Hybrids Classic through PoP

Hail and Good Evening,

Hoping for some insight. I have scoured the web, and found tons of seemingly conflicting info. everything from rangers suck to they can top charts in classic. Pallies are the most underrated tanks. SK's can DPS upper mid tier style. I have a hard time separating fact from fiction.

I have historically played Shaman or Priest. though should a new tlp server get announced I plan to hybrid it up.

anyone around able to provide solid, unbiased and preferably informed advice as to what these three classes bring to the table for raids during the period of Classic through PoP in terms of spells / skills, AA's, and anything else?

I realize it will change as expansions progress. and I am sorry for asking for the effort. though I am grateful for anything provided.

Best Regards
Xyrax

I'd stay all three of these get better starting with Luclin expansion.

Rangers get bow AAs which improve their dps (this starts to drop off a bit in PoP but is still pretty easy/mindless dps). Paladins get cheaper stun lines which makes agro easier. SKs are always pretty good and yes with the right gear/disciplines they can do really well on the parse depending how good the other dps classes in your guild are.

Paladins/rangers aren't great in classic-kunark or even velious but still very playable and fun if you want to.

Rangers
Trash DPS in classic. Fine as group tanks
Decent DPS in Kunark. Fine as group tanks
Below avg DPS in Velious. Fine as group tanks
Top DPS in SOL and POP. Best XP group tanks(can tank anything but have much better dps). Can offtank anything a knight can in raids besides the fearless AA bosses.

Shadow Knights
Best tanks in Classic. DPS is
Best group tanks in Kunark/Velious. DPS still , but have decent burst so people think your DPS isn't
Good group tanks have plenty of raid tanking usage in SoL and PoP. DPS still , people still think your DPS is good because burst parses are decent

Pally
Sucks in Classic
Sucks in Kunark
Still a worse tank then a Ranger in Velious
In SoL become the strongest group tank. Main rampage tanks thanks to DA hammer
POP still the strongest group tank. Plenty of meaningful roles as a main/off tank on raids. Still the preferred Ramp tank

SK is the most versatile in my opinion. As an SK you can build pure tank and you're able to tank anything in the game through PoP. Paladin has marginally better tank ability because of self heals. However, SK can also get high on DPS charts if you're skilled.

What I like about SK is that if you build properly and are really on top of things you can be top of DPS lists even through PoP. Pretty much every era through PoP SK can do almost everything grouping through raiding.

Rangers are slightly less versatile: can tank e rrything but not quite as good... Better served as DPS, but in terms of grouping they're totally fine. With BIS gear on Agnarr, ranger can interchange melee and range DPS and it's probably equivalent so you can play variety of styles. Ranger is probably the easiest class to be decent at - especially in Luclin because you can just ask autofire on raids and you'll be a top 10 DPS. You'll never out DPS a good rog or monk who press their buttons properly but you'll always be respectable.

I see you mention raiding specifically, and it's important to keep in mind there are incredibly wide differences between that and groups. And that's often underappreciated when taken out of context.

So on a raid, sure a pally is a fine tank but compared to an sk they have absolutely nothing critical to offer. An sk has fd which is simply something you need sometimes. a pally has great heals for a group, but on a raid you're going to have a healer in your group and should have op heal pots until those get nerfed. Both of their aggro is stellar, but since players are bad and just don't know spell meta. Its easier to be a bad sk I think but they also have a higher skill cap given the fact they pull a lot in early eq.

I've raided with some great eq players who I know have no gainful employment, and can say with confidence that rangers are great dogs in luclin but they peter off fast. Sks can do great burns but they'll never compete on the parses fight after fight like a monk.

Classic through Velious is rough as a hybrid. The role of a hybrid is to take death touches and tank trash but know that warriors are more important so healers will be focusing on them. If all the hybrids die, the raid can still proceed and kill a boss. If all the warriors die, the raid stops until they are rebuffed, have endurance, etc.

