Gamer Monkey » AOC Guide

Guide to Efficient Questing and Grinding by Fervor

Lifebane — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:49:47 +0000

This guide provides answers to the ‘Where do I go next?’ question while doing the 1 to 80 level grind. There are other guides out there that provide more comprehensive listings of quest areas and grind locations, but you don’t need to go to every location. (Complete list of zones/instances. Great list of grinding locations.)

General Tips

Always restock your potions (they stack to 50) and food (stack to 20) whenever you run low and are near a vendor. Potions are cheap. Don’t hesitate to drink them like water. The game is balanced around everyone having constant access to potions.
Whenever you run out of quests in a certain area, there are usually plenty of good grinding spots. Try to grind monsters that drop silk, leather or gems, which is a great way to make money or feed your armorsmithing craft.
Especially at the higher levels, the five Villas in Noble District are a great location for leveling. They are private instances that automatically scale to your level. It takes about 5-6 hours for the Villa instances to reset, starting from the time you turn in the quest.
Bind your Asura location to Old Tarantia. NPC’s leading to Cimmeria, Aquilonia and Stygia are available that will quick jump you to zones deeper in the area.
Try to engage in as much world PvP (or mini-games) as possible. It’s a great way to break the leveling/grinding monotony. It also sucks to reach level 80 and realize you are horrible at PvP.
1 to 19 – Tortage (I try to avoid ganker infested zones whenever possible)

1 to 5 – Tortage Beach
5 to 8 – Tortage night time solo quests.
8 to 10 – Quests in and around Tortage city.
10 to 13 – Tortage night time solo quests.
13 to 15 – Acheronian Ruins, White Sands, Underhall
15 to 17/18 – Tortage night time solo quests.
17/18 to 19 – White Sands, Underhall
19 – Tortage night time solo quests
19 to 20 – Old Tarantia, Conarch Village or Khemi (depending on your race)

No combat is involved. You just need to reach level 20 to gain access to more quests. You can also stay in Tortage longer and finish all the quests, if you prefer.

20 to 35 – The Wilds, Khopshef Province, The Pyramid, The Maze, Overflow Tunnels (Tarantia Sewers)

I usually start at the Wilds. Most of the quests start at the central hub of the zone (Tesso), so it requires less running around. Unfortunately, quests run dry and you are forced to go to at least one other starting zone. Khopshef Province is usually my choice, especially since the level 30 Destiny quest is also located there.

I usually go the Maze instance in the Wilds once I get all the quests. You will also get quests in The Wilds and Khemi that send you to the Overflow Tunnels in Old Tarantia (low 30’s). That eventually leads you to another quest in Sanctum.

35 to 38 (up to 40) – Sanctum of the Burning Souls or the Black Castle

At level 35, I run around the Wilds to get all of the Sanctum quests. I do enough Sanctum runs to get me to level 38. If you enjoy doing Sanctum runs, staying for a few more levels is fine.

If you have the opportunity, do Black Castle in Khopshef Province instead. Unfortunately, it can be hard to find a group.

38 to 43 – Noble District

Plenty of quests. I usually do a few of the Villas and as many of the Arena quests as possible.

43 to 49 – Field of the Dead

There are plenty of quests here. You can stay until 50 to finish all the quests and do some grinding. The undead circle (the undead bosses to the south) and the Wanted quests in the SE of the zone are great grinding spots. I usually leave FotD as soon as possible (level 48).

48 to 53 – Eiglophian Mountains (Settlement of Dinog, the Hunting Lodge)

Primary questing hubs are the Settlement of Dinog and the Hunting Lodge. You may need to do some grinding on Wanted posters for cannibals if you come to Eiglophian Mountains too soon to meet the level requirements for various quests. The cannibals drop silk, which can be sold for good money on the trader, so it’s not a waste of time. Don’t forget to do your level 50 Destiny quest, which is conveniently located near a good grinding spot.

53 to 57 – Eiglophian Mountains (Cannibal Caves grinding, the Hunting Lodge)

I spend most of my 53 to 57 grinding Cannibal Caves over and over again. When I run out of potions, I kill all the cannibals outside before restocking at the Hunting Lodge.

57 to 58/59 – Eiglophian Mountains

I finish off all the quests from the Hunting Lodge, Settlement of Dinog and the Vanir quests NW of the Hunting Lodge. I usually spend some time grinding apes (W, NW of the Hunting Lodge) to farm leather drops. Great grinding spot because all the apes are melee.

58/59 to 60 – Noble District (Arena, the Villas)

I finish off all the solo Arena quests and run through all the Villas once. You can try to do the group instance here, but I find that pickup groups tend to do really poorly. There are a lot of quests though, so if you find a good group, it is worth doing.

60 to 65 – Thunder River, Aztel’s Approach

There are enough quests and grinding spots in Thunder River to easily reach 65. If you want to avoid too much grinding, do the lower level quests in Aztel’s Approach once you finish the first batch of quests in Thunder River (around level 62). Then return to Thunder River to do the quests at the upper east side of the zone.

If you bind your Asura location to Old Tarantia, it’s easy to jump back and forth without too much effort.

65 to 70 – Aztel’s Approach

There are plenty of quests, but it’s not enough to reach level 70. Lots of great grinding spots. You can often team up with other people who are also grinding this zone.

70 to 80 – Kheshatta, the Villas, The Onyx Chamber (group), Epic Kheshatta (group)

Depending on your server, the good grinding spots are either overpopulated or full of PvP gankers. You can try to do quests starting from level 68. I usually spend a few levels here, but by this time, I tend to get sick of questing. I finish most of the grind to 80 by casually doing Villas. I’ll do a couple Villas, then log off for a while or play another character.

For the upper 70’s, I usually get a couple levels doing group instances or group grinding Epic Kheshatta for loot. If you are in a reasonably sized guild, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find people for The Onyx Chamber (lots of quests) or the other group instances. Epic Kheshatta can be done with a single group (the lion spawn is a good choice) or even with a small raid group (camps with lots of bosses in SW Kheshatta).

Fervor’s original guide can be found on his Blog: Gaming Fervor . This particular guide can be found HERE The guides may be updated based on game changes so check there for any changes. Our thanks to Fervor for allowing us to post his guides here for the community. great work!

Herald of Xotli: Leveling Build and Feat Advice by Fervor

Lifebane — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:46:28 +0000

The Herald of Xotli (HoX) is all about damage and more damage. For many people, it is the most exciting class to play in Age of Conan. I’ve heard it referred to as a glass chainsaw and it is a very apt analogy. They dish out huge numbers, but the combination of cloth armor and a relatively small health pool for a melee fighter means a HoX is always at death’s door.

This leveling build is primarily focused around increasing the HoX’s core damage dealing abilities, which is essential for efficient leveling and PvP. At higher levels when quests start to run dry, you will spend much of your time grinding groups of mobs and this build also gives you the tools to AoE effectively.

This build recommends respec’ing at level 40 to get Horrible Visage of Xotli (HVoX) as soon as possible. The lack of crowd control abilities is one of HoX’s primary weaknesses. Getting HVoX, a point blank AoE stun, sooner makes a dramatic impact on the HoX’s viability, especially in PvP.

Summary

10-14 Hellfire
15-19 Fiery Weapons
20-23 Improved Fiery Weapons
24-26 Rage of Xotli
27-28 Spreading Flames (2 points)
29-30 Mindless Brute
31-32 Flame of Xotli (2 points)
33 Fire Lance
34 Blood Pit
35 Flame of Xotli
36-37 Reaching Flames
38-39 Spreading Flames
Respec at level 40

    * 5/5 Fiery Weapons
    * 1/5 Improved Fiery Weapons
    * 5/5 Hellfire
    * 5/5 Flame Tongue
    * 5/5 Xotli’s Vengeance
    * 2/2 Improved Word of Command
    * 3/3 Demonic Link
    * 3/3 Fury of Xotli
    * 1/1 Thundering Flames or Undying Glory of Xotli
    * 1/1 Renewed Exultation of Xotli
    * 3/3 Horrible Visage of Xotli

41-45 Spreading Flames
46-48 Rage of Xotli
49 Improved Fiery Weapons (1 point)
50-51 Flame of Xotli
52-53 Mindless Brute (2 points)
54 Fire Lance
55 Blood Pit or Mindless Brute
56-58 Improved Fiery Weapons and/or Reaching Flames
59-60 Butcher (3 points)
61-62 Wrath of Xotli
63-67 Demon Within
68-71 Desecration
72 Avatar of Xotli
73-74 Molten Flesh

Build by Level

    * level 20
    * level 30
    * level 39
    * level 40 respec
    * level 50
    * level 60
    * level 70
    * level 74

Avatar Feats

    * Fiery Weapons – Adds a chance to trigger additional fire damage to all melee attacks. It triggers fairly often for good damage. Significant DPS increase.
    * Improved Fiery Weapons – Further increases the fire damage and gives team members a chance to trigger Fiery Weapons as well.
    * Spreading Flames – The DoT effect from the Burn to Death combo spreads to nearby mobs, in essence making BtD into an AoE DoT. A great feat for grinding groups of mobs.
    * Rage of Xotli – Hell Strikes is somewhat underwhelming when you first get this combo, but it soon becomes your standard bread and butter combo due to the short cooldown. This feat increases the damage.
    * Demonic Leech – Increases the mana drain from the Body and Spirit Wrack combo. Helpful for longer PvE encounters.
    * Mindless Brute – Increases the HoX’s health for a very small decrease in magic damage (-3%). Very helpful for the squishy HoX.
    * Flame of Xotli – Increases the damage output of the Burn to Death combo. Especially at mid and higher levels, the damage is significant. Very good for larger groups in conjunction with the Spreading Flames feat.
    * Reaching Flames – Increases the AoE radius of the Pillar of Internal Flames Combo. It’s more a PvP feat because in PvE, melee mobs tend to be bunched together.
    * Fire Lance – Longish cooldown (3 minutes), but does exceptional damage.
    * Blood Pit – Creates a ‘Blood Pit’ that provides a decent Heal over Time (HoT). Nice for AoE grinding and reducing downtime. Not really necessary because potions are cheap, but it’s only one point and a passive ability.
    * Butcher – Each point reduces the cooldown by 1s for Hell Strikes, your primary PvE combo. Only need 3 or 4 points to have Hell Strikes available whenever you need it at higher levels.
    * Wrath of Xotli – A decent DPS increase for the demon form’s DoT. Good for PvE and PvP.
    * Demon Within – A must have ability. Increases the duration of your demon form to 37s.
    * Desecration – A must have ability. Reduces the cooldown of your demon form to 1.5minutes.
    * Avatar of Xotli – A must have ability. The primary reason you invested so many points in the Avatar tree.

Possession Feats

    * Hellfire – Should be the first 5 points for every HoX, no matter what their build. Reduces the casting time to 0.5s, which makes it possible to cast Hellfire Breath while queuing up your next combo.
    * Flame Tongue – Underwhelming feat, but it’s the requirement for Fury of Xotli.
    * Xotli’s Vengeance – There is some debate over the effectiveness of this skill. Some testing had found that it augmented the damage of Hell Strikes. At this time, +fire damage is being re-evaluated by Funcom, so the effectiveness is still in question.
    * Improved Word of Command – Increases the effected area of the root and some people have found it seems to reduce the chance the root breaks on damage.
    * Demonic Link – Increases the fire damage bonus (melee and magic) from the demon form. More DPS is always great to have.
    * Fury of Xotli – Triggers often, which helps quite a lot with mana management. You should be casting Hellfire Breath as much as possible, so this is a must have ability.
    * Renewed Exultation of Xotli – EoX is a great way to increase your overall damage and for 1 point, this feat reduces the downside of using EoX.
    * Undying Glory of Xotli – A self-rez is always nice to have and reduces the lost time from dying. The boost to damage and health regeneration makes it even better.
    * Horrible Visage of Xotli – A must have skill. Adds a 5s point blank AoE stun to Desecrating Essence. Essential in PvP and great in PvE too.
    * Molten Flesh – A situational ability (great when used against enemies with fire damage), but the primary use is for AoE grinding at higher levels.
    * Thundering Flames – Kind of working as of the 7/10 patch. It doesn’t interrupt casts in progress. It adds a passive effect to HfB that silences for about 1s, with a 10s immunity. It doesn’t seem to make any difference in PvE. For one feat point, it’s a nice added bonus to Hellfire Breath, which you are going to using as often as possible anyways.

NOTE: For more information about feats not included in this leveling build, do a title search for ‘feat’ in the official HoX subforum. There are several feat reviews by helpful members of the HoX community.

Alternative Feat Choices

By level 74, you have all the feats you need for leveling and PvP. How you spend the remaining points is up to you. By now, you should have a great sense of your own playstyle, so use the remaining points to invest in feats that support your gameplay.

    * Phoenix Wing – Makes a useful defensive ability better and more useful by significantly reducing the movement and damage penalties.
    * Tough of Hell + Lingering Hell – 1% invulnerability debuff for each point invested. It isn’t worth using when solo or non-epic groups. But for longer encounters (epic monsters, raids), it can make a difference.
    * Flaming Hatred + Searing Hatred – Reduces the cooldown of the Pillar combo to 45s. Searing adds a DoT that is very weak by itself, but it’s another fire DoT for when you want to stack as many DoT’s as possible.
    * Insanity of Xotli – A PvP feat that drains a significant amount of mana/stamina from stunned victims.
    * Burning Word – Adds a moderate DoT to the area root.
    * Mage Blood – A passive ability that reduces downtime and helps for longer PvE and PvP encounters. A potion is usually enough to make it unnecessary to get this feat.
    * Demonic Leech + Ether Thirst + Demonic Fortitude – Mana and Stamina management feats.
    * Roots of Hell (Does not currently work) – If the feat worked as described, this could be a very useful ability.

General Advice

    * Get used to constantly drinking and buying potions. They are cheap and make a huge impact on your survivability. Always carry around a big stack of potions (potions stack to 50).
    * Because the HoX has such a high damage output, they are always at risk of getting aggro in group elite instances. The HoX does not have any tanking ability, so pulling aggro away from the tank is a quick way to die. Learning how to manage aggro in groups is an important group skill. If you do get aggro, learn to double-tap back for evade bonuses. Try to refrain from running around randomly, which makes it harder for the tank or healer to help you.
    * In PvP, a slow HoX is a dead HoX. HoX’s don’t have the luxury of a huge health pool, self heals or great defensive abilities. HoX’s have to react quickly and think fast.
    * In group PvP, being overly aggressive can easily mean death for a HoX. Healers are usually the primary targets in group PvP, but if a HoX charges into the fray and rampages in demon form, they are painting a huge target on their head. Think ‘assassin’, instead of a bulldozer. It’s usually a smart idea to let the tougher members of your group absorb the initial attack.

Fervor's original guide can be found on his Blog: Gaming Fervor . This particular guide can be found HERE The guides may be updated based on game changes so check there for any changes. Our thanks to Fervor for allowing us to post his guides here for the community. great work!

Bear Shaman: Revised leveling build and feat advice by Fervor

Lifebane — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:39:01 +0000

Blood Fever vs Untamed Regeneration

With the significant reduction in Untamed Regeneration’s regeneration and increase in vulnerabilities, it becomes a good situational tool instead of a skill you run all the time. Blood Fever’s 20% damage increase becomes a more attractive option.

Untamed Regeneration (UR) is no longer a must have skill for many BS’s. It is still a very good skill, but one that should be managed properly. Preliminary testing has shown that invulnerability works differently in PvE vs PvP. In PvE, it is a straightforward % increase in damage. In PvP, it appears to impact the chance of critical hits and increases the damage as well. Running UR in PvP is a quick way to die, especially with the BS’s small health pool.

Aspects can be clicked on or off instantly, with a 5 second cooldown between changes. If you have Blood Fever (BF) and UR, learning to switch between aspects depending on your situation can be a powerful tool.

For leveling purposes, at low levels, the regeneration from UR is less impressive. The immediate 20% increase in damage from BF speeds up killing, which is the primary task when leveling.

