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EQ is really 2 different games. You can't really expect to tank like a raid tank if you are not in a raid type guild. But having said that here is a link to the BP for tier 5 group gear that should be easy enough to get for your group: Ordained Ironbone Plate Breastplate

As you can see it has well over the 700 hp you are asking for and decent AC.

Complete list of SoD armor

To both of your posts,(which are very helpful and informative,thanks =)...

Yes, my war is maxxed at 23/28 ranks of both CA / CS (less the UF ranks, since i don't have that exp, yet...)

The only difference i see in the Enameled Chest pc i have from the Grp MM, is that the HP are better on the t5 grp armor, but the AC is roughly the same, minus any augs.
I did 2-3 weeks worth of research before i ever made my war toon; to make sure i made it right from the beginning (knowing where to put my char pts, what the specific main role of a warrior IS)...(to maintain aggro, not dps)...and how to play a warrior the right way, .....I think i have done a fair job at it thru my lvls 1-80+

But i've noticed that on mobs past level 78+ish...each level that i've gained, the mobs levels have stiffled our grp. (What i mean is: at lvl 78, mobs seemed "easier" to our grp, than they did at lvl 80, and then 82+...and so on. I know the game content is made this way, so that a grp of lvl 85's can't plow thru lvl 85-90 mobs like butter. But it just seems that in a matter of my war's lvls, going from lvl 78 (with the stats i had then, and onto 85 , with the stats i have now --- it feels like i'm a lvl 5 toon trying to take on a lvl 20 mob, with no chance in hell!) Even trash mobs 83+ hit like trucks...therefore i know my AC is sub-standard for my level, because the mitigation doesn't seem to be as effective as it was a few levels ago, on mobs that conned even or higher to us then.

I have pretty much 600+aa's out of my 900 in Defensive type aa's...CS,CA, HP bonus (natural durability and such), anything having to due with extra HP, AC or melee mit / def -- i already have it.

Okay, so as far as the t5 grp gear....i assumed that the highest our 4some could go, was t4 grp gear?...isn't t5 the first step of "raid" gear for SoD? or am i mistaken?

Besides the point, i guess, anyhow --- thanks for the AC aug list (i have 80% of the ones you listed augged atm =) And some of the ones i don't have from your list, i have better AC/HP augs in place of them. Just seems tho, that once i have all the best AC augs our grp "can" get...what then? It seems as tho the only 2 options left to gain more AC are: better gear with higher AC on it (limited by grp gear, without having any raid level gear), and secondly...AA's -- by means of getting the UF exp and maxxing the remaining ranks of def aa's i do not currently have. I will have to recheck my research on what gear our guild / grp is capable of acheiving in this day and time.

Okay here's an example of my self uberness reality check,lol...

I was going after the Jewel of Stalwart, in Vald the other day...(just my 85 war and 85 mage (bot) + t2 merc's, healer / tank...
I had to fight my way from the outside gate all the way to the Cryptguard room, np...just took me a while (no FD puller, limited DPS)...but made it in one piece. Then i open the door to the cryptguard and i see 5+ mobs in room, including named....hmmmm.....felt comfortable with 2 mobs at once earlier, 3 was doable, but close....
I pull the closest mob to the door, and i managed to get 4 trash mobs + the cryptguard, yikes. I killed 1-2 trash mobs, before my war bit the dust, mage gated out safely. My point is: am i alone on thinking that your avg. 85 grp geared war in a similar situation would have also died like that too? Or how would a 85 war with: 35kHP/4500AC buffed (and maybe another 100-200 aa's) have faired in the same situtaion? maybe they could have downed 4 trash mobs, before the named stomped them down, also???? these are my questions.

- Am i really setting my bar too high for what i really can / can't do with my current gear / stats? Or should i just admit that if i had my wife's bot's there, we could have made it thru np?

- How can our grp fight effectively in higher content zones like: OBF, City of Dranik's....etc... and live thru the trash mobs, so we can get named mobs and their gear? (which would be upgrades from the MM grp gear). Not like i wanna take down a level 90 raid mob with our 4some, but just a lvl 86-88 named in a lvl 85 playground zone. Not knowing that these lvl 85 grps that link all the rot in these zones truly are 40kHP unbuffed ppl? I don't want to BE them, just closer to it would be great. I feel as tho i'm 5kHP and 500AC behind a war that can tank these mobs with np, at my current lvl.

- I may be too aggressive in what we are trying to go after; mobs, gear...but what is the point in being able to comfortably tank a lvl 79 mob that offers no gear upgrades, only to get 3-5% aa per kill? We could spend the next 2 years just grinding aa's like that, and then we'd be another 3 exp's behind on gear again. We just want to be able to get gear upgrades by ourselves, in a decent amount of time. It would feel like we've accomplished something on our own.
Before the Classic MM's came out, our best gear was always, always Bazaar bought gear....that consumes alot of plats and you don't get the feeling of, "hey, we got this ourselves,w00t." It's more like , "well we have better gear than we did, blew most of our plats to get it, and now what?" Do we have to wait for more player gotten gear to show up in the baz, only to blow more plats on minimal upgrades to what we already have?....I'm hoping our grp is at the point now where we can be self sustaining to our own means. Not having to rely on "raid lvl geared" ppl to farm our next upgrades for us.

