Let’s start by saying I’ve been playing EQ1 for way longer than I’d like to admit. That being said I’ve never played EQ2. I’m getting sick of the TLP carousel and would like to give this new TLE in EQ2 a go. I’m just looking for advice since I have no idea what I’ll be doing here. Is there a class that might be better for someone that’s never played? I’d prefer to start as a dps don’t want to take on a healer or a tank at first not knowing exactly what’s going on. Is there a starting place or race that might be better and more enjoyable for a new person? Any other tips a vet can give me to get going in the right direction?
Always exciting to see someone new wanting to give EQ2 a try. I played EQ1 for years from when it launched, took a long break from gaming and switched over to EQ2 primarily. I have tried the EQ1 TLP servers a couple of times, and enjoyed them, but find that I prefer EQ2. So welcome! As far as suggestions...I can't recommend one class or race combination over another because it is subjective and personal. It is also difficult to really make comparisons based on the classes in EQ1 because they really are completely different games. What I would personally recommend, especially since we have two months, is trying a few characters on Kaladim, the current TLE server. It is hard to really understand a class until you get some levels under your belt, but even at low lvls you can get a feel for the mechanics of a class. Also, if you are one to tradeskill, I'd recommend researching tradeskill classes and check out the system since you can only choose one primary tradeskill per character and it is completely different than EQ tradeskills. With the above in mind, I can offer some very generic info that may or may not be helpful. Caster dps classes include wizard & warlock, conjuror & necromancer; scout dps is ranger & assassin, swashbuckler& brigand; enchanter utility is coercer & illusionist; bards are troubadour & dirge. Wizards & warlocks blow things up, though warlocks are considered to be more AE than wizards. Conjuror is kind of like an EQ mage, and necromancer is, well, a necromancer. Ranger and assassin are kind of straightforward, ranger shoots things with bows, assassins like to poke things from behind. Swashbucklers and brigands are classes that I know some about from raiding and grouping, but I have never actually run either class. Swashies are supposed to be more AE focused than brigands, and have amazing debuffs, while brigands get buffs & later on dispatch. So yeah, very, very generic information above, probably not very helpful. In EQ2 you can be "good" or "evil" versus the different races have their own starting cities. If you are good you can make your start city Qeynos or Frostfang Sea, and evil gets Freeport or Neriak. The best questlines to follow starting out are going to be Frostfang Sea or Darklight wood (Neriak). Don't let that dissuade you from choosing Qeynos or Freeport for your home city, because it is easy enough to get from Qeynos to Frostfang or Freeport to Darklight. I prefer darklight wood for a starting area, but that is just a preference. Both Frostfang or Darklight get you a basic set of gear and a mount. In general, EQ2 is more solo-friendly than EQ is, so no matter what class you choose it is possible to log in and get some things accomplished if you don't find a group or feel like grouping. I wish I had more to put in this post, but there is really too much. Again, I'd recommend playing around on Kaladim to get a feel for the different starting locations and classes. If you try it out and have more specific questions, you can ask in chat there or come back here. https://eq2.fandom.com has a lot of information, I'd recommend going there to see some good class descriptions and general information.
Don't be shy of playing a healer. Race determines alignment which affects your available starter cities. Otherwise race choice isn't a big deal. Play the starter isle to get basic orientation, choose Freeport or Qeynos as your home and have a quick look around the city. Then take the Dock Bell to Neriak if you're in FP and play through Dark Light Woods, or go to New Halas if you're in Qeynos and play through Frostfang Sea. Those zones will get you to about level 19 and reward you with a mount if you complete the main quest line. You can group for the first dungeons at about level 11. Make friends along the way, ask questions, have fun.
