65 Monk, Inadequate yet full of potential!

[Reiker]

Hello all, I started on this server about 25 days ago and currently play a 65 Monk/Shaman duo. I'm currently in the process of trying to find a guild as I play this game to raid. Grouping and questing is fine, but I'm a raider. I hit 65 a couple days ago and I'm currently working on improving my AA / gear to become a valuable member of the level 65 community.

Why post now instead of obtaining the necessary AA/gear first? Well, for the off chance that anyone's interested and would like to take me along for some groups or tmaps or such. Finding groups is proving difficult, and duoing has been slow/boring. I've had a few groups say they're looking for 65 dps and never respond when I send a tell, which I find odd.

Besides my currently low AA/gear situation I'm an ideal candidate. I started playing EQ around Dec99/Jan00 and played up through GoD, as well as countless emus. I have been boxing monk/shaman 95% of the time, making up over 6 years of experience playing these classes. And while I've mained a Shaman and boxed a Monk in the Live raid guilds, I would like to switch things up a bit here and main the Monk. However, I am highly skilled with both of these classes, without the gear/exp deficiency I'm confident I perform equally or better than high end monks/shaman on the server. Not only do the mechanics of FD splitting come second nature to me, I have an understanding of many concepts that come with years of playing (such as judging when a group/raid is ready for more pulls as to not waste time and keep things moving quickly, etc).

My ideal guild would be somewhat new and progressing through raid content quickly, challenging and conquering new content skillfully. I'm looking for a guild that raids often and doesn't like to waste time. I hate DKP and feel merit/officer rewarded loot to be 100x more beneficial to a guild's progression. Vent is a must, and I prefer members to not talk in teen/leetspeak (this includes "u"s and "r"s). Of course, these are just preferences and if I end up in a Tier 26 DKP based guild full of 13 year olds and I manage to have fun, so be it.

I started on Tunare, doing PUG raids of Vox/Naggy/Fear/Hate. I eventually joined a guild named Gale of Destruction and did raid content from Velious up through Uqua. I returned for the Progression servers, dominating all raid content from Phinny up to Qvic where I once again left EQ due to RL issues. Being a member of a top end guild on Progression is about as hardcore as it gets, our members were completing entire expansions in under a month, getting calls at 3 am to kill Kunark dragons, and all kinds of other insane measures to conquer all available content. I obtained many Progression-wide firsts such as the first Time's Antithesis (Shaman-only, one of if not the most powerful item(s) in that era of EQ).

I currently (attempt) to play from about 12:00 noon EST to 3:00 AM EST. Attempt as in, LFG all day and eventually take breaks from boring duo grinds. This is where you come in, if you're interested in possibly having me as a member, feel free to take me along on some grinds and make me pull or sing songs to you in vent or whatever you need to see if I'm right for you.

Oh, I'm Gradalsh pledged, planning to work on aug as soon as I can find the NPC alive along enough to start it, finished with MQ up through High Seeker and currently working on 2nd portion of Blackscale factioning.

Finally, my Fomelos, keep the snickering to yourself please. I'm hoping to make significant improvement here soon. Monk / Shaman.

Thank you!

 

[Reiker]

I've had a few groups say they're looking for 65 dps and never respond when I send a tell, which I find odd.

I know this is offtopic, but I was wondering if anyone could explain this phenomenon. I was excited to get to 65 as it seemed that's where most of the groups were happening. Now I don't even bother to ask if a group would want to take me, as multiple times daily the same thing happens: 65 group oocs for dps, I send a tell and I'm ignored/told no. Group continues to OOC for over an hour while I just duo. And these are zones that I could duo myself, not exactly places you need 500 AA and Tier 9 gear for. Recently turned down for a sunmines group, Fomeloed a couple of the members and they were equal to me or just slightly better geared/AAs. If this was one or two times, I'd be like "they're jerks, whatever" but this is every group. The only 2 groups I've gotten post-65 were pity invites by Tier 7+ guys. Is the elitism on this server just that extreme?

