Epic questions need help!

[Luis_Velderve]

Hi:

I would like to the minimum numbers to be able to survive epic .


Min HP to Survive
Min to hit
Min DPS to be helpful in a party
Min Spot assuming +15 item
Min Search assuming +15 item
Min Open lock assumming +15 item
Min Disable Device asumming +15 item
Min AC to avoid 50% attacks and 75% attacks
Min Base Mana to be helpful in a party

Feel free to ask similar questions if you have doubts yourself; getting so many contradictory feedback that I got to ask. I have a TWF Fighter, a pure Cleric and a 12F/6TRAN/2R and feedback will be very welcome.

[Sir_Chonas]

Hi:

I would like to the minimum numbers to be able to survive epic .


Min HP to Survive
Min to hit
Min DPS to be helpful in a party
Min Spot assuming +15 item
Min Search assuming +15 item
Min Open lock assumming +15 item
Min Disable Device asumming +15 item
Min AC to avoid 50% attacks and 75% attacks
Min Base Mana to be helpful in a party

Feel free to ask similar questions if you have doubts yourself; getting so many contradictory feedback that I got to ask. I have a TWF Fighter, a pure Cleric and a 12F/6TRAN/2R and feedback will be very welcome.

To hit in the 50s for most trash. Highest out there have in the low 70s. Most nameds you need mid 60s.

Don't worry about ac, it's impossible to dodge anything.

[Lorz]

Hi:

I would like to the minimum numbers to be able to survive epic .


Min HP to Survive
Min to hit
Min DPS to be helpful in a party
Min Spot assuming +15 item
Min Search assuming +15 item
Min Open lock assumming +15 item
Min Disable Device asumming +15 item
Min AC to avoid 50% attacks and 75% attacks
Min Base Mana to be helpful in a party

Feel free to ask similar questions if you have doubts yourself; getting so many contradictory feedback that I got to ask. I have a TWF Fighter, a pure Cleric and a 12F/6TRAN/2R and feedback will be very welcome.

There is no absolute minimum...as soon as somebody states one...somebody will come along and do it with less. What you got is what you got. What you need to do is figure out ways to be useful and helpful to the effort of the party. Sometimes...its just up to the caster or stunner.....but there is always some way to help....even if it just to cheer them on.

[moops]

You dont need high HP or even high to hit, heck I know some 350 HP melees whom do just fine, and most stuff is not hard to hit, I only take power attack off for maybe 2 things and they are not even raid bosses.

Good strategy/teamwork can bring any group thru. If stuff is stunned its auto crited--Mass Hold, Waves of Exhaustion, greater command, symbol of stunning, facinate, haltundead, and of course the Firewall method where the caster has all the aggro and dances Casters and drow for the group to take out. ..

Really Epic is all about Strategy more than gear or SP.
I dont know about the search and trap stuff as we don't usually bother with any of that. But casters can open the doors in OOB with Knock, and that is all that matters to me.

[Crazyfruit]

Min HP to Survive

60ish - avoid being 1 hit by archer attack
100ish - avoid being 1 hit by melee attack
250ish - avoid being 1 hit by most trash spells
350ish - avoid being 1 hit by most traps
460ish - avoid being 1 hit by big baddy spells


Min to hit

35 does ok if dual destructing. Sunder, Waves, etc also helps.

If stuff is auto hit/crit it doesn't matter what your to-hit is.

The highest AC I think I saw was 72... it's pretty rare. Those first mate minotaurs in the sentinels pack and a couple other things.


Min DPS to be helpful in a party

*shrug* One of my chars who's best weapon was a Cloudburst wasn't piking. The actual DPS your chars do doesn't matter too much with good tactics except for bosses.


Min Spot assuming +15 item
Min Search assuming +15 item
Min Open lock assumming +15 item
Min Disable Device asumming +15 item

A friend said skills around 60ish do fine.


Min AC to avoid 50% attacks and 75% attacks

Llamaland guys say 75-85 works. How well I don't know.

[sirgog]

Hi:

I would like to the minimum numbers to be able to survive epic .

Min HP to Survive
Min to hit
Min DPS to be helpful in a party
Min Spot assuming +15 item
Min Search assuming +15 item
Min Open lock assumming +15 item
Min Disable Device asumming +15 item
Min AC to avoid 50% attacks and 75% attacks
Min Base Mana to be helpful in a party

Feel free to ask similar questions if you have doubts yourself; getting so many contradictory feedback that I got to ask. I have a TWF Fighter, a pure Cleric and a 12F/6TRAN/2R and feedback will be very welcome.

