Question - Powerleveling with Sub-Par SK

[Oath]

Hey Guys,
A friend of mine let me piggy back an SK in his groups and blazed me to 110 quickly. I went ahead and bought gear off the baz and now am around 181K life and 4400 AC with no augs etc. I'm wanting to get my own group going and made heroic Clr, Berz, Bard, Sham and took them to Temple of the Resplendant and did.."ok". I did the SK 2.0 so able to marginally kill about 5-6 mobs when I click epic. Without it, I can handle 2 or so as most. Is there a better path than what I am currently doing for this leveling? I also have access to a 110 Ranger who is poorly geared if that helps. I was picturing in my head that the SK would be a machine and swarming 30-40 mobs.. that isn't happening. Should I go back to HAs? Playing on FV server also.

Thanks for any tips!

 

[wymranar]

You must be missing a whole lot of AAs/type 7/type5 etc. you should be close to 300k and 9500 combined AC when buffed at that level.

What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? What’s your skill level with the SK? How much work are you willing to do?

In today’s content, I’d say your tank is your most important group member and once you get him up to par, life will get exponentially easier.

 

[whytdrumer]

@Oath I was in the same boat earlier in the year. Here's what I did. FOCUS ON AAs. When I had no AAs I was getting owned by light blue with a healer. As soon as I got 20k AAs I can handle yellows in OT with a solid group no problem. Obviously gear and augs are important, but I think what's going to have the biggest impact in a short time is increasing your AAs. You didn't mention how many you have but with 180k hp I would assume not many. Hope that helps.

 

[Oath]

@wymranar Yeah, the SK is a fresh SK. I'm use to playing SK on another server. Decided to give FV a try but still haven't played EQ seriously in over 2 years. My current SK has zero augs. I got him to 110 two days ago, got him gear yesterday and now trying to use him today. I'm willing to get the gear needed to be efficient! My goal is group content with a solid 5man group. Thanks!

Edited as I forgot to mention, SK currently has 17.8K aas

 

[wymranar]

@Oath on the augs here’s what I would do to get started out:

-use your free heroic character boost on your SK so you can do all the heroic type 7 aug quests. You can really get all of these done in a day, maybe 2. Then you will have a full set of 30 AC type 7 augs.
-Ask in general to buy old remnants of tranquility. Most people have a lot just sitting there and you should be able to buy enough for a full set of type 5 augs for 100-250k. You’re also going to need to compete two relatively simple quests to access the aug vendor. One of them is a walk around quest (seal of approval?) and the other one should scale to your group level (into the temple b).

Then you should at least have a starting set of augs to go with your tier 1 ToV armor. Also, make sure you’re buying the tank versions of that tier 1 gear.

As for the aas, you’re just going to have to bust your butt.

 

[Oath]

@wymranar This char is a heroic char. Could you possibly link to the heroic aug quests? Thank you all for the help!

 

[wymranar]

@Oath all of the mercenary and partisan quests in Fearrot the dream and House of Thule Lower Floors. Each quest gives 1 aug, and they’re all real easy.

 

[wymranar]

@Oath there are 7 of them listed here: https://hot.eqresource.com/progression.php

Pretty much any quest giver in those two zones has a heroic aug quest. Each quest is for a different slot

 

[Oath]

@wymranar Thank you so much! This will be my task tomorrow! All my chars are heroics, so I will do them on all of them!

 

[Fabianz1977]

Yeah Wym is correct for heroic char you should definitely grab them easy quests for 30 ac augment. As for Pling your group using the SK, are you manually grabbing 5-6 mobs to kill or are you using kissassist/mq2eskay? I know nothing about playing SK so I let ka or eskay run it, and I would just put it in pull mode and watch it run. By doing that my SK usually only pull 1 or 2 at a time and kill them, but he killed them fast enough that sometimes he was waiting for respawn. No need to pull 5-6 at a time if you can kill them fast enough for respawn. When I pling my rogue recently I also took her to resplendent temple and used mq2eskay to pull them underground pigs. Took 5-6 hrs to went from 80-95. Of course that was just 1 roon on test server where xp is higher than FV so you can expect your to be slower, but it shouldn’t take but a week or so to get all yours toons to around 100+ and start contributing to your SK. I would stay at resplendent temple until around 93 or 94 then go to shard landing, stay there until 98 or so then try and see if I could handle brother island. That could take you to 104 or 105. Grab the ac augment while you at it. After that go to frontier mt./Droga until 110.

 

[Oath]

@Fabianz1977 Thank you for the ideas! I have been manually pulling with my SK. SK has been my main for years so I feel I have a pretty good idea on how to perform on them. I will look into the MQ2eskay.. I am a bit nervous to use the full automation capabilities even if I am at my keyboard as I don't prefer for a GM to be suspicious of me! lol.

Thanks again!

 

[Fabianz1977]

@Fabianz1977 Thank you for the ideas! I have been manually pulling with my SK. SK has been my main for years so I feel I have a pretty good idea on how to perform on them. I will look into the MQ2eskay.. I am a bit nervous to use the full automation capabilities even if I am at my keyboard as I don't prefer for a GM to be suspicious of me! lol.

Thanks again!

Yeah I can understand your hesitation about full automation. I didn’t do that until recently when my group was already at lvl 110 and I feel a bit more comfortable letting go of control, but I can tell you that whether you go full automation or semi automation (I.e control one char manually and the rest on KA or other classes plugin) it won’t look normal to other players/GM eyes. So the best you can do is to stay at keyboards and pay attention to your surroundings or zone . I will periodically do /w to see if there are other in the zone. If I see there are other in zone then I will do /tar their name then look on map to see where they are and what they are doing. I also have /mqp macro to pause and unpause my macro. If you use eskay then have macro to either pause, load/unload, or change mode to manual so you can stop if people get near your group. Often time I will chat with people when they come by and even offer to give them the camp if they like. Playing on test server I have many places that I can go to so no need to stay near people when not necessary. Because as I mentioned even if I am at the keyboard manually controlling 1 char it will still won’t look right. Why? Because my group will just be too coordinated to be controlled by individuals, and my chars reacting too quickly that no way it can be controlled all by myself.