At higher levels, picking up both aspects can be helpful. With the nerf, some BS’s are skipping UR in favor of other skills like Balance of Nature and Saintly Warrior. Remember that potions are always cheap and work well to supplement your natural regeneration.

General Notes

Many of the feats are underwhelming (especially the feats deep in both trees) or just broken, so some of the feat choices are not set in stone and can definitely be tweaked to suit your playstyle.

With the UR nerf, another very good option for BS’s is to get 5/5 Ether Flow, 5/5 Spirit Armor and 3/3 Saintly Warrior. Spirit Armor provides additional melee invulnerabilities which is a good thing and Saintly Warrior provides a lot of stamina when solo leveling. In most cases, if you are willing to use potions, this is unnecessary, but it’s still nice to not have to worry about downtime.

In my leveling build, I skip back and forth between the Spirits and Wrath trees. I do this to try to get the most useful skills at that time. Some of the skills are decent at lower levels, but do not scale well. So it’s sometimes better to get these skills early when it could be helpful. Feel free to shuffle the feats around to suit your playstyle. Every level, look at your progress in both trees and decide which is best for you, instead of blindly following my build.

Leveling Build

5/5 Blood Warrior – Adds a damage buff to your primary heal over time (HoT) skill. Casting spells does not break combos, so you can cast Blood Flow in between combo swings.
5/5 Empowered Renewal – 50% damage increase for the hit that triggers renewal. This is arguably the most useful feat and one you should learn to use properly as soon as possible. Use it immediately before the final blow of your combo. This should usually be the last blow of the Crush Armor combo.
5/5 Improved Spirit of the Bear – Significantly increases your health buff. One of the BS’s weaknesses is a small health pool and this skill is essential.
5/5 Aspect: Blood Fever – 20% damage increase with a 22% reduction in healing power. During solo leveling, the 20% damage increase is a good tradeoff to speed up killing. Turn off the aspect if you need more healing, especially in groups.

Feat build at level 28

5/5 Nature’s Wrath – Very high chance of proc. Adds a secondary heal to your primary HoT.
5/5 Animalistic Fury or 5/5 Ursine Onslaught – Increase to your standard melee attacks (but not combos) vs 40% damage increase for the Ursine Brawl combo. Someone parsed their combat logs and found that Animalistic Fury added more DPS over time. The problem is the very long cooldown on Ursine Brawl. For PvP, Ursine Onslaught is the better choice.
3/3 Aspect: Untamed Regeneration – Some BS’s now choose to skip this skill, but I still think it has its uses. It provides good regeneration for health, mana and stamina at the cost of -15% invulnerabilities.
1/1 Manifestation of Rabies – 30s short range area damage (40s cooldown). Decent damage when you first get the skill, but it does not scale well with level. It is useful for PvP because it pops people out of stealth. If you plan to get this skill, get it now when the damage is useful or wait until much later to use as a PvP skill.
2/5 Animalistic Fury or 2/5 Ursine Onslaught – Whichever skill you didn’t get earlier.
3/3 Improved Grizzled Hide – Adds 3% invulnerabilities and increases the grizzled hide defense bonus by 30%. Very helpful for the relatively squishy BS.
2/3 Poisoned Hide – ~25% of triggering a small poison DoT when hit by melee. Small, but noticeable DPS increase.
1/1 Rupture – Increase damage of one of your primary combos (Crush Armor) by 10% and decreases the cooldown by 1.5s.
1/1 Battle Roar – 3% damage buff, moderate health buff for entire group. 30s duration, 60s cooldown.
3/3 Ursine Roar – 10s debuff that reduces damage by 15%. 40s cooldown. 1s cast.

Feat build at level 50

1/3 Ursine Rush – A charge. Additional points increase DoT damage (not recommended).
3/3 Poisoned Hide
5/5 Animalistic Fury or 5/5 Ursine Onslaught – Filler. Can spend the 3 points on anything else.
2/2 Weight of the World – Next 3 attacks do +40% damage and -25% movement snare. 2min cooldown. Great in PvE and essential in PvP to increase your burst damage.
3/3 Stone Hide – Recent testing has shown that this skill does provide a percentage based reduction in damage in PvE and PvP. Instant cast, 15s duration, 90s cooldown.
3/3 Rampage – Provides a good damage boost and health regen. Very nice because it is a passive skill that triggers off any attack. BS’s have tons of other hotkeys/skills to worry about and it’s nice to have a good passive skill.
5/5 Blood Champion – 10s buff that provides 20% damage every 2 minutes. Primarily for PvP burst damage, still a good way to increase your DPS. Consider getting this skill sooner if you play on a PvP server.
1/1 Rune of Grounding – 90% spell immunity for 15s, but snares you. Great against casters. Use Ursine Rush to close the gap.
1/1 Grace of Nature – Removes roots for your entire party. Provides 6 seconds of immunity, with a 40 second cooldown. Good for PvP.

Feat build at level 70

2/3 Deft Renewal or 2/3 Manifestation: Regrowth – Add a 5% evade bonus with 10s (?) duration to your standard group HoT or a small 30s HoT with a 60s cooldown. Grants a small bonus to survivability to your BS and group. Pick whichever better fits your playstyle. Deft Renewal is an easier choice because it is linked to a spell you already use, instead of adding yet another spell to your loaded hotbars.
5/5 Balance of Nature – Moderate (30% to 40%) chance to add a short stamina regen buff to Blood Flow.
5/5 Claws of Life – ~90 natural regen (at level 80, scales to level) with a small proc heal.
3/3 Deft Renewal or 3/3 Manifestation: Regrowth

Feat build at level 80

Other Options

5/5 Rune of Slaughter – Not useful in solo PvE, but can help in groups when facing epic mobs and in long PvP encounters.
General Playing Advice

The BS is not a tank, no matter how tough you look. In groups, wait for your tank to establish aggro before jumping in with HoT’s and combos. BS’s have limited crowd control abilities.
If you get in trouble in groups, remember you can always double-tap back for evade buffs and active block. That’s better than running around, which makes it impossible for your tank to help you.
Take full advantage of food buffs and potions. I always carry a big stack of food and a ton of stamina and health potions. Potions stack to 50. They are cheap and help immensely to your survival and killing speed.
For melee combos, only the position of your target when you swing your last attack matters. After that, it doesn’t matter if the target runs around. In PvP, you can wind up your combo while running around.
Casting spells does not break combos. You can cast Blood Flow in between swings. This is useful for some of the procs that depend on Blood Flow.
If you can find a leveling buddy that specializes in AoE attacks, it can significantly help both of you. The ToS and PoM are leveling machines by themselves, but with another healer, it’s even better. The mages are also much better when supported by heals, especially the HoX.

Tempest of Set: Leveling Builds and Feat Review by Fervor

Lifebane — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:34:15 +0000

The most effective leveling build is no longer as obvious due to the many recent changes to the Tempest of Set. This guide includes two leveling progressions. One is based on building a balanced toolset focused around Lightning Strike and Storm Field. The other is a build focused on maximizing AoE damage and grinding static mob camps or instances.

NOTE: I place a high priority on acquiring the more important feats as soon as possible. As a result, the feat progression is a little messy. It may be easier to follow the build if you look at the level progression illustrated by the feat calculator. I have tried to design the most efficient/effective leveling build, but it is only a suggestion. The best leveling build is one you enjoy playing.

There is a lot of information and numbers, so if you see any errors, please drop a comment. The next time I respec, I also plan to add a section with all the abilities and feats that detail the exact numbers for a level 80 ToS.

Table of Contents
Standard Leveling Build

Feat calculator overview for every 10 levels
Level by level progression
Analysis and playstyle
Alternative feat choices
Maximum AoE Grinding Build (’Synergy’ build)

Feat calculator overview for every 10 levels
Level by level progression
Analysis and playstyle
Alternative feat choices
Feat Information and Review

Lightning
Thunder
Priest

Standard Leveling Build
Build at level 75 with 7 leftover points

This build is very flexible, equally good for grinding static camps, doing quests, running group instances and engaging in PvP. Its primary focus is improving the core DPS toolset and burst damage. This build lacks Brain Spasms and Puppets of Set, so it’s not the optimal PvP build, but the burst damage potential and general utility makes it very effective.

It also gives new ToS a chance to try out Idol of Set at level 30, to see if it suits their playstyle. A nicely feated Idol of Set provides a lot of benefits, but the 60 second cooldown makes it a playstyle choice.

Feat Calculator Overview for every 10 levels

Level 20
Level 30
Level 39 before Respec
Level 40
Level 50
Level 60
Level 70
Level 80

Level by Level Progression

10-14 Ether Flow
15-19 Growing Storm
20-21 Storm Crown
22-24 Storm Throne
25-27 Empowered Cobra Stare
28-30 Storm Regalia
30-32 Idol of Set
33-34 Idol of Set’s Power
35 Empowered Life of Set
36 Set’s Life Spark
37-39 Piercing Storm Crown
Respec at 40

5/5 Growing Storm
1/3 Storm Crown
5/5 Arcing Charged Blast
5/5 Improved LS
5/5 Static Charge
3/5 Ether Absorption
5/5 Brutal LS
1/1 Inner Charge
1/1 Elemental Fury
1/1 Column Lightning
2/2 Set’s Storm
41-42 Storm Crown
43-44 Storm Throne (2 points)
45-47 Empowered Cobra Stare
48-49 Set’s Brutality or Lightning Arc (2 points)
50 Titanic Storm (2 points)
51 Storm Throne
52-54 Storm Regalia
55-59 Ether Flow
60-61 Power of the Serpent Ring
62 Empowered Life of Set
63-67 Fury of the Storm
68-71 Wrath of the Serpent Ring
72-74 Lightning Cast
75 Set’s Life Spark

(7 points left)

Analysis and Playstyle

Pre level 30 – Until level 30, your primary damage comes from Lightning Strike (which has a splash damage component) and Charged Blast (CB). As you feat out Storm Crown (SC), it becomes more helpful. Lightning Strike is very mana expensive, which is the reason why it is very important to pick up Ether Flow as soon as possible. You don’t have to put all 5 feat points into Ether Flow at once. You can add more points as needed.

Level 30 – Once you reach level 30 and gain Storm Field, your entire playstyle changes. Cast SC, pull with LS, SF, HoT’s, then continue attacking with your melee weapon and CB. As you gain more abilities like Elemental Fury and Column Lightning, incorporate them into your attack sequence.

Double-tap back for the short but very effective evade buff. It is an essential skill to learn for ToS’s at all level ranges. Active blocking is no longer a good option for ToS, due to the 50% decrease in damage and healing. Having a ready stash of health, mana and stamina potions is also very important.

ToS have very few ways to escape when they get in trouble. With a much weaken defenses due to recent changes, Empowered Cobra Stare is almost a necessity. It is also critical in groups for protecting yourself and other group members.

Level 40 – The purpose of the level 40 respec is to get Set’s Storm as soon as possible. If you miss having Idol of Set, you can always feat for it again later on. Idol of Set’s Power has a great synergy with SF because it also emits pulses when SF is active. This can make quick work of mobs and bosses alike.

Level 50 – By the mid 50’s, quests run dry and you are forced to start grinding instances and static camps. With a nicely feated SF and SC, it becomes easy to get into a smooth routine. While ToS is no longer incredible at killing large groups, they still level very quickly compared to many of the other classes.

Level 60 – From the mid 60’s, your gain even more abilities to significantly augment your Lightning Strike. This powers up your ability to PvP as well as dishing out damage in groups.

NOTE: At this time, Inner Charge and Lightning Cast have a synergy. Casting the following sequence: Inner Charge, LS, Lightning Cast, LS will cause both LS to critical strike. If you have Fury of the Storm and additional +damage (feats, buffs, equipment), the burst damage from this sequence is impressive. You can even add spellweaving to get the maximum damage buff.

Alternative Feat Choices

This build has 7 leftover points. In addition, you may want to tweak this build to better match your playstyle. The following are feats that match well with this build or provide additional utility.

Idol of Set + Idol of Set’s Power + Idol of Set’s Supremacy
Symbiotic Idol of Set – A group skill. It adds +damage for every ally within range of the Idol. Great for raiding, groups, especially when there are necromancer pets.
Ether Absorption + Coalesce Ether – More mana is always good.
Lightning Arc – Adds a DoT to Column Lightning that inflicts about half the damage of the initial strike.
Vindicator or Grace – Vindicator is the better choice as it helps tanks hold aggro better, so it helps everyone in your group, not just you.
Presence of Mind – Making the emergency heal into instant cast is probably the most important thing you can do if you want to prioritize healing. It allows you to cast it on the run, making it a useful PvP feat as well.
Thundering Command + Staggering Voice – A silence and a root. More CC is always good, but this feat is deep in the Thunder tree.
Rousing Shock – I haven’t had a chance to test this skill recently, but many PvP builds seem to include it, so I assume it works. (My next respec will include this feat, so I will update this when that happens.)

Maximum AoE Grinding Build

Build at level 80 with 3 leftover points

The end goal of this build is to maximize your AoE grinding ability. This is done by using Idols and Cyclones and taking advantage of the fact that both are considered party members. There are several key abilities that work far better when they affect more people. Due to the static nature of Idols and Cyclones, this is not a very good PvP build, although it can be quite effective against players unfamiliar with some of the ToS abilities.

By the mid 50’s, quests are no longer the primary source of experience. It becomes necessary to grind instances or static camps. This allows the ToS to maximize the benefit from the longer lasting, but immovable Idols and Cyclones.

This ‘Synergy’ build has been gaining a lot of popularity lately, especially with more people reaching higher levels and being forced to grind experience or farm for money and resources. My ToS is 90% focused on PvP, so I’ve been slow at testing various PvE focused builds. After a lot of recent experimenting and research, I haven’t been able to improve on Zangief’s version from the official forums (Good job, Zangief! His thread on Tempest builds. There is a lot of good information for higher level ToS’s).

This guide outlines an efficient order in which to acquire the necessary feats, focusing on getting the important feats when they would be the most helpful.

Feat Calculator Overview for every 10 levels

Level 20
Level 30
Level 40
Level 50
Level 60
Level 70
Level 80

Level by Level Progression

10-14 Ether Flow
15-19 Growing Storm
20-21 Storm Crown
22-23 Storm Throne (2 points)
24-26 Empowered Cobra Stare
27 Storm Throne
28 Storm Regalia (1 point)
28-30 Idol of Set
31-32 Idol of Set’s Power
33 Empowered Life of Set
34 Set’s Life Spark
35-36 Storm Regalia
37-39 Piercing Storm Crown
40 Respec

5/5 Growing Storm
1/3 Storm Crown
5/5 Arcing Charged Blast
5/5 Grounding Charge or Improved Lightning Strike
1/1 Rousing Shock
5/5 Static Charge
5/5 Ether Absorption
3/3 Coalesce Ether
1/1 Elemental Fury
1/1 Column Lightning
2/2 Set’s Storm
41-42 Storm Crown
43-44 Storm Throne (2 points)
45-47 Empowered Cobra Stare
48 Storm Throne
49 Storm Regalia (1 point)
50-51 Idol of Set
52-53 Idol of Set’s Power
54 Empowered Life of Set
55-56 Set’s Brutality (2 points)
57-58 Titanic Storm
59-62 Cyclone of Set
63-64 Storm Regalia
65-66 Symbiotic Idol of Set (2 points)
67 Idol of Set’s Supremacy
68-71 Cyclonic Storms of Set
72 Storms of Set
73 Set’s Brutality
74-76 Piercing Storm Crown
77-80 Symbiotic Idol of Set
(3 points left)

Analysis and Playstyle
Pre Level 30 – As with a normal Lightning focused build, before level 30, your primary damage comes from Lightning Strike. Ether Flow is still important due to the mana cost of LS. As you invest more points in Storm Crown, you will notice a significant damage increase, especially in groups. The mana gain from SC is helpful as well.

