Anti-Kiting Expansion!Follow

I find you need to box nowadays which is a shame but what it has come to. I suggest mage and Wizard or Druid. I have never agreed or liked forced group content. I always thought it was 25% raid content, 50% group and 25% solo or way it should be.


Edited, Dec 15th 2017 9:44pm by Mymercisajerk

Edited, Dec 15th 2017 9:45pm by Mymercisajerk

I agree.


This is also where it would be really easy to justify the mass-revamp approach. A revamped to 110+ Cobalt Scar, Noble's Causeway, Icefall Glacier, Plane of Valor, etc. would be expected to still be kite-happy zones or at least zones with kite-happy camps.

Sure, totally new stuff is great too but the best way to get lots of niche tactic stuff faster is to be pro-revamp. Expand the sandbox 85+ and drastically reduce the world 1-85 to match where the live playerbase is. Tie in the revamps to current era drops and it works pretty easily.

Remember to move quest items (i.e., epic stuff) to a level appropriate new spot and/or provide an alternative way to get the item. All this stuff can be era-set so anyone that wants it the old way plays (even just levels up) on progression to do it that way.

Well, they have a bit of a history of detuning things after launch as well...

Remember when fishing in GoD was profitable? I don't think that lasted 2 weeks.

I haven't kited with my wizard in ages, I level her in a boxed group. The problem for me is the short-duration snare wizzies get. Druid snare, once enhanced with AA's, lasts 15 mins and the AA version, "Entrap", is basically unresistable if the mob isn't flagged immune to run speed changes.

Kiting is absolutely possible in recent expansions so while I agree Sony/DBG never seemed to be big proponents of solo kiting or root-rotting it has definitely been doable. I levelled both my max level druids almost exclusively with solo-kiting up to now. See my writeup here in the Wiki. It's linked from the QUAD-KITING article since I couldn't figure out how to add my QUINT-KITING article to the "table of contents." I list a bunch of mobs/zones which work there. But they're not as efficient XP-wise once you hit 105.

I will add my secret kiting spots for 105-110 once I ding 110 lol.

I'm not sure revamping passage zones like Cobalt Scar to 110+ would be good. I remember soloing there with my Druid long ago and know it is a great spot for it, but changing the zone to 110+ would make getting to the content behind it, SG and WW etc. difficult/impossible for any sub 100 player.

I know the player base in general is beyond the levels the content in those zones is designed for, but there are some.

They can do it a lot of ways.

I'm not super-fond of multiple versions of the same zone existing at the same time at various levels (if the story is different in the versions of the zone. If it is the same story I don't care), but if the Dev team feels that is wisdom so be it. Keeping the base world as-is and providing high level instances that you hail an NPC (or click a new object) to go into probably appeals to me more than always being prompted to choose on zoning.

I prefer the idea that the story moves. Recognizing that the vast majority of the active playerbase is 95+ it really does makes sense (to me) to work towards a game with most of the content in that level and beyond. Since progression lets us visit nostalgia... it's pretty easy to justify being more radical in revamping.

Do I like having 10+ viable different leveling chains from 1-50... yes, but it is empty content 99% of the time on live servers. I can revisit it full to empty on progression servers depending where they are at.

I (and likely speaking for only myself) would accept an updated live EQ that did the following (and I will be brief vs. mass idea listing):

-forwarded storylines to reduce the number of home cities and leveling chains, even available continents

-Used TSS as the 1-75 chain, infilled other connected zones to broaden some options and get us to 85. This is where alternate access to quests worth not obsoleting occurs. Not because I love TSS, but because the work is mostly already done aside from putting the alternate access to key quests in.

-Used revamped Feerott and the connected zones as the leveling chain (and tutorial Sr. to get people up to speed with the modern game). Again, much of the work has been done and having Lower Guk, Kithicor, Befallen, Ro and such on the re-entry chain makes sense.

-took everything else and either reused it tuned to 105+ (including fun things like making Grobb a raid zone, in the spirit of Thurgadin or even Plane of Growth where a place means different things to different race/class/diety combos) or made it obsolete and set it aside for future expansions (for example... take Taelosia [Gates of Discord] out completely. Reuse the zone art, rename the zones and populate them with the new overlords from the Deathfist/Crushbone alliance).

-tune new things to age better. By this I mean 2018 expac raids get a 2019 normal mode (so easier for casual guilds) and a 2020 group mode, with rewards scaled to be good for the effort but viable in the era you get them. Keeps the content valid way longer and keeps the world bigger at the top.

many other little things, but that is probably the basic theory.

Yes, 109 is certainly a hell level, according to all I've heard. Still, 0.4%/kill is still better than some of the old time hell levels back in the day. I remember for some of those, calculating I'd need ~450 mobs to level. This is 250.

Edit: Of course, we didn't have Lesson back then, so 2 x 250 = 500, so I guess this is about the same ;)

Quick question for you on the yetis and quinting. I haven't tried quinting anywhere yet, but I have been running my Lessons at the yetis, and can kill ~22-24 per Lesson, using DoTs instead (worth ~55 AA/Lesson @ 106). I was curious how this compared to quinting.

For comparison's sake, I have about 105K mana, maybe 110K if I have crack.

