No groups?

[Rano]

Hey all I am 74 and was told that 1-70 is a lot harder than 70-80 because once you hit your 70s, you can start grouping a whole lot.  Well I am 74 and everytime a group is LFM its just for 80s, I can never ever find a group, am I just getting back luck or was I told the wrong thing?

[Yimway]

Rano wrote:

Hey all I am 74 and was told that 1-70 is a lot harder than 70-80 because once you hit your 70s, you can start grouping a whole lot.  Well I am 74 and everytime a group is LFM its just for 80s, I can never ever find a group, am I just getting back luck or was I told the wrong thing?

You were told wrong. 

Soloquest lasts 1-80.  You'll start getting groups as soon as you ding 80.

[Azekah1]

You should have joined nagafen

[Jesdyr]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

You were told wrong. 

Yup ... one reason is that if you are grouped with 80s and they take you on a shard run the zone will not spawn shinies.The real reason is .. you arent 80 yet .. even at 80 it will be hard to find groups until you get decent gear.

My suggestion is to find a casual guild that is more on the social side and make some new friends.

RoK went with solo leveling and TSO is really more of the same. They added in scaled instances but the only time they seem to be used at the low levels is to exploit an oversight with the mission system.

[NicolasKL]

It depends quite a bit on the server but the main problem right now is that most people are doing TSO instances and no 80s want a 74 because it screws things up (for a variety of reasons, AoEs that you'll be too squishy for, wont be able to get shinies, things will get scaled down which means crap loot, no shard chest, etc).  Keep your LFG tag up and run solo content as fast as possible, there's plenty of it to get you to 80.

[Yimway]

Fact is, doing anythign other than soloquestion 1-80 is kneecapping yourself.  You need the aa gained from questing to be effective when you get level 80.  You ding 80 with less than 140aa, your likely going to get judged pretty poorly with your group contribution once you get in some.

As others have said, join a casual guild, finish soloquest, and group with people that wont flame you to the server while you learn the grouping game.

[liveja]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

You ding 80 with less than 140aa, your likely going to get judged pretty poorly with your group contribution once you get in some.

My Troubie ding'd 80 the other day with 129 AAs. The next day, I did Ravenscale, Mystmyr, & Necrotic with an SK, Def, Coercer, Wizzie, Illy group. Nobody noticed my lack of AAs, & we dropped the Curator so fast I barely even noticed the fight had begun. The SK & Coercer were the only mythicals in the group, & being a new level 80, my Troubie doesn't even have his fabled epic yet, & is in mostly MC gear ... though I do have 3 T1 shard pieces, & a couple pieces of T1 shard jewelry. I have only my Training M2, & maybe a couple Ad3s ... all other spells & CAs are Ad1. The only mob we had any trouble with was T'lon, but I think we got him, too.

I'll be raiding with that Troubie next week, & I can pretty much guarantee nobody will notice the "lack" of AAs then, either.

Of course, I've now got 136, but that's still short of 140. My Swashy also was only around 125 or so when he ding'd 80, & the "missing" 15 or so AAs were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I think my point is that good players, especially in good groups, simply are not handicapped by those "missing" AAs as much as many people would like to think.

[scruffylookin]

One thing that really helps with the solo questing is to find a good duo partner. It makes the quests much more fun, and it starts to teach you a little bit about the dynamics of grouping and knowing your role.

[Thunndar316]

Join a guild.  Fact is most players solo or duo from 1-80 and when they do group, they do it with guildies.  There are tons of pickup groups once you hit 80 but until then you will have a difficult time getting one.

[Jesdyr]

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

My Troubie ding'd 80 the other day with 129 AAs.

Bards can get away with it .. people are normally just happy to have a bard ;P My coercer is at 162 AA and I feel like I am behind. Out parsed by a necro !?! this will not do ! ... jk(mostly)

[Yimway]

Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

My Troubie ding'd 80 the other day with 129 AAs.

Bards can get away with it .. people are normally just happy to have a bard ;P My coercer is at 162 AA and I feel like I am behind. Out parsed by a necro !?! this will not do ! ... jk(mostly)

Yeah, no one complains about the bard parse, their just happy to have them...

[Rashaak]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Fact is, doing anythign other than soloquestion 1-80 is kneecapping yourself.  You need the aa gained from questing to be effective when you get level 80.  You ding 80 with less than 140aa, your likely going to get judged pretty poorly with your group contribution once you get in some.