Level 30 – It isn’t until you feat Idol of Set’s Power when you really start to see the benefit of having an Idol. Storm Field also pulse from the Idol, in addition the inherent damage and buff that the Idol provides. Unfortunately, you will also get annoyed with the long 60s cooldown. You can place it and drag mobs to the Idol or just pull more mobs whenever the Idol is available.

NOTE: At this time, if you queue up another Idol of Set IMMEDIATELY, you can place TWO Idols. In other words, hotkey, click, hotkey, click as fast as possible. This is a bug which will probably be fixed eventually, but there is no reason not to take advantage of it now. SF and SC pulse from both Idols, adding nicely to the overall damage output.

Learn to use double-tap back for the short but powerful evade buff. It is one of the primary abilities for keeping yourself alive. Make sure you always have a stash of health, mana and stamina potions.

Level 40 – At level 40, you respec in order to get access to the SF feats as soon as possible. While having a fully feated SC and the Idol of Set is very nice, it is useful to reduce the casting time and increase the duration of Storm Field. In addition, you no longer need Ether Flow. This build requires a lot of points, so dropping unnecessary feats is important.

Level 50 – By the early 50’s, you will regain a more powerful SC, Emp. Cobra Stare and Idol of Set. This is perfect timing for you to start grinding instances (Cannibal Caves) and static camps. You also have the benefit of the feats in the Lightning tree; Column Lightning and Elemental Fury for use when SF is up, Static Charge for more overall damage and Ether Absorption/Coalesce Ether for mana management).

At 54, you gain Empowered Life of Set, which provides a nice damage buff by itself. It also affects the Idol of Set, increasing its inherent damage and SF pulses.

Level 70 – By level 72, you gain the ability to drop 3 Cyclones and even more synergy between your abilities. Empowered Life of Set and SC affect all Idols and Cyclones, which adds a huge increase in AoE damage potential. Cyclones also benefit from all the buffs, which makes the damage respectable. Symbiotic Idol of Set gives you increased +damage. The tradeoff is a loss of mobility due to the immovable Idols and Cyclones.

The combination of Idols, Cyclones, a fully feated Storm Crown and a fully feated Storm Field creates a zone of massive AoE damage. It’s even more incredible because it is all passive damage. It takes a lot of time to cast all the spells, but once you do, you are free to cast anything you like (except for LS when SF is up). Depending on the situation, you don’t have to set up an entire field of Idols and Cyclones. At the core of your AoE damage is a fully feated SC and SF, which does a great job by itself.

Alternative Feat Choices
This build has 3 leftover points at level 80. In addition, you may want to tweak this build to better match your playstyle. The following are feats that match well with this build or provide additional utility.

Lightning Arc – Adds a DoT to Column Lightning, which adds about half the damage of the initial nuke.
Thundering Command + Staggering Voice – More CC is always good.
Lightning Cast – Primarily useful for some burst damage while pulling mobs and the occasional PvP.
Set’s Life Spark – Self resurrection on a 30min cooldown. Time saver for solo. Potential group and raid saver.

Feat Information and Review

Lightning

Arcing Charged Blast – Adds splash damage with a small AoE radius to your fast casting nuke, Charged Bolt (CB). CB is a ToS staple, so more potential AoE damage is good.
Improved Lightning Strike – Improves the damage of your primary nuke. It was reported a while ago that a Funcom developer said this skills improves the damage by 7.5%, but no further testing has been done to verify.
Grounding Charge – Adds a 50% chance of rooting the primary target of CB for 4 seconds. A useful bonus for PvP.
Rousing Shock – Instant cast, 60s cooldown. Provides an additional 5s (10s?) stun immunity.
Pillar Lightning – Increases the radius and the number of targets affected by the LS splash damage. At this time, this feat is questionable. It doesn’t seem to work properly, so consider spending the 3 points in another feat instead.
Faithful of Set – Reported by forum testers to have a minimal impact on healing. Not currently recommended.
Static Charge – Increases the damage of all your nukes. Scales with level.
Inner Charge – Instant cast, 1 minute cooldown. Your next LS is a guaranteed critical strike.
Brutal Lightning Strike – Increases critical strike chance for LS. The exact number is unknown at this time.
Ether Absorption – Ether Absorption returns a portion of your damage as mana. Once you reach level 30 and acquire SF, mana management becomes less important, until endgame and PvP.
Coalesce Ether – Adds more mana return for your inflicted damage.
Blood Mana – Yet another mana management skill. Most people find it unnecessary.
Elemental Fury – Instant cast AoE nuke with a 45 second cooldown. Instant casts are great for PvE and PvP. Another nuke to use with Storm Field. Damage is similar to a single SF pulse.
The Building Storm – Group skill for ToS more focused on utility, rather than DPS. (More testing required)
Fury of the Storm – When you get a lightning strike critical, this feat increases the damage by 40%.
Column Lightning – Column area nuke that does great damage. 3 second cast, 60 second cooldown. Can also be used with Storm Field. Good for PvE and PvP. In addition to the AoE column, it also has a splash damage component.
Lightning Arc – Adds a short DoT to Column Lightning that totals to approximate half of the initial damage.
Set’s Storm – Reduces casting time to 1.5s and reduces the cooldown so you can always have Storm Field up. Essential for leveling.
Set’s Brutality – Increases the chance of critical strike for SF. The exact increase is unknown at this time.
Cyclone of Set – 1.5s cast (?), lasts about 30s. By itself, it is unimpressive. It doesn’t move. The AoE damage is underwhelming and the radius of effect is fairly small. But when combined with a feated Idol and SC, it starts pulling its own weight.
Titanic Storm – Increases the number of targets for SF to 5 and improves the range of attack.
Visions of Hatred – 6.5s channeled stun with a modest DoT. 5 minute cooldown. The fact that it’s channeled and has a 5 minute cooldown makes it far less useful, but another CC is always welcome.
Cyclonic Storms of Set – Allows a ToS to place 2 cyclones.
Brain Spasms – Instant cast buff that negates or helps you quickly recover from the next stun/charm/fear. Once it is used up, it has a 3 minute cooldown until you can buff it again.
Storms of Set – Allows a ToS to place 3 cyclones.
Puppets of Set – 2.5s cast (?), lasts 10.5s, 2minute cooldown. A great PvP crowd control ability. It charms the target (basically a stun) and drags them into melee range. Even better in groups because it separates the opposing team and usually guarantees the victim is ganged and killed quickly. For PvE, you gain a pet control bar, allowing you to direct the mob to attack other mobs. It is unattackable for the 10.5s duration. It has a very high taunt, in essence allowing you to CC more than one mob. If cast on a mob that is not aggro’ed to you, it will attack a nearby mob and keeping fighting until it’s dead or until you do something else to aggro it.

Thunder
Growing Storm – Reduces the mana cost of Life of Set every time LS, CB and SF is cast. Small, but nice bonus.
Piercing Storm Crown – Increases the critical strike chance of SC. The exact number is unknown at this time.
Storm Crown – Instant cast. 30s passive buff that triggers an electric shock to a nearby enemy every few (?) seconds. Takes about 5 seconds before the first shock is emitted, so cast SC before pulling any mobs.
Storm Throne – A significant increase to Storm Crown’s damage. It also restores mana for each strike and adds a weaker SC to all team members.
Power of the Serpent Ring – 3s buff that adds magic resistance.
Empowered Cobra Stare – Stun doesn’t break on damage. Essential for PvP servers. Very useful for ToS’s who group a lot. If you get aggro, this stun is a great way to stop the incoming damage and give your tank a chance to regain aggro.
Storm Regalia – Further increases SC damage for you and your team members. Also restores mana to team members as well.
Wrath of the Serpent Ring – 10s duration, 60s cooldown, 30% damage buff. Great damage buff for burst damage, especially for PvP.
Static Blood – Adds a small amount of electric invulnerability and a weak damage shield.
Idol of Set – 2.5s cast, 50s duration. 60s cooldown reduces the usefulness of this skill, but it is still a very good way to boost damage. Also restores mana to you and nearby allies.
Idol of Set’s Power – While Storm Field is active, it pulses from the Idol as well, providing a significant damage increase. Adds a strong +damage buff for your spells and melee attacks of nearby allies.
Set’s Life Spark – Gives you the ability to resurrect yourself once every 30 minutes. Can be very useful. Unfortunately, you resurrect at the location you died, which is typically surrounded by whatever killed you in the first place. Without your buffs, you die a much faster second death. For instances and raids, it can be invaluable.
Empowered Life of Set – Adds extra damage to your next LS, CB, SF or melee swing. Also buffs anyone else affected by Life of Set. This can provide a significant damage boost for melee groups and melee necromancer pets. If you have Guiding Spirit, you can spam LoS on melee allies (and melee necromancer pets), dramatically increasing their damage output.
Symbiotic Idol of Set – Every group/raid member affected by the Idol of Set’s buff adds a large amount of bonus damage to the ToS’s spells. This includes necromancer pets.
Shock and Awe – (More testing required) People are reporting that it either doesn’t work or is too difficult to use properly.
Divide and Conquer – (More testing required) People are reporting that it either doesn’t work or is too difficult to use properly.
Thundering Command – An instant cast silence. 4s duration. 30s cooldown. Does not interrupt the current spell being cast. Helpful in PvP.
Lightning Cast – Your next LS is instant cast. 2minute cooldown with 1 point. Each additional point reduces the cooldown by 30s. Great synergy with the 1minute cooldown Inner Charge.
Idol of Set’s Supremacy – Improves the Idol by allowing it to hit an additional target and debuffing targets to suffer additional damage.
Improved Overcharge – (More testing required)
Storm Blood – Electrical damage suffered by the ToS is converted into healing. Very situational skill.
Vital Shock – 1.5s cast, 60s cooldown. Damages the target and restores health, mana, stamina to nearby allies. At level 80, it returns about 320 health/mana/stamina. The general consensus is that the benefit is underwhelming and the cooldown is too long.
Improved Call Lightning – Increases the damage of the Call Lightning spell, but this is of questionable value because testing has shown that Call Lightning seems to hit targets ~30% of the time. Nice when it works, but too unreliable. The primary benefit of Call Lightning is the big damage buff.
Staggering Voice – Adds a root that does not break on damage to the Thundering Command silence.
Triumphant Life of Set – Adds a moderate amount of damage to your LoS spell. (More testing required) This is much weaker than it used to be, but for a passive bonus to your core healing spell, it is a nice addition.
Summon Aura of Nebthu – 2.5s cast, 21s duration, 2minute cooldown. General consensus is that the DoT is too weak and the cooldown is too long for the amount of feat points required to gain this ability.
Serpent Transmutation – 15 minute cooldown. Lasts 7s (?), absorbing all damage and converting it into healing. Powerful, but the cooldown is so long that most ToS will forget they even have this ability.

Priest
Ether Flow – Provides very good mana regen both in and out of combat.
Spirit Armor – Provides a passive physical defensive boost, helpful for AoE nuking.
Ether Discharge – Another mana management skill.
Grace – Reduces hate generated by -1% for each point invested. Decent skill, but better to pick up Vindicator instead.
Far-Reaching Spirit – Increases the radius of your emergency direct heal. Be careful because it also means more players are hit by the 1 minute debuff.
Vindicator – Causes allied soldiers in Defensive Stance to generate more hate. This improves tanking ability, which benefits your entire group.
Spirit Aegis – Provides a small passive magic defensive boost.
Saintly Warrior – Provides mana and stamina when struck in melee combat. No longer as helpful now that active blocking is far less effective, but can still reduce downtime.
Guiding Spirit – Reduces the cooldown on Life of Set. Good synergy with Empowered Life of Set.
All-Encompassing Spirit – (More testing required)
Presence of Mind – Makes your emergency direct heal into an instant cast. Makes it far more useful. Can be cast while running.
Soothe the Soul – (More testing required) Should be unnecessary, as long as the priest knows how to manage his aggro properly.
Saintly Martyr – Not as useful as Saintly Warrior because most mobs are melee.
Exemplar – Passive increase to melee and nuke damage.
Focus – Pointless right now since Casting Concentration already prevents any spells from being interrupted.
Healing Spirit – Another mana management feat, which a ToS does not need.
Vengeance of the Gods – Good damage buff. 1s (?) cast, 30s duration, 3m cooldown. 20% damage buff. Requires a lot of feat points invested in the general tree, so for most ToS, Wrath of the Serpent Ring is the better choice.
Shroud of the Gods – (More testing required)

Priest of MItra Leveling & Feat Guide by Fervor

Lifebane — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:25:05 +0000

This build is focused on creating a Priest of Mitra (PoM) capable of solo grinding efficiently, while maintaining the core skills required to be an effective group healer. For the most part, the PoM community has a consensus about the important feats for leveling. This guide will explain the best order in which to select the feats and the reasons for picking them.

Summary

10-14 Improved Smite
15-19 Cleansing Fire
20-23 Holy Vengeance
25-25 Revivication (2 points)

26-30 Lance of Mitra
31-34 Divine Lance

35-39 Ether Flow

40-41 Glowing Radiance
42 Searing Light

43-44 Far Reaching Spirit
45-47 Spirit Armor or Grace or Vindicator
48-51 Presence of Mind

52-56 Holy Accession
57-60 Wrath of Mitra
61 Clarity of Mind
62-64 Force of Will
65-67 Purification
68-70 Improved Repulse
70-74 Holy Surge
75-79 Overwhelming Light
80 Empowered Repulse

Leveling Build (feat calculator)

level 20
level 30
level 40
level 50
level 60
level 70
level 80
Detailed Progression

NOTE: Some people like to invest 1 point in Lance of Mitra as their very first feat choice, before going down the Vengeance tree. It’s unnecessary, but it’s nice to have Lance of Mitra so early.