Honestly with it being your first time in EQ2 I would say rolling a healer at the start of TLE will actually teach you more about the game and mechanics faster than a DPS. My main reasoning behind it is because everyone will want a healer in the group and you will be pretty important to groups right off the bat and be able to find groups pretty quickly. As for the healing, a druid is usually everyone first pick which would be a Fury/Warden. Fury does more DPS and designed around mage groups where as a warden does less DPS but heals better and is usually in MT groups for harder dungeons and raids overall. If you want to DPS on your first go I would recommend a Conjuror or Necromancer. Both being pet mage classes, they offer really good DPS for both groups and solo tank pets for when you wanna solo and quest. Necro being the prefered DPS class overall. As for scout DPS. Assassin and ranger would be the better DPS choices but also harder soloing and has somewhat of a learning curve with its DPS during dungeons and raids. Swashbuckler and Brigand would be my choice for scout DPS unless you wanna play a bard and offer more utility. Which is also important to groups and raids as well
Starting on a fresh TLE, all of the classes are fairly simple. I would just say avoid tanking until you are comfortable with leading the way through dungeons. Not all the dungeons have linear paths, so knowing where what names / quest objectives are is not always obvious. Races don't make much difference. Better to just pick one you enjoy staring at for several hours. If you want you can look at Racial traits here. https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Traditions Biggest tips read the tooltips of your skills, if you don't understand one ask somebody get EQ2 maps addon, either directly or indirectly through installing DarqUI find a guild who wants to do the same things you do, this game is exponentially better with friends.
It really depends on your personal playstyle. Are you comfortable jockeying around a mob to hit it from the back and sides? That would lead you to Scout DPS. Do you have a sense of humor about dying and want an easy-mode nuker? Then try a Conjuror or Necromancer... the pet makes it easy to play.
Sorry for the small incoming essay, but I figured I'd given you a basic primer of combat in EQ2 and a small breakdown of classes to give you some help in deciding whether you want to play, and what class you might like to try. Since you're new to EQ2, there are some commonly used phrases that could use some explanation before any real in-depth breakdown of classes can be given. In EQ2, fights are typically broken into what are called "encounters". Each encounter is given a difficulty, from non-Heroic to Raid. Whenever you hover over or click on a monster with your mouse, it will tell you whether it is considered a non-Heroic, Heroic with up carrots, or a Raid encounter. In the event that the encounter is Heroic or Raid, it will also highlight all of the visible monsters inside of the encounter. Defeating an encounter instead of a single monster always gives additional bonus xp, so encounters are typically what groups fight in order to maximize their xp gain for the purpose of leveling. Non-Heroic: Generally single monsters that are fairly easy to solo. Non-Heroic monsters are typically found out in the open world and not in any dungeons (instanced or otherwise). Heroic: Heroic encounters can range from ^, ^^, and ^^^. This is commonly abbreviated to 1 up, 2 up, and 3 up. 1up encounters are also generally fairly soloable, but are slightly more difficult than non-Heroic encounters. 2 ups are much more rare than 1ups and 3 ups but are tailored to small groups of 1-3 people. 3 ups are typically much harder encounters that, at least early into the game's cycle, are designed for full groups. Most named monsters in dungeons and in the open world are 3up. There are a lot of places that have large groups of "non-Heroic" monsters that are grouped into an encounter, and the entire encounter is granted Heroic status. Raid: Raid encounters are broken into two categories: x2 and x4. This is fairly self explanatory. A x2 raid is generally designed for two full groups of players (12 players) and x4 raids are generally designed for four full groups of players (24 players). Unlike a lot of other games, EQ2 has raid encounters interspersed throughout the leveling process that are found in the open world, as well as several raid encounters that are found in the open world for max level characters. Raid encounters found in the open world are called "contested" because... any group that forms fast enough can kill them and then they are despawned until their respawn timer becomes active. They're contested because they're... contested. While leveling, contested encounters are generally just skipped past, but at max level, the end-game geared contesteds can inspire some rather unhealthy gaming habits (but as an EQ1 player, I'm sure you're used to contested raid mobs and batphoning) due to several of them dropping Best in Slot gear. If degenerate hour batphone gaming isn't what you're looking for, make sure you're joining a guild that isn't going to participate in these endeavors. The next thing we're going to talk about is general combat. Whether you're playing a melee or a caster class dps, one of