Where you SOLO xp from 86 to 90

[varutia]

Where your guys planning to do some casual lesson burns or just xp for level 86 to 90 completely solo, not molo or bots or anything like that. I tend to have very fragmented playing time so half hour there and half hour here means a lot of solo. Some research and compilation of information can help all of us here.

When list an area, things like ease of kill, travel time, etc. Frostcrypt for one, but can not imagine any kind of stellar xp plus really long traveling time. Too bad RoI is going out of style with level up, it is really the second coming of Hole for me. There are also undead in Hills of shade, plus Loping plain, not sure how well their xp can be from 86 to 90. These are the only ones with reasonable undead I can think of anyhow.

[Luthair]

This isn't really what you're looking for but I anticipate grinding to 90 in Lichen Creep. Who knows, if we get a big tanking boost maybe CC undead will become useful ;)

[shiftie]

CC undead have about 550k hp if you do 5k dps (most times you average 3k with no support) that is 110 seconds of fighting the xp gains in cooling chamber just won't be worth it full burn that is 15 mobs in a lesson.

I imagine FC will be the new place to swarm :/ it will be our only viable option since it is the only place with a decent population. Loping/HoS don't have enough mobs to support any type of swarming.

[riou]

[Normy]

FC is already a decent swarm spot for me, really never got into the Ruins all that much, although they do have less hp there.

[shiftie]

RoI vs FC is virtually 12 aa lesson a burn less in FC just a heads up.

[Normy]

[Arethro]

[shiftie]

[Abazzagorath]

I think RoI is good until you ding 87. So I'll probably go gind that out there quickly, and then do instances like mech guardian or something. Once I'm 90 and do the whole "lesson" solo thing when bored in FC, or that zone off of loping plains with the undead, can't remember the name.

Honestly though, I'll probably find a spot in HoT to group grind whenever I want to exp.

[Axeion]

From the House of Thule video fly threw their looks to be a decent amount of undead looking mobs.Hopeing they are taged undead an not just looking the part.

[Normy]

Yea, but if the trend continues, they are going to have like 750k hp, and hitting in the 5-8k range. I'm not counting on soloing much in the new expansion for xp.

[Luthair]

I happened to go to Frostcrypt-1 the other night, all the trash there is still dark-blue and by today's standards isn't particularly difficult. Probably still need 6 to request the instance unfortunately.

[Hammerdahl]

Sorry for being slightly off post, but regarding the anguish BP that Shiftee mentions above, I'm thinking about getting it but it requires an AMV or OMM kill. I haven't been to anguish in ages and I wonder if they are one groupable yet? Also, it looks like the tier one breastplate ("Oathbound Breastplate") has a similar clicky, and I could easily solo that, if the effect is similar I would prefer to avoid dragging folks to anguish.

Also, would you agree that the anguish BP heal will be obsolete once we move out of ROI and into FC or wherever we solo next because the mobs will be hitting for more damage? That would be a reason not to trouble with getting it at this point.

More to the point of the OP, let's hope there are soloable tasks/missions in the HoT expansion that are doable by melee/hybrid classes, otherwise I'll be doing the few soloable UF tasks I've found and messing around in FC. The LP undead barely give any exp even with the hot zone bonus (why is there no "kill 20 of ___" tasks for undead in that zone???) and it sounds like old man mckenzie missions are going to be shut down, at least for awhile, when HoT is release (and at 85 regular exp is pretty bad from those classic missions anyway). I think its going to be a LONG climb to 90 for any paladin that wants to solo it (I still have nightmares of getting 3% reg exp per lesson soloing in direwind grinding to 80) and our easy aa pipeline is going to come to an end too.

[Normy]

I can easily confirm most of Anguish is indeed groupable. As to HOW groupable, as always that depends on who/what you take in with you. Last time I did anything CoA related, I soloed Keldvan (first event) like 6 months ago. Took a little work. Bring DPS to make everything easier.

Ture is laughable at this point, easiest solo event in the zone I think. Group makes this fast.

Warden Hanvar is easily done with a group. Any modern melee type can tank all of the adds. Actually a decent geared silk could hold them with any healer.

Jelvan is my sticking point, I'm confident that I can't tank all three and live, if nothing else because of the silence effect.

AVM is groupable, probably soloable as well, depending on how quickly you can put down adds.