As others have said, join a casual guild, finish soloquest, and group with people that wont flame you to the server while you learn the grouping game.

This statement here is exactly whats wrong with most of the game community today...

You need to max this, max that. Level lock for AA because of this, have t2 shard armor, etc etc etc

You can group at any level and explore any amount of content. Not everyone needs to have the same play style. To the OP, yes there are plenty of groups out there, you just have to look in your level range (67-75). You should be able to do Unrest, MMC, CMM, CoV, and majority of the RoK instances.

[liveja]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

My Troubie ding'd 80 the other day with 129 AAs.

Bards can get away with it .. people are normally just happy to have a bard ;P My coercer is at 162 AA and I feel like I am behind. Out parsed by a necro !?! this will not do ! ... jk(mostly)

Yeah, no one complains about the bard parse, their just happy to have them...

Conveniently, neither of you addressed my comments about my Swashy.

[Mew]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Fact is, doing anythign other than soloquestion 1-80 is kneecapping yourself.  You need the aa gained from questing to be effective when you get level 80.  You ding 80 with less than 140aa, your likely going to get judged pretty poorly with your group contribution once you get in some.

As others have said, join a casual guild, finish soloquest, and group with people that wont flame you to the server while you learn the grouping game.

That depends on your class.  For most 120 AA is fine (and easy to hit by the time you reach 80).

[erin]

Rashaak wrote:

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Fact is, doing anythign other than soloquestion 1-80 is kneecapping yourself.  You need the aa gained from questing to be effective when you get level 80.  You ding 80 with less than 140aa, your likely going to get judged pretty poorly with your group contribution once you get in some.

As others have said, join a casual guild, finish soloquest, and group with people that wont flame you to the server while you learn the grouping game.

This statement here is exactly whats wrong with most of the game community today...

You need to max this, max that. Level lock for AA because of this, have t2 shard armor, etc etc etc

You can group at any level and explore any amount of content. Not everyone needs to have the same play style. To the OP, yes there are plenty of groups out there, you just have to look in your level range (67-75). You should be able to do Unrest, MMC, CMM, CoV, and majority of the RoK instances.

I totally agree with this.  There's groups, there's content, at every level.  Several people already suggested the solution, find a good guild with people of various levels (make sure its not an all 80s guild).

[feldon30]

Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:

Atan@Unrest wrote:

You were told wrong. 

Yup ... one reason is that if you are grouped with 80s and they take you on a shard run the zone will not spawn shinies.

Level 75. Problem solved.

The irony is, if any of you grouped with this person at level 80 and they didn't know how to play their class in a group, you'd kick them right? So how the hell are they supposed to learn how to play in a group?

[Rano]

Wow thanks for all the replies folks.  And I am in a very good guild right on Antonia Bayle, I am in the Knights of Freeport so I have plenty of friends.  One make reason I want to make 80 is to really rank up and help my guild, but I want to be 80 first, so if I want to, I can run 80 instances and such.  As for RoK instances at 74, what are my options there?

[feldon30]

Should be able to do CoA and VoES with a 74.

[Yimway]

Rano wrote:

Wow thanks for all the replies folks.  And I am in a very good guild right on Antonia Bayle, I am in the Knights of Freeport so I have plenty of friends.  One make reason I want to make 80 is to really rank up and help my guild, but I want to be 80 first, so if I want to, I can run 80 instances and such.  As for RoK instances at 74, what are my options there?

As already stated.  Performing any task in game to achieve levels (get to 80) that isn't also at the same time maximizing your AA reward is a concious decision to kneecap your progress and make a negative impact on what your effectiveness is once you do reach 80 and are ready to group.

There are PLENTY of soloquests to get you there.  At level 74, your looking at around another 12-14 hours of soloquesting to get it done. Open wikia and get to work.

You can go group t7 instances and grind xp at a slower rate than soloquesting, and on a miracle you might find someone to group you into rok instances before 80 and grind xp there at a slower rate than soloquesting, but even if you succeeded at doing that, you'll ding 80 with significantly less AA and you'll have to turn around and do the soloquests you skipped to get the AA you skipped.

If there was seriously a method to do heroic/group content to get to 80 with the same AA effectiveness, I'd jump all over it and strongly urge you to go that path; however, that does not exist.

Look, I don't like it, in fact I think this is one of the most negative aspects of the game, but I can not deny soloquesting is the most efficient use of your time until you are level 80.

