Question for melee people's

[xarilzir]

Hi all..

So I had a thought today... I have never played a melee class in everquest .. I have always liked having the convince of having gate bind spells etc.. but I wondered how melee classes are if you start with nothing..I have taken a long hiatus so starting with nothing.

So melee classes.. solo wise how do they get on? Bards for example I know can solo AE kite but can they solo in other ways? With no gear can soloing be posible

I'm intreeged by monks and bards and very randomly rangers. When I come back someone posted to say maybe try something different with a second chance of playing classic eq... So I thought why not.

Any advice would be helpful I'm currently grinding out a shammy which is fun

[ChooChoo Train]

Bards are super efficient soloers, with mana free charm and snare+fear There’s a lot you can do and soloing to 50 is no problem. My bard is lvl 48 and I’ve been grinding in SolB and felwithe solo easy with shit gear. I don’t have enough experience on the other two classes to comment.

[ldgo86]

Soloing in Felwithe at 48? I’m intrigued. Just charming the guards or what? I’m currently levelling a Bard on green and interested in camps like this for the future.

[ChooChoo Train]

Soloing in Felwithe at 48? I’m intrigued. Just charming the guards or what? I’m currently levelling a Bard on green and interested in camps like this for the future.

My discord is Chooochooo#0834 I’ll make an OBS of it tomorrow that I can send you, it’s relatively straight forward fear kiting once you get the camp split(which takes some finesse). The drum dots do really good damage.

[magnetaress]

Bards aren't melee... Really more like casters.

A set of banded and fine steel is enough for any melee to hit level 15..

Melees play more like leveling their gear than grinding for exp. It is not usually possible to camp upgrades unless you group. So that leaves farming greens or camping stuff like ruined bone fork for 300p at a go.

I don't typically enjoy going after hard mobs on my casters anymore and play them more like melees. It's painful not being able to bind on a low pop server.

The pop is great and the economy perfect on green however. It is I am sure possible to casually get full mithral and some decent weapons by the time kunark will launch.

[jolanar]

If you want to be a pure melee and solo then monk is your best bet. They are surprisingly good at efficient exp grinding, but worse at hard target soloing than other melee. They can single pull mobs with a little effort and they can back out of most fights that aren't going their way with FD. Additionally, their skills keep increasing from 40 to 50 when all other melee classes skills stop until 51.

If not monk then Ranger or SK are your best bets for solo. Both make up for their weaker defensive or offensive capabilities with a set of useful spells. High level soloing with these two will either be fearkiting or root and shoot/cast.

Like others said, bard plays more like a caster than a melee.

[Stonewallx39]

Monk is so multifaceted for a melee. You do exchange survival ability for being able to save others but if you learn your craft and can both split, and keep camps split you'll protect your group. Solo monk gets to explore and lay hate and so often a get out of jail free card with FD and mend. You will never feel so free crawling through a new dungeon than with a monk who mastered Feign death. Even laying there while mobs that will tear you to shred go about their business is a rush.

I've played monk on blue and green. Monk on green is a grind and you feel like a burden in the dips role, monk on blue is a joy where you feel like a superhero "can you link your weapon?". It's just a 50pp wu's quivering staff. ;-)

[unleashedd]

wus quivering staff, silver chitin hand wraps, 55hp rings = my budget monk. lvl14 in maybe 10 hours. seems fun so far

[Jimjam]

wus quivering staff, silver chitin hand wraps, 55hp rings = my budget monk. lvl14 in maybe 10 hours. seems fun so far

I took my monk to the 40s with this and bristlesilk armour (looks like velious quest, actually is cloth). Mostly solo. That was before the meleebandage was made less reliable. Monks are ridiculously OP, especially iksar. 40ish was farming Thurgadin critter caves for dorf heads and silks. Replaced bristesilk with crystalline silk (cured silk with +mr).

Did most of the epic solo on my 60 ranger, a couple of fights I needed a heal and extra dps class. AG kindly helped with Bro Z, Gwarn and Xeno. Killed an extra monk bro for a second robe and replaced schw with the sky rot haste belt.

Did the monk shackle quest a couple of times for the bronze and steel shackles. Use jboots for magic kick, got a ww dragon neck and made sure to pick up a sarnak earring of the station.

All pretty easy to attain gear, seems to work well enough even in the 50s. If you want a low effort / cheap monk build on blue with some questing fun I don't think you'd go too wrong doing something similar.

