RSS boxed, non-raid gear

[bham]

Lately Ive been playing in RSS with 4 my toons (Beast, cleric, mage and wizard) and 2 friends of mine (pally and necro). We have been killing quite effectively in the sumoner / researcher room and the balancer / riftseeker room.

Last night they had to log before me and rather then head to my usual 4-box stomping ground of MPG I decided to hang around in the balancer / riftseeker room and see how I went by myself.

My main is my beastlord (of course!). He has about 9.1k hp with self buffs, conviction and leadership points. I used him to tank, slow and pull. My cleric healed with HoT and a mix of c-heals and medium heals. My nukers, ummm, nuked.

None of my guys have a single piece of raid gear, its all omens / ldon / don 1-groupable gear. 98% of it came from stuff I have 4-boxed. All right, they have close on 2000 AA between them, but it doesnt make that much difference

I cleared the 5 PHs in balancer room twice each. I got bored of waiting for repops and tried to pull a few from outside to keep me interested and promptly died. I am pissed I didnt get a chance to try a named. The charm would be a hassle, but with fast debuffing I might be able to do it.

I used leopard and HoT right before the pull, giving me about 10k hp and 1300 / tick regen for each fight. Pull with slow, closely followed by Mala. Cleric uses medium heal till slow lands, then switch to c-heal to save mana. Use incapacitate and CB to maintain aggro while nukers burn it down. Fights took about 1 min each.

With the increased drop rate in RSS for 69/70 runes, when it was pretty good to begin with, there is no real excuse to not go and get them. A full group with a real tank should have trouble if the players are competent, irrespective of casual / raid status.

Since starting there 2 weeks ago we have fitted out the pally with 4 70 hp and 2 25 AC augs, my cleric with 4 70 mana augs, and my beastlord with the minion of darkness range item. We have had 1 70 rune (my level 70 warder!) and about 7 or 8 69 runes drop.

RSS is fun and challenging, do not think it is too hard for you until you give it a decent attempt.

PS: on our first 3 visit we died lots and got no loot in return, but we stuck at it :)

[jabby]

im impressed - and its good to hear how you did it.

My main concern regarding using a beastie as slower / MT is how well he can tank higher end stuff, but it seems like you are doing well on those mobs. Congrats! How hard do those mobs hit btw?

[bham]

They quad, max hit is 1288.

[bham]

Went back today. Balancer Relik was up, killed him. Pyrilean Riftseeker popped after 1 clearing of PHs, killed him too. Had a 69 warrior friend along, but I tanked anyway. I got 2 69 runes and warrior got a 25 AC aug. Still havent fought a charmer, but non-charmers are cake.

[Dakat]

With a good healer it's doable. Just got to be on your toes with the beast tanking. I'm about 9400hp raid buffed so I just might have to give it a shot. Nice post btw  :wink:

[jabby]

dammit bham

these posts are gonna make me reroll to beast cleric mage wizzie/dru

already went to sk, druid, mage, shammy and thats going well, but if a beastie can tank well enough, and slow well enough, why do i need a shadowknight - shammy ...

[Zanois]

My main is my beastlord (of course!). He has about 9.1k hp with self buffs, conviction and leadership points. I used him to tank, slow and pull.

Not to call you out, this sounds very impressive.....

However I would be interested to know your down time, I buff to about 13.3k, 2kac with shaman buffs/conviction/SV, LAA and tribute, and the past week or so, I have been doing the fountain camp with summoner and researcher.

I go with friends, 70 rogue, 70 mage, 70 shammy, 70 chanter, myself 70 bst and a bot 70 cleric, now we dont have any problems with this camp, however mobs do kick my ass from time to time.

I would just think with your 9.1k hp fully buffed this can't be much of an exp spot, surely there is a lot of downtime for your cleric to med up??

Either way its a great accomplishment and grats.

[bham]

I certainly cant chain pull non-stop. Im here for the runes and loot, not fast exp. For each cycle, which I havent timed but I think is about 20 mins. I generally kill about 8 mobs, 10 at most. In the Balancer room this is all the PHs, plus the 2 walking chimeras, and maybe 1 mob from the hallway outside. I try to have a 20-second or so break between killing one mob and pulling the next, to make sure one doesnt pop unexpectedly next cycle.  When boxing here I have zero chance against 2 mobs at once, so I avoid it at all costs. Kiling 8-10  mobs with a break in between like this takes about 15 mins and uses 60-80% of my cleric mana, then I med up and wait for repops. In a zone like this its all about control for me. I cant afford mistakes, exp gain is secondary. I do die occasionally, but Id rather die trying to get useful stuff, than live killing the same old crap over and over again in RcoD for no real gain. And for some reason, RSS is no harder for me to tank than MPG. At least I dont have Nocs rampaging my casters dead in one round like they sometimes do there.

My cleric has FT 20, MP5, healing focus and stuff. With SA, kei, zealot, perfection and rods, his mana regen is pretty decent. By using the massive regen of the HoT plus leopard, I generally only have to use C-heals if slow lands early, and some of those C-heals I can cancel and restart when they are a few seconds off finishing because Ive had a few low damage rounds.

