I'm trying to replace as many of the raid trophies in the guild hall of the guild I just took over, just in case the old leader ever comes back and throws a tantrum (not likely), OR I move to a different guild hall So, two simple questions that may take long answers: 1) How far up the ladder can a solo player climb collecting raid trophies? I'll qualify this by saying I have 120 characters with starting gear but with the extra adornments from the Panda Quests / "Getting Started in Vetrovia" post. 2) Are any classes necessarily better for this little task? Tank because they'll absorb damage, DPS to kill fast, etc...
I think any of the raids up through SF would be soloable (with or without a merc). There are some later ones with mechanics that may be problematic, not due to damage, but because they require more than one actual player.
dis be's me'es tinkin' bout too!! dis be's me's suggestion fur "Legacy"* raids: dat DEVs put book merchant just inside entrance, an fur 100p wun culd buys book detailing strategy fur Zone/Named. Dat way'es wun hav choice to try an figur out on wun's own, or if need be's heps, could buy book. *Legacy, as defined as all but latest two or three expansions.
I can farm up to Kunark Ascending depending on which specific dungeon that is. It was in Altar of Malice, Terror of Thalumbra, and Kunark Ascending that they started introducing mechanics that makes it literally impossible to solo certain bosses no matter how powerful you are. -Kunark Ascending also introduced bosses that need all four Ascension classes present in the raid in order to proceed. -Planes of Prophecy continues the ascension class requirements and adds more types of curses that can wipe a raid if not cured by a healer. -Chaos Descending introduced the Bulwark mechanic that will wipe a group or raid if a tank doesn't react to it. -Blood of Luclin onward all add massive power drains to enforce having a power source to keep you going. Everything before AoM can generally be soloed with a healer mercenary. I farm level 70-level 95 dungeons for appearance gear all the time, and only a few encounters require thinking outside the box. The Construct of Malice in AoM cannot be soloed. Period. It has invulnerability mechanics that prevent it from taking damage unless two off-tanks carefully peel the two (extremely easy to kill) lackies off to either side of the arena and wait for them to put up two fields that drop the invulnerability of the construct in the middle. Mercs are too powerful to keep them alive before the damage mechanics can happen. This is one boss that may very well not be possible to ever kill again in this game, because even level appropriate characters who aren't boosted with PoP starter gear will still be too powerful. There's one dungeon in Thalumbra that has four bosses who literally makes your head explode if a player has more than two of them agroed to them. You could theoretically kill them while you're at max level, not getting any loot from the kill, but you could at least proceed. The 2nd boss in Kraytoc's Fortress in Velious requires a 2nd player to complete, and it's a complete slow-burn that requires you to use an underpowered mercenary to whittle down the boss. He will wipe the raid if you don't follow the script, and you break the zone's progression if you don't beat him according to his script. Siren's Grotto requires tinkered inverters to dispell a magic barrier if you don't have the ability to do so yourself. Plane of War can be soloed if your merc is strong enough. Send him to attack one general on one side of the zone, while you one-shot the other when your merc finally engages in battle. The Leviathan in Kunark requires you to get the orb from Protector's realm first. Send your merc to do the damage while you insert the orb to bring down the invulnerability and kill it.
That's fitting my experience thus far, which is why I asked the initial question. I wanted to see if I was missing something when my performance in different higher level raid instances was varying wildly. The ascension and other mechanics explain at least some of it.
Tankies VERY much fur Sumery! me's no knoes enee Wizzies, so neber goes to dem paces! me'es ohnee knoe Rangers, Monks, wun Berzerker, an wun Shaman--so oh wells. but now me's knoes wat SADISTIC paces to avoid--"stik elbow inna ear, jump three tims on wun paw while licking knee,..." NO tankies!
My guildmates and I killed the Construct of Malice 2 or 3 months ago. It took 4 of us, no mercs, no buffs, no procs, and VERY careful positioning (as well as several attempts.) But we did get it. We were able to burn this group down with 6 mentored players, by syncing up our initial spells to take out one of the quartet. As long as one mob is dead, the instant kill no longer occurs. This is the one pre-KA raid named that we haven't been able to figure out yet. But we haven't tried him in some time. For the most part, prior to AoM the raid named are easy enough. But if you want to get all the trophies, you will have to get creative and you may need 2+ people for some encounters. Creative means mentoring, removing all buffs that proc damage, no mercs (or passive mercs only,) and potentially only using autoattack (or autoattack with a class that doesn't have riposte.) Using this method we were able to get most of the pre-KA trophies for our guild, including the Construct of Malice and including both sword trophies from Roehn Theer.
Roehn Theer wasn't hard to figure out. I just needed to use an underpowered healer like Chumba Spiritcaller from Reign of Shadows. She's a mystic so her DPS output is minimal. Send her to Roehn while you kill the four sigils, then when the Chaos version spawns, one shot them both. The Thalumbra raid encounter, I can't solo. It's cool that you got them with 6 people, I think I will need a few more expansions of level increases before I can solo it without getting killed. As for that boss in Kraytoc: You need to have two people stand at the end of the docks, because you will wipe the raid if you try to get him to follow you away from the ends. Turn your backs away so you don't reposte any of his damage while you have your Chumba Spiritcallers whittle him down. When he jumps from one dock to the other, hold back your merc and have the other player send theirs in to do DPS. Meanwhile, you are free to destroy the crystal bombs. I don't know if they do enough damage to matter, but I didn't take any chances. Eventually (like 10 minutes later) he will get down to a low enough HP for the script to activate that everyone needs to jump into the water, where he then drains it and you can freely kill him and the beasts. The rest of the zone can be one-shotted.
Thanks for the great advice guys (especially Cusashorn...again heh, so glad you are on these forums)...in the process of grabbing as many of these myself also at the moment so this is great reading.
I haven't tried any RoS zones, but I was able to solo the BoL raid zone "The Blinding: Twisted Vista [Raid]" on my necro with no merc. Unless an encounter has a mechanic that freezes the boss at a specific percent until the "raid" performs some class specific stuff to get it taking damage again - you can pretty much out DPS any mechanics from old zones.
I could solo raid mobs through Altar of Malice, but it seems like there are mechanics after that so you can't solo stuff. I haven't been able to solo a heroic from Planes of Power onward.
I have solo'd every raid up through Altar of Malice. Some of the later ones required extremely high dps in order to overcome or even prevent scripts that required multiple players. The final boss of AoM can't be solo'd, as it is completely immune to damage until the first script is passed. After that, I solo'd every boss in ToT. Kunark Ascending required extra dps from a friend, but only the final zone required multiple people by script (which I'm still working on). PoP has at least one boss that requires two tanks, and I only made it halfway through that expansion.
It would be nice if a mechanic was added so that if you were flagged for already killing a raid boss, you could go back and buy the trophy. Unless you are lucky enough to win the random roll on the trophy head in current expansions, or, able to find people willing to run old content, it is very difficult to go back and collect most of the trophy heads from KA on. It would at least be something to spend all this accrued status and loyalty point tokens for.