[boukk]

Can make 18AA in illsalin without camping(pulling all 4 camps, ie all undead), 30aas when camping.

The xp in FC is a lot less .

[Luthair]

[varutia]

Just picked up blade of far sight three days ago, man what a difference it made using it plus shield to swarm verse using subjugator axe. I pretty much went from 5 to 7 mobs at once to double that. I seriously underestimate the survivability of using shield while swarming even if I read what others said before. I think before looting everything I can do about 10 aa per burn before, my last run with blade of far sight got 13.5 aa even without the run being optimized as I have not adjusted to the increased ability to swarm yet.

[boukk]

[Peaky]

[Normy]

Ok, went back into RoI, armed with my new clicky BP. The BP worked amazingly well, but wasn't enough to save my arse. So I'm really confused as to what I'm doing wrong here. I ran into the first big room, took those mobs down into a smaller room, ran across and got another smaller room. All said and done I had about three rooms worth of mobs on me.

Stuck myself in a corner, when deflection first, then as that faded I clicked my CoA BP and my epic, which kept me up for a while longer. Hit my LoH after that faded, kept myself up for a little longer with heals and eventually ended up dead again.

I checked my parse, I can post it here if people really care, but I was putting out about 9k DPS for a 97 second fight before I died. I got about half an AA with lesson running before I died, I killed about 8 mobs only.

So am I just pulling too many rooms at once? I don't understand why so many talk of this like it's so easy, and yet I find myself looking for a rez after any decent pull. Should I not be using sword and board doing this for the greater slays? That would negate my deflection time. I didn't hit 7th or gylph, but how good of a swarm is it if I can only do it every 4 hours?

While I don't expect to pull 30 AA in a lesson burn, I shouldn't be dying if this is really the easy-good xp route. So what the hell am I doing wrong?

[Thessiuss]

Couple things to try to keep yourself alive longer.

1) after deflection fades, hit Honorific Mantle (good mitigation for a while) and/or Armor of the Inquisitor (AA) and/or First Spire.

2) Max out Shield Specialist AA asap (assuming you're from Tunare), this will boost your DPS and riposte DPS so mobs die faster. Which in turn makes it so you will be hit less as time wears on (and BP clicky fades), this will probably be your largest help.

3) Glorious Vindication + Burst of Dawnlight = win. If you have AotI, epic or 1st spire up, that should nearly heal you to full (with a decent heal focus). I try to time my spell refresh so GV pops just before Burst. HoT potions and Aurora are good for the times i'm falling behind on self healing.

4) I'd suggest starting small and building up from there. Sometimes it takes a bit to figure out what a good sized pull is for you and different factors play in for everyone even with same gear (lag*, bot healer outside group, 1 person in group sitting in GH so you can use Aurora, Dolphins, etc).

Max tower gear (before UF) i was able to get 25 AA per lesson when camping, in group gear (SoD group gear) i was getting around 16.

[Normy]

Good suggestions all the way around. I did end up using my defensive disc, and that helped. Does Shield specialist do anything for slays? I thought it was a factor of damage bonus, which is applied after the slay effect?

I'm just going to have to do small pulls, but then I go back to "is this really better than FC" gig. If I'm only pulling 6-8 in RoI, I pull the same number in FC without any problem.

/shrug, I guess I'll just plow through the mobs with less each pull, numbers will speak for themselves. I didn't have a bot in group and I didn't take the time to kill my gimp merc, so that would have definitely helped some.

edit:

and yes, this is Normy of Tunare. I also have my magelo linked under my avatar on the boards here. It's mostly up to date so you can get an idea of what I'm working with gear-wise.

[shiftie]

shield specialist will turn your 1her slays = 2her slays. With tower 1her I land 32k slays.

One of the problems with the corners in RoI is that they are not true corners and mobs do not funnel into them. Because mob push is so high with that many mobs they can push you out of range from your melee without you being in range to hit them. If you don't pay attention you can end up with all of your tricks down and the train of mobs barely thinned out. It is imperative that you constantly keep scooting forward making sure you are in melee range.

Do you keep remorse of the fallen up? This is a huge boost to healing when swarming because you will constantly have this buff running.

