Is there any troubador websites i can go to? I am looking for a guide that tells me where to put my aa's pre-raiding and when i start raiding. Also a leveling guide and a class discussion like spell/abilities lines etc. I know this site has all that but i wanted to know if there was a more personalized site for the class itsself where that information is more categorized.
None that are being maintained any longer. Unfortunately, all the good 3rd party sites on troubs got discontinued before RoK got released. The info is still there in a lot of cases but its outdated. See the sticky posts above. There are a few commercial sites still "maintained" but the info on there stopped getting accurate updates before EoF or earlier. I don't want to name names though because the current owner/operators may be lawsuit happy.
one of the better non-official sites for troubadours is eq2-flames (www.eq2flames.com) ..troubadour section or for level guide check out eq2wiki (eq2.wikia.com) do a search for 'solo timeline' I would update the FAQ sticked at the top but tbh I am not really interested in maintaining it
I found the troub section at eq2flames to be very poorly maintained and replies to new questions just flames to use the search function. Most of the little information I found there ended up being out of the dirge section.
RanmaBoyType wrote: I'm with ya there. I typically follow the dirge board (mainly for the equipment list). Maybe it's because it's assumed there's only one right way to play a Troub /shrug So we have nothing to discuss
My own personal and idiosyncratic guide to playing a Troubador, take it with as many grains of salt as you require: Race Many people prefer Ratongas or Kerrans for their racial abilities, but the differences don't ultimately have a huge impact. Play a race you enjoy, that's far more important. Stats You will need Strength for melee damage, Agility for avoidance, Intelligence for spell damage, Stamina for survivability, and oh yes, Wisdom will help your resists. A Troubador's power pool is based 3/4 on Agility and 1/4 on Intelligence, but running out of power won't be that much of an issue unless you are raiding (and not much even then). Unlike many classes, Troubadors tend to have several stats raised quite high although Wisdom is not a focus of attention. Ultimately your stats will be dictated by your gear and your AAs, but try not to let any suffer too much by your choices. Gear Most of a Troubador's gear has Agility on it, so typically you'll be choosing between magelike gear with Intelligence and spellcasting bonus vs DPS scout gear. Up until level 70-ish you're going to be doing more damage with your spells than your melee, but the balance of power starts to shift decidedly towards melee after that. That being said, mastercrafted armor and weapons are generally a solid choice until you begin getting quest/instance loot in RoK. Mastercrafted jewelery is also very nice but beware, player-crafted jewelry tends to either increase stats or resists but not both. Splurging on a bunch of stat jewelry can leave your resists woefully weak. One or two crafted pieces mixed with some loot drops is a reasonable balance. Carrying around situational gear is a good habit to get into. Buy the largest capacity crafted backpacks and, after you start having some decent carrying capacity, large volume strong boxes. Any gear you come across with nice resists, hang on to. Being able to swap out some gear for extra resists (even if you lose a few stat points or bonuses to crit) is the mark of a good player. Adornments can be useful, but unless you're wealthy I'd hold off until you are in your end game gear. The one exception would be adorning your weapons, this has a very solid utility. Vampiric procs are typically the best choice for a Troubador's weapons if you can afford them. Dual Wield or Weapon & Roundshield The consensus of opinion is that you will do more damage and have just as much survivability if you dual wield, no matter what AA spec you have. I tend to agree, and have always gone with two weapons. AA Lines There are a few different choices here and depend on what you need. There is no one spec that everyone uses, though going 4-4-6-8-1 in Wisdom for Don't Kill The Messenger is pretty much a standard choice. After that, some go up the Strength line to get Bladeturn, which often helps guilds when they begin to raid. The Stamina line is useful for Fortissimo, even if the earlier choices don't do much unless you give up dual wielding. The Int line helps your buffs and your spell damage a bit, and Rhythm Blade is a useful attack that buffs your abilities. The Stamina line is popular for increasing your DPS. On the Troubador side things are a bit easier, you want to spend points in your important abilties such as Jester's Cap, PotM, and debuffs. Try to get Harmonization, it's one of the better end line abilties. Resonance is also useful. I recommend reading the various