5/5 Improved Smite – More damage for your standard nuke.
5/5 Cleansing Fire – Much easier to use in solo situations than Lance of Mitra. At this level, people are spending most of their time solo, so this will be more useful.
5/5 Holy Vengeance or 5/5 Improved Rebuke – Both add to your DPS. Since you are always casting Wave of Life, HV is a nice added bonus. It works well if you are party focused and want one less thing to think about. On the other hand, Rebuke is a fast casting nuke that works well in the nuke rotation and quickly finishing off opponents. For PvP, Rebuke is more useful as well.
2/3 Revivication – 2 points is enough to ensure it will trigger early in every battle. You don’t ever have to worry about casting Emanation of Life (EoL) again when playing solo. Useful in tough situations and great for running away or traveling. Especially useful for PvP where you will get surprised a lot and spending 2 seconds to cast EoL is far too long.
5/5 Lance of Mitra – A great nuke, but requires positioning yourself properly to use it effectively. Melee mobs tend to surround you and usually two targets is the maximum you will hit using Lance. Use repulse to throw them back, giving you time to line them up for a Lance. By this level, most PoM’s probably have a guild or friends they usually play with. In a group, it’s very easy to use Lance to its full potential.
5/5 Divine Lance – Makes Lance of Mitra into a nuke and a heal. Very useful in groups. Useful in solo situations as well because it can heal you if it hits a nearby target. I recommend getting this skill prior to level 35 when most people start doing Sanctum groups. For most PoM’s, Sanctum is their first elite instance and it is extremely helpful to have all your healing tools available.
5/5 Ether Flow – By now, the PoM has upgraded versions of their skills and mana management starts to become an issue. If you have mana problems sooner, consider getting this skill at an earlier level.
3/3 Glowing Radiance – The debuff from Radiance also grants a +5% damage buff.
1/1 Searing Light – Gives Radiance a powerful AoE nuke that does damage on par with Smite.
2/2 Far Reaching Spirit – Significantly increases Radiance’s range.
3/5 Spirit Armor or 3/3 Grace or 2/2 Vindicator – A 3 point filler to get to the next feat. Spend 3 points in the 2nd tier general tree that best suits your playstyle.
5/5 Presence of Mind – Makes Radiance into an instant cast. This makes the emergency heal far more useful. It can be cast on the run. With Searing Light, it means Radiance is a powerful instant cast AoE nuke. Soon after you get this feat, you will start running out of quests and need to grind experience. Cannibal Caves is a great grinding spot in the 50’s and you now have all the skills required to kill groups of mobs efficiently.
5/5 Holy Accession – At 5/5, it triggers constantly, reducing the mana cost of your next nuke to zero. It is a great mana management feat. This makes it much easier to heal and nuke nonstop.
5/5 Wrath of Mind – Gives a significant damage buff to all your nukes. Scales with your level.
1/1 Clarity of Mind – The next nuke can be cast for no mana cost. 2 minute cooldown. Not that useful until you get Force of Will.
3/3 Force of Will – This makes the nuke you cast using Clarity of Mind do double damage.
3/3 Purification – Every nuke has a chance of triggering bonus damage.
3/3 Improved Repulse – Improves the damage of your highest damage AoE nuke. Great for PvE and PvP. There is some question whether this feat is working properly, but hopefully it will be fixed soon.
5/5 Holy Surge – Increases the critical strike chance of your nukes. Good way to increase your DPS.
5/5 Overwhelming Light – Increases the critical damage multiplier of your nukes. When you land a critical strike, it does more damage.
1/1 Avatar of Mitra – Instant cast, point blank AoE 5 second stun. 2 minute cooldown. Extremely helpful in both PvE and PvP.
2/2 Empowered Repulse – Increases the knockback power and distance of Repulse. This allows Repulse to knockback most players. Good skill for PvE. Great for PvP.
Alternative Feat Choices

Blessed Armor of Faith + Unyielding Faith – Reduces the Armor of Faith holy damage penalty to -20 at level 80 and significantly reduces the mana penalty. Unyielding Faith reduces the unholy vulnerability to 20%. Armor of Faith provides a big defensive boost, which is invaluable to the relatively squishy PoM. This is an expensive investment, but one that many PoM’s are willing to make.
Exemplar – Passive damage increase that stacks well with other damage boosting feats.
Vengeance of the Gods – 20% damage buff that lasts 30s with a 3min cooldown. Great for PvP and difficult PvE encounters.
Saintly Warrior – Provides mana and stamina when struck by melee. A good way to reduce your downtime.
Purification of Mitra – Although the damage is much lower than it used to be, for only 2 points, it is basically free additional damage since you are always casting Wave of Life. Decent DPS increase for leveling.
General Advice

Smite and Rebuke have a small AoE radius. Take advantage by adjusting your positioning to ensure both nukes always hit two targets. Backpedaling will usually force melee mobs to follow you and bunch up closer.
Lance of Mitra takes some practice to learn how to maximize the number of targets. At close range, proper positioning can allow you to hit multiple mobs.

Conflag PvE Guide by Sargeras

Lifebane — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:33:14 +0000

While this guide focuses on PvE, it delves a bit into PvP as well since many of the higher-end conflag feats/spells can be used very effectively for both purposes.

Build

http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx…2fef2efef6ef::.

It's a conflag leveling build and centers around FoG. Fill out the first 5 tiers of the conflag tree. Since you're too low level to continue, then move to the general tree and fill it out completely. However, watch when combustion(lvl 40) and greater fires(lvl 50) become available and take them right away.

I also recommend respeccing when you get to the 70-80 range and remove devouring flames in favor of impish horde when it becomes available. This rationale is explained below.

Since I have already explained the order you should pick feats in, they are not ordered like that below.

General Tree

Mage Blood – 5/5

Necessary for going into general and mana regen never hurts

Archmage – 5/5

The opinion on archmage seems to be mixed. Its tooltip is misleading, so let me explain how it works. 5 points in archmage means having either the fire or lightning buff on means you effectively have both on. Its main benefit in my build seems to be for spamming inferno/shockblast (see pull strategy for more info). Having archmage could come close to doubling your shockblast damage, increasing your total aoe damage by more than 33% (this is based on very rough numbers and the fact that shockblast deals more damage than inferno). I use inferno/shockblast whenever I fight more than two mobs and the added shockblast damage is certainly welcome.

Spiritual Armament – 5/5

Provides a nice chunk of resists. Since the vast majority of NPCs deal physical damage, I picked this feat over Spiritual Aegis. From my own experience, this feat is quite handy and can really increase your survivabilty

Mystical Attunement – 5/5

This buff is just a decent damage bonus. It doesn't seem all that high for the regular FoG damage, but for aoe spells and for the FoG dot, I think it will help a lot.

Quickened Iron – 3/3

Protection of set is vital for the demonologist as it can greatly reduce the damage he takes in combat. Naturally, I would like to take any feats that improve its effectiveness. Quickened iron seems like a critical feat since my demo does fairly well against a large group for the first several seconds, but drops like a stone when PoS breaks.

The other feats that buff PoS are not nearly as useful though. The crimson shield tooltip makes it sound useful, but unfortunately, the bonus it provides is miniscule and doesn't scale. If/when it gets fixed, I suspect it will find a way into this build. The damage return from mirrored iron isn't that significant and given the numerous other feats that increase demo damage, mirrored iron isn't nearly as useful as quickened iron.

Tome of Erlic – 3/3

Gives the 15% more damage for 15 sec at max rank, so it's very nice.

I didn't really talk about the feats I left out too much, so let me briefly mention them here. The two chants might sound like they would be useful. In reality, they don't scale, so their benefits are marginal and not at all worth dumping 5-10 points into. Purge is useful in PvP, but not so much for leveling. The rest of the spells are either completely useless for leveling, like aggro reduction, or just have very limited utility, like dark meditation.

Conflag Tree

For the conflag tree, I mostly went with spells that boosted my FoG or fire damage. This made the feat choices for the first few tiers easy. All the choices are described in more detail below.

Deeper Fires – 5/5

Necessary to get into the tree.

Pyromancer – 5/5

Bonus damage is always lovely.

Fluidic Fires – 5/5

The aoe from these feat is quite substantial. By the time you're done killing one enemy with FoG, enemies close to it can be down to 50% health or less. If you start the fight with greater fires (covered later), you can kill a couple mobs at once with this.

Amassed Flames – 2/2

Once this builds up, it can really increase the damage FoG deals. Especially useful against bosses since they take more hits to kill.

Lingering Flames – 5/5

Lingering flames is quite useful as it does a fair bit of damage. This becomes especially noticeable in longer fights.

Demonic War – 2/2

Nice, long damage buff.

Unholy Hate – 1/1

Has a very fast cooldown (25 sec) and can substantially increase your damage output. Should be used at every change you get.

Devouring Flames – 1/1

Very useful against large groups of mobs. I recommend dropping this when you hit 70 because chaotic blast along with your other aoes becomes much more potent for dealing with large group mobs than FoG, making this feat obsolete.

Detonation – 1/1

Also useful against groups and can deal a good bit of damage.

Living Firestorm – 1/1

Essential feat. This is a great aoe spell. Once it deals the initial aoe damage, it places a molten rock on the ground that deals continuous aoe damage, so just don't pull mobs with this spell.

Combustion – 2/2

Initially, hellfire stream has roughly the same dps as FoG, but this feat makes it have higher dps, so you can use it whenever it's on cooldown. Nice feat to have if you remember to use hellfire stream.

Greater Flames – 1/1

I would say that this is one of the most useful feats in the entire conflag tree, for pure PvE, maybe even the MOST useful. It triples the damage of an FoG cast, but doubles the cast time. While this is a great spell whenever, it's especially hadny for pulling, since it effectively becomes an instant cast. However, it's a little bugged. The greater flames buff will linger a bit after your first FoG cast and if you cast another FoG while the buff is still on, the cast time will still be doubled, but the damage will NOT be tripled. Against most mobs, the GF buff will about 3-4 sec. However, if you use it in seiges or against any other buildings, it will last for the full 15 sec I think. I read that casting shock, hellfire stream, and detonation after an FoG will typically be enough for GF to expire.

Flame Body – 5/5

More damage!

Set's chosen – 5/5

I find that while Pact/Bloody Pact does jack my damage up like crazy, the dot it puts on me often makes it not worth it. Alone, the dot takes away half my health. Assuming the mob doesn't stun me, I can probably finish it off in a few shots, but if it does stun or knock me down, I'm almost certainly dead. While I could probably use a potion to offset the dot, I just find that I'm usually safer not using Pact with Set. Hopefully, this feat will make the ability more viable.

Phase Out – 2/2

Planar Shift is absolutely critical for reducing the damage you take in PvE and PvP and putting 2 feat points into this feat increases the spell substantially. It raises the bonus resists from 30% to 35% and adds some other bonus too.

Blessing of Amher – 5/5

I improved Inferno of Amher since it's a standard aoe spell that I use quite often.

Gate of Hell – 5/5

While Gate of Hell may be more useful for PvP, you'll be close to 80 when I get it anyway, so you may as well have an excellent root. It can also be useful against bosses.

Impish Horde – 1/1

This spell has a pretty short cast time and the imps can deal very impressive damage against bosses or rooted/stunned players. I recommend respeccing at 70 and removing devouring flames so you can get this feat.

Let Them Burn! – 0/1

While I have heard good things about this feat, I tried it and was very disappointed. It channels for 13 sec and deals aoe damage every 3 sec. The top end listed on the tooltip is about 1k, which is the same range as my shockblast, and it can also be cast every 3 sec. Given FoGs decreased casting time, it might actually have higher dps. The bottom line is this spell is no more effective at killing things than the spells I already have. When I used LTB, I saw no increase in damage between ticks. It's only redeeming feature is the low mana cost, but I don't typically have mana problems anyway.

Skills

For leveling, max out bandaging, renew mana, and casting concentration.

Mana attractor really isn't necessary because I typically am lower on health than mana at the end of a fight, so as long as my mana is full before my health, I don't care how fasts it regens.

I'd recommend putting points into climbing as well because it can make accessing certain areas possible or at least easier. For example, one of the villa quests can't be done without 350 climbing. Once you get to Atzel's, you can also get 200 bonus climbing from some gear you can buy for 5g 40s.

Since I'm concentrating more on PvP now, I maxed out hiding, but that's not necessary if you don't PvP.

The quick explanation is that I use aoe for 4 or more mobs and FoG with 3 or less.

FoG pulls:

When I pull with FoG, I always use Greater Flames. I also cast unholy hate and tome of erlik. I don't use flame body on the pull because with its casting time and the increased casting time of FoG, unholy hate could easily run out before FoG ever goes off. After this initial cast, I use flame body right away and then shock+hellfire stream. I used hellfire stream and shock whenever they are on cooldown(both insta-cast) and FoG the rest of time. When fighting a boss, I wait until FoG stacks 5 times and use detonation. On regular mobs, it almost never stacks that high, so I don't bother with detonate. I also cast unholy hate, tome of erlik, and flame body whenever they are on cooldown.

My aoe pull starts out with shockblast since it deals more damage than IoA. Then I cast chaotic blast and it usually goes off just when the melee mobs reach me. Then Living Firestorm and IoA/Shockblast cycle until everyone is dead. If there are ranged mobs in the group, I run up to them instead and start with chaotic blast instead.

Insta-casts are also very useful in aoe pulls because they let you kill mobs that are at low health faster than just AoE and barely take time away from your aoe cycle. This can save you time when facing 1-2 mobs and can save your life when facing more. If you're in a tight situation against a group of enemies, make sure to use both of these spells to take out ones near death when you can. However, be careful and try to use them only when you know you can kill a mob. If the mob is alive after both are cast, you'll have to use FoG or aoe to finish it (since hellfire stream and shock will be on cooldown) and you've just wasted time and mana.

The demonologist gets storm chains early on and can use very effectively against groups and single enemies. An obvious use of chains is to use it on one of a group of enemies and pull the rest toward you, effectively reducing the amount of enemies smacking you at once. If you're facing a melee and ranged mob, you can also chains the melee mob and aoe both to maximize damage. Just be careful that the chains don't break in this case. One final use of chains is against boss mobs, whether they're alone or with minions. Chains the boss mob and FoG away. This should let you get at least a few hits on it before it attacks you. Remember that mobs can still attack whiled chained, but can't turn around. If you're in a critical situation, chain a ranged mob and run behind it.

This same strategy can be applied to Fiery Torment, Gate of Hell, and Hands of the Underworld. The good thing about them is that they don't have a chance to break. Since Fiery Torment is a stun, you don't have to bother running behind your opponent.

Running can be very helpful in a battle and not just to get out of it completely. If you run, any enemies you have not damaged will only run a short distance after you, but ones you have damaged will run a longer distance. This makes running a good way to separate a group of enemies. You also regen health and mana if you don't take damage for long enough, so running away when you get low on either and turning around after regening a bit may help turn the tide. You could also try resting since it should become available at the same time as you starting naturally regening. Also, if you're having trouble killing a group of enemies and your respawn point is close, concentrate on individual targets and continue after you respawn.

Items/Gear

Keep any potions you find, esp. health and mana ones, since they are a great help in battle. You should also buy them from merchants. Especially stock up on health potions. If you start a fight where you know you will need to use a health potion, use it the instant you start taking damage to maximize its effectiveness.

Gear choices are fairly straightforward. I go for +spell or +fire damage and damage resistances. +int and +casting conc are good too, but the damage bonus from int isn't too significant and since I already have conc maxed, raising it more probably won't help much.

~~ Our thanks to Sargeras for taking the time to write up his Conflag Build and sharing his learnings with the community. And of course our thanks to Sargeras for allowing us to post his information here.

Jeboyb’s Polearm Guide

Lifebane — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:59:53 +0000

Greetings fellow Hyborians. Jeboyb has put together a great guide on Polearms and why you want to use one basically. It is easy to tell that Jeboyb put a bunch of time into this guide so we be thankful that there are good players out there like Jeboyb that are willing to share and make us all a bit less newbish in the process. The following is all Jeboyb’s writings:

Why should I use polearm?

Polearm is very fun to level with. I tried a couple of levels with the sword and board builds, but it can get very repetitive, hence why I always respect to polearm. Polearm is very dynamic, you need to check for enemies abilities (stuns, knockdowns) to properly use an opportunity that is given to you (using frenzy at the right time). I am in a PvP server and without being overpowered I just feel like I can beat anything if I time my things right. This is why I like the guardian : if I micromanage good, I can kill and if I play stupid I die. The more I play this class the more I seem to enjoy it since there is so much tweaking that you can do.

Anything I should know before reading this?

This is a polearm guide that is to generally guide everyone that needs helpful hints. I mostly did this to cut the newbie threads on the guardian’s forum so that everyone can talk about things more intricate than : Should I switch to polearm?

Correctness :
- You should know that I consider inacceptable to distribute false information, hence if anything I say is not true, please tell me so everyone can enjoy a clean guide.
- My mother tongue is not english, so I would greatly appreciate any relevant corrections to my WALLOFTEXTLOL.

There are terms I’ll be using the whole thread :

Priming : Priming consists in starting a combo only to keep the last hit for further use. You can keep each hit for about 5 seconds and the combo will disappear if you go above 5 seconds.
SS : Means Sword ‘n’ Board meaning the Juggernaut Guardian, the sword user.
Frenzy : The frenzy stance plus all the offensive tactics and strategems if you have quick fingers.
Defensive : The defensive stance plus all the defensive tactics and strategems if you have quick fingers.
Tempest : The guardian Tempest tree.
Soldier : The guardian Soldier tree.
Juggernaut : The guardian Juggernaut tree.
Mob : monster

2. Leveling :

The rule of thumb is to follow the quests and if by any mean you feel bored, change areas and get clean fresh air. That’s what I did, but I must say if you want to grind, I would look for Ciderhelm’s Grinding Guide on Guardian’s forum. Because of the reach of your polearm as a tempest guardian, you aren’t forced to fight tiny (humanoids) targets like the SS build would to be effective in grinding. However, humanoid seems to drop more money, so that is still a plus.