 

[Oath]

@Fabianz1977 So I tried looking at the Eskay plugin. I can't seem to find anywhere to purchase/use it? Feeling sort of stupid about this, lol.

 

[Robban]

@Fabianz1977 So I tried looking at the Eskay plugin. I can't seem to find anywhere to purchase/use it? Feeling sort of stupid about this, lol.

/plugin mq2eskay

 

[Oath]

@Robban Ah, Thank you! For some reason I thought it was not included with the vanilla version. Thanks!

 

[Fabianz1977]

@Fabianz1977 So I tried looking at the Eskay plugin. I can't seem to find anywhere to purchase/use it? Feeling sort of stupid about this, lol.

I believe the plugin is still in testing so it’s free right now. Don’t let the fact that it is still in testing or free fool you though. It still works quite well.

 

[Sic]

@Robban Ah, Thank you! For some reason I thought it was not included with the vanilla version. Thanks!

nah not stupid at all

mq2cleric
mq2eskay (shadowknight)
and mq2bst

these are currently unreleased, so they're just "free to check em out" in your VeryVanilla while they're being built

 

[Oath]

Thank you @Sic . I've been using the Kissassist for my heroic 85 Clr. Do you prefer the mq2cleric over the KA?

 

[Sic]

Thank you @Sic . I've been using the Kissassist for my heroic 85 Clr. Do you prefer the mq2cleric over the KA?

I've done all of TBL/ToV with mq2cleric, and i've been working on mq2cleric with chat since it started getting developed

 

[Mongo]

Thank you @Sic . I've been using the Kissassist for my heroic 85 Clr. Do you prefer the mq2cleric over the KA?

It's a no brainer for me, Mq2cleric is ridiculously good! I recommend all of chats plugins!!

Also was in a similar boat to you, Had an SK powerlevelled and wanted to make the rest of my team up myself. I ran GMM's at 110until I had about 10k AA above autogrant and then I dived into progression, everything snowballed into place after that. GMM was a godsend because it's just so easy - if I could do it at 110 with 300aa over autogrant, anyone can!

 

[wymranar]

@Sic ’s cleric ini for KA is pretty awesome. If I were you and you’re worried about looking obvious, then I would look into mq2posse, gtfo Mac, and mq2discord. I think if everyone used those 3 things, then we would all get along much better with the general player base.

 

[Oath]

@Mongo Thank you for the info! Could you elaborate more on the GMM portion? That is new to me. I allakhazam'ed it and it seems it's a zone off DSH as well as a few missions. Did you do the missions or just swarmed in the zone? Thanks for the info!

 

[Mongo]

@Mongo Thank you for the info! Could you elaborate more on the GMM portion? That is new to me. I allakhazam'ed it and it seems it's a zone off DSH as well as a few missions. Did you do the missions or just swarmed in the zone? Thanks for the info!

I ran THIS mission, I didn't complete it unless I was about to go to bed - but the loot is good at 110 and the mobs are really quite easy so it's a good one to do.

 

[Oath]

I ran THIS mission, I didn't complete it unless I was about to go to bed - but the loot is good at 110 and the mobs are really quite easy so it's a good one to do.

Thanks for this. I'll check it out today. I did all the heroic quests in Feerott and HoT yesterday on all 5 chars. Will try and see if I can handle this mission today!

 

[Redmonkey]

You can get to GNM thru DSH on the opposite end of the zone from the other canon ..... so head south. I have a hard time due to lack of cc on that mission and I kill too slow to keep it moving well as mobs respawn super fast.

However others swear by it. I prefer FM - easier mobs, still good exp and couple nice aug drops for your group

 

[Oath]

@Redmonkey Any particular camp you like in FM? People have said sarnaks due to lower health I believe?

 

[Redmonkey]

I got bored with Bi'faik and it can have adds from people running past. I am liking a little fort kinda in the west middle area. Its where Blooddrinker pops. There are two flame Sarnaks attacking 1 giant in each corner and up on a tower.

Super easy to split and once you get a rotation going you can keep it steady. Named was popping about every 5th rotation but don't swear by that lol

 

[Fabianz1977]

You can also try scorched woods just outside of Chardok. The Sarnaks here are about as easy as the one in FM if not more. The respawn there are just as fast as the one in FM. If you can handle 2 or 3 mobs at a time or have crowd control then you can stay in the fort outside Chardok where there is a named. Otherwise you can move outside the fort in the open where there are also plenty of single to pull. It is where I currently setup my group for long AA grind. Scorched Woods seems to be much less popular than FM(probably due to the lvl is slightly lower and mobs are not tightly bunched together through out the zone) so I am usually the only one there. Make me feel a bit more comfortable there.

 

[Sungazer]

Thanks for this. I'll check it out today. I did all the heroic quests in Feerott and HoT yesterday on all 5 chars. Will try and see if I can handle this mission today!

if you’re undergeared GMM can be very tough. The darkness howls is a good mission to grind for exo and gear, but the mobs hit hard and if you don’t have some form of singling mobs or strong CC you’re in for a rough ride

 

[Sungazer]

@Redmonkey Any particular camp you like in FM? People have said sarnaks due to lower health I believe?

there are three sarnak forts, all along the west side of the zone. All are good, but I prefer the north western one because it has more named PHers. All the mobs in FM are on a fast respawn (I think less than 10m) so you’ll never run out of stuff to kill.