I was told to check it out, so I went out there for a while.


I couldn't get into a group. Everyone was completely non-responsive. Either macro'd or just didn't watn to talk to me I suppose. Several groups had less than 8, but weren't interested in letting another person join.


It's both impressive and sad at the same time.


When I was there, each little "gazebo" had an ice wizard in the middle of it, the remaining people around it on the pads and what not varied from group to group.


I don't know what all they had going, but the ice wizards were able to cast pbaoe constantly, non-stop the entire time I was there... I don't know how they don't run out of power, and I guess I don't understand the encounter, because nobody was being interrupted either.


Glass was dropping in the little 10 stacks, but some of the mobs drop 10-30 glass at a time, and they're killing what has to be about 4-5 mobs every what, 10 seconds on average? Maybe 30 mobs per minute? They're yellow/oj mostly, with some reds to a 50.


In just the few minutes I was there, one of the non-responsives was a level 19 mercenary, who dinged 20, then 21, and 22 in just the few minutes I was standing there. Not that going 19-22 is any great feat of strength, but I was still amazed how incredibly FAST it happened. It's ridiculous.


Seeing all of them standing around like zombies, completely dead to the world around them, it was almost kind of eerie.


Part of me was jealous I couldn't get into the group, part of me was glad I couldn't. It is terribly efficient, but feels a little too much like cheating, and being basically unconcious for a couple hours isn't really how I want to spend my time in the game.


I'm really surprised they've left this encounter working the particular way it is.


EDIT: That said, if you can get into a group doing this, I would recommend doing so if you're after glass or powerleveling.

 

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I recently joined a Rassa group for the first time. In general, they're open to letting people in the group if they don't have enough for the pads. I certainly didn't know what I was doing but they invited me.

My group had 8 people, only 1 of which wasn't afk (me). The group setup was:

- pulsing pbae bainshee
- blockbot (lurikeen champ with mob5, etc)
- fop bot
- bard with power/heal songs on
- 4 PLees

With the blockbot, the bainshee only got hit once per 5 minutes so no heals were necessary. I was the 'jumper' which meant that I jumped onto the last unoccupied pad for a second to start the encounter, then moved off it so that a mob Malrassa didn't spawn. I kept doing this every minute or so.

After 2 hours, I had 2500 glass (on 2 characters) and my bard's level 1 artifacts were level 10. Maybe our setup could've been more optimal, but it worked well enough for me.

If a rassa group needs to someone to stand on a pad or be a jumper, they'll invite anyone. Once the group is set up, they don't really have a use for someone else (especially when group is full).

I think this PLing mechanism is fairly nice in that just about anyone can get in a group if it isn't full and you don't have people relying on PL for plat groups (in which they likely bought the plat from them online anyways).

 

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Hehe, you should see the grogans camp on Gaheris where the nGed tower (the one right next to the front door) is. A bainshee/blocker can literally afk there for hours and chain-pull with the pbae pulse, no movement, help, or skill required. They all respawn on the same location, so you park the bainshee right there, park the blocker outside of grogans' melee range, and you're good to go for hours at a time (you have to move/jump/sit/etc both chars once per hour to keep from auto-logging however).


A simple HKN script that casts a spell on both characters once every half hour would be enough to run both characters for as long as your connection stayed up, provided the shield doesn't drop so low in con that you wipe (will happen at about 75% con on my warden).

 

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On alb you need, an Ice wiz, a block bot, (aug dex/mob4-5) a sight necro to transfer power and fop bot. Necro transfers power to the wiz non-stop so the wiz can pbaoe non-stop, the block bot just stands there. Fop's are place near the necro. I've had two toons leveled this way.

Friday morning a rolled a minstrel and by 7pm it was level 50 with level 10 arties. By 1 am it was temped and I was RvRing with it.

 

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So the necro gains mana from the FoP because he's staying out of combat. Then just continuously transfers mana to the ice wiz, I see. I didn't notice the necro casting his power transfer, but there was a necro there, so that's probably what was going on.


The block bots put their Guard on the ice wiz, and with aug dex/MoB it's enough to keep the ice wiz from taking hits?


Incredible.

 

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Just about every group on Gaheris is built around that principle. My standard trio is Arms/Druid/Enchanter. Saracen armsman, 50+18 shield, MoB 5, aug dex 3, 101 dex in template, 10% PvE block. Enchanter gets hit probably less than 1 out of every 100 swings (provided I keep the pulls under 20 ~L65 mobs). With 20% siphon and 45% power pool in her template, I probably could pbae non-stop even without a necrobot for at least 7-8 minutes (when the timers on mcl2 items finally caught up with me), assuming I didn't get a dragon robe proc to go off once (Oh how I love that omni-HoT proc).

 

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Precisely.

 

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Well it's nice of Mythic to leave an encounter allowing groups of people to stand around, forcing oj-red mobs to load constantly and indefinitely as long as 1 person is either present, or has a sophisticated enough macro to move on/off the pad every minute or so.


I loved the Contra analogy. Though this does require a "little" more work than that simply because you do have to rely on others, or have like 5-6 accounts at your disposal.

 

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That's just silly... The next time I need to level a toon, I really need to get into one of these groups.


There's what, 3 of these portals there? I forget, but as popular as it is, I have seen one or 2 of the portals vacant on more than one occasion, so it shouldn't be too difficult to start a new group even if I can get a couple key members.

 

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The other portals don't spawn nearly as many monsters, however. So while you could use them to PL, generally doesn't work as well.

 

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