UF and your non-optimal group

[Vivamort]

I want to encourage more people into UF, so here goes.

I have found my mercs not to be totally useless in UF, they just need a little more care (as in a shaman and 2 cleric mercs).

My group-when-none-of-my-regular-group-is-on make up, Played on laptop, so have to swap screens to get one of the boxes to do something, so if you have a better box set up, or better yet a real person running the other toons, this will be even easier.
1) Necromancer
a)Have Warrior pet up with taunt on so if tank dies you and shaman have the chance to FD or Inconspicous totem while your pet tanks (If you have the pet tanking AAs and a decent pet focus, may be able to have your pet finish mob off)
b) Set as puller, main source of DPS
2)Shaman bot (T5 geared, 700ish AA)
a) Buffs (Hp buffs and haste. Listlessness for Tank and puller)
b) Combat (slows (counterbias prefered, but if they don't have it, they will after this mission) send in pet, cast Lynx (this is my shaman's sole source of DPS since I suck at boxing), and patch heal as you can.
3) other toon that doesn't do anything but pop T5 cleric merc. And in my case, I mean nothing.. I can barely box 2, 3 is out of the question, it just follows group around invis

So now you ask, "Okay that is a pretty substandard group, what can you get done with that?"

Things that can get done. (yeah your tank merc will die a couple of times from spikey damage, but he knew the job was dangerous when he took it, so just take a break for 5 minutes and put the tank back to work).

Brell's Rest progression mission - Don't Fear the Destroyer.
Pretty straight forward. Let Necro do all the hails that result in combat while FD and can just pull at leisure. For the hail that spawns 4+named and then 4+named on death of last one.. have necro solo last mob (the non named do not summon, so kite it down) that way when the next 5 pop they only have aggro on necro who can FD it off if necessary.

Pellucid Grotto progression mission - The Seeding Frenzy
Very straight forward pull and kill one at a time. Some of the cliknar at the end see invis and are unsnarable, so you will get some pulling practice splitting those. Fight these in the room with the Quest mobs.. just don't use any AE effects.

Arthicrex progression mission - To Serve Sporali
Pull and Kill, nothing special about this one at all.

I am fairly certain all Tier 6,7 zone progression missions but Cooling Chambers could be done with a merc tank with this set up, but haven't tried it in the other 3 so I can't say for sure it can be done.

Kernagir the Shining City Progression Mission- The Silent Schism
Set up on the second level from the top and pull to there.

Fungal Forest progression mission- The Fungal Bloom
I hear this can be kited from start to finish, I am going to try it tonight. So technically I guess you just need 2 random toons to be in group with you to get mission

Lichen Creep progression mission - Bonfire of the Adherents
Pull and Kill.

This group is also capable of doing all the prereq tasks for Lichen Creep, Fungal Forest, and Kernagir, and Foundation missions. I did the Brell's Temple missions too, but called in help for the golem kills, maybe could have merced it, but I didn't try after failing on the first golem 3 times when it was easy to call in help.

So, in short do not be too scared to get your foot into the door in UF, there is stuff you can do with just a shaman and one other toon, and mercs.

[sauruman]

If your not doing anything on third box, make it a bard.
Bard aura adds ~30% to your dps off the bat. Manasong is nice, proc song, overhaste crazy pulling ability etc.

When I'm lazy three boxing, my bard has aura up while fades... it still works and adds a lot of speed to kills. Often I'll even have the window with the bard minimized to save CPU resources. There is a box under advanced graphics or whatever where you can set the maximum background FPS EQ uses, this helps with the resources your boxes use, allowing you to do more.

Don't neglect the shaman on the dots or VP. If I'm running nec/shaman/bard and root rotting heres what I'll do. Pull a PH with the bard, mez lock it. Minimize his window. Shaman tashes/slows/VP's the mob (buy all the hastened and increased VP aa's!!!). From there I alternate on shaman and necros on dots. Shamans have three dots that are on par with ours, so at minimum always use those. Also shamans first spire is pretty close to ours, and epic clicky is awesome.

[Vivamort]

Definitly a Bard would be the best toon just to sit with aura on, or even melody with if I had access to one.
And yes Shaman can be helpful with DPS beyond what I have my shaman do.

My point was, I suck at boxing, and the group make-up is subpar on top of that, and yet even with a group like that, people can succeed in UF. Just trying to encourage people that have been hanging back because they heard how hard it is, to try it out.