Since the patch almost every named seems to drop a 69 rune (no 70s since patch), and there are still some augs and loot items I can upgrade with to get here. Even if I only kill 25 mobs per hour thats still making my Exp bar move, and I have almost all the AAs really worth getting anyway.

[Zanois]

thats good to hear:) certainly impressive, kudos....

Yeah since doing summoner/researcher, i'll pull the 2 Familiar Venomtail PHer's, in 2 days, bout 5 hours each day, we got 12 69 runes, 1 70 rune, 9 70/70mana augs, 3 70hp augs, + the claws/piercer which are good for guild tribute...

I love the camp personally, nice to finish up those spells for the bot, chanter and shammy.

This game is certainly a lot more fun pushing yourself to the limits than sitting in PG or WoS or where ever doing the same stuff day in day out.

[bham]

I was there again just now with my 4 and a time-equipped mage friend of mine.

I died using pet pull to split the 2 that are closer together in Balancer room (I hate it when someone kills the battlemaster!). Once I had it split it was np. Had balancer pop 5 mins before patch went in. My mage friend got his last 69 spell off it. We were about to log when Pyrilien Riftseeker popped with about 3 mins to go. I pulled him quick, but he resisted slow and charmed me. I thought we were goners, so I tried to evac, but Bham was beating on my wizard and interupted him. By now the MoE focus'd mage pet had aggro so I started healing it with my cleric. Luckily my beastlord does so little PvP damage, my wizard was in no trouble.

I was surprised that the named didnt charm more of us, I can only assume that it only uses charm on whoever is top of the aggro list, and as the mage pet was tanking he was unable to charm anymore at all. We kept the mage pet healed and slowly nuked him down. I thought we deserved a 70 rune for our trouble but got no rune at all. Just a bow for guild tribute...

Next time we have a named with charm ability I will try to pet tank it from the start. Send in pet to get aggro, then slow etc.... OMG a use for healing of Mikily? or whatever that useless new pet heal is called? I might be able to cycle it in between c-heals, since the 70 warder tanks so badly he wont last 12.5 secs even on a slowed mob. A big heal every 6 or 7 seconds might just be enough.....

[delfi]

Bham that is very impressive. I myself play a , 66beast, 66wizard, 65ceric. Would you have any suggestions on where I might go to level these boys? Looking for levels not aa's atm. Beast has pretty good stats, wizard and cleric are ok. All have pretty nice aa's(my standards anyhow). Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Also if it wouldn't be to much of a bother, would you mind posting your magelo's of bst, clr, wiz? I am very interested in your stats of these charecters to compare to mine, so I can get a feel of where I am compared with you.(Obvisouly behind in levels and missing one guy, but it will give me a general idea.)

Thanks.
Delfi

[bham]

For straight exp I recommend the murkgliders in the Caves in eastern WoS. They rarely resist slow, and there is an endless supply of single pulls (ok, 1 double). But no loot or runes from this area.

Some random ideas:

I dunno your gear level but I started doing RcoD when my beast was 68 and that was doable.

I moved to MPG at level 70 and about 600 AA, with about 8.8k hp I think. Personally I dont like MPG much, except to get a few good loots. (The silk, plate and leather legs for example)

I moved to RSS at about 700 AA and 9.1k hp.

DoN mission are probably a good way to get exp and gear atm. If you grab 3 /lfg guys you can do missions fast, and then give all your crystals to whoever needs the upgrade.

I recommend DoN missions till you hit 70. Upgrade with DoN gear and augs as you go. At 70 try RSS to get your 69 and 70 runes. If you still need 66-68 runes, try WoS or RcoD, or sell crystals from DoN to buy runes.

I dont have any up-to-date magelos, but the guild I am thinking of joining needs to see some for my recruitment, so i will have to do all 4 up and Ill post them here too.

[delfi]

Thanks for the suggestions. Quick question tho, when you are describing your beastlords stats, are you talking about buffs(your charecters only) or self buffed or no buffs. Will look into those suggestions. Magelo's would be great whenever you get em updated, love to locate upgrades through magelo's :).
Thanks again.
Delfi

[bham]

Thats buffs from my group, not including Spirit of the leopard cause it only lasts 1 min. With leadership points (rhoast is almost maxxed but its not in the magelo) and leopard Bham runs at about 10khp.

Got 3 magelos done

Bham (beastlord) http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=1057176

Wastrel (cleric)  http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=1191775

Rhoast (mage)  http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=1191770

The wizard I havent done yet, but he has no cool stuff except for the riftorn robe from RSS.

Only skills, gear, augs and AA are in. I havent balanced the hp, ac, charms and adventure stone, but you get the idea.

If you wanna know where any of it drops let me know. I think I know where it all comes from except the Glimmering Veil of Piety on Bham that I bought in bazaar.

[delfi]

Thanks alot for all your help. Found a bunch of upgrades I can shoot for now, some slots just so hard to find items for :). I think I might send you a tell in game cross-server when I get a chance to ask about aquiring one or two items if you don't mind.

Thanks again.
Delfi