Stance, Tactics, Stratagems and Maneuvers

During enemies encounters, I suggest you always be in Enduring Defense Maneuver ( since you’re polearm -10% damage is nothing versus the extra protection you’ll get but go Unguarded if you want to DPS more), Hold the line Stratagem (if you’re soloing / not tanking in a group). The only one you’ll need to change depending the encounter is the Tactics :
- If you’re not tanking and in a group, use Elusive Daring,
- If you’re solo (or tanking) melee mobs (or melee and casters), use Wall of steel (you’re not draining that much stam so it’s a big help)
- If you’re solo (or tanking) caster mobs ONLY, use Mental Barrier.

As for the stance, I’m always in defensive stance, then I’ll hit my combos and I’ll hold the last hit only to switch to frenzy stance and hit it right after, to get the frenzy damage bonus, then I go back in defensive so I won’t take useless damage by staying frenzy. Keep in mind that if you spec into “Guarded Frenzy” you won’t have to change so fast. Also if you’re tanking, you stay in defensive! =)

Before I explain the procedure to follow during a mob encounter, I will explain a bit about the guard ability : The guard ability, when the combo hits an enemy, triggers a shield of your level and a counterattacking buff. Each time an enemy melee strike you, he has a chance to get hurt for X damage (10-20 for the first one?). But this damage is really useless when you think of all the damage you will do with Flashing arcs and Skewer. So UNLESS you prime your guard outside of combat and you hit the mob with the last hit OR the mob is full shielded on the right side and you’ll need to rebuff yourself in some time, I will always use Guard I since it’s the same shielding buff as Guard 2,3,4,5 (it’s based on your level). It’s so much faster and really less stamina draining (it’s about a Flashing Arc stamina worth that you’re saving).

Procedures

You need to damage your enemies fast since the longer they hit you, the slimmer your chances are. Such statement is not necessarily true with a SS build (counterstrike, strike and guard, high hp regen). When I kill (up to 3 or 4) mobs, I have two sets of combos that I use alternatively :

Guard / Flashing Arc : This is the procedure I will use the most often. You hit Guard and prime your highest Flashing Arc in defensive, unleash the combo and go back in defensive like I said. The Flashing Arcs animation and Stance cooldowns are both 3 seconds so you can switch to defensive at the same time your combo finishes. When they are low on health, I stay in frenzy to white damage them until they die (dead in 2 or 3 hits, if not, just crank a lower rank flashing arc). I will talk about this later, but you can change the directional damage by an instant combo called Riposte.

Impale / Skewer : Both Impale and skewer are on a 1min cooldown so it’s a perfect mix. I usually do this combo on a lonely target or a caster in a mob group (up to 3, but try to only hit the caster so the damage doesn’t get reduced). I switch to frenzy stance, then hit my Impale ability. When I’m next to the mob, I just hit my skewer and finish off with directional damage or Riposte (even if I don’t have the Attack Evaded buff). The lonely mob will be dead like the caster in the group. You can then use the Guard / FA procedure I talked about to finish the group (keep in mind to hit the defensive and guard ability faster if the mobs around the caster are hitting you hard, you’ll just have to hit him a couple of times for him to die right after).

If a group of mobs is giving you a hard time, be sure to hit stagger and give yourself 2 – 3 free hits or to flee (remember, you can’t win them all!).

When killing mobs, be sure to check your next targets. I usually check for my 2 next bunch of mobs to kill : If I feel they are weak or not hard, I will use my skewer a lot more to save stamina (Skewer is using 131 stamina where flashing arcs are about 3 to 4 times more costly) and to shorten my grinding time.

Another quick note, switch to SS if you’re getting attacked and you don’t have you Guard buff on. I switch to SS when I’m fleeing or going through mobs I don’t want to fight.

RANDOM TIP(s) :

- Use Disarming Aggression when you change to frenzy stance (last combo hit). In the worst case, you can crank up 2 Flashing arcs, a skewer and a riposte while you would have done 2 flashing arcs max if you started it when you started your combo.

Food, Drinks and Potions :

Buy food, drink and Stam/HP potions as they are cheap and will shorten dramatically your downtime. As for the pots, I will often use a hp one when I fight 3-4 or more mobs together. Just take a quick look at your health when you’re doing the first procedures you know by heart; if your hp drops faster than you like, chew a potion up.

3. Builds :
I found that a good mix of Tempest and Soldier is the way to go with Polearm leveling. Tempest will give you mostly damaging feats, where Soldier tree will be more about upgrading your survivability. I’m going with survivability first so you pretty much can use SS before 26 if you want to. I’m a Lifesaver freak so if it doesn’t fit you, change it.

Level 26 : http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx…f48efef2ef8ef3
Level 44 : http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx…f15efef2ef8ef3
Level 56 : http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx…f10efef2ef8ef3

Now the tricky part : depending on your playstyle, you may chose a different path.

I would go with impale and 1 in Toughness and then get Cunning Deflection / Volcanic Rage but I prefer to get Redoubt first, a skill that I love. Either way, you end up with Riposte, Cunning Deflection, Impale and Volcanic rage.

After it’s easy, just go with Guarded Frenzy or Stone Skin depending on your playstyle.
At level 74 : http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx…2ef2ef2e2fe2f2

The last few points are up to you : If you wanna suck up everybit of DPS, go Master Pikeman but Iron Skin in Soldier is more important IMO.

Notable Feats (not in order)

Cunning deflection : Many people will agree that this feat is very important against casters as there magic is 50% less effective until you are melee struck.

Life saver : I personally still use Lifesaver even if I’m Tempest in case something goes wrong (as they often do, like aggroing more than 3 mobs, hard hitting guys, caster, etc…). Plus, it shortens my downtime (hp regen after the fight).

Riposte : This is really personal, but I really like the Riposte combo. With this feat, you get a stamina free (well, only 100 stam), instant attack that does 750-800 at 70 (scale it down a bit for your lvl). Plus, it gets the 30% damage increase of the “Disarming Aggression” if you have it on. I found out that if I evaded an attack (see the little boost that says you evaded an attack on top of your screen) while priming or hitting my Flashing Arc, I would only need to hit the Riposte button to kill the mob, resulting in a really fast grind.

1 point in Toughness : to get some more hp regen / invuln. It’s pretty cheap for what it gives you, I highly recommend it.

Volcanic Rage : This feat is just great since you can mow down mobs really fast, but it’s a 2 min cooldown.

Guarded Frenzy : Without this feat, you will take more damage than usual when staying in frenzy stance. This can be easily countered by Stance dancing effectively (prime in defensive , unleash in frenzy, go back in defensive, finish off mob or redo a combo like I told you). I did most of my leveling without this feat, so without being necessary, it will give you a second chance if you stay too long in frenzy stance. Some people claim they grind in frenzy non-stop with this feat though.

4. Key binding :

I’m using a pretty basic setup, but that have worked for me. I’m just putting it here just so you get a general idea of my setup if you are either a groupie (yay? ^_^) or unsatisfied by your key bindings :

WASD to move forward, backward and strafe
123QE : Directionnal attacks
# : Impale / stunning charge
R : Brutal Enraging Strike, though I don’t use it (only for a little damage boost on the left side)
T : Highest Flashing arc (I use T so I didn’t have to think about the last hit of flashing arc when I started, so the left attack is R and the right attack is T)
4 : 1 level lower rank than my best FA
5 : Stagger
6 : Basic Charge
F and Ctrl + F : Thoses are my stances, F being defensive and Ctrl + F being Frenzy
G : Riposte, instant attack so it’s right next to my fingers
Ctrl + G : Overwhelming Shout, that was my WoW setup so I didn’t change it
V and Ctrl+V : Thoses are my damage booster, V being Disarming Aggression and Ctrl + V Volcanic Rage
C is Guard I
X is the active shielding that I NEVER use.
Z is Skewer
Ctrl E and Q are Wall of steel and Mental Barrier (Elusive isn’t key bound, I just click it)
Alt + 1,2,3 : My maneuvers
Alt + R,T,C : Stratagems
Alt + E,Q : Brutal Wound and Highest level of Guard
Shift + R : Switch to Sword and board (if I need a Javelin, I open inventory right click when I have my polearm, shoot it and right click right after)
F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F7, F8 : In order, Hp pot, stam pot, Cunning Deflection, Rest, Search, Horse, Path of Asura

***Note*** : 7,8,9,0 are Z,R,T,C

5. PvP Polearm Builds :

I will give more time in this section later on, but I will at least give you some viable build to try out with your polearm spec. This is to give you a general idea, be sure to tweak it to your liking like I did.

Tempest/ Soldier Build : http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx…2e2fef2e2fe2f2
Disable is great to get fatalities in PvP and you still have lots of survivability.

Hybrid Build :
http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx…e3f5ef2e2f2ef2
This build is great if you can micromanage both SS and Polearm abilities and there’s still a bit of survivability.

Juggernaut / Tempest:
http://www.conanarmory.com/feat.aspx…fe2f2e3f2e2f28
A great burst and group build, just a lot less survivability.

A quick tip to polearm PvP better :

You need to stop moving when you unleash any combos. I don’t know why but if you’re moving sometimes it doesn’t connect even if you’re close and everything is perfect.

Thanks to :

I just would like to thank some people that have, with or without their consent, helped me going through all of this guide.

Ciderhelm : For writing such great guides through WoW and AoC and always being very helpful the #1 source of information for everything PvE related. Without him, my guide wouldn’t have been half as clear than it is now. =)

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=69489

TheUnnamed : For his great insights in the polearm specs mostly directed in PvP. He has been quite helpful mostly in the PvP aspect of the game.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=42656

travail02 : As Ciderhelm, he has a great knowledge of the class and the informations he shares are amongst the clearest (is this a word?) I’ve ever seen.

Lusain : For always making me laugh with his sarcastic and clever posts, I just love reading this guy. Plus, he’s always helpful.

~~ Thanks for allowing this to be posted and shared here with the community.(lifebane)

Faustina’s +Fire (magic) results

Lifebane — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:02:17 +0000

Greetings fellow denizens of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Faustina, Herald of Xotli of much reknown (Wiccana Server, Exodus guild) has made a great article reviewing how the new +fire (magic) bonuses are working. The is a great guide on the actual benefit of going with a heavy +fire (magic) gear set. I'll not give away the results prematurey though, give the review below a read fr Faustina's insight into this matter.The text that follows was written fully by Faustina and reproduced here with Faustina's permission. On with the review!

"Well after trying out every feat to see how the new +fire (magic) bonuses work, i can honestly tell you i'm not impressed. I'll break it down with every feat affected. I'm fully slotted with about +450 Fire (magic) in gear.

Fiery Weapons: When it procs it seems to do an extra 100 damage. Very rare proc too. Perhaps 1/20 swings. Utter trash from what i expected.

Imp Fiery weapons: Same deal. Rarely procs and when it does the damage is negligable again.

Spreading flames: It's so so. No real changes done to this but with the changes to BTD it's actually not half bad.

Fire Lance: Wasn't listed as being affected but i am hitting harder with it. Before was 600ish a hit now it's 800ish a hit.

Improved burning skull: Surprisingly not too bad. With my fire damage it procs for 200 damage pretty consistantly, and when its off the imp feat makes it proc for 200 still. The 450dmg proc on damage is also pretty consistent 1/5 i'd say. For a 1 point feat it's stead damage so not too shabby.

Burning Hex: I was extremely disapointed with this. It was the first thing i tried out as i thought, if it scales properly, we could seriously unload with the DoT's. Not the case. With +450 fire magic all this procs for is 90-100damage every 5 seconds. Even with aox and demon maw on it procs for about 112 every 5 seconds. I mean is this a joke? +1000 fire (magic) and it procs for barely over 100 every 5 seconds? This is balance? Who in there right mind would ever put points into this garbage? come on already.

Searing curses: Another i was extremely disapointed with. The DoT burns for 100 damage every few seconds. It's complete trash. Yet another feat i thought might add to us being DoT machines with all +fire slotted. It's sickening how in aox+demon maw+450 fire magic this would only proc for 130 every few seconds. Like what's the joke? Another trash update on feats.

Flame Cleave: More BS. It procs alright. And when it does it procs for some 60 odd damage. Where exactly is it scaling with our fire bonuses? It's not.

Searing Hatred: And the bandwagon of disapointing DoT's continues. Procs for 100ish damage every 5 seconds. Trash trash trash trash. Before this patch this feat mostly proc'd for 60-70. Now with +450 fire magic i added all of 20-30 damage? So thats a scale of what, 20/1? Come on.

Tongue of Xotli: Hits for roughly 2000 damage. Fire bonuses on it are negligable. In full aox+demon maw+ 450 fire magic, it would hit for around 2700 damage. So not bad, but concidering you have to invest 11 points to get this, and 10 of them are on skills that DO NOT WORK PROPERLY WITH FIRE, i would say pass on this.

Des essence/Aox: These are beastly. When in either form the proc that goes off is hitting for 500-600 every few seconds. I'm guesing the +fire bonuses to it scale on 2/1 ratio. Very beastly!

Burn to death: Pure pain on this one, but nowhere near what i expected it to be. With +450 fire magic it was proccing for 700 a tic. Concidering it use to be 550, it basically went up by 150 a tic for +450 fire magic. Very disapointing as this is where i expected the bulk of our update to be. Don't get me wrong, it's no joke when you aox+demonmaw+450fire magic and then BTD, the tics will proc in the 1000 range, but the problem is it could have scaled a lot more to compensate for nothing else of our DoT's scaling at all.

Pillars of infernal flame: Same, nothings changed for this. You'd figure this would get a fire magic bonus, but it doesn't.

Hellfirebreath: Pretty much the same. Hitting for 1200-1400 on level 80 mobs. Same as it was before the patch.

Flame tongue: No difference since pre-patch.

Xotli's vengeance: No difference since pre-patch.

Spitfire: Not bad scale to it. tics 5 times for 500 ish a tic. Pretty good if you don't mind the 5minute cooldown timer on it.

Spell Inferno: A lot better then what it was before. With 10 lash counters, it would proc for 100 damage before. Now, with 10 lash counters and +450 fire magic, it procs just over 200. Combined with burning skull they'd double proc for 200+200 for a nice 400. Not bad, but i expected a lot more then an extra +100 bonus. It needs to proc as much as our BTD. 500-700 a tic. And even with +1000 fire magic with all buffs, you wont get it over 250. So better then it was, but nowhere near where it should be.

Burning words: Actually pretty decent bonus. With basic +450 fire magic, it procs twice for 350ish each time. So over 700 damage total. From before where it was 200 proc x 2 for 400 damage. This actually scales very good, almost 1/1. This is how they should have scaled all of our feats and abilities.

Knowledge of the underworld/hatred of the living: Horrible scale. It's a flippin joke. 10/1 at best. Before i'd hit for 500-600 when it procs, now its 650-700 when it procs. Wee bloody wee for having +450 fire magic. An extra 50-100 every 10 swings.

And thats pretty much it folks. Before they removed +fire magic the scale was 1/1 on everything. Now it's 10/1. So for every 10 points you put in, you'll get 1 damage. 100 points give you 10 damage. 450 points give you an extra 45 damage. It's what 99% of the skills and feats we have do now. How is this proper balance? It's beyond an overnerf.

You can slot 2h edge and get insane % damage off of it. But fully slotting fire magic and burning hex procs for 90 damage every 5 seconds? MSS procs for 100 damage every 5 seconds? I mean what kind of joke is this? Who tested this crap and said "yep, sounds about right"? Do you even know how much hp a player or mobs have? 90-100damage DoT would be fine if the thing i'm fighting has 1000-2000hp. Not when the basic level 80 mobs have 5000+ hp.

This patch for +fire magic is a joke. You'll be using the same things you were pre-patch. Everything new i thought would scale amazingly by going all fire magic, which by the way is not easy to get and you sacrifice a lot slotting all that, doesnt scale well at all.

You'll still be spamming BTD, HFB, Pillars and HS. You might start using burning skull now but thats basically it. You won't be able to stack DoT's that actually put up damage. All of our DoT feats scale 10/1. 10/1 people. 5/1 would have been -maybe- ok, 2/1 would have been expected. But 10/1 scale is just sick. Why even bother putting +fire magic back in if nothings changing for what i'll be doing? A little more damage here and there but nothing new to play with or change.