Signed,
Reiker the Second Rate Citizen

 

[metvayne1]

yeah, just be patient, this is a social game too. Let people become acquainted with you and you will slowly get groups. Also, by that time you should have some better gear. With your duo, you can farm some gear and cash to buy more imphide/tradeskill gear and maps, while gaining some AA.

edit: it's very rare that a fresh 65 gets a guild invite from a raiding guild right off the bat, see above for the reasoning. It took me months before I began raiding.

 

[Diodimus]

Before you get offended by anything I may say, I want you to realize that any comments made are without malice and are my personal opinion/analysis of your post.

Hello all, I started on this server about 25 days ago and currently play a 65 Monk/Shaman duo. I'm currently in the process of trying to find a guild as I play this game to raid. Grouping and questing is fine, but I'm a raider. I hit 65 a couple days ago and I'm currently working on improving my AA / gear to become a valuable member of the level 65 community.

25 days on your first characters? Thats not much time to get to know the community/world/classes.

Besides my currently low AA/gear situation I'm an ideal candidate. I started playing EQ around Dec99/Jan00 and played up through GoD, as well as countless emus. I have been boxing monk/shaman 95% of the time, making up over 6 years of experience playing these classes. And while I've mained a Shaman and boxed a Monk in the Live raid guilds, I would like to switch things up a bit here and main the Monk. However, I am highly skilled with both of these classes, without the gear/exp deficiency I'm confident I perform equally or better than high end monks/shaman on the server. Not only do the mechanics of FD splitting come second nature to me, I have an understanding of many concepts that come with years of playing (such as judging when a group/raid is ready for more pulls as to not waste time and keep things moving quickly, etc).

SoD is different than live and other emu's so, your experience there does not necessarily carry over. Also, your boast about being the equal to any puller in the game.... ballsy. Essentially this seems like an unsupported boast which implies that you are excessively arrogant. Arrogance leads to drama, thus you become less desirable.

My ideal guild would be somewhat new and progressing through raid content quickly, challenging and conquering new content skillfully. I'm looking for a guild that raids often and doesn't like to waste time. I hate DKP and feel merit/officer rewarded loot to be 100x more beneficial to a guild's progression. Vent is a must, and I prefer members to not talk in teen/leetspeak (this includes "u"s and "r"s). Of course, these are just preferences and if I end up in a Tier 26 DKP based guild full of 13 year olds and I manage to have fun, so be it.

SoD is mainly adults. Slim chance of your worst nightmare happening. This paragraph, although wordy, is solid and shows very well what you are looking for.

block of text that adds and means nothing in SoD

Pry coulda done without my translation for what I read, but i felt that every paragraph deserved representation.

I currently (attempt) to play from about 12:00 noon EST to 3:00 AM EST. Attempt as in, LFG all day and eventually take breaks from boring duo grinds. This is where you come in, if you're interested in possibly having me as a member, feel free to take me along on some grinds and make me pull or sing songs to you in vent or whatever you need to see if I'm right for you.

Oh, I'm Gradalsh pledged, planning to work on aug as soon as I can find the NPC alive along enough to start it, finished with MQ up through High Seeker and currently working on 2nd portion of Blackscale factioning.

Finally, my Fomelos, keep the snickering to yourself please. I'm hoping to make significant improvement here soon. Monk / Shaman.

This is good shit. How do you manage so much play time though? Everyone's Fomelo needs to start somewhere, so don't get down on yourself too much.

I know this is offtopic, but I was wondering if anyone could explain this phenomenon. I was excited to get to 65 as it seemed that's where most of the groups were happening. Now I don't even bother to ask if a group would want to take me, as multiple times daily the same thing happens: 65 group oocs for dps, I send a tell and I'm ignored/told no. Group continues to OOC for over an hour while I just duo. And these are zones that I could duo myself, not exactly places you need 500 AA and Tier 9 gear for. Recently turned down for a sunmines group, Fomeloed a couple of the members and they were equal to me or just slightly better geared/AAs. If this was one or two times, I'd be like "they're jerks, whatever" but this is every group. The only 2 groups I've gotten post-65 were pity invites by Tier 7+ guys. Is the elitism on this server just that extreme?

