Hi all, I am debating starting this. Currently playing on TAKP as I only have a Mac these days but the three box limit and my odd Euro play times is starting to constrain me. Further, the MQ2 aspect of this server appeals to my programmer nature. I am seeing that people can box a full raid (18) themselves and whilst I don't imagine people solo box The Rathe Council (maybe they do!) I can live without Elemental Planes and Time access. However, having been out of the loop with Windows land for years I am unsure what kind of kit is needed to handle this. Assuming a decent mid-range gaming laptop (has to be laptop, my wife won't tolerate a desktop) will that be sufficient to run 18 clients or am I looking at having to find something beefier (Say with 16GB of RAM) or is it one group of 6 per device etc? I also have a question about group make up. I am assuming one warr, one cler, one util and 3 dps is reasonable per raiding group but I may be totally off. Thanks in advance to anyone who can spare a minute to answer my n00b ass.
Once you get into using MQ2 and (in all likelihood, the E3 macro; of which this server is something of a test-bed), you'll find adding more toons remarkably easy. Instanced raids are 54-toon max, and some people box enough to fully fill this out on their own. (A vast majority, however, stick to a few groups so as to keep the raid scene social still) Secondly, yes, people most certainly solo box The Rathe Council, all of PoTime, as well as every other raid all the way up thru Omens of War. This is my no means the norm, or expected in any way, but the option and freedom is there to expand however you wish. 18 toons is enough to sustain any questing or group-related endeavor, as well as tackle many of the lower and mid-range max-lvl raids, but you won't be soloing the whole game with 18, no matter how good your makeup. As for group makeup, especially with level 70 being the cap, diversity is absolute KING in terms of stacking Auras, Buffs, Discipline-Buffs, and more. Single-class deathsquad groups (of ANY class) just don't even come close when compared to a diverse well-stacked/synergized group anymore (by a long shot). Ultimately, it's best not to think of each individual group's strength on its own, but rather build your team up as one massive fully-functioning megagroup (E3 has no problems with automated heals/buffs out-of-group, so for actual group compositions you need only look at group-only effects like bardsongs, Auras, and some shaman buffs. In addition, it is much, much easier when first starting out to just make one solid group of 6, get them max level, some gear, and at least a smattering of AA's before you even *think* about adding in more. Doing it this way will VASTLY affect your needs as far as group composition by allowing you to gauge things like mana-preservation focus effects, aa's, heal crits, and the like & factor that into your overall group makeup(s). Not to mention, it is SO much easier to level & gear up new toons once you've already got a solid 6-box group to work with & use for support. Trying to make a full multi-group team right out of the gate will not only give you immense headaches while trying to level them all at once (/raids are notoriously awful exp), but you'll likely end up with redundant healers and/or other classes because you were speculating instead of using actual "in-game" data & parses. There's also issues like having a bard in each group (basically required for consistent raiding; even some non-endgame, mid-range raids) and by the time you hit level 70 on everyone it's likely you'll have found changes you want to make anyhow. There are optimization guides on here, as well as a great & helpful community you can ask in /ooc in-game for help in terms of running more toons, but suffice to say that you don't need huge system requirements to box even 18-24 toons. Assuming you follow my advice on just starting with 6, you should be able to continue building for some time without needing a hardware upgrade (but don't quote me; sometimes that's subjective). As far as additional starting advice, I'd only say that in this era Knight tanks are vastly more versatile than Warrior (who, despite being the ubiquitous tank class in eras past, tend to struggle with agro compared to other tanks for pretty much the whole game). Warrior is also somewhat of a mono-function class, and with the ease behind MQ2/E3 it just makes sense to have more options, especially for purposes of agro-generation. Furthermore, BOTH knight class can also tank just as well as a warrior can for all intents and purposes in this era, so you needn't worry that you're selling yourself out of the "best tank" or anything (something that I know for a fact wasn't the case in the TAKP era you mentioned.) Here's my suggestion for a starting group that is 1) Well-Balanced 2) Fun, but not overly difficult to manage (particularly with using MQ2 & E3), and 3) Will complement well (albeit possibly with some group restructuring for full dps-opimization) with any additional toon(s) you make down the line: You may notice a lack of caster DPS in this build; and that'd be something to potentially address further down the line if/when you add more toons. For starting-out, not having to wait on mana will give you a much more consistent baseline to work with for grinding exp. Also, you only need to really worry about weapons for gearing (as opposed to sorting/managing tons of focus effects from the best low-midlevel gear) I'm sure I'm missing some things, but you can always ask the server via /ooc (visible in every zone sever-wide, in case you were unaware). In any case, welcome to PEQ! See you in-game. ##EDIT: Spelling & Grammar (it's early)
Welcome! I am also another euro player here, we have a few on the server! I can and do box 54 characters, but I am also happy to drop to one group, 2 groups etc and team up with 3-4 other people to do raids, flagging etc etc. Ive been here years but only recently moved to 54, 18 of what are still not top level. The server is great, the community is one of the best I have experienced in EverQuest. I am not amazing at all the MQ2 stuff, I'm slowly learning though and theirs plenty of people here who will offer help, from forum posts, discord chats or even /ooc. If you use /ooc just remember its server wide and not one zone only. use /shout for a single zone. I would always recommend a bard in every group, but also a druid in the first to help power level a second group later on. As has been said, don't try and do to many at once, it makes it way harder. I did just that, had one OK group then 18 other characters power levelled up. They added nothing and thinking you can kill more with naked fresh power levelled characters just doesn't work. Either way I'm sure you'll have great fun. Don't stress to much its a bit different and a learning curve, but great fun!