Do me a favor, take +fire magic back out, put it in the dishwasher and clean it up before bringing it back. We went from a 100%, 1/1 scale, to 10/1. This isn't "fixing" this is nerfing. 1/1 was broken, just as much 10/1 is. At level 80 using feats on lvl 80 mobs who have over 5000hp, having a proc of 90 damage every 5 seconds is a bloody joke and you know it.

I'm not happy with this update. Demon form and BTD are beastly, but its what we all spammed before anyway. I'm very disapointed.

Making an all 2h edge set now to test that out. From what i hear its very powerfull. Seeing as having max +fire magic gives you nothing extra.

Faustina"

Crow’s No-Nonsense Guide to Guardian Leveling (v 2.0)

Lifebane — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:09:18 +0000

Crow's No-Nonsense Guide to Guardian Leveling (v 2.0)
"Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.
-Sun Tzu "The Art of War"

Read This Disclaimer First!
Firstly, I don't claim to be the master of all things guardian. This writing is simply intended to be a general guide to leveling a Guardian; not the end-all-be-all bible of dominating as one. This guide is a result of my experiences thus far and I am writing it to provide a compiled database of answers to a lot of the questions I see here on the guardian forums. This guide also assumes that you have some basic knowledge of the guardian class, such as what most combos and abilities do. If you are looking for that type of information keep this wonderful guide here open in a separate tab for reference. With that said, lets get to it.

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Update/Change Log:
6-6-2008: The initial guide (v1.0) was completed and posted.
6-7-2008: Updated to (v1.1). Added the Advanced Tactics section as well as tweaked (v1.0) with various adjustments, grammar and spelling fixes.
6-10-2008: Updated to (v2.0). Made several adjustments and tweaks to the entire guide in response to the recent overreach nerf. Added new feats and combos as well as a template level 60 and 70 build. Added a “Gear” section under “The Basics”.
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Table of Contents:
Ctrl+f is your friend!

1. The Basics

1a. Why Sword and Shield over Polearm?
1b. Combat Theory

1b.A. Primary Combos
1b.B. Secondary Combos
1b.C. Stances
1b.D. Manuevers
1b.E. Stratagems

1c. Feats

1c.A. Juggernaut Feats
2c.B. Soldier Feats

1d. Skills
1e. Gear

2. Solo Tactics

2a. General Combat
2b. Multi-Mob Combat

3. Advanced Tactics

3a. Weapon Swapping
3b. Stance Dancing and Advanced Combat Tactics

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1. The Basics
In the beggining, God created the Sword and the Shield.

Playing a Guardian is a very fun and very rewarding experience. There's nothing like standing toe to toe with a group of mobs 4-5 levels higher than you and watching them chip away at your massive health pool hopelessly. We will be taking advantage of the fact that you are an unstoppable mountain of steel when wielding the sword and the shield and augmenting that with damage the best we can. To get started, lets cover the basics that you will need to know for leveling a guardian.

1a. Why Sword and Shield over Polearm?
There is really no contest here, for solo questing/grinding/general owning its sword and board all the way. I have played on both sides of the feat tree and I can honestly tell you it is a huge difference. The negligible loss in damage capability is more than made up for in the survivability and utility of the juggernaut tree. With the sword and shield I have found that I am able to take on multiple mobs that are upwards of (and sometimes exceeding) 5 levels higher than me; and survive with plenty of breathing room to boot. The Tempest tree just doesn't offer much in terms of survivability and will not be able to survive a clash with a group of mobs that collectively has 15 levels on you. Not only does the sword and board spec offer the best survivability and sustained damage capability, it also brings some pretty nice burst damage to the table. The only thing I can think of that a Tempest guardian has over a Juggernaut guardian (remember that this is a leveling guide) is a substantial reach advantage; but what good is that when your dead? Trust me on this one, pick up a sword and a shield and you won't be looking back at your polearm spec because the only thing you will see is a massive trail of bloodied corpses and a whole crap ton of EXP.

1b. Combat Theory
Here I will break down very generally how combat should be done as a juggernaut guardian; dividing combo usage into primary and secondary priorities as well as covering the self buffs (stances, maneuvers and stratagems). Basically you are a porcupine; a giant, menacing porcupine with the unquenchable desire to kill things.

1b.A. Primary Combos
These are combos that should be used just about every single fight.

1. Counterstrike
This is your staple ability as a Juggernaut guardian, allowing you to immediately and automatically counter the attacks of enemies struck by the combo. It is your main source of damage and should almost without question be the opening combo of every fight. Most 1v1 fights will end before the duration expires but clashes with multiple mobs may require a second application. It is important to understand that you will only counterstrike mobs that are PHYSICALLY STRUCK by the final swing of this combo, meaning just because you have the personal buff up DOES NOT mean you are counterstriking everyone who hits you.

2. Dulling Blow
This is another staple combo that should be used almost every fight following your opening counterstrike. It deals nice damage as well as noticeably reduce the amount of damage dealt by the mobs struck by it. Its effectiveness really shines in multi-mob combat where fights last much longer. We will also be powering this up through feats, making it one of your best damage and utility combos.

3. Directional Attacks
No this is not a joke. There will be plenty of times during your career where all that is needed to down a mob is to follow up a counterstrike with dulling blow and spammed directional attacks. When doing this, always attack undefended directions and keep in mind that your left attack (default 1) is your quickest directional attack. When your enemies shielding favors it, always spam it as it pumps out the most DPS.

4. Strike and Guard (Post 60 only!)
In the wake of the catastrophic nerf to overreach (6/9/08), many guardians have been left searching for a way to fill the now gaping burst damage void. Look no further my friends, “Strike and Guard” is the new Overreach (kind of). Though not nearly as powerful as its once great distant cousin was, strike and guard will be a mainstay ability for this build for the foreseeable future. Its opening strike stuns, it deals excellent damage and it buffs your survivability for a short duration after; making it the perfect replacement for the now mediocre overreach. You do have to wait quite awhile before you can get it but it will be well worth the effort by the time you do.

1b.B. Secondary Combos
These are filler combos used for damage or for other various effects that support your primary combos.

1. Brutal Enraging Strike/Overreach(or insert other damage oriented combo)
This is a basic damage combo. Its nothing too spectacular but, if need be, it can be used to pump out some extra damage when your stamina reserves are high. Generally, you will only need to use this when fighting multiple mobs.
Since “Overreach” was nerfed into the ground on 6/9/08, it is no longer a primary combo for guardian leveling. It still deals decent damage but its steep stamina cost and resulting damage debuff make it much less useful. However, it can still be used at the end of a fight for extra burst damage and it can still be used with the advanced tactics later on in the guide (just don’t expect too much from it). Until you get ‘Strike and Guard” at 60, you will still want to be using this for leveling.

2. Plexus Strike
This is great combo to use when you need to gain stamina in a pinch. Its damage is next to nothing but it will allow you to pull off a last second damage combo during a “last stand” situation. Keep in mind that you receive stamina for each target struck by the combo, so make sure to get yourself into a position where you can strike all engaged mobs when you need to use it.

3. Shield Sweep
I shouldn't have to point this out but you obviously always want to have this ability on your hot bar. It is a great knock back and can hit multiple targets. Use it to escape undesirable situations or set up attack combos (more on this in the Advanced Tactics section).

4. A second Counterstrike
Ever screwed up your counterstrike combo and then felt like a DPS-less wimp until it finished cooling down? Avoid this disaster by always keeping a second rank of counterstrike on your hot bar. Each rank is on a separate cooldown so you can quickly recover from a botched initial application with a lower rank if need be.
Side Note: As of the time of this writing it is possible to stack multiple ranks of counterstrike, meaning that you will actually deal the counterstrike damage multiple times (one strike for each rank you have active) when struck. Please note that this has "unintended effect" written all over it and it should not be relied upon as it will likely soon be changed. Feel free to utilize it until then however.

1b.C. Stances
Generally the only stance you will be using is defensive stance once it is fairly well augmented by the feats you will pick up in the soldier tree (Improved Defensive Stance and Lifesaver). Until then, just fight stance-less and use frenzy stance for the advanced tactics covered in that section.

1b.D. Maneuvers
At first you can use Unguarded Attack for the small damage boost but I think that after about level 30 the health debuff (which seems to be in excess of 10%) is just too much to justify the benefit. If your average damage per hit was 100 damage with unguarded attack, your average damage without it would be 95. So you would be trading 5 damage for around 10% of your entire health pool (aka not worth it). Ditch it and fight maneuver-less while using Enduring Defense for escaping nasty engagements and tanking packs of mobs when your trying to quickly travel through an area.

1b.E. Stratagems
Hold the Line is a clear winner here; boosting your stamina regeneration with 0 penalty as your aggro holding capabilities do not matter for soloing. 99% of most regular, grindable mobs will not be using any knockbacks, fears or stuns so no need for Intractable Mind and you will need your mobility so leave Bolster the Line for tanking situations only.

1c. Feats
You should be fighting with a sword and shield so the juggernaut tree is an obvious choice here. However, DO NOT make the mistake of counting out the soldier feats. I know it is easy to get caught up in your primary tree and shoot for those awesome sounding ability feats as fast as possible, but you will only be hurting yourself. Many of the feats in both the Tempest and the Juggernaut trees are fairly useless to you during the leveling process and should be avoided entirely. These points are much better spent in the soldier tree where you will be increasing your regeneration rates to ridiculous levels and augmenting your defensive stance and survivability. I will list out a few of the primary and secondary feats in both the juggernaut and soldier trees as well as present some progressive builds to shoot for while leveling.

1c.A. Juggernaut Feats

1. Toughness (Primary)
This a is primary feat not only because you have to choose it to go any further in the juggernaut tree, but also because it is the feat you should invest your first 5 points into and it rocks mobs faces off. Remember that your biggest advantage is your survivability and this increases both invulnerability ratings as well as natural health regeneration rate. As you probably already know, natural health regen is ALWAYS active meaning it persists in combat as well (aka rocks mobs faces off).

2. Savage Counterstrike (Primary)
I know there has been some discussion on the effectiveness of this feat but it is a direct buff to your primary damage combo and should not be passed up. It also isn't like there is some other almighty feat that passing up this one will allow you to get instead. Increasing your porcupine damage is always good so don't worry about it and keep 5 points in this one.

3. Bleeding Counterstrike (Primary)
Further augments your primary damage combo by enabling all counterstrikes to inflict a bleed on the target that deals damage over time. It is a solid damage increase and is a direct buff to your main damage combo making it a primary feat for sure. Also, this bleed effect scales as you level so its damage should never become obsolete.

4. Bleeding Dulling Blow (Primary)
This is an excellent talent that directly boosts the damage output of one of your primary combos. Dulling Blow already deals good damage (speaking in terms of guardian combos) and this feat just makes it stronger by adding a nice bleed over time effect. This strengthened version of dulling blow can really help in filling the DPS void left by the overreach nerf. Using dulling blow multiple times in fights, especially large multi-mob fights, will be common after you pick up this feat. I really can’t tell you how much I love dulling blow! Use it all the time!

5. Weapon Master (Secondary)
This is a solid feat choice; increasing your raw damage. However, it is not as important as some of the other Juggernaut feats you will want nor is it more important than ANY feat you will want in the soldier tree. Keep it on standby until you have those other things filled.

6. Battle Cry (Primary) and Ardent Battle Cry(Secondary)
This is an excellent feat that serves the same purpose as Plexus strike except it provides instant stamina and increased regeneration without the need to execute a combo. It is also on a short cooldown (40 seconds) so it can be used nearly every fight decreasing downtime as well. Once augmented with the Ardent Battle Cry feat it gives a small damage boost (5%) to all party members. You can time this augmented battle cry for use before your big damage combos like overreach to provide a small boost to their potency. The Ardent Battle Cry feat is not a necessity however, and you will want to make sure you have other primaries filled before you drop points into it.

7. Strike and Guard (Primary)
Here, ladies and gentleman, is the new love of your life. It is a two swing combo that deals excellent burst damage and gives you melee damage deflection for a short duration after. Now that we are a bit lacking in the burst damage department this ability really helps minimize that deficiency, and it actually buffs you nicely instead of debuffing you like overreach. Not to mention the fact that its initial swing stuns! The only downside to this ability is the fact that you need to be level 60 in order to put points into it. Get it ASAP but DO NOT remove points from your primaries in the soldier tree do so!

1c.B. Soldier Feats

1. Recovery (Primary)
Of course this is a primary because it is the first feat of the tree but it also rocks for the same reasons as Toughness. It provides a massive increase to natural health regeneration and is reported to give around +173.5 at level 80. This should be the feat that you invest your second set of 5 points into.

2. Iron Skin (Primary)
A straight up increase to your guardian's invulnerability ratings (and therefore survivability), this feat is yout best choice when investing the feat points needed to meet the requirement for lifesaver.

3. Stone Skin (Secondary)
No doubt a nice feat for increasing survivability, but the reason Stone Skin is a secondary is the fact that you won't want to be fighting spell casting mobs as a juggernaut guardian. In order for us to be dealing damage we need to be taking shots from melee attacks and caster mobs tend to avoid melee combat. The points are better spent in Iron Skin where they will help us take more punishment from the enemies we intend to fight.

4. Improved Defensive Stance (Primary)
Improved Defensive Stance's effect is actually rather lackluster for a 5 point investment (3% increase to invulnerabilities while in defensive stance making it a 10% total), but we need it to get to lifesaver which is what we are really after. Nevertheless, it does increase your invulnerability ratings which is always a good thing.

4. Lifesaver (Primary)
You better believe this is a primary! Once you have this feat you can start using defensive stance all the time. This feat increases natural health regen while in defensive stance (supposedly around two thirds of that which you get from recovery) and puts you up their with frickin' Wolverine on the regeneration scale (really frickin' good). In most situations, one equal level mob will not be able to out DPS your regeneration. Feel free to pull one and laugh at his/her pathetic attempt to do more than scratch your health pool every few seconds.

5. Counterstrike Stance (Secondary) and Anticipation (Secondary)
Though the general consensus (and what I've experienced) is that these two feats don't provide THAT much damage, they both further bolster your primary means of DPS by providing more return damage to your attackers. That is never a bad thing and I would recommend picking up these two feats when you get the chance.

6. Volcanic Rage (Secondary)
Have you ever said to yourself, “Well if I just had a little bit more damage, I could have taken that huge group of mobs.”? Here is the answer to that problem. Volcanic Rage is a huge damage boost (20%) for 20 seconds on a short 2 minute cooldown. It is great for extended fights with several mobs or surviving fights you normally could not have because of an insufficient kill speed. It is an excellent talent that is fairly useful for leveling purposes but you will want to spend the extra pre-requirement feat points you need for it in the Juggernaut tree for picking up strike and guard first. Leave it on standby until you have some of those other things taken care of.

For leveling purposes, you can consider all other feats secondaries. I'll leave the rest of your choices in feats up to you as you can tailor the rest of your build to your playstyle (whether that be more damage oriented,tanking oriented, etc.). Here are a a few links to some examples of what your leveling build might look like at different levels: Level 28, Level 40, Level 50, Level 60, Level 70.

1d. Skills
There are only a few skills you should focus on to help you with the leveling/grinding process and those are Bandaging, Recovery, (and to a very small degree) Fast Recovery and Fast Bandaging. You will want to continue putting points into Bandaging and Recovery for obvious reasons (minimize downtime during resting and bandaging is rumored to improve in combat regeneration as well as out of combat regeneration). You only need to place 1 point into both Fast Recovery and Fast Bandaging as that is all you need to receive a chance to double regenerate while resting (and it is still unknown whether investing more points helps much more or not). Other than these four skills, focus your points in areas that coincide with your in game goals. If you want to be a main tank you will want to invest points into taunt while PVP focused people (like myself) will want to focus more points into perception and endurance. It is also rumored that the climbing skill will be important for reaching high end instances so you should continue putting points into it as well.

