Why I don't like to group

[Aetherial]

Originally Posted by Rasterburn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well... my old main was a DE necro and yes, there is a certain amount of exaggeration happening here. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What I said about quad-kiting for wizzies was accurate, though.

Regarding necro pets... they aren't usually "un-buffed." We have our own pet buff spells (AC and haste buff), along with at least three different ways to heal the pet during combat.

I mentioned unbuffed because that would mean no mana required for buff refresh. I was trying to come up with a fastest-kill, most efficient scenario to make a point

even wizzie or druid quad kiting has down time, and do they kill 4 mobs every minute they are fighting? They would have to, at least!, to to net out at 2-3/ minute.

I can't think of a quad-kiting place with a fast enough respawn to go steady at 2/3 mobs / minute.

[Rasterburn]

Originally Posted by Aetherial [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I can't think of a quad-kiting place with a fast enough respawn to go steady at 2/3 mobs / minute.

Well, there's no such place for a full group to pull that fast, either. Even a godly group is gonna end up clearing the place and then you gotta wait for re-pops.

Everybody has downtime, whether it be a group or solo. Same for everybody, in that regard.

Cobalt Scar was a great place for quads, mainly because the respawn timer on the mobs roughly coincided with your downtime if you had a brain buff. When I hunted there, and assuming that I wasn't competing with a bunch of druids for pulls (grrr), I could usually just keep pulling a new quad every five or ten minutes. Or to be more accurate, I could usually do two quads back-to-back, then med up for about ten minutes, and then run out and pull another two quads. And by the time I finished medding up after that, the first two groups of wyverns had re-popped. So really, the only major factor in the entire deal was downtime for medding... which as I say, would be an equal factor whether you solo'ed or grouped.

[Aetherial]

Originally Posted by Taluvill [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This. It's not that hard.

Edit: and 30 mobs in 5 minutes is rediculous. absolutely ludicrous. any group would blaze past any soloer.

I cannot think of a zone where you could do 30, level appropriate, solo pulls in 5 minutes, *maybe* W. Freeport doing snakes/rats/bats.

The zones just don't have that many Mobs in a relatively compact area.

[Rasterburn]

Exactly right. There isn't any such place to keep pulling at that rate... not in the old world. Now, if we were all level 16-ish and if this were the Luclin era, then I'd say that a group is definitely gonna be faster than soloing if you head into a zone like Paludal Caverns. Lots of mobs and fairly fast respawn rate. Huge XP bonus, too.

Everywhere else... no, not possible. You can clear it fast, sure. But after that, you'll be sitting there waiting for re-pops. Meanwhile, a solo player doesn't have to worry about that factor, since he or she will be pulling the mobs in a cycle and the first mobs pulled will likely re-pop by the time the last mobs have been killed.

[Aetherial]

Originally Posted by Qaedain [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The most reliable mid-40s solo camp for a Mage is spectres in Oasis, I think. The five ground-level spawns can be cleared before repops, consuming sufficiently little mana to keep this cycle going indefinitely.

I don't know how long the respawns are, but 9-11 minutes feels right.

Reasonably speaking, a Mage requires about 2-3 minutes of meditating to regenerate enough mana to come out ahead relative to what is required for the next pull, rebuffs, etc.

In other words: in the 2-3 minutes it takes for a Mage to kill one mob and prepare for the next--that is, real grinding, not simply draining your mana bar to kill as quickly as possible--a group could easily bring in 2-3% exp. I did it tonight at BNB myself.

Ceteris paribus, grouping is faster.

No no no there MUST be some other way, you only have 5 Mobs every 9-11 minutes. You need to be able to find a place where you can do 2-3, level appropriate MOBS / Minute steadily.

Thank you for making my point... some kill rate claims for groups AND for solo'ers are just ridiculous here.

[Aetherial]

Originally Posted by Messianic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh - In Velious - Rangers rival necros in solo efficiency when fighting animals (snare+Animal fear+beatdown).

Reality fear-kiting as a ranger is not like you described.

