I was curious, what classes are considered to have the easier of times completing their epic 1.5 and 2.0 quests? Which classes have it the hardest? Also, which epics are considered very useful and which ones are generally not needed at all?
The epic 1.5, 2.0 are great quests for the most part. They can be done start to finish in a relatively short time frame (2-3 hours if you have a character that can handle the "raid" encounters) as there are very few roadblocks with a couple of exceptions. Almost all of the epics will require a trade skill of some type be raised to the 100+ range which is often the step that takes the most time. The two that stand out to me as exceptions were the rogue epic and shadowknight epic. The rogue epic required far more trade skills, a LDoN raid instance, and a Hateplane raid instance. The latter two items have been resolved as far as I know. The shadowknight epic required a few drops that can be rare for some. First it required killing a named in Dranik City that was elusive and took several hours alone, and second it required a drop from Plane of Nightmare in which the mobs have a 90 minute respawn which is also somewhat rare. Aside from those two, I was able to do the rest of them quickly from start to finish with few major hangups.
Easiest: SK. Worst: Rogue Mandatory: Necro (focus) SK, Cleric (clickies) Clicky effects on the rest are of varying degrees of usefulness, but most are useful. I don't really know which ones scale in level off of the top of my head, but Bard, Shaman, Paladin are probably next highest in usefulness.
I don't recall the LDoN raid, but the Hate raid requires a lot of people to assist you, which can be hard to arrange - unless that was the "resolved" you were referring to? Paladin also requires a gather of people in Felwithe to help you. Which makes rogue and paladin the hardest 1.5/2.0 epics to complete. All 2.0 require an Anguish orb, and therefore a raid instance, but that just evens out the playing field.
Did you have your Wizard 1.0 or the Runes already? We've completed six 1.5s (including prequests) in the last month, but I am still looking for three of the "common" Runes still for the Wizard 1.5 pre-quest. I vendor dive daily, I've wasted entire evenings of play time AoEing Veksar, Santus Seru and other places one of these dropped in 2003. I've even started checking for the 1.0 mobs (VS and the fish guy.. like that will happen). I honestly think we'll have 1.5s for the entire guild before I find the last three Runes.
I did the wizard 1.0 way back when we still needed the skin from Cazic Thule. Now that was a nightmare! Phinny is pretty easy to find up, as he repops about every 12 hours. Odds are if you check the zone often you'll find someone camping one of the other drops and they will gladly give up the Blue Crystal Staff if it drops. Venril Sathir is a little trickier but just requires persistence by checking the zone often. The entire wizard epic 1.0 can be multi-quested too in just minutes. You just need to locate the three staves and you're basically done.
I did the 1.0 rather than camping runes (for wizard 1.0); I suspect that some of them don't drop in the way that they should, based on reading many other posts on the subject over the years.
Speaking in terms of pure difficulty getting rare drops/spawning rare creatures/gathering up peeps to do old content, the zerk 1.5/2.0 is relatively easy. Maybe not the easiest but definitely top 5. As far as usefulness, the zerk epic click is, and forever will be, useful since its crit chance multiplier scales by % and not by a set amount.
The freaking jelly fish in Dranik .. 2 weeks 12 hours a day (camped him while I worked and while I played at home) .... /rude!
I've done the Rogue and Pal epics twice each, Rogue is much worse. Yes, the Pal 2.0 headcount in Felwithe sucks as does and they should fix it, and camping the orc messenger in crushbone is boring, but not exactly hard. They fixed the headcount check for PoH instance for 1.5, but you still have to do a bunch of EF LDoN group missions to get the reanimation formula (some were unlucky and had to do a LOT of these, like 20+) Not to mention the AE-Deathtouching Undead Renux (that mercs won't cure) and that's just the 1.5... 2.0 is really not bad at all in comparison. The Frozen Nightmare raid can be a little tricky/buggy in places but I have yet to fail it. The rest is typical running around and mobs that drop dead easily these days. A lot of 2.0's are like this that are basically all about the Anguish globe and a couple easy drops/kills. I seem to recall necro 2.0 being a 20min quest besides the globe.