Also know that in classic, at best, you're getting a 90% rez. However, you can end up getting 0% rezzes depending on how the fight is going and the size/skill of your guild. After 10+ deaths each week, it can get annoying.

Everything changes in Luclin through PoP:
Rangers - Fantastic sustained dps. Can actually do a lot more than simply /assist with a bow.
SK - Decent dps and also buffs the group's attack.
Paladin - Premier ramp tank (DA hammer) along with raid HP buff.

If I had to play a hybrid during Classic through Velious, I would play an Ogre SK. From Luclin through LDoN, all the roles are fun depending on what you want to do.

In genereal i'd recommend using the time untill the next possible tlp to try out the classes.

It also matters a lot if you plan to raid or not. I myself palyed SK on various TLp on more or less high end raid level so i have some insight on knights in general that might be useful to you:

All 3 classes are heavily gear dependant paticularly vs a priest, this sucks at the start of an expansion but has the advantage that you tend to scale a lot better.

SK are generally great but their dps comes a lot from spells. unless you have plenty of manaregen don't expect to be tanking and doing any more that melee dps in groups up untill luclin.
As mentioned before they are very versatile (invis, ivu, FD, corpse summon should not be underestminated, snare, lifetaps).
Their weakness is you have no reliable stun besides bash so healer mobs can be really annoying and even dangerous. Also their selfhealing is only based on lifetaps, particularly on raids you might encounter the odd mobs that are magic immune (no selfhealing) and motm reduces spelldamage a lot which means on bosses your only somewhat useful selfheal is durationtaps as a lifetap will hit for like 15 dmg = 15 hp healed. You are also quite dependant on other classes for cures
Still in general SKs are good and in luclin they reall start to shine (AAs stack nicely, resolves manaregen) and it is lzclin i think we get our first lich, which makes you the only hybrid that is not that reliant on a manregen buff (thus going well with a shammy for the infamous shammy / SK duo).
I'd also like to mention untill luclin SKs don'T have access to their terror line, and that line only becomes worthwhile around PoP as main agro, so you rely on disease cloud, snare for agro... meaning if you tank something you also dot it, wich can mess things up if your group / raid also relies on mezzing mobs. The advantage on terrors is that they are instant cast once you get them, which makes kiting a lot easier vs the time it had a casttime.

Paladins are also great, while they will always rely on others for dps as gear and manargeen rises they are less and less reliant on a healer. Also they do have access to res and lesser / lower versions of cleric buffs as well their unique brell line.
For raids they bring LoH that acts as a redicolous (spelling?) duration heal, heals for everyone, cures also great agro and are not limited on the mobs around but rather their manaregen and pool.
They also have the earlies form of AE agro in the form of groupheals, something SK gets in OoW (!!).
Honorably mention is their PoP spell "Shackles of Tunare" (i think that wa steh name), a rather low resit and really fast cast root that enables a skilled pally to root-cc-pull stuff vs the rather slow split of a SK pulling.
For grouping in gereal I think a pally can get away with a bit less gear due their stuns and selfhealing, but long term SK has the better passive selfhealing that evetually can outpace the dps you take from mobs.

For ranger I cannot say much, besids you possibly be the hero on a Lady N raid in velious if you expend the arrows (range dps without manause). They get a great / cheap long term snare that does not dot a mob, the mentioned bow AA in luclin, some okish heals and buffs the first expansions an really good buffs for raids during luclin.
However their best feature of all is that after 20 years EQ the deposit of dead ranger jokes is not yet exhausted

Paladins are just fine in classic. you can tank anything in the game, great agro for groups,. and you get great heals. undead nukes in lower guk are also good dps. kunark and velious suck as a paladin, gets a bit better in luclin, and takes off in PoP and beyond

Not to pick nits, but Disease Cloud no longer has the aggro it did way back. 3-4 darkness casts will lock aggro pretty well, though.

