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#1 Apr 14 2004 at 1:00 PM Rating: Decent
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I've been playing EQ for a number of months now but don't get to play as often as I like, so I'm still a newbie. I've gotten my feet wet with a number of classes so I can see what I like. Since I'm at work, and since for the first time ever we've finished our tax work BEFORE 7pm on April 15, I thought I would take some time and post some of the questions about things in EQ that I still can't figure out. Thanks in advance to anyone who will help!

1. Pulling while you have a pet. I've been in groups with a pet owning class, like Shadow Knight, where I've been trying to pull a single mob from wherever it is to wherever my group is congregated. The pet is always ******** this up. I've tried all kinds of things.

Not knowing better, the first time I tried this I had the pet on follow and went up and meleed the mob, then turned and ran back to the group. Of course, the mob then isn't going anywhere since the pet will engage. Spamming the Back key isn't any fun and often doesn't work for ****. On to Plan B.

Next I tried telling the pet to guard or sit at the group's site and then pulling with a missile weapon. This worked great. When I reach the group with the mob in tow, I can either tell the pet to attack or simply wait for agro from the mob if the pet is in guard mode. This worked until I encountered mobs that cast spells.

If I missile the mob and run back to the party to pull it, but instead of following me the mob decides to cast a spell, it doesn't seem to matter what mode I have my pet in. It will jump up and engage the mob. Around corners, up stairs, whatever, totally ******** up the pull. What can I do?

2. Monk issues. Monks seem to get all kinds of nifty special combat moves. When I started off I think I had Kick. Then later Round Kick. Then Tiger Claw. Let's stop there. When I got Round Kick, should I have stopped using Kick, so I skill up in Round Kick only? Then when I get Tiger Claw, do I neglect Round Kick? Or do I simultaneously work on whatever the latest Kick & Claw abilities are together?

How can I tell empirically what the exact optimal weight is. I mean, I've heard all kinds of things from different people about what the magic weight number is that I don't want to exceed....

Do you have to be in combat to skill up by practicing Fiegn Death, or can you just practice it in town?

3. Lull Pull. What does this mean? Let me try to guess based on context clues. There are 2 mobs close enough to each other that if you pull one, they will both agro on you. So you lull one, thereby pulling the other. Am I close?

4. Dual Wield. Is it always the case that it's preferable to use two weapons instead of a weapon & shield combo (barring any super ultra uber shield)?

Do Paladins ever get Dual Wield?

5. Picking Pockets during Combat. I want to write a hotkey for this but don't know what to do.

/attack off
/pause 3
/Don't know what to insert here to pick pocket
/pause 3
/attack on

Would the above work once I'm supplied with the missing line?

6. Alcohol Tolerance. Is there ever a benefit in having this skilled up?

Again, thanks in advance for any and all help!! Sorry for the volume presented....
#2 Apr 14 2004 at 1:17 PM Rating: Decent
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88 posts
Lets see if I can help a bit:

1> Can't help with this because I don't know much about pet classes. Only thing I have seen is to send in the pet and spam the 'back' command.

2> The only thing you will really want to train to master are the following: Eagle Strike/Dragon Punch/Flying Kick These 3 are the only ones worth training. Flying Kick will be your main attack once you get it. The other 2 have AA abilities that make them worth wild to have at high levels.

14 is the weight cap - it goes up much later in levels.

FD can be practiced at any time. When you are waiting for a group, hit that hotkey! :)

3> Also known as Paci (pacify). This effectively shrinks the aggro range of a mob allowing you to pull one that is close without everyone in the area following. It's not 100% end all to pulling...but close.

4> Pallys do not get dual wield, as far as I know. Dual wield is useful when you have a high damage weapon in the off-hand. Since the off-hand has it's own delay that overrides the weapons, put a high damage weapon in there. Good for melee classes that like to hold aggro or are DPS (damage per second).

5> I think the command is /doability <ability> - Someone will confirm this I'm sure. I don't know if you can do it once they notice you there...it is a sneaky rogue thing :)

6> This skill enables you to drink more alcohol before losing your ability to remain focused. Drinking enables melee fighters to lose intelligence and wisdom in return for gaining more strength.

Hope that helps.
#3 Apr 14 2004 at 1:28 PM Rating: Decent
You can set your pet to guard and then pull the mob. If it's caster you should have your pet far enough away so that if you do get hit with a spell you can still call him back.

