Melee Worthlessness - The Biggest Balance Problem There Is

[kipoki]

I was going to post this as a reply to the "is enchanter OP?" poll thread, only to realize it's been locked, but I think it's such an important topic necessary for some level of discussion (or proper reasonings to put me in my place about it) that I need to make a thread bout it.

First and foremost, before anything else, I *DON'T* think enchanters or any other class are OP -- I think the 'power-classes' like ENC and MAG, and to some degree every spellcaster, solo or in group, are just toeing the line of "the proper balance" to make it through a game as gruelingly difficult as classic EQ. You still need some level of smarts, some level of knowledge, some level of hard-won experience in the game, guide-studying, figuring out how things work, time commitment, perseverance and stubbornness to get far in this game -- outside of powerleveling, of course, but given not only how unforgiving the game is in a general sense, and aspects like spell resists, the extreme state of small mana pools and slow mana recovery, the competitiveness of every popular exp/money spot and just how fast you die when things inevitably go wrong and how punishing death is, I couldn't call any class in this game 'overpowered' so much as, at best, in case of ENC perhaps most of all, "just right, able to cheese the game back almost as hard as it cheeses its players".

The problem arises when you factor in classes that DON'T have all those tools to compete with the insane "overtuning" of the enemies (though that's how we like it, what makes the game more satisfying than newer MMOs and generally makes grouping at all stages far more popular than it would be in others). Even IN groups, where they're seemingly more "needed" and where they flock since soloing gets exponentially harder to even try to do rapidly the higher level you get... The melees. They were designed to fill the same void they do in every other classical RPG or RPG-inspired game, the big dudes that take hits so the finger-wagglers can safely do their waggling, or to do consistent, constant DPS while the mages are meditating or against mobs that resist magic or what-have-you. This would have been fine if the only spellcasters in the game had been clerics and wizards, maybe, but well...

Let me give you a story of my recent personal experience. I finally came to green late as Kunark launched, I made an IKS WAR (I know they can't wear plate till velious and are thus frowned upon but I also know I was future-proofing a bit and I love the racials and aesthetics). I painstakingly got the guy up into the 30s after weeks of hardcore play and had EXCELLENT equipment every step of the way thanks to kind strangers, friends and guildmates, and my own blood sweat and tears scrabbling every single copper I could every step of the way to fill out every slot with at least decent mid-tier stuff as soon as possible.. People appreciated me in groups and I think I did a decent job with everythign I could. But despite all this hard work and commitment, despite the hundreds, thousands of plat that went into gearing me up to fairly twinkish levels, consistently every single time I partied with any kind of pet class, even several levels below me, the pet was consistently MONUMENTALLY out-DPSing me, even with no weapons, and I'm pretty damn sure they'd out-tank me if people bothered to throw a set of cheap noob gear on them and keep them healed. No matter what I did, what I tried, how I tried to squeeze every iota of stats and ability and goodness out of my character, or how much money I funneled into it, I couldn't even begin to dream to even halfway catch up to this naked pet in sheer raw power for my level, they're scaled just the same as NPCs which is to say 'white mob should be enough of a threat to need multiple players to take it down after like level 5, unless you cheese the game as is often necessary". Though my guy was so kitted out I was able to solo high blues and sometimes even whites all the way up to level 30 mobs -- then the stat skyrocket is so blatant and insane no melee can even dream of it anymore, while of course every single spellcaster can with some tactics and patience. Or just throwing junk at it till it dies if you're a MAG I guess lol. I even tried my best to get into all aspects of crafting and any side-ability I could use to give me any edge, and let me tell you, all crafting is completely useless in this era lmao, best to use that time to farm some cash for a set of banded and some HMBP's and just get fletching to the not-at-all-high level you need to craft the longest range arrows for pulling, which is all that matters, you'll never get any damage out of them and any amount of 'hard work' and 'squeezing every last drop out of the class' is pointless and adds absolutely nothing.

The point I'm trying to make is -- why the hell would you ever roll a melee or bring a melee to any group, ever, when bringing a magic user or ESPECIALLY pet class is just infinitely, gargantuanly, objectively, far far better? You need literally zero gear whatsoever to humongously outperform even geared-to-the-teeth melees. Just summon a pet and send it in. You can give it almost any gear you want and it will immediately auto-equip it. Sure, it makes it a pain to give it expensive stuff that you know will disappear forever as soon as it dies or you log or zone, but... so? What are you gonna do, go all the way to EC and spend a month trying to peddle it off, or worse yet, give it to a melee noob when you'll get infinitely more use out of it letting your pet have it and getting you and/or your group that much more easy and fast exp and money? Why buff any of the melees when you could buff the pets and see so much more effect for it? Why give even good weapons to the melees instead of the pets? Why heal the melees when you could heal the pets? Why in the world would you make any melee class instead of bringing a class that literally can effortlessly summon or charm a mob that IS, immediately, with no money or gear, not only as good as, but BETTER THAN any melee you could possibly add to your group, PLUS all the myriad spells and abilities that you get as a spell-user? And no matter what spellcaster you are you're going to get unfathomably uber-useful core abilities too like bind and gate, at least some menial CC like root, and likely things like food/drink summoning or other means to not bother with some core aspects of the game. Still, I don't think this is 'op' -- I just think melee is severely, severely UP.

I know there are some apparent exceptions but, well -- let's go over a few.
- Warriors get disciplines later that let them tank raid bosses. They're the only class that can tank raid bosses.
-- Great! That's exactly one solitary warrior needed per entire raid, and 99.999% of the playerbase will never touch any raid ever. You all know that this warrior will be some ogre war a guildie with a DRU or NEC main will make as an alt real quick and get powerlevelled and omega-twinked just to fulfill this one purpose, anyway.
- Rogues get backstab, that's pretty strong, right?
-- Yes, but not so much stronger than other pet DPS or spell DPS that it really matters, and in some zones there are rogue NPCs to charm that do this anyway, so what's the point?
- Rogues can also sneak/invis and scout or do sick corpse runs!
-- Yeah, but who needs scouting anymore when we all have fully detailed maps of every zone in the game, and/or use gnome ghetto tracking, and we can just kill all the mobs anyway with CC and pet barrages? And who needs corpse runs when you could just summon them, pull through floor, use a bard or other class that can do it just as well etc?
- Monks do so much great DPS and can pull and FD and it's neat!
-- Yea, but pets are still gonna outdps them before raid-tier endgame and again, who needs a puller when you could just kill/CC everything with enough pets/spellcasters? And necros can FD for when that's needed.
- Hybrids can do some stuff, maybe, sometimes, and hold hate well.
-- No one on the planet's gonna party with a hybrid as long as exp penalty is in place, the most ludicrously pointless aspect of 'keep it classic' that serves literally zero purpose whatsoever except make already-grotesquely-underpowered classes even less viable to play or wanted by anyone. and even after that, literally why bother when you could just send in more pets and root the mob so they tank it? And do many many times over the DPS of these classes that do far less dmg than warriors, and warriors do far less than pets?

So yeah like... I'm not saying anything should be nerfed, just that melees should be buffed to actually compete with pets and even-leveled mobs, or be able to conceivably have any reason to exist alongside spellcasters when there's absolutely no way for them to ever even dream of approaching the DPS of most of them, especially pet ones, tanking is pointless when pets and charmed mobs exist atm, and they have absolutely utterly nothing they can do of any real value at all compared to ANY spellcaster class, and have much much much harder time doing the basic stuff of the game for not only no reward but *less* powerful or needed of a character objectively, *and* they take a million times more money to make even somewhat viable, but SITLL far LESS viable than a naked spellcaster of any type...

I know this won't be changed ever and the purpose of this server is to simulate classic EQ as closely as possible, imbalances and all, but it really gets under my skin and pisses me off so I wanted to make a post about it :P

TL;DR all melees (except bards which don't count) suck and are terrible and worthless, prove me wrong

[madgarin]

Make a friend.

[Gustoo]

A melee is a pet that you can control directly.

Best group is 5 mages and 1 enchanter.

But who cares.

[Toxigen]

TL;DR all melees (except bards which don't count) suck and are terrible and worthless, prove me wrong

No need to prove it, you're just wrong.

[rewinder47]

"No one on the planet is going to party with hybrids"

Not only is this untrue, but you're a dick if you think this way. Plenty of people play as, and group with, hybrids because the game is about having fun and playing what you like.

Your whole post is basically whining and complaining that you can't play as a melee because it's not perfect statistical min/maxing. I wonder if you even get any enjoyment out of the game when you worry so much about perfect effectiveness. Maybe you should play something else

[Snortles Chortles]

if i ever saw a tank LFG i would take one
good thing i can charm
(LOL)

[Videri]

OP, tanks are not for doing damage. They are for taking hits, and hopefully pulling.

Player tanks are valuable. Those all-powerful casters want someone to go pull so they don't have to stand up. Just make sure to have a bow and some arrows and fletching materials.

Pets are not always a sufficient replacement for tank players. Players can pull intelligently; for example, try to get singles, warn of multiple mobs incoming, die away from camp instead of training the pet master.

There is a tank shortage right now in the 50+ range. When I log in my useless potato warrior, I instantly get a group. Is it the same at lower levels?

Furthermore, in my opinion, warriors are a guild class. You need a guild because a guild needs you. A guild with any sense will support and enable their warriors.

[A Knight]

I hate to sound like a broken record.

If everything is fair and balanced then you take away from the feel of a real world. Then everything is bland and equal. Everything would feel like Wow where it may look like a world but it doesn't feel it.

As long as everything is relatively equal at high level. Plus or minus some concerns like rangers. I'm also from pvp though so hybrids have a job.

[Gustoo]

Yeah just turn on red and see what class you want to be when you're pegged at max level and gear.

There are tradeoffs thats why the game is actually fun.

[Jibartik]

I hate to say that I think wow fixed melee by taking disciplines and expanding them to basically be "melee spell lines" and using stamina instead of mana to cast them.

[Shinko]

I have no problem playing my warrior , you just learn to control the fights, it’s not your job to blow up the mobs but to keep the xp flowing

[DMN]

A melee is a pet that you can control directly.

Best group is 5 mages and 1 enchanter.

But who cares.

If in dungeon and viable charms are around, it's 5 enc, 1 necro.
If no viable charms, 1 nec, 1 enc, 4 mage.
If outdoors 1 bard 4 wizards. 1 enc

As far as this thread /shrug. Classic is classic.

[A Knight]

I hate to say that I think wow fixed melee by taking disciplines and expanding them to basically be "melee spell lines" and using stamina instead of mana to cast them.

Don't get me wrong I think a Wow like game could be fun sometimes. Where lets say all melee start with bronze and some decent weapon like dragoon dirk.

I hope Pantheon is a good cross between a Wow-like and EQ like game. There might even be a game out there already like that but I haven't found it yet.

But also 80 percent of the time I'd rather play classic EQ or a classic EQ like game.

[Jimjam]

Around Dragons of Norrath expansion, there was a Dev post that revealed Bash/slam had been broken since implementation - it was meant to have generated aggro similar to spell stun, but it was bugged since inception.

Bash was meant to be the mechanic for tanks to build aggro (hence why plate fighters had it).

All that time the had Devs thought the players were just a bunch of idiot munchkins using duel wield / 2 handers just to be awesome, and the players hadn't realised the super aggro of bash! Of course, by the time this bug was discovered and DoN was out, the player meta of the game had adapted to offset this (warriors using off hand proc weapons and low delay primary to build max aggro).

Rather than fix the bug, the Devs just started adding far more 'Furious Bash' shields and some shield related aa.

Similarly, taunt had been broken to never work on anything yellow or red for years too.

So yeah, while pets being OP was a big part of things (and this is despite pets being repeatedly nerfed), another problem was tanks (especially warriors) had their two main tools of acquiring / consolidating aggro in a bugged state since day 0.

Classic.

[A Knight]

One think I like about Wow is they use shields more.

But also I don't mind warriors duel wielding either.

Gives the same feel of not being able to be any race/class combo you want. There is a set way and you have to work around it.

[Videri]

Another element of warrior aggro is, everyone else has to learn to NOT take aggro. This often means straight-up not attacking for many seconds so the warrior has time to build up aggro via swings and procs.

Everyone else attacking too soon doesn't mean warriors are bad.

[Snortles Chortles]

Another element of warrior aggro is, everyone else has to learn to NOT take aggro. This often means straight-up not attacking for many seconds so the warrior has time to build up aggro via swings and procs.

Everyone else attacking too soon doesn't mean warriors are bad.

This so much

[Baler]

I aint reading OP, but the problem with green is too many hybrids.

Hybrids don't come into their own until the very last few patches of velious. In reality luclin/PoP or OOW,.. Classic hybrids suck unless they're twinked with all their velious spells and raid gear.

---
Warrior is fine, they have the skills to pay the bills and do acceptable dps when they're not tanking.

[Keebz]

Lots of hot takes in this thread.

Yes pet classes and charming can trivialize a lot of content, but there's also a ton of content where melees vastly simplify things.

Example: can you duo King on a Chanter/Cleric, probably, but it'll be spicy—add a Monk and you're gonna have a much better time.

[Baler]

add a Monk and you're gonna have a much better time.

Iksar Monks on p99 are OP, They get nerfed in luclin. Velious is the ultimate cut off for monk op-ness.

[Gustoo]

If in dungeon and viable charms are around, it's 5 enc, 1 necro.
If no viable charms, 1 nec, 1 enc, 4 mage.
If outdoors 1 bard 4 wizards. 1 enc

As far as this thread /shrug. Classic is classic.

I dunno, I think that

1 enchanter to break up pulls.

5 mages or maybe 4 mage 1 necro to shred mobs without even thinking about it. Charm breaking and smashing an enchanter or their friends makes instability that isn't necessary at all and all those charmed pets means less mobs to massacre in any given location.

When you have a group of OP the enchanter charm I think is a liability that isn't necessary.