So if you are an 85 necromancer with a T5 merc, and have an 85 shaman friend or bot with a T5 merc and can get one more 85th level toon to join you that has a T5 merc, and one of those mercs is a tank.. you can accomplish a lot in UF.

[scrat]

Good stuff

As always, excellent & encouraging info. I have been struggling with UF boxing my war along with a bud who boxes a monk & shm, using a pair of t5 healers. It never dawned on me to spawn hail while feigned lol.

[Legba]

Thanks for the post mate, I've got access to similar boxes but haven't tried to do anything much in UF as people keep telling me you MUST have certain classes. Looks well worthwhile giving it a go.

[scrat]

Cooling Chamber-(viewpoint from nec/war box (me) + shm/monk box (friend) + rogue/merc healer (friends wife) group

Investigate the Dead:
Undead can proc a debuff that causes you to take 30% more melee damage, so they start spiking hits over 7500 and no cleric merc or shaman can cure it or keep it down because it's a proc. They proc it a lot. Also, other various goodies such as 30s ghoul roots, 8k+ instant nukes thrown bones, 3500/tick dots, 4k instant nukes, etc all of which hit with extreme reliabiity at 700 resists. It seems they use physical resists, nothing you can buff. Expect your tank to die often even using shield & bracing defense, field armorer, etc. randomly without anything much you can do about it. Collect the I-V signets for 1 of your group so they can request the next task and move on.

Hunt the Dead:
This one makes you spawn a named undead that hits for 10600 with 30% shielding.
Edit: This named can be of any undead model, it seems random what you get. Whatever model the named spawns as, it inherits that model's special abilities i.e. if it spawns as a banshee, it will banshee scream (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=16544&source=Live)you. If it spawns as a skelly model, it will use the hurl-back proc and throne bone. (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=16545&source=Live) Etc.

Then at 70% health, it spawns 4 undead adds that all hit for 5500 and proc Death's Touch (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=16543&source=Live) a 5k/tick DoT.
We tried all sorts of stuff, even busting up the group and making a tank group with 3 mercs + shaman to no avail. After about a dozen tries & wipes, we figured out...
Tank the named until 70% while keeping the monk off agro. When adds spawn, have monk tag the adds and haul ass back up the hallways to feign. By this time the tank & 3 mercs & shaman are all dead from an average 10kdps assault.
Named despawns after around 1 minute of non agro. Let it go.
Undead adds despawns after around 1 minute of non agro, let them go except for the 1-2 your monk pulled way up.
Monk keeps jockeying agro to keep 1, letting all others depop. Then monk can solo w/merc the one add which has low hp, prob 100k. Have the same person that completed Investigate the dead loot the signet for turn-in. Now you got one person that can request the CC progression mission to flag everybody else.

We are going to start trying the mission next week. My normal 'group' has around 30 deaths so far just getting to the point of being able to request the mission.

Edit: We did the CC mission this morning in about 1.5hrs taking our lazy time without a single hitch. Raspers guide is very solid for this. Beat down Tanise until he flees & warps you to some random part of the zone - for us he didn't do this until 58% life. 3 of the group got ported to the undead area way down, and one got ported back to zi. Regrouped and then cleared to each of the named and gave them a beat-down. We waited until war defensive and all burn aas were refreshed for each named. Each one had right at 1 mill hp. After they were all dead and the device made, cleared a bunch of roaming undead near the lake and took on tanise. He's a monster. Was a 4+ minute fight (war / mnk / shm / nec / merc / merc) and my war went down when Tanise was 6% and luckily the monk had his invulnerable disc on the ready. Parsed Tanise at 3.5 Mil hp - he's the first group mob to get a realistic parse burn on that I've ran accross. Overall, this was Far, Far, Far, Far easier than any of the solo tasks required to request the progression mission. Far easier. The one war death at the end was the ONLY death during the entire mission.

For zonewide rares (tower of gold, etc) fight oozes at entrance. They come minimum of 3 at a time, but the same tank that dies nonstop to undead can handle 3 oozes without breaking a sweat, and a full room of 9 on defensive. Though not "weak" con mobs, they hit for little and have much less than normal hp - and their xp reward is much lower also.

Edit: did Pellucid Grotto mission this morning. Just like vivamort said, very simple pull & kill mission with no tricks, swarms, adds or funky mob procs. Super, super easy. IMO every t6 mission is actually easier than the solo tasks required to get the mission.

Now onto t7 stuff.