the key differences between EQ2 dps and other games is that your auto-attack damage makes up a very large amount of your character's DPS. The game has broken down two types of abilities - Combat Arts and Spells. In previous iterations of the game, if you were using a melee or a non-wand weapon and using a Combat Art (CA) when your auto-attack was set to go off, it would delay the auto-attack until the completion of the CA. This functionality has been removed, and auto-attacks will now go through Combat Art casting, but because of this, a lot of veteran players will always turn on their Weapon Swing timer so they can visually see the auto-attack timer to calculate when to weave in CAs. One important thing to note is that if you're playing a class that dual wields, picking weapons that have the same delay is very important, because your off-hand attack will never trigger while your main hand is currently waiting to swing. If you're a spellcaster with a wand (or a "focus" weapon), your auto-attacks continue even while you cast your spells. The next thing that we'll talk about are Concentration Slots. Every character gets 5 Concentration Slots. These are typically used by buffs that the classes get. They are permanent for as long as your character "maintains concentration", i.e. spends a concentration slot, on them. To find out if your buff requires a Concentration Slot, check the tooltip of the buff or just cast it and see if one of the light blue bars under your Health and Power (mana) pool fill up. When your Concentration Slots are filled, you cannot cast another buff that requires concentration. You can cancel the use of Concentration by either re-casting a spell that is currently consuming a concentration slot or by right-clicking on the light blue bar under your Health and Power bar and selecting "Cancel". In EQ2, all abilities that your character has will have a colored background. That means there will be a display image that you'll come to recognize as the ability, plus a colored background behind it when it is placed onto your hotbars. Each of these colors has a meaning: Yellow: This is an ability that affects only you. These are generally temporary self-buffs with a cooldown. Purple: This is a group/raid-wide buff. These normally require Concentration Slots. Both Group-wide and Raid-wide buffs use this purple indicator and the vast majority affect the entire raid, but there are some few spells that only affect your group (Bards and DPS casters especially tend to see this). Read your tooltip to figure out if your buff says Group (AE) or Raid (AE). This will tell you who all the buff affects. Orange: This is a single-target buff that you can place on other group members. They often have limitations, such as requiring concentration slots or limiting you to only one use of the buff. Red: This is a single-target spell or CA. Green: This is an AoE spell or CA, but it ONLY targets an encounter. If you are fighting multiple encounters, this ability will only hit the encounter that belongs with the mob that you are currently targeting. Blue: This is an AoE spell or CA, and is also known as point-blank AoE or PBAoE, and it hits everything in an area around your character (up to a capped number of mobs, typically 8). Blue AoEs can hit multiple encounters, so they are generally preferred for use while leveling when your tank is pulling multiple encounters. Moving on, we'll start talking about classes. Since you said you wanted to stay DPS, I'll stick with those. Each DPS class is broken down between archetypes that just generally make sense to people who have played fantasy MMO genres before. To give a slightly more in-depth, but not crazy, run down of dps damage classes than what Liliun gave: Sorcerers: Spellcasters with a focus on different damage types. They also offer great group utility in the form of portals after level 25. Warlocks: great AoE caster dps that does a lot of Noxious (poison & disease) damage. They are typically very strong in any leveling content and any group or raid content that has a lot of adds.They have a very low recast (8 second) blue aoe that allows them to excel at multiple-encounter damage. They are generally weaker than Wizards when it comes to single target. You can find a full list of available spells and what level you get them here: https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Warlock/50 Wizards: great single target caster dps that does a lot of Elemental (fire and ice) damage. They also have a few Magic damage-type spells. Wizards emphasize doing big bursts of damage and the class has several hard-hitting abilities that are on long cooldowns coupled with weaker spells that have a much shorter recast. They are generally weaker than Warlocks when it comes to doing damage to multiple enemies, but especially in later expansions, the amount of damage their single target can do can start to bridge the gap in overall damage in group-based encounters. