New Player Need Help!

Hey I just logged into my character after the new 1.20 patch and im finding things a lot more difficult.
Its probably because im doing something wrong, im only level 26. So my basic strategy is to use invigorate & life surge, then attack with either true thrust to heavy thrust or vorpal thrust to impulse drive.

Im finding my main problem is against packs of enemies, before I would use skewer or doomspike coupled with life surge to do lots of damage to all of them and get a good chunk of hp back.

But now with (no way at my current level?) to do aoe attacks, I have to rest after fighting 2 monsters at a time. And in leves where a 4 monster fight is unavoidable I don't stand a chance any-more.

So if any of you have any tips for me, please let me know. Thank you :).

Make sure you stack the Life Surges; remember they can be stacked up to 3 times now. I've heard that Life Surge III gives ridiculous HP regen. You won't get an AoE until Leg Sweep at 30...it seems they took out quite a few AoE weapon skills across the board.

You are a pioneer! Facing Eorzea as a pure Lancer post 1.20, you will provide the data and strategy for newbies to come after you! {/grovel}

/enddramaticspeech :D

Yeah I've just noticed the 3 stack thing on life surge. It does help but its not ridiculous amounts of hp at my level. Also the long cooldown on it is annoying. :p

Also sorry to disappoint you about the lancer pioneer thing, I've took cure from CNJ for now to make things easier. :)

Lol that's fine, we need you to tell us what cross-class works for that level range too =p grab second wind while you're at it (if you have it)

Try getting second wind from pug, and the mar one, I think bloodspill? Basically a hp drain from your next ws.

Try stun locking with the stun combo, forget the names allready but if you time it right you get an extra free ws after the combo with greatly increased stun duration. This works for 2 enemies at a time, but you also get a free leg sweep at 30 the same method which can be used for more.

On my phone ATM, but when I get to my pc I can explain with better detail

Ok, so a better explaination, for what i have been doing and having reasonable ease with leves and stuff is this,

For HP Regen -
Have life surge at 3 stacks at all times - you can keep this controlled with Invigorate when out of battle without TP.
Second Wind - pretty much the most important cross class skill for soloing in my view, at 32 it restores around 250hp
Bloodbath + Blood for Blood with WS - not as good as it used to be with doomspike but can still give back around 150hp.

Stunlock combo
Using Heavy Thrust ---> True Thrust gives the enhanced stun effect. After your True Thrust hits, you will see that your moves that are able to cause a stun status will glow pink. You can use these free from TP charge and if a stun procs, the stun duration is significantly longer than normal. This can be insaine if you leg sweep a large group.

Conveniently Heavy Thrust is also a stun proc move, so you can use it as your free TP move, stunning one target, and then you are able to just throw a True Thrust and complete the Combo again.

If you are carefull on your cooldowns, and manage Heavy Thrust with Keen Flurry you can just continually use the stun combo to semi-stunlock your enemies and hit free WS damage.

This is working for me in low-mid 30's and can only imagine its the same futher on.