P99 player starting up on TAKP

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Rabitz, Apr 19, 2018.

  1. Linkamus

    Linkamus People Like Me

    Messages:
    413
    Ya, it's definitely AKurate. But so is perma-pac, an EZ mode xegony, a broken unbeatable rathe council for most of AKs life, and an impossible broken quarm! ;) . The archery wall thing was definitely an unintended bug, which Sony eventually ended up fixing (after a few failed attempts if I recall).
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2018
  2. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    3,627
    Torpor is the most expensive spell on the server, and will remain that way until Luclin launches then either RGC, Garrisons or Marzins Mark will take that title. It probably runs 30-60k on TAKP. I'm not quite sure anymore.

    Beastlords are quite good as a support class however their DPS is fairly lackluster. In this era they are pretty good because pets are quite good relative to players. But in PoP pet growth compared to player growth shrinks quite a bit and Beastlord Melee just isn't that incredible. They don't get double attack skill at all, only through AAs I believe.

    Their role on raids is a support class with ability to slow when needed, provide Paragon a short duration mana recovery AA, and do mediocre DPS. They also provide a long duration mana / HP regen buff that stacks with other classes buffs and they have an Avatar equivalent Buff called Savagery and later Ferocity, basically a 100-150 ATK single buff you can keep up on a few Rogues or Monks or Rangers to boost their DPS. This line stacks with avatar.

    If you go into a Beastlord thinking you will top parses you will be disappointed. However they're an extremely valuable asset on a raid. Quite good in off-raid hours for group activities as well due to their ability to tank most group content and slow quite effectively at 60 and 65.

    I'd personally lean against a Wiz/Necro/Mage combination as it's quite fragile once pets die. However if you are careful about pulling and diligent with root CC I'm sure you could level to 60 with that combo.
     
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2018
  3. Rabitz

    Rabitz Member

    Messages:
    22
    BL sounds like it could be cool if there are support spells unique to their class that are useful at raids!

    I should have been more clear, what I meant to write was that Ranger/Cleric/Wizard or Necro or Mage appeals more to me than Ranger/Cleric/Ench.

    If I go Ranger/Cleric/BL will I be pretty limited without CC?
     
  4. Linkamus

    Linkamus People Like Me

    Messages:
    413
    With ranger/cleric/BL you will have Pac and root, which in most scenarios is sufficient. It you get swarmed by mobs, CC will be harder, as you will have to pull one away and root. It's times like that you will wish you had mez!
     
  5. Manstache

    Manstache Active Member

    Messages:
    208
    BL gives slow, decreasing the need for ranger rezzes. Pet is less work than charm pet too.
     
  6. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    3,627
    Two downsides I see in Ranger/Beastlord/Cleric.

    The first being two Melee classes. Personally, I hate positioning multiple Melee toons. If you box a lot you can get pretty good at setting your toons to /follow your tank and position mobs inbetween yourself and your toons so you don't have to move multiple hatacers just move your tank such that the autofollowing toon can hit it. But this only works if you're crawling around.

    If you set up camp in a location positioning your Beastlord facing into a corner and always pulling back to this corner on the ranger minimizes the amount of positioning you need to do.

    The second being lack of Resist Debuffs and CC. Beastlord slow generally is great but unlike Shamans who get Malo and Enchanters who get Tash, beastlords have no way of reducing MR on a mob to land a slow. In regular content this isn't a big factor, you'll eat occasional Resists. But in some areas you will just not be able to effectively land a slow which may mean you bleed too much mana on the Cleric and wipe.

    CC is a lesser point. Much of the game can be handled with Harmony as 80% of PoP is outdoors and almost all of it is susceptible to level 65 cap Harmony or you can always fall back on Cleric pacification. There will be some sticky camps where you need to root park or split up tanking roles between Ranger, Beastlord and Beastlord warder.

    All in all the combination should be fine to handle most of the group game. You won't be doing the highest tier of things aimed at 1-2 full groups that maybe a Plate tank or Enchanter charmed pet based combination will be able to handle, but those aren't extremely common.
     
