Level 50 toons on PVE/TLE: Scouts : Assas 60, Rangers 82 (is raga more fun?) Swach 60, Brig 61 (sister classes almost balanced) Scout-util: Dirges 116, Troubies 66 (big bias toward dirge class) Mage-utils: Coercer 69, Illu 111 (people prefer a reliable pet?) Summoners : Necros 210, Conjurers 157 (favorite classes) Pure Mages: warlocks 47, wizards 94 (huge bias toward wizzies no idea why) Tanks : Zerk 80, Guardians 58 SK 130, paladins 77 (yeah 2 sk for each paladin) avoidance tanks : Bruiser 37, Monks 40 (it seems that avoidnace tanks suck ?) Healers : Shammies : Defiler 67, Mystic 61 (indeed mystic with no spell conversion is just another defiler ?) Plate healers : Inqui 66, Templars 82. Druids : Warden 124, Furies 108 (surprising i would had expected more furies). Conclusion : All healers but druids are not very fun, scouts are not great (lack of autonomy), enchanters are fine, Summoners are OP, Avoidance tanks need some help and Sks are probably a bit OP, pure wizzies need some help.
It's funny, Pre-AAs the Swash/Brig ratio will probably remain pretty balanced. Post-KoS we'll probably see a lot of betraying though. Druids are mostly fun because again...pre-AAs they are the best DPS healers; Shammies and Clerics are both extremely tooled towards healing prior to KoS or so. Main reason people seem to be avoiding Brawlers, I think, is because the two are more demanding on a healer. They are also not exactly friendly for anyone who might be using the TLE as an excuse to test the waters with tanking/lead groups as we progress. Even I'll admit I was more drawn to Zerker because they dual wield while not being absolute bunt cakes in terms of healer attention.
rangers do the most damage of any scout at the moment (due to flurry and having a level 50 bow where scouts use the prismatic weapon which is 47). most fights in Vanilla are straight burn, tank and spank single target. wizzies > warlocks. wardens are the best of the healers at the moment (due to casting speed and HoTs).
This entire post means absolutely nothing in regards to fun, class efficiency, who is best, what is best, and what does the most DPS, HPS, or anything quantifiable. Your 'census' doesn't take into account whether or not toons are mains, alts, farming toons, part of a bot group, or anything that really matters. SKs are heavy because they are great AOE tanks, Paladins are outdoing Guardians because percent-based heals and Amends with 44% threat transfer = EZ mode, always has been even without % heals. Guardians are raid tanks only, they're not nearly as much fun in groups as Berserker. Avoidance tanks don't suck, they're just not nearly as much fun to play with all of their attacks being on 30-45 second recast timers, those recast timers have always been outdated. Coercer to Illusionist is easy, the pet has 17,000 HP and is NOT "a lesser version of the Illusionist that does not deal much damage, but still retains the control spells of the Illusionist". The illusionist pet mastered at 50 nukes for 2,000 damage; Illusionist can hit that much in one spell with a Master Strike or if you add up the cumulative damage from an attack, but Master's Strikes are it in one shot. The pet casts this every 5 seconds or so... Coercers don't suck, they're actually a lot better at CCing during a fight than Illusionists are. Coercers will be needed and are a great addition to any raid or group. Some people just think Illusionists are soooo much better, because they're ignorant. A well played coercer will hit 1,000 DPS consistently with no pet fluffing the parse, and no bard. Necs and Conjs being so much of a majority is pretty easy, it's not a favorite class either, it's the alt that everyone should have so they can EZ mode farm everything like every other Summoner is doing. Know those elusive Legendary level 50 wands that are a huge increase in damage over a treasured wand? Yeah, there's one more of those added in DOF, and it's level 50 still. So enjoy farming Lavastorm everyone! Because those don't drop anywhere else. Dirges vs Troub pretty easy, Dirges give more to themselves than Troubadors do, Troubadors truly are the buffing and giving class of the two. Troubadors don't cast nearly as many spells as Dirges cast combat attacks. Rangers outdo Assassins because most Assassins haven't figured out all they need to do is pick up a bow, force ranged attack, and start plinking arrows to outdo Rangers on single target fights. Same with every other scout class to be honest. Swashes and Brigs are so low because everyone thinks they suck right now, and don't add anything to a raid because no Dispatch, Hurricane, whatever. Swashes add a lot of offensive debuffs so the mob can't attack the tank as easily or as hard, and Brigands without Dispatch, still debuff the mob tremendously allowing the raid to do more damage. Mystic vs Defiler, you say that Mystic without spell conversion is just another defiler? What are you smoking, friend? This is exactly what's wrong with the player base of EQ2 currently, no one has any idea what their abilities and skills actually do. So you're telling me that a completely different set of debuffs, including 50+ attack speed being reduced, from the Mystic is just another defiler? Really? So wrong. Yeah, I totally forgot that Defilers get Bolster at 65 too, right? Right?! Wardens vs Fury, why would you expect more Furys? No one knows how to play a Fury. They either sit there and "DPS" and don't even bother casting the single target regen, or they don't cast any of their offensive skills which take place of debuffs, and suck completely. Everyone rolled wardens because they're A) Amazing healers and B) because they all think they'll be Scouts or something when EoF finally hits in 2017. This list literally tells nothing, other than how many of which class are at level 50. That's it. Actually Shamans should always be out-healing Wardens, but I forget you've played this game since 2010 and know all, Ucala. Warlocks are also back in line from this absolute insanity that is live where apparently Wizards do more AE damage than a Warlock, don't know how that ever became a thing, but anyway... Warlocks will smash a Wizard on AE/AOE fights, as it should be, and vice versa for a single target fight, which yes, most of vanilla is. But last time I checked we weren't playing on a forever-vanilla server. Hopefully just one that doesn't go past RoK or TSO.
