Alright gang, I have recently returned to the game and am really having a hard time deicing which class I want to stick with and make my main to primarily play. I have it narrowed down between Warrior and Monk and want your advice. So, a little information about my goals and my concerns. My goal is to meet some friends to play with regularly and group up for challenging content. At the same time, I enjoy the option of being able to solo or camp things on my own. My concern, is that throughout the week my playtime is limited to 2-3 hours max in the evenings. I am worried that being a tank, no one will want to throw a group together for such a limited time - I remember the days of people going for long, long grinding sessions. Also, I remember dps being a dime-a-dozen, so when I do have time to get in a healthy grind session on the weekends or days off, I wont be able to find a solid group to hang with because the slots are already full. Any advice / thoughts? I truly do believe that I will enjoy both classes, but I am the type that I cannot play them both. I need to commit to one or the other and focus on it.
If you want to be a tank you should go Warrior. It'll be challenging as you're going to have to spend a lot of time getting your AA's and augs but you shouldn't have any problems with getting groups if you do.
DPS is "a dime-a-dozen" because all groups [should] want 3-4 high dps in them. If you're good, folks will want you around.
If I had to start over again my choices would be paladin or berserker. A paladin can do everything the other tanks can do in addition to healing and curing like a priest. A berserker as of EoK can do anything any other dps class can do only miles better. They burst higher. They sustain better. They regen end better. They area attack better. Their dark blue con and under ability is better.
A few points: 1. If you're limited to 2-3 hours a night, you'll be able to form a group and do a mission or two. It's not as bad as the old days. However, if you don't have friends you can schedule with or a healthy guild that regularly puts together groups it'll be harder. 2. Because the tank in a group is so critical and tank mercs are useless, player tanks are the cornerstone of a group more so than healers/DPS now. If you've got a dps merc instead of an average player, you'll just kill slower. If you've got a tank merc instead of an average player, they'll just get blown up and you'll have no tank. 3. The balance to #2 is that you'll be totally useless until you get geared and AA'd up. If you have friends they can carry you through TBM / EoK and you can get geared that way. If you want to pay 2 win you can buy a krono, sell it for plat, buy The Broken Mirror currency, buy a set of TBM gear + type 9 augs. As in, combine the armor with the first link and the aug in the second link: http://tbm.eqresource.com/potranqgroupvendor.php http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=123809 Note that you'll need to do some small amount of progression in TBM before these vendors will sell to you. With a full set of vendor gear and granted AA's, you won't be able to tank EoK and will have a tough time tanking TBM, but you can at least tank the easy heroic adventure in the Dead Hills from Gribble that can give you a lot of AAs. 4. If you're not interested in being the MT in a raid, I recommend choosing an SK or paladin instead of a warrior. Warriors are great too, but SK/pal are much more versatile. 5. I recommend to anyone to three-box if they are able, especially if they play a warrior (which has low utility). I three box a war/bard/mage, but there are many great combinations. If you're mostly interested in putting together quick groups, I'd recommend a tank + healer + dps/utility. (Ex: war/cle/enc, war/sha/mage, war/cle/bard). If you don't want to manage a tank and a healer, you can do fine with healer mercs in most content. If you want to build up your character you'll be spending a lot of time doing old content to get augs, get clickies, achievements etc. Having a tracker makes a lot of this much easier. Unless you've got close friends, nobody is going to want to go camp augs in TDS with you, so having a your own team you can roll out makes everything a lot easier. And you can kickstart a group with it.
The right answer here is pal/sk. You want to be a tank cuz it makes building your Group easyer Also once you get your aas and augs , gear. Sk and PAL can both solo/molo very well. Right now pal is a bit stronger in the total package but both tank as good a warrior for what you want to do
It sounds cliche but always go with whatever class you feel you'll have the most fun with. Personally, I'd go with Shadowknight if coming back from an extended break and looking to do a ton of tanking, solo, molo, grouping. As you get reacquainted and explore the game, the simple things like FD/better fade will come in handy. Warriors can get a bit boring if not planning to raid and you don't have a set group of friends. Paladins require a ton of AA, far more knowledge of various spell sets etc. IMO before you can fully start utilizing the "fun" things they have to offer. I have a highend War, Pal, SK, feel free to pm me with any questions pertaining to those classes if you end up starting the climb on one
I play a monk and i've also played warrior a bit. Both are a lot of fun. However, monk has some great utility that most are not aware of. Monks can do a lot, and many things that many other classes can't. I'll go ahead and say that one downpoint is tanking missions can be difficult if there's an ambush or something that requires AE taunt or tanking many mobs at once, or extra high dmg mobs, or raids Aside from that, during TBM, I molo'd all TDS and CotF progression by myself pretty much. Even Arx, solo'd all the missions. We can do some crazy stuff if you got the AAs, gear, and know what you are doing. I usually parse top of charts in raids, but an equally skilled zerker will beat me, but we got the utility. We're the best/quickest pullers, good run speed, good damage, pacifiy, aoe mez, can keep mobs stunned like 30% of the time, good tanking ability, good cooldowns, mend. Sitting at 13k AC with full TBM gear and not having a problem tanking in EoK zones. We also pull a lot of aggro, but we can reset it anytime we want. With a good dps group you can also killed named before your 18 sec def disc wears off. I love it. I was in a frontier mountains group recently, 3 dps, bard, cleric, gg group. Best thing, perma AFK feign death somewhere and not die
Bro, i think realistically if you are limited on play time as you stated , you might need to think SK, rather than Monk or Warrior. Even just something as simple as getting from here to there to even start grinding is easier on an SK than either a Warrior or Monk, they get EB,Lev, Invis, Invis to Undead and later even free mounts. If you go Warr or Monk you get none of those and incur either camps for items to address those shortages or spending money on and carrying all kinds of potions to fix it.,both of which will be an avoidable time sink on already limited play time if you simply roll SK. SK can Tank within reason anything a Warr can, and will out tank a Monk easily and has solid DPS
Sk and PAL out tank warrs in group content due massive self healing cupled with almost as good mitigtion as warr
If of same skill level SK and PAL will out tank a Warr in group game there is no ifs or butts about it. This doesent mean warrs are chumps, just that warrs skills lends more to raid bosses cuz of upwards scaleing tools. And SK and PAL has way better tools that scale down (self healing ect) thats great for group content
ShadowKnights are no where near worthless on raids and this is a myth that has long been perpetuated by a couple of ShadowKnights on this forum. They are one of three most powerful group classes in entire game and now one of the most powerful raid classes in entire game. There is zero purpose currently not to carry a strong amount of SK's on a raid roster. A paladin may or may not out do a warrior in group game. If you're playing with a top level group and AE killing things, a warriors vastly superior AE aggro can easily make them the more appealing option
