Warrior Return Guide?

[mak1208]

For starters, hello!

It's been a blast getting back into EQ this past week for me, and I probably spend more time researching warrior class things at work than I do legal precidents as im supposed to be. That aside, let me get down to my request.

As a former avid lover of this forum and its knowledge base and contributors several years ago, I returned to find a myriad of posts dating back 6+ years. I know games change at different rates, but I feel very lost on my warrior, and feel as if I must be missing something or many things.

So basically, what I'm asking for is a reference listing of posts here that I should read up on to further understand how warriors have evolved and function over the past few years. Screenshots of UI layouts so I can further understand what skills and abilities I should be working with. That sort of thing. Or, if any of the more experienced players have time to spend schooling an old player in the ways of the warrior in-game, that would be phenomenal.

I obviously don't expect anything, as im simply a schmuck crawling from the lower sesspools of the interwebs begging to leech off your collective greatness, but anything I can get as a starting point would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Silthrix]

My opinion is the best thing you can do is find a casual raiding guild with competant warrior(s) and learn from them. There is nothing like learning on the job

[Cowboyatheart]

That's a little broad for us to be able to point you in the right direction really.

Level?
AA count?
Friends, either returning too, or long time established in game, or are you going it alone at the moment?
Magelo profile?

And most importantly, what are your short/medium term goals?

[huggly]

Originally Posted by Silthrix

My opinion is the best thing you can do is find a casual raiding guild with competant warrior(s) and learn from them. There is nothing like learning on the job

Competent warriors (players) are hard to find. Just because someone has played this game for a long time, doesn't mean they are automatically good at it. Always ask WHY you do it, along with the WHAT do you do.
If they can't give you a decent answer (and even if they do), do some research, and make sure the reasoning makes sense.
Having said that, I agree with Kaz. First thing I do with new to raiding warriors is put them in the MTO. After they die, we have a discussion about what went wrong. Invariably, the responses are vague and unsure, and tends to blame healers, but it opens up opportunities for discussion about methods for engaging, or tank swapping, or dealing with MT death, etc. I've tried having these discussions before putting them in the MTO, without success, because quite often the new tank felt they knew everything there was to know about tanking.

Funny story: We had a lvl 95 SK app to our guild a while back. He had a decent amount of AA, and gear was acceptable. However, he made a comment in our guild channel right before his first raid, along the lines of, "SK's are gods. No other tank is as good as us" I tried to have a discussion with him about tanking, but he kept telling me that he know what he was doing, I didn't have to worry about him.
I couldn't resist. He was put first on the MTO for Argath raid. Something like 12 deaths later, I told him if he taunted the mob again, he was getting deguilded. Everytime he was rezzed he would jump back in, without buffs, and pull aggro. Keep in mind, we have never lost a tank on this mob, since we learned the event. He didn't last very long. before he dropped his app.

Some tips.

• Create a magelo, you can get use their 10 day trial to do your initial sync, then manage manually after that. Or spend the money for a yearly subscription
• Make use of http://everquest.allakhazam.com/
• Go to PoK disc vendors and buy all of the discs up to your level. I think they are all there now, through to HoT. Make sure you understand what each does. Even if you don't know when to use them yet.
• Ask specific questions of the community. We can help you a lot better, if you have taken the time to define a particular issue that needs improvement, rather than a general plea for help.
• A level 95 warrior with less than 3k AA in today's game is virtually useless. We have 2k AA players app to our raiding guild in VoA group gear, and they are little more than speed bumps, who can't hold aggro. Keep that in mind as you level. If you burn through to 95, you will need to spend lots of time AA grinding. Depending on your playtime/style that may work for you, or it may make more sense to stop every 5 levels, and fix up your AA.
• There are some posts on the forums about merc soloing (molo) that you can search for.You will also want to search for the quests required to get the best healer merc.
• There are lots of discussions on gear and augment choices. Personally, I feel you should shoot for unbuffed stats at lvl 95 of at least 8k+ AC, 80K+ HP, with Heroic Dex and Agi as close as you can get to 300. Grouping warriors will be somewhat lower.
• Keep having fun. If you aren't having fun, you aren't doing it right!!

Keep in mind, this is from a raid tank/raid leader perspective. I rarely have time to play the group game anymore.

[Battleblade]

Find out about mercs and heroics.

In the June patch there's going to be some AA acceleration.

http://www.raidloot.com/ has a search function that will let you pick out best items in slots.

While slightly out of date http://www.evilgamer.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4870 will help you with augs.

http://eq.magelo.com/ranking.jspa can be used to look at other player's profiles and see what they are doing.

BTW, that's SK was partially right. SK's are gods. He apparently didn't know how to play the class and was so egotistical/aggressive he didn't understand no buffs + no mana = not tanking (and even if you are a god, let the other tanks tank too).