All good you are right. I forgot that one, prolly because it has been a while and also i like to play with enchanters and so really don't like any form of DoT as agro

I think people sleep on Pallies and Rangers in Classic through Velious with their quest spell a ranger can easily top charts and tank anything but Inny and CT.

In Sky especially they are deadly. And kunark with epic and wurmslayer they can parse with middle of the road monks and rogues.

Velius is a low point, but Luclin and PoP they become gods.

Also if a ranger and pally keep a high mana/wis set on hand they can heal as well as any druid or shaman with snap aggro, and speedbump utility. And pally LOH can flat save a raid from a wipe.

Pally stuns, cures, and group heals, ranger weaponshield + taunt and high aggro generation allows for them to pseudo mini defensive that gives time for a rezzed tank to get buffed or a defensive to come off cooldown.

And both just LOVE being touched to death!!!

All in all, I feel either one in the hands of a skilled player that understands more than raw dps or hps is a very very valuable edition to a raid.

(But bro if you suck or don't try to learn your class with these two you are all but worthless to raid)

Also keep in mind Rangers get the benefit of the upgraded Druid line of DoT spells, which now hit like a truck.

Those plus melee or archery adds up to crazy dps.

@Abyssmul Does anyone around have a breakdown for the SK like this guys for Pally and Ranger?

I would like to nitpick the terror part(Someone beat me to the disease cloud part), in PoP Asystole and Clinging Darkness should be your main aggro spells. Terror's are situational for usefulness. It's either GoD or OoW when they finally get large enough to replace CD as a primary threat spell. Against mezzable mob(in Luclin and PoP), fear and invoke fear are larger hit then the terror spells, but the cast and recast time sucks.
Additional SK get their first lich buff as a proc off souldefiler in Velious, and it's better than lich spell they get Luclin.

Sk in groups everyone knows what's up. You want them or a pal if you're pugging. Great utility. Amazing aggro.

On raids there are good ones and bad ones. the bad ones just react slow. But otherwise they are mainly off tanks constantly picking up adds. They are great at it. There will be a few burns where they parse well but if you're not chasing open world mobs you may never get to see them shine in that regard. Otherwise on raids theyre just middle of the pack dps whose primary job is to kite mobs, off tank, and sometimes assist in pulling.

Sk raiding is not glorious but good players know and appreciate a good sk. Likewise, when nothing gets picked up and mobs run loose constantly the sks will be looked down on.

Paladins are by far the best group tank from level 28 onwards in Classic, and only gets better as time progresses.

Terror is my pull spell, primarily because it is instant cast.

Dozens (hundreds?) of SKs would disagree. It's pretty widely known that SKs make the best group tanks. If not, why do they outnumber paladins 10 to 1?

Paladins are definitely great group tanks, and the rez gives them an edge if you play late nights when sometimes you can't expect clerics.

But I think most people like sk because modern eq is damage centric kill kill kill faster attitude. And also a Paladins typical role on raids is keep yourself DA and turn on attack. I.e. sad, unfun, and underappreciated. Before da hammers I've also seen paladins basically play bad cleric standin which probably isn't fun.

Rez is not a terribly important spell and the tank being typically the most likely to die amd the least capable of medding is the worst place for it. Make your group bind nearby and run back + don't take an awkward composition pug to somewhere like DN thats rough for doing that. Sks have better damage and also better agro and outside lay on hands actually better self survivability. There is literally nothing a paladin does better in the early stages of eq except for ramp tank. Making a paladin you plan to stop in pop with is only useful if your guild has none, or you want some kind of roleplay questing sentiment. Shadowknight is a pretty consistent contender for most or close to it OP class through most of eqs expansions.

Rangers are great in this stage just they fall behind in potential dps later. If you plan to quit before 70 that's not a problem. Monks will be better for the first few expacs and then you peak, sks will top sometimes when discing but your sustained dps is higher.