EZ Server

I've never played any class other than Wizard until coming here, so my experience is very limited with all others.  I've done my best in searching and reading threads and watching OoC, but I get the feeling I'm missing something with some of my characters.  I see the occasional purple bar with Shadow, and I'd say half the time I wipe on him.  I simply don't have enough consistency to follow him all around the zone in a timely manner.  So, I was wondering if someone could tell me (out of the things I list below) what I need to add or remove in the way of buffs, discs, etc.  I also need to add that I've done everything on my own and would prefer to not have to rely on anyone else blasting Shadow, buying the Cleric spell from someone's Air drop, etc.

Warrior (MT):  Epic 3.0's (x2 Angry IV's in each).  113k HP.  Sorc 4.  Buffs from T2 armor, Conviction, Brell's.  Use Stonewall when things get hairy, and I didn't know about the usefulness of Furious until today.

Paladin I:  Epic 3.0, x2 FSII's. Sorc 7 (bad choice?).  Buffs from T2 armor, Conviction, Brell's, FoH, Armor of the Champion, Pious Fury, and Valor of Marr.  No discs that I use.

Paladin II:  Epic 3.0, x2 FSII's.  No charm.  Staff of Fluxing Power.  Buffs from T2 armor, Conviction, Brell's, FoH, Armor of the Champion, Pious Fury, and Valor of Marr.  No discs that I use.

Cleric:  Epic 3.0.  Oracle 2.  Buffs from T2 armor, Conviction, Brell's, and Amplify Healing (epic).

Wizard:  Epic 3.0.  No charm.  Staff of Fluxing Power.  Buffs from pet and Conviction.

Bard:  Epic 3.0's.  No charm.  Buffs from T2 armor, Conviction, and Brell's (can use CG pet buffs if they'll make an appreciable difference).

Basically, all battles are the same.  I pull with bow on MT and spam epic to generate hate, pulling mob over rest of group so they'll be behind the mob.  Once in position, I engage the rest of the group.  Adds are no problem and are handled in order of weakest first. Bard is already twisting Storm Blade, Ancient: Call of Power, War March of Muram, Psalm of Veeshan, and Amplification.  Cleric casts Word of Vivification as needed.  Wizard interweaves Ancient: Core Fire and Ether Flame.  Everything in T3 does not give too much trouble, though Heavens seem to pack a heavy punch, Storms is annoying, and each Hell battle starts with a Cancel Magic.  I don't use activate'able AA very much other than Radiant Cure (I can't really tell if Pyromancy helps very much on Wizard).  For all characters, they have the majority of usable passive AA (average of 600 total per char).

If I can just get past one Shadow kill, I am hoping that will help bootstrap me into easier kills.  MoW was just like this for me, and once I got past that first kill, it got just ever so slightly easier with each epic.  I know RoA or more charms would help, but I really don't want to have to grind those out (I've been back a number of times to LDoN for charms, and after a few hours, I lost my motivation each time).  I can get Shadow down to the point of poofing about half the time... the other half everything goes just fine and BAM... didn't even get an opportunity to Viv or Stonewall.

Any insight would be appreciated.

*edit*  Forgot to add that I use DI quite regularly, as well.

Get your paladins oracle charms (If you're farming shadow for 3.5 books, you'll get a couple oracle upgrades from him).

Get your cleric and warrior 3.5s first so you can use the perma stonewall and you get an extra proc healer. Cleric 3.5 proc does like 18-20k (or something?) with the 3.0 shield click (You're gonna have to farm up another 3.0 once you get 3.5 if you haven't got the books already).

My main tank was a SK, and shadow can get ugly if he does a flurry + another hit during the stun. Without some kind of stonewall ability going, you really aren't safe tanking him until you have around 160k hp. Honestly though, most of the T3 bosses are easier than shadow, except for H1 since he has a bucket of HP, and Split Paw who is probably the hardest T3 boss for some reason.

Your group is really pretty low on DPS. Bards are pretty good at buffing other classes (and will be much better if/when hate's spells go in) but you are lacking the types of classes that bards really shine in a group with. Consider replacing the bard with a mage, necro, or beastlord since they will give you a lot of free dps and not compete with the other nigh 70% of your group that is plate.

