Incompetent Grouping (is fun)
Jul. 7th, 2005 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothSo, last night I finally got to play EQ2 with someone I know... namely Speckles. His level 12 ranger Flyken logged on, and we met up in Antonica to kill gnolls.
Flyken: "Mentor me!"
Terrix: "Won't that mean I don't get xp?"
Flyken: "Well, you'll hardly get xp anyway from level 11s and 12s."
That was sort of true, so I decided to try it out. But the gnolls he led me to were big groups of level 11 and 12 heroics -- the kind that at level 16 I couldn't solo (with my warrior, my druid could have done it easily). But, what the hell -- the reason I couldn't solo them was because I couldn't outdamage their healing, so with a ranger along to add DPS -- rangers are a DPS class, right?
Anyway, the 11s in the first group we try are blue, because I'm mentoring. I pull the mystic with a ranged attack, and start attacking it. I notice that Flyken is not anywhere near the mystic, and the mystic is, sure enough, outhealing my damage in between lightning strikes. Casters drop warriors *really fast*, by the time I realized that Flyken was not actually helping me fight it was too late to run, although I got far enough not to drop the shard in their spawn point.
Terrix: "Why weren't you attacking the caster? We need to take them out fast."
Flyken: "I was!"
Terrix: "No you weren't! You were nowhere near it!"
Flyken: "I was attacking your target! I had you targetted, so I'll automatically hit what you attack!"
Terrix: "Well, you were too far away from it to be doing any damage to it... no wonder we got killed."
Flyken: "Let's skip the mentoring."
Terrix: "Gah, I hate this! Why would anyone want to play a warrior? I have worse mitigation than my druid, lower hit points, and only have equal avoidance because I'm carrying around a huge shield. I don't get the automatic damage procs, my combat arts do piddly damage..."
Flyken: "Druids don't get anything to help buff AC and HP..."
Terrix: "Wild Fury, or whatever -- AGI. Courage and Willowskin -- AC. Verdure -- HP."
Flyken: "Oh, right, I guess I might have just got those..."
Terrix: "So what's the point of playing a warrior?"
Flyken: "You get taunts! You make the enemy want to kill you first!"
Terrix: "Well, I guess *that* part is working."
After that, we did okay, taking on the green groups. I reminded Flyken to run around behind the enemies to backstab them, and that let us take out casters; the non-casters I could have solod anyway. After about a half hour, he had to go to bed.
...
Right. The rest of the night I got in various pick up groups hunting in Blackburra, and finished off the other 300 gnolls I needed, and made 17. For most of it I was in a proper group with some healers and mages and another tank. The cleric kept yelling at the other tank whenever he got aggro -- "I can't heal more than one tank!" So I did my best to taunt everything, but the cleric still complained when the other tank got noticeably hurt before I could get the thing off him. That she was yelling at *him* instead of at *me* (how would *he* have done anything about it?) just made it more annoying.
Part of her mana woes was probably that she kept putting bestowal of vitae on me when I wasn't hurt yet, so that it constantly overhealed. The few times that she forgot to heal me for a while it worked better, with the cleric vitae automagically refilling my health in seconds (you are hit for 27! You get healed for 75! repeat five times a second). This is why druids aren't the best healers.
The druid -- the other healer we had -- never used a single heal the entire time. Chill and Smite all the way, baby. This might also be why druids aren't the best healers.
But even incompetent healing made a huge difference in what we could fight -- whites and yellows instead of fearing double-up-arrow greens, basically.
Eventually the healers decided they were tired, and both of them gated out of the throne room before I could tell them 'OMG NO DON'T LEAVE ME DOWN HERE!' Since, of course, I didn't have a gate. I managed to run back to the entrance with a sliver of health left... the other warrior (the mage had left earlier) got lost and died, somewhere. I don't know if he didn't have a gate, or had just thought he could somehow help me, or something...
He asked me to help him retrieve his shard. "Um... how? I can't fight the things down there." "Just back me up." "...how?" He lost another shard down in the depths trying to go get it. I didn't, because I'd paused to try to fight off the dozen or so gnolls on the surface that he'd trained running straight for the tunnel down. When double-up-arrow blues started swarming up after me, I ran for it again...
So he invited a level 21 swashbuckler to help. I was still leery about our chances (I'd been watching my health ping pong during those fights earlier, and 'I can't fight them' was really the only answer I could give as far as my tanking ability without healing went), but the level 21 was confident. More importantly, almost everything in the dungeon was gray, so the guy was able to get his shards easily. He then logged off.
I stayed with the rogue, and she joined up with a pair of high level warriors (a crusader and a warrior, technically) we ran across in the depths. Apparently the reason she'd joined was that she had to kill some gnoll oracles, so I led her to them, and to my surprise we managed to do just fine without any healing at all -- the crusader could tank the things easily since they were so far beneath him, and warriors can add *some* DPS. We got her oracles, and some more gnolls that I needed, and then went outside and took down the Fanglord for good measure (he dropped a truly crappy symbol that I can't imagine anyone wanting to use), and then noticed that it was 1:30 am and everyone left to go to sleep.