Signed,
Reiker the Second Rate Citizen

This phenomenon is extremely common. I am a tier 6 player and I get ignored/turned down for groups all the time. Most groups are in guild groups. Most PUGs may not be guild groups, but everyone has who the PUG with prioritized. Build up your SoD social network (which takes more than 25 days) and you will start to see these things change. Maybe you should take the initiative and buy some tmaps to start tmap groups. This gives you an opportunity to get more gear and build up your social network.

I cannot offer you membership in a guild, but I can offer to help you anytime you see me online and I am not doing guild stuff. Shoot me a tell for tmaps and such. I would be on Diodimus or Azeem. I will keep an eye out for you, I remember how much of a pain in the ass being gearless is.

 

[Otcho]

There are sadly a lot of low end groups who try to ride coat tails for better exp. There are a lot that don't. Keep at it and eventually you will get somewhere. If its really seeming dire you would be surprised at how many people will send you a tell if you say your looking for more/to form. I find it hard to believe every group you have attempted to send join has ignored you though.

 

[Reiker]

25 days on your first characters? Thats not much time to get to know the community/world/classes.

I agree that I haven't had time to get to know the community, hence this thread. The classes are exactly the same as I've been playing for over 6 years, yes I realize some spells are a bit different, etc, but the basic mechanics are the same, so I can cross that off the list.

SoD is different than live and other emu's so, your experience there does not necessarily carry over. Also, your boast about being the equal to any puller in the game.... ballsy. Essentially this seems like an unsupported boast which implies that you are excessively arrogant. Arrogance leads to drama, thus you become less desirable.

The core game is 100% the same. Feign Death operates 99% the same as any other EQ server. To say experience playing EQLive does not carry over here is false. As I said before, some spells are slightly different/new, it takes a few seconds after obtaining them to figure out the differences. And like I said, I've been pulling every single situation in the game for years, how is that any different than other top end players? I'm not trying to seem like an ass, but I'm also not going to say I don't know what I'm doing when it's not the truth. I'm assuming people want to play with skilled players and I'm just saying that I'm a skilled player. Yes obviously a post on a forum is unsupported. If you want me to support my claims, put me to work sometime.

This phenomenon is extremely common. I am a tier 6 player and I get ignored/turned down for groups all the time. Most groups are in guild groups. Most PUGs may not be guild groups, but everyone has who the PUG with prioritized. Build up your SoD social network (which takes more than 25 days) and you will start to see these things change. Maybe you should take the initiative and buy some tmaps to start tmap groups. This gives you an opportunity to get more gear and build up your social network.

I cannot offer you membership in a guild, but I can offer to help you anytime you see me online and I am not doing guild stuff. Shoot me a tell for tmaps and such. I would be on Diodimus or Azeem. I will keep an eye out for you, I remember how much of a pain in the ass being gearless is.

I appreciate it. I just assume that if you OOC you're looking for someone for your group, that doesn't mean friends only. If that's the case... go through your friends list and spare other people who may be interested the annoyance. I, like I assume many people do, keep a list of players who annoy me. Anyone who ignores my tell after saying they're LFM goes on the list. It is not hard to flat out say "no, you lack AC/resists/DPS/AA/etc for this camp, sorry" which is much less rude and I'll actually learn something from the correspondence.

While leveling up I found that starting my own group was the only way to get things going. This usually went with me starting off duoing somewhere else and then asking if anyone else would want to join to make things faster. At 65 the areas that offer decent exp for my duo don't really support a full group. I've tried to get things going for other places without much success. I mainly duo at the entrance of Eldenal's (which is on a 1 hour respawn and causes me to take a 10-20 minute break to wait on respawns) or at cyc gorge for cash. Neither really support any other players. I kinda want to get into some 65 groups to see what kind of group can handle what kind of content before I lead a group to failure.

Same goes with tmaps, really. The gear only starts to become decent at Mods, and the only mod map I've done was with seriously overgeared players. Since I'm not quite good at judging how a group will fair against one yet, I'm leery to purchase some mod maps and attempt to form a group for them.

