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Dr. Whom Ph.D's Progression Guide for Non-Progression Servers

Guide - Dr. Whom Ph.D's Progression Guide for Non-Progression Servers (1 Viewer)

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drwhomphd

drwhomphd

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drwhomphd submitted a new resource:

Dr. Whom Ph.D's Progression Guide for Non-Progression Servers - or: How I Learned to Stop Power-leveling and Learned to Love the Content

Introduction
This guide is all about experiencing Everquest 'in-era' as much as possible without ever actually being in-era. The creation of this guide stemmed from my asking around about interesting quests and activities to do since my first characters hit 60. It was at this era (Kunark) that I originally stopped playing, got disgusted, deleted all my characters, and never looked back for a good 20 years (all because ROG's had a devil of a time getting groups back in the...
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Making a placeholder post as a couple of us are going to be doing progression style play on test. I will keep a log of things we do and difficulty we experienced.

First stop Classic Progression at level 52

AA/Gear/Food/Buffs
  1. Auto-granted AAs
  2. Defiant gear that dropped along the way leveling 25-52 (so by no means well equipped)
  3. Used Primordial noodle and primordial smoothie stat foods.
  4. No outside buffs from higher levels
Group Fights
1. (Good fight) King Tranix - Was a little dicey since he came with ~4 adds, but we survived. I think the rogues were doing ~1k dps each at this point.
2. (Good fight) Rogue epic fight: Renux - Tank and spanked, healer had to use all her mana, but we killed it. Will fight the general soon and see how that fight goes!
2a. (Too hard) General -> He would have wooped my butt. The pull was super difficult, and he was super difficult. I think I would try this again at 60.
Edit: Tried this again (still at 52) but this time got a clean pull with only the general right up front since I knew what to expect. End result was a very close fight but pulled through! Tank got down to ~20% hp but cleric mana was still above 50% so not bad. Here is DPS chart:
GeneralDPSanon.JPG

3. (Too hard) Cleric epic: Ixiblat - He absolutely wrecked the warrior. The AoE wasn't too bad because we all had the HP food. Ixiblat hit super hard and I freaked out an just killed it with a 105. Realized I am probably going to have to swap out monk with shaman for safety of slows, but will see how it goes.
3a. Used a 105 char to get the chardok King drop mostly an issue of time for me over the weekend. When the team hits 60 I will try to do a slow clear of Chardok all the way to Royals
3b. The team killed the Zordak dragon! It was a super close fight and the tank died when the dragon had 20% hp! I had no idea a dragon spawned, so used burn on human version lol. When the dragon spawned I cried a little, but the team pulled through! Forgot to get a DPS capture though since I was freaking out a bit at the end when tank died. Cleric epic complete!

4. (Too hard) Noble Djorn - Using just main group (war/clr/brd/mnk/rog/rog) Noble Djorn + the 2 bladestorms were too much, burned him down to 30% but everyone died.
Edit: Went back with the 3 full groups of level 52 and made quick work of Noble Djorn! It wasn't bad when putting a tank on each of the 3 mobs to keep them off the clerics.

5. (Monk Epic) - Xenevorash - Very tough fight with one group. Part of which again was using burn too early, saving it for the dragon would have made things smoother. Cleric died when dragon was around 50% hp. I campfired her back, and she rezzed herself lol. Tank died around 20% hp, but the DPS finished the job. Difficult fight but lots of fun with 1 group of 52s!

Basically carrying the raid epic fights with 105 SK, didn't realize they would be so hard, but didn't want to waste the time put into farming group items.

**started another group of: war/clr/brd/shm/zerk/zerk , probably won't do so much epic hunting with them but will use for the extra damages

5/17/2021: 2nd team is now level 52. Will be giving some dragons a try soon.