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Wizard/50 Summoners: A fairly self-explanatory name. Conjuror: Similar to how Warlocks do Noxious and Wizards do Elemental damage, Conjurors focus on Elemental damage. During the beginning expansions, Conjurors and Necromancers are fairly even in strength. However, in later expansions, Necromancers get a lot of really cool and unique features that Conjurors must go without. The key feature that the Conjuror brings is that their blue AoE does a lot of damage combined with a very potent knockdown effect, which adds multiple-encounter CC and can help stabilize your team during dangerous pulls. Conjurors do not have a wide variety of spells that they can cast, and while they do get a castable Damage Shield (DS) that they can place on a tank like they do in EQ1, monster health values in EQ2 make the DS feel very underwhelming. Your pet will do the vast majority of your damage for you. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Conjuror/50 Necromancer: While Conjurors do mostly Elemental damage, Necromancers do mostly Noxious damage. Necromancers get tools like Feign Death (FD), Lich for basically unlimited Power (mana), and high damage lifetaps for good self-sustain. In higher level expansions, Necromancers get cool features like Lifeburn, which does a large amount of damage to the Necromancer in exchange for converting that spent life into damage. Lifeburn was nerfed somewhat recently and the gap between Necros and Conjis is a lot lower now, but all of the Necromancer's features make them a very good, self-reliant solo class. Necros do also have a blue aoe, but it is slightly less potent than the Conji's and does not have a CC effect attached. Like the Conji, your pet will do the vast majority of damage for you, but you have a much wider array of spells at your disposal. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Necromancer/50 Enchanters: Not the OP classes of EQ1, charms are weak and Mezzes are basically ignored. While it's true that charms are weak and mezzes are basically ignored, Enchanters are still very valuable classes because of the buffs that they bring to the table. All Enchanters bring power regeneration to their group, and each type of Enchanter has a different specialty. Coercer: Let's start with the cons first. Illusionists get a self-casted pet that, while weaker than the pets of the Summoner, provides stable dps and soloability. Coercer's mainstay was supposed to be their ability to charm/dominate monsters, but over the course of years in the game, charms have gotten significantly weaker in EQ2, to the point where charming a monster is generally just not worth the effort. However, Coercers get access to Stifle (silence), interrupts, stuns which work on Raid encounters (with reduced effect and which grant the Raid monsters 21 second immunity afterwards), and decent damage. Coercers also have one of the most important tank buffs - increased threat generation - which the Illusionist does not get access to, as well as multiple debuffs they can cast on the target that reduce the target's resistances and combat mitigation (a confusing stat that monsters have that would take too long to explain, but which overall makes the monster take less damage). https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Coercer/50 Illusionist: As stated in the Coercer section, Illusionists get a very stable pet which helps increase their ability to solo as well as does decent, although not as good as a Summoner pet, damage. Like Coercer, they get group power regeneration buffs which always make them an important part of any group. Illusionists get great damage buffs, like a concentration slot single target Haste, which makes them very desirable, as well as a short-duration group buff called Flash of Brilliance which increases your group's spellcasting ability which, in turn, reduces monster resistability. You will generally do more damage as an Illusionist, but both Enchanter types are very important to different group types. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Illusionist/50 Predators: single target focused Scout classes that are often overlooked in raid compositions because they don't offer much of anything other than damage. Assassin: Like the name would suggest, Assassins exist to... assassinate monsters. They have several very high-damage Stealth oriented and/or positional attacks. I'm not going to lie, I've not played either Predator class so my understanding of them is very limited. Just know that Assassins are melee focused, requiring you to be up close and personal all of the time, while focusing on your use of Stealth and positioning in order to deal the highest amounts of damage. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Assassin/50 Ranger: Rangers blend melee and ranged attacks, requiring you to weave between ranged and melee in order to fully maximize your damage. A lot of the highest damage Ranger CAs come from a combination of Stealth and ranged. I've not played the class so I'm not really able to offer more information than that, except to reiterate that while Predators offer AMAZING damage and an engaging playstyle, their group and raid utility is very low and their damage is not that much higher than the Sorcerers and Conjurors, and as such they are often overlooked when building group and raid compositions. