I recently did exactly this with your same group composition. I hadn't played EQ since Luclin and started out clean on a new server with no cash, no gear, nothing. I used
this guide loosely as a hint on where to go as I progressed. Like you I felt a major slowdown around 68, as I was grinding in plane of fire. All my accounts were FTP at this point. Then I tried Dragonscale Hills per the guide and I was getting absolutely slaughtered. I opened the wallet a little and got my tank a gold subscription. The auto grant AAs helped a bit but only for a few levels. Shortly after that I made the other 5 toons gold, which again helped for a few levels. I was able to do gribbles and the easiest HA in west karana, but they weren't always easy. At this point, I was level 81, I realized that my gear was my problem. I was still in defiant. I was a little bummed at this point because I was flying through content and now I felt like I could barely scratch together 20% of a level in a night.
I decided to take a break from leveling and gear up. I did all of the quests for the Paragon armor achievements (
example of one), yes all of them. At times it was brutal and I wanted to quit, but my OCD made me finish them. It probably took me two weeks to complete them all. After that two weeks my crew took all their shiny new armor back to Gribble and we were able to easily handle all three of his HAs. Occasionally being able to pop Lessons of the Devoted right before the final turn in and finish a second one before the XP bonus wore off. Those runs were pretty fun. Once I got over that hump it was pretty straight forward. I focused on keeping my SK in the latest and greatest gear that I could get my hands on. Gear on the rest of the group was nice, but I really only noticed a difference when gearing my tank.
I would do whatever HAs that I could handle that Teeks offered for the bonuses, but I would usually grind according to the guide I linked above. Full disclosure, I did a lot of AFK grinding and probably just got lucky because I did not take sufficient precautions... 81-100 was still a little slow, but I feel like 100-110 was really fast.
I did get the CWTN plugins for all my toons somewhere around 90ish. If you have a little money to burn they are very worth it. I spent so much time tinkering with KA inis that I was happy to just have it done for me, it even tells you what spells you are missing and just the ones you actually need.
I just consulted my git repo of KA inis...I told you they were a pain. Here is my teams progression:
July 16 - Level 1
July 27 - Level 70
August 5 - Level 81
The paragon armor break... Also somewhere in here I got the
CWTN plugins because now I only have bard inis in my repo
August 31 - Level 92
September 9 - Level 95
September 15 - Level 110
Hope this helps. If you have any specific questions feel free to hit me up. The knowledge is still pretty fresh. But honestly it was a lot of fun just working through it without outside help.
I have since leveled two other teams to 110. The first by decking them out and having my clr bst and brd follow them around for buffs and a safety net. Once the second group got in level range, I would bring along the DPS toons to start slaughtering mobs once the leveling team got it down to 50%. The second team I PL'd using the hatchery macro to 65ish, then SK damage shielding in the Grounds to 80, then by grouping them with my higher level toons in Eok/RoS. These were both way faster obviously but no where near as fun as that first team. Enjoy it while it lasts. Relearning the game was a huge part of the fun for me.