Tat

Edited, Dec 29th 2017 11:35am by tatankaseventh

No need to question, I'll tell you how I do it here :)

First, as a note, I have enough focus AAs for my DoTs, that they're all doing the extra 8% damage, and my DoT AAs are complete (with the exception of Destructive vortex, missing the third rank). With this, I can kill most with one round of the 5 main DoTs (I skip the 2.5+ minute DoT, XXX Chill, it takes too long). Also, with twincast running, I can take out a yeti with just one round of Sunflash/Horde/Overwhelming.

When I start, I gather 6, and start kiting, throwing on wolf form, and then IT, which gives me 18 doubled casts. Since I need 3 DoTs/mob, that will kill 6 mobs, how convenient ;) I cast Lesson as I finish applying DoTs to the 3rd mob. Once all DoTs are on, I also throw in Storm Strike/Fire Storm as it refreshes (as well as while gathering the six). I may have one or two which need one more dot to finish, so I throw on a Sunflash. Once all 6 are dotted, I cast the mana regen bear, so that helps as well. For the rest of the lesson, I'm recasting the mana bear whenever it refreshes.

When the six are down, I have just enough mana left to kill another with twincasting, so I use the spell form and take out another. After that I med to near full, taking advantage of fast regen, and then kill one normally (the full round of 5 dots). By then, spell twincast is back up, so I do one that way, med up, and now IT is refreshed, and I start over. Rinse and repeat, and viola, 20-24 dead yetis in a Lesson, without porting out to PoK :)

My question with the quinting is, looking at the base damage of the quint spells, it seems like I'd have to cast it well over 100 times to take them out, which seems like an awful lot, not to mention I wouldn't have enough mana to cast them that many times.

Tat

Edit - Forgot to mention, I don't think either method could go much past 25-26 per Lesson, due to lack of availability of mobs. Though, with porting out to regen, you could wait for respawns, so that would help.

Edited, Dec 29th 2017 2:48pm by tatankaseventh

Ok just for fun I did a hard test this morning. I pulled 10 yetis and then played them as hard as possible while watching the clock and my casts.

The first 5 died after 25 quint spell casts. I have the top 4 aoe dd's, Rank 3's of the lowest 2 and Rank 2's of the new ones. This consumed all of my Improved Twincast.

Then I casted Twincast Rank II. Short duration so it only allowed me 5 casts before dropping.

Total time to kill all 10 mobs, at max efficiency, was 5 minutes. I did waste a minute afterwards looting. I can loot during the quint but this still burns up time. Then I gated out to refresh timers.

I can't do this 6 times in one Lesson because on this first quint I popped LotD AFTER rounding up 10 mobs. It must take 1-2 minutes to round up and ensnare 10 yetis. Now if I wanted to get super-efficient I could use my "backup druid" to do the rounding up and bring in my main only when they're all ready for him.

BTW, there is also the yeti fur quest which requires looting 14 yeti furs. You can't delegate that. It still gives 1% XP at 109. But IMO it's only worth doing once per Lesson since I wouldn't waste the time doing the turn-ins during the Lesson.

So in summary I think with maximum efficiency, and using an alt for prep work, one could kill 60 yetis during one LotD. Allowing for the inevitable snafu, maybe 40-50 is the more realistic maximum. If/when I get Rank 3's of all the aoe dd's, this might improve further.

It also helps to buy Glyph of Destruction 2, but that costs 5 AA's and until I'm max AA I always loathe spending AA's on quickly consumed buffs like this one.


Edited, Dec 30th 2017 7:44am by Sippin

I'm using more than Twincast. Read my quinting article here. I activate every possible buff and AA that enhances dps: Nature's Fury, druid BP clicky, Intensity of the Resolute, First Spire, Focus Arcanum, Season's Wrath, Black Wolf form (of course), Frostweave Aura, Gaze of Ro, you name it. Plus, of course, I use Storm Strike and Banestrike every chance I get.

Quint-Kiting for Fun, Profit and XP

I'm on the verge of dinging 110 almost exclusively off quinting yetis. Plus I'm a certified Monkey Killer now, or whatever that title is!

I did accidentally aggro "a laborer" when I pulled some yetis near the city wall. He was LB, a very easy kill and I saw a 1% increase in XP when he died. I'll have to try a quint of those and see how good that XP is, because I do think they have a lot fewer HPs than yetis. Killing them does boost 5 factions UP but it lowers two Combine factions. I posted the result under the page here for "a laborer." There are a lot of laborers in/around the city plus the guards don't care if you attack them---incredibly. Brings back the olden days when druids used to quad Butcherblock guards. Not that I ever did that <ahem> I just heard of evil-inclined druids who would.

PS

Default faction with denizens of EoK and RoS cities is apprehensive. Killing two laborers got me to dubious. So caution is advised.

Edited, Jan 3rd 2018 7:38am by Sippin

Thanks!

Yep, that's one of the reasons I've learned to level one level at a time in this game, get the AAs I want, and only then moving up to a new level.

Last night I turned on regular XP again for the first time since the 12th, when I dinged 106. Made about 2500 AAs in that time, and everything that's left is not too exciting. Time to move on to 107 :)