There's no reason to invite a Wizard or Rogue to your group.

I see, you misinterpreted my saying "all classes are terrible" as a comparison between said classes and the creatures/mobs they are going up against.

Sorry about the confusion.

What I guess I should say is Classic EQ is terrible. Nearly no class definition. Boring zero-mechanic raids. And the largest reason new TLP starting in classic even have a large population at the start is because people from one of the other 10 TLPs + live servers come to make easy Krono.

I really hope they stop the cycle of starting in Classic for next years 25th Anniversary TLP server. They need to shake it up a bit. None of the classes in EQ feels finished until about Luclin, when they start getting some class defining AAs and abilities. People keep asking for Zerkers in classic, But I dont think they really want that. They would just be left with a Warrior with less mitigation and no taunt button.

there's definitely a reason to have a wizard and/or a rogue in a group... this is a TLP and classic... you don't need to be optimized in order to successfully kill mobs, raid, or gain xp. You can have any assortment of class and you'll be just fine as long as you have a healer and some kind of tank. The other 4 can be anyting

Meanwhile on Mischief, wizards and rogues are top DPS.

You simple people discussing classic strats.

Coming from a Wizard perspective, this is false. The issue is that there are so few *good* wizards. Most people feel to play a wizard, you need to nuke until empty then med for 10 minutes.This is incorrect, and is the sign of a bad wizard. The purpose of a Wizard in a 6-man group is not to do dps, it's to *keep the party alive*. A wizard is a "break glass in case of emergency". His primary goal is to keep an eye on the party during encounters and decide when the situation needs a burn, or an evac. He keeps the party from wiping.

Like I said, most people don't know how to play a wizard well, so here's a basic primer. First, a wizard should have the following spells on his bar: Three direct damage nukes (A quick low-mana, low dmg one, usually from a few levels before), a solid mid-level nuke, the most mana efficient one he has access to, and the biggest nuke he owns. That first one is for times when the mob is almost dead but needs a small amount of damage to finish it off, like a runner. The second one is his 'normal' nuke, the one he casts most often that gets the best bang for the buck. And the last is for when you absolutely have to kill something right now, to hell with the mana cost or aggro; this one is for when the situation is falling apart, and you gotta get it under control.

Next, you need the strongest rain spell you have access to. To the guy who said he kicks any wizard out who uses rains, either you are playing with bad wizards or you're an idiot. Rains are the way wizards keep up with other classes. The problem is that many wizards don't know how to use them. They cast it directly on the primary target and hope for the best. But what many players don't know is that you can cast a rain spell on almost any target, including corpses. What the wizard needs to do is know where the mezzed mobs are, and find a PC or corpse who is positioned so that they are in range of the primary target but NOT near the mezzed targets. There is nearly always someone you can target with the rain spell who meets these criteria. And usually someone in the party can help with this. Ask that bard to try and stay to one side away from the mezzed targets, or the cleric, etc etc. Or find a corpse on the ground and ask the tank to position the target near there. It's about teamwork.

Also, the wizard needs EVAC loaded. At no time should he ever take evac off his bar. There is no other spell more important than this in a group. A well timed evac is the difference between wiping at Unrest FP and potentionally losing the camp cause you need 30 minutes to recover at the zone line, and a short 3 minute run back. Always have evac loaded.

Also, under normal circumstances, a wizard should never drop below 60% mana. Preferably, they should stay above 80% mana at all times, but should never hit 100%. Any time you are sitting at 100% is time you are losing efficiency.

Another note: All wizards over about lvl 20 should have Greater Conc running constantly. Consider it part of your required gear. you should never run out of conc pots. Mana regen is life for a wizard, so ABC: Always Be Concentrating. ALWAYS Be Concentrating.

Gearing wizards is easy. Whichever gear gives you the most mana is the correct one. Don't worry about HP or Str or anything else, everything besides mana is secondary. MAYBE Flowing Thought, but FT is gonna come with mana regardless.

I hope this will help anyone playing a wizard, and I hope people will give wizards a chance in groups.

