Sword and Board best for soloing since we do most dmg with spells anyway?

[Pnaxx]

<p>I have just been pondering this. It seems that I don't really rely on my melee as much as spell dmg, so didn't think the loss of some melee dps would be missed that much during Auto Attack. It seems protection is what is needed. Not that I am having an issue, just looking to tweak things. I would normally just try it and know for myself, but I am using MC stuff and dun want to dump moola less it seems the right thing to do.</p><p>What would you all think?</p>

[Banditman]

I found the decrease in DPS to be significant, and the increase in avoidance negligible.It wasn't a situation where the increase in avoidance made up for the DPS loss in terms of overall speed.  I didn't avoid enough damage to noticeably affect my downtime, but I did noticeably increase the fight length.Speaking from a solo perspective, which is how I did the majority of my leveling.

[Pnaxx]

<p>I saw this thread, that I missed before when looking for answers before starting thisa thread.</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=15&topic_id=360325" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=360325</a></p><p>This says that most are saying go SnB....AGI/STA.</p>

[Banditman]

*shrug*I took my Troubador from 1-80 in 13 days /played.  I found DW to be faster.  To each their own.

[Pnaxx]

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>*shrug*I took my Troubador from 1-80 in 13 days /played.  I found DW to be faster.  To each their own.</blockquote>Hey there Bandit, not dissin what you said at all. I throw it into the melting pot of ideas. I will prolly try the SnB for the heck of it at some point but at this point I am not having many issues soloing yellow con and blue^. White^ I am have not come across but doubt it would be too terribly big of a problem considering how fast the Blue^ go down. Speed is a major factor as I want to get the biggest bang for my buck. All I want to do is level this to 80, but I don't have the time to do it as fast as you did. I avg an hour a night on weekdays and 2-3 on weekends...missing every sunday and monday. SO I have him at 33 now. But I agree that DW prolly is just fine fer now....I did hear that RoK needs a SnB ...ot at least if you go there under 72 with the old gear.

[Banditman]

Ain't botherin' me either way man.  Just tellin' ya what worked for me and giving you an unbiased frame of reference.  /played only tells you how long I actually played the character, not how long in real terms it took me to get him there.I did try a SnS for a while, it just didn't work for me at all, even with the DA line.

[Pnaxx]

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ain't botherin' me either way man.  Just tellin' ya what worked for me and giving you an unbiased frame of reference.  /played only tells you how long I actually played the character, not how long in real terms it took me to get him there.I did try a SnS for a while, it just didn't work for me at all, even with the DA line.</blockquote><p>One of the things I noticed was that I had done wrong was, I had my old defensive buff on and not my new updated one with a Master I......so I fixed that...it made a little bit of a difference. I maxed out the Agi line so far with AGI and I think Defense so I am as well off as I could be in that regard and have MC chain armor.</p><p>The place that have been testin me the most is Ferrott fighting the lizzards...they come at me 4 at a time aften, and even though they are 2 down arrows...they are yellow and stun and I think poison or something.....but they get me good. I ahe to bail on a few fights with the lower tier buff I was talking about. With the Master up and running, it still is a close fight if 4 attack. I have won with a sliver...or less than in some case...of health left. It was in those situations that I thought the SnB would come in handy. But, for the most part, I I may not need it for the rest of the quests as most are not as tough. Dunno...I will have to see. Ferrott does seem to have many more large groups of mobs than many other zones...and the SnB may just be the thing to do while leveling there. </p><p>So there was my reasoning. Now you have it all.</p><p>Hehe.</p>

[Sedenten]

For me it was a combination of the right AA combo and gear, at least in 71+ content.  I never did have great weapons, so dual wield never was enough DPS to get stuff dead fast enough.  I went with STA, AGI, and WIS, and the combo worked much, much better for RoK level content.  If I dropped the AGI line, though, my avoidance plummetted a good amount.  Sometimes that extra 4-5% avoidance really can make a difference if you don't have the gear to DPS through everything.  For me, it worked, and I tried every other conceivable combination. 

[Jesters]

<p>sword and board ftw</p><p>in the end game content you can pretty much solo the ^^^ quest named for quests out in rok at 80 even though it takes a long time</p><p>even lower con mobs the sword and board help prevent damage and the knock back helps you kite them a good bit especially if you aren't sprint kiting</p><p>in pvp its amazing, helps you cancel that fission that you KNOW is coming from that pesky wizzy and knocks scouts and tanks back and stuns them long enough you can be at max range and ready to kite them</p><p>sword and board all the way...solo + grouping.....keep the aa lines in raids if you end up in a melee heavy group but go dw..... dw is faster to level with but it isn't as efficient  for soloing more difficult mobs, if you plan on killing blue standards yea its great but bleh not my slice of cheese heh</p>

[Pnaxx]

I won a nice looking treasure shield in Steamfont the other day and used it fer kicks, just to see. I must say I am killing things about the same rate without taking the same damage. I have yet to even put a point in the STA line either. So, all in all, I think it is a good choice fer me. I am currently at 38 I think. I will get a MC shield at 42.