Basically to progress from where you are, you want to get cracking on either a RoA or a UC. Since your tank is a warrior, he can farm the first half of the UC for himself (though having a mage/cleric to heal him and CoH him to re-pull zones is handy). You're either going to need another warrior, a SK with the T4 spell (unlikely), or a 3.0+ mage or something to do the backend of RoA though, so I'd say UC is the better immediate goal.

Once you actually get your tank some T3 and a 3.5, and your cleric and one paladin have at least an oracle 11 you shouldn't need to run both paladins. Again, I suggest getting some dps alts so it doesn't take you a year to kill T3/T4 bosses. My SK can solo Warlord. Do I bother? No, because even with a UC and some FS4s it takes me like 10 minutes to get him to 90% :/

Thanks for the tips.  I was really hoping I could tweak some of the ways I was using some characters to tip the scales, but the DPS is pretty bad I suppose.  The biggest aggravation for Shadow isn't really the occasional wipe... it's getting him down to 25% after 15-20 minutes and then watching him poof.  I've been putting off charm farming, hopeful that they were just helpful and not required.  I soooo hated LDoN on Live, and it's not any more loved on EZ.  I don't mind ditching the Bard, as he really feels like a third wheel, but won't I eventually need him to mana pump my Wizard?  Retiring one of the Paladins after meeting those conditions is also no problem, and I do find myself often wanting CoH.

One question I do have, though.  Could I actually go after some of the T3 bosses now as I am?  I have quite a few tokens, and if I could get some T3 armor, surely that would help.  I haven't even stepped foot in "airplane," as I just assumed I really didn't belong there until finishing PoG.

T3 isn't a huge upgrade in armor honestly and the bosses will take you 40+ minutes in your current setup. I run war,pal,clr,monk,mage,necro. We had some augs on monk so his dps was not too bad, but no sorc charm. When we started HoH grind I thought the same thing about charms, so went after T3 bosses to test them out. First one took about 35 minutes, and thats with 3 decent dps classes. After we had 3.5s on everyone, sorc 21+ on monk and war, T3 boss kills took about 10 minutes. Im down to about 3 minutes now (added in a kraken sham and some 4.0 pets) but were still mostly farming hoh for shadow for version 1 charms, which feels like less of a grind then ldon.

Oh and without at least a 21 oracle, expect your tank to die quite a few times to shadow/T3. My pal had to take over tanking while I rezzed the war several times before we got the charm up a bit

Correct.  Maybe more importantly he will be needed to refresh your War's Endurance from his perm stonewall.  I just stick mine with my shammy in a tag along group.

You should be able to kill some of the T3 bosses if you can kill shadow. They don't hit as hard, but they have adds. The adds hit for maybe 10-20k each, but have lowish HP (maybe 400k?). Like I said though, they will take forever for you to kill considering most classes only do like 5-15k dps with 3.0s and low level augs.

I am kinda on haiatus right now, but my normal group has a 4.0 necro (whose pet can solo shadow when I'm lazy) and a 4.0 mage (CoH is pretty damn useful, and the pet does about 70-80k dps). Until you're rich, and have high level charms on melee the pets do some silly damage up through T4 and are really helpful. Then they become pretty useless in T5 since you can't hail pets in The Abyss and they sometimes lose gear/buffs when zoning.

Regarding LDON, a warrior in full T2 with a 3.5 and anger Vs is all you need. It works with 3.0s, but you might die/take too much damage while pulling. It takes a couple weeks doing a few hours a day to finish V1s, but I did it while watching movies on my other monitor, so it wasn't too bad. Do it in chunks and take breaks from it so it doesn't become too tedious.

First, if you do nothing else, put an oracle 1 and a flux staff on each paladin until your sorcer is > 10. (The gain from flux staff is the same as the gain from sorcer 1-10)  This gives you both healing and damage boosts.

Pick one of the two paladins and put a UC on him.... Problem solved.

Lest you think it a "smart Alex" reply, think on it.  You will have to have a UC char to progress through T5.  Completing a UC is a task you can do at present capability.  By completing that task now you shift the UC from something that you have to have to function in T5 (That you haven't reached yet.) into something that turns you into a minor demi-god in HoH / posky (Where you can desperately use the power.).

