I bought out the Zazz bank! There's nothing left! Someday the devs will realize this, and you'll have a veritable field of the stuff.
I think most people want to be better than average by virtue of their work and skill, rather than because they picked a particular class.
Solo: necros & enchanters just about certainly, with different emphasis Group: wizards & berserkers for DPS, enchanters for control Raid: ask yourself, how do you min/max? The answer is usually: get the minimum amount of people for each class needed to get through raid mechanics,and then stack raid with best raid DPS available. Therefore, the best raid DPS is the best class for raids, and that's presently wizards All in all, I'd say that it's between necros, enchanters, and wizards for best over all class, depending on what you aim to do. All three classes are able to solo for exp, but necros and enchanters have the edge on wizards. Necros, however, are mediocre in groups, while wizards and enchanters are both amazing. On raids, enchanters are required but only up to the minimum; wizards are the best raid DPS over all, but necros are able to match them from time to time. So you have your trade offs.
Someone should start a website that documents a timeline of nerfs to which classes patch by patch. I bet we'd see some interesting trending if it went back far enough. The devs on staff during certain periods would also be some pretty interesting info to go with it Necros face the exact same issue as Enchanters on raids - there is a soft-cap of usefulness. More than 3 Enchanters, benefits begin to drop significantly. More than 3 Necros, really bad as you start killing your own raid's DPS. So even though a Necro can match and occasionally beat a Wiz in a raid, Wiz is still going to ALWAYS win. These issues really only plague mid-tier guilds who don't have consistent attendance and have to over-recruit certain classes though.
From an endgame raiding perspective, I can tell you wizzies are not the win button people seem to think. We top some parses but so do zerkers, rogues, necros, and rangers. I think mana burn should arguably be listed as a ranger aa lol.
It's hard to do that, some nerfs aren't even listed in patch notes. Or are listed in a way that's completely opposite of the actual change.
This is coming from a relatively new wizard: If good damage is your goal, in their current state wizards definitely are a win button. We're quite strong in fights of any duration(basically always in the top 10 mix). That said, necros and berserkers regularly parse higher. Rangers on shorter fights put out amazing dps(but it destroys their means pool). I forget which fight it was (something long in codecay iirc), but I died twice and still managed to crack top 10. Granted, I double glyphed and used the mana refill vet AA. Point is-- wizards are at an advantage over melee because rez effects just don't mean anything other than I have to bucolic/harvest/robe/vet AA/tell a cleric for qm. I'm a longtime monk and I absolutely love the class but I'm loving the wizard on raids. I don't love the wizard in modern group content because of how reliant on others I feel/the squish factor.
Best idea ever. A ranger aa that consumes someone else's mana since we are perpetually oom these days.
Well I can think of the primary reasons Rangers are OOM.........Just ask the clerics for the 100% resurrections
Every class has good points and bad points. A good player should be able to do well with any of them.
A powerful class in the hands of a good player, is better than a poor class in the hands of a good player. Why anyone would want to play a neglected class is beyond me. It seems easy to spot the top 4 classes in EQ. Wiz, mage, ench and necro. Tanks are barely played. Too expensive to maintain, and will never do what the other classes are able to accomplish(solo and top dps charts).Why deal with that headache? Players have chosen not to. Even the good ones. Melee dps are second in terms of neglect. Again expensive to maintain and little solo ability. Monks, rogues, and beserkers will never be seen soloing current or close to current content. Do we even need to mention clerics? The most broken/boring class of any MMO ever created. And before you argue - the number of players actively playing clerics reveals the truth. The most actively played characters are Mage, enchanter, wizard and necro. There is a reason for it. Its because they are easy to get off the ground, low maintenance, and very powerful relative to other classes.
I don't disagree, but those are personal opinions. Fairly widely held opinions, but still personal opinions. For myself, I would rather play a class that I enjoy even if it is not as powerful as some others. That is a less widely held opinion, but still a valid opinion. I can't see any sense in playing a class that I don't like, even if it can just step in and wipe the whole area in the blink of an eye. My only purpose in playing is to have fun, not to stroke my own epeen.
I think Steampunk's point can be valid, and at the same time people asking "which class is the good class" can be valid. Different classes are better at different things. There are so many factors, and making the right choice for your scenario may be partially impossible and partially luck, but it's still a skill. Consider the following: 1) How much does the player want to group/solo/raid? There are various stances on this, not just 3. A player could like to raid and solo, or raid and group, or do all 3 but prefer grouping to soloing or vice versa. Every class you can pick is a tradeoff in this area. 2) What environment is the player going into? Let's assume the player wants to group. If you're in a tank rich environment, I'd play a rogue or a wizard if you don't like to solo (rogues can do some interesting things though), or maybe a healer if you like to group a lot. If you're in a dps rich environment, I would play a tank, because tank w/clr merc is better than healer w/tank merc every time. If you're in an environment full of solo classes, then you kind of get locked in, don't you? You could try an enc or bard with those guys for good results though, and then you'd still be able to group with others too if they come along. 3) What other factors exist here? Are you already sort of set up with a group of friends? The makeup of your group can greatly determine what class you would do the best on in that group. Do you plan on helping people level later on? Some classes are better at that than others. Do you want to be lazy or try hard? Some classes do better with less effort than others, and some allow you to really push beyond what a person could normally do at the expense of a lot of effort. What kind of playtime do you have? If it is more consistent then that leans towards making grouping more possible. If you name any 2 classes, assuming that one is "the weakest" an the other is "the strongest", I could find circumstances where a person would outright do better with "the weakest" assuming the same amount of effort for gear/aa/knowledge was put in.
People prefer to play mages, enchanters, necros, and wizards over melees because the former can solo/molo and the latter struggle to. Path of less resistance - it's that simple. As much as developers are in denial and want to change it, Everquest is no longer, primarily, a grouping game and has not been for a while. They could choose to either roll with it, else resist it with all their might. The latter, however, is not going to bring people back, and I dare say with a larger % of the player base playing mages, enchanters, necros, etc. these days, it's liable to back fire and result in net losses of players. I've always been a proponent of making changes to melee classes so as to make it easier for them to solo/molo, but there's so much resistance from the small group of "elitists" who play those clases that it feels as though they enjoy being the "The few. The proud. The melee." Which would be fine but for the fact that they keep crying to nerf every one else down to their level. Come on guys - just because you're a masochist, does not make the rest of us masochists.
I think a lot of the people saying that a class "is neglected" may have secondary motives, heh. I'd take anything here with a bit of a grain of salt, as this sort of question can be important, but always goes into murky waters.
