Melee group fine tuning questions

[dobey]

I have played a sk/zerk for years and finally decided to get a few more accounts and make a full group.

My group is made up of:

Sk 120k hp 10k ac 12k aa
zerk 10k aa
zerk 8k aa
bard 5k aa
shammy 5k aa
healer merc

I just swarmed up the shammy/zerk/bard in a few days to 100 and some aa, then started trying to make a group out of this mess lol.

I am running my own macro's on them, I play the sk, and use group chat to command the others, letting mq2melee run them. This way I don't need to switch screens and I retain full control over what they are doing from the sk with some hotkeys that say key phrases to the group.

I went with double zerks because I know how to set them up well, and glad I did because I know nothing about the bard and shammy and it really shows.

Right now I am maintaining about 100k dps on lvl 99 xp mobs, and my first question is how much more should I expect from this group as I tune the macro's and get the shammy and bard working correctly, and get the aa's all up over 10k.

Breakdown roughly:

SK: 15k dps
zerk 1: 35 to 40k dps
zerk 2: 30 to 35k dps
Bard: 8 to 10k dps

All are stuck with group gear for now.

Shammy is just slowing, buffing, and leopard maw, can group heal on command. No epic yet.

Bard is using aura and a few songs that were in the highest level range, no idea what I am doing here.

Any tips or good links to read, my search skills suck, and also what can I do to get them a bit more natural looking, when I call for them to attack I get a mob of bard speed animals jumping all over the back side of the mob right now lol.

any tips or pointers are much appreciated.

 

[Dealings]

change your stick settings

stickcmd=10 moveback (this goes in your melee ini)

use this holyshit flag

holyshit0=/if (${Me.Buff[Selo's Sonata].ID}) /nomodkey /notify BuffWindow Buff${Math.Calc[${Me.Buff[Selo's Sonata].ID}-1].Int} leftmouseup

that will get rid of that "look at me I use MQ shit!!!"

there are several shaman macros u can use even a plugin here for a sham

that should give u some things to tweak

 

[aspire2008]

Level up a rogue and replace one of those zerkers. One zerker should be sufficient for your group, or level up a rogue (assasinate crits for ~950k, zerker decap crits for ~450k) on a completely new account and put one zerker out of group.

 

[dobey]

It will cost me a day but i will give the rogue a try. And thank you Dealings will give that a try.

 

[dewey2461]

Add a mage. Doing the new zones you will want to be able to CoH your group. I'm thinking of starting up a mage to replace my ranger.

 

[William12]

Mage is great when doing progression but not so much when just sitting in one spot and pulling mobs.

 

[aspire2008]

You may also want to consider just leveling other toons along with the rogue, if you decide to level a rogue. Usually when I go on a leveling spree I level 5 at a time (with the 6th toon being a bard or wiz for ae, till I get to level 70, then I just drop the ae toon).

Nothing wrong with running more toons along with your primary group, especially if you are lazy like me and don't want to spend the time and effort to gear them, zerging with extra dps from adding more toons seems to work well, after all you don't have to have a gold account on most toons these days.

 

[dobey]

Rogue is 90 now, didn't have the station cash for a hero toon so had to start at lvl 1. Will gear it up a bit and throw it in the group now for the next ten levels so it gets some skills. Hopefully it is gtg by tomorrow afternoon and I can start getting some parses.

 

[dobey]

Got the rogue up to 100 and 5500 aa's, geared it up and went to start testing/parsing. I guess I should have done a bit of research because the assassinate skill only works on humanoids, which seriously limits its usefulness. Berserker Decap works on everything. I will continue to flesh the toon out for a day or two and see what I can get out of it, but that kind of sucks. I am sure it can still do decent dps, will see what happens.

 

[PumpThump]

Are your characters level 100 or 105? Are you going to Nuke/Dot with your Shammy as well when you are able or no? Does your tank own everything easily or are some fights rough on the tanking? I can help you with Bard twists but it really depends on your situation.

 

[dobey]

100 to 102 right now.

Shammy is just buffing and slowing right now, and maw.

Trash is easy, I am beating named but have to work a bit more.

 

[dobey]

If I tune the group a little bit more I should be about equal to one group necro! Woot!

 

[PumpThump]

You should be using the Overhaste Aura and twisting Haste, Regen, Song of Suffering (big proc), and the 4th one is a wild card given your group makeup. Doben's Spry Sonata and Psalm of the Forsaken are both good for increasing survivability.

 

[aspire2008]

Got the rogue up to 100 and 5500 aa's, geared it up and went to start testing/parsing. I guess I should have done a bit of research because the assassinate skill only works on humanoids, which seriously limits its usefulness. Berserker Decap works on everything. I will continue to flesh the toon out for a day or two and see what I can get out of it, but that kind of sucks. I am sure it can still do decent dps, will see what happens.

Yes it only works on humanoids, but you are still better off in terms of sustained dps keeping 1 rogue + 1 zerker , rather then 2 zerkers in group.

 

[dobey]

So far the Rogue experiment is a dismal failure. The rogue is 100 with 6100 aa's and top group gear now.

Against non humanoid targets it is running a sad 10k dps, just a little above the bard. The utility it brings to the group did up the dps of the other toons a little bit, but not even close to what the other berserker was doing.

It does do better against humanoids but still falls short of the zerker even then. I will give it another week of testing and try to get the kinks worked out but so far berserker is much better in my group makeup.

 

[aspire2008]

You need to be setting up your rogue right if its only doing 10k dps. I'm running 3 rogues cause of how powerful they are currently. I leveled 4 zerkers thinking the exact thing as you, running them for decapitation. I switched to shaman, bard, 2 rogues, monk, zerker for my 2ndary group, with the other rogue in another group. Decap triggers only once per mob if they are dying to fast, if that, same thing with assassinate. But rogues do far better sustained dps compared to zerkers.

 

[Dealings]

Im still in love with wizards over zerks, went zerk route a while back happier now w wizards by far

 

[dobey]

Zerks are procing decap about 3 times a minute on current setup. Rogue never procs unless its a humanoid.

I am hoping I have it set up right but I never played a rogue, I made hotkeys for all skills, and turned on everything in mq2melee, all the buttons I made are going down in a timely fashion so I just don't know.

I am not bashing on the rogue, I really want it to work after wasting a week on it lol.

Maybe the rogue needs more aa's to shine, it is a shame that with the same aa's as the lower zerk it is 1/3 the damage output on non humanoids.

Anyone have a good link to a proper setup for the rogue, and things I might be missing feel free to share please.

 

[aspire2008]

How fast are you killing mobs? I'm able to kill a level 103 mob every 20 secs just running the melee group setup of shm/brd, 2 rogues, zerk, monk, and thats continuously over days. I don't know if you can do anything like that with a caster setup, without resting out of combat. Possibly with a 4 wizard, brd +enc, but I've never tried that.

 

[Dealings]

never needed to med and prior to this expansion 3 wizards was way overkill, sometimes u couldnt get your nukes in

this expansion a 103 can go anywhere from under 5 seconds to about 30
in a grp w 2 wizards, will be bringing my 3rd into expansion and expect to have the same results w yellow mobs to 105

even w some cotf raid weapons and gear ive been over zerks for a long time
at one point even w shm and bard they couldnt touch a wiz heavy grp

thats just me (had about 5 zerks) sold 2 of em, sold 1 wiz too now that I think about it, but like I said Im happiest w wiz over zerk grps (both had good fast responding custom macros)