1e. Gear
You really shouldn’t stress out too much about what gear your guardian is wearing but there are certainly good and bad ways to go about determining gear priority. I do not have a crazy in-depth point system for every stat (as some stats are still largely mysterious) but here are some general guidelines you may want to follow for determining what is better than what.

1. Survivability
First and foremost, you should focus on gear that has survivability increasing stats on it. This means that almost all of the defensive stats listed below are valued higher than almost all offensive stats (I say almost because there is one exception that you will find below). You will find these types of stats almost exclusively on armor and other non-offensive types of equipment. I have listed out most of the defensive stats in order of importance below:

1. Natural Health Regeneration*
2. Maximum Health*
3. Invulnerability Ratings
4. Defense Rating and Heroic Defense Rating
5. Constitution
6. Natural Stamina Regeneration
7. Maximum Stamina
8. Dexterity
9. Non-Combat Health Regeneration
10. Non-Combat Stamina Regeneration
11. Immunity (If anyone knows exactly how this works feel free to let me know.)
12. Evasion (This is your single most powerful stat for damage mitigation but it is not useful for this type of build. We actually need things to be hitting us in order to do damage so evasion sits at the bottom of this list for good reason.)

2. Offense
The number one offensive stat I would value over all others is +One-Handed (Blunt or Edged) damage. The biggest reason is that you can visually see it increase your weapons DPS on the inventory screen while strength and other stats are much more dubious. This is also the only offensive stat I would value over all defensive ones BUT the ones that have a (*) next to them on the list above. This is important because you will mostly find this stat on armor and will most likely be weighing the value of defensive stats against it. Besides this, just consider all other offensive stats “extras” and always shoot for the weapon with the most DPS. It is also worth noting that weapon itemization seems to be much better for swords (one-handed edged) and I have found much more +One-Handed Edged gear than I have +One-Handed Blunt.

2. Solo Tactics
"If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail."

Now that you have the basics covered we can jump into the tactical aspects of combat as a guardian. Here I will go over general tactics such as combo usage, combo setups, and facing for single and multi-mob pull situations.

2a. General Combat
Remember the theory here is that by taking melee damage you are dealing maximum damage yourself. Here is the basic flow of attacks for each fight:

Engage(Charge or Approach) > Counterstrike > Dulling Blow > Optional Secondary Combo > Directional Attacks > Optional Finishing Combo (such as overreach)

This is generally how every fight should look. Use a secondary combination for extra damage, utility, or for finishing at your discretion. After a few levels worth of fighting with this sword and shield build you will learn the ins and outs of combat with it. This is a general guideline to combat so I will leave the rest of the more technical tactics for you to learn for yourself.

Once your defensive stance is nicely buffed by points spent in the soldier tree, you will want to be in it for most of your time spent fighting. I say most because you will find some uses for frenzy stance below in the Advanced Tactics section. Hold the Line should also always be your active stratagem of choice and leave all maneuvers inactive.

2b. Multi-Mob Combat
You should be striving to fight multiple enemies every time you fight. As mentioned before the beauty of this build is that you can absorb massive amounts of punishment. Do not be afraid to engage multiple mobs that are several levels higher than you as the battle will probably be a walk in the park. Here are few things to remember when multiple mobs at once.

1. Facing is key!
It is obviously important for you to maintain a position where you can strike as many of the engaged mobs as possible. During clashes with multiple mobs it may not be possible for you to hit every engaged mob at the same time (especially when fighting mobs with polearms or that otherwise have a reach advantage on you). When this happens, try to reposition yourself the best you can but make sure you do not waste too much time as you will need to get that combo chain going quickly. It is much better to quickly kill one target than to let all the mobs beat on you while you run around trying to get them all grouped together. Also, try to reposition yourself quickly before you execute the final swing of a combo for a last second chance at inflicting all the mobs you are fighting with its effect.

2. Timing!
It is also very important that you time your ability usage well. You can follow the same basic combo flow shown in General Combat but you will certainly need to throw in those secondary combos. Make sure to use battle cry every time it is available and do not be afraid to use dulling blow multiple times in a fight (especially once you have it boosted by feats). You will want to pump out some extra damage so a good burst combination for these extended multi-mob fights is: (Ardent) Battle Cry (5% damage increase) > Brutal Enraging Strike (or other damage focused combo) > Overreach. Even in its nerfed form overreach is still a decent burst damage combo and Ardent Battle Cry will also help to diminish the effects of its debuff while providing a nice damage boost as well. Also, keep an eye on your counterstrike combo's remaining duration as you need to keep that baby up at all times. Do not be afraid to refresh it even if you are towards the end of a fight as you will be surprised just how much DPS it accounts for.

3. Preparation!
You do not want to rush into a fight with 4 mobs 6 levels higher than you unprepared. Though a battle like this can be won you need to make sure you are at your best before engaging. Rest to full and make sure your primary combos are not cooling down before you engage. Be sure that you are in the correct stance and that your Hold the Line stratagem is active. You may also want to wait out a healing or stamina potion cooldown if you had to use one during the last fight. In general just make sure you are at your best before engaging tough multi-mob battles.

3. Advanced Tactics
Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
– Sun Tzu "The Art of War"

Now that you have the basic theory and flow of combat down, lets jump into some more advanced methods of cleaving people's heads off. Here I will discuss weapon swapping, frenzy stance use, and other advanced tactics.

3a. Weapon Swapping
Even though you are not a polearm spec you still want to have a polearm in our second weapon set. The reason is that it gives you access to a second knock back; stagger, which can be invaluable at times. Stagger and shield sweep are on separate cooldowns so you will effectively have two knock backs at your disposal. The default hot key for weapon swap is Shift+R. Using this you can quickly swap between wielding your primary sword/shield and polearm. We will talk more about the benefits of weapon swapping and the second knock back later on in the following sections. 3b. Stance Dancing
As we already know defensive stance should be your primary fighting stance for all combat. However, there are times when it would be nice to receive that big damage boost from frenzy stance (mainly to boost your overreach combo's damage). Now we don't want to just go switching into frenzy stance before every overreach or strike and guard as that leaves us open to too much punishment. Here are some methods and setups you can use to boost your DPS safely when you need to.1. Shield Sweep/Stagger > Frenzy Stance > Strike and Guard/Overreach
This is the safest way to use frenzy stance during the leveling process. A knocked down mob cannot attack you and is therefore vulnerable to a frenzy stance + [damage combo] combination while you are not susceptible to any retaliatory damage. Remember that switching stances does not interrupt any current action so you can stance change while executing a combo or knock back with out interrupting that ability. The cooldown on a stance change is 3 seconds so you should be able to execute the entire combo and return to defensive stance before the enemy is able to strike back. Try to time the stance change during the animation of your knock back so that the cooldown has passed by time the mob is getting back up (as he will not be happy, or in the best case scenario, he will be dead).

2. Expanding the Knockback > Overreach combination.
You can also expand upon the basic Knockback > Overreach combination and make it even more deadly. Throw in your (Ardent) Battle Cry for an even greater burst damage. Also, utilizing the fact that you have two knock backs you can effectively repeat the combo with a lower rank of overreach immediately following the first. Something like this: Shield Sweep > Frenzy Stance > Overreach(Primary Rank) > Stagger > Overreach(Lower Rank).Remember your second overreach will be under the effects of the first's damage debuff but it is still much more powerful than a stance-less or defensive stance overreach. This provides excellent burst damage for fighting difficult single target monster's (such as high level bosses). Now it is possible that in the future (just like they may do with counterstrike) separate ranks of overreach will be placed on the same cooldown (making it impossible to do this combo). However, if you put your Overwhelming Shout ability to good use, you can achieve the same effect with even better results. Something like this:Shield Sweep > Overreach > Overwhelming Shout (create space and wait for Overreach cooldown) > Stagger > Overreach>Note that you will be using your highest rank of overreach twice in this combination and the second will not be effected by the first's damage debuff (big burst damage and no damage taken).

These expanded forms of the basic Knockback > Frenzy Stance > Overreach combination are primarily for single target combat such as high level bosses (although you can find ways to use them for multi-mob).

3. Other Frenzy Stance Uses
You will find other uses for frenzy stance but they all primarily stem from the already mentioned uses. Taking advantage of the fact that switching stances does not interrupt your current action, you can change to frenzy stance just before the last hit of a combo to receive the damage boost for it's final strike. Use this to finish mobs just as you normally would with overreach but now you can finish them sooner. You must be careful though as if you misjudge the damage you will be stuck in frenzy stance for a few seconds allowing the mob(s) to smack you with some big damage. Until next time…
This will be the completed guide for the time being while I spend more time actually logged into the game and while I play the heck out of MGS 4. I will keep it up to date with any new information, tactics or strategies I come across but I wouldn’t expect another major update (like the adding of entirely new sections) for some time. I am still more than open to suggested changes or things you would like to see added to the guide so do not be afraid to PM me. Take care guys!