forum threads on AA choices and then trying a few specs out yourself. Combat Your goal is to do as much damage as possible while simultaneously debuffing your foe enough that you can survive the encounter. There are two general methods, kiting and melee. Melee: Whenever possible start your battles from stealth and open up with the Night Blade line of attacks. Immediately apply snare+magic debuff (Sybil's Slowing Chant line), then Cheap Shot to stun, move behind the target and do a side/back positional strike (Brilliant Blade line) or a Sinister Strike if you have completed the Lore and Legend for that class of foe, and debuff them again with your magic resistance debuff (Zander's Choral Rebuff line). Then happily spam your combat arts and spells on your foe as best you can, perhaps adding your DOT+wis debuff (Kian's Destructive Anthem line) if the fight seems like it will be long enough to justify it. When soloing it often is, but things die so fast in groups that it's rarely a good idea unless fighting a named mob. Kiting: You can open with a stealth attack and a stun or start the fight from range. The goal is to get the foe snared and then keep your distance firing arrows and spells, many of which you can cast while moving. Getting a DOT on the foe early on is a good idea, as is using the Singing Shot line to stop any spell casting heading in your direction. Once you hit 50 and gain the ability to mezmerise a single target (Lullaby line) it's possible to do some opening damage, mez the target, debuff them, then pick up the fight. At any time you're getting the worst of it you can mez again and wait for your health to regen back before continuing. (Personal note: I rarely used this method, finding it tedious. Some people thrive on it though. It's definitely your best bet for fighting tough heroic foes though, assuming you have the room to maneuver.) A note on the Sybil's Slowing Chant snare spell, this has two parts to it, the debuff and the slow. The debuff always lasts the full length of the spell, so it should always be cast as soon as possible no matter which style of combat you're using. Most of your attacks are mental based, so lowering the resist to mental means more damage for your attacks. The actual movement speed debuff portion is typically broken in moments by attacks, but if you're not kiting this is nothing to worry about. Jester's Cap Once you hit level 65 you need to track down this spell on the broker, hopefully you can save up and get the Master for it. Consistent use of this spell is one of the things that separates the merely good Troubadors from the great ones. Jester's Cap lowers the recycle time of any spell or ability by 50%, which in EQ2's math means by two thirds. An ability that normally recycles in 10 minutes recycles in 6 min 40 seconds, etc. While it's obviously useful for long recast abilities, everything benefits from it equally. It is therefore a powerful DPS or healing booster for nearly every class (except ones that primarily rely on DOTs, such as Necromancers). As long as the Jester's Cap ability is active on a character when the game calculates the recast time for something, its effects are applied. For some things the recast is calculated the moment they are used, for other things the recast is calculated when the ability's timer expires. For example, you would need to cap yourself before you used Countersong, which has a 10 minute recast, for the cap to reduce that to 6min 40sec. Applying it afterwards would have no effect on the Countersong recast time. On the other hand, Precision of the Maestro (the level 58 group damage proc) lasts for 30 seconds and then gets it's recast timer calculated. If you cap yourself then cast PoTM it will have no effect on the recast timer because the Jester's Cap buff will have expired by the time the game goes to calculate the recast. You have to cast PoTM and then, sometime within the next 30 seconds, cap yourself. The complication to the use of Jester's Cap is the lockout applied on termination, making it necessary to know if your potential buff target can be capped or not. It is possible to run ACT timers and do elaborate things with scripts to time your casting of Jester's Cap. My personal recommendation is a little less intensive: make a separate window for all your tells. Turn on the display of log time for all messages. Make a macro for Jester's that sends a tell to your target informing them they are being capped then casting the buff. This will leave a line in your tell window with a timestamp and who you sent the tell to. A quick glance at this window will tell you who you've capped and when, and as long as at least 3 minutes have passed you can be sure they're not in lockout. If you normally get a lot of tells you could also make your own Jcap chat channel and window and add a line to your macro to put a line of text in that channel as well, this will give you an uncluttered record of your attempts