Best class to play with no gear?

The answer is monk as they were designed to not need gear

Pets now are better then the 99 pets, in the old days pets could come in a range of levels, you could watch necros and mages burn trough a stack of chips or mala trying to get the top level one, now they always get top level pet every time,

Pets would poof if you invised or zoned, now they stay with you so you can load them up with banded/bronze armour and other gear to make them even more effective and not loose them when you have to zone.

Pets don't pull agro on their own, pets were basically banned in dungeons back in 99 because they constantly would chase fleeing mobs and cause huge trains ...

General pet stats are also much better, not worse as you claim, heck even enchanter summoned pets are effective tanks in classic now.

The nurf you are referring too was that originally pet would use the delay of any weapon they were handed but ignored the damage, so giving a necro pet 2 fine steel daggers would drop their delay to 19 but they would keep hitting for max damage.

I was there on Emarr when the devs logged to watch that famous duel when a necro pet took on Cattie from Da'Kor the top warrior on our server at the time and killed her before she got it to 50%... next patch pets ignored weapon delay.

Especially starting on Selo since they will have their spell focus summons right away.

Enchanter or Necro. Charm is OP on TLPs with how resist checks worth. Monks are fine with no gear, but while they may be the best melee, they're not great in classic.

Pets have QoL adjustments but that doesn't mean they haven't been nerfed.

You obviously haven't played a pet class past level 12 lately, they are paper. You can clearly see a difference in pets if you log into p99 and compare them, there is a night and day difference.

And I like your logic that pets were being banned for chasing "fleeing mobs". Fleeing mobs pull agro on their own buddy...

Like he said, the level 49 pet could solo a warrior back in 99, not sure about a well geared one though. I would like to see the level 49 pet duel a level 50 warrior now, it wouldn't be close, unless it's on p99.

Mage is best without any gear because especially without gear charm pets have a chance to kill you every time they break, they take a lot more work than people claim, and because of this you must play very diligently for as long as a grind session lasts and can take few and only quick breaks. That's the opposite of easy.

Monk fists are 3/38 to start...if that is BiS that is pathetic, and they are 20/38 at 50...

Yeah, but already 6/38 at lvl5, 9/38 at lvl9 etc. ... Oh, and it is 21/38 at lvl50.

However, BiS for monks during classic would be Wu's Tranquil Fist at 16/27.

List from Best to Worst IMO

Mage
Necromancer
Enchanter
Bard
Druid
Shaman
Monk
Cleric
Shadow Knight
Paladin
Warrior
Rogue

Also, remember MoTM mitigates damage down. And monk's fists do not have any damage bonus and can't be augmented. That is another reason why Wu's is a good main hand it gets a bit of damage bonus.

BiS for Monk in classic is 16/22, Wu's Fist of Mastery... which is the correct reward for Monk's Test of the Fist in PoS.

Wouldn't Rogue be higher on the list since he only needs a good piercer to do his job and not necessarily armor since if he's being beat on, he's dead anyway?

Winner.!

MotM reduce all damage - regardless of the source.

That one shouldn't be the reward before Velious, but if it is the default reward during Classic and Kunark as well then that is a clear oversight by the retroengineers in the DBG devteam. Also, ZAM is long overdue for an update on this quest.

1 - casters
2 - monk
3 - bard
4 - everyone else

Monk. Mage.

I'm not sure why people keep tossing casters into the mix exclusively. Monks, as melee characters go, are extremely easy to level, they have some pretty good bonuses in abilities and skills and start in places where they can readily find gear and quests that help them out. I have never gone wanting with a Monk.

The Mage is my choice for caster. You can summon a lot of equipment you might need, you can gain levels fairly quickly with the pet, and if the exp is going to be on a bonus, it will go super fast. A secondary for me is Necro. You can melee with a necro if you set your spells up to support it, joining in right beside your pet, and the necro drains make it easy to survive if you are a good player.

If you opt for a pet class, remember that giving your pet weapons and armor is something you have to do until you get more into the modern era of EQ. I'm not sure when the pets start getting armor automatically, but until they do, you need to remember to give it to them. They will get bonuses from magic and if a weapon has a proc, it will work so long as the pet is the right level and class. I favor piercing weapons for pets, but Warders should have fist weapons and Shaman pets can use piercing or blunt. The mage pets can use some of the mage foci to gain extra hit points and such, but if you have armor on, it will override the focus bonus. Make sure you give it magical bracer focus rather than non-magic wrist items. What it cannot use, it will give back in many cases. Low level pets can use two hand weapons pretty effectively. In fact, for a long time it was considered common to equip mage pets with 2 hand weapons until around L30ish. Now not so much.

Sorry I thought they mean with no gear except starting equipment. Bard probably should be lower than monk and cleric .

Mage. I leveled a mage to 60 on Agnarr with nothing but basic cloth gear. Was cake.

Automatically the max level, umm no. They averaged the levels a pet could be and THAT is now the level of the new pets, not the MAX

The only gear a '99 necro pet needed was FS daggers. Also, the fact that they had to be re-summoned or mobs aggroed them and so to travel invis you have to wait to summon them, has NOTHING to do with COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS.

Total and complete Bull***. The combat abilities of the necro pet has been nerfed either through direct nerfs (aka the nerfs to the classic '99 pets) or silent nerfs by making them not as powerful compared to content as the higher level pet spells came out in later expansions(stilll a nerf).

On Veeshan, the devs had known this for a LONG time. It was "a thing" that a necro pet could win in a duel vs a top geared warrior. Everyone knew it, for months. I used to discuss this with the GM on Veeshan before he quit, and he would just laugh and say that I better enjoy it while it lasted, because it would deffinitely be fixed.

My question is this, did you actually main a necro at all on live? Or are you just speaking out your rear?

Any caster class, literally.

This is actually false. lvl 4 mage pet could be lvl 3,4 ,5. If what you said was correct then it would always be level 4, its actually level 5 every time...

Same of the lvl 8 pet, it used to spawn in as level 6,7, 8, or 9 iirc, now it always is summoned at level 9.

The simply took the level range the pet could be and always made it so you summoned the max level for that spell.