[Taiku]

2 enchanters is pretty sweet, having multiple enchanters means one can afk if needed and the other can mez pet, also have to consider multiple charms means potentially less spawns in the room you are set up in, making it safer to set up anywhere you want!

[branamil]

if you think of a charmed pet and its owner as one unit, it's a character that has 12,000 HP, quads for 150+, can haste itself 70% for free, slow other mobs by 70%, stun and mez almost everything forever, and heal itself to full in 2 minutes.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

I hate to say that I think wow fixed melee by taking disciplines and expanding them to basically be "melee spell lines" and using stamina instead of mana to cast them.

Which EQ (attempted to) pioneer with the addition of AAs in Luclin.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

if you think of a charmed pet and its owner as one unit, it's a character that has 12,000 HP, quads for 150+, can haste itself 70% for free, slow other mobs by 70%, stun and mez almost everything forever, and heal itself to full in 2 minutes.

And this is WITHOUT accounting for insane clickies!

[cd288]

I think OP is new to EQ and doesn’t realize that his warrior isn’t intended as a dps class. As far as raids go, OP must be new to EQ if he thinks a raid brings one warrior; first off you’ll want back up MTs and second there’s no raid size cap so why would you be like no thanks other warriors don’t come?

Necro FD requires a 1.5 second cast time. Monks will always be better for that purpose. Monks and Rogues are also great DPS. OP must be new since he things spell damage will outpace a monk and a rogue wailing on a mob in your average fight.

No one groups with hybrids? Since when? Almost every group I’ve been in on Green has a pally or SK as a tank because there aren’t that many warriors.

Honestly this post is so incorrect in so many ways that it’s confusing how someone could be so wrong

[Manakim]

I hate to say that I think wow fixed melee by taking disciplines and expanding them to basically be "melee spell lines" and using stamina instead of mana to cast them.

I've played wow since beta all the way trough Warlords, and i have to say in the long run it has absolutely nothing over EQ when it comes to a world that feels alive. It might have better mechanics in some aspects if that, but all that falls flat on the over generalization of content that catters to the lowest common denominator.

[NPC]

I was going to post this as a reply to the "is enchanter OP?" poll thread, only to realize it's been locked, but I think it's such an important topic necessary for some level of discussion (or proper reasonings to put me in my place about it) that I need to make a thread bout it.

First and foremost, before anything else, I *DON'T* think enchanters or any other class are OP -- I think the 'power-classes' like ENC and MAG, and to some degree every spellcaster, solo or in group, are just toeing the line of "the proper balance" to make it through a game as gruelingly difficult as classic EQ. You still need some level of smarts, some level of knowledge, some level of hard-won experience in the game, guide-studying, figuring out how things work, time commitment, perseverance and stubbornness to get far in this game -- outside of powerleveling, of course, but given not only how unforgiving the game is in a general sense, and aspects like spell resists, the extreme state of small mana pools and slow mana recovery, the competitiveness of every popular exp/money spot and just how fast you die when things inevitably go wrong and how punishing death is, I couldn't call any class in this game 'overpowered' so much as, at best, in case of ENC perhaps most of all, "just right, able to cheese the game back almost as hard as it cheeses its players".

The problem arises when you factor in classes that DON'T have all those tools to compete with the insane "overtuning" of the enemies (though that's how we like it, what makes the game more satisfying than newer MMOs and generally makes grouping at all stages far more popular than it would be in others). Even IN groups, where they're seemingly more "needed" and where they flock since soloing gets exponentially harder to even try to do rapidly the higher level you get... The melees. They were designed to fill the same void they do in every other classical RPG or RPG-inspired game, the big dudes that take hits so the finger-wagglers can safely do their waggling, or to do consistent, constant DPS while the mages are meditating or against mobs that resist magic or what-have-you. This would have been fine if the only spellcasters in the game had been clerics and wizards, maybe, but well...

Let me give you a story of my recent personal experience. I finally came to green late as Kunark launched, I made an IKS WAR (I know they can't wear plate till velious and are thus frowned upon but I also know I was future-proofing a bit and I love the racials and aesthetics). I painstakingly got the guy up into the 30s after weeks of hardcore play and had EXCELLENT equipment every step of the way thanks to kind strangers, friends and guildmates, and my own blood sweat and tears scrabbling every single copper I could every step of the way to fill out every slot with at least decent mid-tier stuff as soon as possible.. People appreciated me in groups and I think I did a decent job with everythign I could. But despite all this hard work and commitment, despite the hundreds, thousands of plat that went into gearing me up to fairly twinkish levels, consistently every single time I partied with any kind of pet class, even several levels below me, the pet was consistently MONUMENTALLY out-DPSing me, even with no weapons, and I'm pretty damn sure they'd out-tank me if people bothered to throw a set of cheap noob gear on them and keep them healed. No matter what I did, what I tried, how I tried to squeeze every iota of stats and ability and goodness out of my character, or how much money I funneled into it, I couldn't even begin to dream to even halfway catch up to this naked pet in sheer raw power for my level, they're scaled just the same as NPCs which is to say 'white mob should be enough of a threat to need multiple players to take it down after like level 5, unless you cheese the game as is often necessary". Though my guy was so kitted out I was able to solo high blues and sometimes even whites all the way up to level 30 mobs -- then the stat skyrocket is so blatant and insane no melee can even dream of it anymore, while of course every single spellcaster can with some tactics and patience. Or just throwing junk at it till it dies if you're a MAG I guess lol. I even tried my best to get into all aspects of crafting and any side-ability I could use to give me any edge, and let me tell you, all crafting is completely useless in this era lmao, best to use that time to farm some cash for a set of banded and some HMBP's and just get fletching to the not-at-all-high level you need to craft the longest range arrows for pulling, which is all that matters, you'll never get any damage out of them and any amount of 'hard work' and 'squeezing every last drop out of the class' is pointless and adds absolutely nothing.

The point I'm trying to make is -- why the hell would you ever roll a melee or bring a melee to any group, ever, when bringing a magic user or ESPECIALLY pet class is just infinitely, gargantuanly, objectively, far far better? You need literally zero gear whatsoever to humongously outperform even geared-to-the-teeth melees. Just summon a pet and send it in. You can give it almost any gear you want and it will immediately auto-equip it. Sure, it makes it a pain to give it expensive stuff that you know will disappear forever as soon as it dies or you log or zone, but... so? What are you gonna do, go all the way to EC and spend a month trying to peddle it off, or worse yet, give it to a melee noob when you'll get infinitely more use out of it letting your pet have it and getting you and/or your group that much more easy and fast exp and money? Why buff any of the melees when you could buff the pets and see so much more effect for it? Why give even good weapons to the melees instead of the pets? Why heal the melees when you could heal the pets? Why in the world would you make any melee class instead of bringing a class that literally can effortlessly summon or charm a mob that IS, immediately, with no money or gear, not only as good as, but BETTER THAN any melee you could possibly add to your group, PLUS all the myriad spells and abilities that you get as a spell-user? And no matter what spellcaster you are you're going to get unfathomably uber-useful core abilities too like bind and gate, at least some menial CC like root, and likely things like food/drink summoning or other means to not bother with some core aspects of the game. Still, I don't think this is 'op' -- I just think melee is severely, severely UP.

I know there are some apparent exceptions but, well -- let's go over a few.
- Warriors get disciplines later that let them tank raid bosses. They're the only class that can tank raid bosses.
-- Great! That's exactly one solitary warrior needed per entire raid, and 99.999% of the playerbase will never touch any raid ever. You all know that this warrior will be some ogre war a guildie with a DRU or NEC main will make as an alt real quick and get powerlevelled and omega-twinked just to fulfill this one purpose, anyway.
- Rogues get backstab, that's pretty strong, right?
-- Yes, but not so much stronger than other pet DPS or spell DPS that it really matters, and in some zones there are rogue NPCs to charm that do this anyway, so what's the point?
- Rogues can also sneak/invis and scout or do sick corpse runs!
-- Yeah, but who needs scouting anymore when we all have fully detailed maps of every zone in the game, and/or use gnome ghetto tracking, and we can just kill all the mobs anyway with CC and pet barrages? And who needs corpse runs when you could just summon them, pull through floor, use a bard or other class that can do it just as well etc?
- Monks do so much great DPS and can pull and FD and it's neat!
-- Yea, but pets are still gonna outdps them before raid-tier endgame and again, who needs a puller when you could just kill/CC everything with enough pets/spellcasters? And necros can FD for when that's needed.
- Hybrids can do some stuff, maybe, sometimes, and hold hate well.
-- No one on the planet's gonna party with a hybrid as long as exp penalty is in place, the most ludicrously pointless aspect of 'keep it classic' that serves literally zero purpose whatsoever except make already-grotesquely-underpowered classes even less viable to play or wanted by anyone. and even after that, literally why bother when you could just send in more pets and root the mob so they tank it? And do many many times over the DPS of these classes that do far less dmg than warriors, and warriors do far less than pets?

So yeah like... I'm not saying anything should be nerfed, just that melees should be buffed to actually compete with pets and even-leveled mobs, or be able to conceivably have any reason to exist alongside spellcasters when there's absolutely no way for them to ever even dream of approaching the DPS of most of them, especially pet ones, tanking is pointless when pets and charmed mobs exist atm, and they have absolutely utterly nothing they can do of any real value at all compared to ANY spellcaster class, and have much much much harder time doing the basic stuff of the game for not only no reward but *less* powerful or needed of a character objectively, *and* they take a million times more money to make even somewhat viable, but SITLL far LESS viable than a naked spellcaster of any type...

I know this won't be changed ever and the purpose of this server is to simulate classic EQ as closely as possible, imbalances and all, but it really gets under my skin and pisses me off so I wanted to make a post about it :P

TL;DR all melees (except bards which don't count) suck and are terrible and worthless, prove me wrong

The problem is you are making assumptions rather than actually knowing your characters weaknesses and strengths. You should have started a caster to gear your melee, that's what the seasoned players do. It probably sounds unthinkable if you're new, make 2 characters? Its the only way to go, then you understand the mechanics for casters that you are only guessing at. Warriors are essential end game, you want to do any content level 50+? You MUST have a tank, cleric, slower, only enchanters could solo at this stage, and at certain spots, necros and mages. Also race plays an huge role, Warrior ogres are the most effective, the extra stamina ogres start with means 1k-2k extra hps 50+ level. Iksar should be monk or necro.
The most powerful broken mechanic in the game is a warrior with massive hps and cleric complete heal spell. FYI, It's how all raid targets are killed, period. When you hit 50th level, then you start to learn the actual game.

[DMN]

I dunno, I think that

1 enchanter to break up pulls.

5 mages or maybe 4 mage 1 necro to shred mobs without even thinking about it. Charm breaking and smashing an enchanter or their friends makes instability that isn't necessary at all and all those charmed pets means less mobs to massacre in any given location.

When you have a group of OP the enchanter charm I think is a liability that isn't necessary.


If the enchanters are working together and stay close to each other even with multiple charm breaks at the exact same time they should be able to chain stun the mobs such they will never get more than 1 round of combat(or 2 rounds if max hasted). And the necro is there to patch up any bumps and scratches that do get through rune/bedlam.

[NPC]

I dunno, I think that

1 enchanter to break up pulls.

5 mages or maybe 4 mage 1 necro to shred mobs without even thinking about it. Charm breaking and smashing an enchanter or their friends makes instability that isn't necessary at all and all those charmed pets means less mobs to massacre in any given location.

When you have a group of OP the enchanter charm I think is a liability that isn't necessary.

Charm pet was a liability on LIVE, here it is much, much safer. Thus the OP chanter thread. I used to hate charmed pets on live because more often than not, the charm breaks an the hasted pet attacks your group just as repop happens an you wipe.

[NPC]

I was going to post this as a reply to the "is enchanter OP?" poll thread, only to realize it's been locked, but I think it's such an important topic necessary for some level of discussion (or proper reasonings to put me in my place about it) that I need to make a thread bout it.

First and foremost, before anything else, I *DON'T* think enchanters or any other class are OP -- I think the 'power-classes' like ENC and MAG, and to some degree every spellcaster, solo or in group, are just toeing the line of "the proper balance" to make it through a game as gruelingly difficult as classic EQ. You still need some level of smarts, some level of knowledge, some level of hard-won experience in the game, guide-studying, figuring out how things work, time commitment, perseverance and stubbornness to get far in this game -- outside of powerleveling, of course, but given not only how unforgiving the game is in a general sense, and aspects like spell resists, the extreme state of small mana pools and slow mana recovery, the competitiveness of every popular exp/money spot and just how fast you die when things inevitably go wrong and how punishing death is, I couldn't call any class in this game 'overpowered' so much as, at best, in case of ENC perhaps most of all, "just right, able to cheese the game back almost as hard as it cheeses its players".

The problem arises when you factor in classes that DON'T have all those tools to compete with the insane "overtuning" of the enemies (though that's how we like it, what makes the game more satisfying than newer MMOs and generally makes grouping at all stages far more popular than it would be in others). Even IN groups, where they're seemingly more "needed" and where they flock since soloing gets exponentially harder to even try to do rapidly the higher level you get... The melees. They were designed to fill the same void they do in every other classical RPG or RPG-inspired game, the big dudes that take hits so the finger-wagglers can safely do their waggling, or to do consistent, constant DPS while the mages are meditating or against mobs that resist magic or what-have-you. This would have been fine if the only spellcasters in the game had been clerics and wizards, maybe, but well...