Hey, thanks for the replies. A few further questions if I may (especially for Apollo). 1) I note you advise knight over warrior. I know that for single group this is definitely the case but raid mobs often need /disc defensive rotations so surely, at some point, I am going to have to level a warrior or 2? 2) In your suggested group make up I don't see any CC/Pulling unless Lull from the Pally works on this server? I would have expected to have SK/Monk or ENC somewhere. Bards can pull once you get Fading Memories obviously but that's a way out. 3) Power Levelling, as Donnylad pointed out there is no druid here (which would also give you ports). Are you just proposing using group 1 as a feeder of gear to group 2 and levelling group 2 on it's own after?
Not apollo but First off, welcome! I'm also euro 1) Shadowknight is very nice this era too. I run 36 toons and in that i have 2 war, 1 pal and 1 shd and feel its a perfect balance. 2) I would get a chanter up early maybe in your 2nd group. Remember bard can mez so there's your initial CC 3) I run a porter for every group (2 druid, 4 wiz). It may not be optimal but it sure is easy to move around.
Thanks Clippy. Another question I have is around initial gearing as my experience is only really up to PoP for that. Assuming a single group to 70 how are you going to gear it ? Is LDoN on here? a) Initially - newbie quest armor isn't worth the bother in my experience b) Once Umbral Plains stuff outlives its usefulness (given that's the single group way of gearing some classes post 50). Assuming that I can't get a few raids done with other players at the appropriate times.
Appollo pretty much nailed it. I would suggest gearing a warrior first. I went sk and got max gear and then just ultimately needed a war to do anything. Sk is still the better group tank for sure but If your focus is raiding then I'd go with the war. Monks get really strong with their 2.0 and also have really great burns for dps. Rogues will carry you to 70 without gear just make sure to get poisons. I did 2 rogues to powerlevel my first group but then added a monk and zeker for the auras.
When I got started here I mostly did luclin and pop content, got help flagging up to elementals and then started farming the minis in elemental planes. A faster path would probably be skipping that old content and focus on OOW, since the OOW group content (WOS, MPG, RSS) is of similar quality to pop elemental planes but with like 16 minute respawn rather than 3 days, and some of it is even tradeable.
If you want to solo raids then you will want a warrior. Knights are amazing for adds during raids and group content. LDoN is here, but the gear is pretty much garbage. Don't worry about gear, levels and aa are way more important. I was able to solo to elementals with 24 and about half of them were more than half naked. If you want to gear up though, oow has a ton of gear on groupable mobs in the 100 hp range. Before that pop ornate is solid. Pulling classes are overrated. RoF2 client makes pulling a joke. Just use a range weapon on your tank to pull. It significantly reduces the aggro range for mobs assist calls. Don't use paci, don't use fd, just pull with a bow. Rogues are by far the best dps class (don't let anyone try to sell you on monk or berserker, you will be disappointed) and they are incredibly easy to max out. If I had to do it again knowing all I know my first group would be: SK Druid Bard Rog Rog Rog But that is super boring so I understand if you don't want to do that. While melee dps is king wizards are the class that will increase your rate of aa later on. Much later on, however. Having ports is nice, but you dont need 1 per group. I run 36 and I have 4 wiz 0 dru. I use the 4 wiz to TL 12 chars and then the 4 wiz port the remaining 24. Stack up on heals and melee dps. Put every piece of gear on your tanks and then your healers. The only "rule" I'd say is one bard per group. They are the most OP class here and you will be happy you have 1 per group at every stage of the game. Welcome!!