I did do that. I was nowhere near the efficiency of a necro, not to mention the fact that I had to find qualifying animals.

The reality... fear breaks, or is resisted or you are interrupted. In each of these cases the MOB gets a few seconds to beat on you. You lose health, as a ranger I can tell you that you last marginally longer than a cloth class. That means you need to self-heal, our heals were bad, our mana pool was tiny... which also means you need to med. Even if I never got hit, our mana pool was so small that self-buffs and fear, snare spell casts meant I had to med every handful of MOBS.

Also, even in very good gear at the time, I am not killing any animal worth decent exp too quickly. You still have to hunt blues. Reds and yellows will resist fear too many times.

[Aetherial]

Originally Posted by Rasterburn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well, there's no such place for a full group to pull that fast, either. Even a godly group is gonna end up clearing the place and then you gotta wait for re-pops.

Everybody has downtime, whether it be a group or solo. Same for everybody, in that regard.

Cobalt Scar was a great place for quads, mainly because the respawn timer on the mobs roughly coincided with your downtime if you had a brain buff. When I hunted there, and assuming that I wasn't competing with a bunch of druids for pulls (grrr), I could usually just keep pulling a new quad every five or ten minutes. Or to be more accurate, I could usually do two quads back-to-back, then med up for about ten minutes, and then run out and pull another two quads. And by the time I finished medding up after that, the first two groups of wyverns had re-popped. So really, the only major factor in the entire deal was downtime for medding... which as I say, would be an equal factor whether you solo'ed or grouped.

I do not believe this. In a balanced group, depending on the relative strength of what you are hunting, you can med up during fights, or sit one out, or use minimal mana on the easier fights...

A group can go more steadily without much downtime, in the grindier zones.

That is not to say they exp faster. I believe certain classes exp faster solo. The one HUGE advantage is not waiting on a group, waiting for people to be ready in a group, waiting on AFK for biobreaks, or waiting on a replacement healer/slower/tank which are necessary in some areas...

[Tallenn]

There are other reasons that soloing > grouping than just no experience bonus.

One of them is the extreme over crowding in places where 40-50s group- which is just Sol B and L Guk; because face it, nobody goes to Kedge or Perma to level 40-50. When there are that many people in those two zones, two things will happen: First, most groups will be sitting and waiting for pops more often than they are fighting, and second, when one group has a pull they can't handle, it's virtually guaranteed to wipe not just that group, but others as well.

The other one is that some people that play this game just plain suck at it. You have tanks that can't hold agro, healers that watch TV or surf the web, DPS that attack the wrong (i.e. mezzed) targets, snarers that forget to snare until the mob starts running, and all sorts of other crappy behavior happening every day in dungeon groups. When you solo, the only person that can get you killed is you, and the only person you can kill is you (notwithstanding jerks that train over other people. I know that I NEVER die while soloing unless my client crashes mid-fight. Apparently the AI isn't smart enough to figure out that a 40 druid doesn't do so well meleeing against a 35 giant. But that's ok; I accept that risk, because it's still FAR less risky than getting into most groups.

The biggest problem with soloing 40-50 right now is lack of targets. But the fact is, groups face the same issue, so grouping wouldn't solve that. After all, it's not like there are camps in Sol B and L Guk that are going empty because nobody wants to group, is it? Even with all the crying about how much better it is to solo than group, there doesn't seem to be any lack of groups in those dungeons.

The problem isn't solo vs group, IMO. The problem is lack of content for the 35+ crowd. There just isn't enough content for this many people leveling in the higher levels. I don't know if this was a problem in classic, because Kunark had already been out a couple of months by the time I got my first character to 35, but it's definitely a problem here.

[Weekapaug]

It was. But way more crowded. Was one of the problems with the old world, really. You spent a lot of time on lists for groups just for exp.

Kunark fixes that for the most part.

[Messianic]

Originally Posted by Rasterburn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Those zones would get you from 30 to 51... and then it was time to head off to the Cobalt Scar gravy train. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So where do Wizards do their uber-soloing from 1-50 pre-Luclin? =P