Let me give you a story of my recent personal experience. I finally came to green late as Kunark launched, I made an IKS WAR (I know they can't wear plate till velious and are thus frowned upon but I also know I was future-proofing a bit and I love the racials and aesthetics). I painstakingly got the guy up into the 30s after weeks of hardcore play and had EXCELLENT equipment every step of the way thanks to kind strangers, friends and guildmates, and my own blood sweat and tears scrabbling every single copper I could every step of the way to fill out every slot with at least decent mid-tier stuff as soon as possible.. People appreciated me in groups and I think I did a decent job with everythign I could. But despite all this hard work and commitment, despite the hundreds, thousands of plat that went into gearing me up to fairly twinkish levels, consistently every single time I partied with any kind of pet class, even several levels below me, the pet was consistently MONUMENTALLY out-DPSing me, even with no weapons, and I'm pretty damn sure they'd out-tank me if people bothered to throw a set of cheap noob gear on them and keep them healed. No matter what I did, what I tried, how I tried to squeeze every iota of stats and ability and goodness out of my character, or how much money I funneled into it, I couldn't even begin to dream to even halfway catch up to this naked pet in sheer raw power for my level, they're scaled just the same as NPCs which is to say 'white mob should be enough of a threat to need multiple players to take it down after like level 5, unless you cheese the game as is often necessary". Though my guy was so kitted out I was able to solo high blues and sometimes even whites all the way up to level 30 mobs -- then the stat skyrocket is so blatant and insane no melee can even dream of it anymore, while of course every single spellcaster can with some tactics and patience. Or just throwing junk at it till it dies if you're a MAG I guess lol. I even tried my best to get into all aspects of crafting and any side-ability I could use to give me any edge, and let me tell you, all crafting is completely useless in this era lmao, best to use that time to farm some cash for a set of banded and some HMBP's and just get fletching to the not-at-all-high level you need to craft the longest range arrows for pulling, which is all that matters, you'll never get any damage out of them and any amount of 'hard work' and 'squeezing every last drop out of the class' is pointless and adds absolutely nothing.

The point I'm trying to make is -- why the hell would you ever roll a melee or bring a melee to any group, ever, when bringing a magic user or ESPECIALLY pet class is just infinitely, gargantuanly, objectively, far far better? You need literally zero gear whatsoever to humongously outperform even geared-to-the-teeth melees. Just summon a pet and send it in. You can give it almost any gear you want and it will immediately auto-equip it. Sure, it makes it a pain to give it expensive stuff that you know will disappear forever as soon as it dies or you log or zone, but... so? What are you gonna do, go all the way to EC and spend a month trying to peddle it off, or worse yet, give it to a melee noob when you'll get infinitely more use out of it letting your pet have it and getting you and/or your group that much more easy and fast exp and money? Why buff any of the melees when you could buff the pets and see so much more effect for it? Why give even good weapons to the melees instead of the pets? Why heal the melees when you could heal the pets? Why in the world would you make any melee class instead of bringing a class that literally can effortlessly summon or charm a mob that IS, immediately, with no money or gear, not only as good as, but BETTER THAN any melee you could possibly add to your group, PLUS all the myriad spells and abilities that you get as a spell-user? And no matter what spellcaster you are you're going to get unfathomably uber-useful core abilities too like bind and gate, at least some menial CC like root, and likely things like food/drink summoning or other means to not bother with some core aspects of the game. Still, I don't think this is 'op' -- I just think melee is severely, severely UP.

I know there are some apparent exceptions but, well -- let's go over a few.
- Warriors get disciplines later that let them tank raid bosses. They're the only class that can tank raid bosses.
-- Great! That's exactly one solitary warrior needed per entire raid, and 99.999% of the playerbase will never touch any raid ever. You all know that this warrior will be some ogre war a guildie with a DRU or NEC main will make as an alt real quick and get powerlevelled and omega-twinked just to fulfill this one purpose, anyway.
- Rogues get backstab, that's pretty strong, right?
-- Yes, but not so much stronger than other pet DPS or spell DPS that it really matters, and in some zones there are rogue NPCs to charm that do this anyway, so what's the point?
- Rogues can also sneak/invis and scout or do sick corpse runs!
-- Yeah, but who needs scouting anymore when we all have fully detailed maps of every zone in the game, and/or use gnome ghetto tracking, and we can just kill all the mobs anyway with CC and pet barrages? And who needs corpse runs when you could just summon them, pull through floor, use a bard or other class that can do it just as well etc?
- Monks do so much great DPS and can pull and FD and it's neat!
-- Yea, but pets are still gonna outdps them before raid-tier endgame and again, who needs a puller when you could just kill/CC everything with enough pets/spellcasters? And necros can FD for when that's needed.
- Hybrids can do some stuff, maybe, sometimes, and hold hate well.
-- No one on the planet's gonna party with a hybrid as long as exp penalty is in place, the most ludicrously pointless aspect of 'keep it classic' that serves literally zero purpose whatsoever except make already-grotesquely-underpowered classes even less viable to play or wanted by anyone. and even after that, literally why bother when you could just send in more pets and root the mob so they tank it? And do many many times over the DPS of these classes that do far less dmg than warriors, and warriors do far less than pets?

So yeah like... I'm not saying anything should be nerfed, just that melees should be buffed to actually compete with pets and even-leveled mobs, or be able to conceivably have any reason to exist alongside spellcasters when there's absolutely no way for them to ever even dream of approaching the DPS of most of them, especially pet ones, tanking is pointless when pets and charmed mobs exist atm, and they have absolutely utterly nothing they can do of any real value at all compared to ANY spellcaster class, and have much much much harder time doing the basic stuff of the game for not only no reward but *less* powerful or needed of a character objectively, *and* they take a million times more money to make even somewhat viable, but SITLL far LESS viable than a naked spellcaster of any type...

I know this won't be changed ever and the purpose of this server is to simulate classic EQ as closely as possible, imbalances and all, but it really gets under my skin and pisses me off so I wanted to make a post about it :P

TL;DR all melees (except bards which don't count) suck and are terrible and worthless, prove me wrong


FYI, get a fungi tunic an watch your warrior out level casters 1st-35th level. No down time. As the time line progresses, melee twinking will extremely overpower casters on lower level. A lot of players including me are waiting for that gear to hit or drop in price. The twinking is still not optimal atm.
Also there is nothing equivalent for caster twinking, only melee can twink with better weapons, an gear like fungi. Casters at low level will all have the same gimpy spells they had since classic before the expansions. FYI- Melee can twink, casters can't for the most part. I had a 17th level paladin twinked on LIVE, he could kill a 35th level spectre, wizard 17th level could NEVER kill a 35th level mob, his spells at 17th level CANNOT hit a mob that high level, period.
Only the enchanter can do the things you are complaining about, my mage cannot solo in most places because I cannot crowd control for solo pulling, mez, an my pets get destroyed 50+level mobs.

[Taiku]

Does a rogue really not out dps a mage pet? I know nothing keeps up with charm pets, but summoned pets are much less dps than a rouge or monk with proper gear/buffs, right? At 60 I mean.

The initial post makes a lot of assumptions about spell/pet damage vs melee.

[axisofebola]

Charm pet was a liability on LIVE, here it is much, much safer. Thus the OP chanter thread. I used to hate charmed pets on live because more often than not, the charm breaks an the hasted pet attacks your group just as repop happens an you wipe.

That's just because you were bad at EQ back then, so were 95% of enchanters.

[NPC]

That's just because you were bad at EQ back then, so were 95% of enchanters.

No charm, like many things on this server, were set by tourists for play by tourists.
Tourists= Played blue for 2-10 years and pretends they played LIVE Classic

[kaev]

I was very casual player on Live. I heard about people using charm to do notable things (charm zerg accomplished the first AoW kill, which resulted in Verant making all mobs in Kael uncharmable for months), but saw little of it in play. All I know for certain is that by LDoN era (hah!) solo charming ala p99 was a thing, although not common. Note that there were a lot of patches & tunings between Velious and LDoN, so that is not evidence that it was possible to do as people do here in era.

[Arvan]

Everquest in 1999 was difficult everquest in 2021 is trivial

Hope this helps

[BlackBellamy]

I love advice like you should spend two months playing a character you don't like so you can farm equipment for the one you do like. So you can understand.

Meanwhile I'm just looking for warrior to buff.

[DoodyLich666]

I love advice like you should spend two months playing a character you don't like so you can farm equipment for the one you do like. So you can understand.

Meanwhile I'm just looking for warrior to buff.

That advice always rubbed me the wrong way as well.

[magnetaress]

A group of all melee with like a ranger and warriors using their bows to manage hp is pretty fun.

[cd288]

That's just because you were bad at EQ back then, so were 95% of enchanters.

Yeah not sure what this guy you were replying to is talking about. I was in a Hole group the other day, Ench’s charm was breaking every few minutes. But apparently Charm is hugely broken!

[Snortles Chortles]

I love advice like you should spend two months playing a character you don't like so you can farm equipment for the one you do like.

this one kills me too lol

[Jimjam]

this one kills me too lol

/agree.

Just beating up decayed skeletons for 4 levels with a tarnished halberd gets plenty of pp for a decent enough ratio weapon and a suit of banded, doesn't take much longer to get some hp rings too. That will honestly carry you to 40. Not worth spending 2 months levelling a mage/necro for 2 months and farming marginally better gear imo.

[OuterChimp]

Poh Tay Toe!

[magnetaress]

/agree.

Just beating up decayed skeletons for 4 levels with a tarnished halberd gets plenty of pp for a decent enough ratio weapon and a suit of banded, doesn't take much longer to get some hp rings too. That will honestly carry you to 40. Not worth spending 2 months levelling a mage/necro for 2 months and farming marginally better gear imo.

/thread

[Vivitron]

Does a rogue really not out dps a mage pet? I know nothing keeps up with charm pets, but summoned pets are much less dps than a rouge or monk with proper gear/buffs, right? At 60 I mean.

The initial post makes a lot of assumptions about spell/pet damage vs melee.

I haven't done a ton of parsing and very little on level 60 players, but based on what I have seen, pets out damaging melee was much more common pre-kunark than post.

[Toxigen]

All a rogue needs is epic and a seb croak dirk and he is #1 raid dps.

Don't even get me started on velious geared monks.

Good luck raiding successfully without a massive amount of warriors, rogues, and monks...hell, even rangers can be raid-saving speedbumps. Pallies are now the only ones bringing Soulfires to those AoW / Tunare / Vyemm kills. SK may be the only class to hate on, but they're still strong in single group xp / cash farm content and are perfectly fine trash tanks in hate / fear / tov / pog.

OP is either new, bad, or both.

[Saisu]

Also race plays an huge role, Warrior ogres are the most effective, the extra stamina ogres start with means 1k-2k extra hps 50+ level.

An Ogre warrior that went full stamina at creation would be at 157. The worst you can be is a Dark Elf or Woof Elf with a measly base of 75 (maybe you put all points into charisma).

At level 60 those 82 stat points would equal 492 HP, which is your worst case scenario.

For an Ogre to have 1,000 extra HP over a Wood Elf, they'd need to start with 241 stamina.
For an Ogre to have 2,000 extra HP over a Wood Elf, they'd need to start with 408 stamina.

[Jimjam]

@Saisu creation stats are capped at 150. An ogre can’t start at 157. They’ll be only 75 points ahead of the theoretical +0 sta elf, which is a still beefy 450 hp, but 42hp leas than your figures and even more less than the ‘thousands’ suggested by NPC.

[Saisu]

Hah, good catch Jimjam! Ogres get fantastic starting stats, but NPC was implying they have an insurmountably drastic advantage that the numbers just don't back up.

[Jimjam]

Hah, good catch Jimjam! Ogres get fantastic starting stats, but NPC was implying they have an insurmountably drastic advantage that the numbers just don't back up.

Indubitably.

[magnetaress]

10 ac matters more than 450hp.

[cd288]

I haven't done a ton of parsing and very little on level 60 players, but based on what I have seen, pets out damaging melee was much more common pre-kunark than post.

Yup. Maybe with epic mage pet or high level monster summoning you’d be able to compete but from Kunark on you’re not going to put DPS a pet if you have semi decent gear. And you’re going to put DPS a Necro pet for sure. Enchanter hasted charmed mob can prob put dps you but I don’t think that’s unbalanced since you’re taking a risk using a charmed hasted mob (not to mention if melees would be able to match mob dps the game would be ez mode).

[Bardp1999]

A charmed/hasted/weaponized pet does like literally 4 times the damage of a melee

[cd288]

A charmed/hasted/weaponized pet does like literally 4 times the damage of a melee

So a hasted mage pet with summoned swords does more dps than a hasted Velious geared monk? Find that hard to believe.

Do you have parsing to show that?

[Vexenu]

The fact that melees and tanks in particular ARE weaker than casters and completely reliant on being geared out is, paradoxically, what makes them more fun to play in the long run. Gearing out a high level Mage is a particularly joyless experience, as you quickly realize that even great pieces of gear have essentially zero impact on your character's effectiveness. This applies to all casters to an extent, but much less so to melees. Warriors in particular are incredibly fun to gear out because they get so much value out of not only each individual worn item, but from the wide assortment of clickies and proc weapons they can use. Each new item your Warrior acquires noticeably enhances his abilities as a tank or increases his utility. The power curve of most casters increases only marginally wearing best in slot gear vs. quality tunnel bought gear. But the difference for melees between best in slot and tunnel gear is night and day. Over the long run, there is nothing more satisfying in EQ than gearing out a Warrior. It's a long term project that you can chip away at for literally years.

[Bardp1999]

So a hasted mage pet with summoned swords does more dps than a hasted Velious geared monk? Find that hard to believe.

Do you have parsing to show that?

Not a summoned pet, a charmed pet. Look at any raid parse for DPS and it will be a charmed pet doing about 10x damage of any actual player. Charm DPS is completely and utterly unbalanced on P99 (and on live TLPs)

[Snortles Chortles]

https://i.imgur.com/1RBAfUi.png

[Shinko]

10 ac matters more than 450hp.

Na

I’ll take 450 hp over 10 ac any day

[azeth]

Rogues do the most damage of any class Classic->velious

[Bardp1999]

https://i.imgur.com/CutKjHL.jpg

[cd288]

Not a summoned pet, a charmed pet. Look at any raid parse for DPS and it will be a charmed pet doing about 10x damage of any actual player. Charm DPS is completely and utterly unbalanced on P99 (and on live TLPs)

Welcome to classic

[Baldwooky]

That's just because you were bad at EQ back then, so were 95% of enchanters.