Also to answer your question about hardware. I play on a shitty old corporate computer and can box 18 using the optimization guide barbatos posted. I like to stick to 12 because it really starts to mess me up if I go to 18.
I mean, I regularly tank endgame mobs using a Paladin as a Main Tank. There is simply no better single/duo-target agro class due to all of their stun spells & AA's, which really helps in endgame since you can utilize your burn discs sooner w/o having to worry about mob spin. The notion of knights being "off-tanks" really saw its end in PoP/LoY/GoD. By OoW, they're both much beefier than you remember & can certainly stand in for a Warrior. Largely, most of the content you'll run across (raid or not) will be dead in ~8-10 mins tops, so I'm not sold on people's opinion that you NEED a warrior down the road (if you expand out to 3 or more groups, I'd definitely add in a 2nd (and different class) tank; about 1 tank per 2-3 groups is the advice I give most often. Couple other things based on some of the comments (again, only my opinion, there is no single BEST setup): Porter in Every Group: A waste, imo. In this era, we have the Guild Hall which provides numerous multi-group porting capacities, not to mention LDoN Magus ports, and PoP stones. Getting TO a zone is really not that difficult even without a porter in each group; and to get BACK all you need is 1 Wizard to cast Teleport which will hit every toon/group in radius & send them all back to their bind point. Especially starting off, following the setup of "a porter in each group" will likely end up with you being extremely caster-heavy (which will slow you down until you've got solid melee to supplement). Need a Warrior to Raid: Not even close. I don't mean to cast aspersions on anyone's views, but anymore Warrior is no longer as "must-have" as it once was. As I said before in my original post, I kept my team smaller in order to preserve some of the social aspects of EQ. Even doing this I've been able to tank even endgame raids with no assistance (beyond extra dps on the mob from whomever I'm with) using a Paladin tank and only Clr/Dru/Shm to stay alive. I feel this really illustrates quite well just how much you can do with a minimum # of toons (provided you're patient enough to get them near full power before trying to roll up more). Defensive Disc rotations are not really a thing anymore for most people since roughtly 98% of all raids rarely last long enough for more than 1 Disc anyway (the same is true of cleric CH rotations for the same reasons, consequently - the mana you save using CH Chains isn't worth all the toon slots you have to roll up as Clerics to make it work, normal heals/HoTs work just dandy). I really wouldn't lean too hard on warrior discs; the more toons you add, the more you'll struggle with agro. Especially once you get AA'd and get decent weapons on your DPS, you'll find yourself having to dual-wield on warrior to maintain consistent agro (which increases damage taken on raid mobs from Riposte) and not to mention you don't get to make full use of the Shield Block AA. My main gripe about warrior is that if you lose agro, you have absolutely nothing you can really do about it except praying and mashing Taunt (or, at high lvls, burn a long cooldown AA). Having those spell options from your tank should not be underestimated. Puller: You don't need one. If you spec your team right, most people just use their tank to either body-pull small distances (or in the case of the knight classes, use spells to pick things up). Paladin is especially good for this because if you use a Stun spell to pull a small group, you can usually spread them out by just continuing to stun as they come at ya. I really can't overstate just how much a Paladin mitigates with Stuns. A puller in your first group would be a waste imo. (Paladin Lull is a thing, but it's not super-effective either) No Druid (I'm guessing for powerleveling down the road?): There's almost always buffs around if you ask, so if it's a simple question of needing a damage shield, then adding a druid to my original suggestion is a horrid, horrid waste. Druid is a great class & I'd definitely recommend adding one into a 2nd group, but no my suggestion was not simply a "feeder" that you'll need more toons to make proper use of. Also, for what it's worth, a Mage damage shield is literally the exact same as a Druid damage shield, so this is hardly a "must-have" class for that purpose. All you need is to find someone else with a Druid or Mage while you're leveling (easy in PoK) and you can skip this for your first group no problem. (There's also player-crafted damage shield potions you can use to supplement spell usage so you're not running back to PoK for a fresh one every 15-20m. Rogue Poisons: Yes, these are great dps, especially in early levels, but be careful about leaning on vendor-bought poisons too much for your overall DPS. As you get up in levels you run into more and more things resistant to Poison & this negates a large amount of your dps in those cases. I suggested different classes for each slot because the diversity of OoW and lvl 70 cap is most optimized for sustained play this way. Once you have a better gauge of your abilities, then you can eschew some of that mantra & possibly make doubles on some of the melee dps classes. Starting off though, you'll do far better being able to mix buffs/abilities/discs than you would just making Rogues and leaning almost entirely on vendor-bought poisons for your DPS.