Yeah, I don't think a lot know how to play one well. I mained a Wizard on Cazic-Thule.

That's how I would run too - 60-80% mana and just pace my damage. I had an XLS with the spells and it would calculate the ratio of mana to damage, so I knew which to use to keep my efficiency as high as possible. This may vary by mob resists, that's why I kept that XLS as it still helped me 'optimize' on mobs that resisted or were immune to certain types of damage.

Then, when the SHTF, it was time to unload. Often, the group wouldn't even realize just what happened. I would call it "Wizard crowd control".

To that concept, I think the INT casters were all a part of that concept of handling groups of mobs. The enchanter could mez, Mage could pet off-tank, Wizard could just melt stuff.

I also mained a Mage and in some zones - like Plane of Fire, you are pretty restricted on what spells you can use, but the Wizard always has options.

Where a Warrior must keep a high focus on gear - the Wizard has to know their spells and put in the time there, instead of just gearing.

Of course, mana regen and mana supply are pretty critical as well.

I'm not being sarcastic, most mages never use malo and if you get one you should play with them often and add them to friends.

You're not wrong about Wizard being theoretically great DPS, but the situations like that seldom occur in groups on Oakwynd. And in classic, a Rogue could potentially be good because the good Rogue weapons that drop are similar ratio to monk fists, but have gem slots and procs + backstab is prob more damage than flying kick in most situations. But I think the problem where Rogues really start to feel like trash is actually when Monks start getting their epic fists which aren't replaced until Monks get PoTime weapons. That's how strong they are.

I played a rogue extensively on Mischief and had access to best in slot everything (loot was super easy to come by, this isn't a brag), but also had a Monk, and can confirm that Rogues can't really consistently out-damage Monks until the end of PoP, but Monks still bring a lot more to the group, and have no positional requirement, and don't have to coat their weapons with an expensive and clunky poison system. And not soon after this point, berserkers are released which blow Rogues out of the water anyways.

So it's just like eh... I mean these same arguments apply to a lot of other classes too, like Monk doesn't just make Rogue damage obsolete, it makes a lot of other classes damage feel obsolete as well, it's just that Rogues can ONLY do melee DPS so it makes that class seem even worse than it normally would. At least the other classes bring some type of utility or can pull / tank.

The simple solution to all of this would be to simply make Monk fists classic again. It's not like the class would become obsolete, monks still have the best ratio weapons in classic, velious, kunark, luclin etc. They would still be just as viable as they are now, but they would require weapons in order to do so, and Rogues and Rangers would suddenly be a lot more appealing to groups or raids.

I'm an incredibly skilled player. I've played WoW for nearly 20 years now, and have been a gladiator multiple seasons in a row. I'm used to using a million keybinds at a time, so when I come over to a game like EverQuest and play a class like Wizard, it's an incredibly trivial experience for me. But yes, when a Wizard is doing Hamlord with a Cleric and Magician in their group, and you're waiting for the mob to get low enough HP to finish it off, you will often times realize you can't finish casting your nuke before the Magician and Cleric boom the target down because their spells cast dramatically faster (and in the case of the Cleric, are less likely to be resisted or pull aggro). When I'm doing Hamlord on other characters, I always tell them to get a Cleric over any other DPS class because of how good they are for this camp + you have the back up heals / rez if need be, or if someone leaves.

Now you could just nuke prematurely and pull aggro off of the tank, but that's actually what I would consider bad game play. In a situation where you are the only nuker in the group, this obviously is less of a problem.

But yeah y'all can't really fathom how skilled I am at this game without witnessing it, I've never been in a group on my Enchanter where people aren't blown away with how skilled I am, and it's not even challenging for me because again, an Enchanter on EverQuest requires less mechanical than the easiest class in the game on WoW (a priest).

I'm pretty insane on Shaman too because I played one for years on P99 and was one of those Shamans you see mashing cannibalize and Torpor to solo dragons. I come over to TLP and realize I'm the only Shaman who plays like this, like I will easily main heal a group, malo/slow everything, keep regen, full buffs, resists, haste on everyone, and micro manage a pet while still maintaining 80% mana.

