Classes with the most and least devoted Mains

Thought I would start a fun discussion about which classes when you see someone maining has the greatest chance they are a hardcore min/max player who wants to push the limits of their toon and the classes when you see them have the greatest chance of being someone who just is more there for the ride and their toon is just a vehicle to experience the game.

Most Devoted:
1. Necro: I feel this class really attracts people who want to try hard and often people who main necros do not really like maining anything else. While I personally am not a necro player myself I always do watching the cool things hardcore necro mains manage to pull off
2. Bard: I feel bard mains are always fighting the stigma that their class is better done as a box and so bard mains are always try harding to prove that its worth it to main their character.

Least Devoted
1. Cleric: because clerics are always in such high demand this class really seems to attract people who are just looking for a way to find groups. They are less concerned with what their character can do and more with just finding some buddies to play with.
2. Warriors: Like clerics its a high demand class and a guild can never feel like they have too many in addition warrior are a lot like a luxury car and they need a lot of up keep and help in order to do their role. This attracts high playtime players like guild officers who are often more concerned with more broad large term goals rather than milking the most out of their characters performance.

Most Devoted: Anyone who still mains one of the classes that has been abandoned by the EQ dev's.
- Wizard
- Monk

Least Devoted:
- Any other class.

We have examples of almost every class having the rock stars vs their lounge lizards.

I miss you.

<3 Crixx

To give a serious answer though, I find mages and druids to be the most common choices for players who want to just coast along. Don't get me wrong, a truly devoted mage or druid can do awesome stuff, but coasting players tend to pick roles that are never really in the spotlight. Main tanks, clerics, pullers (in earlier content) etc. can make or break a raid. It's rare to say "well we would have won, but the druids didn't play well enough."

Kind of talking about 2 different things here. Min/Max vs not willing to change mains.

It's hard to say, since I see so many people that are great and so many that are not so great.

I would say for min/maxing, the people I see the most focuses on that are tanks and melee DPS. They see the most benefits from small gains.

For commitment to class, anyone willing to play a Wizard or a Cleric needs therapy.

I am committed to ENC, but not Min/Max, because I am interested in return on investment. Our abilities, such as our runes, guards, and various other abilities, prevent us from ever taking a hit in the first place, making minor gear improvements not that big of a deal.

for the bolded part anyone who loves these 2 classes don't need therapy. they need to be put into a padded room.

I feel that this is a trick question. While you have people that are looking for easy street in this game, those that show dedication to their class, no matter what, are going to succeed, DPG class balance issues or not. Sure, wizzies and monks are DPGs abandoned children, but I have seen dedicated players who play both and can give it their all to still make the class decent.

I think the difference is not in the class, but in the dedication of the players themselves. Too many want easy street, and they look at high end players and say, "That's what I want to do!" but then don't stick it out to become their idol. They have the Veruca Salt complex, "I want it and I want it now!" I don't know how many rogues I have tried to help out only to have them quit because they don't want to put in the work of knowing their class. They hit 120 think that just by pressing autoattack and backstab that they will do all this amazing damage, but they fail to devote time to AAs that make these skills so much better. They don't learn their rotations, their burns, when to hit what, keeping poisons up...the simple things that make the difference.

Then you have the rogues that can do it all (consistently be top 5 on parse, molo, etc), because of the devotion to their character.

SHD for players who love having an "I win" button.

Most devoted:

• Rogue - Very tactical class with many tools to max the potential.
• Cleric - Always min/max with mana efficiency for heals by timing and choosing the right spells.
• Magician - Many tools including all the summoned gear and pet choices, and I love the chaotic spell line with it's random effects. To bad that it seems being discontinued.

Least devoted:

• Shaman - Boring class without much tactical potential. Buffs/debuffs, DoTs and cannibalize mostly. About the same routine for each fight and is always casting something when using cannibalize, which is annoying.
• Paladin - Also a bit boring and limited in tools but I have not played it at higher levels.