So false. was in 3 guilds all best on server in live.. I can guarantee you, charming was not a thing in the upper echeleons of EQ play.

The good enchanters back then helped figure out AoE stun lock groups with me. Charming was minimally used, and not in raids until Velious really.

[K-EAVKR]

Maybe we had bad enchanters back then too (early velious era). We had enchanters try to be cheeky and charm a massively overpowered mob in effort to speed up the raid but would constantly lose charm (bad player? resists? I have no idea) and make our raid twice as hard while it ping pongs around killing every one.

[greenspectre]

My IRL friend joined p99 about 6 months in, and started fresh on a barb warrior. I thought he was insane, but he greatly enjoyed the challenge and I was more than happy to help him camp gear and complete his set of crafted. His gear mattered so much more than my shaman, who wore almost all banded with a combine spear until 35ish.

When we were raiding sky pre-kunark, he was happy to be one of the tanks for 4th island and told me "This is exactly why I made this character. Being this crucial piece of the raid."

Melee is just a different path. Melees rely on their friends more, but are also far more VALUABLE to their friends in return, as most groups need at least one solid tank. And as I played an SK to 90 on live, I can say that aggro management is FUN (yes I know non-classic and all but the concept is still the same). I enjoyed pulling aggro off my healers, rounding the mobs up and making sure my face was the one getting bashed in, not theirs.

I started a shaman when green launched and have enjoyed the change of pace from my melees-only run on live (Pal, bst, rng, sk) but I am really getting that itch to just smack things for damage...

[TripSin]

Maybe we had bad enchanters back then too (early velious era). We had enchanters try to be cheeky and charm a massively overpowered mob in effort to speed up the raid but would constantly lose charm (bad player? resists? I have no idea) and make our raid twice as hard while it ping pongs around killing every one.

Enchanters were not stacking CHA
Enchanters were using 56k dial up modems
Enchanters were playing on servers with 1999 technology and associated delay
Enchanters were not using GINA audio and text alerts
Enchanters were not using clickies to bypass GCD
Enchanters were not universally using J boots and Goblin rings
Enchanters did not have a wiki and game knowledge to tell them what the best charm mobs are and what to avoid trying to charm

All of this contributes to why the game is played differently now.

Anyways, it's always seemed silly to me, in any game, how people hitting things with a metal stick can even at all compete with people who command literal magic. Like, a mage simply casting diamond skin should render the metal stick guy impotent, no?

[Toxigen]

Anyways, it's always seemed silly to me, in any game, how people hitting things with a metal stick can even at all compete with people who command literal magic. Like, a mage simply casting diamond skin should render the metal stick guy impotent, no?

Yeah but they swing that metal stick super hard.

[Wyclef31]

You're always gonna have your min/maxers who don't want to group with hybrids or melee in general. But also there's a lot of people like me who just want adventure and to do things differently. I'm not after xp or loot, just a good time, if I get the xp and loot that just makes it better.

[axisofebola]

So false. was in 3 guilds all best on server in live.. I can guarantee you, charming was not a thing in the upper echeleons of EQ play.

The good enchanters back then helped figure out AoE stun lock groups with me. Charming was minimally used, and not in raids until Velious really.

Suuure. We used charms in fear long before kunark even arrived and then almost exclusively for clearing fear 2.0 later for quick run at CT. And guilds are full of trash tier players. That's why many join guilds, to be carried by better player.

[onlyrockerfan]

Wow that was a lot of information....too bad I didn’t read it

[cd288]

You're always gonna have your min/maxers who don't want to group with hybrids or melee in general. But also there's a lot of people like me who just want adventure and to do things differently. I'm not after xp or loot, just a good time, if I get the xp and loot that just makes it better.

I haven’t even really run into that on green. Worst I’ve seen is the group has one slot left and is rolling along just fine and doesn’t want to add a final person of any class. No group has ever been like “yeah we need a tank but we’d rather have no tank than a hybrid”

[bubur]

just divide all mob damage by 4

melee good, charm bad

[greenspectre]

just divide all mob damage by 4

melee good, charm bad

This is almost exactly what some other solo-oriented emu servers do.

[Keza]

I hate to say that I think wow fixed melee by taking disciplines and expanding them to basically be "melee spell lines" and using stamina instead of mana to cast them.

Pretty sure DAoC did that first though. WoW's claim to fame is trivializing content.

OP looks like a troll I'm guessing. Talking about how hard the game is, about how everyone likes it that way - yet saying casters who trivialize much of the game aren't OP, and that melee should be just as strong.

Right.

[Videri]

So, OP, any response to the thread so far? (Ignoring the haters, of course.)

[Baler]

If every hybrid re-rolled rogue there would be no problem.

[reznor_]

10 ac matters more than 450hp.

um...no

[Woodrow]

This actually reminds me of an uproar back in the day on the official EQ forums in classic when people realized a lvl 50 necro pet could solo a lvl 50 warrior. People started crunching the numbers and realized many stats didnt actually do what they were supposed to do and were worthless.

[NPC]

An Ogre warrior that went full stamina at creation would be at 157. The worst you can be is a Dark Elf or Woof Elf with a measly base of 75 (maybe you put all points into charisma).

At level 60 those 82 stat points would equal 492 HP, which is your worst case scenario.

For an Ogre to have 1,000 extra HP over a Wood Elf, they'd need to start with 241 stamina.
For an Ogre to have 2,000 extra HP over a Wood Elf, they'd need to start with 408 stamina.

That would be compared to a hybrid. FYI

[Jimjam]

That would be compared to a hybrid. FYI

I’m confused. Are you saying a 150 stam ogre war will have a four figure number more hp than a 75sta wood elf ranger at 60?

[Saisu]

I’m confused. Are you saying a 150 stam ogre war will have a four figure number more hp than a 75sta wood elf ranger at 60?

Plugged the numbers into Magelo, and that does seem to be the case.
150 Stamina Ogre Warrior at 60 = 2638 HP
75 Stamina Wood Elf Ranger at 60 = 1580 HP

1,058 HP difference.

[Jimjam]

Plugged the numbers into Magelo, and that does seem to be the case.
150 Stamina Ogre Warrior at 60 = 2638 HP
75 Stamina Wood Elf Ranger at 60 = 1580 HP

1,058 HP difference.

Most of that difference is due to class base hp though, not really due to stamina.

[baue1446]

Both myself and a good friend of mine re-rolled as iksar monks when we each won a fungi.

I have 50 sham, necro and mage on green. And all 3 solo amazingly. Then I soloed with the iksar monk with a fungi.

And I can honestly say it was at least 25-50% faster to go from 1-50 on monk than those other 3 classes. You simply have no down time. NO need to med and you regen your health while you are fighting/running to the next mob.

I have soloed to 51 and hes at 54. Never having grouped once. And have leveled faster than any class ive done so far.

[apprentice04]

maybe its time for my 53 paladin to return to the hole

[BlackBellamy]

Both myself and a good friend of mine re-rolled as iksar monks when we each won a fungi.

I have 50 sham, necro and mage on green. And all 3 solo amazingly. Then I soloed with the iksar monk with a fungi.

And I can honestly say it was at least 25-50% faster to go from 1-50 on monk than those other 3 classes. You simply have no down time. NO need to med and you regen your health while you are fighting/running to the next mob.

I have soloed to 51 and hes at 54. Never having grouped once. And have leveled faster than any class ive done so far.

Sounds like a fungi is best when trying to develop an anti-social personality disorder.

[beargryllz]

Plugged the numbers into Magelo, and that does seem to be the case.
150 Stamina Ogre Warrior at 60 = 2638 HP
75 Stamina Wood Elf Ranger at 60 = 1580 HP

1,058 HP difference.

Hybrids get dog shit HP compared to warriors. They get more than pure casters, but warriors get much more than hybrids

How many 7k rangers do you know?

[TripSin]

I have soloed to 51 and hes at 54. Never having grouped once. And have leveled faster than any class ive done so far.

Nice, real classic experience. Hope that was fun for you.

[drackgon]

I love how this post is about Melee. Some of you havn't played Wizzy:) at least Melee constantly doing dmg and bashing. Wizzy = ice comet pray no resist then mana.. Resist and accept res afterwards..

Yes wizzy can solo lvl. But who cares about solo leveling. As melee form groups. As a ranger form a group(be the puller). If your hate for melee that you can't find groups. Take a breathe, realize maybe you have bad rep? And try and fix it. Join a guild, or group of people you constantly run with.

If your hate is I can't solo a cash camp.. Move on to ones you can. SK can easily solo FBSS, Ice giants, Hill giants, HHK guards. Don't be mad that the enc or necro is soloing Howling stones, or fire giants. Just realize were limited but can still have fun and make money, and earn pixals.

[baue1446]

Nice, real classic experience. Hope that was fun for you.

I mean regardless of what I get out of it. I was just commenting on the ability of melee to solo and not only that but to be able to solo as well or more successfully than even the classes that are designed to solo.

[Videri]

maybe its time for my 53 paladin to return to the hole

You will have group invites as soon as you log in. Maybe even before you log in.

[azeth]

Question can anyone name a Kunark or Velious raid target that can be killed without melee DPS?

I'll give you a tank and even a backup tank, but no melee DPS.

[Charball]

I mean regardless of what I get out of it. I was just commenting on the ability of melee to solo and not only that but to be able to solo as well or more successfully than even the classes that are designed to solo.

Your ability to solo with a fungi tunic monk is not a good commentary. That's what he meant by real classic experience.

[NPC]

Question can anyone name a Kunark or Velious raid target that can be killed without melee DPS?

I'll give you a tank and even a backup tank, but no melee DPS.

A single wizard (55-60) can do over 10k-12k damage in a minute. Kunark mobs get destroyed.

[azeth]

A single wizard (55-60) can do over 10k-12k damage in a minute. Kunark mobs get destroyed.

Okay which raid targets

[Swish]

Another element of warrior aggro is, everyone else has to learn to NOT take aggro. This often means straight-up not attacking for many seconds so the warrior has time to build up aggro via swings and procs.

Everyone else attacking too soon doesn't mean warriors are bad.

A good cleric will call the melees out on this for being douches and taking hits, and offer a courtesy root if needed.

[Vaarsuvius]

I stopped reading OP after finding magician and OP in the same sentence...

Mages have no effing defensive spell or skill, aside from Gate.
No root, no mez, no slow, no charm, no rune, no fancy magic shield / hp buffer, no kick ass self buffs, no nothing

Just one pet that lacks proper hps to tank any serious mob. Nukes that are subpar compared to wizards', and about as good as druids'


Ignore the pet, kick the mage's teeth in, and you've won.

[Falditin]

I have soloed to 51 and hes at 54. Never having grouped once. And have leveled faster than any class ive done so far.

I'm not calling you out, I'm calling myself out.

I did this and solo'd a monk to 55 before grouping and never have playing a monk before. Turned out a huge mistake for me, I had no idea nor experience in splitting mobs or pulling as a monk.

[xmaerx]

Do any of these people play enchanters? They're the only class where you can properly control risk v reward in this game. Every other class is at the mercy of group setup. Yes, that makes them OP. No, it isn't free wins.

Enchanters are OP because they benefit the most from exploits. Condoned exploits, but exploits nonetheless. See: paci blurring pet, gcd reset, ToT duels, illusion-warping through doors, pre-cast clarity on rez, even things like GINA and audio triggers

Not to mention unfixable bugs like spell mem speed, which allow them to switch their loadout mid-fight super easily.

I imagine the game was probably balanced pretty well until people found ways to break it, many of which didn't come to light until Luclin save a select few who kept solid secrets.

Thankfully, this is a PVE game, not a PVP game, and class balance isn't designed class v class, it's designed class + class v mob. While it's possible to do a LOT of content with a pet zerg, it's NOT possible to tell your raid that everyone is required to play one. The incentive to utilize all of the melee gear alone will land people on melee classes. Which is pretty much how it works now.

[xmaerx]

I stopped reading OP after finding magician and OP in the same sentence...

Mages have no effing defensive spell or skill, aside from Gate.
No root, no mez, no slow, no charm, no rune, no fancy magic shield / hp buffer, no kick ass self buffs, no nothing

Just one pet that lacks proper hps to tank any serious mob. Nukes that are subpar compared to wizards', and about as good as druids'


Ignore the pet, kick the mage's teeth in, and you've won.

Invest in clickies, become a god. Clickies are all-powerful in this game.

[Xer0]

I hate to say that I think wow fixed melee by taking disciplines and expanding them to basically be "melee spell lines" and using stamina instead of mana to cast them.

Agreed. Loved playing tanks and melees on wow. Playing them on EQ is a bit of a drag. Though I do love Monk and SK.

[Vaarsuvius]

Invest in clickies, become a god. Clickies are all-powerful in this game.

Got some of them, but nothing game changing.

I can't think of many clickies that would make a mage half as good as a Shaman or Enchanter even without said clickies. Plus any useful item you might want to give your mage pet to give it some much needed oooomph will be lost, unlike those you can give a charmed pet and get back if you know what you're doing

And don't get me started about no pet raids... Yeah, Now all I can do is try & cast nukes that will hardly ever land since they're fire & magic based 👍👍

[coki]

Got some of them, but nothing game changing.

I can't think of many clickies that would make a mage half as good as a Shaman or Enchanter even without said clickies. Plus any useful item you might want to give your mage pet to give it some much needed oooomph will be lost, unlike those you can give a charmed pet and get back if you know what you're doing

And don't get me started about no pet raids... Yeah, Now all I can do is try & cast nukes that will hardly ever land since they're fire & magic based 👍👍

A bag or two full of wooly-spider root nets!

[sajbert]

I just find that some classes (mainly nec and enchanter) are able to solo content, including attractive camps, that likely was intended for groups.

Then ZEM changes made dungeon grouping less attractive.

The result is that it's difficult to find groups for classes that need groups to get anywhere anytime before Green is done. Especially difficult for players playing on less populated time zones.