I've never seen another Shaman do any of this.

Last night I was playing a Monk and the Cleric in the group was going to go to sleep because they were so sleepy and as soon as I joined the group I pointed out that another camp was taking all of our pulls, and they said it's because we're nerds who think the game is P99 and let people walk all over us. I was like nah homie, I'm the type of person to take someones entire camp right out from under them and then taunt them afterwards. And I think that piqued everyones interest. I started pulling all of live side Lower Guk, all of Exe/Cav//Sup, stealing Frenzied etc. to Hamlord without missing a beat.

The cleric who was going to go to sleep stayed awake for another 5 hours, and everyone popped XP pots and started raving about how insane the exp was.

I'm an incredibly skilled player, and likely the most skilled player on the entirety of TLP, but it's not from playing TLP, it's from 20 years of playing WoW, and then years of playing P99. You don't develop this type of skill level playing on TLP. The hardcore TLP players just box 6 toons, they don't try to learn how to be mechanically gifted with a single character the way P99 players do, and the average P99 player lacks mechanical skills that WoW players have.

I'm basically the best of both worlds, so it always cracks me up when people try to imply that I'm not a highly skilled player and that's why I have problems with certain classes.

I'll give you a hint BTW, I can box my Cleric and Wizard easier than I can play my Shaman by itself. Wizard is that simplistic. (On P99 at least they quad kite, so there can be some skill involved).

We should group in game sometime BTW if you doubt me. It's prob the fastest exp you'll ever see, it always shocks people when I do 1-40 in a day without XP pots lmao. TLP is the easiest MMO you'll ever play.

I didn't have issues with this at all when I leveled my Cleric 45-50 at BNB with a Ranger tank. I kept Reso/Naltron/Shield of Words/Magic Resist on them though. No one was geared enough to warrant Complete Heals back then (most of us were naked with a few pieces of cloth when server first launched). And the charmed lava beetles and LDCs did most of the work anyways.

I also leveled with a Ranger at Hamlord who was my fav tank to date. I still talk to the dude and he's one of my favorite dudes to group with because of how good he is at pulling, he somehow knows when every mob in the camp is going to spawn down to the actual second, it's pretty impressive, but healing him was never an issue.

I think if people are like exclusively leveling in the Hole then maybe they are running into issues with Ranger tanks, but hell, when I leveled my Warrior in the Hole, the Enchanter pet was tanking 80% of the time anyways, so IDEK how applicable that is. I did have to tank that rat that they accidentally pulled who hit for 300 consistently and took like 10 minutes to kill. IDK if a Ranger could have done that.

IMO there is so much more to EQ than an optimized group. I would much rather have cool/funny/interesting people in an unoptimized group than a perfectly optimized group with less than savory folks. In fact some of the best times I had on retail back in the day was when we got creative and made poorly optimized groups (or raids) work with whatever we had. Pushing classes to the limits or getting creative with their abilities (even when it fails) can be just as fun as being a well oiled XP machine.

Good that you found the forums, welcome mate. Many of us could not get enough of your wisdom in-game in Oakwynd. I have snipped out irrelevant parts so the simpletons here can focus on the key parts, hope it help!!

We adore the experts from P99, especially top notch (global 1st) player like you! Welcome and share your knowledge please.

Meleegibson
Worst Shaman ever in EQ - Oakwynd

If you've only played P99 and original era EQ you are not a skillful player and everyone with multiple 120's on their main servers laugh at you for making that claim

You surely must at least accept no shaman ever in live EQ when Velious were live (2001?) used Canni and Torpor though? Not even in the dozen TLPs till date. You just need to accept the inferiority, and then learn from the gladiator (?), mate, please.

You play one of the most overpowered classes during the most brain dead simple eras of the game. You are not a gladiator. You are assuming that you are good because your class is so unbalanced. It's not you it's bad mechanics. You'd be crying like a rat eating red onions if you had to deal with mobs that mitigated your slow

Sarchasm fail on my part

we both failed there