What's the easiest class to play?

Been having a debate about this with some guildies recently. Curious what the general population thinks. What class do you guys think is overall the easiest to play? Speaking from a raiding perspective mostly but feel free to chime in for other stuff too. Strawpoll link below:

http://www.strawpoll.me/10849665

My personal opinion is Rogue. Doesn't get much simpler than "Stand behind mob hit backstab" but others (Mostly Rogues) disagree. Place your votes!

If you are only talking raids, then Bards are pretty simple. Depending on the role, it's way more challenging in group play.

On TLP? Wizard by a mile. You can afk all the time and cite "medding", you don't have to move around, send a pet, or generally do much of anything in your average group or raid.

PS: believe that posting polls is against the forum rules, so oderationmay may be cominginmay.

From a TLP raid stand point it would be Wizard (see Sheex above) with the need to press 1 macro or Bard due to melody and there not being anything else for them to really do on older raids.

Group game Wizard hands down.

For modern EQ raiding things would change drastically and depend on expansion/event.

LoL @ Necro & Cleric votes. Sad that TLP Necros will never experience what it is like to really Necro and well played Clerics are worth their weight in kronos x10 in modern EQ.

Fairly sure the necro votes are guildies messin with me lol. I've yet to hear a legitimate argument for how necro is easier than wiz/rog to play. I think arguments can be made for Wiz Rog or Bard for easiest in raid environment. I can't really see any good arguments for any other class.

It's pretty damn easy to be invisible as a Druid.
Wizards are easy, but you are expected to parse generally. This isn't hard to do, but poeple will notice if you are afk.

Druids are expected to cast POTG/Seasons every couple of hrs. You can literally afk 80% of the time during raids.

Duh. Magician.

Pets are worthless.
You CoH late-comers.
You Rod casters upon request.
Maybe you buff groups / tanks with DS.

You don't even need any gear to do any of that.

You still have to constantly be paying attention on the mage though to cast rod and whatnot.

I can "AFK" netflix the entire Vulak/AoW fight on my rogue with a simple keyboard macro and reliably place top 10 every time with Immaculate shield spam.

That was kinda my thought too. You could bind the entire rogue class to a super simple macro and it pretty much plays itself.

You can play a bard afk and still offer something to your groups/raids. You can also utilize your tools and offer a lot more than a melody bot. All depends on your playing style.

DPS monk is pretty high on the list, probably moreso than rogue IMO.

Well...

1. Use the fire pet, worth to use on more Velious bosses than you'd think. That pet itself can reach 45 dps on some fights. But it's easier to use than other pets, you can even skip controlling it when an aoeing mob is incoming as long the pet has no line of sight to the mob (pet will be aggroed but will stand stupidly there doing nothing as it can't nuke). You still need to position it because of belly casters everywhere once dps is called in.

2. Actually, you spend much more time cohing before the raid than during the raid (latecomers). Most intense use of pearls is to bypass Sontalak and to reach Thylex spot. OK, it's not difficult. You just need to manage coh-groups and coordinate with the raid leader (some prefer you to be in raid and will give you group leadership, some prefer you to be outside so your hands are 100% free to do your business in group managing). Pen and paper advised, as well as a bard and a necro you'd better coh at the start, lol.

3. A macro to make "rodding" easier :
- /tt Stay in range, mod rod incoming !
- /pause 5, /rt
- /cast <your rodspellslot>
But you still need to be in front of your screen, no afk here.

4. Yes, just do that by /tar or using the raid window once the raidleader has announced the tank rotation.

I'll add :

5. Malosini, shamans will Malo and will be busy, you need to come close to the mob as almost every one is a belly caster (see point 1).

6. Become a mininec. Only way not to get oom on MotMed raidbosses is to use our two dots. Requires to watch your spam window to know when they wear off. To help our lazy fellow mages here, when you have seen the dot reports 4 times, prepare to recast them (without extended affliction or how it is called). Requires also to watch target window : when the tank dies, stop dotting.

7. Become a minimonk. If you have a DD proc stick (like the ST ones), might be worth to add a little dps on fights where aoes are not deadly, and keep meleeing inbetween casts.

Actually nukes and dots are sometimes/often resisted as we don't have resist modifiers, but properly debuffed most raidbosses are dottable or nukable, fights where you really cannot do anything aren't that frequent. It's a little bit exaggerated to say mages can't cast on Velious raidmobs. Requires to remember which ones are a bit weaker to fire or to magic, and which ones flip flop aggro (see point 6).

And about gear, unlike in the group game, you'll want resists, hit points (personally I rather go after hps than after mana), something with ID III, SH III, MP III and BA III (for the dots, yes, sounds crazy I know). I also use all the time Jboots (for the insta clicky, not for the movement speed buff) and fungi staff for regen (aoes, etc.).

