Static Group Tips and Tactics

Bleedalbeans · #1 04-13-2018, 05:48 AM

Any good tips and tactics for static groups as opposed to soloing/pick up groups? We like dungeons and aren't shying away from difficulty so we can get gud/ understand fundamentals enough to be ready for later content. We are in lower guk currently camping stuff for rogue.

We pool our money so what are priorities for spending? We got jewelry down mostly, except resist gear. Tank AC or rogue DPS? Is prenerf CoS worth the investment for group pulling? Just got global refresh for enchanter in form of rod of glamor, should all casters get one? Prioritize what over what? We have about 5k-7k plat among us currently.

Context:

I play with a static group of irl friends about once a week. I'm the only one with eq experience (live circa 2001 was when I quit as a lvl 47 cleric, druzzil ro shoutout.)

Group:
DE Enchanter (me)- was dual mugging it, now I have glamor rod. Been using racial hide to cancel charm so we don't have to buy expensive invis ring. 5/55 rings or cha or int? With Cha buff from shammy i hit 160cha. Int 130?

Human Cleric- snare necklace, bronze armor. She gets hand me downs from SK AND wisdom/mana gear w/out HP.

Troll Shammy- random af equipment loadout. Wearing mostly what no one else can wear. 5/55 rings and he's been getting Hp equipment recently. Working on epic for him and just got to black dire portion. 5th man award.

Ogre SK- our tank and not a very good puller. Maybe he needs more practice but I'm under impression he doesn't get FD and aggro (me neither really). Most spoiled with equipment so far. Has wurmslayer and highest ac we can get. Was looking at crustacean armor for purchase...

Barb rogue- has white dragon spear vox drops, crystallized gang offhand. Str around 160-170 with current shammy buffs. Our DPS. No haste items yet, but we are in guk. If no fbss drops how high priority is haste for rogue vs. Ac for Tank? Or HP for shaman? Cha for Enchanter? Wis for Cleric?

We are around 41. We play on red so buying exactly what we want is hard since we only play once a week and most things aren't up for sale (at least publically at that time) and what is, is usually 50-100% more expensive then blue pricing especially resist gear.

Oh yeah, we play on red so resist gear is a thing... panic attack thinking about resist gearing 5 characters.

Overwhelmed and appreciative of any tips and advice, thanks!

Rygar · #2 04-13-2018, 07:17 AM

While I won't offer any suggestions on gear, something that always bothered me about grouping is the concept of 'pulling'. Don't get me wrong, pulling is necessary but a lot of dungeons were designed around 'crawling' the dungeon. Basically the group just moves as a unit through the dungeon fighting pockets of 2-4 mobs.

Its a lot more fun and a bit more dangerous, but you never have to worry about waiting on repops and I think you earn more EXP. And on red, who knows maybe its even safer. If you just sit at zone in and pull mobs to zone line I would think you are more vulnerable to PKers.

Ruhtar · #3 04-13-2018, 08:04 AM

Your main dps, especially with 2 priest classes, will be the rogue and enchanter. So if you're looking for things to farm and/or buy, it would be a haste item and better weapons for the rogue and trying to get hp + charisma gear for the chanter. Cleric doesn't require much gear if they won't be doing any low level tanking, other than wis/mana and it sounds like your SK is rocking the best gear currently. Getting more wis/sta/hp for the shammy would be nice for him, but he'll be canni dancing most of the time.

So, things to focus on (my opinion):

Rogue: haste + better weapons + str gear
Enchanter: CHA and HP gear
Shaman: Farm a shrunken goblin earring for him or if any of you have a porting class, you can do the Tarton's Wheel quest for the Star of Eyes. The shaman will use either for canni A LOT.

For places to go, just do some searches on the wiki for loot you guys want for your level range or lower and go there. Since you play once a week, try focusing on one character each week to get them an upgrade or whatever. I don't know how active trading/sales are on red these days, so I would plan on farming the stuff you want and keep pooling your money until you guys see something you want being sold.

kjs86z · #4 04-13-2018, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naethyn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Go check out droga. Put all your cash into a rog epic at 46.

Aye. Go camp Soothsayer for earrings.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Soothsayer_Dregzak

Bleedalbeans · #5 04-13-2018, 10:03 AM

Quote:

While I won't offer any suggestions on gear, something that always bothered me about grouping is the concept of 'pulling'. Don't get me wrong, pulling is necessary but a lot of dungeons were designed around 'crawling' the dungeon. Basically the group just moves as a unit through the dungeon fighting pockets of 2-4 mobs.

I mean we crawled the shit out of Befallen, Unrest, CC, CT temple, sol a, 1st 3 layers of ToFS, upper guk and now getting into lower. We probably saw 70-100% of all the above. But as you mentioned, sometimes you have to pull to split a room. I pull with calm a lot, and even with bind sight on the rogue, a FD pull would work better/be safer in a lot of cases. It's probably the safest way when no one has ever been in a location before and your're just learning the ropes/pathing. This shit is brand new to us. When I clericed back in the day I only saw half of what I've seen dungeon-wise so far with this static group.