[Vivamort]

[QUOTE=scrat;117915]
Undead can proc a debuff that causes you to take 30% more melee damage, so they start spiking hits over 7500 and no cleric merc or shaman can cure it or keep it down because it's a proc. They proc it a lot. Also, other various goodies such as 30s ghoul roots, 8k+ instant nukes thrown bones, 3500/tick dots, 4k instant nukes, etc all of which hit with extreme reliabiity at 700 resists. Expect your tank to die often even using shield & bracing defense, field armorer, etc. randomly without anything much you can do about it. Collect the I-V signets for 1 of your group so they can request the next task and move on.
[QUOTE]

Can have necro just rootrot mobs in the water for this. Drag mobs into lake and root and dot them up. Clicky Tash helps them stay rooted longer. There are no roamers in the water. Note: I was wondering why root kept breaking, until I remembered I had my epic auged with the sympathetic proc augs.. once I unequiped that, was easy enough.

[sauruman]

[QUOTE=scrat;117915]
Undead can proc a debuff that causes you to take 30% more melee damage, so they start spiking hits over 7500 and no cleric merc or shaman can cure it or keep it down because it's a proc. They proc it a lot. Also, other various goodies such as 30s ghoul roots, 8k+ instant nukes thrown bones, 3500/tick dots, 4k instant nukes, etc all of which hit with extreme reliabiity at 700 resists. Expect your tank to die often even using shield & bracing defense, field armorer, etc. randomly without anything much you can do about it. Collect the I-V signets for 1 of your group so they can request the next task and move on.
[QUOTE]

Can have necro just rootrot mobs in the water for this. Drag mobs into lake and root and dot them up. Clicky Tash helps them stay rooted longer. There are no roamers in the water. Note: I was wondering why root kept breaking, until I remembered I had my epic auged with the sympathetic proc augs.. once I unequiped that, was easy enough.

Aye thats exactly how I did it. CC mobs are just insane. Water killing sucks... but it works.

[Vivamort]

Hunt the Dead:
This one makes you spawn a named undead that hits for 10600 with 30% shielding.
Edit: This named can be of any undead model, it seems random what you get. Whatever model the named spawns as, it inherits that model's special abilities i.e. if it spawns as a banshee, it will banshee scream (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=16544&source=Live)you. If it spawns as a skelly model, it will use the hurl-back proc and throne bone. (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=16545&source=Live) Etc.

Then at 70% health, it spawns 4 undead adds that all hit for 5500 and proc Death's Touch (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=16543&source=Live) a 5k/tick DoT.
We tried all sorts of stuff, even busting up the group and making a tank group with 3 mercs + shaman to no avail. After about a dozen tries & wipes, we figured out...
Tank the named until 70% while keeping the monk off agro. When adds spawn, have monk tag the adds and haul ass back up the hallways to feign. By this time the tank & 3 mercs & shaman are all dead from an average 10kdps assault.
Named despawns after around 1 minute of non agro. Let it go.
Undead adds despawns after around 1 minute of non agro, let them go except for the 1-2 your monk pulled way up.
Monk keeps jockeying agro to keep 1, letting all others depop. Then monk can solo w/merc the one add which has low hp, prob 100k. Have the same person that completed Investigate the dead loot the signet for turn-in. Now you got one person that can request the CC progression mission to flag everybody else.


Gold by the way, Thanks Scrat!

[Vivamort]

Okay some more info.

The VHusk prereq tasks for the mission are soloable to at least the last one, it maybe soloable as well, if the named that quest spawns (Bryxyx Kyzox) is snareable and does not summon. I didn't have to try it out and have not yet repeated the task (it is 200 Brellium, the new currency like the one before it, so may be worth repeating).

So if you have the OMM clicky tash and a set up that doesn't include damage procing augs you can root rot your way through these tasks. The hardest part is pulling (mourn DC's demise as a pull tool). What worked for me is guarding pet nearish the mob I wanted to pull and then getting to a safe spot that was near by. Tell pet to attack then when the whole area comes running at you snare your mob fd and let the masses go back home... then if your safe spot wasn't the zone ins pull it to one of the zone-ins and root rot it there.

Once you finish those 5 or 6 missions, the actual mission Kill the Hatchlings is soloable up to the point where the bellikos spawn, as they are not snarable, and the instanced zone has lots of safe spots since their are so few mobs in it.