So that just leaves... the trivia quiz of doom, and maybe a few more fights against specific NPCs.
Flyken: "Mentor me!"
Terrix: "Won't that mean I don't get xp?"
Flyken: "Well, you'll hardly get xp anyway from level 11s and 12s."
That was sort of true, so I decided to try it out. But the gnolls he led me to were big groups of level 11 and 12 heroics -- the kind that at level 16 I couldn't solo (with my warrior, my druid could have done it easily). But, what the hell -- the reason I couldn't solo them was because I couldn't outdamage their healing, so with a ranger along to add DPS -- rangers are a DPS class, right?
Anyway, the 11s in the first group we try are blue, because I'm mentoring. I pull the mystic with a ranged attack, and start attacking it. I notice that Flyken is not anywhere near the mystic, and the mystic is, sure enough, outhealing my damage in between lightning strikes. Casters drop warriors *really fast*, by the time I realized that Flyken was not actually helping me fight it was too late to run, although I got far enough not to drop the shard in their spawn point.
Terrix: "Why weren't you attacking the caster? We need to take them out fast."
Flyken: "I was!"
Terrix: "No you weren't! You were nowhere near it!"
Flyken: "I was attacking your target! I had you targetted, so I'll automatically hit what you attack!"
Terrix: "Well, you were too far away from it to be doing any damage to it... no wonder we got killed."
Flyken: "Let's skip the mentoring."
Terrix: "Gah, I hate this! Why would anyone want to play a warrior? I have worse mitigation than my druid, lower hit points, and only have equal avoidance because I'm carrying around a huge shield. I don't get the automatic damage procs, my combat arts do piddly damage..."
Flyken: "Druids don't get anything to help buff AC and HP..."
Terrix: "Wild Fury, or whatever -- AGI. Courage and Willowskin -- AC. Verdure -- HP."
Flyken: "Oh, right, I guess I might have just got those..."
Terrix: "So what's the point of playing a warrior?"
Flyken: "You get taunts! You make the enemy want to kill you first!"
Terrix: "Well, I guess *that* part is working."
After that, we did okay, taking on the green groups. I reminded Flyken to run around behind the enemies to backstab them, and that let us take out casters; the non-casters I could have solod anyway. After about a half hour, he had to go to bed.
...
Right. The rest of the night I got in various pick up groups hunting in Blackburra, and finished off the other 300 gnolls I needed, and made 17. For most of it I was in a proper group with some healers and mages and another tank. The cleric kept yelling at the other tank whenever he got aggro -- "I can't heal more than one tank!" So I did my best to taunt everything, but the cleric still complained when the other tank got noticeably hurt before I could get the thing off him. That she was yelling at *him* instead of at *me* (how would *he* have done anything about it?) just made it more annoying.
Part of her mana woes was probably that she kept putting bestowal of vitae on me when I wasn't hurt yet, so that it constantly overhealed. The few times that she forgot to heal me for a while it worked better, with the cleric vitae automagically refilling my health in seconds (you are hit for 27! You get healed for 75! repeat five times a second). This is why druids aren't the best healers.
The druid -- the other healer we had -- never used a single heal the entire time. Chill and Smite all the way, baby. This might also be why druids aren't the best healers.
But even incompetent healing made a huge difference in what we could fight -- whites and yellows instead of fearing double-up-arrow greens, basically.
Eventually the healers decided they were tired, and both of them gated out of the throne room before I could tell them 'OMG NO DON'T LEAVE ME DOWN HERE!' Since, of course, I didn't have a gate. I managed to run back to the entrance with a sliver of health left... the other warrior (the mage had left earlier) got lost and died, somewhere. I don't know if he didn't have a gate, or had just thought he could somehow help me, or something...
He asked me to help him retrieve his shard. "Um... how? I can't fight the things down there." "Just back me up." "...how?" He lost another shard down in the depths trying to go get it. I didn't, because I'd paused to try to fight off the dozen or so gnolls on the surface that he'd trained running straight for the tunnel down. When double-up-arrow blues started swarming up after me, I ran for it again...
So he invited a level 21 swashbuckler to help. I was still leery about our chances (I'd been watching my health ping pong during those fights earlier, and 'I can't fight them' was really the only answer I could give as far as my tanking ability without healing went), but the level 21 was confident. More importantly, almost everything in the dungeon was gray, so the guy was able to get his shards easily. He then logged off.
I stayed with the rogue, and she joined up with a pair of high level warriors (a crusader and a warrior, technically) we ran across in the depths. Apparently the reason she'd joined was that she had to kill some gnoll oracles, so I led her to them, and to my surprise we managed to do just fine without any healing at all -- the crusader could tank the things easily since they were so far beneath him, and warriors can add *some* DPS. We got her oracles, and some more gnolls that I needed, and then went outside and took down the Fanglord for good measure (he dropped a truly crappy symbol that I can't imagine anyone wanting to use), and then noticed that it was 1:30 am and everyone left to go to sleep.
So that just leaves... the trivia quiz of doom, and maybe a few more fights against specific NPCs.