/sighs....i love this game, always have since i started playing way back in `99, then taking a 2 yr hiatus from it in `01, only to return in 2004.
It just feels like that with every exp that comes out, we lose another year or more on everyone else, not keeping par with the current content. I know this game is not a race. It can be played at any pace you choose. But we don't want to keep falling further behind as time goes on. We want to maintain our statis or actually improve it.
We'll just finish up our MM grp gear (all 4 chars are 90% decked out with the MM grp gear so far), and then we'll focus on us, not what the rest of the game is doing. We'll just go about grind AA's while getting Void "C" progression finished; working on upgrading some of those augs we don't have yet...and worry about "uber grp gear" later. Good point on working on t1-t5 SoD gear. The only drawback i did see, was that our MM grp gear is equivalent to @ t3-t4 gear atm. That's alot of work to just gain another tier to get 200 more HP per piece with roughly the same amount of AC on it. Then again...i didn't think about that in that way before. 10 pieces of gear with 200 more HP's = 2000 more HP's....hmmmm that's good!!!
The math, tho....t1-t5 gear x 4 chars...you realize how many essences that equals total? OMG!!!! say 10 ess per char, x 4 chars, x 5 tiers worth.....errr that's like 200 essences. We tried camping in Kaesora for some ess a while back...spent over 40 hours RT there and never got one named to pop....Realistically...that'd be equal to thousands of hours just just get a few tiers worth of essences. Meanwhile, another few expansions behind, already,lol...a never ending cycle for us.
It's still stumping me about how i can gain more AC, tho.? My war self buffed and grp buffed has max (atm) 4100 AC and 27.5kHP. That includes my lvl 70 war aura, self tribute (rank 8 of AC) and form of defense III. I've pondered on how i can get a FoD IV or V with our grp, but most of the items are raid attained or super-uber grped; high end SoD zones or UF. So i'm stuck on increasing my AC atm....


Thank you so much for shedding some light on some things i overlooked and didn't see before....

Any more help like this would be greatly appreciated, thanks....Sometimes it takes anothers point of view to let you see the "big" picture =)

I really think you have answered your own question. If you want to be able to gear up your toons better and enjoy the newest content then you are going to need to join a guild. You and your wife are doing about as much as you can on your own. Or at least make some friends that can replace your mercs in your group. Find a monk for pulling and a rogue or wizard for extra DPS and the content your group will be able to handle will rise considerably which will raise your ability to get better gear.

Or, you and your wife could start new toons, 4 different from what you've been doing, and experience the game from 1 to 85 with new classes, ways to play.

There is a "boomerang" mini-game in the first Underfoot zone. It lets you earn two types of currency to buy non-visible Tier 6 (around 800 HME) items -- see http://home.comcast.net/~mathadon/Guides/Underfoot/BA_Over.html for a write-up and a list of items. Once you get a few items that way, it should help your characters in older zones quite a bit. Note that one type of currency is tradable and the other one is not, so, depending on Bazaar prices on your server, you may want to plan accordingly.

Some people hate the mini-game and refuse to play it, but who knows what your and your wife's reaction will be?

P.S. Tank mercs are not all that great at 85, so you may want to consider getting a second healer merc instead. And definitely get tier 5 mercs after finishing the SOD progression. Hopefully, all that OMM gear should enable you to do it fairly easily.

As far as pulling goes, CotH seems like your best bet when you don't have the chanter along or when the mobs are not mezzable. I would recommend practicing it in a safe environment until you are pretty sure what your limits are.

Edited, Jan 10th 2010 7:36pm by Muon

Do Void progression to get your mercs to T5. Nothing you do as a group will have as big an impact on your gameplay as moving from T2 to T5 mercs.

You need at least 1k AAs more before you can reliably beat the 80-85 content.

Farm the augs throughout SoD (Rasper's Repository is your friend. AC and heroic stats galore.

No group content is beyond your reach with that group, but you *really* need to join a guild to learn more tips and tricks for each class. You will never learn everything on your own, and why repeat mistakes others already made?

The Vald ac aug is doable with much lower than level 85 toons.
My team is 77dru/tank merc, 78sham/tank merc, 77sk/cleric merc, all tier 1 mercs and elegant/tss tier one gear.

I take the sk into the building invis, target the see invis mob...aggro him and pull him and all his buddies out to the yard, snare him and then flop(fd).
When all the others go back in I pull the si mob over to the group and kill him...rinse-repeat.

I have seen as many as 3 si mobs to get to the aug room. When they are all dead, invis group...run all into the northeast corner and cycle the room until the named pops.

Modify this a bit for your group, taking advantage of enchanter/mage mez/evac after you snare si mob with any one of the snare clickies that are available for your tank, and you will be in and cycling the room also.

Hope this helps and good luck.

p.s. even if you took a death on your tank after snaring each si mob, you will soon be in the proud owner of the aug as the rest of your group can easily handle the snared mob and deaths are so trivial these days...

Edited, Jan 11th 2010 6:53am by alwayslost

I didn't address this part of it.

With that group, there is very little that you can't do within the group game. And I mean very little. In SoD there is one mission that comes to mind that requires more DPS to make it easy, but you can still do it with your group.

With that said, your group would really benefit from some LFG people. Even if you drop the tank merc and add one DPS, that would make a world of difference. If that added person is a puller, that would even be a plus. A family style guild might truely be the way to go just to find those one or two people to group with.

Well, he said "we have up to SoD exp's...no UF so far", so they can't play the boomerang game yet, but it may be just enough reason to spend $160 ($40 times 4) on UF.

Also, returning to the question of how many AAs are enough to do what you are trying to do, recent expansions have been tuned around characters with a certain number of AAs. I never played a Warrior, so I don't know their tanking AAs beyond the basics, but <1,000 AAs seems low for SoD and definitely low for UF. Steel Warriors will probably be a better place to ask about Warrior AAs, though.

Edited, Jan 11th 2010 4:06pm by Muon