Class Choice - The downside to every class from someone who has played them all on the TLP (2 hours)

Its been common knowledge for many years that if you can dps you should dps.

Only guild leaders who can't read a parse ask necros to dump mana.

The only time mana dumping was viable was when necro dots couldn't stack and or due to resists you can't really do much damage anyway. I refer to this as the raid necro dark ages.

no mention for my favorite class, Wizard??

Maybe on purpose, since no one plays them? =p

One of the unintentionally funniest videos I've seen on YouTube is a guy trying to demonstrate Enchanter Charm killing Spectres, a level 35ish MOB, in OOT using what I think he called an Enchanter to high to get meaningful experience from them. Nothing but Charm breaks and them beating on his character. Video was over 40 minutes long and I think he only managed to kill 4-6. That has been my experience in game too. There are techniques that avoid the getting beat on, just that they are manna intensive mass stuns kind of things IMO.

Would only agree in Classic era. Kunark/Velious you can actually do something.

Uhh, is this like a joke? Even with the 20% charm damage nerf Enchanter is so hilariously op and safe on the TLPs. They don't really get balanced until GoD. Arguably PoP a bit as well because the AoE stuns stop working due to mob level but still just insane damage.

It was 1999 but pretty much the same experience I have with my Enchanter live or TLP.

That's a necromancer. Managing charm as a necro or druid is an absolute chore compared to an enchanter. The power of PBAE stuns is unbelievable in the level 60 era.

However even for enchanters there's a stretch between like 25-40 where managing charm is really terrible. Your stun won't last long enough to recast charm, your tash is low level garbage, and haste duration is terrible and costs huge mana. Once you have tashania, color skew, theft of thought and Aanya's quickening then you are set to ravage the land. Theft of Thought alone is so unbelievably good it can't be overstated. Used properly it's equivalent to about 20 mana per tick.

That said, don't play an enchanter. Thankless role that to really enjoy it requires a mindset that not many players have.

wow and most mmo are boring what i love about eq its hard to play it takes coordination.
love my warrior when iam boxing i pull 3 or 4 mobs on tlp build aggro and then burn each mob one at the time,not the most efficent way but i rarely wipe,on raids its fun playing a warrior,love the game my fauvorite mmo.

Its not difficult at all to manage charm as a necro. Load screaming terror and simply mez the pet after it breaks. Chanter can do the same thing with their low level mez. It doesn't last that long and it allows you to get things under control.

I've done plenty of charm killing with all the classes that have useful charm spells you forgot mages in PoP and Bards. Necro and Mage charm is much easier to do and much more powerful, albeit much more limited in where. Bard charm swarming ect is way easier being able to cast while moving and having selo is just makes it too easy. Druids are really the only class that has it harder when charming then Enchanters, but Druids get better pet haste spells so in zones like Chardok their best pets out DPS the best chanter charm pets.

Thanks for the info! I'm actually fairly pleased with Druid Charm because it forces my character to go after pets that seem to have low magic resists and they work OK once you buff them. I think Spectres have high magic resist anyway so they make a bad pet for everyone. I know they laugh off my Druid's root like it wasn't there.

A bit of drift, a while back I stated in the forums ~I wonder why there aren't more Druids Charming 'a gaduladian widemouth' since they are animal, charmable, and the toughest MOB in the dungeon. So I went there with a level 50+ Druid and gave it a shot. Charm broke within 2 ticks and got hit with poison first strike. My Druid ran out of there screaming like a little girl! I may bring an Enchanter down there with me to see if it makes a difference or I just ran out of luck with the RNG. I'm not in any hurry to go back though.

I made this post two hours before the last TLP launch to give people some class roll advice. I now bump it to help the players for this next TLP.

OP seems like the kinda guy who likes his own facebook posts and completes quizzes about what type of animal feces he might be based on birth month.

As someone who plays a cleric and a shaman this is extremely accurate

On my cleric people act like I must be medding wrong or something. The class feels like it wasn’t made to be played without clarity. And I actually found it easier to heal as a Shaman than a cleric because shaman isn’t constantly OOM since they have cannibalize. And everyone expects you to stop healing your group to Rez them and it has gotten so bad I actually rage quit before.

I almost made a bard, but at the last minute I made a shaman instead because it seemed like bard was too much work. Had no idea how much work shaman is. I get to where I dread more melees joining the group because of how many buffs I have to keep up on top of everything else. If there’s no Enchanter and you have to haste and main heal too... geez Louise. Even when I log off Shaman and onto another character I find myself sitting and standing while repeatedly mashing a cannibalize ability that isn’t even there.

You missed the joys of bard when on raids, everyone who has ever boxed a bard wants to tell you what your rotation should be to optimize their melee/spell/healing/haste/AC (Nillipus' is a tiny rune and goes away when the tank gets hit, it's useless for the AC buff, but don't try to tell that one guy who had a box bard 3 TLPs ago, and it doesn't matter because he's leaving during POP when the new one launches anyway).

Monk: "Bard, go pull so I can DPS harder."
Bard: "On it!"
Every Caster Ever: "Why does my mana song keep going away?"
Guy Who Played A Bard Once in a Tell: "Put mana song first in your /melody so it gets refreshed faster"

6 mobs in camp and no chanter, 4 mezzed and 1 charmed and by the grace of... well, nobody because the best bards are agnostic, no resists. fingers cramping, sweat pouring into your eyes, no time to even key up discord and yell at people for being an idiot asking for mana incessantly...

Don't worry the problems with others wanting the wrong songs goes all the way to TOV where bard dots got a big boost and did more damage than some of their ADPS songs would add. some people got upset with their bards for focusing a bit more on their personal dps.

This is 100% true! lol

In my defense I didn't create a masterpiece of literary here. I just blatted out some hard truths about each class for some lol's while watching for the server to up.

Interesting. I never played that far. EQ died at pop for me.

Oh the game is very different at 100+ (well really starting at 75+) All of the classes are very active now. If you're not constantly pushing buttons at 115 you probably are doing a terrible job and really low dps. When you left around POP before bards got meoldy they were considered a class with a high keypress per minute because of the manual twisting. Now a days all of the classes easily have to press many more buttons per second than any class had to back in the day.

There's a really big knowledge gap amongst players at level 115 as well, lots of abilities don't stack with each other so there's a specific way to burn and if other players in your group don't do their burn right it makes your burn worse. There's a lot more synergy between certain classes now than before as well so in most guilds there's bad dps groups and good dps groups and it can suck if you're good but you end up with the baddies. A lot of "good" players actually don't do pickup groups and there's not a parser built into the game so people don't know how bad they are too.