But, if you want to go group T7 stuff to grind slower and get to 80 needing to go back and do all those quests you would have got adventure xp for as well AA for, by all means, go do that.  Just understand your penalyzing yourself to choose that path.

[Tanes]

this game is dieing from so many bad designs and no real new people are playing.. thats why you can not get a group and one of the many reasons i left. People are not going to wait YEARS for fixes.. x numbers of years in EQ 2 and it's still in BETA look at the class forums and see all the unhappy people.. I should have stayed put in EQ 1.

[Moralpanic]

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

Atan@Unrest wrote:

You ding 80 with less than 140aa, your likely going to get judged pretty poorly with your group contribution once you get in some.

My Troubie ding'd 80 the other day with 129 AAs. The next day, I did Ravenscale, Mystmyr, & Necrotic with an SK, Def, Coercer, Wizzie, Illy group. Nobody noticed my lack of AAs, & we dropped the Curator so fast I barely even noticed the fight had begun. The SK & Coercer were the only mythicals in the group, & being a new level 80, my Troubie doesn't even have his fabled epic yet, & is in mostly MC gear ... though I do have 3 T1 shard pieces, & a couple pieces of T1 shard jewelry. I have only my Training M2, & maybe a couple Ad3s ... all other spells & CAs are Ad1. The only mob we had any trouble with was T'lon, but I think we got him, too.

I'll be raiding with that Troubie next week, & I can pretty much guarantee nobody will notice the "lack" of AAs then, either.

Of course, I've now got 136, but that's still short of 140. My Swashy also was only around 125 or so when he ding'd 80, & the "missing" 15 or so AAs were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I think my point is that good players, especially in good groups, simply are not handicapped by those "missing" AAs as much as many people would like to think.

LOLOL! You're a bard, the only thing you're expected to do is play your powersong. How much dps did you do? How much dps did you increase your group by? I can guarantee you that somebody with 50 more AAs than you is a far better troubie than you. And somebody with a fable or mythical is far better than you and your MC crap.

[liveja]

Moralpanic wrote:

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

Atan@Unrest wrote:

You ding 80 with less than 140aa, your likely going to get judged pretty poorly with your group contribution once you get in some.

My Troubie ding'd 80 the other day with 129 AAs. The next day, I did Ravenscale, Mystmyr, & Necrotic with an SK, Def, Coercer, Wizzie, Illy group. Nobody noticed my lack of AAs, & we dropped the Curator so fast I barely even noticed the fight had begun. The SK & Coercer were the only mythicals in the group, & being a new level 80, my Troubie doesn't even have his fabled epic yet, & is in mostly MC gear ... though I do have 3 T1 shard pieces, & a couple pieces of T1 shard jewelry. I have only my Training M2, & maybe a couple Ad3s ... all other spells & CAs are Ad1. The only mob we had any trouble with was T'lon, but I think we got him, too.

I'll be raiding with that Troubie next week, & I can pretty much guarantee nobody will notice the "lack" of AAs then, either.

Of course, I've now got 136, but that's still short of 140. My Swashy also was only around 125 or so when he ding'd 80, & the "missing" 15 or so AAs were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I think my point is that good players, especially in good groups, simply are not handicapped by those "missing" AAs as much as many people would like to think.

LOLOL! You're a bard

Additional relevant text, on which you chose not to comment, has been bolded, colored, & super-sized for your convenience. That's THREE of you now, at least, who have chosen to respond to that post without reading it. Grtz to all of you.

Simply put, "you must have 140 AAs by 80 or else you're gimped" is a player superstition with little basis in reality.

BTW, absolutely NO player with any shred of brains or intelligence would deny that a Troubie with 50 more points & a fabled epic or a mythical would have been better. NO FREEKIN' KIDDING, thanx for the blitherously obvious statement that added nothing & said nothing.

Did you have a point in fully quoting a post & then responding to it without reading it? I mean, other than to prove to everyone else that you didn't actually read it, & thus can't be taken seriously? If so ... what was it?

[Yimway]

Moralpanic wrote:

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

LOLOL! You're a bard, the only thing you're expected to do is play your powersong. How much dps did you do? How much dps did you increase your group by? I can guarantee you that somebody with 50 more AAs than you is a far better troubie than you. And somebody with a fable or mythical is far better than you and your MC crap.