[unleashedd]

noob Q: combat bind wound macro please?

ill paste it into wiki

[Jimjam]

You select the target for bind wound (tab onto your self, hit the f# of your group mate, include a /target yourname in the first line, however you want to do it)

/doa # where # is the slot in your skill or combat page where you have put bind wound

/stand

and then just target the mob you were fighting (tab back /assist tankname /target a_ ,whatever works for you)

reengage autoattack.

I've given you the steps so you can write the macro that suits you best.

Personally I just tab (target self), press 4 (bind wound), press 3, (/stand), tab (previous target), f (autoattack) rather than use a grand unified macro.

Not using a macro lets me use a f# for a group mate to bandage, and I can /ass tank to resume fighting.

[unleashedd]

thanks a lot, time to start using that :)

[Lartanin63]

I'd suggest a ranger for your first melee. You get alot of utility spells and can do a bit of everything. You will get the tank experience, pulling, dps, cc and mild solo capabilities. Real tracking opens up a whole new way of playing the game and finding named targets, forage,hide and sneak. It may not be for you but you will get alot of tools that you may have not experienced with pure casters.

[unleashedd]

omg, combat bindwound is OP. thanks Jimjam

[Snaggles]

I guess it depends. A melee on green is going to be rough, especially a hybrid (bard/sk/pal/ranger) due to the extra 40% xp penalty. Although, bards are by far easier to equip than the other melee classes except maybe monks.

I'd be tempted to try a bard tho. Get a cheap instrument or two and enjoy running fast :).

[magnetaress]

naw... i bet i could get a rogue to 50 on green in under a month untwinked with 16 hr play sessions, tho would end up needing to group some.

how dedicated to this character are you going to be? if only a lil, start a ranger, or monk, or mess around on a rogue and dont feel bad if it gets real hard at lvl 12

imo rogues are the coolest, with the deepest learning curve, but they power up slower than warriors. Warriors just keep powering up. Monks are really active, and intersting, and pulling is cool. Rangers are the most versatile hybrid. Paladins are for roleplayers, and shadowknights are for minmaxers.

[Chinetter]

I'd suggest a ranger for your first melee. You get alot of utility spells and can do a bit of everything. You will get the tank experience, pulling, dps, cc and mild solo capabilities. Real tracking opens up a whole new way of playing the game and finding named targets, forage,hide and sneak. It may not be for you but you will get alot of tools that you may have not experienced with pure casters.

This is exactly my experience thus far on Green: ranger as my first-ever EQ melee. Now at lvl15. So far having fun, it's going well, track is amazing, and I intend to stick with it. I like some variety, a mix of soloing and grouping and trying different stuff in a game. From that perspective a ranger is a great fit.

[Kich867]

Soloing on a fresh warrior is pretty easy. I'm currently just under level 29 on my solo Dwarf Warrior run only using gear I find/craft/quest for. Their experience bonus also makes the leveling process a tad easier, a lot less stuff you have to kill.

Honestly as a shorty, it's a pretty easy time. There's a bunch of XP hand in quests, there's a lot of amazing early game armor quests, you can get basically best-in-slot weapons for the vast majority of your character's life (Bull Smasher / Langseax) pretty easily.

As an ogre or a troll I'm not sure what weapons I'd shoot for, but you can raise blacksmithing to craft banded in ~250ish plat which is honestly super easy to acquire if you just focus on big money drops like cracked staves, stackable decent selling items, etc.

If you open yourself up to trading, you can pretty easily amass currency selling bone chips or CB belts and buy a pair of good weapons. Start saving for Crafted armor.

[jolanar]

Melee soloing in general is much more doable than a lot of posts on the forums can make people believe especially after Kunark is released. Granted self found is a whole different ballgame.

I leveled my monk as my first character in Kunark era before combat bind wound was general knowledge so I didn't use it. Aside from having to spend a little bit of time farming to buy a good weapon there was no point I felt it wasn't doable or particular challenging until 51+.

51+ is almost an entirely different game though.

[unleashedd]

lvl20 now. iksar monk using combat bindwound seems to be a supereasy way to solo. granted, im slightly twinked BUT without my haste gloves, its only 300pp worth of gear. the 55hp rings scale fantastically with mend and bindwound, and the 23/28 2hb stick cannot be beat for the price of 50-100pp. at lvl20, the doubleattack skill along with removed melee dmg restrictions (went from 28 max dmg per swing to 46dmg x2 chance per swing) make this monk killer dps. also, feigndeath is just clutch!