All in all, I'd say playing a mage in raids is average difficulty. Still enough though, for me at least, to avoid boxing chanter and druid during raids as I am busy all the time on Adon's screen if I follow all my points, like timing the dots and monitoring HoTT window for example, doesn't leave much time to switch to another character, but that's my own weakness, I started boxing only recently.

No class is difficult to play, they're all pretty easy to play moderately well. Most of what's been discussed above is various degrees of being busy, not actual difficulty.

On most raids in these eras, most classes are easy. When things go wrong is when ability comes into play, and that's more telling in groups than on raids too.

Ranger...no one expects anything from a ranger except DT sacrifices. Raiding? Cast pred and /autofire, go read a book.

disclaimer - I don't now or ever have played a ranger.

Do you play one on TLP?

Trueshot parses with AOW bow and Steel guardian arrows, max dex, capped and over cap haste and I think the best I saw on a parse on Tormax was 55-60 DPS. Only thing I don't have is a fleeting quiver which may push it up to 70 dps with a few friendly crits. Tormax is a good choice simply because everyone can parse and fights last around the duration of Trueshot.

That won't be the case in the year long epic battles in Luclin. Even with AM3, I'd be surprised to see rangers parse over 100 DPS on any raid target using /autofire.

In short, archery DPS has lagged way behind melee dps for a long long time for rangers. The memories of them being amazing back in the day are going to disappoint many (me included) this time around.

Ahhh, Bewts, so you play a ranger and not a mage, explains a lot

Easiest answer is rogue, they have 1 role and it is very easy to accomplish. Wizard would definitely be a close 2nd though. Everyone else has some sort of secondary role they are expected to fill/provide for.

Agreed. Everyone is trying to argue which is the easiest class to AFK on raids with, which doesn't really equate to difficulty. Most classes are quite easy, especially in this era. Difficulty tends to be with the specific encounter(still not that hard in this era) as opposed to the classes themselves.

As this point I would go with Rogue as the "easiest" class to raid with. You have really nothing you can do other than stab the boss, and as long as the tank is holding agro - you rarely have to worry about threat. In terms of awareness, the most difficult part is determining if you need to dodge an AE and still maximize your melee uptime.

Other "easy" classes mentioned such as Wizard, Mage, Ranger have some subtle things they can do or need to worry about. Wizards for example if you want to parse well, need to try to balance that line between pulling agro and dying while maintaining high dps. Also maximizing dps with rains(and watching range on belly casters) are both things that rogues don't need to worry about.

Mages have plenty of things to be aware of, making sure mala/sini get up on all mobs, knowing the right nukes to use for which fight, managing rods/DS. As someone who plays a debuffing class, I have a huge appreciation for a mage who gets that mala up asap on trash mobs(and bosses) so slow will land. Its not super difficult, but its more than a rogue has to worry about

Rangers don't have a whole lot but they do have spells outside of autoattack, buffs to maintain, and can even heal a bit in a pinch or use weaponshield to save a raid. Again, things a rogue doesn't have to worry about.

Druids, while definitely under the radar, have a ton they can do. Determining whether or not healing is needed is the main thing. A crappy druid can just sit back and buff and then toss a heal once or twice when needed - but there are things you can do to maximize efficiency by putting out some mediocre dps while also keeping a group alive. Certainly more involved than turning on autoattack.

Monks for pure dps are about the same as rogues - but throw in pulling into that mix and it adds quite a bit more difficulty.

Again, I don't think any of the above is difficult per se, but in my opinion of all the classes in the current era - Rogue is probably the most narrow and straight-forward.

All hail Pikallo !!! /bow

(but I am a bad mage I wait the shamans cast Malo before casting Malosini, I'll listen to your advice next time and sacrifice one more spell slot for Mala)

If coth is being counted then wiz/druid ports and TL's count as well. Everyone else can afk while the raid is gathering/buffing but porters need to go get people or they get exposed as afk.

Druids also have to charm pets in some encounters.

Rogues used be important for corpse retrieval but that is far less necessary now for many reasons, especially the removal of naked corpse runs. So I agree they aren't left with much.

Bards also have to know which resist songs to play for different mobs, if we're counting that kind of thing for nukers.

Belly casting, which is not needed on all encounters, is certainly no harder than the chasing the mob around to maintain melee range and avoid ripostes that all melees have to do anyway. Certainly for trash mobs the nukers can just sit in the back mostly afk, and participate intermittently, whereas a melee would be obvious doing that.

Again, you are talking about "ease of afk" vs actual playstyle of the class. Just because someone can easily go afk without getting noticed, doesn't make it more or less difficult to play.