May 29, 2007

The Alt-Bandit Strikes Again

stargrace May 29, 2007 8Comments

Remember that warlock I made when the evil fae first came out? Well today she wanted to play

Restless. That’s how I am in game lately. It comes from a few factors, being bored of all my alts, restless in game with old content, and trying to wiggle around some and figure out what I want to do. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I envy those who have one “main” character, and no alts. I wish I could do that. I’ve tried, but it’s just not my style. So today I piddled around absentmindedly in game and barely did anything for the majority of the time. I did manage to get Tulips a level in her armoring, and damn is that an annoying craft.

I also spent 10p and bought two full sets of cobalt armor. Why? Well, my ranger is sitting at 48, and my dirge at 47, and they’re not going to be those levels forever. Eventually they will hit 52, and need something pretty to wear. So why buy it now? Cobalt armor was selling for 60g a piece. Cobalt clusters were selling fro 95g a piece. That doesn’t include the fee I’d have to pay someone to make it, since my armorer is sitting at uh well level 33. 60g was a great price for me to snag those pieces, especially with the mad influx of evil fae that are going to make their way slowly across all leveling fields. This is in fact the busiest I’ve ever seen Nektulos Forest.

So later on in the evening I brushed off Minxes, my warlock, and decided to delete her. I made her into an inquisitor. Why? I have no idea. I’ve never played one before, and with three T7 healers already, well, it’s not as though I needed another. I brought Goudia to Darklight Woods, she’s my exiled dirge. She has +13,000 with the city of Freeport, but that still leaves Neriak, Kelethin, and Qeynos all disliking her. I figured I’d try to see if the npc of Darklight give out their quests still — and they did.

So I mentored down to level 1, smacked a mob once, and it died instantly. Smacked a few more, got the inquisitor to level 7, and completed all of the lowbie quests on Goudia for some quest credit, then decided I didn’t want Minxes to be an inquisitor after all. So I deleted and remade her back into my origional warlock. Completed all of the level 1-7 quests (again) and managed to get her to level 10 within a relatively short period. I really do love Darklight Woods and all of the quests that can be found there. I really wish Antonica and Commonlands hosted the same sort / quality. Even the gear is far beyond what you can find in any of the “old school” starter zones.

I also managed to get the monk to level 19, and a few more quests under her belt. I was looking on EQ2players.com (a site I adore and use to snoop on people!) to figure out where I rated in the “quest scheme” of things. Stargrace (my “main”) is 33rd on most quests for Illusionists. The top few don’t even play any more. There is also a level 26 coercer (or maybe it’s an illusionist, I forget now.. I was checking both) who has 600+ quests under their belt. Wow. Now that’s impressive.

So my day in game was restless but fun none the less. I’m hoping this is just a phase and I’ll settle down as always. In the mean time, between my two accounts that leaves me with the following: 70 fury, 70 templar, 64 defiler, 19 monk, 10 warlock on one account, and 70 illusionist, 53 conjuror, 48 ranger, 47 dirge, 31 coercer, 7 berserker. I have room to make 2 characters on one account, and 1 on the other. Not that I’ve any intentions of making more alts.. yet.

One reason why I love my illusionist

stargrace May 29, 2007 2Comments

Stargrace, 70 illusionist 70 provisioner, stats while playing in Obelisk

The screen shot above is of my illusionist, while she’s playing in Obelisk. I wanted to try to get some templar boots last night, Dasie is going to be heading to Freethinkers Hideout tonight, and her boots suck, to put it bluntly. The best thing about that screen shot, is that I’m grouped with a shadowknight, and a templar, but that’s it. The templar had just cast Divine Recovery, which is one amazing aa they have. As you can tell by the spell casting speed, and the spell recovery speed, I well over the cap on one, and brushing the half way point on the other. This makes me a machine gun caster. I can do some fantastic dps with my illusionist, especially with her int sitting at 836, and if she’s below 30% power, which I rarely am, but I try to be. The enchanters do 30% more dps when they’re below 30% power.

It’s amusing since during raids everyone keeps trying to give my illusionist food and drink. I keep food and drink on me at all times, I’m a 70 provisioner after all. But I do raid with sprint on, to keep below the 30% mark. It sounds easy, but with a bard in my grp, and me having to keep my regen spell up for the other group members, it’s very hard. Takes some practice to be able to hover there.

I did a lyceum raid not too long ago with a guild that had a few extra slots. The raid went alright, the group set ups were completely weird to me though. I’ve been on a good amount of raids over the years, and this was the first one where the illusionist was in the main tank group. There was a coercer on the raid, level 70 as well, and they were put into the mage group. The tank asked for Time Compression, which doesn’t do that much except it does affect their taunts. It does not help with general CA’s though. I was still parsing 1-2-3 on the raid, in the main tank group on a raid with warlocks, wizards, necromancers, and conjurors, and not because I was parsing high, but because the dps was incredibly low.

There’s only one key thing you have to do on a raid that 70% of people who are ‘casual raiders’ seem to miss, and it’s pay attention. If you’re going AFK every four seconds or every few minutes, you’re not paying attention. If you’re in tells, or chattering away on channels, you’re not paying attention. I realize that there’s such a thing as real life, and people have children, but honestly that’s the one thing that bothers me beyond all else – when it’s raid time, dedicate the few hours you need to do the raid, and try to clear your time table for that. Everyone asks how they can raid better, how they can parse better. Pay attention, that’s all you need to do. Realize that you have spells that need to be cast in a particular order. Cast them in the right order, and keep casting them when they’re up, and you’ll do fine. Why do my healers do well? Because I pay attention, and not just to the main tank, but to the entire raid. People need to be cured, group heals need to go off, spot heals for other groups. If you have a necromancer who’s life burning, you need to heal them or they’re going to die. Why does my illusionist parse in the 1k-1.5k range without being in the mage group? Because I pay attention. Cast spells in order, remember to debuff. Wait for those dispatch messages, assist the proper person and don’t take frequent AFK’s.

Tonight’s raid should be interesting to say the least. I know the guild I’m going with has difficulty to begin with on this stuff. There was also a recent change to a tinker made item that used to let you mem-wipe constantly and prevent the 2nd named in Freethinkers from doing their script. It now has a 2 minute recast timer, and can’t be used as effectively for that use any more. Which means all those guilds who used to breeze by the encounter by mem-wiping, will have to do it the good ol “regular” way, off tanking all of the adds that spawn — or — hope that you have enough enchanters on your raid to mem-wipe the real way. I’m expecting to be naked once or twice with Dasie on this raid. She’s not exactly the best geared of my characters, in fact she does not have any fabled from KoS or EoF at all. She’s wearing legendary, has 6.3k power self buffed, and 7.3k HP. She has good saves though, and all of her spells are master quality, so I don’t think she’ll be a liability. We’ll just see how it goes.