T2 compard to T1 is all about dynamics. There's a zillion combos to success.
It's *nicer* to:
1. ) not have to rely on paladin proc healing
2. ) have more than one potential tank for battle ressing
3. ) have dps in droves
4. ) above all else *have options*
It's a huge jenga puzzle: If you have a cleric, that cleric needs enough hp gear to survive the AEs, since he's not going to be able to compete with a similarly geared paladin.
Having more than one tank (esp warrior) means a whole lot of extra T1 farming for plate gear, hp augs, regen augs, and anger augs.
DPS is the name of the game... However DPS comes in all flavors. Beastlords and mages are frustrating boxes in that their pets weren't built to eat T2 dragon/boss AEs, or offtank adds at all. Monks are rather self sufficient, paladins and SKs even moreso.. The latter two are not "dps" to the level of a rogue or ranger. Ranger involves either meleeing or finding that sweet spot where they still get proc heals and are far enough away to bow outside of rampage-- something thats not real easy to do boxing in the heat of a battle.
Above all else you gotta deal with RNG : T2 minis seem to have a knack for getting in the "rounds of their lifes" to one shot tanks.. Even in full T2 my warrior sometimes has close calls on T2 minis waiting for pally proc heals, whereas any T2 boss besides kronos I can practically watch tv and come back after 5 minutes.. It's all relative.
The trick to T1 is out dps'n regen by a sustainable amount: especially with stonewall as a crutch T1 tiki bosses are laughable at best outside of Heh, who's main line of defense is to blind before your paladin is auto-attacking (it's his only chance and he knows it).
So what are the dynamic options on T2 bosses? Augs. It's beyond handy to have both Anger IV and Anger V set up on your warrior boxes, Only through trial and error will you figure out based on your unique box team what augs are going to work best, and as you grow in power (especially in warrior armor and augs) you can just use Anger Vs and forget about it. Until then, you'd be better served having a pally or SK box offtank add spawns + minis to take some heat off the warrior. Someone mentioned earlier T2 is all about a DPS race to get most things dead before stonewall drops.. It's hard to make it more simple than that, so i won't even try.
Some T2 bosses are incredibly easy if you don't get too many mini pops on the dragon adds. It's an amusing zone in that regard. I'll see a Seth and go "lol sweet" where a minute ago i was killing trash and going "oh dang, Rylos!".. And there is the never-ending threat of "spawning Kronos" -- that silly guy that a T3 geared person farmin essences with his banker and COH bot can never find, but that poor sap trying out T2 for the first time to "see if he can hang" will spawn 3 times in a row.
My tip: have a couple uber friends and play off peak hours. If you spawn a Kronos when you clearly aren't capable of pwning him, fire off /tells to people you know can kill em.. They'll be more than happy (if public) to come and spank him for ya, and if you got a Shaman or BST or ENC box there's a 98.5% chance they'll let you have the BP that inevitably drops free of charge..
Ideally you'd want a cookie cutter 4box of War/War/Pal/Clr so you could easily juggle stonewalls pre-T2 gearz, but god, good luck getting that 4some geared up in Qvic and T1 gear..You mix in a monk or rogue for a Warrior, and suddenly you really are relying on that Warrior staying alive, etc... Which is all about balancing and deep prayer that one day cloth and leather and chain drops will be halved and plate drops will be upped to reflect actual toon usage on this server, but i wouldn't hold my breath.
Ever custom EMU server i've ever played on was headed by a hard working guy with a dream that one day leather and cloth wearing toons would be relevant, if not preferred, in mid-to-late game encounters. It's the impossible dream, the Holy Grail of online server design. We're as much to blame : we steer clear of those classes in droves so the GM won't even get the volume of feedback necessary to make the proper adjustments.