To survive - the numbers are pretty low. To have runs that use few resources, I'd suggest the following:

Min HP: 400 if not meleeing, 550 if meleeing. With foreknowledge of the quests, you can manage with less. Low Healing Amplification toons need more.
Min To-Hit: 50 with typical party buffs (GH, Haste, Rage, if applicable Divine Power/Favor, Kensai Power Surge, Barbarian Rage, etc). Some foes are very difficult with under 60 to-hit - that's why Power Attack has an on/off switch.
Min DPS: Tier 2 shroudcrafted DPS weapons or equivalents like +4 Greater Banes. Tier 3 Shroud weapons are very desirable. In certain quests, specific weapons are pretty much mandatory (blunt weapons in Wiz-King, for instance).
Min trapsmithing skills: Extreme skills aren't needed. If you can find the traps and disable them in Rainbow in the Dark Hard, you can probably do Epic ones too.
Min AC: This is changing soon - currently low 90s, should soon be mid 80s. (Note that getting a 90+ AC requires such enormous sacrifices in the rest of your build that it just isn't worth it - mid 80s can be more reasonably achieved). Lailat seems to have +90 to hit after exhaustion and is the highest to-hit of any mob.
Min mana: I've solohealed most 6-person Epics on my Clr18/Ftr2 with only 1611 mana. More important than total mana is mana conservation - in particular, using Scrolls for *all* non-emergency healing and using (quickened) Mass Heal for all in-combat healing unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise.

[Vallin]

To hit in the 50s for most trash. Highest out there have in the low 70s. Most nameds you need mid 60s.

Don't worry about ac, it's impossible to dodge anything.

Although your AC won't likely be at a level where you will not get hit at all - it is a common misconception that 'AC doesn't matter.'

In fact AC does still matter at end game. I cleric many epic pugs and I groan every time I see group full of cookie cutter twf tempests or true res wf barbs. It is much easier for a group to get through if there is a stalwart defender or defender of siberys s&b mixed in. It is much easier to keep a group healed if SOMEONE in the group has at least some ac.

Yes, it will naturally take an extra 5 seconds to kill a mob because dps will be decreased and I know everyone gets all crazy about thinking that they need to be producing massive dps at every possible moment but in my opinion it just isn't the easiest way to heal through those quests and avoid deaths and the delays associated with deaths.

And, for the record, most people who don't get this fact also don't have clerics that they run epic pugs with.

Vallin

[sirgog]

Although your AC won't likely be at a level where you will not get hit at all - it is a common misconception that 'AC doesn't matter.'

In fact AC does still matter at end game. I cleric many epic pugs and I groan every time I see group full of cookie cutter twf tempests or true res wf barbs. It is much easier for a group to get through if there is a stalwart defender or defender of siberys s&b mixed in. It is much easier to keep a group healed if SOMEONE in the group has at least some ac.

Yes, it will naturally take an extra 5 seconds to kill a mob because dps will be decreased and I know everyone gets all crazy about thinking that they need to be producing massive dps at every possible moment but in my opinion it just isn't the easiest way to heal through those quests and avoid deaths and the delays associated with deaths.

And, for the record, most people who don't get this fact also don't have clerics that they run epic pugs with.

Vallin

When healing Epics, I can't stand having a DoS/Stalwart s&b intimitank in the group. (Threat tanking multiple mobs is not at all viable)

Assuming they have an AC of 82, they'll take about 75% of the damage a 10AC Barb takes. But, where in a no-intim group, that 100% of the damage is split reasonably equally across all of the toons in group (and easy to heal with Mass Heal), an Intimitank takes almost all of the damage themself, and becomes pretty much impossible to keep alive in encounters with large packs of trash. Heal does have a 4 second cooldown, after all.

Sometimes you can keep them up with cycling Heal/Max-Empped Cure Critical - but from a mana efficiency viewpoint, better to let them die and heal efficiently.

An intimitank with extreme AC (say 88), high HP and top-notch Healing Amplification is viable, but I'm not aware of many of these existing.

[Vallin]

When healing Epics, I can't stand having a DoS/Stalwart s&b intimitank in the group. (Threat tanking multiple mobs is not at all viable)



I was just referring to a stalward/DoS in the group from an AC perspective. If such a build intims on epic they are just stupid. I still think that a higher ac build will help to mitigate healing frenzy - but of course that assumes that the higher ac isn't doing things to particularly draw all the aggro.

Vallin.

[sirgog]

I was just referring to a stalward/DoS in the group from an AC perspective. If such a build intims on epic they are just stupid. I still think that a higher ac build will help to mitigate healing frenzy - but of course that assumes that the higher ac isn't doing things to particularly draw all the aggro.

