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Thread: Returning from a 5 yr. hiatus; overwhelmed

  1. #1

    Default Returning from a 5 yr. hiatus; overwhelmed

    I stopped playing AOC in 2009, after logging in many hours, and getting 3 characters to level 80.

    Last time I seriously played was right before the combat/stat revamp. Now, I did peek in for a bit afterwards, but was so overwhelmed by how different everything was, I realized that I would have to put in a lot of time, and research, into AA's, factions, new gear, new raids, so much stuff for my old 80's to have to do just to be relevant and not get stomped out of existence trying to do some of these new things on my own! I was just clicking things to see what they were in the feat tree, and didn't even realize I was adding the mass of points sitting there, waiting for me, thats how confused I was...

    I've seen many posts on here regarding returning players, searched through the forums, and haven't seen much evidence of players in my position. I'm guessing that I will have to start all over again, and scramble my way back to 80 on a fresh character, just to find out what the hell I'm supposed to do, but that seems daunting, and tedious to me.

    My barbarian was my main, and he was a dps raid killing machine. Managed to get most of my T1 gear, and was lucky enough to even get a few T2 pieces when my guild started doing the freshly introduced wings in kesh... oh nostalgia! Now, it seems that all that stuff is junk, that will hardly get me by in newer zones, and my dual wielding meat grinder, is no longer valid.

    I guess after all this long windedness, I do actually have a question, and I humbly ask; what do I do now? Have I been gone too long? Is there any hope to relearn the game/earn better gear, for someone who was hard-core into it, and can only now return as a casual, at best?

    Where can I get a good resource on how different things are, compared to how they were?

    I have an 80 barbarian, an 80 assassin, and an 80 necromancer. Are they lost to me?

  2. #2

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    Bad news: barbarians sucks right now. If you have caster or another RDD class, you still can maintane good DPS in PVE/PVP. But in melee PVP opponents just farm you. I have ranger in full T2 set, and can keep good dps in both dungeons and mini-games.

    If you want PVE, good rogue always neccessary in khitai 6-mans. If you have Rise of Godslayer, go to khitai. If you don't have it, buy it.

    If your characters on Fury, go for pvp and get better pvp set. Fury almost don't have PUGs for T1-T2-khitai 6-mans, so just go pvp.

    If your characters on Crom, skip pvp and go for pve. You can get AA fast and get khitai sets. And visit as many T1-T2 PUGs as you can to get raid weapon.

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by lmagowz View Post
    Bad news: barbarians sucks right now. If you have caster or another RDD class, you still can maintane good DPS in PVE/PVP. But in melee PVP opponents just farm you. I have ranger in full T2 set, and can keep good dps in both dungeons and mini-games.

    If you want PVE, good rogue always neccessary in khitai 6-mans. If you have Rise of Godslayer, go to khitai. If you don't have it, buy it.

    If your characters on Fury, go for pvp and get better pvp set. Fury almost don't have PUGs for T1-T2-khitai 6-mans, so just go pvp.

    If your characters on Crom, skip pvp and go for pve. You can get AA fast and get khitai sets. And visit as many T1-T2 PUGs as you can to get raid weapon.
    Yup, I think I will try to pug the "old" T1 raids, as I still remember them pretty well.

    As far as PvP goes, I never have, and as far as I can see, will never have an interest in it. I'm strictly a pve kind of a guy.

    Thank you for the advice!

  4. #4

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    barbarians sucks ? what ?!
    Water is my bubble
    __________________________________________________ ____
    Religolibri (10) Ranger, trying something else
    Amtihotep (10) Hox, Using copy paste poss/gen feat

  5. #5

    Default

    The good news for you is that your barbarian and assassin can do very decent damage even without the best gear. So you don't need to start all over again if you don't want to (though levelling to 80 is a lot less tedious now than you may remember).

    The first thing you should do is press K and start training AA perks:
    * Focus on Decisive Strikes and Pressing Strikes for all your classes;
    * For your rogues, get the "Finely Honed" (FH) and "Tainted Weapons" (TW) AA feats as soon as you can. You will need these in many Khitai dungeons, where the encounter mechnanics involve a rogue removing a shield (FH) or a heal (TW) from the boss. If you are strictly a raid player, FH and TW are less important - but a lot of the beauty of AoC is in 6-man dungeons these days, so I'd recommend getting them.
    * On your necro, Unbinding Charm is pretty similar to FH and TW for rogues - but not quite as important, as it is not needed in as many encounters.

