have ONE piece of heroic potency gear, the rest is from Nizara SOLO. And I will tell u what...7k potency is LOW compared to what the raiders and those guys who blow up the parses run with.

There are several potency rings, a potency necklace and 2 potency charms that all come from Nizara solo. It's old content now...and the baseline that they tuned KA overland mobs to. Thank you Kander.

As I said earlier, this is a game that takes time and dedication to succeed. The good news is, there are plenty of people willing and able to help out those who are new or returning or just plain lost when it comes to building a character. Everquest2 is the most fun when you are playing with friends--especially friends who understand how to progress a character and are willing to share some tips and strategies.

I will say, though, that tip number 1 is if you want to make the most of your time here, get all-access. If you find yourself playing more than a couple hours a week, it is more than worth it. And based on Kander's comments, these are the people they are balancing the game towards--the ones with access to all previous content.

That being said, I don't remember if zek and nizara come with the purchase of Kunark Ascending. If they do, well then to get into the new sig line, you don't even need to pay up just yet. Just do a few runs through scourge keep and fabled nizara, and you'll boost your potency and procs by a TON. With a good friend, each can be done in about 15 minutes, so 30 minutes of fun in 'older' content to get potentially almost 2k more potency if you're lucky.

Also, if you haven't finished the ToT sig line but are trying to get into the kunark line, well you're at an almost 900 potency disadvantage just from one item that you're missing along with a very solid mount. They are obviously not going to tune this game for people who played for one month at the start of ToT, then never progressed or put any substantial time (or money) towards the game.

Do I wish it was a little bit more casual friendly sometimes, so we could have a larger playerbase? Sure. But this is why I try to be as helpful to others as possible. Good luck, and happy questing.

Logged in today and a friend of mine was online. We started talking over skype and I brought up the issue I had when I first loaded up the expansion... He just started last night with the new content and mentioned he too was having an issue with mobs taking a while to kill but just chalked it up to an increase in difficulty (like most people in this thread are doing).

Had him strip his character completely of all items.. Had him log out of the game (completely closed not just loading screen).. Log back in and re-equip all his gear. When finished he noticed his HP and Power totals were slightly different then just a moment earlier.

Issue resolved itself and mobs were dying fast again. It is a bug.

Might not be related but my mount drops when loading new zones since tuesday, I've not had issues with killing stuff but will try to pay attention to stats fluctuating.

After reading this thread, it was reassuring to know that I am not the only one that is seriously considering not getting any future expansions. EQ2 has a large community of solo and casual players and this game has left them in the dust. They are loosing players faster than they are gaining them. Returning players are disappointed and discouraged. Not good Daylight. There is plenty of content for the raiders and raid geared people but content for the casual player is becoming a rare event. It is up to you, to find the happy medium where you keep your hard core players and still make the game enjoyable for the casual and solo people.

Ahhh... this is a relief and explains why only my top most geared toons were able to push through some of the early content.
2 to 5 mins per fight on my solo geared toons.

Try doing heroic zones. Bosses take 20-60 minutes to kill.