to buff people. Another useful trick is to make a return-tell macro for Jester's Cap. This is a macro with two lines: /tell %rt You have been buffed with Jester's Cap! /useabilityonreplytarget Jester's Cap Put this macro on your hotbar and teach your group and raid allies that if they need to get a Jester's Cap buff outside of your normal rotation, they need to send you a tell for it. Have them make a macro for that if they like. Once you get a tell from them you can just hit your macro button and they will be sent a tell and the buff will be cast on them, assuming it's ready, no switching of targets needed. Your goal is to apply Jester's Cap as much as possible to the people in your group that benefit most from it. Your first choice should be DPS casters and scouts, but tagging the healer with it when a fight is getting nasty is a good idea too (faster heals and cures). Anyone who has a long recast spell or ability (Necromancers with Lifeburn, I'm looking in your direction) should be told to request their buff 30 seconds before they need it. This gives you time to get them buffed because lord knows, Necros have a sixth sense about when you have just cast Jester's and tend to request it then. Precision of the Maestro The Precision of the Maestro line (level 58+) is another reason mage groups love to have a Troubador along. This spell line gives a 100% damage proc to all hostile spells and should be cast as often as possible. Make a macro for it with the first line being a group message saying that it's active and the second being the casting of the buff. This serves two purposes, firstly your group can time AoEs and whatnot with the casting of PotM, and second it gives your damage boost a bit of visibility. It's hard sometimes getting credit for the things a Troubador brings to a group and a little publicity never hurt a musician. A typical scenario would be for you to apply Jester's Cap to a DPS caster/scout in the group on the pull, then PotM, then fight as normal. As soon as Jester's is up, cap yourself. This will apply the recycle time reduction to PoTM and give you some extra DPS for the duration. Try to maximize PotM's use, there's no point in casting it if the fight will be over in seconds. On the other hand, don't be stingy with it simply because your group is tearing through your enemies and you don't want to waste it, or be overly concerned about saving it for tough fights/named battles. Those are considerations, but try to use PotM as often as is reasonable. PotM shines in linked encounters. You have several green icon encounter debuffs and all of them will proc PotM on your foes. Even relatively useless spells like the Breathtaking Bellow line are useful as carriers of damage for PotM, so fire them all off when PotM is up and watch your DPS soar. Raiding Every raid needs a Troubador, most need two. In my opinion, your job in a raid is not to top the DPS parse (though it's nice to see yourself in the top 10 at least), your job is to get your group members on the top of the parse. Taking this view gives a greater sense of accomplishment than fighting for a spot on the DPS parse against the Assassins armed with nuclear-tipped swords and the Wizards directing orbital death-ray bombardments. Debuff early and often, Jester's Cap everyone in your group you can (and even those outside your group if they send a polite tell), apply PotM with efficiency, and try and get as much personal damage in as possible. Your DPS will depend greatly on your gear, so if you're in Treasured/Legendary stuff and all your abilities are at Ap3, you're not going to be wowing anyone with your damage. Your group buffs and foe debuffs are going to make a huge difference though, remember that. Tradeskills and Harvesting If you enjoy crafting, becoming a Jeweler is a good choice as it allows you to craft your own Adept 3 spells. Tinkering is a nice secondary tradeskill for a Troubador, giving you the ability to feign death, some mana regen options, mender bots and other handy things. If crafting bores you it can be safely avoided, just buy what you need from the broker. It may cost a bit more but then again, leveling up a tradeskill can be expensive too. Try to harvest resource nodes you come across, it takes almost no time and it's a powerful source of extra cash from selling rare harvests on the broker. Some quests require you to have harvesting skills at the level of the zone the quest is in, so keeping your skills up as you level is a wise choice. Buy harvesting tools, either regular crafted ones or preferably the tinkered variety to speed up your harvesting time. Afterword I hope this proves somewhat helpful to new Troubadors. It's a fun class with lots to do and lots to contribute to a group or raid. Riodan, level 80 Troubador of Pillage/Oasis server
Fantastic writeup! Can this be stickied? This is the best Trouby info I've seen posted in a long time. That answers pretty much every question I had.
