So! I've tried basically everything since I joined a month ago, and I'm much less of a newbie now And I've bounced all over the place in my preferences. For example, I love Warrior's personality and playfeel, but the inability to go DPS spec when I'm tired and don't feel like playing Aggro Whack-a-Mole was ultimately a deal-breaker. At this point, with a fair amount of play experience, I feel most comfortable with Ranger and Beastlord. Between these two, though, I don't have a strong preference — I find them equally fun (in different ways). But, I'm still fairly new, and my experiences are still fairly low-level. So I'm interested in any advice / guidance / recommendations more experienced players might offer about choosing between these two classes.
There really isn't any "advice". Both are strong Hybrid DPS classes, that bring a lot of different "Toys" and "Parlor Tricks" to the table. Only way to choose (forever) is to buy a Heroic toon at 85 and play it to 90 - then exchange it and do the same. You'll have a good personal handle on what they do. -W
Here's one way to look at it. (Definitely not involved as I've never played a beastlord; pet classes and I don't typically get along.) Rangers - have track (so you'll always know whether named are up) Beastlords - have full time pets so you have to be comfortable managing your character as well as the pet
No wrong choice there, both fun to play and effective. If it was me, I'd probably go ranger, if for nothing else but tracking. Tracking in EQ is something that is actually incredibly handy, as things don't have a big yellow arrow over their head telling you where they are lol. Rangers also get some really nice AA, endless quiver (which means you can buy 1 really awesome expensive arrow and use it forever), some great bow disciplines that turn their ranged attacks into something pretty amazing, instant permanent camo (invisibility), the ability to pull single monsters out of a crowd (which is really important the higher level you get, and makes trying to solo/molo much easier). BL tend to be a bit more involved due to the pet managing issues. This can cut both ways. It's fun, but it can also get tedious after a while. BL are more or less mini shamans, so you end up with a ton of fairly useful buffs. They are certainly a strong class with very few down sides. I personally really like having a castable snare (BL get a spell that makes their pets snare). Rangers can both snare and root, which makes a variety of playstyles open up solo. You can snare/root mobs, and use your ranged attacks to kite them around, while a DPS merc blasts them, or you can take a tank merc and use your healing to keep you both up, or you can take a healer merc and tank stuff yourself. I really like the variety of play that ranger offers, it's just a fun class. Like I said, no wrong answer, both fun. I'm sure you'll be happy with either choice, and given what kind of game EQ is, I'm sure you'll end up leveling both of them at some point so...flip a coin lol.
... unfortunately unavailable until dinging 85 for Two-Hander Proficiency and looting or buying an appropriate weapon...
Ranger play is much more straightforward. Bst dps is melee + werewolves/nukes + dots + pet + discs, Ranger skips the werewolves & dots, and their arrowspells/nukes all go on one button. In the current end game, the ceiling on bst dps is higher than ranger, but these things flux.
See I get a lot of mixed signals about this from players. Some people have told me WAR just flat-out is not ever a DPS and isn't going to be brought to groups as anything but Tank, ever. Other people (usually Warriors) insist they're DPS if they feel like it. It's confusing.
When I was rolling with Warrior, people strongly encouraged me to box (Wiz Merc + F2P Bard + A5 Cleric Merc). I also notice boxing being advised for other melee classes (Monk and Zerker threads, for example). Is boxing also recommended for Ranger?
