OoW - MPG: Weaponry

[Gloriana]

re-post from the Crucible

Gloriana

I had an incredible EQ experience this weekend, one of those great fights which reminds me why I love EQ so much.

A warrior in a big guild sent me a tell out of the blue asking me if I wanted to do the Weaponry trial - I said sure. The group turned out to be a pick up group!

Group make up - warrior, SK, rogue, rogue, mage, shaman (ONLY HEALER, NO PRESSURE)

Everyone got conviction/KEI/haste. We invised to ODI, then fought our way to the Body trial. It was single pulls all the way to the trial and I did okay as main healer.

I buffed everyone with typical shaman buffs + regen + FA. I would have really appreciated Champion.

The trial has a 15 minute trial with no boss mob at the end. When you enter the main room, there are 4 mobs lying on the floor - spaced around the room.

Mobs:

Golem is weak to blunts.
Bazu is weak to slashing.
Dragorn is weak to piercing.
Lightning is weak to nuking.
All are susceptible to special attacks like backstab.
The correct weapon typically does 4x normal damage.
(taken from the Safehouse, just to be sure I was remembering correctly)

When the trial started, one mob activated (the other 3 were still on the floor). We ran to the active mob (the order of mob activation appears to be random) and the melee types equipped the correct weapon. I did malos/slow and healed (wish I had had Spiritual Serenity at the time). When the mob died, the next mob activated.

I did pull out my trusty Bone of Bertox. for the blunt mob and a few 800 hits definitely made me happy. I didn't melee much, this was a fight that definitely gave my mana pool a work out.

The mage nuked like crazy on the Lightning mob, but I didn't find him particularly easy to hit with nukes (even after malos), definitely no 4x nuke hits. The Lightning mob was the second to last mob and I was already a little hurting for mana, so I stuck mostly to healing.

I don't recall any big AEs to worry about.

The final mob was weak to piercing. I had saved Ancestral Aid and 1.5 heal for this fight. I hit Spiritual Channeling to get a little extra mana - the countdown kept going: 1 minute, 30 seconds...all the melee hit their disciplines, my heart was pounding, it was so tense...

I saw the failure message as the mob died...immediately followed by the win message! We won the fight on THE LAST second, it could not have been closer.

Here is what dropped (went to the mage) -
Painbringer's Velvet Pelisse

It was pretty much the most fun I had had in EQ in a looong time. Although we were a pick up group (one member was a guildmate), we all sat around for at least 10 minutes, complimenting each other and commenting on how much fun the fight was.

Weaponry is a fun trial where the shaman class can really shine!!


taraddar

Weaponry is fun for sure. Used to be a joke to heal because the mobs where completely slowable. I've done it several times now but still haven't gotten the silly cloak to drop yet.

Some tips on the fight.

Don't save epic. It's 6 minute reuse now so you can actually get 3 casts off. 1 right when you start, 1 6 minutes later and a 3rd 6 minutes later. It makes your healing easier and adds a bit of dps theoretically from the crit effect.

I'd use Spiritual channeling earlier. If you use it on the next to last mob you can spend more mana earlier. Pop spiritual channeling and then with cann v and natural regen have a good amount of mana back when spiritual channeling wears off. Can allow you to do a bit more dps instead of having to hold back for mana to heal as much.

Don't forget pets. They don't do great dps but any helps. Same goes for the sk too if he didn't have his up.


The lightning guy doesn't take extra dmg from nukes like the other guys do from melee but he does have about 1/5 the hps on the other guys so nukers can kill him faster. Since you need to do more healing now shaman are definitely best to use dots for dps rather than nukes.

I don't know if or when the rogues used thier furious backstab disc but if they have it they should use it on the spell guy. Special attacks like backstab aren't effected by the weapon bonuses. So you get the most benifit from it on the lowest hps mob.

Gloriana

I did have a pet up, forgot and did puppies on the final fight!

I should have used Spiritual Channeling earlier - but I honestly still FORGET about that AA sometimes. I was running out of mana and I was like DUHHHHH.

I saved the 1.5 because the warrior asked me to click it for the piercer mob and I wanted to be sure it would be up - just weird luck that the piercer mob was our last one.

Brohg

Besides being weak to the appropriate weapon types, each mob is heavily resistant to the other types, reducing damage from them by 60-70%. They all take normal unmodified damage from non-melee attacks like nukes, dots, backstab, kick, frenzy. Their hp are so high, though, that spending mana on magical attacks isn't close to as effective as the appropriate melee damage. Magicians, for example, will be 400ish dps on any of the four mobs as long as thier mana holds out, just like always. But melee with the right weapons will be pushing 1200dps (warrior base 250 with good gear/aa, multiplied by about 4.5), and will go the whole trial. But with the wrong weapon type, melee will only be like 100dps, or less.