For group content, no one is going to care, they're just happy to get the stock bard buffs and go.  Providing the bard isn't obviously afk, groups are happy.

Now, troubs recruiting to us, we're not particularly thrilled if they can't parse over 3.5k, but generally we're still ok with 2.5k from a troubie, just cause they just hard to find and they have a relatively high burnout rate.

I'm not intending to be overly negative at the OP, but fact is, players judge new blood at end game very harshly.  There are threads in many of the server forums at flames with topics like 'suck list' or 'don't group with these people'.  There is little lattitude given new players that get to cap and don't understand how to min/max atleast group content for their class.  Testing waters while being mentored in guild groups is the best path, and regardless of class, more aa == easier to demonstrate proficiency.  Not that it can't be done with less, but it is significantly more difficult.

Did I mention I had a healer in a leviathon raid sunday that didn't know what a cure was?  I mean seriously, it wasn't that he didn't cure, he didn't understand the fricken mechanic! Yet he had 50p to buy a slot for his VP flag.  So very shortly he'll probably be a mythical wielding templar that doesn't know what cures are. *sigh*

[Yimway]

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

Simply put, "you must have 140 AAs by 80 or else you're gimped" is a player superstition with little basis in reality.

It requires significantly more player focus and knowledge to demonstrate a measured contribution to the group at a point where your pier players expect you to be if you're behind on the AA curve.

Yes, its not impossible, and the degree of dificulty varies between classes, but you can't deny more aa makes it much easier to parse where you should be as a dps class.

[liveja]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Moralpanic wrote:

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

LOLOL! You're a bard, the only thing you're expected to do is play your powersong. How much dps did you do? How much dps did you increase your group by? I can guarantee you that somebody with 50 more AAs than you is a far better troubie than you. And somebody with a fable or mythical is far better than you and your MC crap.

For group content, no one is going to care, they're just happy to get the stock bard buffs and go. 

You are the leader of a fairly serious raiding guild, correct? I would not expect you to recruit a Troubie like me. However, your statement has no basis at all for a much more casual guild, like the one I'm in. I hate to take this down to semantics, but ... in couching your statement as a "this is true in all cases" certitude, you're giving people a distorted idea of what they need. I can think of a level 80 guild on Mistmoore that right now would snap me up happily, if I weren't already guilded; they wouldn't care how many AAs I  have. I can even think of a raiding guild that would probably take me, since I've raided with them before on my Swashy & they know I'm a good player. But would I app to, say, Trinitas? Not on your freekin' life; I know I'm not good enough for the SERIOUS raid guilds, & my original post on this subject, describing my experience with my Troubie, WAS NOT INTENDED TO CONVEY THAT IMPRESSION. Anyone who drew that inference mis-inferred, & I'm not going to take the blame for it, since I can't be reasonably accused of implying it.

If you had explained your statement more fully -- i.e., if you'd said, "If you want to be a serious raider, then you should ..." I'd not have commented at all.

[liveja]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

but you can't deny more aa makes it much easier to parse where you should be as a dps class.

Since I never did, or even implied such a thing, that "point" is pointless

I said you're not necessarily GIMPED as you strongly implied, & I *implied* that you could easily get away with having all kinds of casual heroic fun with casual heroic groups & never go anywhere near raiding or the hard-core folks who will make your life miserable because you don't have 15 more AAs.

& yes, it does require more focus & more commitment ... but you say that like it's a bad thing, where I'm saying it like, "If you want to be a GOOD PLAYER, you need more focus & commitment, so focus & commit!" & that's true no matter how many AAs you have. After all, you can have 140 AAs at level 80, & still be a largely incompetent [Removed for Content].

& while it's probably true that most folks don't want to get all focussed & committed while playing a game ... that doesn't invalidate my point, it merely proves that the list of mediocre players is considerably longer than the list of truly competent ones. But since we all knew that anyway .....

Edit, because I can't pass up this little gem ....

Atan wrote:

"Did I mention I had a healer in a leviathon raid sunday that didn't know what a cure was?  I mean seriously, it wasn't that he didn't cure, he didn't understand the fricken mechanic! Yet he had 50p to buy a slot for his VP flag.  So very shortly he'll probably be a mythical wielding templar that doesn't know what cures are. *sigh*"

Yea, Atan, & something tells me that "healer" had a whole ton of AAs, too. Thanx for proving my point that all the AAs in the world won't help an idiot. I'll bet if you'd had a COMPETENT healer with 30 fewer AAs, you'd have done better & not even noticed the difference.