[DeadLikeMe]

For Hatchlings do yourself a favor and kill all the lava golems first thing. I believe there are 9 of them. Be in one of the lower rooms when you kill the last crab or the grekken will spawn on top of you. It's not that you will die since you can FD then invis but it's still a rude surprise. I would also have the HS AA handy. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten turned around in those rooms/tunnels and found myself running into a room full of mobs with 1 or 2 hot on my tail. If you are patient and careful, you can solo the Bellikos too. FYI they hit for 8K. This task takes me over an hour to do. I get a bit over 30% of an AA per kill and once I got 2 Brightly Pulsating Crystallized Cosgrove Shard (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=86461). At 44 mobs that's 14 AAs.

This is the damage I dealt to the mobs:
Lava Golem - 750K
Autachian Reaper - 624K
Sessiloid Attendant - 545K
Grekken Hatchling - 646K
Grekken Youngling - 689K
Bellikos - 1.4M - took me almost 10 mins but I rather be slow than dead.

[Vivamort]

Thanks.. i didn't kill any of the golems and just root rotted so no suprises while running into rooms, and got the golem hookey achievement. However, if I do it again, I will do it your way and kill them all so I can kite.

[scrat]

I gotta express my thanks for encouraging unconventional group progression. For the longest time it seemed I was doing nothing productive, just banging my head against an unweilding wall. Two months ago I was pretty sure I would never see the inside of a t8 zone and had accepted the defeatism mentality. Literally hundreds of deaths, a good dose of insanity and the cold determination brought on by the knowledge that it can be done -last weekend we started farming Convorteum.

[Vivamort]

Woot! gratz to you Scrat!

[Vanlor]

Hah, I forgot about this thread. I just got myself into VH a couple of days ago and soloed all but the very last part of pre-task #5 as well. I found that if you look around, you can find at least a couple of mobs in each area that you can root rot without adds. I always click my tash orb, then immediately FD, when I lose aggro, I stand and THEN start the root rot. Seems way more reliable this way.

I actually didn't pull anything iirc. I even root rotted warden and her gnoll add in that small little room (took a few deaths...) using 3rd + robe.

For the 5th task, just use the robots, don't even bother dotting or casting on any of the 5 bellikos. I think you can't be FD when it dies though, I believe I missed credit for one that was.

For the last part of the 5th task, you need to be within almost 5 feet to get the hail on the named bellikos. The actual phrase to update that you say to the named bellikos is "imposition" (allas and raspers didn't have it). I said the phrase and immediately FDd. We had a bard solo pull the named down south to the lava and then 2 wizards + me blew the crap out of it while the bard tanked. Dead in under 25 seconds (bard and wizards are tower geared).

QUESTION. On the hatchlings task, do the last 3 bellikos summon? I'm getting that nothing up to them does?

[Poisonwaters]

Hah, I forgot about this thread. I just got myself into VH a couple of days ago and soloed all but the very last part of pre-task #5 as well. I found that if you look around, you can find at least a couple of mobs in each area that you can root rot without adds. I always click my tash orb, then immediately FD, when I lose aggro, I stand and THEN start the root rot. Seems way more reliable this way.

I actually didn't pull anything iirc. I even root rotted warden and her gnoll add in that small little room (took a few deaths...) using 3rd + robe.

For the 5th task, just use the robots, don't even bother dotting or casting on any of the 5 bellikos. I think you can't be FD when it dies though, I believe I missed credit for one that was.

For the last part of the 5th task, you need to be within almost 5 feet to get the hail on the named bellikos. The actual phrase to update that you say to the named bellikos is "imposition" (allas and raspers didn't have it). I said the phrase and immediately FDd. We had a bard solo pull the named down south to the lava and then 2 wizards + me blew the crap out of it while the bard tanked. Dead in under 25 seconds (bard and wizards are tower geared).

QUESTION. On the hatchlings task, do the last 3 bellikos summon? I'm getting that nothing up to them does?


I couldnt remember if they did or not but I went through some logs and the answer is no they do not summon.

Btw, I run sk/necromancer (my brother is the necro) we are probably better geared/aad than average but we are able to duo about 80% of UF and adding a beastlord or another necro for slows or dps and an extra merc allows us to do most of the rest of the content. The only places we have issues are on quests or nameds that require crowd control or have short time limits (I cant think of any with short timers).

[Dembonez]

Just did the hatchlings quest the other day, can't say as to whether the deceivers summon or not. They are however snare/root immune. Had fun splitting them.

[Poisonwaters]

Did it again today, they do not summon.

you have to old school monk split em as an fd class /grins