[drenath]

Something else to check out, about 2 years dated but most of the low level stuff is good

http://www.paullynch.org/eqblog/?p=350

[mak1208]

First off, thank you everyone for your responses. The EQ community has always been one of my favorites, and this is why.

Second. Current char situation.

level: 74
AA's: 215
End goal: Raiding current content in a main tank or off-tank role. Not being one of those worthless people who are basically just a body to fill a raid spot and throw a little DPS is also a major goal.

My plan, for now, is to hang around at 74ish for a bit and farm to about 600aa's before i continue in levels. But that may be a bad plan, im not sure.

I've always been a person who believes if you're going to be mediocre at something, don't bother doing it. I love tanking in MMO's, its been one of my favorite things in games over the years. I also hate throwing namby pamby spells at things like those silly knights. Get in there, like a man, and hit it. This is the warriors appeal to me.

I would simply like to be informed as i go along. Learning on the job is a great way to learn, but i don't have access to a mentor at the moment. So i turned to the community, and the one which i felt possessed the best knowledge and experience base. So far there have been some great links given and general ideas on where to aim, which is awesome. I don't know what may follow in this thread, but i look forward to it.

Thanks all of you.

[Battleblade]

If you are going to ask for some guidance from this community it's going to be very useful if you make a magelo profile.

See http://eq.magelo.com/ click my name below to see the kind of info a profile provides yourself and others.

At level 74 you would would probably benefit from a full set of Lost Rubicite armor. It's dropping atm but it won't be available forever. Depending on what server you are on should you provide the actual name of your character there's a good chance a high level player would hook you up.

You are also going to want access to purity orbs.

The suggestion that you find a (larger rather than tiny) guild to join is a good one.

It's not that you couldn't handle this alone or with a regular group (if you can find one) - you can. But a kick start would help you out a lot.

I'm not the one who will discourage you but:

Originally Posted by mak1208

End goal: Raiding current content in a main tank or off-tank role.

You need to set some intermediate goals and just so you know - ain't no raid guilds that "hire" Warriors to be offtanks. We're all MT's (who sometimes offtank).

Originally Posted by mak1208

...i don't have access to a mentor at the moment...

Um, yes you do. So far you've got 3-5 Top 30ish serverwide Warriors ready to give you advice. PLUS there are a bunch of very top end non-raiders who spend time here. Mentors you definitely got. Just make that Magelo, make in-game effort, and try to put good advice to use and you'll advance. Current content raid MT? It's a long hard road - but it can be done. First you gots to be an absolute stud as a 75, 80, 85, 90 group content tank.

[mak1208]

This Magelo thing is much more in depth than when i last played.



I like it.

So, specific questions.

At the moment, i use Bazu Bellow & Mock quite a bit to maintain agro. I, however, run out of endurance rather quickly in fights. Is this simply because i lack the AA's to maintain agro via dps/procs? Or lack end regen AA's?

Possibly a lack of hate procs in general?

Also, at this level the only 2 buttons im really hitting are Taunt and Kick (besides mock and bazu for snaps of sorts). From my old experience, that's about right. But since then have any new abilities come out that are additional spams? Or do those come later via AA's as further Combat Abilities?

[Battleblade]

Aggro -

You need a worn ability commonly called Echo of Anger. Many Warriors acquire it by doing their Epic 1.5 or 2.0. You could conceivably skip this and get Vladd's Guantlets for now and a "hate mask" at around level 80.

You would benefit from getting a hate proc self-buff. While an Enchanter could cast I_forget on you, most Warriors get a Symbol of the Planesmaster or Gloves of the Crimson Sigil.

You need weapons with an aggro proc. You'll have to look up what's best. I think Torklar's Hammer and Darkened YKesha which are available for the next couple weeks are pretty ok.

You need aggro augs for those weapons. The easiet thing to do is to get 285 Ebon Crystals, Invis yourself, and buy a Deep Crust Fire Geode from the DoN merchant and then buy another from the other DoN merchant with 285 Radiant Crystals.

A Darkened Flowing Black Silk Sash would be fairly terrific for you - 39% haste and 5% overhaste. But you can't prolly camp it and it's likely to be quite expensive in the bazaar (I checked, the price is ridiculous).

Spams? Don't spam your taunt button. Taunt is used to get back aggro when you've lost it. Geared properly you won't lose it.

Oh ya - get Lost Rubicite (Othni quest items) or the Darkened Enamel armor if you can get it cheaply or someone will gift it to you and start banging out that "Easy" set of 75 augs on evilgamer. Bbbbut yer not level 75? Aye sir you are slacking, but we can fix that. BTW you need a regular group. For now you might want to let a merc tank - got a ways to go.