The total of 2063(+5 currently for a total of 2068) max level characters is also interesting. I realize it is an under-count, but it is a useful data point to tell us if DoF might be voted in or not this week. Here are other breakdowns: level 1+: 37800 level 10+: 20959 level 20+: 11934 level 30+: 6227 level 40+: 3503 level 50: 2068 It appears to me that the bulk of the population is still stuck in tier 3 and tier 4 at this point. My guess from how busy Frostfang Sea is, that we've been picking up new players as time has gone on or there are a lot of alts being created. Darklight Wood would be a better barometer, but I haven't been there in awhile. My guess is that we could have several months before DoF comes out. It's hard to tell. I also thought it would be interesting to check how top or bottom heavy some of the classes were. Here is a table of numbers of characters and progress rates for levels 10, 20, 30, 40 & 50 for a few select classes. Hopefully, this copies okay from excel. It didn't. This only includes percentage progress to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. nec : 62, 37, 20, 11, 6.8 conj: 62, 36, 18, 11, 6.5 ward: 59, 35, 19, 10, 5.7 wiz : 51, 30, 15, 8.2, 4.8 monk: 48, 24, 12, 5.5, 2.8 dirge: 57, 37, 20, 12, 7.5 troub: 51, 31, 17, 9.2, 5.3 overall: 55, 32, 17, 9.3, 5.5 It's probably fair to say that a lot of the sub 10 characters are someday might be played, tradeskill only, trade mules and cross faction trade gofers that don't say much about the class other than how they are perceived before playing. As such, amongst this group, it appears that Dirge is the most fun to play.
Well I can comment on Coercer vs. Illy - it's simple - people have perception that Illy do more DPS and give more utility to group so yes this dictate choice .. Coercer on other hand much stronger sololist but heavily depend on quality of charm (in other word anything below master charm suck big time).. let me repeat this - unless coercer have master charm and right pet class is hardly soloable otherwise arguably one of the best for solo. Warlock vs. Wizard and why so few of each class - well same reason as for coercers - really hard to solo w/o merc or w/o reliable root, raid wise predators on TLE more than capable to give better performance ... And lastly necro vs . conjurer .... Let me put this way - necro pretty much selfsufficient class conjurer luck self heal
On the conjuror vs necro, conj doesn't have self heal, but if they're healing the pet it becomes a wash because the necro uses their own health to heal their pet. The real differentiator I've seen when soloing or undersized grouping is feign death.
Part of the explanation for the difference in healer numbers might be the druids' portal ability. I tried out a templar in beta but rolled a warden when TLE went live so travel would be easier. I also have a monk and find it fun and have no problem tanking...or I should say, I only have one problem tanking...summoner pets. I HATE scout pets in defensive stance. They can't pull agro from me on the mob I have targeted but the rest of the mobs (even tho I always use my blue AE, enc. taunt, and cycle) always wind up on the pet and I can barely pull them off. What point is there even having a tank in a group when a summoner's pet tanks everything anyway. I wouldn't even hate it so much if it were a tank pet but why is a scout pet able to grab agro so easily when I have no problem keeping it off a pc warlock?