Vallin.

Ah, that's OK then - so they threat tank bosses and play a DPS role on trash? That works, although most Epic bosses do a lot of AoE damage to toons other than the threat tank.

I still prefer a combination of high HP, high Healing Amplification and concealment (blur/displace) in Epics to a high AC, medium HP, low Healing Amp tank.

[baflin_haverstaff]

Von 6 on epic isnt really that tough. I haven't done dq raid yet but imagine its really tough. I run a 19 barb/1 fighter and find that ac is pointless and hp's are everything. Though I have lots of str and 744 hps i think it really depends on the group when doing epic quests.

[irivan]

I was just referring to a stalward/DoS in the group from an AC perspective. If such a build intims on epic they are just stupid. I still think that a higher ac build will help to mitigate healing frenzy - but of course that assumes that the higher ac isn't doing things to particularly draw all the aggro.

Vallin.

I think Vallin had been mugged before this post, i was talking to him after he made it and it was some kind of eerie revelation by some one who was in deep shock!!

The only way to handle epic.....

1. tactics - using terrain/traps to your adavantage, pulling mobs into more favorable situations, blocking doors so that caster are free from agro while mobs are on fire, melee skirmishers are free from to much abuse.

2. high powered DPS - i am not talking about some guy that just hit level 20 and has min 1 great sword, no, i mean all out death machines wielding only the latest hardware (min 2, lightning 2, incineration, epic weapons, etc..) the faster a mob dies the less damage it can inflict on the party and absolutely needed for end bosses.

3. Competent and reflexive casters needed - No i do not mean that Clerics should throw BB and draw agro, great way to die in Wiz king like 20 times or more, and no i do not mean that wizards should be spamming chain lightning until their sp runs out.... Casters must be tactile, buffing first to the hilt, then using spells like mass charm, then mass hold, and watch your enemies destroy their own held friendlies, casting halt undead, then dropping firewall on top of them Max/emp while hold green blade/skiver and pot 6 item or ear dweller, knowing when to bail the party out with various AOE and or DDoor if **** hits the fan...

Ac unfortunately my dear friend i feel plays a limited role, maybe one guy, but if you dont have at least two other killers in the party it could be a doomed expedition!!

[sirgog]

Von 6 on epic isnt really that tough. I haven't done dq raid yet but imagine its really tough. I run a 19 barb/1 fighter and find that ac is pointless and hp's are everything. Though I have lots of str and 744 hps i think it really depends on the group when doing epic quests.

DQ2 epic is tougher than VON6, but not in any way unPUGgable.

Having a single melee in the group that can (through DR or extreme HP) survive eight or nine 90-point whacks and that has the required Strength (62+) to never be tripped by Lailat makes it much easier.

It's the only quest in the game I'm hesitant to take on without at least one Kensai or Frenzied Berserker.

[Luis_Velderve]

To survive - the numbers are pretty low. To have runs that use few resources, I'd suggest the following:

Min HP: 400 if not meleeing, 550 if meleeing. With foreknowledge of the quests, you can manage with less. Low Healing Amplification toons need more.
Min To-Hit: 50 with typical party buffs (GH, Haste, Rage, if applicable Divine Power/Favor, Kensai Power Surge, Barbarian Rage, etc). Some foes are very difficult with under 60 to-hit - that's why Power Attack has an on/off switch.
Min DPS: Tier 2 shroudcrafted DPS weapons or equivalents like +4 Greater Banes. Tier 3 Shroud weapons are very desirable. In certain quests, specific weapons are pretty much mandatory (blunt weapons in Wiz-King, for instance).
Min trapsmithing skills: Extreme skills aren't needed. If you can find the traps and disable them in Rainbow in the Dark Hard, you can probably do Epic ones too.



Min AC: This is changing soon - currently low 90s, should soon be mid 80s. (Note that getting a 90+ AC requires such enormous sacrifices in the rest of your build that it just isn't worth it - mid 80s can be more reasonably achieved). Lailat seems to have +90 to hit after exhaustion and is the highest to-hit of any mob.



Min mana: I've solohealed most 6-person Epics on my Clr18/Ftr2 with only 1611 mana. More important than total mana is mana conservation - in particular, using Scrolls for *all* non-emergency healing and using (quickened) Mass Heal for all in-combat healing unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise.



What kind of changes are about to happen related to AC? Is that related to the TWF NERF!

[sirgog]

What kind of changes are about to happen related to AC? Is that related to the TWF NERF!

Mobs in Epics are now getting a penalty of up to 20 to hit.

Mobs that currently hit a high AC toon 75% of the time should now only hit 25%.