He won't try and attack until either you or he is hit.
#4 Apr 14 2004 at 1:33 PM Rating: Good
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564 posts
Let's see....

1. You've got the right idea for pulling with pets. Set it to guard and pull with spell or missle. If you get a caster there isn't much you can do but hit the pat back off button when it casts a spell on you while it's coming to the group. As long as your pet isn't getting hit, you'll only need to hit the button once after you get hit by spell damage.

2. Monks should work on thier best available attack. kick, round kick, tiger claw are all the same line of attack, might as well use the highest one available to you.

3. Yup, you're right on the money with lull(or pacify for us paladinsSmiley: wink2). If you want to be safe you cast lull on the target you're going to pull, then cast lull on the targets around it, then pull the target you originally cast lull on. If you like walking a bit on the wild side, you skip casting lull on the mob you're going to pull.

4. Okay, I know people are going to bash me for this, so let me qualify by saying this is my OPINION onlySmiley: smile, other opinions may vary. Most of the time, it's better to dual wield than use a sword and shield combo. However...If you're in a situation where you are able to generate enough aggro with a single weapon, you've got a group with good DPS(damage per second), and you're fighting mobs that hit very hard and it's causing the healer to heal you often and draining thier mana, why not switch to a shield to make life a bit easier for you and the healer? And paladins never get dual wield.

5. I've never used a rogue, have no clue about pick pockets, so can't help you there.

6. Alcohol tolerance is an interesting thing. When you're under the influence of alcohol in the game, your strength goes up(your other melee skills might as well it's been a while since I tested it so I don't remember all the skills that increase), while your intelligence and wisdom go down. Obviously this makes alcohol a good thing for melee's. I've heard that when you're drunk in game it actually INCREASES your total mana pool, but that wasn't from a reputable source, and I never bothered to test it. So the basic line is, if you're a melee class having a high alcohol tolerance will allow you to fight drunk, which would give you a bit of a bonus when whacking on the mobs.
#5 Apr 14 2004 at 1:59 PM Rating: Decent
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480 posts
1. Others covered it.

2. No idea, never played a monk.

3. You got it right.

4. Before the introduction of good 2H weapons, dual wield was the way to go for any class that could dual wield. It was all a matter of DPS, and no single weapon could outdamage two weapons. That has since changed with some of the nice 2H weapons out there.

The other part of dual wield is that each time you swing, your weapon will have a chance to proc. This is still preferred by many warriors to help hold aggro.

Except for using a good 2H weapon, you will rarely see a dual wield class use a 1H weapon and a shield. Most of the time it involves tank mezzing an off mob and the added AC from the shield will lessen the damage taken.

5. Hit alt-m. Click on the ability tab. Make one of those buttons pickpocket. Before you do this, note that the button has a number associated with it. In the line, you want /doability #. Where # is the slot that you put the pickpocket button.

6.
Quote:
I've heard that when you're drunk in game it actually INCREASES your total mana pool, but that wasn't from a reputable source, and I never bothered to test it.
It only looks like you have more mana. When you are drunk, your int/wis are low and your mana pool changes to reflect this. As you sober up, your int/wis increase thus increasing your mana pool, but you need to med to get the mana back. So people see this "empty" mana and think their mana pool must have increased while they were drunk; however, they never thought of all the mana they lost while getting drunk.

There are a couple LDoN traps that cast drunkeness. A high alcohol tolerance helps you shed these effects a little faster and they don't impact you are hard.
#6 Apr 14 2004 at 4:19 PM Rating: Good
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285 posts
I am by no mean expert at all of these but I will throw in my opinion on these subjects.

Quote:
1. Pulling while you have a pet.


As you have noticed, pets can be a real pain, specially pulling a caster. They tend to attack before you want them to and draws aggro often. Two things to help. One is what everyone said, spam back off command. It does work some of the time, specially useful for melee types. For caster types, one thing helps. Currently, the casters need LoS (Line of Sight) for them to cast spells. So here is what you can do. Put the group and the pet around a corner or near an alcove. When you pull a caster, go around the corner or hide in an alcove. This means the mob has to get close enough to see you to cast the spell. Hopefully, this is close to the group so the pet would not aggro early.

Quote:
2. Monk issues.
I never had a monk, so I can't help you here.