Added a 3rd group of sk/shm/brd/zerk/zerk/zerk

Raids

  1. Plane Of Sky
    1. Went to PoSky with 3 groups. It was quite a bit overkill, but I wanted some practice for moving them around: War/war/SK/Clr/Clr/Ench Shm/Brd/Zerk/Zerk/Rog/Rog Shm/Brd/Zerk/Zerk/Zerk/Mnk - mostly in the Test starter gear but some defiant mixed in here and there. (Except for the 2 rogues have epics)
    2. Finished the boss of Island 3, then had some navigation issues and decided to call it a night. The fights were not super difficult, the tank did not take a ton of damage and the nameds died rather quickly. I was always able to pull 1-3 mobs at a time. DPS Chart for reference:
      1. PoSkyIsland3GorgDPSanon.jpg
    3. 5/22 update, killed Eye of Veeshan on Island 8! We had the above 3 groups + 1 mage played by another player. Took ~3 hours (where 1 hr of that was waiting for Keeper of Souls to pop) in order to get all the way up. There was a lot of dying. Having 3 tanks and an epic cleric to rez was paramount to success and speed up recovery. This would have been very challenging with just 2 groups I think, and not possible with 1 due to the death touches.
    4. Some tips to make things smoother:
      1. Get all your raid movement setup ahead of time, I used Dannet /dgrae commands
      2. Use giveitems.mac to trade keys to sirran https://www.redguides.com/community/threads/giveitems-mac.57203/
      3. Setup your loot.ini and giveitems.ini (for giveitems.mac) with key names ahead of time
      4. Use this to get a list of chars who have the key items while you are killing trash: /noparse /dgrae /dgt raid ${FindItem[beast]}
      5. You can use the following command format to trade the keys with giveitems.mac
        1. /dgrae /mac giveitems
          /dgrae /target sirran
          /dgrae /giveitem np gr sky4
      6. Don't forget to /afollow off or your chars will just randomly run around place you don't expect and fall to EFP :) I mostly just used a"Come to me" macro to move
      7. Check the consent all raid/guild/group boxes on all your characters!
  2. Vox
    1. Lady Vox Down! Died ~3 times...mostly from learning how to pull the room. Eventually got it down to just her, went in and downed her no problem. DPS chart:
      1. LadyVoxDPSanon.jpg
      2. Adding screencap of stats for warrior so people can get a sense of comparison
      3. VoxWarStats.JPG
  3. Naggy
    1. Lord nagafen was an easy fight as well, fought him with the Magus and killed both easily. DPS:
      1. LordNagafenDPSanon.jpg
  4. Plane of Hate (Is this actually classic after revamp?)
    1. Went up to PoHate...Maestro of Rancor (which is part of the achievement) is level 75, and innoruk is level 70. I didn't even get Maestro to 99% hp. Going to wait and do this later.
    2. EDIT 6/10/2021: Killed Maestro of Rancor with 5 groups of level 60s. Was a tough fight even so, with a couple battle rezes on the tank. Pushed through DPS with the banshees and took him down
    3. 1623318771178.png\
    4. Tried Inny afterwards....there were just too many adds with him and took down all the healer was not able to pull through. He was also level 75. Might try again sometime and see if it's possible to get a bit cleaner pull.
  5. Plane of Fear (Is this actually Kunark?)
    1. Got dracoliche to ~80% before wiping, the warrior was taking a lot of damage. Combined with the adds, I think this equates to fear taking a super long time at level 52. I think it might be doable, but a bit too much of a pain. Will come back here at 60 as well.
 
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Level 60 - Kunark

Raid setup:
3 groups @ level 60. Using mostly Elaborate Defiant gear (few pieces missing), intricate defiant jewelry from vendor, and the same HP food mentioned above.
War/Clr/Brd/Rog/Rog/Mon (Rogues, cleric, monk with epic 1.0)
War/Clr/Shm/Brd/Ber/Ber
SK/Shm/Enc/Ber/Ber/Ber