A 30 min lesson burn should look something like this

largest train you can pull
(for me this is about 70 or so mobs and includes All the spiders from the raid mob room, all the shillskin in the small room leading to arena, all of the shillskin in the first room as you get to arena top, all the zombies in arena top, all the shillskin guarding the doors in pairs, and all the shillskin in the 2nd room arena top.)
During this gigantic train you tank in either a doorway as it closes or next to one of the dividers in the arena top area. While you don't think that it is a good time to hit 7th because you can only do it once every 4 hours - you can only hit lesson once ever day so it is a good time to pair them. Mobs lag a little bit because pathing is bad so once you have the aggro you can circle them around until you have room to hit lesson. So you let the mobs funnel into where you are as you start to take real damage (i usually let myself drop to about 60% health) Then pop deflection, as soon as you hit deflection you hit 7th and keep the combat window up so you can watch deflection tic down. Just as deflection is about to fade you hit anguish bp + LoH because the train is still rather large. By the time these start to fade the train will be reduced from around 70 down to 25 or so. 25 mobs are easily handled with preservation of tunare and self healing. During all of this it is a good idea to constantly keep glorious counting down in case you need to burst.

This pull is easily 6 AA and since the whole goal of a lesson burn is AA etc it makes sense to use 7th to pull this off. If you do not want to burn 7th there is still yet another way to make this happen. Before you run out to RoI have a shaman buff you with listless in the lobby/hall you then have 7-8 minutes to make it to RoI and pull this train it can be done with 4 minutes remaining on listless giving you 4 minutes to kill the mobs. The slow greatly reduces mob dps and the healing proc combined with ward procs is a lot of passive healing.

Other trick combos to add - SoD bp click + epic is about 1k heal per proc.
In the event that ward has faded before its recast use TSS bp (solt bp is on same timer as sod bp and isn't worth using imo)

After that first big pull I go up to the throne area and pull all of the shillskin there it is about 10-15 mobs and your oow bp will refresh again either during the pull or just after they start beating on you. It is best to make use of tricks against the shillskin mob because their dps is much higher than the other mobs in the zone because of the self buff bolster.

When those die I drop down to arena bottom and pull the remaining zombies approx 10 or so no real tricks needed here

then I move on to the spider island in the center pull that as you see fit (it should be noted that in large swarms their spell stun still lands from time to time and can kill you if you aren't paying attention)

if you have any other questions feel free to ask be happy to help you out because I'd like to see ya get some aa gain while it is still worth doing.

[Arethro]

Nice write up, I think I need to get myself a Anguish BP now.

I have always used a 2 hander when in RoI, I'm going to give it a try now with sword and board.

[Ughbash]

[shiftie]

[Normy]

Yup, but this doesn't work for me. I've died everytime I have more than about 25 mobs. All it takes is one or two of them not coming close enough, summoning me and it's all over.

Thank you for the writeup, but it's impossible for me to pull this off. I did a much smaller train last time, just to see what I can survive, went fine but I got 8 AA for the lesson burn, which is no better than FC and way more of a risk of death and annoying healers. According to my parser the train was only 28 mobs and I burned every trick I had to stay alive, still almost died. Simply can't kill enough of them and can't get a spell cast off to save my life, and the train is maintaining 3.5k+ dps on me through honorific and a grand total of maybe 6 or 7 of them die by the time deflection is over. A whole bunch get healed and I get my face chewed off.

[Xanderax]

I tend to get the big train going by using shrink wand so I do not get summoned then find a good spot and pop da. I then run back and forth to stack the mobs in a tight bundle. I basically do it the same way as shiftie. I think its around 40 ish mobs on the first pull the way I do it. I also throw that two min frostcrypt clickie into the mix too. The mob push can mess with that to though so i try and get it off during deflection.

Xanderax

[petain]

[varutia]

Even if you just kill 7 to 8 mobs at any one time, you should be able to pull around 8-10 aa per lesson at least, that is what I get while looting every single corpse. What Petain said is very important about not damaging the mob when rounding up a large train, you can use DA to assist with that if you feel you are taking too much damage while at it. Round them into a tight group is very helpful, not so important when only dealing with a 10 to 15, just run them into a long line and then wait for all to come to you and then just keep moving forward during the fight to compensate for the push.

Also the trick I found in lesson burn is to minimize the pulling and running around, so work out the route most suite to your capabilities and slowly improve from that. I got about same level of gear and aa as you do, so 25 to 30 mobs in a pull if you using disc and loh etc should be fairly easy to do.

Without using special tricks, 15 shiliskin is what I can do safely, poping disc, 7th etc, 30 to 40 is pretty easy, you really do want them in a tight knot however.