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Ranger/50 Rogues: more debuff-heavy Scouts that still put up good damage and don't require compositions to be built around them. In one-group content, they can also serve as an off-tank as they receive taunts built into their kits. Brigand: The Brigand, like all Scouts, has stealth and positional attacks. What really makes the Brigand unique is that they possess several powerful debuffs that make the monsters you are fighting take increased damage. Because of this, almost every raid composition uses at least one Brigand. They do acceptable damage regardless of your group composition (although will obviously do more damage if you're in a group which heavily buffs melee damage), which means that you can be slotted into almost every group and be able to perform well while also increasing the performance of your allies. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Brigand/50 Swashbuckler: Swashies do generally more damage than the Brigand, but have less important and unique debuffs. They are more group reliant than the Brigand, as they are more damage focused, which means placing them in a "scout" group (or a group with buffs specifically designed to increase melee dps) is much more highly recommended. In future expansions, they become the premiere melee AoE dps class by being granted high levels of baseline "AoE Auto-attack" from their Hurricane ability. If you want to play a class that does good damage, has a lot of cool flavor, and still brings some debuffing action, it's Swashbuckler. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Swashbuckler/50 Bards: No twisting, just a lot of balancing of Concentration slots. Dirge: This class focuses a lot more on being the tank or scout class buff machine. Every main tank group in a raid setting needs a Dirge for the tank stats that they give. Additionally, while Dirges emphasize melee and tank buffs, they also have an arsenal of caster buffs which are not wasteful. This is also the only Scout class that receives a Resurrection ability, and it can be used in Combat. Bards, by design, do the least amount of damage of the Scout classes, but the numerous buffs that they bring more than make up for it. The buffs plus the combat rez makes Dirges highly desirable. Troubador: While the Dirge focuses on buffing melee and tanks, Troubadors focus on buffing casters. Similarly to the Dirge, who does have caster buffs but doesn't excel at them, the Troubador has melee buffs but really shines in a caster group. Their real claim to fame doesn't come until level 65, and that is the ability known as Jester's Cap (often referred to as JCap). JCap provides a huge amount of Recast (i.e. cooldown reduction) to a single target for a duration, meaning that you can JCap classes like Wizards that have large cooldowns and they can cast their abilities and benefit from the large recast bonus given to them. Even before JCap, Troubadors are highly desired for every single caster group. https://u.eq2wire.com/spells/list_spells/Troubador/50 I realize that this was a huge post, and I apologize for it. But this covers a lot of the basics plus gives some general insight into the classes. No matter which class you choose, this game has a lot of great things in it, and if you're looking for an "EverQuest Experience" but more modern, this definitely scratches the itch. I look forward to seeing you on Varsoon!
Conj/Necro are pretty easy and offer you the ability to solo basically anything in vanilla shy of raid bosses. Everyone plays one though, so it might be harder to find a raid slot. Dirge/Troub are very simple because you just need to have the right buffs up, auto attack, and everyone will automatically love you. Downside is they are kinda boring until much later. SKs are basically a no-brainer tank, who can faceroll their keyboard and still do high dps and keep agro on anything. Druids are the most straight forward healers, simply using straight heals and HoTs. Plus ports. Honestly, nothing in vanilla EQ2 is too difficult for new players to figure out except maybe a raid MT Guardian. You just need a lot of experience with EQ2's systems and jankyness to do that job well. New Player Suggestions: Level up the crafting class required to upgrade spells/abilities for your main. Your ability damage, heal amounts, pet stats, and buff strength go way up when you have your Expert/Master spells. Try to learn about the various buffs in the game. Buffs are a big part of EQ2 - certain buffs on the wrong people can be a huge waste of potential. Vanilla doesn't have too much of this, but later your dps can double/triple with the right buffs. If you have single target buffs, just ask your guild who should get them. Even if you're not playing a DPS, grab the ACT parser so you can use it to track raid-wide stats and add triggers for raid AoE timers. Don't underestimate resistances in raids, especially in vanilla. Having a set of resistance jewelry to toss on when facing big AoEs might be necessary. Depends on how they balance things this time around. Don't let vanilla & DoF raids discourage you too much. These are by far the weakest raids/content and future expansions have much more involved and difficult challenges. At the start, most raid encounters are simply hack&slash with one or two AoEs.
Thank you all for the responses! This was the type of information I was looking for that I just couldn’t find anywhere else. One of those bard classes look interesting to me. They sound like a class that benefit groups and aren’t to hard to get the hang of. I’m not saying I won’t make alts but it sounds like a class that will let me get a feel for what other classes are doing in game.