Main tank stats:
1621925538236.png

Now on to some fights:
1. Ixiblat Revisited - He got destroyed with the three groups, melted in about 20s
2. Chardok King/Queen - I fell into the King room and pulled King + 8 sarnaks, we still annihilated them. Cleric in MT group ended with about 20% hp, the fight lasted ~2 mins to kill all the adds
3. Talendor - Absolutely evaporated, went from 100->50% HP I think from the SK harm touch. Died within ~20s
4. Zordak - Finished another cleric epic and killed zordak again. Absolutely no issues with him at all.
5. Nagafen - Did an Agent of Change version of Nagafen, again, melted.
6. Severilous - Killed with one group (War/Clr/Brd/Rog/Rog/Mnk) No issues at all, most fears got resisted.
7. Trak'anon - We were able to spawn an instance through agent of change to get a fresh level 60 instance of Sebelis! Pretty awesome. We fought down to trak and smashed him. He lived ~60seconds. This was 2 groups, each controlled by one person. From here on out will try to only do one group per person. In Kunark that will probably be overkill, but Velious dragons might start putting up a fight. Here is DPS for trak:
TrakanonDPSanon.jpg
8. Echo of Nortlav (classic) - killed easily with 1 group
9. Faydedar - Killed easily with 1 group
10. Venril Sathir - Killed easily with 1 group
11. Garudon (Veksar) - he was a red con level 70, hit very hard and very fast. I think we got him to ~90% with one group before wiping. Will re-visit this with more firepower.
12. VP !? - Seems this is the revamped version even in AoC, but going to try anyway with a couple groups worth of chars to see how far along we can get.
- Edit - Went into VP with 6 groups of level 60s. The trash we killed no problem. We tried Silverwing twice. First time we didn't have levitates so gravity flux ruined everything. Second time we went in a bit more prepared with everyone autoassistat 100. We got her to 35% but ended up losing healers and dying. Possibly could try her again and get some better aggro up front with the tank. This may be something we revisit before leveling past 60. It is definitely tough though. Maybe bringing another 2-4 groups will even the odds a bit.
Edit: Just wanted to update, we went into NTOV a bit today and the dragons in there felt harder than Silverwing did. I'm going to setup a more accurate parser to get a better idea of how much HP the bosses have.
13. Cazic Thule (and dracolich) - First time I tried CT with 4 groups (1 player), and wiped due to all the trash in fear adding on the fight. The second time I parked the groups in the corner by succor point, and kited the zone with a bard. After the initial aggro on CT, I kited him around to the corner then pulled him with an SK to the main group. The fight still took ~5+ mins and was a pain but since he kept booting us into the nearby wall everyone could re-engage quickly. Here is the DPS chart, was happy to see the top 3 spots held by DPS with their epics (2x rog and a monk) CT was level 70, I think this would have been difficult with less than 4 groups.
CazicThuleDPSanon.jpg
14. Just beat Korukust down in Chardok: Hall of Betrayal. Took just a few minutes with the four groups, did not hit very hard. Was a pretty cool zone, all the trash is regular group content though. He seems to be the only raid mob in the zone. Probably doable with one defiant geared group at level 60.
 
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Level 60 - Velious

Current setup: 5 groups (some of the earlier velious kills were done with the previous 4 groups). Got a 6th group leveling too since it seems a lot of DPS will be needed for Luclin. I also started capturing logs to get better history of DPS if I forget to take a screenshot after the fight.

All elaborate defiant gear + intricate defiant jewelry from vendor. Using primordial noodle/smoothie. No out of raid buffs from higher levels
War / War / SK / Clr / Clr / Brd
SK / Clr / Clr / Brd / Ber / SK
Brd / Shm / Rog / Rog / Mnk / Ber
Brd / Shm / Mnk / Ber / Ber / Ber
Brd / Shm / Mnk / Mnk / Rog / Ench
SK / Shm / Brd / Mnk / Mnk / Mnk

