So I ran Amrine Expedition twice for the first time last night (I’m level 27 now) and learned a couple best practices, I figured I’d put them here and ask others for what they’ve learned running Expeditions (and probably a lot more of them than me!). Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
Everyone should follow the tank. If you’re close to the level of the expedition then you’re DPS players will quickly die without a tank, sometimes even if there is a mediocre healer. If nobody’s talking or typing, just default to following the tank.
The healer should heal the tank. When the tank dies, especially on bosses, you’re probably going to wipe. I had to kite Simon Grey around as the DPS for the last third of his health bar last night on my second run when our tank died.
The healer should bring three healing abilities. Yesterday on my second run the healer was low level and only brought one healing ability, leading to all kinds of problems and potion consumption.
The tank should start the fights. I’m a bit of a noob and I drew aggro of some gold mobs a the start of a couple encounters in the Expedition. Made my tank’s job much harder and made me take too much damage.
Don’t ice gauntlet on two of your DPS players. The AoEs don’t stack any more.
What other best practices do y’all know. Let’s help each other do better.
Best best practice is:
If you have an orb DON’T use it with RANDOMS unless you already did 1 dungeon with them and went really well because most of the times you will fail and ORB is gone and not easily farmable and not invited really often to other people teams so this is the best best practice
Best practice is always wear heavy armor and use weapons with some sustain, like Hammer, G.Axe, and Hatchet. I prefer Hammer/Hatchet, but use weapons that take advantage of enemy weaknesses.
1-2 members of the group should have a life staff as well.
You absolutely need someone with a spear! The 100% uptime on 3 stacks of rend is insane for group play. Spear is totally overlooked for pve play!
All debuffs and buffs stack to 50% so you want 1 other person with a weapon that can also apply a rend near 100% uptime ( the tank can do this with a really clever SS build).
At least 1 GA and Hammer for the CC they bring, stuns slows, pulls, gravwell are all amazing for helping stack up the mobs. Hammer has a rending shockwave perk on some weapons that is amazing.
1 range mage, frost gauntlet and fire staff… especially in genesis where all mobs are weak to fire damage.
1 healer 1 tank, pretty simple. but a dps or the tank with a good off healing build is really powerful. I think the off healer should be running Sacred ground, orb of protection, and beacon so they can essentially throw down a massive amount of healing and swap weapons and still be healing the whole time. The main healer should be running sacred ground (its too much healing not too, just make sure that the 2 sacred grounds aren’t overlapping too much and your good) and the 2 single target heals, giving incredible amount of tank/spot healing.
You could also setup the comp to have a large amount of fortify buffs, as the tank I can cap on 50% dmg reduction frequently with the right composition.
edit: Hatchet is absolutely garbage in group play… almost completely useless. With the one important exception of infected (infecting?) thow being the only solid healing debuff in the game… making hatchet almost necessary for fighting the spriggan arena.