-Crow

~~~ Many thanks to Crow for letting us post his great guide to share with the community. And more importantly, thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge with others, not enough of that goes on normally.

Lifebane

Dead? Not a Prob! Head to your nearest Resurrection Location

Lifebane — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:17:18 +0000

Death is an Every day thing in Age of Conan: Hybporian Adventures… well maybe more than daily depending on how you are living your virtual life there. With death comes the inevitable rebirth, or resurrection in this case. When you die you can resurrect filly clothed and geared up at any resurrectim location that you have discovered within your same zone. What does this mean to you exactly? Go DISCOVER every possible resurrection location within a zone! This gives you more options for where to reappear in the zone and can also be used as a rather morbid means fo transportation, at least until such time as they implement some kind of decay of items upon death anyway.

Here is an alphabetical list of the resurrection locations per zone. If you happen to know of any not already listed then please send that in and we will update it as soon as possible. Thanks!

Atzel's Approac
Aelfrith Camp (264,51)
Atzel's Fortress (732,712)
Ivoryvale (923,140)
Skammestein (359,445)

Conall's Valle
Cascade Falls (1258,552)
Cimmerian Settlement (541,403)
Conall's Valley Entrance (123,174)
Mountain Glade (1123,981)

Eiglophian Mountains
Mountain Hunting Lodge (640,855)
Settlement of Dinog (831,424)
Valley Hunting Lodge (225,92)

Fields of the Dead
Crossroads (124,313)
Foothills (253,427)
Lookout (1175,585)
Stream Bridge (622,593)

Kheshatt
Kheshatta City (741,632)
Kheshatta Oasis (712,1221)

Khopshef Provinc
Black Castle Valley (1102,345)
Bubshur (572,1014)
Caravanserai (613,541)
Deep Desert (562,114)
The Shadow of the Pyramid (1093,1061)
Water's Edge (681,1324)

Wild Lands of Zelata
Corvo Outskirts (551,374)
Tesso (241,673)
The Outcast Camp (255,1352)
Wild Hills (641,643)
Wild Plains (974,1309)
Wild Valley (1084,974)

The City Building Guide

Lifebane — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:02:13 +0000

Perhaps the greatest feature of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is the promise of massive Siege warfare amongst warring guilds. Catapults hurling their fiery missiles, war-mounts bashing away at defensive walls and pvp galore. While this sounds fun and simple in theory, there is a long and tedious process to getting setup with the best possible defences and structures.

Since this process can be confusing to many, Lahon of ULtra Vires has put together a guide fo city building which he wanted to share with everyone. So read on young architects of Hyboria and learn what awaits you in your building endeavors. Thanks again Lahon for a great guide!

Frequently Ask Questions

Q. Do the building have to be built in a specific order?
A. Yes! & here it is…

1 Keep,
2 Trade Post,
3 Temple,
4 Library,
5 Barracks,
6 Theive's Guild,
7 Weaponsmith Workshop,
8 Armorsmith Workshop,
9 Alchemist Workshop,
10 Architect Workshop.

Walls, Towers & Gates Can Be Built Anytime After The Keep Is Built.

Q. Does the guild leader need to be an architect or can any guild member make a building?
A. No any player in the guild can be an architect and construct the city but remember all the cities resources and large amounts of money will need to be sent to that player for construction. I'd recommend using a trusted member only as this is a major investment. Remember architect is a very expensive class to level up having more then one can be a major burden on a small guild.

Q. Are plans consumed when something is built? And/Or turning them in for the quest?
A. Yes plans are consumed each time you build something and for the quests, they are NOT reusable.

Q. Can i use my quest plan to build anything instead of turning it to the npc?
A. Yes you can currently build the city buildings before actually doing the quest.

Q. Does an architect need to make two sets of plans for every building in order to advance to the next tier?
A. Yes one set for the quest and one set for the buildings themselves.

Q. Do any of the buildings actually do anything?
A. The Trade Post Provides one Trader NPC, the guild keep provides a extreamly small health bonus, and a siege npc spawns in the guild keep although some guilds are having trouble getting it to appear.

Q. Why do you lose the plans for a building once it is built.
A. Consumables… It's a gold sink, they keep inflation at bay and prices reasonable.

Q. Do we have to give our people rank to get the buffs from the city buildings?
A. No this rumor has been tested is it is NOT true!

Q. Is there going to be player housing that can be added to the cities one day?
A. No hard evidence one way or the other yet.. rumor mill says Barracks may have instanced housing in it for each member in the guild as well as spawning npc guards… wait as see!

General Information About Cities

Reserving a guild city location?
The Guild Leader must go to the guild management tab (available at level 20) half way down on the first page there is a zone reservation tool open it and select which of the 3 building zones you want to live in. Choices are Lacheish Plains, Poitain, and Purple Lotus Swamp. You may not currently choose which plot you are assigned within the zone, it's random. I recommend visiting each location before you pick they are very different.
After you have reserved the location it will tell you which instance you live in. Level restriction of 40 for the guild leader, and 24 members were required to reserve your plot, it was bugged when i did it and our city was reserved at level 22. I do not know if the GM's have since fixed this if you can confirm please post a screen shot of the denial because of your level.

Requirements for the guild…
All buildings are 24 members required, so is reserving a city plot.

PvE Nature Of the Towns, Enemy NPC's & Your Neighbors!
Three guilds are assigned to each city zone, on the pvp servers currently. Currently only the three guilds that live in your city zone can enter that zone.Enemy npc's are rumored to spawn and attack your city from time to time at the moment if this is intended it is disabled no npc's have been reported raiding a city to my knowledge.

Battlekeeps
They are not in Lachleish Plains, Poitain or The Purple Lotus Swamp, these are PVE city zones reserved to guilds that live in them. BattleKeeps Exist in Border Kingdom Aquilonian End, Boarder Kingdom Cimmerian End & The Border To Kush. To our knowledge each one of these areas only has one instance with 3 keeps in it a grand total of 9 battle keeps per server, representing each country. Requirements for these will come as we learn more and will be posted in the PvP related forums as well as in another thread here titled Battlekeep Building FAQ. Look for that in the next few days. The only requirement i know for sure for these is a tier 3 PVE City.

Spawning NPC's in your town
Barracks are rumored to spawn npc's in the city as well as to provide instance based player housing.. This is all rumors as you can build it but currently nothing happens will post more info when there is hard evidence.

Building Repair Costs & Maintenance
Currently this is also disabled will update when that changes.

Crafting Information

Quest Info
To complete all the quests for the first tier you have to make 18 plans in all. Two parchment(38 Silver Each) and one Drawing Ink(25 Silver Each) per plan from the merchant in the npc cities of Lachleish Plains, Poitain or Purple Lotus Swamp. 18.18g for the Quests.

Cost

Every quest requires you give the trainer samples of each of the plans.
So you are required to "buy" your levels basicly.
Each post in your city will require it's own plan, plans are not reusable they are consumed, this includes the buildings, walls, towers, ect…

Tier 1
Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Parchment (38 Silver)
18 Plans Needed In Total
1.01g X 18 = (18.18 Gold Total Needed To Finish Tier 1 Quests)

Tier 2
Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Papyrus (64 Silver)
18 Plans Needed In Total
1.53 x 18 = (27.54 Gold Total Needed To Finish Tier 2 Quests)

Tier 3
Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Vellum (1.12 Gold)
18 Plans Needed In Total
2.49 x 18 = (44.82 Gold Total Needed To Finish Tier 3 Quests)

Each city zone varies in price, to find out how much your city will cost add up every building "stone". Each Tier has it's own total requirements check below under the tier sections for those numbers.
Also this spreadsheet holds the city costs as well but we warned it has not been updated to reflect the new values so the numbers are off.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k…z_iVEcg&gid=19

Tier 1 Building Information

Keep: Must be built first to allow construction of other buildings
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
150 Ash Tree – 15 Joist
200 SandStone – 20 Brick
50 Silver – 5 Plain Facade
100 Copper – 10 Brace

Tower:
Predecessors: Keep
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
10 Ash Tree – 1 Joist
20 Sandstone – 2 Brick
10 Copper – 1 Brace

Corner Tower:
Predecessors: Keep
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
10 Ash Tree – 1 Joist
20 Sandstone – 2 Brick
10 Copper – 1 Brace

Ending Tower:
Predecessors: Keep
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
10 Ash Tree – 1 Joist
20 Sandstone – 2 Brick
10 Copper – 1 Brace

Wall:
Predecessors: Keep
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
10 Ash tree – 1 Joist
20 Sandstone – 2 Brick

Gate:
Predecessors: Keep
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
20 Ash Tree – 2 Joist
20 Sandstone – 2 Brick
10 Copper – 1 Brace

Trade Post:
Predecessors: Keep
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
150 Ash Tree – 15 Joist
200 Sandstone – 20 Brick
50 Silver – 5 Plain Facade
100 Copper – 10 Brace

Temple:
Predecessors: Keep , Trade Post
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
40 Ash Tree – 4 Joist
50 Sandstone – 5 Brick
20 Silver – 2 Plain Facade
30 Copper – 3 Brace

Library:
Predecessors: Keep , Library
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
40 Ash Tree – 4 Joist
50 Sandstone – 5 Brick
20 Silver – 2 Plain Facade
30 Copper – 3 Brace

Barracks:
Predecessors: Keep, Gate
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
40 Ash tree – 4 Joist
50 Sandstone – 5 Brick
10 Silver – 1 Plain Facade
30 Copper – 3 brace

Thieve's Guild:
Predecessors:Keep, Temple
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
40 Ash Tree – 4 joist
50 Sandstone – 5 Brick
10 Silver – 1 Plain Facade
30 Copper – 3 brace

Weaponsmith Workshop:
Predecessors: Keep, Barracks
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
40 Ash Tree – 4 joist
50 Sandstone – 5 Brick
10 Silver – 1 Plain Facade
30 Copper – 3 brace

Armorsmith Workshop:
Predecessors: Keep, Thieve's Guild
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
40 Ash Tree – 4 joist
50 Sandstone – 5 Brick
10 Silver – 1 Plain Facade
30 Copper – 3 brace

Alchemist Workshop:
Predecessors: Keep, Weaponsmith's Workshop.
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
50 Ash Tree – 5 Joist
50 Sandstone – 5 Brick
20 Silver – 2 Plain Facade
30 Copper – 3 Brace

Architect Workshop:
Predecessors: Keep, Armorsmith's Workshop
Plan: Two Parchment(38 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
40 Ash Tree – 4 Joist
50 Sandstone – 5 Brick
10 Silver – 1 Plain Facade
30 Copper – 3 Brace

Tier 2 Building Information

Keep II
Advanced Keep Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Keep, Alchemist Workshop
1500 Yew – 150 Beam
2500 Granite – 250 Block
500 Electrum – 50 Ornate Facade
1200 Iron – 120 Lintel

Trade Post II
Advanced Trade Post Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Trade Post, Keep II
1500 Yew – 150 Beam
2500 Granite – 250 Block
500 Electrum – 50 Ornate Facade
1200 Iron – 120 Lintel

Temple II
Advanced Temple Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Library, Trade Post II, Architect Worshop
750 Yew – 75 Beam
1500 Granite – 150 Block
200 Electrum – 20 Ornate Facade
500 Iron – 50 Lintel

Library II
Advanced Library Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Temple, Trade II, Keep II
500 Yew – 50 Beam
1200 Granite – 120 Block
100 Electrum – 10 Ornate Facade
400 Iron – 40 Lintel

Barracks II
Advanced Barracks Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Temple, Trade Post II, Keep II
500 Yew – 50 Beam
1200 Granite – 120 Block
100 Electrum – 10 Ornate Facade
400 Iron – 40 Lintel

Thieve's Guild II
Advanced Thieve's Guild Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Barracks, Trade Post II, Temple II
500 Yew – 50 Beam
1200 Granite – 120 Block
100 Electrum – 10 Ornate Facade
400 Iron – 40 Lintel

Weaponsmith Workshop II
Advanced Weaponsmith Workshop Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Thieve's Guild, Trade Post II, Barracks II
500 Yew – 50 Beam
1200 Granite – 120 Block
100 Electrum – 10 Ornate Facade
400 Iron – 40 Lintel

Armorsmith Workshop II
Advanced Armorsmith Workshop Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Weaponsmith Workshop II, Trade Post II, Thieve's Guild II
500 Yew – 50 Beam
1200 Granite – 120 Block
100 Electrum – 10 Ornate Facade
400 Iron – 40 Lintel

Alchemist Workshop II
Advanced Alchemist Workshop Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Armorsmith Workshop, Trade Post II, Weaponsmith Workshop II
750 Yew – 75 Beam
1500 Granite – 150 Block
200 Electrum – 20 Ornate Facade
500 Iron – 50 Lintel

Architect Workshop II
Advanced Architect Workshop Plan: Two Papyrus(64 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Alchemist Workshop, Trade Post II, Armorsmith Workshop II
500 Yew – 50 Beam
1200 Granite – 120 Block
100 Electrum – 10 Ornate Facade
400 Iron – 40 Lintel

Tier 3 Building Information

Keep III
Superior Keep Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Keep II, Armorsmith's Workshop II
2400 Duskmetal – 240 Girder
5000 Basalt – 500 Slab
3000 Oak – 300 Frame
1000 Gold – 100 Grand Facade

Trade Post III
Superior Trade Post Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Trade Post II, Keep III
20000 Duskmetal – 2000 Girder
30000 Basalt – 3000 Slab
18000 Oak – 1800 Frame
6000 Gold – 600 Grand Facade

Temple III
Superior Temple Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Temple II, Keep III, Trade Post III
12000 Duskmetal – 1200 Girder
19000 Basalt – 1900 Slab
10000 Oak – 1000 Frame
2200 Gold – 220 Grand Facade

Library III
Superior Library Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Library II, Trade III, Keep III
7000 Duskmetal – 700 Girder
15000 Basalt – 1500 Slab
6000 Oak – 600 Frame
2200 Gold – 220 Grand Facade

Barracks III
Superior Barracks Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Barracks II, Trade Post III, Keep III
7000 Duskmetal – 700 Girder
15000 Basalt – 1500 Slab
6000 Oak – 600 Frame
1300 Gold – 130 Grand Facade

Thieve's Guild III
Superior Thieve's Guild Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Thieve's Guild II, Trade Post III, Keep III
7000 Duskmetal – 700 Girder
15000 Basalt – 1500 Slab
6000 Oak – 600 Frame
1300 Gold – 130 Grand Facade

Weaponsmith Workshop III
Superior Weaponsmith Workshop Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Weaponsmith Workshop II, Trade Post III, Keep III
7000 Duskmetal – 700 Girder
15000 Basalt – 1500 Slab
6000 Oak – 600 Frame
1300 Gold – 130 Grand Facade

Armorsmith Workshop III
Superior Armorsmith Workshop Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Armorsmith Workshop II, Trade Post III, Keep III
7000 Duskmetal – 700 Girder
15000 Basalt – 1500 Slab
6000 Oak – 600 Frame
1300 Gold – 130 Grand Facade

Alchemist Workshop III
Superior Alchemist Workshop Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Alchemist Workshop II, Trade Post III, Keep III
12000 Duskmetal – 1200 Girder
19000 Basalt – 1900 Slab
10000 Oak – 1000 Frame
2200 Gold – 220 Grand Facade

Architect Workshop III
Superior Architect Workshop Plan: Two Vellum(1 Gold 12 Silver Each) + Drawing Ink (25 Silver)
Predecessors: Architect Workshop II, Trade Post III, Keep III
7000 Duskmetal – 700 Girder
15000 Basalt – 1500 Slab
6000 Oak – 600 Frame
1300 Gold – 130 Grand Facade

Broken Disabled & or Bugs

The Library currently uses the University Plan & their is no Library Plan
(Mislabeled) just use the University Plan to make your Library and you will be fine.

Two NPC's Spawn In The City
The Trader Npc & the Siege Npc was recently added, currently all the others are still not spawning.

No Buffs
The building buffs and abilities are disabled or not in-game so currently there are no bonuses.

Lahon
Guild Leader Ultra Vires
Deathwhisper Server

Lahon's guide is shown here with his paermission. The Original Threadcam be found here

here are a few links to charts that show this information in a different way:

Tier 1 Requirements

Tier 2 Requirements

Tier 3 Requirements

Leveling Guide, Barbarian focused

Lifebane — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:18:55 +0000

Greetings all. Tild the Barbarian from the Omm server put together leveling experience as a guide of what he killed at what levels with additional tips and commentary throughout his guide. He wanted to have this posted so that others could share his experiences and perhps benefit from them. Great resource Tild, thanks for sharing! Here is his Leveling Guide:

" I am getting really tired of the "I am level __, and I notice _____" posts Where __ is a level between 1-60 and _____ is some random complaint the poster has.

Every class has levels at which they are weak, and other levels during which they are strong. Some levels will go by quickly, and others will take some patience.

Rather than being vague – I'll give you, to the best of my memory, which sets of levels went by quickly/slowly for me, and where I spent my time gaining these levels.

1-29:

I zoomed through levels 1-29 the first day I played. There are quests which you can stack, and tons of them. I was level 19 when I left Tortage, and hit 20 shortly after entering Conall's Valley. I just quested in Conall's until I was 29, it was pretty easy and fast. I should mention that I did not play in closed beta. I did play in open beta, to level 24. So, these levels were mildly familiar. All of the levels after this were new to me.

29-39:

My second day playing, I was able to get through these 10 levels. 29 was when I entered my first rut, and I found that I couldn't solo mobs with little downtime anymore. It wasn't a huge deal, but just something I began to notice. I played a Druid in EQ, so I was weary of the fact that some classes in MMOs are solo machines, and some are not. I was apprehensive about the Barbarian being a solo class for the first 30 levels, and this was where I first noticed their inherent solo flaws.

Around 35, I went to Pyramid of the Ancients, which was great for leveling. As a DW Barb I would pull two of the mobs at a time, and kill them simultaneously. For 2H, I imagine you could probably take 4 at a time, although killing them would be much slower. 35-39 took about the same length as 29-35 for me.

39-50:

My third and fourth days playing were spent gaining these levels. At 39, I headed to Old Tarantia Noble District, and was quite pleased. I was able to solo two mobs at a time with relative ease, although three usually resulted in significant downtime. Thus was the second instance of my noticing that Barbarians are not the solo powerhouse that healer classes can be. I stayed at Noble District until 45 or so, long enough to get Vaedus – my first lifetapping weapon, and then went to Field of the Dead.

**As a side note, I also did arena during these levels. Arena is in the tavern in Old Tarantia Noble District, and there are solo/group quests you can do. There is a level requirement on all of these quests, and I think you can do the final group quest at level 57 or so. These are well-worth the exp/rewards.

I managed to quest all the way to 48.5 in Field of the Dead, then briefly went into Eiglophian Mountains with an HoX friend of mine. It was at this time I noticed how powerful a Herald of Xotli can be – we were destroying the zone en masse =) Between his damage absorb buff and my sheer DPS, we killed 4-5 mobs at a time. He would Hellfire Breath/Hell Strikes and I would Cyclone of Steel, which was 3-4 dead mobs at a time right there.

We did the beginning quests and such, then decided to call it a night.

50-57:

Fifth day playing. 50 is where the game slows down with regard to leveling. It didn't slow way down, but it definitely slowed down quite a bit. I managed to quest in EM until 55 or so, then I had to grind to 56. The apes in this zone are great for grinding, just kill them in pairs with Cyclone of Steel if you're DW spec'd. It seems like some quests opened between 54-56, so I did those and got close to 57, then I had to grind some more until I was 57. It was at that time I got the typical quest to head to another area – Thunder River in this case.

57-58:

Not my entire sixth day =) This is the amount of time I spent at Thunder River. The mobs were entirely too difficult for me to solo at this level, shame on Funcom for sending me here. Luckily, I heard through some of my closed beta friends that Atzel's Approach would be much better for leveling.

58-63:

Atzel's Approach rocks! When I first arrived, the content was very difficult. Atzel Conscripts added on me like an abbacus, and I died frequently. Once I got past that part of the zone, though, my exp flew. I did all of the quests and ended up somewhere around level 63.

63-68:

Seventh Day etc. I left Atzel's Approach and headed for Thunder River. I was able to finish the quests here with more rapidity than before, so I stayed a while. It seems like there was some mild grinding involved as well. After finishing all of the quests that I could, I went back to Atzel's Approach. I finished up my remaining quests and stumbled upon Ivoryvale at 67. Ivoryvale is an icy canyon full of non-aggro mammoths, generally in pairs of two. This was perfect for me, and since I was out of quests I figured, what the hell, so I grinded these mammoths until 68. Mammoth grinding is done like this: Open with Impale/Cyclone on one mammoth. Slowly air charge your combo and run to another mammoth. When they are both in your cone, unleash the Cyclone, with your primary target being the mammoth at full health. Both mobs should be dead now, due to Impale on the first mammoth.

68-72;

My eighth day was an off day for me; I went and saw my girlfriend and took a general break from the game. I started my playtime by grinding those mammoths until 70. 70 was a magical level for me, as I headed to Kheshatta. Kheshatta is a wonderful place, when you're the only one in the zone. I quickly filled up my quest journal and got two full levels from quests alone.

72-76:

Kheshatta Kheshatta Kheshatta was the theme of the ninth day. I had to grind a lot of level 72, some quests opened up at 73, so I banged those out really quickly. I think I did scorpions, in pairs again. At this level, I kill mobs with wonderous rapidity. I am no longer worried about the viability of Barbarians and soloing. It was at this time I fully appreciated my choice to be a DW Barb as well. I grinded my way to 74 after finishing some quests, and then more opened up, but it seems like they were group quests or something. I ended up heading over the the Death Master Camps, never having been before. I duo'd that with my best friend in RL – he is a Guardian. Isn't that ironic? Anyway, I ended up hitting 76 that day.

76-80:

Death Master Camp AE group. Anyone who has been to Kheshatta knows about these. Basically, you pull the entire lower camp and level it. We had a tank, 2 healers, a necro, myself, and a demonologist. It was mayhem, some of the most fun I've had in game. During these levels I had my first real group mechanics experience with casters of the non-healer variety. I was rather impressed, makes me lol whenever I hear people complaining about demos/necros now. These levels would be pretty unbearable solo, I must say. You need something like 2.9 million exp to advance to level 80 from level 79.

It was actually kind of funny, because I was on a time limit. I hit 80 something like 2 hours before the server came down. I was #4 on my server, the first Barbarian.

As far as I know, I was also the first Barbarian gamewide. I wasn't really going for this, just trying to give the guide some credibility =)

Oh, and here is the build I used:

http://feats.goonheim.com/barbarian#…h3j1n1o3r1s1u2

And here are some pics of my last day of grinding =)
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9…picture030.png
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9…picture031.png

Feel free to PM/reply any questions you have.

edit: Here is a good thread with grinding with respect to level. I suggest using it when you run out of quests for a particular area.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=75394

Tild the Barbarian of Omm"