I actually use extended window to shift target to mobs with higher hps total in order to speed up the overall kill rate.

[Normy]

I use DA and no weapon in primary to avoid damage while pulling the mobs, but no corner is sufficient, and as soon as they get pushed away from me in anyway I get summoned behind most of the group and quickly eaten. And even when things are going perfectly well, I need to bust my arse to survive with 25 mobs, spend time medding back up after I eventually drain my mana on self healing, and end up with 8-9 AA. At that rate, I do better in FC with far less risk. It's a great zone for those uber enough to be able to rape it like that, but that is the only way that it's any better than FC for a hunting ground. Minus being able to slaughter 50-70 mobs very rapidly the zone is only decent at best.

I'm not knocking the tactic, I know it's viable and possible, but not any paladin walking in the doors is going to make this efficient or even worthwhile. I've spent about 12-14 deaths there trying to figure this crap out. I have the pull, I've used about 10 different corners that include closing doors, various doorways and indentations on the wall, various side-pin tactics. I've survived 3 trains, all of them way less than 70 mobs and every single one of them by the skin of my teeth. My dps while killing them remains between 8.5k on the low end to 13k on the upper end, but the 13k burns are when I died shortly after deflection faded. A mediocre paladin can't pull this off and make it worthwhile.

[knytul]

i dont know if this is helpful or not, but maybe something worth trying. when DoD first came out and we were xp'n there, just beside the Arena there along its outer wall is a small ledge on the left hand side. It looks like your standing on water, but it has a VERY solid corner. We used to pull the arena clear, THEN using a stun pulling a shiliskin single from the bleachers. They would fidget for a second then warp down from the bleachers to the arena. I dont know if it would work, but maybe you can pull your entire train from up above down through the bleachers, (wait a sec for them all to gather up), then run down into the arena area, let em warp to u, then circle em around the corner of the outer wall into that corner and do ur thing?

[shiftie]

Here is a link of the route I use and the corners I tank in during a lesson burn in RoI. If you have any question as to what spells I'm casting throughout feel free to ask and I will elaborate further.



I wanted to embebbed the vid but I don't think that mod is active on this board or at least I couldn't get it to work so you didn't have to leave the site.

[Normy]

Cool video, looks alot like mine except you are standing at the end. And I used the exact corner you used on the big train, spider mob got pushed back from my melee, summoned, and zoning please wait...

cool to see done though, since I'll never see this in game.

[shiftie]

[Brohg]

Do you click your Symbol of the Planemasters compulsively? It'll straight kill you doing something like this.

[Aetemius]

Nice video Shiftie. Did you have selos on or was that just the guy doing the recording?

I guess I need to go back and get an Anguish BP. I think that was the only class-specific BP I never got going thru the expansions.

I wonder how many I can pull without the BP but using:

- Kiss of EM
- Vet aa including intensity and servant
- Deflect
- "def" disc
- one of those instant-cast full hp / mana potions

I just came back to the game after a 2 year hiatus, but quickly went from 22k to ~39k unbuffed and ~5600 AC. When I first came back I was pulling at most 5 of those, but with UF exp I haven't been back since I gained the gear I have now. Gonna try this tonight I think.

Another couple of questions (sorry) - Once you're done pulling - do you hit any self buff DS clickis? Do you get ranger COF buff? How much aggro do you think a druid would sustain casting a DS on you after pull and maybe throwing in a couple of heals outside of group? I ask this because I think I could pull X mobs to a preset location with druid in group, have him hit SoTW, drop group, hit with druid DS then sit back and heal in the worst case scenario.

[varutia]

You can also use the plain normal wall to back yourself, with a 20 something train, it doesn't really matter that much how well your corner yourself, just make sure you line all mob in front you in a reasonable tight knot. When 20 something mob you can fight it in the open, when you stop to do the fight, just back up a little extra and mobs at back will step closer and you step up a little and that is it. The biggest advantage of RoI is the travel time, you literally spend only 1 minute getting to your camp.

Also as Shiftee said to get the hang of it, you can just bum a listless from guildhall and test the pull to get a better feel for it.

That being said not everyone can do what Shiftee did, a train of that size if you did not manage it properly will kill you in seconds. I personally pull about 12 to 13 aa in a loot all and somewhat relaxing lesson burn.

[Dole]