Greetings, In my many years of experience dating back to the Original Everquest, there's still one journey I have yet to venture upon... Creating a "buffs" toon. I figured I would call upon our experienced community to help me decide on the next class of toon to create. I would like the class to have all (or most) of the traits listed below. As I'm sure several class options exist, such as why I'm asking here on which is best: 1.) The most overall buffs to apply to a group that would be beneficial to most classes in the game. 2.) To include "Until Cancelled" Buffs mainly. I hate needing to keep track of spells that are only for specific durations of time. 3.) A class that isn't a "paper-bag" 4.) A class that's at least moderately enjoyable to play. Although, I'd prefer very enjoyable. Based on what I *think* I know... I've come down to Troubador or Dirge being a selection. But again, I'm not experienced with these types of toons and so I could be completely wrong. What do you all think I should go with?
Having played both in groups/raids, my observation is that Dirges are a lot more active than Troubadors. Most of that comes from their ability to resurrect fallen allies and heal/prevent damage though. As far as temporary abilities go: Dirges can throw out a heal, through AA they can put a 3 trigger damage absorption on an ally under 50% health, they can remove resurrection sickness ( along with other control effects through AA ), they can resurrect both single target and group ( 100% health and power through AA ), and also get a nice healer buff ( Gravitas ), plus their temporary buff, Cacophony of Blades, which grants raidwide attack speed and a damage proc. Troubadors can buff ability reuse speed with Jester’s Cap ( along with casting and recovery through AA ), they can feed an ally power, their raidwide Perfection of the Maestro increases INT and grants a spell damage proc, through AA they also can give a raid/group a 25% chance to proc elemental/arcane cure when damaged with that type of spell ( when running their resist buffs ). Both get excellent “until cancelled†buffs that are great for their respective groups. The temporary buffs Gravitas and Jester’s Cap both have immunities, which means that you will have to keep track of who gets it and have a rotation. Both get similar encounter based debuffs, with Dirges debuffing more mitigation and Troubadors debuffing more combat skills. Overall I think Dirges tend to be a lot more flexible as far as group mates go, and Troubadors really need some dev loving.
Ultraheavybeat was dead on for a scout class, I've played both (in groups, not raids) and Dirges are much preferred in most groups because they help the tank and melee dpsers and even have Gravitas and rezzes to help healers out. As far as what you've asked for in a toon, all the arch types have something of what you're looking for. All the tank and healer "until cancelled" buffs benefit almost every class, and mage buffs are pretty good for a lot of classes as well. Yhere are three Healers that are fun to level because they get melee attacks through AAs (all healers are mainly spells for attacks), Fighters can be fun though some stand out more than others, and Mages can be some of the best soloers because of roots/other CC + their massive damage output. I guess what you should really look at is how you enjoy playing the game as well as what you want to bring to a group or raid at end game. If you want to go scout and be melee/behind the mob oriented than Dirge seems to be the best choice for what you have asked but try out each arch type and try out more than one class (note: if you do try out multiple classes in the same arch type they don't start to become really unique until level 30 or so).