Quote:
3. Lull Pull. What does this mean? Let me try to guess based on context clues. There are 2 mobs close enough to each other that if you pull one, they will both agro on you. So you lull one, thereby pulling the other. Am I close?


Yep, that's what it is. Lull line of spell segway in to Pacify line of spell at higher levels. Druids (I think rangers too) get their Lull type spells but they can only use outdoors (not 100% certain on this). As a Cleric, I often use Pacification spell in LDoN adventures if we don't have a CC or someone else who can cast the line of spell (Enchanter for example). One way I do this is have the puller target a mob, I do /assist and cast Pacification and cancel auto-attack. Keep doing this until the room is ready for a pull.

Quote:
4. Dual Wield. Is it always the case that it's preferable to use two weapons instead of a weapon & shield combo (barring any super ultra uber shield)?
Being a lowbie melee type, I don't have a great answer. However, as a Cleric, I usually carry my shield over not. Even with pathetic 75 max skill on Bash, it does come in handy. For example, when there is a gating or healing mob that was pulled. My stun lasts 8 seconds but has a long refresh cycle. So if I don't quite time it right, I don't have my stun back in time to interrupt the mob's casting. I then just walk up and try to Bash. It doesn't always work but sometimes it does and it's just enough to finish the mob before they gate or heal.

Quote:
5. Picking Pockets during Combat. I want to write a hotkey for this but don't know what to do.

/attack off
/pause 3
/Don't know what to insert here to pick pocket
/pause 3
/attack on

Would the above work once I'm supplied with the missing line?

Again, no Rogue here but usually you can do this by inserting /doability # usually works in that slot, where # is the hot key you created using Pickpocket.

Quote:
6. Alcohol Tolerance. Is there ever a benefit in having this skilled up?

I never us alcohol while adventuring since it lowers my wisdom. However, the melee types used to build it up because with high AT, using alcohol increases STR and some other stats, which I can't remember. It does have it's use I guess.

Taushar
#7 Apr 14 2004 at 4:58 PM Rating: Good
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35,568 posts
Ok. Most of the info is good. Just a couple nits though:


Thorric wrote:
Dual wield is useful when you have a high damage weapon in the off-hand. Since the off-hand has it's own delay that overrides the weapons, put a high damage weapon in there.


Where the heck did you get this? This is completely wrong. Offhand weapons use their own delay independant of the mainhand weapon. It's not fixed though. It's the delay on whatever weapon you equip in the offhand.

The correct answer is to simply put the weapon with the best overall ratio in your offhand. So a 11/20 weapon is better then a 20/40 weapon.

You are correct about one thing. Paladins do not ever get dual wield.



Second bit: Taushar. You should really use the /assist off command. You only need to use it once. It will disable the automatic attack whenever you assist. IMO, everyone in the game should turn that off. That way you can use /assist for targeting and targeting only and never have to worry about attacking a mob or npc accidentally.


As to using 1h and shield. It's very situational. At lower levels, the extra AC you can probably get with a good shield is probably worth it. At higher levels, it's probably not. This is because 1h weapons are really designed to be "best" when they are "fast" (low delay). 2h weapons are scaled. The damage bonus goes *up* as the delay gets higher, counteracting the fact that you swing less often. This means that if you want to use a slower weapon, it should be a 2h weapon.

Why does that matter? Well. A "fast" weapon means that if you are fighting a mob that ripostes, you'll take more riposte damage. If you are tanking, that's probably not a great idea (and if you're not, why use the shield?). You could theoretically use a slow 1h weapon and a shield, but that's almost always going to be less effective then just using a big 2h weapon, especially as you gain levels. Past about 50th level, there's almost no situation where you should be using a 1h weapon and shield (except maybe just for fun).

IMO, this is a flaw in the game mechanics as they are right now. It *should* be better defensively to use a shield then not, but the way things are right now, you're generally better off not using a shield.


Last bit. A bit of a combo answer (cause you mixed questions about SKs and pallys a bit). Let's say you are pulling with your paladin and get a caster. One very useful trick that you can use once you hit 30th level and get your first stun, is to use stun to pull the caster. That will give you about 5 seconds to run back to the party and around a corner to break line of sight with the caster. This will force it to run directly to you (which is presumably what you wanted it so do).