Sure, I'd love to twink a melee and solo my way but the cost to twink a melee is out of this world in comparison to what it takes to twink a caster. For the price of just one Fungi I could twink 4 enchanters with GGR+Jboots and the works.

Some of this is what EQ is but ZEM changes and other non-classic aspects certainly could be changed.

[cd288]

Haven’t had trouble finding groups in any dungeons except certain lowbie ones. Finding groups has always been an issue for people in different time zones

[Vaarsuvius]

A bag or two full of wooly-spider root nets!

You can't compare 3 charge spider nets to shamans' root that lasts for ages, slow, and DoTs

Any Torp shaman can handle a handful of blue con mobs with enough room to move, even summoning ones without a sweat. I'd never try and do that on my mage with more than a couple mobs and a dozen nets handy

[cd288]

You can't compare 3 charge spider nets to shamans' root that lasts for ages, slow, and DoTs

Any Torp shaman can handle a handful of blue con mobs with enough room to move, even summoning ones without a sweat. I'd never try and do that on my mage with more than a couple mobs and a dozen nets handy

Only caveat would be once you have the vocorate earth pet that basically procs a root instantly. I’d feel comfortable handling multiple mobs with that

[Vaarsuvius]

Only caveat would be once you have the vocorate earth pet that basically procs a root instantly. I’d feel comfortable handling multiple mobs with that

In theory yup, except mage pet aggro management sucks: Gluck having a pet focus on the target you want it to if a couple mobs are rooted close to each others and in melee range of your pet,
Earth pet's root can and will be resisted by mobs and is short duration
Post 55, there's hardly any blue con mob your pet will be able to handle on it own, let alone several. So hoping root lasts long enough on 2+ mobs for you to chain cast another pet and give it a DS and possibly Burnout seems very tricky to me.

I guess I'll have to try with a couple geonids one of these days :)

[NPC]

I stopped reading OP after finding magician and OP in the same sentence...

Mages have no effing defensive spell or skill, aside from Gate.
No root, no mez, no slow, no charm, no rune, no fancy magic shield / hp buffer, no kick ass self buffs, no nothing

Just one pet that lacks proper hps to tank any serious mob. Nukes that are subpar compared to wizards', and about as good as druids'


Ignore the pet, kick the mage's teeth in, and you've won.

When chain pet was working, meaning the pet dies as you summon another an the agro of the dead pet does not go to the caster, you could do some crazy things.
My earth 49 pet only costs 200 mana, w/ foci the possible hps depending on level 3250hp-3600hps. It take's me 1 min to med 200 mana back, as long as my pet doesn't die in 1 min, I could potentially do infinite damage. As you can keep summon a new pet every min if need be.OP? Yes
I can solo KC non-stop as my pet can solo most mobs, the pet might almost die, but by that time i've med back the 200 mana i used to cast him.
If i get involved i can take 2-3 at a time if need be. Also Malo plus earth pet root is actually really powerful for splits and CC, FYI.

[NPC]

I love how this post is about Melee. Some of you havn't played Wizzy:) at least Melee constantly doing dmg and bashing. Wizzy = ice comet pray no resist then mana.. Resist and accept res afterwards..

Yes wizzy can solo lvl. But who cares about solo leveling. As melee form groups. As a ranger form a group(be the puller). If your hate for melee that you can't find groups. Take a breathe, realize maybe you have bad rep? And try and fix it. Join a guild, or group of people you constantly run with.

If your hate is I can't solo a cash camp.. Move on to ones you can. SK can easily solo FBSS, Ice giants, Hill giants, HHK guards. Don't be mad that the enc or necro is soloing Howling stones, or fire giants. Just realize were limited but can still have fun and make money, and earn pixals.

Ice comet is trash, draught of fire, or pillar of flame son.
Draught of fire way more powerful than Ice comet.
You can draught of fire twice before IC goes off once.
688 x 2 = 1376 in 6 seconds, resisted MUCH less
Pillar of flame 952 dmg x4 in 4.5 seconds= 3808 dmg for 364 mana, there's no better mana ratio in the game, excpet PBaoe of course. Need a group for that.

[NPC]

Got some of them, but nothing game changing.

I can't think of many clickies that would make a mage half as good as a Shaman or Enchanter even without said clickies. Plus any useful item you might want to give your mage pet to give it some much needed oooomph will be lost, unlike those you can give a charmed pet and get back if you know what you're doing

And don't get me started about no pet raids... Yeah, Now all I can do is try & cast nukes that will hardly ever land since they're fire & magic based 👍👍

Burnt wood staff

[Grumph]

Around Dragons of Norrath expansion, there was a Dev post that revealed Bash/slam had been broken since implementation - it was meant to have generated aggro similar to spell stun, but it was bugged since inception.

Bash was meant to be the mechanic for tanks to build aggro (hence why plate fighters had it).

All that time the had Devs thought the players were just a bunch of idiot munchkins using duel wield / 2 handers just to be awesome, and the players hadn't realised the super aggro of bash! Of course, by the time this bug was discovered and DoN was out, the player meta of the game had adapted to offset this (warriors using off hand proc weapons and low delay primary to build max aggro).

Rather than fix the bug, the Devs just started adding far more 'Furious Bash' shields and some shield related aa.

Similarly, taunt had been broken to never work on anything yellow or red for years too.

So yeah, while pets being OP was a big part of things (and this is despite pets being repeatedly nerfed), another problem was tanks (especially warriors) had their two main tools of acquiring / consolidating aggro in a bugged state since day 0.

Classic.


Can you imagine if the original devs had learned to code?

You're litterally describing a world without WoW.

Like Atlantis. It's hard to determine whether this is a legend or a fiary tale!

[tadkins]

I love how this post is about Melee. Some of you havn't played Wizzy:) at least Melee constantly doing dmg and bashing. Wizzy = ice comet pray no resist then mana.. Resist and accept res afterwards..

Yes wizzy can solo lvl. But who cares about solo leveling. As melee form groups. As a ranger form a group(be the puller). If your hate for melee that you can't find groups. Take a breathe, realize maybe you have bad rep? And try and fix it. Join a guild, or group of people you constantly run with.


I'm playing a wizard right now, currently level 19, after having played a mage to 44. I suppose I'll learn in due time what really is better but I figure in the long run a wizard will be more fun and interesting later.

On the surface though, it just seems like the wizard will be better over the long haul. I feel like a wizard with good gear and all of their clickies will just be more fun and powerful. They also get noticable benefits from actually being geared, while my mage just puts on a focus item and runs around wearing a starter robe and little else. No joke, I am literally doing this right now, my mage at 44 is wearing a Sr. Purple Apprentice Robe (https://wiki.project1999.com/Purple_Sr_Apprentice_Robe*) and still killing blues at his level.

I also am liking the fact that my wizard can zone and drop invis somewhere, and immediately be battle ready, while my mage needs a few moments to do anything. A mage caught without a pet feels like literal dog food.

And then finally, as a wizard I can look forward to playing my fantasy in a raid later and actually launch lightning bolts at that terrifying dragon, as opposed to standing in the back and pooping out mod rods.

Again I could be wrong but these are just the impressions I am getting. I admit I don't have any higher level experiences so I could be totally wrong. Please don't hurt me lols.

[Tethler]

as opposed to standing in the back and pooping out mod rods.


Don't forget CoTHing an entire raid force. Sitting with your face in a wall and dropping eyeballs for X amount of time is a stimulating raid experience.

[tadkins]

Don't forget CoTHing an entire raid force. Sitting with your face in a wall and dropping eyeballs for X amount of time is a stimulating raid experience.

Ah yeah that's true, forgot about that one.

But yup it was disappointing to find out I wouldn't really even be allowed to sic a buffed pet on a boss.

[NPC]

I'm playing a wizard right now, currently level 19, after having played a mage to 44. I suppose I'll learn in due time what really is better but I figure in the long run a wizard will be more fun and interesting later.

On the surface though, it just seems like the wizard will be better over the long haul. I feel like a wizard with good gear and all of their clickies will just be more fun and powerful. They also get noticable benefits from actually being geared, while my mage just puts on a focus item and runs around wearing a starter robe and little else. No joke, I am literally doing this right now, my mage at 44 is wearing a Sr. Purple Apprentice Robe (https://wiki.project1999.com/Purple_Sr_Apprentice_Robe*) and still killing blues at his level.

I also am liking the fact that my wizard can zone and drop invis somewhere, and immediately be battle ready, while my mage needs a few moments to do anything. A mage caught without a pet feels like literal dog food.

And then finally, as a wizard I can look forward to playing my fantasy in a raid later and actually launch lightning bolts at that terrifying dragon, as opposed to standing in the back and pooping out mod rods.

Again I could be wrong but these are just the impressions I am getting. I admit I don't have any higher level experiences so I could be totally wrong. Please don't hurt me lols.

Quad kiting the wizards true power, you will level faster than just about any class in the game. At 19 you can quad beetles in NK without Jboots, they are slow enough to out run on foot, strafe running makes this even easier. It helps to have your Staff of Temperate flux to quad, do the Sol Ro temple quest, if you have 44 mage should be easy.
NK beetles to 23-24th
After that your gonna need Jboots.
I did SK treants till 39th after that, but will you take Qeynos and Druid ring faction hits. You dont need Jboots for Treants, plus wizards destroys treants, fire spells own them. Awesome loot an xp too, and only a 4 min spawn. Can take 1 treant till about 29th, then you can take both till 39th.
Then quad guards EK or WK till 49th.
Spirocs in TD till 51.
Raptors in TD till 60.

[cd288]

Lol anyone trying to monopolize all the guard spawns with a quad is a total ass

[Vaarsuvius]

Burnt wood staff

Got one too.

Between the staff and SS clickies, soloing is really a lot easier. One can farm cash cows for days spending hardly any mana....

[Vaarsuvius]

Ah yeah that's true, forgot about that one.

But yup it was disappointing to find out I wouldn't really even be allowed to sic a buffed pet on a boss.
Yeah your one pet will push that raid target a lot more than several dozen melee PCs you know... Way to dangerous for your raid force

[Gwaihir]

A melee is a pet that you can control directly.

Best group is 5 mages and 1 enchanter.

But who cares.

Nope.

Enchanter
Bard
3mage
Necro is a better spread

[Gwaihir]

The game is not played on 99 like it was in classic raiding because meleeDPS push the p99 meta.

In classic EQ, the warrior confronted the mob. The CHLoop established stability. There was a 30 to 60 second stabilization for establishing agro. THEN assist was called and it was full burn on the raid target. There was no early rogue/monk/ranger engage. Every single fight was a burn fight after a lengthy agro period for the tank.

Raids engages were often aborted if the tank died in the agro building period, sometimes with all of the non clerics and nonMT in a room adjacent, so as to remove all risk of wipe due to an MT/CHLoop failure

[fastboy21]

Middle of the curve casters tend to fall behind as the server progresses (at least they did on blue).

On blue, for example, a typical lvl 50 rogue has his epic. An epic rogue does way more damage then his typical non-epic counterpart on green. But on Green the choice of rogue or wizard isn't really about melee vs caster...it is about poorly geared melee vs poorly geared caster, which the caster wins.

Casters do get more powerful as they get better gear, but geared melee are far more powerful than their less geared melee counterparts. If I play my 60 chanter or 60 necro naked on blue there isn't much I can't do...try to do the same as a 60 war and you'll be noticeably poopier.

Green would probably go the same way...if you let it sit in kunark/vanilla for another 10 years.

[tadkins]

Quad kiting the wizards true power, you will level faster than just about any class in the game. At 19 you can quad beetles in NK without Jboots, they are slow enough to out run on foot, strafe running makes this even easier. It helps to have your Staff of Temperate flux to quad, do the Sol Ro temple quest, if you have 44 mage should be easy.
NK beetles to 23-24th
After that your gonna need Jboots.
I did SK treants till 39th after that, but will you take Qeynos and Druid ring faction hits. You dont need Jboots for Treants, plus wizards destroys treants, fire spells own them. Awesome loot an xp too, and only a 4 min spawn. Can take 1 treant till about 29th, then you can take both till 39th.
Then quad guards EK or WK till 49th.
Spirocs in TD till 51.
Raptors in TD till 60.

Thank you for the advice. :) I'll give quadding those scarabs a try. I'm 20 now and have been doing crag spiders right now but those look fun. I do think I need my project lightning spell first though?

I'm not caring much about faction as my wizard is a dark elf Innoruuk follower. I can port in a few levels to the one and only city I really need to care about. xD

I am definitely using my mage for helping the wizard though. I have him camped in SRo atm logging on every 9pm hoping for a shot at the ring, as I found out recently you can MQ JBoots to yourself. After that I plan on using the mage to get my wizard his staff of tempflux. I've also just been farming plat with him in Rivervale during later hours. Wizard is already kinda twinked out and I'm not done.

Lol anyone trying to monopolize all the guard spawns with a quad is a total ass

Those EK guards? I rarely see anyone there. When I was leveling my mage, the EK guards were usually around my 4th choice of leveling for the day when I'd check my usual spots, the kind that are almost always ended up being camped on a Saturday afternoon.

I don't think many folks should mind if I'm quadding those guys and no one is there. I'm always willing to talk it out and compromise with folks though. I don't think I'm an ass.

