Saturday we will be doing Lazarus Expedition groups instead of our normal chest run. Please signup in this thread and come adequatley prepared. Spaces will be dictated by available tanks and healers. Players will be slotted into groups on a first come first serve basis.
When and Where
Covenant Faction Representative in Reekwater @ 9:20pm EST. Please check prior to the event for faction quests for Lazarus. These missions will help you with faction tokens to buy keys.
Bring as close to a full 2000 repair parts as possible. It’s also a good idea to bring repair kits.
Have enough consumables to last multiple runs: ancient weapon coatings, honing stones, stat food, etc. You don’t need the best but your expected to be using some level of each of those mentioned.
Please consult the damage effectiveness chart to understand which weapons you should or shouldn’t bring to Lazarus.
Healers need to have a lifestaff with Blessed perk.
If you are not designated as the group’s tank you should not have a Carnelian Gem in your primary DPS weapon. If at all possible you should not be wearing any gear with positive threat modifiers.
Signups
Please signup for this event by posting in this thread with the following details:
Any roles that you are both willing and capable to perform.
Your average gear score for each role listed.
Indicate if you’ve completed Lazarus on Normal mode before.
Indicate if you would be comfortable leading your assigned group through the instance and explaining fights.
Indicate whither you have a key available for Lazarus.
Players will be slotted based on first come first serve basis. Additional groups will be opened up as additional tanks and healers signup.
Additional Groups
Additional groups will be added as tanks and healers signup.
Participant Notes
** willing to sit out for someone needing experience.
*** spoke with on discord and good chance will be available.
**** will tank in group 3 if Phingers ends up unavailable.
DPS: Hammer’ Great axe Hatchet
Average expertise - 595
Gear Score - 592
I have completed regular once
I have 1 regular Lazarus Key and 1 mutated
I would not be a good guide due to memory problems.
Kbella and I are not ready for this as our gear score and average expertise are around 525 ish although for instance head and chest are higher. Listening to you all talk we have picked up the trick of placing our Gypsum orbs in Jewelry slots and this is helping. We are on the Dynasty Shipyards part of the main story and plugging along with you when we do chest runs etc.
I guess our question is what do you consider to be the needed average expertise score for a DPS and a TANK?
Also we are currently not worrying so much about wearing the highest gear score items we collect but are paying more mind to wearing the right type and ability stat of armor as it seems the expertise takes care of the collective “power” you have from your items. Is this correct?
I retyped this about a dozen different ways. I apologize for its length. I want to be direct and honest but not discouraging.
Dynasty
If you want to run Dynasty I’m sure we can find some folks to help you get through that. It’s a level 55 dungeon. My wife still needs to unlock Dynasty normal to get her codex unlocked.
Average Expertise
This is kind of a loaded question. Expertise doesn’t empower your lower gear score items it only reduces their effective gear score if your expertise is below the items gearscore. So if you are wearing a 600 helm and your expertise is only 550 - then that item is functioning like a 575 item. The item functions at the midpoint of the two. Where as if your item is gear scoree 500 and your expertise is 600. That item still only functions at 500 gearscore.
So from a power perspective I’d say you’d want to be at a bare minimum probably around 550 average gear score or higher and I think that’s very aggressive - personally my comfort level would be 580.
A lot of people recommend buying and crafting keys and stock piling them until your 590. The reason is that the keys are costly to buy and craft. Your limited on how many you get per week. Your expertise will cause the drops in the instance to be MUCH lower than they potentially could be. The highest item that can drop for you is generally 10 item levels above your expertise but it functions more like a bell curve.
I can only speak for myself but I didn’t run an expedition until I was close to 600 and I was DPS when I did that so I could learn the instance. By comparison my wife’s first attempts she was 580ish heals healing my dumb ass on my first tanking attempts. We’ve taken 580 dps through sense and managed to finish with golds on mutators. Mutators is not as big of a step up from normal as normal is a step up from open world content. The two steps are night and day different.
Tanking Expeditions
You certainty could try to go in with no exposure to the instances some of our tanks did I’m sure. I would recommend asking around if you can tag along as a melee DPS for a run so you can get a feel for the instance first. We have several qualified tanks that are both patient, friendly, and willing to help other tanks learn instances so we have more tanks. The ones that have been active recently that you can try asking are: myself, Komma, Nyyx, and Phingers all of us have experience not only in normal but mutators. I’ve always enjoyed running DPS with other experienced tanks just because I learn things from them that I wouldn’t of thought of myself.
Gearscore vs stats vs perks
It really depends on your role and what content your doing. For the zergs we do through point of interests it doesn’t really matter what your wearing as long as you can stay alive. In that case the highest gear score item is probably going to provide the most utility.
When you start looking at things like OPR, Wars, Invasions, 3-5 manning the POIs that we do as a ZERG, or expeditions the perks become more important. But there is definatly a point where gear score outweights perks it jut all depends. Gearscore dictates how many points of attributes you can get on an item so the higher it is the higehr your attributes and attributes directly affect damage output, your effective health, and your healing output.
There are even perks that are non negotiable for example blessed. +20% healing on a life staff. As you can imagine having or not having 20% of your healing output is pretty significant.
Tanking has a few almost required perks or itemization. Carnelian full 300% in your weapons - both of them. Increased Stamina perk and reduced stamina damage while blocking perk. Refreshing Ward to reduce cooldowns. Defiant Stance and at least 1 other method of taunting - some opt for shield bash others opt for secondary taunts on off weapons. Then perk the remaining peices as makes sense based on your off hand of choice. Keep in mind you’ll have to keep at a bare minimum 2 off hand weapons unless your only using your offhand for utility due to how different weapons have different penaliteis against different creature types.
edit as you can see we have some folks in the 550 range who are indicating they have completed Lazarus on normal - so it really depends on you and how comfortable you feel at what point in your progression.
Solid gold info here and we appreciate the sharing of knowledge and your candor. Kbella and I will take this info and run with it to progress! Being a duo with a work schedule that does not allow for nearly as much play time as we would like it is always a matter of being a bit behind but still wanting to see the end of the train you are following and to be on the right track if that makes any sense. The simple explanations in your reply are excellent confirmation that our pathway is viable.