It depends on gear while solo. If you are in raid gear, ANY melee class/tank is better than a caster.
Not looking to flame any class, or boast about another. BUT you have an interesting albeit incorrect opinion. ANY is a very strong word.
I did all the solo quests all the way up to EoK with my SK and Healer merc....I even took down the random named that spawned every once in a while.
Raid gear strongely benefits melee more than casters. Thats just a fact. Most stats don't do much for casters. The extra ac doesn't let them tank, ect. However, rangers, beastlords, rogues ect can tank in raid gear. Plus tanks do some really nice damage with raid weapons (and can afford to always go 2h). Raid gear just doesn't give the soloability/tankability to casters like it does melee. So I stand by my statement.
It really is starting to sound like you forgot about pets, if you wanted you could just cast swarm pets and re summon the main pet until a named was dead. Mages may not be the best but to claim they are below all melee for soloing is just false. These forums are a bit ridiculous sometimes.
Except that mages could never summon herds of swarm pets, that was necros. They get 1 swarm every 10 minutes or so.... And the thing about pets, that can handle 1 mob. 1. Read that: 1. ONE - O - N - E. They have no ae agro, they have really BAD agro (Any pet owner can overagro pet). They cannot tank multiples without multiple healer mercs (no longer soloing). And even if they were handling multiples, the healers would pull the extra mobs off the pet because it can any raise agro through melee combat on 1 mob. Forget using an AE when there are multiples in camp. Then the mage is .... "tanking" And about your swarm pet fantasies, that has been nerfed anyways. Swarm pets all start with zero agro, so necros they cant endlessly summon them for tanking, cause they will never get agro.
The question that was posed was "which class can solo/molo progression from COTF through ROS. A percentage of 90 was given, which seems silly - if the first zone of each expansion represents the 10% and you cannot get past it alone, then it is irrelevant that you can do the other 90%. Magicians can, as I said earlier, handle one mob with little to no difficulty for the most part. I would guess even a group gear, average AA magician with some competence can handle one mob. Two mobs starts to get a bit more challenging, but I would guess the majority of magicians can handle it. It is when you get to three, four, five, six mobs... no magician in the game can easily handle that. The upper upper tier of skill and talent and gear and AA can probably do it with a lot of luck, maybe 10-20% of the time. And I say that in current content and gear and levels, not racing to 110 then starting it. And that is my point- when you are doing progression from COTF to ROS, you are not going to have every encounter be one mob *unless* you are a class that can single pull a mob. Which is something that magicians just cannot do with consistency and accuracy. As far as what classes could do it, I am looking at classes that can handle crowd control and just kill one mob at a time. Classes like enchanter, monk, necromancer, shadow knight, possibly shaman are all options that could do it. Again if it was just a continuation of four straight expansions of killing one mob at a time to do progression, I would say magician is among that group. But progression is not. Thus why I say not really with magicians...
Ok but I still use my gargoyles for adds and can keep agro on the pets if I plan ahead. Try using agro weapons and sending the pet to multiple mobs off and on to keep it off the merc if/when all the gargoyles die. I'm not saying mages are overpowered or perfect but this post started out about strong molo classes and mages are for sure up there. Your claim was: "If you are in raid gear, ANY melee class/tank is better than a caster." , I disagree because I've played a melee with raid gear and an alt mage without and the alt is much better at tanking using the pets. Everyone has their role and what mages gain from pets they lose elsewhere but that does not mean they are weak solo.
I will have to ask one of the mages I always see moloing how they are able to do it. I know one of our raiding mages said he always had a problem with more than 3 but he could definitely handle three at once, as long as one wasn't a named. Either way three is two more than one!
Fair enough at level/gear and solo some missions would be rough without the more traditional splits but I think still possible. I guess they part I was curious about is saying mages can only handle one at a time and no splits since I have split things but I will admit it is messy and not simple at all. I was assuming you could go back after leveling/gearing past it(TDS with EoK gear etc) but nobody is going to be soloing the RoS group missions if that is included in the question.
Main Pet on 1, swarm pet on 2, forceful rejuvenation, another swarm pet on 2, Companion of necessity on 3, Burn mob 1 with all offensive aas. Switch main pet to Mob 2, cast 3rd swarm pet on mob 3, and a possible 4th swarm pet from clicky . Burn mob 2. Switch main pet to mob 3, finish. Yeah you can kill 3 tier 1 RoS mobs, if you know it's coming, have maxed most AAs ( 20,000+ ), have all burns available and ready, and push them ahead of time. Though technically you're only ever fighting 2 at once, the third is stunned/mezd for a short duration, if you've maxed all AAs you could possibly kill mob 1 during that time, if you have ALL offensive AAs available which is rare. Or you can get donkey-stomped in 2 seconds by a single add because your dead before you can react or get a spell off, or your AAs aren't refreshed, and this is the more common result. Source: play 3 110 mages at 20k+ aa , die multiple times nearly everyday from adds. Is it possible, yes, is it probable, no, if the adds are unexpected 99% of the time you're taking a dirt-nap. Your friend is being braggadocio .
He could be strutting, but the only option for many classes is to get "donkey-stomped." It still does not explain the large number of molo mages present in the game at any given time. Or the fact that most other classes ask for help in progression tasks.
And 1 berserker has Matched my Mage 3 box in DPS. And I play them really well. But I'm not crying about it because there are things Zerkers can't do. If soloing / moloing is your goal, start your own Mage/bst/necro. They're far from the best at everything, though. If your goal is a game where every class does everything equally well and are exactly the same, create that game, I'm sure people will flock to it,
Apparently you did not read the OP's original question: "Looking for the best/highest dps class that can solo 90% of all progression CoTF through Ros" I was answering the bolded part, I did not mention zerker because they are in your own words a "Donkey-stomped" class with no options.
They don't group with or help you because your an , and they have a choice. Other classes can't be so picky.
LOL, thanks. Still standing by my statement that the best molo classes are mage and necro, with SK coming in third.