First off, welcome to EQ2! There is a plithera of great information already posted in this thread, but I wanted to add a little something based on the concept of coming from EQ1 to EQ2 since that's exactly what my friends are doing on this TLE, and I have played both games many times off and on over the past couple decades. In EQ1, you got one option for a class to represent that class's specific role that it brings to the group/raid. In EQ2, they took the classes and split them in two; good and evil. You would think that it's just a good vs evil thing, and there would be no actual difference between the two classes, but you would be wrong. While they server the same general purpose, they are unique in what they bring to the group/raid. Generally what you see is one side mainly provides advantages for the group while the other side provides disadvantages for the monsters. In other cases, the difference is more based on Melee versus Spells, and in the case of healers, its a difference in how they heal as well as buff/debuff. For example, the bard class in EQ1 is split in to two classes in EQ2; troubadour and dirge. The troubadour is the good class, and it's big focus is based on benefiting caster-based groups. The dirge on the other hand is the evil class, and it's focus is based on benefiting melee-based groups. I highly suggest what others have said above. Create characters on the Kaladim server, and play around. That's the best way to find the class that appeals to you the most.
Oh! One more thing. Coming from EQ1 to EQ2, you are going to quickly notice that EQ2 is very quest heavy. For the level 1 to 20 era, follow the quest line (Frostfang Sea (New Halas) for good and Darklight Woods (Neriak) for evil). This is the fastest way to learn how to play the game, and you will leave that quest line with a full set of good gear and a mount. After you complete that quest line, the world really is your oyster. You can continue following quests, just go kill stuff, or do both. The thing is that I want to caution you on taking every quest you see. While you can do that (although there is an upper limit of number of active quests you can have) and many people do, coming from EQ1's style of game play, you can become very overwhelmed quickly in EQ2. Its easy to feel like you have a trillion things to do in EQ2, and quest fatigue can set in very easily for an EQ1 player. Take it easy, do what you want, and don't feel like you have to do everything. For example, there are: Normal quests Heritage quests Signature quests Lore and Legend quests Language quests Collections Tradeskill quests Faction quests Deity quests Harvesting quests etc There's like a gazillion things to do in the game.
Testing classes on Kaladim is a great idea. If you want to hit the mobs with weapons and position around them, I'd start with a ranger. If you prefer to park and bark, I'd start with a wizard. These are pretty straight forward and you'll do good enough to survive even if it takes awhile to get the hang of it, just check out the other classes after that.
Here's another very helpful hint for a new EQ2 player: bookmark the EQ2 Wiki, particularly the Solo Timeline. There is a ton of helpful info available on the wiki. If you get stuck on a quest, you can type the name of the quest into the Search box and get back step-by-step info on how to do the quest.
Nitpicky thing but I'm fairly certain bards are considered neutral classes. You can start as either type of bard in any city. Although if you pick an "evil" or "good" race, that will restrict you. So a gnome dirge can start in any city as a neutral class & race, but a troll troub would be restricted to evil cities only since trolls are considered evil. I'll also add that if you end up spawning on Noob Island (after the intro boat section) you should just immediately head to the nearby dock and Hail the Captain NPC to take to you either Darklight or Halas. Then follow Pharone's advice above. Leveling up on noob island is not recommended - it purely exists for masochistic nostalgia.
This is 100% correct. Back when the game first came out, a lot of the classes were split between "Good" and "Evil". I believe that around the time that they did away with the format of Archtype -> Class -> Subclass (for example, Scout -> Bard -> Dirge) and just allowed you to create a character with your class at level 1, they removed a lot of the Good and Evil tags. Now there are very few that are alignment locked. The only ones that immediately spring to mind are Crusaders (Paladin and Shadow Knight), Rogues (Brigand and Swashbuckler), Shamans (Defiler and Mystic), and Summoners (Conjis and Necros). Maybe there are still other alignment-locked classes, but those are just the ones at the top of my head.
Those are it. One set from each of the 4 primary class types. If betray any of those you become opposite. All other classes can be/live in Freeport or Qeynos and remain same class if wish even after betrayal.