Look into the RoA quest, but I suspect you will find as I did that it is most efficient to do this with a relatively high level support crew.  That being said, you see improvement by RoA 5, significant improvement by RoA 10, and impossible to ignore improvement by level 20 of the RoA. (The little improvements in each rank of the RoA are like a clump of snow falling of a tree at the top of a hill... the further down the hill you go the more trees your snow clump takes out... before long you have an unresistable avalanche.)

Hope this helps.

Skeezy Ratty Troll

Thanks for the great information, everyone.  I'm in the process of pushing through a Mage, Necro, and Shaman, if for no other reason than wanting CoH and Kraken (eventually).  Not sure where the Necro will be, but I figured why not since I had three slots.  I'm not a big fan of pet classes, and from the sound of it, I'll need to add some different DPS when I hit T5.  My current plan is to revisit Shadow after I have my three additional boxes up to T3, and then I'll start charm farming.  Just having a different source will help break up the monotony, though my hat goes off to those who have done UC even one time and not lost their sanity.  That's some serious mental stamina.

It is so tempting to go pick up a rotting 3.5 book as they're announced, but I just can't do it.

Does your tank already have full HP augs and the best ring/earring/shoulder/cloak/etc combos from storms? That's also something you can finish up.

I filtered it down to the thing I IMMEDIATELY saw. No charms. Get the wizard a lot of Sorcerer Charms. Hell, get yourself Sorc25 and I will farm up T3 wizard spell for you. Charms make or break the character from QVIC on.

It's not overly fun, but it's a necessary evil. Needing as many charms as you do, you have two real options. Go to LDON4 and enjoy the next week and a half farming there (most reliable method)...or... you could go to LDON6 and take your chances. In ~5hr during last double drop weekend, I got 18 charms from LDON6 (and enough credits for 2 more). That is ~20 charms in 5h. KEEP IN MIND, it was double drop weekend and results are NOT typical.

So...yeah: Reliable is LDON4, Chance-y is LDON6. For more information on either: http://www.tinyurl.com/ezcharms (http://www.tinyurl.com/ezcharms)


-Hate

Going with pet classes at your stage in the game is a quick easy way to get some nice dps without spending too much time to accomplish it. A necro and a mage as you said you will level will provide all the dps you need once you get them some 4.0's for you to be able to get your whole crew 3.5's and some T3/4 armor, after that... its a long charm grind and possibly RoA until youll be able to handle T5. You basically need at LEAST 2 UC's for T5, pally and tank, and high sorcs for dps and oracle for healers. Unless you have some help from guildees or kind people, youll have to save up enough money to pay for some 4.0's, and my suggestion would be necro first as that pet can solo just about anything up through T3 bosses with perhaps the exception to splitpaw/H1N1(not sure i dont have a necro.

Also, because I have a bone for wizards: when you get your wizard his 3.5, LET ME KNOW!

Blow up ingame mailbox, forums mailbox, etc. Game name is Hateborne (same as forums). I will kill 4.0 boss for your wizard.

WIZARD POWAH!

-Hate

He wants to progress on his own CAN'T U REED?!:!?:!?!?:

Indeed he does.  I treated him like a princess and gave him all the augs, with the first Paladin having maybe half the slots aug'ed.


I've got a pretty big bone for Wizards, too.  It's the only class I ever played until EZ, so all this boxing has been quite a learning curve.  I remember being so disgusted in the old days.  I couldn't find a group, and the class just seemed like the red-headed stepchild of Verant.  I'd pore over Graffe's forums, even during work, trying to glean the smallest shred of an advantage that would make things easier.  I quit shortly after Dragons of Norrath, but now, the entire set of boxes I have now is just to support the Wizard.  I'm also a TRON nerd (but not so much as the TRON Guy), so I'm looking forward to the MCP.

Since I'm working through those three new boxes, I'll be in LDoN anyway, so I'm going to spend a bit of extra time going for volume kills.  I'm really hoping we get another Double Loot soon... would be fortuitous timing.

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