1. Western Wastes dragons - Killed Sontalak with just 1 group of War/Clr/Brd/Rog/Rog/Mnk, I think the warrior died and got rezzed ~3 times, it was a really close fight.
1a. Klandicar - Melted with 4 groups
2. Zlandicar - Used 4 groups and he died pretty quickly just 1-2 minutes. Not scary
3. Temple of Veeshan - Killed a couple of dragons in West and East with 4 groups. Fights took ~3-4 minutes each maybe, were not too scary. The trash goes down pretty quickly and it was a fun dungeon crawling experience.
3a. ToV-North - These dragons have a lot of HP! Went with 3 people, 4groups+2group+Very Twinked SK+Mag. The twinked SK carried the tanking (they honestly could have solo'd these dragons). But even so the DPS on the dragons took a long time. Lord Vymenn knocked us all into the lava and we had to COTH out. It was a good first look at the fights, but will try going in again with a non-immortal tank and see how things go. Each of the dragons has ~750k HP I think.
4. Avatar of War ! - Managed to kill him with 5 groups listed above. I didn't get a good DPS parse because around 20% HP the tank went flying off to go kill some random trash mob, which pulled part of the raid with him on chase. Somehow managed to hang on and take down that last 20% HP. Did not need to setup and sort of heal rotation on the clerics, but I staggered their HP heal % a little bit. Also staggered the two warrior defensives (though the SKs frequently grab aggro from them). Will try this again to get a clean DPS parse. I only have the DPS parse from Idol just before to give an idea of what the DPS level looks like. One thing I've noticed is berserkers are seriously underperforming at this level.
1623021134624.png

5. Yelinak - Holy cow getting up through skyshrine was terrible. Definitely reccomend cothing past the maze. All the dragons leading up to Yelinak were fairly trivial with 5 groups. Ended up wiping to Yelinak the first time because we didn't have Levitate, causing him to bounce us all over the room. After reforming and giving everyone Lev, he was pretty easy. Still a lot of HP though:
YelinakDPSanon.jpg

6. Tunare - This was a long slog since we had to clear the entire zone. The only mobs that gave us trouble were the two guardians that pop when Tunare first gets aggro'd. They have an AoE silence that almost wiped us if our DPS wouldn't have been quite as high. Tunare herself wasn't so difficult.
TunareDPS.JPG

7. Sleepers Tomb - This was just a straight dungeon crawl with 5 groups. Everything was tank and spank, didn't take more than 2-3 minutes for a fight.

I think that is about it for the big fights on Velious...still need to fight Dain, but might hold off on that for faction purposes. I will probably do another ToV north instance to see if we can tank without using the twinked SK. Will probably start doing some of the Luclin raids now, I expect some of those to be pretty tough. Will focus on upgrading defiant weapons where possible, as well as filling in the shoulders/belt/cloak slots that are missing on some chars. There could be some possible jewelry upgrades in Luclin raids as well (since can only purchase up to intricate defiant at level 60).

8. Update: Did another round of NTOV today with standard 5 groups of 60s. Got clean single pulls on all dragons and took them all down. Knowing how to position for Vymnn, and single pulling triplets helped succeed. Vulak was a longgg fight almost 10 minutes, but took her down! The rogues weren't backstabbing for half the fight due to some distance issues (note with mq2rogue plugin need to be within 15 range, so use stickhow=behind 15 uw or something like that

VulakDPSanon.png
 

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Level 60 - Luclin

Current setup: 5 groups (some of the earlier velious kills were done with the previous 4 groups). Got a 6th group leveling too since it seems a lot of DPS will be needed for Luclin. I also started capturing logs to get better history of DPS if I forget to take a screenshot after the fight.

All elaborate defiant gear + intricate defiant jewelry from vendor. Using primordial noodle/smoothie. No out of raid buffs from higher levels
War / War / SK / Clr / Clr / Brd
SK / Clr / Clr / Brd / Ber / SK
Brd / Shm / Rog / Rog / Mnk / Ber
Brd / Shm / Mnk / Ber / Ber / Ber
Brd / Shm / Mnk / Mnk / Rog / Ench
SK / Shm / Brd / Mnk / Mnk / Mnk

1. Akheva Ruins - Insanity crawler was a very easy fight, took just a couple of minutes. Itraer Vius took ~3 minutes as well, a lot of chars were blind the whole time but that didn't impact the fighting much. I wasn't able to get a good parse for the last boss Shei Vinitras due to death touches on my tank. However with the cleric rez sticks, the death touches weren't too much of an issue and took him down within 5-6 minutes or so. DPS hasn't changed much from the posts in velious. Hoping that moving into Ssra and VT will start to see some weapon upgrades.

Kind of slow going right now, have the raid farming stone drops in the Ssra basement to build bane weapons for the emperor. Hoping to tackle him in the near future.
 
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