[unsunghero]

Not sure why everyone is dog piling on the OP. Don't you guys check the /who of the zones you are in? Maybe it's just the fact that I'm only in my 30's with my first char on green (had to take a break recently), but whenever I do a /who in any zone, the list of classes usually looks like: dru, dru, nec, dru, nec, dru, enc, mag, dru, nec, dru, sham....then mayyyyybe there's some ranger or SK somewhere in there. Never any warriors, rogues, or paladins. And about 80% of the entire green server (at least in lowbie zones) seems to be Druids and Necromancers

Granted, there's some things not mentioned yet in this thread that factor in. I believe the knight's DPS tables get improved at some future point. The OP was talking from a warrior perspective, but having a weaker DPS table for knights on Green server does apply to the topic of melees being gimped. It's part of the reason that I didn't bother to roll the Troll SK twink I wanted to make. That and the fact I'd still need to save oodles of pp for him anyway. Which segways to my next point about server populations: I assume most people rolled solo classes for their first chars on Green in order to farm money on. So its not entirely that melees are gimp, but moreso that because Green is a newer server, most of the people there rolled farming classes that don't require twinking as their first char

But either way, maybe melees aren't gimp on Green, but they certainly ARE scarce as fuck

[tadkins]

Not sure why everyone is dog piling on the OP. Don't you guys check the /who of the zones you are in? Maybe it's just the fact that I'm only in my 30's with my first char on green (had to take a break recently), but whenever I do a /who in any zone, the list of classes usually looks like: dru, dru, nec, dru, nec, dru, enc, mag, dru, nec, dru, sham....then mayyyyybe there's some ranger or SK somewhere in there. Never any warriors, rogues, or paladins. And about 80% of the entire green server (at least in lowbie zones) seems to be Druids and Necromancers

Granted, there's some things not mentioned yet in this thread that factor in. I believe the knight's DPS tables get improved at some future point. The OP was talking from a warrior perspective, but having a weaker DPS table for knights on Green server does apply to the topic of melees being gimped. It's part of the reason that I didn't bother to roll the Troll SK twink I wanted to make. That and the fact I'd still need to save oodles of pp for him anyway. Which segways to my next point about server populations: I assume most people rolled solo classes for their first chars on Green in order to farm money on. So its not entirely that melees are gimp, but moreso that because Green is a newer server, most of the people there rolled farming classes that don't require twinking as their first char

But either way, maybe melees aren't gimp on Green, but they certainly ARE scarce as fuck

I think what would help is if the prices of melee gear got lowered, it might encourage folks to play them more. But yup I have honestly noticed that too. It's also a reflection of the times we live in, as more folks who play this game have RL responsibilities and aren't always able to sit down for big hour blocks at a time with a group, so they need to play something that can solo. I was interested in rogue for a time but hearing of how much they need to stick to a group like a baby to its mother really turned me off to the class.

That said I just tried my first quad kite as a wizard and was amazed at how not-scary it was. I'm giving serious thought to trying out a bard right now. xD But I'm not sure if that class counts as "true melee".

[Gwaihir]

My AGI-centric halfling warrior feels like it was a more stable grind than my ac-centric ogre warrior was. I think this server undervalues agi. That might be your "in" to affordable tank classes. Gearing the halfling was dirt cheap. Tanks CT fine through the 30s and 40s

[tadkins]

My AGI-centric halfling warrior feels like it was a more stable grind than my ac-centric ogre warrior was. I think this server undervalues agi. That might be your "in" to affordable tank classes. Gearing the halfling was dirt cheap. Tanks CT fine through the 30s and 40s

Admittedly I don't know much about warriors, but from reading this I got the impression that AC was king.
https://wiki.project1999.com/Guide_for_Frustrated_Warriors

[Gwaihir]

That's the general consensus, but as I said, I geared mine for max agi and it feels like soloing and group efficacy is better on green with my agi-halfling than it was on blue.

Lvl 41 at "arch top" in CT, I was pulling 4 or 5 mobs at a time into camp, without much problem, with just augmentation for an agi-buff. Most hits: still minimum dmg, and landing less often.

Not getting hit > getting hit with 10% better mitigation. Plate is plate I suppose.

[tadkins]

That's the general consensus, but as I said, I geared mine for max agi and it feels like soloing and group efficacy is better on green with my agi-halfling than it was on blue.

Lvl 41 at "arch top" in CT, I was pulling 4 or 5 mobs at a time into camp, without much problem, with just augmentation for an agi-buff. Most hits: still minimum dmg, and landing less often.

Not getting hit > getting hit with 10% better mitigation. Plate is plate I suppose.

Yup I get ya. :) I do kind of wish the playstyles varied a bit more between the races. A halfling warrior should fight in a different way than an ogre warrior. A dark elf warrior should have their own unique tricks and tactics. There should be a good reason to be a gnome warrior, and so on.

[NPC]

Thank you for the advice. :) I'll give quadding those scarabs a try. I'm 20 now and have been doing crag spiders right now but those look fun. I do think I need my project lightning spell first though?

I'm not caring much about faction as my wizard is a dark elf Innoruuk follower. I can port in a few levels to the one and only city I really need to care about. xD

I am definitely using my mage for helping the wizard though. I have him camped in SRo atm logging on every 9pm hoping for a shot at the ring, as I found out recently you can MQ JBoots to yourself. After that I plan on using the mage to get my wizard his staff of tempflux. I've also just been farming plat with him in Rivervale during later hours. Wizard is already kinda twinked out and I'm not done.



Those EK guards? I rarely see anyone there. When I was leveling my mage, the EK guards were usually around my 4th choice of leveling for the day when I'd check my usual spots, the kind that are almost always ended up being camped on a Saturday afternoon.

I don't think many folks should mind if I'm quadding those guys and no one is there. I'm always willing to talk it out and compromise with folks though. I don't think I'm an ass.


I camped the EK guards from 39 to 49, never had one person contest them. They are higher level than the NK or WK guards. So you get more per quad on those, I was getting 4-8% a quad till about 49th. Hell levels will make them drop low, non hell levels it will be higher. At 49 they dropped to 1-2%. If you have the mana pool you could probably start them sooner cause the exp is awesome but loot not nearly as good, I milked the treants for extra cash. Think i had almost 15-20k after treants from 23-39th. I bought my Jboots MQ for 5k with the money btw, ).

[starkind]

AC from AGi is probably applied uncapped/outside, like shield ac so any class, non-warrior classes most benifity probably the most from it at levels sub 55

its like running with 3 extra cleric ac buffs

same thing with shields, but warriors suck because they can't hold agro with just a shield and 1h in that regard, they don't need them rly tho

just remember that number on the screen in the UI is rediculous and meaningless\

Sheild>Spells>AGI>Worn AC (most likely)

AGI saves mana/per hr, not mana per round. Is likely when u notice it.

Yup I get ya. :) I do kind of wish the playstyles varied a bit more between the races. A halfling warrior should fight in a different way than an ogre warrior. A dark elf warrior should have their own unique tricks and tactics. There should be a good reason to be a gnome warrior, and so on.

gnomes are the kings of dex and procs, and tinkered overhaste, they are quite popular among a subset of minmaxers

all this said, i totally agree, it'd be awesome if ogres favored 2h, dwarves axes, and dark elves like agi and whips or something cool like that, maybe everyone gets the epic, but theres like a .75 weapon thats pretty good for each race thats flavored, maybe give barbarians a spear/sword style, this would be cool :D

[Nirgon]

Make stamina work

And devs not bend to pressure of the whining about it

I've got ur back, Brad bless

[Jimjam]

all this said, i totally agree, it'd be awesome if ogres favored 2h, dwarves axes, and dark elves like agi and whips or something cool like that, maybe everyone gets the epic, but theres like a .75 weapon thats pretty good for each race thats flavored, maybe give barbarians a spear/sword style, this would be cool :D

great idea for custom content - Every race/class combo can hand in their epic to their home town leader / head GM for a replacement that has looks which matches their own lore.

Dark Elf cleric sprinklers look like whips, halfling warrior lightsabres look like spear and round shield, etc.

Elf Karana rangers get to keep their lightning swords, but Tunare ones get theirs replaced with some dollies.

[starkind]

Make stamina work

And devs not bend to pressure of the whining about it

I've got ur back, Brad bless

https://i.imgur.com/LAPC5cJ.gif

great idea for custom content - Every race/class combo can hand in their epic to their home town leader / head GM for a replacement that has looks which matches their own lore.

Dark Elf cleric sprinklers look like whips, halfling warrior lightsabres look like spear and round shield, etc.

Elf Karana rangers get to keep their lightning swords, but Tunare ones get theirs replaced with some dollies.



I would need to reroll tunare :o

[DoodyLich666]

How is stamina supposed to work? I always thought it was weird that there are whole lines of spells to regenerate it, and that they seem pretty insignificant on p99. Would all melee attacks drain it? What would happen if you ran out during a battle? Please, enlighten those of us new the quest.

[Danth]

How is stamina supposed to work? I always thought it was weird that there are whole lines of spells to regenerate it, and that they seem pretty insignificant on p99. Would all melee attacks drain it? What would happen if you ran out during a battle? Please, enlighten those of us new the quest.

Going from memory, so I'll be close but could be a little off on a few details. It's been awhile!

Stamina was a fixed-size bar. Melee attacks drained it, modified by the weight of the weapon (heavier weapons drained more). Dual-wielding drained it faster for what should be an obvious reason. Lighter weapons might not drain enough to exceed normal stamina regeneration rate, so the yellow bar would stay pegged. I never really had to worry about it on my Paladin unless I was wielding something very heavy like a Wurmslayer or Axe of the Iron Back. Heavy weapons (or, more usually, dual-wielding fast and moderate-weight weapons) would gradually drain the bar until the player needed a "zing" (invigor-type spell) to keep going in a long battle with no time to stop to rest. If stamina ran out and you had less than 100 (statistic) stamina, you couldn't jump, ran and attacked slower, and suffered a large penalty to melee stats. Once you got over 100 stamina you no longer took most of the penalties for running out and simply couldn't jump. Swimming also drained stamina and eventually you'd run out and sink.

Later on during EQ's history stamina was re-vamped to what amounted to a melee mana bar called endurance. Unlike stamina, the size of the endurance pool would change with level and gear. The Titanium client uses endurance, with its variable-size pool, which is part of why P99's devs have never been able to get the yellow bar (or the invigor-type spells) working properly on P1999.

Danth

[DoodyLich666]

Thanks! Sounds cool and immersive. Wish it could be implemented!

[starkind]

It was briefly at kunark launch

[enjchanter]

have you guys ever played a melee before, you do realize that the entire playstyle of melees is just turning on auto attack and then hitting ur 10s cd

like cmon

[Raev]

Okay which raid targets

Lure of Ice is 800 damage for 320 mana if memory serves. If each Wizard gets in 10 casts, that's 8000 damage in a minute. A full group is 48K HP which is significantly more than any Kunark raid target, even with VP dragon regeneration or Trakanon lifetaps or whatnot.

IIRC Dragonbanes do 2000 damage for 400 mana. Vulak has 1 million HP or so, and would need 600 casts or so (let's not be cheap with those peridots!) which would mean 240,000 mana. 50 wizards ought to do the trick.

The all wizard guild would cry during the crawl up to Vulak, though.

[starkind]

Just remember u are never worthless.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Lure of Ice is 800 damage for 320 mana if memory serves. If each Wizard gets in 10 casts, that's 8000 damage in a minute. A full group is 48K HP which is significantly more than any Kunark raid target, even with VP dragon regeneration or Trakanon lifetaps or whatnot.

IIRC Dragonbanes do 2000 damage for 400 mana. Vulak has 1 million HP or so, and would need 600 casts or so (let's not be cheap with those peridots!) which would mean 240,000 mana. 50 wizards ought to do the trick.

The all wizard guild would cry during the crawl up to Vulak, though.
Would be fun to see. Has anything like this ever been tried on Blue? I imagine you'd have the player base there that would be required.

Wouldn't mind seeing 50-60 Wizards all together instagib a Kunark dragon either (they all start casting simultaneously)

[ClephNote]

When AAs dropped, my server had mana burn wizard teams that would mana burn a surprising large amount of targets in Velious, and all of Kunark and Classic was dominated by them.

I’d imagine the min makers could figure out a gimped version on Blue, but I don’t believe anyone has.

[coki]

When AAs dropped, my server had mana burn wizard teams that would mana burn a surprising large amount of targets in Velious, and all of Kunark and Classic was dominated by them.

I’d imagine the min makers could figure out a gimped version on Blue, but I don’t believe anyone has.

That lasted all of 2 weeks to 1 month before they nerfed Manaburn and put a limit on how many you could blow on 1 target

[Jimjam]

I love how a thread on balance issue for melee has turned into a discussion on wizard XPing / raiding. Is this an indication of how bad melee have it compared to casters if even wizards, the worst caster (?) have so much more to be said about?

[ClephNote]

Melee are fine.

The strongest five classes are arguably (in no particular order) Monk, Rogue, Enchanter, Shaman, Bard.

Two melee right in the top five! You can’t do a traditional group without a tank.

What’s the problem? They’re is less to squeeze out of them due to deep knowledge of game mechanics?

[Toxigen]

Melee are fine.

The strongest five classes are arguably (in no particular order) Monk, Rogue, Enchanter, Shaman, Bard.

Two melee right in the top five! You can’t do a traditional group without a tank.

What’s the problem? They’re is less to squeeze out of them due to deep knowledge of game mechanics?

Have fun killing raid targets with no warriors or clerics.

[Gustoo]

I love how a thread on balance issue for melee has turned into a discussion on wizard XPing / raiding. Is this an indication of how bad melee have it compared to casters if even wizards, the worst caster (?) have so much more to be said about?

It isn't a solo game.

The successful solo classes have mechanics that really would be nerfed if Verant had their way. But its a long time ago now and we know all the tricks.

Manastone - they didn't want it in the game because it lets druids and wizards and clerics get mana back too fast.

So melee characters work as intended and are designed for groups. Whats the problem?

[NPC]

It isn't a solo game.

The successful solo classes have mechanics that really would be nerfed if Verant had their way. But its a long time ago now and we know all the tricks.

Manastone - they didn't want it in the game because it lets druids and wizards and clerics get mana back too fast.

So melee characters work as intended and are designed for groups. Whats the problem?


Ya no, the developers are the ones that broke the game, because they played the game. They would pump up the classes they played, that's why the classes are so unbalanced. The original Fires of Heaven guild was made up of developers, they would release content, then immediately FoH would defeat said new content at record pace, because they made the content. That's why Shammy's an enchanter get such ridiculously over powered spells an items. The dumm ass developer would make insanely power additions an make up some justification for it. Anybody could have balanced this game in like an afternoon.