[JINX8131]

OP,

imho, TSO alienated the need for ANY rok gear. and made ROK prety useless.

this made 70-79 gear worthless, so if someone was looking for a player that was 70-79 i am CERTAIN they are way under geared. therefore they would not be accepted.

TSO single handedly made 70-79 characters Subpar by a HUGE margin.

prior to having TSO uber gear (non raid gear) my lock could push out a woppin 1100 dps. (no myth, no RAID gear)

after doing ONLY group instances, i have increased my DPS to 8-9K in raid (myth, but NO RAID GEAR, only instance gear)

so would i want a 79 knowing they DONT have myth/fabled, and DONT have TSO gear? when easily i can get an 80 and possibly get lucky with one...

70-79 =1100 non raid gear max

80 =8-9k non raid gear..  im sure it gets higher

Im sorry that TSO has made such a huge impact on NON 80's, but its just that simple. it has

the above mentioned was my opinion, and experience, and may or may not be what others see, just an opinion tho.

[Yimway]

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

Yea, Atan, & something tells me that "healer" had a whole ton of AAs, too. Thanx for proving my point that all the AAs in the world won't help an idiot. I'll bet if you'd had a COMPETENT healer with 30 fewer AAs, you'd have done better & not even noticed the difference.

This doesn't change the fact that to continue to progress in the game, your going to have to eventually get your aa over the 180-185 number.

And choosing to level via heroic content is only going to increase the height of that wall your going to have to eventually overcome.

Now, if it isn't within your goals to complete this expansion, and finish your AA paths, then by all means ignore my advise.

I never said just having AA will make you a good player, however not having AA will contribute rather significantly to the opposite judgement by your piers. 

I listed troub parse numbers only as to set a level of where some players in game are going to judge you eventually.  Lastly, we're not a hardcore raid guild by any means, we're just focused on being proficient at that task.  It really doesn't take much effort to get a troub parsing at the numbers I listed, but yes probably nearly half of the level 80 players in the class aren't at that point.

I in fact highly recommend the class to more casual players as they don't have to focus on playing well to be appreciated in most groups and raids.

[liveja]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

Yea, Atan, & something tells me that "healer" had a whole ton of AAs, too. Thanx for proving my point that all the AAs in the world won't help an idiot. I'll bet if you'd had a COMPETENT healer with 30 fewer AAs, you'd have done better & not even noticed the difference.

This doesn't change the fact that to continue to progress in the game, your going to have to eventually get your aa over the 180-185 number.

That doesn't invalidate my original point, Atan, particularly because it's glaringly obvious: of course, as you advance, you need to get your AAs.

The point of contention is over how many AAs you "need" as a brand-new level 80. Obviously, you "want" as many as you can get ... but how many do you need to function & be reasonably competent in a heroic group as a new level 80? You claimed a person needs to have 140; I say that's simply not true, & that anywhere between 120 & 130 is fine. You've all the time in the world to get those last few, & missing them isn't going to be noticed much, so long as you know how to play.

[JINX8131]

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

Yea, Atan, & something tells me that "healer" had a whole ton of AAs, too. Thanx for proving my point that all the AAs in the world won't help an idiot. I'll bet if you'd had a COMPETENT healer with 30 fewer AAs, you'd have done better & not even noticed the difference.

This doesn't change the fact that to continue to progress in the game, your going to have to eventually get your aa over the 180-185 number.

That doesn't invalidate my original point, Atan, particularly because it's glaringly obvious: of course, as you advance, you need to get your AAs.

The point of contention is over how many AAs you "need" as a brand-new level 80. Obviously, you "want" as many as you can get ... but how many do you need to function & be reasonably competent in a heroic group as a new level 80? You claimed a person needs to have 140; I say that's simply not true, & that anywhere between 120 & 130 is fine. You've all the time in the world to get those last few, & missing them isn't going to be noticed much, so long as you know how to play.

Unfortunately this is a mute subject, because one persons opinion of Need varies from another. for example i am 80/80/80/200 myth. and a person that is capable of doing groups that i want need to have 184+.. so  need is just plane relavent to what you are doing.

you wanna do group quests in moors? you need 0 AA's..  perhaps you want to raid TOMC+, i recomend 180+.  it all varries.

its all based on what you want to do, as to what you NEED to have.

IMHO