I think one thing as a grouper that puts you up with the big boys is getting as much of your achievments done. The heroics you gain from doing all of those old boring zones missions really help out in my opinion. I used to blow them off and just focus on gear and augs but getting them done made a huge difference to me. The missions are super easy as a 120 so you might as well take those days when you are whining you cant get a group and go solo this crap.

Oh and also what Skuz said about SK up above.

I have never found anyone saying a box bard is better than a real bard. I have always been a bard main, so yes, I am devoted to my class. I tried telling a friend the other day, I'd really like to try playing my shaman more, he said why? you are happiest when you are on your bard(s). He says he can hear it in my voice when I talk about doing things as a bard.

Bard is probably the most devoted class because I don't know any other MMORPG that has a class that is similar to what a bard does. It is the most unique class that has ever existed (devs probably hate it because of the running casting so all clickies they have to make sure aren't a problem if bards were to use it while running).

I main clerics, but <only> for raids. Clerics in group content are silly to me mostly, some situations where a tank I know needs/wants a live cleric vs nameds, but for the most part groups want utility with their HP fountains.

Mercs made cleric group play pointless mostly.

I had a cleric box for years but after merc came out I stopped playing it because the cleric merc isn't as good but requires so much less work to do since as a bard /follow for a cleric trying to follow a bard makes it a nightmare in most zones.

/nod and like 75-80% of the players agree.

Nothing shines about a cleric main exterior to raids.

Is that a silent prayer for a healer merc nerf ? There were players in the forums that had asserted that a player controlled cleric is 3-5 times better than a healer merc.

Mercs made also the rogue and wizard classes a bit pointless but it is still fun to play them. And the tank merc is definetly OPed until lvl 50 but is about as weak in tanking as a T2 geared FTP rogue at lvl 115 on a FTP account.

It isn't whether a real cleric is better than a merc cleric. We all know a real cleric is much better. The problem is content normally doesn't need a real cleric and a merc works fine in group content. So you sacrifice the skill of a real cleric to be able to use a merc with less work.

The things that differentiate a played cleric from a merc go unnoticed in typical group grinds. Group content is balanced around all priests, so if a dru or shm can heal who wants a cleric vs the added utility / dps when heals aren't needed etc?

just that with some rare-ish situations, any other priest is as effective on heals as per demand. Only when we approach raid content does that shift.

On raids, heals are SO needed that it's worthy.

Even at raid level, many raids need more DPS / CC than heals, etc and Cleric is /twiddlesauce

Min/Max isent just in terms of gear though. There are some people who set up triggers and special hot bars so they have the perfect rotation or have scoured the globe for super niche clickies to squeeze out that 1-2% more effectiveness from their abilities. For instance I see a lot of necros who have special GINA triggers so they know the exact second to recast their DoTs so they have 100% uptime and 100% mana efficiency, But I don't see that behavior nearly as often with other DoT based classes like druid or Shaman.

That's a fair point. I don't Min/Max gear, but I do have audio triggers for a lot of things.
I have in game alerts for...
mez breaks
GoM/GGoM procs (cast a high mana spell next)

I have GINA for...
MC cast / fade (for rotations)
Alliance casts / procs (for rotations)
AE slow by other ENC
All 3 of our DoTs fading
Noctambulate casts
All 5 buffs landing on me, MGB probably happened (C, Haste, Spell guards x3)
Glyph Spray casts
Unity horn / feather used
Caster aDPS (IOG, Spire, Great wolf, Bard abilities, etc) Also note the % of crit since 40% is our cap, since spire only gives 9% crit and nothing else, I hold it when the group is over 40% crit.
etc

Also check log parses for cast counts, etc. As an ENC, being support, I often compare the amount of aDPS procs instead of my personal DPS. My goal to to see my mag/wiz in the top on the parse.

Another way to put it -- the issue is never whether a real cleric is better than a merc cleric, the issue is always whether a merc cleric is good enough.