[CyrzB]

Originally Posted by mak1208

Is this simply because i lack the AA's to maintain agro via dps/procs? Or lack end regen AA's?

Possibly a lack of hate procs in general?

At your level, you in the middle of a bad area. Disc cost way too much endurance, and you lack Respite (The good Endurance Regen Disc).

We were able to get those items addressed, but not retroactively. At 86, you should see your Bread-And-Butter discs start using a sane amount of endurance, and definitely get Respite.

[Battleblade]

I forgot getting someone to make you Scorpion's Agony potions.

The point is if you are exhausting your endurance, spamming at-will aggro abilities and sometimes not having one on tap when you'd like, it kinda behooves you to generate all the aggro you can in other ways and take some pressure off your endurance bar and at-will aggro generation.

ATM you aren't generating anywhere near the aggro you could be generating. I suggested the standard ways of correcting that situation.

Sam Deathwalker wrote a very good article that lays out aggro generation in detail -
http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum...ad.php?t=16755

(But since we're wandering into history lessons rather than actually mentoring - Originally Mock and Bazu were linked. A thread was started explaining why they should be unlinked. SOE relented and Mock and Bazu were unlinked. Just another of the /cough /giggle ton of suggestions made some of which must inevitably end up in the game - 1,000 monkeys and all.)

Can deal with 85, 95, etc. as they happen. ATM you got getting right with 74-75 to worry about. The truth is OP should probably be in TS/Last Blood armor, have an Epic 2.0, a set of better than "easy" augs, and be dripping with at a minimum Anguish drops. Gotta walk before one can run.

There are alternatives to my suggestions. Get PL'd somehow. Get HoT T1 drops and buy accessories from the merchants, etc. But I can't see him pulling that off.

[mak1208]

I have the Blackfall Blade portion of my Epic 1.5 now. Having my original epic made that a quick endeavor. I couldn't solo anything past that and everyone in my guild had gone to bed at that point. But its a weekend soon, and i should be able to recruit some people to help, i hope.

On the levels, i had put off 75 in favor of AA's, but it sounds like i should get to 75 first. Shouldn't be too hard to grind that out when i'm off work.

The armor suggestions are greatly appreciated, ill look into what i need for those and hopefully make some big strides soon.

Thanks again for everything so far guys.

[Cowboyatheart]

Originally Posted by mak1208

I have the Blackfall Blade portion of my Epic 1.5 now. Having my original epic made that a quick endeavor. I couldn't solo anything past that and everyone in my guild had gone to bed at that point. But its a weekend soon, and i should be able to recruit some people to help, i hope.

On the levels, i had put off 75 in favor of AA's, but it sounds like i should get to 75 first. Shouldn't be too hard to grind that out when i'm off work.

The armor suggestions are greatly appreciated, ill look into what i need for those and hopefully make some big strides soon.

Thanks again for everything so far guys.

There seems to be bazaar buyable gear every 5th level or so. I'd suggest seeing what's available cheap in the bazaar at what level and use those levels as stopping points to get aa's.
Gear has really inflated since 75 so just by hitting the right level to get the next set of gear can give you a huge power boost to keep chugging along.

[drenath]

AA's: Warlord's Return kick - buy rank 1 immediately.

Generally what you're going to want to do is follow a series grinding waves up to 'sweet spots'. Do minimal AA'ing while you grind towards a level target. Once you hit it (with about a 20-30% exp buffer) do a round of re-gear-ing, then catch up on AA's while you farm augs. When you feel you're in a good spot, start the next push. If you're in a spot where you are plowing through mobs like scythe through wheat and getting crazy experience, stay and milk it until you hate yourself.

80 is a gear level, so is 85/86, 90/91 (depending on whether you go with dropped/quested/cultural gear) and obviously 95. If you want to get into raiding, you're going to want to be close to max AA's with a full aug set and maxxed out group gear.

Anyway:
70 - Weapons: Darkened Sword of Ykesha + Arc of Pain and two Deep Crust Fire Geodes.
Armor: Glowing Athlai/Othni becomes Lost Rubicite/Enameled Black
Jewelry: Dwerium Trio with cut Underfoot Diamonds.

75 - 'Fabled' Tier, but fables are only up in March-April...

80 - Tier 1 House of Thule gear (abstruse ironhand, fearful reverie)

85 - Tier 1 Veil of Alaris gear (rustic * of havoc, etc)
86 - HoT cultural (extravagant/illustrious)

90 - Tier 4 House of Thule gear (lucid ironhand, etc)
91 - VoA cultural (glorious/numinous)

80 is a good time to do Tier 5 mercenary quest - See 'invasion of rathe' theme under SoD on Rasper's