  7. Thunderace

    Thunderace People Like Me

    Messages:
    514
    Play whatever you want - there's a challenge in every box combo. Ranger Clr BL will be a fine choice.
     
  8. Haynar

    Haynar Administrator

    Messages:
    3,637
    Monk. Ranger. Rogue.

    Now thats a challenging combination.

    Could swap any of 3 for a paladin to add some healing.
     
    Nilduz likes this.
  9. Faults

    Faults I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    1,892
    Necro/bard/shaman the ultimate apm challenge.
     
  10. Bum

    Bum I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,647

    Everyone's favorite comments are Bum's he is the server legend. Once he was called Lron.

    And I wouldn't play two melee. You would go nuts.


    Every beast lord on TAKP was only created after people saw the awesomeness that is Bumbum.
     
  11. Loraen

    Loraen Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    266
    All casters are much more useful on raids here due to the PoP resist system. It will be quite a shock to your P99 sensibilities when you see an enchanter chain nuke Lord Yelinak. So Wizard, Necromancer, and Magician are all great DPS on raids and Enchanters get a lot of action with debuffs since guilds don't zone pull everything here. I would say every class is useful on raids in their intended way, i.e. not purely twitch/mod rod botting.

    However, you should consider 2-boxing or even single boxing on raids. 3-boxing on raids can be quite difficult unless you roll with something simple like 3 clerics or 3 magicians. You have to constantly dodge AEs and reposition melee due to high push. Gearing is harder as you have to do more shawls, spirit wracked cords, and split the same DKP over more characters. Something like Ranger/Cleric would be a completely acceptable raiding combination.

    For leveling up solo, nothing compares to Enchanter/Cleric if you are willing to charm. It's an unholy combination of defense and offense. But who cares? All of the best gear drops from raids anyway, and while it may seem discouraged, it is in fact possible to group with other players outside of raids.

    IIRC the few times I've parsed BLs they were very close to the top of the charts. The issue BLs have is that you have to add up the pet, the BL, the nuke damage that doesn't show up, and deduct 10% from the Rogue with Savagery and apply it to the BL. However, I guess they will lose some ground in Luclin as the pets won't improve with AAs like PCs.

    TLDR: if your goal is to wreck the most content with a solo 3-box, then roll Cleric/Enchanter and either a Warrior, Mage, or Shadowknight to tank. Most of the best players from AK picked some variant of this. Otherwise, just about anything will work.
     
  12. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

    Messages:
    420
    Not with the cleric. You have pacify, with that you can keep control of all your pulls.

    That trio will do good. But you'll find in the end that it is the beastlord that does the tanking, not the ranger. Plan accordingly.
     
  13. Bum

    Bum I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,647
    I call BS on that statement. It's usually the worst players who suck that have to go that route. Look at Pithy and #Ravenwinged.

    If you want to be a lemming then go that "easy" route. if not then play whatever combo is fun to you. Any combo I play you will see 20 offshoots of people imitating me.
     
  14. Linkamus

    Linkamus People Like Me

    Messages:
    413
    Bum, usually for a troll to work, there has to be an element of truth to what you're saying in order to incite a reaction. Tsk tsk. I expect more from you.
     
  15. Haynar

    Haynar Administrator

    Messages:
    3,637
    I like SK/Shm/Clr.

    I am not "leet". Pacify is for wussies.

    Just kill stuff.
     
  16. Bum

    Bum I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,647
    trolls don't work. I force my child slaves to work in my sweatshops for me
     
    Linkamus likes this.
  17. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

    Messages:
    420
    Anyone ever tried mage/necro/beastlord?
     
  18. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,742
    Just a side-note regarding the resist system: at Luclin's launch or just prior, Sony had changed spell resists to make many spells that previously used the 200 scale to use the 600 scale. I.e. enchanter nukes started to partial hit instead of all-or-nothing. See http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showpost.php?p=252349&postcount=17 for more details. So technically not all of the resist changes were PoP era.

    Edit: Also I have 2001 logs of my warrior procing anarchy on Vulak no problem. Yelinak parsed about ~35 more MR, and they're both level 70, so enchanter nukes certainly were landable in Velious, unless Yelinak's MR was changed since. (I don't have Velious era logs of Yelinak)
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2018
  19. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,742
    Although Yelinak was probably MR immune until the Oct 8 2001 patch, when they implemented the slow immunity flag.
     