[NPC]

I love how a thread on balance issue for melee has turned into a discussion on wizard XPing / raiding. Is this an indication of how bad melee have it compared to casters if even wizards, the worst caster (?) have so much more to be said about?

You need to do a deep dive on the thread, melee stomp casters with gear. You can't twink casters as easily as you can twink melee. Melee with a fungi tunic, FBSS, high dmg new weapons on low level will out level most casters, no down time. As the expansions progress, powerful melee weapons become common for low level melee, all the low level casters are still stuck with the same original spells dmg/mana ratio they always had from release. Only later expansions did casters start to get foci casting items to make up for this.

[DMN]

You need to do a deep dive on the thread, melee stomp casters with gear. You can't twink casters as easily as you can twink melee. Melee with a fungi tunic, FBSS, high dmg new weapons on low level will out level most casters, no down time. As the expansions progress, powerful melee weapons become common for low level melee, all the low level casters are still stuck with the same original spells dmg/mana ratio they always had from release. Only later expansions did casters start to get foci casting items to make up for this.

This is only true 1-30ish. A caster can just use some of that twinking plat to buy a power level or quest items to turn in to get through the crappier lower levels. To be fair, you can't really "get your plat" back with the caster, like you can more easily with twink gear. Druids/clerics could still melee pretty well to their mid 20s, shaman can prolly push all the way into the late 30s since they get both haste and slow.

[ClephNote]

Have fun killing raid targets with no warriors or clerics.

I said tank! Right in the thing!

[NPC]

As the expansions progress, powerful melee weapons become common for low level melee, all the low level casters are still stuck with the same original spells dmg/mana ratio they always had from release. Only later expansions did casters start to get foci casting items to make up for this.

Case in point, a noob int caster spends 200pp for 10 int, that doesnt do much for 1-20 lv.
A noob melee can spend 200pp an get a 10/22 dmg weapon (sword of skyfire), which will allow 1-20 lv stomp mobs faster than any caster spells or pets for those levels.
Melee only had large disadvantage before Kunark, but with each expansion they start to even out and even outclass most casters with the right gear till high end.

[Wwen42]

I was going to post this as a reply to the "is enchanter OP?" poll thread, only to realize it's been locked, but I think it's such an important topic necessary for some level of discussion (or proper reasonings to put me in my place about it) that I need to make a thread bout it.

First and foremost, before anything else, I *DON'T* think enchanters or any other class are OP -- I think the 'power-classes' like ENC and MAG, and to some degree every spellcaster, solo or in group, are just toeing the line of "the proper balance" to make it through a game as gruelingly difficult as classic EQ. You still need some level of smarts, some level of knowledge, some level of hard-won experience in the game, guide-studying, figuring out how things work, time commitment, perseverance and stubbornness to get far in this game -- outside of powerleveling, of course, but given not only how unforgiving the game is in a general sense, and aspects like spell resists, the extreme state of small mana pools and slow mana recovery, the competitiveness of every popular exp/money spot and just how fast you die when things inevitably go wrong and how punishing death is, I couldn't call any class in this game 'overpowered' so much as, at best, in case of ENC perhaps most of all, "just right, able to cheese the game back almost as hard as it cheeses its players".

The problem arises when you factor in classes that DON'T have all those tools to compete with the insane "overtuning" of the enemies (though that's how we like it, what makes the game more satisfying than newer MMOs and generally makes grouping at all stages far more popular than it would be in others). Even IN groups, where they're seemingly more "needed" and where they flock since soloing gets exponentially harder to even try to do rapidly the higher level you get... The melees. They were designed to fill the same void they do in every other classical RPG or RPG-inspired game, the big dudes that take hits so the finger-wagglers can safely do their waggling, or to do consistent, constant DPS while the mages are meditating or against mobs that resist magic or what-have-you. This would have been fine if the only spellcasters in the game had been clerics and wizards, maybe, but well...

Let me give you a story of my recent personal experience. I finally came to green late as Kunark launched, I made an IKS WAR (I know they can't wear plate till velious and are thus frowned upon but I also know I was future-proofing a bit and I love the racials and aesthetics). I painstakingly got the guy up into the 30s after weeks of hardcore play and had EXCELLENT equipment every step of the way thanks to kind strangers, friends and guildmates, and my own blood sweat and tears scrabbling every single copper I could every step of the way to fill out every slot with at least decent mid-tier stuff as soon as possible.. People appreciated me in groups and I think I did a decent job with everythign I could. But despite all this hard work and commitment, despite the hundreds, thousands of plat that went into gearing me up to fairly twinkish levels, consistently every single time I partied with any kind of pet class, even several levels below me, the pet was consistently MONUMENTALLY out-DPSing me, even with no weapons, and I'm pretty damn sure they'd out-tank me if people bothered to throw a set of cheap noob gear on them and keep them healed. No matter what I did, what I tried, how I tried to squeeze every iota of stats and ability and goodness out of my character, or how much money I funneled into it, I couldn't even begin to dream to even halfway catch up to this naked pet in sheer raw power for my level, they're scaled just the same as NPCs which is to say 'white mob should be enough of a threat to need multiple players to take it down after like level 5, unless you cheese the game as is often necessary". Though my guy was so kitted out I was able to solo high blues and sometimes even whites all the way up to level 30 mobs -- then the stat skyrocket is so blatant and insane no melee can even dream of it anymore, while of course every single spellcaster can with some tactics and patience. Or just throwing junk at it till it dies if you're a MAG I guess lol. I even tried my best to get into all aspects of crafting and any side-ability I could use to give me any edge, and let me tell you, all crafting is completely useless in this era lmao, best to use that time to farm some cash for a set of banded and some HMBP's and just get fletching to the not-at-all-high level you need to craft the longest range arrows for pulling, which is all that matters, you'll never get any damage out of them and any amount of 'hard work' and 'squeezing every last drop out of the class' is pointless and adds absolutely nothing.

The point I'm trying to make is -- why the hell would you ever roll a melee or bring a melee to any group, ever, when bringing a magic user or ESPECIALLY pet class is just infinitely, gargantuanly, objectively, far far better? You need literally zero gear whatsoever to humongously outperform even geared-to-the-teeth melees. Just summon a pet and send it in. You can give it almost any gear you want and it will immediately auto-equip it. Sure, it makes it a pain to give it expensive stuff that you know will disappear forever as soon as it dies or you log or zone, but... so? What are you gonna do, go all the way to EC and spend a month trying to peddle it off, or worse yet, give it to a melee noob when you'll get infinitely more use out of it letting your pet have it and getting you and/or your group that much more easy and fast exp and money? Why buff any of the melees when you could buff the pets and see so much more effect for it? Why give even good weapons to the melees instead of the pets? Why heal the melees when you could heal the pets? Why in the world would you make any melee class instead of bringing a class that literally can effortlessly summon or charm a mob that IS, immediately, with no money or gear, not only as good as, but BETTER THAN any melee you could possibly add to your group, PLUS all the myriad spells and abilities that you get as a spell-user? And no matter what spellcaster you are you're going to get unfathomably uber-useful core abilities too like bind and gate, at least some menial CC like root, and likely things like food/drink summoning or other means to not bother with some core aspects of the game. Still, I don't think this is 'op' -- I just think melee is severely, severely UP.

I know there are some apparent exceptions but, well -- let's go over a few.
- Warriors get disciplines later that let them tank raid bosses. They're the only class that can tank raid bosses.
-- Great! That's exactly one solitary warrior needed per entire raid, and 99.999% of the playerbase will never touch any raid ever. You all know that this warrior will be some ogre war a guildie with a DRU or NEC main will make as an alt real quick and get powerlevelled and omega-twinked just to fulfill this one purpose, anyway.
- Rogues get backstab, that's pretty strong, right?
-- Yes, but not so much stronger than other pet DPS or spell DPS that it really matters, and in some zones there are rogue NPCs to charm that do this anyway, so what's the point?
- Rogues can also sneak/invis and scout or do sick corpse runs!
-- Yeah, but who needs scouting anymore when we all have fully detailed maps of every zone in the game, and/or use gnome ghetto tracking, and we can just kill all the mobs anyway with CC and pet barrages? And who needs corpse runs when you could just summon them, pull through floor, use a bard or other class that can do it just as well etc?
- Monks do so much great DPS and can pull and FD and it's neat!
-- Yea, but pets are still gonna outdps them before raid-tier endgame and again, who needs a puller when you could just kill/CC everything with enough pets/spellcasters? And necros can FD for when that's needed.
- Hybrids can do some stuff, maybe, sometimes, and hold hate well.
-- No one on the planet's gonna party with a hybrid as long as exp penalty is in place, the most ludicrously pointless aspect of 'keep it classic' that serves literally zero purpose whatsoever except make already-grotesquely-underpowered classes even less viable to play or wanted by anyone. and even after that, literally why bother when you could just send in more pets and root the mob so they tank it? And do many many times over the DPS of these classes that do far less dmg than warriors, and warriors do far less than pets?

So yeah like... I'm not saying anything should be nerfed, just that melees should be buffed to actually compete with pets and even-leveled mobs, or be able to conceivably have any reason to exist alongside spellcasters when there's absolutely no way for them to ever even dream of approaching the DPS of most of them, especially pet ones, tanking is pointless when pets and charmed mobs exist atm, and they have absolutely utterly nothing they can do of any real value at all compared to ANY spellcaster class, and have much much much harder time doing the basic stuff of the game for not only no reward but *less* powerful or needed of a character objectively, *and* they take a million times more money to make even somewhat viable, but SITLL far LESS viable than a naked spellcaster of any type...

I know this won't be changed ever and the purpose of this server is to simulate classic EQ as closely as possible, imbalances and all, but it really gets under my skin and pisses me off so I wanted to make a post about it :P

TL;DR all melees (except bards which don't count) suck and are terrible and worthless, prove me wrong

This is all very classic. But I re-rolled a ranger anyway, because I hate myself.

[Dannil]

Ah, coming back to EverQuest in 2021 is truly reliving the 1999 experience - even the complaints sound the same.

[starkind]

Rangers can lazily easily solo and farm a lot of the sub40 game so they aren't all that bad, plus track is nice. and at 39 they get sow.

[Darkwoo]

Rangers can lazily easily solo and farm a lot of the sub40 game so they aren't all that bad, plus track is nice. and at 39 they get sow.

rangers suck ass

[Midoo]

This is an extremely stupid point of view that stems from having a WoW player perspective on RPGs. Back in the days of D&D people didn't chase DPS because every class had a viable purpose in the adventure. Sure, it may be harder to solo as a mortal creature whose only skill is swinging weapons compared to a reality-bending caster class, but can you imagine this server without dedicated aggro magnets, corpse retrievers, pullers, trackers, off-healers who won't get one-shotted, versatile classes, etc.?

Then World of Warcraft comes out and all their classes are just differently themed DPS, and the only class variety is what color of fireball comes out of your ass when you faceroll.

Now suddenly the entire gaming landscape starts thinking MMORPGs are supposed to be retarded dick measuring contests where any class that isn't in the top 5 on average DPS logs is "bad."

[NPC]

This is an extremely stupid point of view that stems from having a WoW player perspective on RPGs. Back in the days of D&D people didn't chase DPS because every class had a viable purpose in the adventure. Sure, it may be harder to solo as a mortal creature whose only skill is swinging weapons compared to a reality-bending caster class, but can you imagine this server without dedicated aggro magnets, corpse retrievers, pullers, trackers, off-healers who won't get one-shotted, versatile classes, etc.?

Then World of Warcraft comes out and all their classes are just differently themed DPS, and the only class variety is what color of fireball comes out of your ass when you faceroll.

Now suddenly the entire gaming landscape starts thinking MMORPGs are supposed to be retarded dick measuring contests where any class that isn't in the top 5 on average DPS logs is "bad."

Ya, cause god forbid every class be useful. You should have to play a class to 50 before you find out it sucks right? That's what happened to me in classic. F-ck that, played wizard to 50 then I quit. Grinding the xp trendmills an learning/knowing the xploited broken mechanics because the developers purposefully over powered classes they actually played themselves, of the early MMO's is being enshrined in some godforsaken perfect light. Nothing was ever perfect, but everyone tries to make it out like it was. Early MMO's just sucked even more than the new ones, but in many different AND MANY more ways. EQ was a buggy trashy piece of unbalanced garbage, and it still is.

[Xer0]

This is an extremely stupid point of view that stems from having a WoW player perspective on RPGs. Back in the days of D&D people didn't chase DPS because every class had a viable purpose in the adventure. Sure, it may be harder to solo as a mortal creature whose only skill is swinging weapons compared to a reality-bending caster class, but can you imagine this server without dedicated aggro magnets, corpse retrievers, pullers, trackers, off-healers who won't get one-shotted, versatile classes, etc.?

Then World of Warcraft comes out and all their classes are just differently themed DPS, and the only class variety is what color of fireball comes out of your ass when you faceroll.

Now suddenly the entire gaming landscape starts thinking MMORPGs are supposed to be retarded dick measuring contests where any class that isn't in the top 5 on average DPS logs is "bad."

There's definitely validity to the sentiment of imbalance that has 0 to do with WoW.

[beargryllz]

Ya, cause god forbid every class be useful. You should have to play a class to 50 before you find out it sucks right? That's what happened to me in classic. F-ck that, played wizard to 50 then I quit. Grinding the xp trendmills an learning/knowing the xploited broken mechanics because the developers purposefully over powered classes they actually played themselves, of the early MMO's is being enshrined in some godforsaken perfect light. Nothing was ever perfect, but everyone tries to make it out like it was. Early MMO's just sucked even more than the new ones, but in many different AND MANY more ways. EQ was a buggy trashy piece of unbalanced garbage, and it still is.

Wait didn't the dev guy play a paladin? The class who has one purpose, which is to cast DS and then log out to something useful?