Actually i played a mystic quite a long time and i happen to know what you arrognatly claim, but whatever you may think both are shammies and the game play is somewhat similar both ward and debuff and have huge but slow direct healts, anyway it sems clear that without strikes people simply prefer the defiler which is arguably more defensive. What do you mean when you say " nobody knows how to play a fury ?" That's amusing, they have almost the same heal than wardens, ok they miss spores and sandstorm but bring peerless predator, at level 50 in a group the game play is exactly the same, even i the nuke that they can throw if they do have time are better .. they may not even have yet call of storms, ring of fire and the other open aoe ... Anyway given the current casting speeds they probably don't have time to nuke much. Sks are mostly for people with 2 digit IQs (even if i know some exceptions) and paladin and guardian are for smarter peoples (sure there are exceptions too) yeah that has been always true. Shaman never outhealed druids, it is just that druids had nothing to heal which is vastly different, you cannot heal people who died from a damage spike. That's why their potential hps is lower, cause it's 1005 efficient and because it prevent damage spikes. Icidently I rememebr that my heroic parses (in almost any era of eq2) were usually much higher than the ones of our main warder in raids , so nothing new here.
Interesting so only 2.8 % of the monks are level 50 ? Which seems to indicate that the class is dissapoiting ;-) I never played oe but the possibility to farm shinnies flopping wis interesting ...
You read that correctly, which is impressive considering my awful chart. I was led to believe the excel spreadsheet would copy into the forum by what I saw as I wrote the post, but it didn't turn out that way. I can think of three reasons that the monk distribution might be so poor. Either they are disappointing and people quit, advancement is slow due to the class' abilities, or people who play monks take it slow.
with how low mitigation is, brawlers should be fairly well, they solo well and even have an FD. I am told their avoidance goes to poo when fighting orange con mobs, so they basically crumble (due to even lower mit than plate tanks).
If pallys are the easy way, why are they outnumbered by SK's? Always wondered the answer to that, now I got it: Sks are mostly for people with 2 digit IQs (even if i know some exceptions) and paladin and guardian are for smarter peoples (sure there are exceptions too) yeah that has been always true ;-)
My monk's only 43 but I tank a lot of orange mobs, even with 1 healer I have done fine. Single group, not any raid mobs. I'm not sure how I would fare against a x4 but it was never my goal for this char to be a raid tank.
Coercers don't need a Master Charm and the right pet class to solo things, it just takes longer without it. CC is immeasurable when it comes to soloing ability. Why are you so worried about soloing? This isn't a dead live server with no one to group with besides yourself and Mercy Mike. Besides, you can get any version of Charm, III and above, and it will last you until level 100. May be a short duration, but it does just as much damage as the level 47 Master charm. Coercers are again immeasurable in what they add to a raid force. Easily the best power management and utility, hate transfers cap at 50%, and having the Hate Gain and transfer from a Coercer is just awesome for any tank. Coercers can AE/Encounter Daze a huge raid encounter which allows the tank to position the mobs without taking any autoattack damage and then AE stun them, Illusionists can only AE stun them, which prevents the mobs from moving while also preventing damage. Doesn't sound like much, but it's pretty great to have. Plus Illusionists really only shine with a Troubador, tanks benefit a lot more from a Dirge than they do a Troub, is every group on your raid going to have a Troubador and Illusionist in it? Going to be a lot of unhappy melee or a TON of casters fighting for loot...
So are you saying at 50 monks crumble solo vs orange^^^s? Be kinda broken if they didn't. Or are you saying they crumble vs orange solo mobs? That doesn't seem likely based on how my monk does at 43. More to the point of this thread, I don't think monks low popularity is based on how they actually perform. They have less AE ability than the other tanks (esp w/o AA) and I think a lot of people rolled here with the mindset of live-server room-pull farming.
Muph, In my past life my main was a coercer (I retired from EQ2 shortly after EoF) and I used to be top coercer of my server. Even back in time during end game coercer was never a crucial class for raiding - mainly crackdealer, coercer AoE mez have 1 nasty side effect (unlike AoE/PBAoE stund) .... it does prevent ALL AoE but direct what this mean? it mean after mobs were AoE mezzed tank can't taunt them unless it done directly, warlocks and others AoE classes can't burn them ... so to speak the only purpose of AoE mez is escape. Hate transfer is good but with good tank hardly critical. It was 1 fight where coercer mem wipe was make or break point for the raid. Velocity was indeed highly sought after buff ... but it was in time when haste cap was hard to achieve. Grouping of course was completely different story and enchanters are always were welcome for CC and crackdealing. Now back to the Charm - this is primary class defining ability which been severely nerfed after release and re-adjusted several times. While you are indeed correct that in terms ability to use charm you do not have to have highest rank of the spell and re-charming your pet every 8-9 minutes easy task (albeit annoying like hell) not having master charm is cripple you more than anything in terms of DPS. When you charm melee pet charm quality is irrelevant - you pet is meat dummy that won't produce any DPS either way, but if you can find warlock or wizard pet (or any nuking pet) the game is change completely. Master-charmed warlock pet would yield nearly 10x DPS of Adept-charmed warlock-pet and at least triple DPS of expert-charmed pet... This is a reason why someone will rather use low level master charm with shorter duration when use higher level charm but not master quality