 

[Renshu]

getting calls at 3 am to kill Kunark dragons, and all kinds of other insane measures to conquer all available content.

I love calling fuckers at like 8am to kill some shit when I know they like to sleep past noon.

This game is all about play time, availability, and skill. You can move up pretty quickly if you play a lot and don't suck at pushing buttons. Gear comes with raiding and shit like doing quests (Vah, PoL, etc) pays off. Monk/shaman is pretty powerful, and also really fucking common (I did the same shit).

You'll find a home.

 

[Rusheeth]

If you get into Dragon Necropolis when it's free, or sort of free (lot of people camp city + dragons and leave top rats for picking) its east exp duo + cash + you can rope in more people to join. Just be careful if it's been free awhile there will be a roaming undead dragon up top you probably cant duo, but you can avoid. It's better than Elds entrance exp/pp, and more fun than the gorge whilst being totally easy, especially as a monk to split some of the bigger pulls.

I barely ever /ooc to join a group, i'll watch for PuG and raids and might ask to join but most of the time i start groups myself and see where i can go from there. I play healers so it depends on the tank i find!

Mod maps are pretty easy. Always one group- able. Pally is best, 4k hp base seems pretty fair.

One problem with the set up you have as monk/ shaman is that you can't throw a stone hard enough without hitting one. And i cannot think of those duo's who has ''mained'' the shaman. I started as SK / shaman, after 65 and 75 aa's SK just became redundant as a duo (lack of dps) and i switched to main the shaman. That's something you might want to think about- im the only mained shaman in the guild i'm in right now and we have a lot of regular casual players.

 

[Tuidion]

I spoke with you a bit in game tonight. I think I ran into the same thing, getting turned away from XP groups. I usually would just duo my Monk/Shaman and either get extremely bored by myself or add some extra DPS. I still find myself doing this after some raid gear and a ton more AA's. It gets boring most of the time and I'll log off like you do, but if I fuggup, I have nobody to blame except myself.

I only mained an Enchanter on live and pretty much stuck to playing friend's casters as well. I really enjoyed playing the monk but realized they were dime a dozen and they weren't needed in a raid guild when I was looking. I too decided to main my Shaman and I don't regret it. He has some decent gear and it makes up for what my monk lacks.

Keep grinding out the AA's, put together your own groups, search the wiki for gear you can farm by yourself or with friends and you'll make it.

I too will look out for you when I'm duo'ing. Nothing like getting somebody else to join me who knows how boring it can be.

 

[Jotigidou]

I had the same issue when I reached 65 with my ranger / Dr00d box. I knew no one and people just didn't pick me ( or only wanted my dr00d when really I wanted to play my ranger )

So i started making groups instead. Worked a charm. Also the fact that you can pick who joins and who doesn't... and since i've been somewhat decent ( gear-wise ), when I OOC for groups, i fomelo everyone to try and balance things out because most of the time I don't go into fresh 65 zones anymore, so you do have to be selective. You can't just pick 100 AA chars to go into rust factory ( example ) to farm the hell out of it. You need 6 solid picks.

Also like most people mentionned, people tend to OOC to know if anyone THEY KNOW will reply them LFG. Really it comes down to getting known as a decent player. Getting a guild is probably the best way to get acquainted ( and you probably know that ) but at the same time if you have a high drive to raid high-end, you will have to make painful choices at some point with your fresh 65 guild.

Believe me, I went through there not too far back...

Good Luck

 

[Emerica]

^ basically what Ren and jade said spot on. Those dudes are right about the stuff it takes. I know the first time i made a toon here and leveled and didnt have enough time i didnt hit 65 and didnt last long(like a week i think). Second time around i came back in like november and i had time, so i grinded stayed with the class and hit up everyone i could. Made my own groups, met alot of cool dudes and got invited to raid at like t9 when i had shit. People dont care about your gear, its aa and playtime for sure. So if you just keep reaching out and hitting people up you'll make those connections. I can say if you see me on and im free holla im down to xp.