Troubador Goodness

Ok. I feel like a dork, I admit that right now. Yesterday I couldn’t settle on what I wanted to do. I’m trying not to play Arysh (warden) too much because I’d like her to quest with Shadowgeist (understandable) so I try to sit her aside during the days. I was working on Faydai’s Watch faction in the Fens so that she could vendor buy her 70-75 advanced sage books, but 190+ quests was not what I was looking for. I’d rather adventure the faction in that case. Stargrace, Goudia, and Misako all were having small issues solo’ing in Kylong plains. Things hurt. Even though Stargrace is fable geared, Goudia and Misako were not. I’d been having a far easier time with my healers then any other class lately, I remember it being that way for previous expansions as well. As long as I could heal, it was great.

However.

Then I read a reply from Tipa about her kite method with her troubador.

Well. I’d never really solo’d with the troubador before. I’ve always grouped. So I had no idea how to solo. I also don’t have any melee classes aside from a 52 ranger (used to be assassin) and even my illusionist rarely solo’d her way up. So I decided to give it a shot. I changed my hotbars around to reflect what I thought would be best for kiting. Figured the best bet would be for me to start with a snare, run backwards (Goudia has 15% in combat movement speed… go-go ratongas) and along the way cast my two big nukes first. Then debuff debuff debuff (and procs go off at the same time) as I move backwards a little more. The joys of songs, can cast while moving. Get my bow attacks in there at the same time, and by the time the mob even made it to me, they were typically at 60-50% health and already debuffed. It was great. Amazing in fact. Why did I not figure this out sooner! I could easily melee them down with cheap shot and the rest of my spells while they barely ever got me to 80% health. Rarely used any power, since troubadors now have an extra concentration slot (thank you for changing our self buffs! Those are important to us!) I played my + defense song for once, and my + health regen song. I also keep my str / sta song, power regen (though I suppose I could drop that actually.. there’s nothing else I really want to replace it with though) aria because that’s my life and blood as far as spell procs go. I suppose I could drop power regen while solo’ing and run my haste song too even.

So last night I spent the evening running around Kylong Plains 3 (50 people?! I’m there!) and snaring / kiting to my little hearts content. Get an add? No problem, the troubador mez’s mobs, for the same duration as my illusionist. Need to get back to the docks? Jesters and evac. It’s great. Looking for a specific encounter that I just simply can’t find? Well that’s what track is for. What’s more, Goudia is a was a maxed out tinkerer. So she’s got rez’s under control too, she’s even got feign death. When I mange to spend some time working her tinkering (and once I figure out where the new recipes are sold.. ugh) she’ll also have the reversed Call of The Hero that’ll summon me to my target. Fantastic.

She was wearing legendary EoF gear and treasured jewelry mixed in with some legendary, and I’ve replaced a few pieces already. She had a very poor neck piece (never did MoA on her) so I replaced that right away with some treasured from the docks. I was heavily int spec’d but her agi was so low it was giving me issues. So now she’s sitting at 453 str 615 int and 389 agi which is about where I wanted her, with 315 stam. 6.2k hp help me stay alive a little bit longer, and her power is almost 6k which is far better then it was. I think she was hovering around 290 agi and it was hurting. Even though troubadors get their power from both agi and int, her int was just fine and I really needed that extra agi. Since she does not melee that much as opposed to spell casting (6 pages of spells vs. 3 pages of combat arts) I think staying above 400 str and aiming for higher agi / int is going to be a good combo. I’ve also been working on getting + spell dmg pieces of gear, and even have a few + combat art pieces that were upgrades. At this rate, I may just stick with her as my ‘main for rok’ since I’m enjoying it so much, it’s actually the first time in a long time I felt a definite pull to a class.

So a huge thank you to Tipa for mentioning the kite thing, not sure why I never picked up on that before. RoK zones are perfect for this, I love it. Lots of wide open space to run all over the place. Goudia was not at max aa yet when RoK released, she was sitting at 95, last night I managed to quest up to Brakthyr’s Post, and am at 99aa and level 71, 20% into it. My vitality is actually going up faster then I ever use it since I’m doing mostly quest turn ins, but I’m not complaining. I do realize that group content has taken a serious hit and people are upset over the lack of experience it warrants any more, but I’m pretty sure if it gets ‘fixed’ they’ll just reduce the experience you get for the solo content, and I don’t really want that to happen. I’ve always noticed that to balance something EQ2 tones something down (nerfs) where as (typically) in WoW, in order to balance something, they boost something up (when I played at least, I know that may not be the case any more). I’ve been trying to get as much of the solo exp as I can before any impending nerfs changes that I’m sure are only a few patches away.