Fury or Defiler?

I prefer caster/ranged classes to melee/combat arts classes so I was trying to get a general idea of which seems to be more viable in the game nowadays?

If you're looking for a ranged caster, fury is your best bet. A defiler still gets big bonuses (tribal rage and wards procced from melee hits) for being up close and personal with the mobs.

I don't mind some melee, but I prefer it to be more of a side benefit or after I soften up my target before it reaches me.

Fury all the way. 8) I love mine. If you can get a merc, hire the SK in Neriak and go nuts 8)

Thinking I might go Sarnak for my Fury or Defiler since I prefer Evil or Neutral races more then Good races. Is there any reason to pick another race instead?

Depends on what you're looking for. I like tracking, so I frequently pick races that have that as a racial skill..

I had forgotten about tracking. That might be pretty useful if rare spawns are still needed and move around.

At this point in the game, Furies tend to melee too. The playstyle is completely different though: Do you want to never take any damage and slowly whittle things away, or blow them up and be more likely to get blown up yourself?

You could always just roll both in any case. And I second the tracking thing. Super useful

I just wish some of the evil races had tracking. Looks like I'm leaning Wood Elf versus Halfling if I go for tracking.

Kerra are neutral and can track. My Fury started as a Warden in DLW.

You can always betray, you can't even start a defiler as a good class so you'd have to betray anyway.

P.S. Halflings are awesome.

I'd rather have a race with the option for bonus Wis or does that not matter much?

I was referring to if I started a Fury, I probably would just get by without a tracking race as a Defiler unless I played a Kerran.

Attribute bonuses on the Character tab is a thing of the past. Idk about the base for each race, but stats are so inflated these days that it's not going to matter that much.

The thing to consider now with races is appearance and the things like track, repair (gnomes), and disarm trap. Also of note at lower levels (before 50 when you can get the carpet) is featherfall. For non healer classes the ability to breathe underwater might be useful if you're a miser and don't wanna buy totems. (Me)

So most of the racial traditions that give stat bonuses are more flavor nowadays even for F2P players unless they grant an ability the class doesn't already have and is useful in the long-term?

The amount of the boost your racial bonus gives you is pretty much irrelevant by the time you get to lvl 50 or so compared to everything on your gear, etc.

How useful is repair and disarm trap on average? Still probably gonna stick with a Tracker for my Fury, but was just curious for if I choose that or a port to group race for the Defiler if I decide to role one of them as well.

the most useful racial ability is the transpor2player, the others pretty lack luster. i don't even use track on my scouts other than pvp.

Not much in the way of rare NPC spawns or anything that would require tracking?

TBH they really aren't that useful, I was just listing the only useful racials that I could remember.

And yeah, I forget about the teleport, mostly because I'm so so sick of both elves and erudites, which are the only ones that get it as far as I can remember.