Quote:

Go camp Soothsayer for earrings.

We play once a week for like 3-5 hours at a time. I'm pretty sure we could camp anything level appropriate for one night, and maybe come back later in a couple of weeks or so, but sitting and camping a spawn for what could be weeks (from our perspective) is a no go. I appreciate that you are probably correct as that being the best course of action, but that human element doe. Still, thanks! Sounds like a good place to try after we get tired of lower guk.

To Rhutar- Good Stuff here, thanks. Since I'm the only one with EQ experience I tend to focus on the whole group's tactics and my charming does tend to suffer. I really should push myself into using it more, but it takes up a decent amount of concentration. Plus I haven't hit 200 yet with charisma so it breaks a decent amount of the time, unless light blue, and there aren't always light blues around.

Nagoya · #6 04-13-2018, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naethyn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Go check out droga. Put all your cash into a rog epic at 46.

I don't think this is how it works on red.

Triiz · #7 04-13-2018, 11:02 AM

Im not sure what they go for on Red, but you can get all the casters Kromzek surveyor scope/Spyglass for clicky cooldown. The effect is annoying as shit, but you can click it off and it's better than nothing. Alternatively, you could spend a few hours farming the goblin fort in Warslik Woods and maybe get a couple Shrunken Goblin earrings. Sometimes they drop back to back, sometimes it takes hours to get 1. Multiple Grachnist can be up at the same time so clear the whole fort.

Edit: For clicky cooldown there's also the Star of Eyes quest and it can be clicked from inventory by any class. It's really easy if you could find a porter for an hour or so. The ground spawns respawn in a few seconds so everyone could do it together. The range on the Star of Eyes sucks tho.

Enchanter can be the best puller your group could get. Even if you don't have very high CHA and don't want to risk getting a crit lull resist, charm pet, send pet into room of 4-5 blue mobs, spam pet back off, AOE mez, root, kill. An Enchanter/Cleric can dominate any dungeon in the game, and you have that plus 3 other people. SK really only outshines Enchanter on yellow/red mobs or unmezzable/unstunnable mobs.

Bleedalbeans · #8 04-13-2018, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Triiz [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Im not sure what they go for on Red, but you can get all the casters Kromzek surveyor scope/Spyglass for clicky cooldown. The effect is annoying as shit, but you can click it off and it's better than nothing. Alternatively, you could spend a few hours farming the goblin fort in Warslik Woods and maybe get a couple Shrunken Goblin earrings. Sometimes they drop back to back, sometimes it takes hours to get 1. Multiple Grachnist can be up at the same time so clear the whole fort.

Enchanter can be the best puller your group could get. Even if you don't have very high CHA and don't want to risk getting a crit lull resist, charm pet, send pet into room of 4-5 blue mobs, spam pet back off, AOE mez, root, kill. An Enchanter/Cleric can dominate any dungeon in the game, and you have that plus 3 other people. SK really only outshines Enchanter on yellow/red mobs or unmezzable/unstunnable mobs.

Oh yeah, AoE mez hits party members on red. So AoE kinda sucks unless soloing, or if I can guarantee i can keep distance/get a little luck, or if I get the SK to Disease Cloud us all beforehand, but with even a little bad luck an AoE can cause problems. I use it, but i can see me using it all day long on blue, where on red there are more conditions.

edit: AoE stuns too. Barely get a chance to use them in dungeons

Triiz · #9 04-13-2018, 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bleedalbeans [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh yeah, AoE mez hits party members on red. So AoE kinda sucks unless soloing, or if I can guarantee i can keep distance/get a little luck, or if I get the SK to Disease Cloud us all beforehand, but with even a little bad luck an AoE can cause problems. I use it, but i can see me using it all day long on blue, where on red there are more conditions.

edit: AoE stuns too. Barely get a chance to use them in dungeons

Didn't think about that. That's a shame, AOE mez/aoe stuns are some of the most OP spells Enchanters get. You could still do it with single target mez, a long duration one like Entrance, and have the shaman/cleric rooting while you mez/back pet off but obviously not as safe.

Bleedalbeans · #10 04-13-2018, 12:05 PM

Not afraid of the challenge and have been making it work for the most part by calming and crossing fingers.

You can see why i'd like to offload pulling onto our High HP AC Front Stun immune SK who can FD. His FD fails (12%? chance), he has time to pull off another most cases. Same can't be said for little ole me, the enchanter, if calm or AoE mez goes south.

No AoE stun to buy the cleric time to heal and me to mez and SK to start pulling aggro. I get pasted. Life of the enchanter sometimes I know, but still hoping SK can get gud at FD.