Well, it's confusing because it's complicated. Warriors are tanks first. DPS is our secondary role, a long step back from the tank role. A maxed-out warrior is going to do OK DPS - but someone else has to be doing the tanking for that to work, because our heavy DPS configuration (2-hander and 2-hander proficiency, mainly) negates a lot of our defensive ability. More peripherally, a warrior has to max out all their defensive and aggro AA first, in order to do their primary job, before they think about the DPS AA. This means your level-appropriate DPS, low as it is, will lag behind your tanking. That said, if you have friends who play tanks, it's viable to DPS as a warrior - just don't expect to outshine the DPS classes. For example, I have an SK buddy who is an absolute aggro hog and hates not being the tank in groups, so I just shrug and whip out my 2-hander when we group up. It's a nice change of pace from being the main tank all the time. At high levels, warriors get a disc called Offensive that lasts 3 minutes and has a 4 minute refresh. Along with the other warrior DPS discs, if you are purely DPSing, you can have a DPS disc running around 90% of the time. The problem is, as I mentioned, this locks out your defensive discs; Offensive disc especially makes you actually take more damage (it's the reverse of our defensive discs in that sense), and shares a timer with Last Stand, the strongest defensive discipline. This means that if something goes bad and you are suddenly called on to tank, you'll be at a heavy disadvantage until you can shift gears. Even with all the warrior DPS tricks combined, an actual DPS class will smoke your numbers every time if they are paying any attention and have half a clue what they are doing. A warrior on DPS mode is pretty good sustained DPS over time, but really doesn't spike very high. We do however get a lot out of melee ADPS, more than most other classes, to the point that there have been times when the melee DPS classes complained that warrior DPS was too high, encroaching on their turf, because of how much of a boost we get from playing along with a bard/shaman/beastlord. So, end result, a lot of warriors never bother to learn to max their personal DPS, and will tell you not to bother as well because "we aren't DPS and should always be tanking". Personally, I've always favored knowing all the tricks my class is capable of, and recognizing that what "should" be, isn't always what actually is the case. It's happened to me plenty of times in groups that I was not the main tank, and I prefer to be more than a hanger-on in those cases.
Beastlord plain and simple, Elidroth and other folks that 'balance' have a proven track record of what could essentially amount to a vendetta against classes with too much utility (in their eyes) and getting further development. Rangers have been the same for roughly 10 years, Beastlords on the other hand bring not only huge utility for themselves but the raid or group they visit. As well as a much better ability to tank and debuff and dps.
I like all 3 classes, but dislike playing a Bst the most. It's a pet class, and only pet class I have really liked has been Shm. However, I didn't do much with the pet on the Shm other than send in to attack. Playing with others is great though. I probably wouldn't have quit the Ranger, 'cept for the fact that I was tanking about 90% of the time against hard mobs (red and yellow cons and nameds). It's not what a Rng was designed for, but a War does that fine. And another thing to realize is alot of the differences aren't super significant. They are significant, but people tend to exaggerate the differences to make them clearer. Like War not being able to dps and many would say Rng can't really tank. They both can, just won't be quite as good as the other, and if not worked quite a bit less than the other. Boxing is more of personal thing. I don't enjoy it too much. When I had a fast machine or used two computers it wasn't too bad. But, I don't like lag. Alot of Rngs box. Shm seems to be the favorite, but people box all kinds of classes with Rng. If you like pet classes, Bst is probably an excellent pick. As they are a busy class like Bard is (although as I remember you didn't play yours that way too much, since you were just starting out). Shm is a busy class also, managing rebuffs, their pet, their mana, and group health. Like Crystilia, I'm not a big fan of playing a pet classes (Shm excluded 'cause I don't really micro manage the pet like other classes). Well, I think I rembled enough and still don't think I got to the original point I wanted to. But, Oh well. It's some gibberish to read, none the less. Yther Ore.
I love boxing. I came back to the game a few years ago after leaving at the end of PoP. I went from totally confused to 3 boxing in about a month lol. I find boxing to be a really fun meta game. What combination of classes and skills with what mercs etc. I've gotten a few years of game out of *just* experimenting with that. You don't even need any software to box, you can open multiple EQ clients at the same time and just log onto a different account. I run 3 accounts in windowed mode and just switch between them, it's easy, fast, and works really really well. Be warned, if you get bit by the boxing bug, you're in some trouble lol. What if I put a chanter with this ranger...........and off you go down the rabbit hole.