The lightning guy (name is Steelshock) isn't weak to nukes. His special deal is not having any weapon weaknesses, so melee sucks. Instead he has much lower hp than the other three. Magic in this situation will comparatively deal way more damage than on the other mobs. I've been told he was recently updated to be weak to H2H, I don't know the truth of that. If you happen to have a really really top-of-the-line rogue, he'll still outdamage a shaman on this mob just with Backstab and procs.

Melee, even rogues who will flip out their dagger for backstabbing, should be wielding high-proc weapons for Steelshock. Rangers and Beastlords have a couple proprietary weapons like the Howling Stones dagger. All the other dual wielding classes can use Dedgerex and Ethereal Destroyer. With Weapon Affinity 5 those two run 60ish dps on procs alone, plus crits and any proc augs. Even like that, though, normal melee dps is completely owned by anyone who can nuke at all. If you have a warrior, this mob is where he should use a defensive or evasive disc, so that whoever's healing him can nuke instead.

Champion does indeed change things a lot in Trial of Weaponry. The +10% melee mod is ins8ne in the brain, ins8ne in the membrane.

Grizlor

Rangers are decent if they have a good weapon collection. They can load 3-4 nukes and a couple DoTs for the spell mob, in addition to meleeing with proc weapons.

If you're highend there are some good choices in each category. chailak fang/dagger of distraction for piercing, demerix/quarm for blunts, etc

Tidykat

I did weaponry just a week ago, perhaps less I think, and we had a beast go in, and he used H2H and got less DPS than with his better weapons (1hbs). They likely havent fixed that yet. /shrug

I've found if you are the only healer in the trial, even now, it's pretty cake keeping a well geared tank up. I usually keep Serenity always up on the tank, and use Daluda's Mending to patch as needed. Yes, I do have Yoppa's mending, but I also have qvic gloves for 25% mana pres on daluda's... nice to make use of that effect here.

I always open up the trial with Ancestral Aid, and if i'm lucky, get a quick click of it at the end also. Use epic twice per trial, cani5 if needed, and pained memory anytime I can heh. As for using spiritual channelling... If you have a warrior and a paladin in the group (i've been fortunate enough to have them both), make the warrior blow evasive on Steelshock, toss a HoT on him, and the pally takes over healing the warrior. Why? Cause the pally has crap DPS on steelshock anyways, your dot dps/nukes will own his on steelshock.
THIS is when you blow SC. Pop SC, Serenity yourself, malos, slow, then I usually land BoYoppa, Bane (no sisslak yet, or i''d use it also), BoSaryrn, then start chaining the Yoppa's Rain, replace dots as needed, plus caniing if needed and keeping yourself up. if you got a good warrior (im spoiled) you can run all that and the mob wont even blink at ya. finish steelshock off, and if you can (and have a TA/Epic), melee on the Golem and Dragorn for some added dps.

Last time I went through, I had myself, warrior, rogue, pally, sk, and a necro. Necro never once fed me.. did mindwrack which helped a ton, still ran oom at the end heh, had like 300mana left We won the trial and had around 1min30sec left roughly. We just had the 2 min warning when the mob was at like 20% or so. Yay me on the back Only took a good 14 weaponry trials or so for the back heh

jolav21

Did weaponry with SK as main tank. He poped 2 of his discs & self healed for almost the full Lightning fight. they have 2 discs that heal for a % of the damage they do to the mob. Cleric loaded up nukes & we pwned him.

Group makup was
shaman, cleric, bard, SK, ranger, Rogue

FYI dots land for full on all mobs. I kept Curse & bane up on all melee mobs plus melee for xtra dps. Carefull not to over do it as tank is DPS`ing not trying to generate a truck load of aggro

telosk

Group make up was:

Warrior
Cleric
Shaman
SK
Ranger
Bard

I meleed on the blunt and piercing mobs and saved my mana for the magic damage mob and the slashing mob. I managed to stack up saryrn, yoppa, Bane, wunshi, ultor on them both but got aggro on the magic one towards the end of its life. I always chained Saryrn and Yoppa rains on the magic only mob.

The melees used their best wepons of each type for each specific mob. On the magic mob they used their highest procing ones (the ranger with two weapons procing http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.ht...659&source=Live).

The warrior had bard DS+shaman potion DS+ranger DS and all the mobs had reverse cleric DS on them.