  20. Cadsuane

    Cadsuane People Like Me

    Messages:
    815
    Ya, I gave up on that pretty fast. Staying with nec/shm.
     
  21. The Shade

    The Shade Active Member

    Messages:
    61
    I have done Nec/Bst/Mag and stuck with it till 60. A bit challenging at times, but forces you to figure out how to adapt to each situation and figure out which method works the best with the classes' strengths. Ie: sometime it is better to just straight up tank with the bst/pet cleric/fear kite/etc. By the end you have a high DPS trio that has two chars that can be low APM and is fairly self sufficient mana/tanking wise when you factor all of the mana regen/pumping and healing/hp pumping and slowing you can do.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2018
  22. echofinder

    echofinder Member

    Messages:
    90
    Rng/clr/ench

    From a past eq life so much upside flexibility. Just mentioning some things I loved outside of regular self grouping. Coming from casual perspective

    Ranger - really fun main class, adds great Dps Raids, self depreciating jokes have no end,works well enough with playing cleric in a CH chain, if you can't play all the time you can still really contribute on the raids you make by bringing Rng/ Clr. Wonderful toon to play long term , you will grow very strong through PoP always stuff to look forward to

    Cleric - give a nice boost to your guild on raid day. Helps Any off night xp group roll along if into playing with other folks.

    Ench - the things you can do later in your EQ time are diff than what is utilized during original leveling up time. PoP chanters really Rake in XP with charmed pets making your AA gain for any of your toons much faster. On old AK some of the best players often got their chanters together to take down challenging targets with just a few people. Time investment now pays off big later
     
    Elrontaur likes this.
  23. gardnerjens

    gardnerjens People Like Me

    Messages:
    715
    Make 3 Wizards
     
    showstring likes this.
  24. Haynar

    Haynar Administrator

    Messages:
    3,637
    Or 3 Clerics.
     
  25. Bum

    Bum I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,647
    Or 3 bums
     
  26. gardnerjens

    gardnerjens People Like Me

    Messages:
    715
    Make what bum tells you to
     
  27. Ransom

    Ransom Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    255
    For a Ranger, if you plan to solo box a lot, I’d highly suggest slow and if possible pacify. If you want to do kunark and velious dungeons you’ll have a tough time without single pulls with a ranger tank.

    I’m a fan of Beast/Cleric but it can be annoying to have two melee. I often would just send my beast pet and slow with my beast during fast exp grinds in my trio.

    If you feel like swarmcaller is enough slows for you, Cleric/mage or Cleric/wizard could be good boxes to raid with and provide plenty of burst dps.

    Cleric/necro gets more interesting in luclin when necro get undead slows. That would open AA exp for you in undead dungeons.

    If you’re not set on the Cleric, ranger / Shaman / mage(or wizard) is awesome outdoor exp all the way through 60.
     
  28. Tuluvien

    Tuluvien I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    1,085
    I roll ranger/shaman/cleric. Love it. Enchanter instead of shaman would open up a lot more with charm, can topple a lot of targets with good charm pets. I still prefer the playstyle of the shaman addition however, both utility toons just focus on the ranger and the 75% slow mitigates the Ranger's shortcomings in the tanking game.
     
  29. Ransom

    Ransom Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    255
    Yeah, two priests can be a little slow on the DPS but your ranger will feel as tanky and strong as it can. If you’re really focused on ranger, this can make it quite a bit more fun.

    I leveled a friends monk with a Druid and shaman setup, and it felt unstoppable.

    Also having an extra shaman or Cleric on a raid for buffs/heals is never a terrible thing.
     
  30. Elrontaur

    Elrontaur People Like Me

    Messages:
    1,291
    RNG/CLR/ENC becomes an unstoppable charm group once AAs come into play, I love having 2 toons to paci mobs with as well. RNG + Cleric was my duo on AK (epic slow made that duo work), and adding the ENC really expands my 3 box farming possibilities.