been trying to figure out good instanced raids to gear out my toons without competing/hogging open world zones. AKA my strategy is to reserve open world for flagging/progression, and otherwise try my best to do instanced raids for grinding gear. Seems like the obvious ideal state is to get into GoD progression with ikk raids and uqua+, but I'm not quite there yet and need some building gear. With DoN releasing, seems like I can crystal grind for base gear and do some progression for light raids, but wanted to know if anyone had other ideas? Or are elem minis really the right path, and just deal with open world disruption?
DoN is good for getting toons geared, most gear is on par with PoP EP weapons and armor, but is heavily based on faction and crystals(in expac currency). I do not believe you earn crystals as you do neutral missions to try and get one or the other faction. Additionally while you only need 1 toon to request a raid, which can then get the rest of the raid faction, but then you need to be able to kill that raid. You may run into a gearing issue here that may limit or really hamstring this option. PoP has a plethora of mobs in each zone that drop varying quality of gear, obviously the higher the zone the better quality. There is some contention for raid bosses based on progression, but for other mobs in zone there is rarely any. Pop Raid mobs are usually up in spurts depending on needs of those flagging. I have seen bosses being up for months and I have seen them be down multiple times over a week, it's hit or miss. There are plenty of mid-tier zones like Bastion of Thunder, Halls of Honor, and Crypt of Decay that open based on level(62) regardless of any flags; all of which have named mobs that drop decent gear(not to mention zone-wide rares). I regularly go into Plane of Fire and Plane of Water killing named mobs near the entrance for upgrades(over half my raid is half-naked). It comes down to if you have the time/gear to faction and save crystals in DoN vs. easier/quicker hits in PoP that while maybe not as quite as decent of gear, is generally up quite a bit. That's my 2cp =)
LDoN if you want to go this route has gear equivalent to PoP T2 plus you get a nice aug DoN if is an easy route if you have multiple boxes RSS is great for exp/gear PoP T2 equilvalent also Paw for your jewelry and exp GoD Ikky Minis are great for chain mail/casters All in all farm AAs
When I was in elemental area, elemental minis weren't really contested that much; The much more efficient path though would probably be to level to 70, grind out 1000 AA's somewhere fast with multiple groups no-brainy while watching TV, then go straight into Kod`Taz; Summoner's Ring, Temple of the Damned, and Pit of the Lost all have 1 or 2 hour respawns and are super easy once you learn the events; Ikkinz Group trials are available daily and easy, and Ikkinz Raids 1-3 aren't too hard either. Yxxta gets you Primals and Pixxt Suir Mindrider. It's a lot of gear in the 140-180 HP/mana range "group" minis will drop 120-140 hp/mana range items too to fill out slots, better than elemental, with Tier 8 slot and augment drops as well. It doesn't matter that Kod`Taz is an open zone because things respawn so fast and there isn't real competition.