We won with approx. 2 minutes to spare i reckon. Fun trial

EQOracle

I have done about 50 trials total. Efficiency, Fear, Destruction, Weaponry can all easily be main healed by a shaman. Id recomend maybe time gear at least otherwise it might be to taxing on the mana unless you have a beefy tank. Subversion and Ingenuity I do not see shaman being able to main heal either (possible in subversion with extreme top geared shaman). The dps is just to much on those named (altho I have not done ingenuity since it was changed). If I had to compare them, I would say Fear, Destruction, and Weaponry all very similar in terms of healing. Efficiency is a bit more of a challenge but still quite easy. Atm I have all healing aa's and spells and have ft maxed with a respectable mana pool. Any semi well geared shaman I believe could main heal those trials fine with a good tank.

Denorea

I've tried weaponry 3 times now and failed each time. We are not Time geared, and I wasn't main healer, but we have gotten darn close each time.

This trial is doable. I've heard say it was one of the hardest because it was so gear dependant. It is now my personal goal to win this trial.

Group make up has been: SK, Cler, Shm, Rng, Rng, Bst. (first attempt) that time was difficult to get the healing going since we really didn't know what to expect.

second attempt was: SK, Cler, Shm, Rng, Rng, Zerker. By far a better attempt, but there was a mishap and the SK went down. Zerker OT'd and we got the SK up and going again and ended up wiping.

Third attempt was: SK, Cler, Shm, Rng, Rng, Mnk. We got the last mob to 50% before we ran out of time. We had difficulty with the slashing mob. It just took too long.

We're going to attempt this again soon. Not sure if we're gonna go with Zerker or Mage or something, but I'm pretty confident that we'll win this one. For our gear range, we've done extremely well.

I know it will get easier as we gear up more, but I just wanna do it now. As hard as it is for us as we are geared now, it will make it so much sweeter a victory in the long run.

The most satistying wins are the ones you have to struggle for.

[dohrian]

[Samanna]

Posted by Lickity at http://crucible.samanna.net/viewtopic.php?t=198 :

I made this at the request of my guild, thought it might be of some use to the the shaman as well =)
MPG Trial Proven Successful Strats

Weaponry: 15 minutes

This is a ridiculously fun trial imo, but can be quite hard. The hardest part of this trial tends to be getting people with the right weapons to do it.

There are four mobs, each weak to a certain type of damage, resistant to all others: Lightning staticfist (Magic/h2h), Dragorn (Piercing/Bow), Golem(Blunt), Bazu(slashing.) Depending on your group makeup, have the melee decide which is their most effective DPS setup for the mobs with their offensive discs. I almost always have a warrior in this trial, and Furious on the Bazu results in massive damage if you don't slow the mob right off the back if they have a good high damage 2h, regardless of its delay. (causes the warrior to riposte each hit, ignoring the actual weapons delay, ranger could do this too with WS, but then you have aggro transfer)

Only one of these mobs will be up at any one time, but which comes alive first is completely random. Magic will hit for full on all four mobs, but other than the magic mob, the other three are fairly resistant. The three melee mobs have close to 500,00 hps, the magic one about 150,000. If any of your melees do not have either a 2h weapon or 2 1h weapons for each type (bow for piercing for the rangers) they need to get at least a Velium Gemmed weapon from the bazaar. Using the correct weapons results in 4x the normal damage, the wrong one is half (with the exception of h2h, which is unmitigated on any mob.) Also, pet damage is not mitigated, but regardless of equipped weapons, will not get the 4x bonus.

This trial CAN be healed by a shaman quite easily, but it is not neccesary really unless you are trying to fit in a 2nd caster (friend, blackmail, whatever reason)

I have done this with some very odd group makeups, but in all of those we had a couple of really good DPS To make up for some shortfalls. Good rule of thumb

2 melee dps: monk/beastlord tend to be weaker in this trial as they only can do 2-3 (remember, beasts can pierce, most of them just don't have the weapons) of the mobs for melee dps, but their h2h is not mitigated on any of them.

Tank: I have yet to succeed with a paladin, but probably more due to the fact that I just don't group with them often.

Shaman: Because I am one, so having an example of a trial without one is tough =P Also, panther does significant damage increase for all mobs, especially the spell one. (Spirit Call + Panther = dead mob) Make sure all mobs get crippled and slowed. (unless the warrior/ranger is riposte discing =) ) I also melee on the blunt and piercing weapons, but more for the good feeling I get from hitting for over 800 than because of neccessity.

Cleric: Because I have yet to win one with a druid healing.

6th man: This spot I usually bring a third melee DPS, because I am confident enough on the magic mob, but any "DPS" class can fill it just fine.

[Henora]