Hello everyone, time for a little update on my progression.
I have to say for the first week I spent as much time setting up reading and learning as I did playing. I got the first team to 54 while I tested and tweaked the plugins to make things all work a little better. Sic is pretty much family now as he's become a permanent fixture on one of my monitors as I try to soak in all the invaluable information. I couldn't imagine how this process would of gone without his YouTube channel. My original team [WAR] [ENC] [CLR] [WIZ] [MAGE] [DRU] is a lot of fun to play once I figured out how to play to their strengths. The team was built with idea of I wanted to play an Enchanter at max level. This decision was made before I discovered this community. The team then grew from there, but my focus was on team synergy just for leveling or maybe grinding AA's at max. To be fair, I have no idea what the game is about at max level in current eq. Down the rabbit hole I go and the deeper I get the more I dig it. This place, this community is amazing. Although I did decide to 'main' and enchanter when I came back to EQ in every mmo I play, I tank. The only reason I didn't choose to main a tank in eq is because, well needs group, always needs group. Now my game has evolved to playing a tank while leading a group, my group. This couldn't be any better. I love it, find a camp, set the boys up, head off and pull. I guess this is the point where I realized I wasn't building my team with the right goals. I need to chose a team based on this style of gameplay. After watching enough YT's I had to try out Sic's team build and fired up my second team [SK] [BRD] [SHM] [BER] [BER] [BST] and took to the streets. This team leveled much faster then the first team, not because of the team make up but rather my knowledge and experience had gone up and I knew exactly where I was going what I doing.
I expected a lot less downtime on team 2. I leveled the first team with Kiss until level 50. The setup was pretty basic, I didn't even know the value of a the camp command as all my backup characters were casters and healers. As long as I remembered to turn off follow me or hit come to me before I headed out to pull, they sat still and did their part. With the caster team I would run around with the warrior and pick 8 to 10 dark blue mobs and then stand directly on top of my casters as they went to town. The enchanter (kiss) would aoe stun, mez, slow, the wiz dru mag would nuke. The cleric would tank, well I would tank but with 12 mobs when she starts healing I can't turn em all to 100 hate fast enough. Now all this is before I understood how to get more out of my warrior by enabling different modes. At this point my warrior was always in manual, I didn't even know kiss had modes. After all that fun, now comes the downtime. I'd get about 4 pulls before I'd have to sit on my hands and wait for all the finger wigglers to med up. This style gets me to like upper 40's where by this point I've seen so many CWTN plugin videos I'm going mad wanting to try one out for myself. It eventually dawns on me that the enchanter plugin is still in beta and useable by everyone with the build so I load it up. This was the missing piece my team needed, the chanter would include pet charming now and add to the damage. This helps a lot when the team get's low on mana and there's one or two mobs to finish up. So I guess what I was looking forward to the most about trialing the second group, was less downtime to med up.
This wasn't really the case though, as I leveled up the SHD and SHM mana started to really slow the team down. I started running the enchanter from the first team out to constantly keep clarity and haste on the team to keep my downtime to a minimum. The style is hella fun, I love the sk tank. I originally chose WAR because I read a lot of articles of how much simpler a warrior is to play especially when you're multi-boxing. Since that is no longer a concern (
redguides) I have to say I really prefer the SK, the spells, the pets, the feign, all of it. BER BER BST is a great dps comp, the boys pump and I hear nothing but good things about how they perform at the top. SHM is dope but feels really weak at this point in the game. When team 2 got to level 45 I decided I liked them all enough that I went ahead and picked up CWTN plugins for the team
MQ2Eskay,
MQ2Shaman, MQ2Berserker, and
MQ2Bst! I have to say these plugins are insanely good, mq2 feel incomplete without them. At 50 I took the team to Skyfire Mountains, set camp and started checking for hall passes. I only had 2 real problems, MANA, and a level 60 guardian wyrm that would sneak into my camp once and awhile and oh yea, he summons when you run for it! This is actually the next big hole I have to fill in my setup, I don't have and escape planned for this team. On the caster team I made a macro for evac and another for eagress and if I had to bounce, the macro piles everyone up and we dip out. Currently when my driver dies I'm pretty much pooched, I need to make some driver macros for my other toons so I can try to salvage bad situations.
So both teams are now sitting at 54 and I'm trying to figure out what team I want to move forward with from here. The shaman at this level just isn't cut out for this life, he's always, always oom trying to keep up and when shit hit's the fan he can't even rez yet. Big oof. He's running on
MQ2Shaman, he's definitely trying to do too much. I ran him mostly on the default settings at first. I find him not keeping up so I've gone through and turned off everything that made sense. He's set now to heal, haste, slow and the puma line, no nukes no dots no malo no regen, Ill let the bst buff and share the load for now. My knowledge of bard is severely lacking. I need to learn more about the class and the plugins like mqtwist it uses to get more out of the class. When it bugs out (like constantly sits as it to mem a spell but then doesn't over and over again) or how to set him into med mode to play the mana regen song over his other choices.
So I'm thinking about making some changes to the roster as I level through this next era of eq. I'm thinking of running [SHD] [ENC] [BER] [BER] [BST] [SHM] and see how the shaman's mana holds up or swapping the [SHM] for the [CLR]. Maybe even dropping the [SHD] for the [WAR]. I find the shd is more fun to play with all the spell animations and the pet but a warrior would never have to med. As long as the SHD mana bar isn't the hold up for the group I would prefer to go this route for sure.
You guys tell me, what do you think about the group comps? What's your main team comp?
Well this post got away from me... I'll try to keep the updates a little shorter
TDLR: I'm super excited, completely immersed, and grateful I found this community and gaming experience! pce