    The next thing to think about is what you want to achieve in the game. There's a lot of rather simple content (T1, T2, even some T3, easier Khitai dungeons) which you can PUG. For more challenging content, you may want to find a guild. I understand that you want to keep it casual this time. Joining a casual guild will mean that you won't get the best gear in the game in a matter of a few months. But provided the guild you join is sufficiently large, you will get to see most of the content which the game has to offer.

    Once you have done that, you can start to think about gear. Since your toons are all DPSers, you are better off focusing on Khitai dungeon loot, since the gear that drops there generally (exceptions: weapons, accessories) is better than T3 raid loot (T4 is a different matter of course, but you may want to give it a little bit of time before going for that).
    * These days, the most important dps stats on armour are crit rating and crit damage rating. Which means that on your barb, your focus should be on getting the Tamarin Tigers faction set.
    * Khitai sets are composed of (i) dungeon drops, (ii) items you buy from faction traders in exchange for Marks of Acclaim, and (iii) items you buy from faction traders in exchange for Rare Trophies.
    * You get MoAs from solo questing in Khitai, so do some of that - in particular, do the solo quests for Tamarin's Tigers in Chosain Province, since the items you buy for MoAs require rank 4 with the relevant faction (you gain reputation by doing quests for them).
    * For rare trophies, you need to do dungeons in Khitai, or some of the new "unchained" dungeons. To start out, you can go for some "normal modes" first. Hard modes give more trophies, but are also more difficult. For starters, try the following HMs: Reliquary of Flame (requires FH on your rogue), Vortex of the Storm, and Palace of Yun Rau (requires FH and TW on your rogue).
    * For more information on loot, check this site:
    http://aoc.is-better-than.tv/armory.php
    Rathothis|Tempest of Set || Tigrathes|Dark Templar || Isitnofret|Herald of Xotli
    BS|Sin|Demo|Barb|Conq
    Sudatorius|Noob barb on Rage

  6. #6

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    You want to start with joining an active guild, participate in groups and raids with your new guild. Ask them to help you with your class.

    New people still join AOC and many new toons hit lvl80 everyday. You really cant get behind in this game, even a new lvl80 can get T4 ready in no time.

    How to improve?: as an old lvl80, get new spec and then do 6 man, not only you get better gear then most raids, you learn your class better and get more AAs. You can also make a new lvl80 and experience the game from beginning.

    The key to enjoy this game, is to join an active guild, do 6mans to improve.

  7. #7

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    Get the rogue AAs so you can get more invites to sixmans. When the world boss is active, you can farm it for t1/t2 gear and a chance at 3.5 gear (one week a month). Check the AOC forums for your class threads on how to do AAs and such, a lot of good info there. Check out Aocisbetterthantv.com for faction gear info, read up on what faction armor to get for your barb. Necros go brittle blade generally.

    You don't need to reroll, do timers on your AA trees to get more AAs. If you do reroll you will get an AA per level so you do get 79 AA points by lvl 80...but you still have to grind up another character. If you can do that quickly then it might be worthwhile to reroll but that's only about 3 months of AA timing.

    Practice killing mobs in grasslands. Do faction quests on your character for some decent blues. Run unchained solo dungeons like Forgotten city for some decent blue rings til you get better. Get the milestone quest and farm Quillins in Paikang for the nice dps purple rings. Go to t2 raids: they aren't much harder for a barb than t1s and take about as long. T3 and t4 pug raids are probably not something you should start one, especially with minimal gear, but work into them later.

    Find a starting guild who will help you out. There are quite a few on Crom that will help you out, vs a high end raiding guild.

    Good luck.

  8. #8

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    http://forums.ageofconan.com/forumdisplay.php?f=14

    http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=185935

    stuff like that. Tons in the other class forums also.

    Best = find a guild who does a lot of t1/t2/t3 and get in a group that fits your play style and ask for help. Global help requests can be useful or a bunch of troll answers depending on time of day. But if you are lvl 80 you should be using godslayer expansion also since a lot of the nice 'easier' gear come from khitai.

  9. #9

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    Barb is bad?

    SAY THAT TO MY 2K DPS FAAAACE!

    Barb is the most balanced class atm. Not OP, not bad.

  10. #10

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    Thanks, guys, you're a great help, and I appreciate it!

    I also totally forgot about practicing up in places like the villas, and I'm smacking myself in the head... who can forget villas, if you started back then?

    As it turns out, the few AA's I managed to accidentally click were some listed above! Hooray for dumb luck!

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