Old Slacker back playing a bit.

[iron299wind]

I've been away a good while, and have started playing again.

Some tips from you folks on what gear I should watch out for or could potentially solo or group for. I'm in a guild doing some demi and fay stuff and is working on solteris access, but my raid time is limited due to classes so I don't know much raiding I'll be doing.

Right know I'm focusing on getting level 80. I have anguish and crafted plate with last blood and stuff in that range mostly.

As always I'm think weapon upgrades first since I solo and duo alot at times, but I'm also a bit of an ac and stat freak so any tips or thoughts are welcome.

/salute

Ironwind

[Normy]

Well actually, depending on what gear you have from CoA, AC really hasn't climbed by leaps and bounds like other stats. Its more about the augs.

So what weapon are you currently using? 1h, hands down, try to make it for hatchet whenever you can. The Eulogy is quite possibly the best tanking weapon until SoF due to the proc and respectable stats. 2h, you have some choices these days, but the 2.0 is still decent with a damage aug in it. I only recently swapped mine for a Solteris weapon, and I've been happy soloing with it for a while.

EDIT: so I just saw you have your magelo linked. Swap your remaining visual slots for cultural and last bloods when you have the chance. Work on picking up porous loams, others here might know some good camp spots for them. Get the next step up in the armor pieces, Elegant. It makes a pretty good difference. Then work on getting the best cultural augs only after you get the armor itself.

[iron299wind]

Ok I upgraded my bracer and boots as you suggested so far.

[olts]

your magelo aint opening for me somehow. but from what i understood ya using some cultural - upgrade that to elegant asap. its a nice boost, ya mainly need porous loams for it. and a gm smith of your race of course. also use exalted (easy to make) or sublime augs. (check eqtraders for recepies, name is exalted symbol of xxx or sublime symbol of xxx). than replace your anguish armor step by step with sof tier4 gear - or what may come in sod, should be even better than that.

as for wep, i assume ya use a boff - ya wont find anything better groupwise atm, this may change with sod (and yeah, i HATE it, nm what ppl say ). if your guild raids demi try to get eulogy, its one of the best tank swords ever.

as normy said, use augs. there are plenty, some not very hard to get. check galelors sticky here for inspiration.

gl and wb

c.

p.s. i remember an ironwind somehow, its olts from the nameless here under a new name (caero). i was more or less active at the old original pally boards years ago. ya been there?

[iron299wind]

yes I hung around on the old boards way back when .

[Kakimor]

eh with the new expac there probably will be a new tier of groupable armor along the lines of what we saw in SoF. Personally I would mix in a little of that with a little of the cultural and save your $$ for other things than buying up Porous Loams etc. Straight up the stats may not appear as good but never forget the returns on Heroic stats especially STA. I havent seen or looked for just how much impact heroic Agility has on AC so can comment on that. Most if not all of your non visible slots will be upgradeable with either SoF or SoD stuff IF your willing to sacrifice some AC for major Hp gains. I would watch for those items which give you wanted or needed Foci or Mods. Have not seen any info on another tier of Cultural but there again it might be incoming with new expansion so ..... another consideration may be Fabled just around the corner ... if your in a guild that can and will be raiding PoP Fabled or whatever is new next year .... I know a lot of the PoP Fabled gear still ranks really high for HP AC even compared to SoF gear. SoF also has several camp able or quest able AC or AC/HP augs to go for, and im going to take a shot in the dark and say that several more may be inc with new expansion, at least i hope so.

[olts]

[Normy]

thats a very good question, but I'm not sure if anyone has really recorded enough experience with the heroic stats to give a good linear explanation. But from what I've seen and heard, no its not linear. I expect it to wane in power as the total heroic stats go up, but I don't know numbers in which this might start.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

I've always found heroic stats a bit of an oddity. They reminded me so much of WOW stats (I have a WOW paladin. They can be Healers/Tanks/DPS, with their DPS tree being the poorest, and healing the strongest), and the first question people would ask when LFG is 'what is your plus heal'? Assuming they hadn't already looked you up on the WOW armory before even chatting with you. Plus healing is a CRITICAL stat for WOW healers, and perhaps one of the few ways they can upgrade their healing.

I wonder if that was their intention, then they just bailed on it or haven't yet decided what they are going to do with it? Definetely a potential for future expansion mudflation, much like when they first introduced augs, and they were fairly weak, and hardly critical to today where they are a must have in every slot, and expanding to multiple slots per gear item.

Anyway, just a thought I've had in my head for a while, and never saw the opportunity to toss out.

[Nodden]

My advice on gear to start with would be get camping ac augs! You have some augs that need to go. Primarily sapphire of focused thought(!), jewel of focus, rageshale of bolstering and preserved shiliskin heart. Personally after I replaced those I'd keep on and replace the coa augs to.
Further I think you should get rid of the qvic gauntlets, as been said last bloods if they're availible make for great armor. Also if you can, try to get sublime symbols to go with your cultural gear, lots more hp than eminent.
If you can handle Crystallos you could gain a couple hundred hps by replacing your quarm ring with the earth squire ring.

[olts]

[iron299wind]

Well the sapphire was an intentional aug to boost my loss of some ft once upon a time, I'll have to evaluate options to replace it. Anguish augs were the best possible at the time I had options for, but I'll looking at some of the ac 30 augs that are now available to replace some of those depending if i find other focus with slightly better ac but still a melee type focus.

From my glances there are several more ac quest augs and I'll definitely being checking into those.

How about shield options?

What kinds of choices are available for overhaste?

My guild is doing bloodmoon and one of my guild mates has a nice 2 hander I've got my eye on the Ticka sword.

There don't seem to be many choices for one handers besides Eulogy within my current reach.

[Brohg]

If the guild can get Ticka, they're not far off Pneumatic Powerblade. The proc isn't as good as Eulogy, but stats and ratio are much better.

Even 20ac augs replace CoA augs well.

Overhaste remains rare, you can get it from either the "zoo" event in Qvic, or from Crystallos squires.

[Abazzagorath]

Long time no see.

Yep, you want to get some more ac augs asap, get some exalted symbols made for your cultural while you fill out in elegant/last bloods. Its a huge boost over eminent and they are dirt cheap now (components go for like 3-5k on my server).

[Yandroz Zzyzzx]

I too am a returning Pally after a long break.

What is the word today on AC versus HP? I have several augs with HP but a lot of you seem to be saying to swap out for AC.

What ratio should I use to compare AC to HP? 4 to 1? Is 25 AC as good as 100 HP?

Thanks for any help;

Yandroz

[Grungloe]

[iron299wind]

How you do you deal with Redwave in the shard of the guardian camp? I have been doing ac aug camps in the morning on my lunch hour, but hes such a pain to kill, and everything i tried so far seems to bring him on the pull.

[Arethro]

He shouldn't be agroing if you are only pulling the wolves. The wolves are on different faction then the rest of the mobs in the room. If Student is up and you just pull him, he will agro all the mobs, seems to be on different faction then the other wolves but if you pull another wolf and get Student agro that way, then he won't agro all the mobs and you only get Student plus the wolf you pulled. I hope that made sense ha!