Not enough people starting out are familiar with OoW it seems, so I really like this advice. Along those lines: Work on your Tier 1 OoW Quest Armor! Not only is it really decent stats, but it'll provide you with some useful focus effects along the way (also all of the OoW Quest BPs have stackable clicky effects!). You'll need to raise Dranik Loyalist faction to do them, but there are many, many ways to do this even while leveling up; and the Tier 2 OoW armor is the best-in-slot gear for this era, so that faction work isn't just wasted on newbie gear!
Not here; it's off-topic, but I'll tell you that one of my secrets is setting up my 4 highest-agro DPS as tanks in my Shaman ini. This way, if one of them does catch agro for a second & takes some damage (or is riposted while positioning, AoE'd, etc) my Shaman kicks in and heals them. This allows my Cleric and Druid to focus exclusively on my tank and not have to deviate at all. You'd be surprised just how much healing power you lose out on when they have to switch targets, even for a second.
Can you share then via discord or private message? Thanks for the tip tho.. I will do that for my shaman
Wow, really lots of great advice, thanks a bunch. Still, further clarifications if I may. How are you going to level groups 2, 3, 4 etc if you don't have a tank for the group? The first tank will be overlevelled for group xp. And I guess I am still not getting it about gear. In my experience EQ is a gear driven game and I just can't see myself getting to max level on a whole group with empty slots on some of the toons (except for the bard, it can be nekkid I spose). I have visions of trying to dps in Wall of Slaughter with two rusty daggers on a Rogue from what people are saying above. To clarify, it's a gap in my knowledge of this era. When I did GoD and OOW on Live I had a max level toon in a high end raid guild. I never had to gear up from nothing in this era.
For leveling toons, you can easily hit level 40ish with a full complement of buffs and (practically) no gear, so class selection is less critical at lower levels when adding on to an existing team. Once you hit the magical level 47 (Level x 1.5, rounded down is the equation for determining whether or not you get xp in group), you can group your new toons with your existing max lvls and speed them along quite quickly by cycling them in/out of group 1 or 2 at a time. Also, while still in the lower levels, you can just park your level 70 healer(s) near your newbie toons and E3 will still keep them healed. You may end up tanking mobs on the healer if you over-do this (negating your damage shield), but it's not too difficult to manage properly so you really don't need a tank with each group you bring up. You'll find plenty of gear along the way, plus countless handouts in /ooc when people just need to clear their inventories.
Hello, and welcome I play sometime with my laptop (was high end some time ago) and had no trouble handling 18 , my only issue is the screen size (need to test with Groupy , check for a related post) My 1st group is war cle sha bard rogue dru, i think that i could have levelled faster with a knight, then adding warrior on 2nd group, Dont be fooled by all of thoose writing there... you van do a lot if you are skilled and have great gear.. i sux so i started with a lot of Healing power My suggested 1st not twinked and not so skilled group is Pal sham cle rog bard wiz (stun Will own the spike aggro that come from poison that will be' your primary damage source Or Sk sham cle rog bard druid You can spread a bit the loot, 1st setup miss leather , 2nd miss robe, you could replace sham with ench but is not worth
You put your tank, healers and non dps in grp 1. Pull a lot on tank and have like 3 noobs in grp 2 with your best dps, sham, bard. 2nd grp will get all the xp once they get 47 of course. Getting to 47 is the trick on 2nd grp. Most people powerlevel using kaesora. Once again pull the whole bottom with tank.. no weapons bard ds and Regen. Then use a low-level bard in your pl grp to hit all the mobs Defiant stuff does drop but it's pretty rare. Gearing is hard at first not gonna lie. People help and especially with your tank. Getting 70 and all the defensive as will make it somewhat manageable. People usually have lots of ornate patterns that can get you some ac at least.
Probably worth dropping in this thread my standing offer of free Platinum to anyone (genuinely) new & starting on the server. I'm even fine with handing it out retroactively in case anyone's following this post and has missed me giving stuff away (& has already been leveling). If they're your first set of toons, hit me up in-game anytime. (Really helps fill out bags/spells on everyone & provide a buffer in each bank for corpse summoning stones). See you all in-game
