Our guild has over 30 members, but all but two are casual players. Our
schedules just don't allow us to play more than twice a week on average,
once for 2 hours maybe and once for 3-4. Getting those times to mesh is
generally fairly tough. As a bard I've found that grouping with strangers =
instant multiple deaths 90% of the time. I haven't been in a group other
than guildmates that has worked out for 4 levels now. That's since October.
I tried one week before last and died on the first pull. That's my biggest
complaint about bards. If a pull goes bad we are nearly always the one that
pays for it which tells me that our skills do not balance out with the
dangers we face as well as any other class. Even with reduced taunt from
our songs the only time mobs stop hitting me even now is when either our
enchanter uses multiple mega taunt spells or one the ranger actually gets a
taunt to turn it (very rare).

Kit

-----Original Message-----
From: kim@... [mailto:kim@...]
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2000 2:56 PM
To: 'eqbards@onelist.com'
Subject: RE: [eqbards] Worldly Issues & "Play Nice"

From: <kim@...>

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Kimes, Dean W. wrote:
>
> The problem I was addressing mainly was that due to the limitations I play
> under as a casual player, I can only play long enough to see some named
> spawns spawn twice about once every two weeks. If the spawn is more than
45
> minutes apart, letting my group share any night at every other spawn means

You're in luck then, as the longest regular respawn time I've
seen (excluding the multi-hour and multi-day respawns) is only
40 minutes. In fact, most of the ones your level are like
15-20 minutes.

> able to fight the spawn once, rarely twice. This pretty much locks us out
> of any chance of ever getting rare drops. We can only play with enough of
> us to do tough camps once every other week pretty much anyhow. Giving us
> the ability to get a chance at the spawn every nite while reducing our
> ability to camp the spawn longer gains us exactly zero access, while
> reducing the access we did have. None of my regular groupmates plays more
> than 4 times a week and those are the ones who can solo easily. Once a
week
> is the most often we get more than three guildmembers together. From our
> experience the new rules will not increase our access as casual players,
but
> exactly the opposite.

Sounds like your problem is you don't know enough people
you're willing to group with for a shot at one of these named
mobs. The access is there, you're just unwilling to take
advantage of it because of whom you choose to group with.
It's a variant of the problem solo players complain about -
that they can't really kill most of the named spawns solo
unless it's way green to them. This is a grouping game. If
your grouping is sub-par, you're going to miss out no matter
the rules.

--
John H. Kim
kim@...

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