Done correctly, the mob wont get even a single spell off on you during the pull. It's a pretty nice trick.
____________________________
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More words please
#8 Apr 14 2004 at 5:46 PM Rating: Good
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285 posts
Quote:
Second bit: Taushar. You should really use the /assist off command. You only need to use it once. It will disable the automatic attack whenever you assist. IMO, everyone in the game should turn that off. That way you can use /assist for targeting and targeting only and never have to worry about attacking a mob or npc accidentally.


What a great idea. It's something I saw a while back and thought I should do that since I rarely if even melee anyways. Just forgot about it. Thanks for the info.

Taushar
#9 Apr 15 2004 at 12:01 PM Rating: Decent
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60 posts
Heartfelt thanks to everyone who took so much time for thoughtful answers to my questions. This has been a great help!

If I may be indulged with one more:

I find runes, words, pages.... It seems these are items needed for Research. Which classes will need the Research skill to make spells? My guess is:

Wizards
Magicians
Necromancers
Enchanters

Am I right? Did I leave any out?

And who should save what? Like, do Necromancers use runes but not words? Do Enchanters use pages but not runes? Should I just save everything that looks like a piece of paper no matter which of the relevant classes I'm playing?
#10 Apr 15 2004 at 12:34 PM Rating: Decent
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5,311 posts
Necromancers and Magicians use words.
Wizards use runes.
Enchanters use pages.

When you get to higher levels, any of the above classes can research previously dropped only spells for the priest classes. Priest class spells require various combinations of words, pages and runes (and other goodies.)
#11 Apr 15 2004 at 1:03 PM Rating: Decent
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480 posts
The four INT casters are the ones that can train and do research. There are some spells for each INT class that are only available via research (unless they added them to PoK or SoL merchants, Inever checked). Anyway, you need to research these spells to get them.

Somewhere around Luclin or maybe later, Sony added the feature to research some high-end spells. Many of the high-end spells only dropped from the named mobs, but since only the big guilds and raids were always killing the mobs, many people didn't have access to these spell unless they paid a king's ransom for them from the big guilds.

So new runes, words, pages, items, etc. started to drop that can be used in the research for these high-end spells. This helped out the "little" guy a lot. I think eqtraders.com has a comprehesive list of the research items.
#12 Apr 15 2004 at 2:02 PM Rating: Decent
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2,015 posts
Quote:
3. Lull Pull. What does this mean?


It is when the arrogant cleric thinks he can CALM a MOB and ends up aggroing it and all nearby when CALM gets resisted! Technically a BAD PULL, but a pull nonetheless...

('Twas me....sorry...ZONE TO M.E.!)
#13 Apr 15 2004 at 2:30 PM Rating: Decent
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223 posts
There's a DW thread that was just recently posted and a guy copied an explanation from another board which makes the most sense out of any explanation I've heard yet.

And it seems like everyone that posts on the workings of DW is convinced that they are right and if you disagree they're ready to fight you over it.

Why though would you want to put your best weapon in your offhand? I can't understand that since there is a chance that you won't strike if DW fails, whereas in you primary hand you will always strike (maybe not connect).
#14 Apr 15 2004 at 3:05 PM Rating: Decent
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2,015 posts
The DW discussion got me to thinking about my own characters. I do not claim to 'know it all' but this is what has evolved for me.

I have a monk so my choices for 1H weapons are Blunt or H2H. MY GOAL was to raise the skill levels of these (plus 2hB) as much as possible and max each for my level. So if one or the other was lagging behind I used the FASTEST I had of that type in primary.

If I maxed one skill, I would use two weapons of the other type skill, again with the fastest in primary.

Unless I got into trouble I would use this strategy even if my nice proccing weapon was in off-hand. They still proc in off-hand.

If I had ALL 3 weapon skills maxed, I would use the best weapon I had or best weapon for a particular mob I was fighting in the primary slot.

As to the special attacks, I would move up to best attack that was availble. If circumstances allowed (i.e. wasn't getting into trouble) I would switch to the next lower special attack to raise skill.

Once I got a special attack skill above 100 I switched to the next lowest etc. So far with my 39 Monk, only Kick and Round Kick are below 100. Solo it is hard to use anything but Flying Kick because the (xp)MOBS are getting hard! In a group you can usually get away with using lower special attacks.

Now I have a shadowknight with 5 weapon skills but no DW. Thankfully I was able to max out Archery (max for class is a meager 75), but it is hard to raise all 5 as you level.
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