The war dps thing is a lot like druid dps, and I have a lot of experience with that. The primary role of my class is a healer. Any guilds recruiting a druid are looking for another healer, if I started shouting lfg and joined pickup groups, they would expect me to heal. Now depending on the content, and group makeup, I won't have to be healing all the time. Those times where my healing isn't needed, I get to dps. The druid class gimmick is being the personal dps healer, so I should be pretty good at it, right? When I was in a midtier guild, I could place pretty good on parses, usually top 10 if I was trying hard and nothing bad happened. Same for exp groups with another healer in them. Then I joined roi, and am playing with the best players of the other classes, and I don't get anywhere near top 10 on parses anymore. Same for exp groups, I'm not going to beat any of our actual dps classes on anything. A good parse for me now isn't if I can make top 10, it's if I break 50% of the top parses. If you're running a non-dps class against the real dps classes, you will only win when you're out-skilling them. Once skill level evens out, you will lose. If you want to be dps, play a dps class. Trying to sneak in from the side by being a druid, war, or sk is only going to lead to disappointment.
Thanks, that analysis makes a lot of sense. A lot of my confusion stems from coming to EQ1 from playing mostly very-recent MMOs, which — if they even still use a trinity or role system — tend to be very flexible in terms of what one class can do in a group (via specs, stances, etc). In eg, SWTOR, if I have 1 hour before bed and I'm way too tired for all the responsibility a Tank has to worry about, I can just DPS in my DPS spec (and perform 95%+ of the pure DPS classes, so more than sufficient to justify the group spot). On days I'm rested and feel like taking charge, I can just swap to my Tank spec and off I go at full tanking performance. I can even mostly get away with sharing gear between both specs. Basically, no one argues or raises an eyebrow if my SWTOR Warrior shows up as DPS or Tank, because I can do both equally-well. EQ1 has absolutely no patience for such shenanigans, which has taken a little getting used to. That's why I switched to finding a Melee DPS to play — because I'm in the position of "too sleepy to care if wizard just butt-pulled a rabid bear" more often than not these days, when I get time to play.
You've been stuck the same way I have. I wanted to be a melee blender sort of but with utility. I like a warrior I had from ages ago, but everyone says ill have to tank, and I prefer main healing or blasting numbers out to tanking usually. My stuck is between Ranger and Bard and Beast and Cleric, but mostly leaning to ranger now. They just have tons of other stuff to do but are still a designated blender. Hopefully we can settle on classes someday soon ;p I'll laugh if I just decide to play a wizard or something in the end.
Wonder why you dont go Monk. Can tank some, can dps well, can roam freely, can molo well - all in all high lvl of fun. And if you want to dual wield swords, get an orna: I got two from a GM event, there are cheap ones from the SC as well..
Hey, that's why I specified "paying attention and have half a clue". I've outparsed slacker DPS on plenty of occasions, and I give them crap for it every time, because it means they aren't doing their jobs.
This is an extremely good suggestion (and also the very first class Iila suggested to me, for the same reasons). I can say this confidently, having tried MNK myself. You're correct — MNK is a great compromise solution for someone who wants a lot of the feel WAR offers, but without the obligation to tank 24/7 (or, well, 23/6). It's simple, straightforward, has DW/DA/blender melee, high weapon skill caps, does tons of damage, yet is still very survivable when AA'd up and played smartly. And yes, with ornaments you even get swords! Unfortunately, I don't enjoy playing MNK. It's just me — there's nothing at all wrong with the class. I loved it at first, since it's got the blender-melee feel of WAR but with more freedom/flexibility. Over time, though, I started to notice I really didn't care about ... anything. New weapon? New skill? Combat? Eh... okay, whatever. Once I started to just Pull → FD and let the merc deal with it while I tabbed out to Reddit, I realized I probably wasn't very engaged with MNK's concept / playstyle.