[Jimjam]

Wait didn't the dev guy play a paladin? The class who has one purpose, which is to cast DS and then log out to something useful?

Aradune was a ranger with a fiery defender clone iirc. He was the top brass and could circumvent the rules on his GM toon. The worker devs instead tilted the balance towards their player / non- staff toons.

[HalflingSpergand]

The dev guy? Gtfo out of here u scrub

[unsunghero]

Then World of Warcraft comes out and all their classes are just differently themed DPS, and the only class variety is what color of fireball comes out of your ass when you faceroll

Well, technically you are describing the evolution of WoW

In Vanilla and TBC classes had their uniqueness. Warlocks would summon, mages would port, rogues and druid had their stealth, etc. The big negatives on launch were 1.) the game was made far too easy (everyone recognizes this), and 2.) balancing issues (having paladins made alliance objectively better at PvE, certain specs of multiple classes were completely gimp, etc)

Then as WoW went on, the devs made a terrible idea in the name of balance to just homogenize all the classes. They gave self-heals to just about every DPS, stealth to mages and hunters and who knows what else (I haven't played since WOTLK), CC to literally everyone, etc. Every class became a homogenous blob

They still couldn't balance their PvP, which I believe was the entire reason for the homogenization of the classes. So that concept in my opinion was a complete failure and contributed to a noted decline in WoW's popularity as the game went on

[Zuranthium]

Rogues do the most damage of any class Classic->velious

No. Necros/Mages/Enchanters in Classic (although most players at the time didn't realize it about Enchanters) were by FAR the best, Bards and Druids could do some game-changing things too, and Monks were generally more damage than Rogues before the backstab buff as well.

Rogues really came into their own during Kunark, but still get outclassed by Charm in places where it can be reliably used, and Mages still do more damage in a lot of situations as well, particularly pre-Epic era of Kunark.

Rogues for Raid DPS in Velious are often the best, this is their most shining era (aside from Stealing during early Classic, which technically can be considered the most game-changing thing of all), but still inferior to Enchanters any time they can reliably use Charm.

[DMN]

Actually necros could do even more in those similar raid situations also assuming there was viable charm targets for them, as they could also land their taps on virtually everything... i think saw maybe two or three completely immune to tap raid enemies in all of vanila/kunark.

[cd288]

No. Necros/Mages/Enchanters in Classic (although most players at the time didn't realize it about Enchanters) were by FAR the best, Bards and Druids could do some game-changing things too, and Monks were generally more damage than Rogues before the backstab buff as well.

Rogues really came into their own during Kunark, but still get outclassed by Charm in places where it can be reliably used, and Mages still do more damage in a lot of situations as well, particularly pre-Epic era of Kunark.

Rogues for Raid DPS in Velious are often the best, this is their most shining era (aside from Stealing during early Classic, which technically can be considered the most game-changing thing of all), but still inferior to Enchanters any time they can reliably use Charm.

A hasted and geared rogue definitely does more DPS than a mage.

[DMN]

A hasted and geared rogue definitely does more DPS than a mage.

He said before epics in kunark in speific situations. certainly there is zero chance of a rogue out dpsing pure mana dumping mage. if not mana dumping, what kind of gear you talking? backstabbing water pet + 30 DPs per second clicky+ shielded tank+unslowed mobs = a lot of dps.

[cd288]

He said before epics in kunark in speific situations. certainly there is zero chance of a rogue out dpsing pure mana dumping mage. if not mana dumping, what kind of gear you talking? backstabbing water pet + 30 DPs per second clicky+ shielded tank+unslowed mobs = a lot of dps.

Oh sure if a mage is just nuking through their entire mana bar for that fight then good chance he will put dps a rogue. But I was speaking of more normal/realistic situations in a group where the mage is usually just sending pet in and maybe nuking once

[Zuranthium]

Mage pet + damage shield + normal cast damage is definitely more DPS than a Rogue who doesn't have the best Kunark-era weapons. The best weapons of that era still might fall behind actually, I'd be interested in seeing exact parses. Plus, it was uncommon back in the day for someone to have even close to the best weapons in game (still true for any new server), whereas casters get a much higher baseline of capability automatically.

[Vaarsuvius]

Mage pet + damage shield + normal cast damage is definitely more DPS than a Rogue who doesn't have the best Kunark-era weapons. The best weapons of that era still might fall behind actually, I'd be interested in seeing exact parses. Plus, it was uncommon back in the day for someone to have even close to the best weapons in game (still true for any new server), whereas casters get a much higher baseline of capability automatically.

Depends on the target too, mages being limited to fire and magic nukes. I yet have to understand why we don't have a single frost based DD...

[Jimjam]

Depends on the target too, mages being limited to fire and magic nukes. I yet have to understand why we don't have a single frost based DD...

Mages don’t get a cold cos they can summon a mask.

[Vaarsuvius]

I fail to see the relation between the 2...
Muzzle of Mardu at 55 or some cold nukes from lvl1-> 60?

that's a very weird alternative �� as if Mages pet needed some more haste on top of BO

[DMN]

It was a joke.

[Vaarsuvius]

It was a joke.

Yeah I got that, but when it comes to magicians and EQ devs, I still have a lot of unanswered questions :) and you may very well be spot on

[Baldwooky]

rangers suck ass

Youre wrong.

[Toxigen]

rangers suck ass

i mean they're great speedbumps in the raid scene

otherwise, your statement is correct

[Sotaris]

I'm a huge classic idealist and traditionalist, but I actually wouldn't mind some melee buffs. It will never happen though, the trade off is too great for most people. But my god it'd be great to have something perfectly classic like p99, except for small buffs for melee classes. But it's just too complicated of a problem and it'd take a genius to find a way to keep EQ classic and buff melee without sacrificing classic EQ integrity.

Basically, just don't play a melee unless you have good friends to play with regularly, or you have tons and tons of plat to twink and pay for PL till 50+, where getting a group seems way easier for tanks.

[Sotaris]

This actually reminds me of an uproar back in the day on the official EQ forums in classic when people realized a lvl 50 necro pet could solo a lvl 50 warrior. People started crunching the numbers and realized many stats didnt actually do what they were supposed to do and were worthless.

Sorry for the necro, but this brought back huge memories. This was a BIG deal. It causes an uproar all across Everquest. Everyone heard about it on every server. Wasn't there an example of a level 50 warrior getting stomped by a sand giant and a level 50 necro pet STOMPING a sand giant? It caused the first necro pet nerf. the very first necro pet ever was so ridiculous, it hit for high 80's I think? It was nuts.

Everquest has never been fair for melee, they simply weren't designed well. But it's a huge reason why playing melee can be so damn rewarding and why twinking them is so fun and why gearing them is so rewarding.

[NPC]

Depends on the target too, mages being limited to fire and magic nukes. I yet have to understand why we don't have a single frost based DD...

Because Wizards were supposed to be the magic damage dealing class and needed something to differentiate themselves from mages. That's why only wizards get Fire, Ice ,and Magic based damage spells and have the lowest resist spells for those types of damage. Does it come close to making up for not having pet? No, mages still have Malo which makes their spells land better anyway, cause that makes sense right?

[Sabin76]

Because Wizards were supposed to be the magic damage dealing class and needed something to differentiate themselves from mages. That's why only wizards get Fire, Ice ,and Magic based damage spells and have the lowest resist spells for those types of damage. Does it come close to making up for not having pet? No, mages still have Malo which makes their spells land better anyway, cause that makes sense right?

Not compared to Lures... not by a long shot.

Conceptually, it just doesn't seem fitting that the class who's description revolves around the elements can't cast any spells other than a pet that are #NotFireorMagic.

Back to the topic at hand, I wonder how much better it would feel for melee classes if spell components were much rarer than they currently are (not Kunark+ spell drops, I think those seem to be about right)? Think about it, where a melee class progresses through equipment, a caster progresses through spells. No amount of equipment is going to make a wizard cast Ice Shock any faster or have it hit any harder. But get the mats for Ice Comet and you've now got that potential.

Many key spells for INT casters are gated behind research, but by the end of Vanilla there are only a couple spells that sell for above 1k (mostly because the materials ARE rare drops *cough* Words of WhatInTarnation *cough*), while melee gear is orders of magnitude more expensive.

Or make it the anti-mischief server. Spell drops and components are on specific mobs (or at least specific areas) that then become contested and much more expensive as a result.

Not that we'd ever see this here, but it's an interesting thought experiment to me.

[cd288]

Not compared to Lures... not by a long shot.

Conceptually, it just doesn't seem fitting that the class who's description revolves around the elements can't cast any spells other than a pet that are #NotFireorMagic.

Back to the topic at hand, I wonder how much better it would feel for melee classes if spell components were much rarer than they currently are (not Kunark+ spell drops, I think those seem to be about right)? Think about it, where a melee class progresses through equipment, a caster progresses through spells. No amount of equipment is going to make a wizard cast Ice Shock any faster or have it hit any harder. But get the mats for Ice Comet and you've now got that potential.

Many key spells for INT casters are gated behind research, but by the end of Vanilla there are only a couple spells that sell for above 1k (mostly because the materials ARE rare drops *cough* Words of WhatInTarnation *cough*), while melee gear is orders of magnitude more expensive.

Or make it the anti-mischief server. Spell drops and components are on specific mobs (or at least specific areas) that then become contested and much more expensive as a result.

Not that we'd ever see this here, but it's an interesting thought experiment to me.

One part your missing though is the definition of rare. For example many mage spell components aren’t ultra rare but they are also not easy to get by any means. As the server progresses those components are also harder to find for sale from players as many people think most people who would need them have already leveled past the point where they would and most players also won’t spend the time creating and auctioning a lower level spell because the prices just progressively get cheaper and cheaper as more plat comes into the economy.

So you have a pretty decent lack of supply from player auctions while also having to find some pretty annoying components

[Danth]

One part your missing though is the definition of rare. For example many mage spell components aren’t ultra rare but they are also not easy to get by any means. As the server progresses those components are also harder to find for sale from players as many people think most people who would need them have already leveled past the point where they would and most players also won’t spend the time creating and auctioning a lower level spell because the prices just progressively get cheaper and cheaper as more plat comes into the economy.

So you have a pretty decent lack of supply from player auctions while also having to find some pretty annoying components

Right. Same thing does actually happen with melee equipment: Low/mid level equipment is, for the most part, starting to get kind of hard to find on P1999 if a player wants some specific piece. Thing is, with melee equipment there are a bunch of options so a player who doesn't find exactly what he wants can still find something else that does the job about as well. Not so with spells. There aren't a lot of dropped spells (or researched spells) for any given class, and nearly all dropped spells are class-specific, meaning a caster either finds a specific spell that probably isn't worth someone's time to bother trying to sell or he goes without because there aren't options for spells the same way there are for pieces of melee equipment. Some Warrior wants a Silvery War Axe, can't find one for sale, so he buys a Langseax instead and he doesn't care because it's pretty much the same thing. Some Enchanter can't find a Salil's Writ 174, tough beans, no Gravity Flux for him, because there aren't any options.

Add in the complete lack of spellcaster scaling in this game and I think we can agree that for all this game's strengths, in some respects its also very much showing its age.

Danth

[Sabin76]

One part your missing though is the definition of rare. For example many mage spell components aren’t ultra rare but they are also not easy to get by any means. As the server progresses those components are also harder to find for sale from players as many people think most people who would need them have already leveled past the point where they would and most players also won’t spend the time creating and auctioning a lower level spell because the prices just progressively get cheaper and cheaper as more plat comes into the economy.

So you have a pretty decent lack of supply from player auctions while also having to find some pretty annoying components

I didn't define it on purpose, because it's something that I don't think you'd be able to get right the first time, and might need some tweaking as Kunark and Velious come out in whatever alternate reality exists where RogBog actually implement it.

I'll address your last point next, because I think it counters the rest to a degree. I don't see how things get cheaper when more plat enters the system... that's kind of the opposite of what it's supposed to do. So it comes back to another basic economic principle: how much is it worth to you? If people are willing to spend enough on components (or a completed spell), there will be people that will farm it. If no one is willing to spend it, then they better farm the mats themselves.

And that leads to my last point. Currently, it's not particularly "hard" to farm materials... all you need is the right level mobs. They literally drop anywhere in the world. Incidentally, I have a tunnel mule with a bunch on it, so if you need spell mats, give me a holler :P.

[cd288]

I didn't define it on purpose, because it's something that I don't think you'd be able to get right the first time, and might need some tweaking as Kunark and Velious come out in whatever alternate reality exists where RogBog actually implement it.

I'll address your last point next, because I think it counters the rest to a degree. I don't see how things get cheaper when more plat enters the system... that's kind of the opposite of what it's supposed to do. So it comes back to another basic economic principle: how much is it worth to you? If people are willing to spend enough on components (or a completed spell), there will be people that will farm it. If no one is willing to spend it, then they better farm the mats themselves.

And that leads to my last point. Currently, it's not particularly "hard" to farm materials... all you need is the right level mobs. They literally drop anywhere in the world. Incidentally, I have a tunnel mule with a bunch on it, so if you need spell mats, give me a holler :P.

Meant to say things get cheaper as more items enter the economy and that things get more expensive so selling things that are much cheaper like many types of lower level words or spells doesn’t really put a dent in what you need to buy a good item and therefore not worth the time to sell.

Certain types of components are still a hassle to get. You’d be surprised how annoying it can be to try and find some of the components that aren’t words

[NPC]

One part your missing though is the definition of rare. For example many mage spell components aren’t ultra rare but they are also not easy to get by any means. As the server progresses those components are also harder to find for sale from players as many people think most people who would need them have already leveled past the point where they would and most players also won’t spend the time creating and auctioning a lower level spell because the prices just progressively get cheaper and cheaper as more plat comes into the economy.

So you have a pretty decent lack of supply from player auctions while also having to find some pretty annoying components

Actually you would be amazed if you went around looking at NPC vendors, they usually have most of those rare spell components for sale because most players on P99 don't even realize and just sell everything to NPC vendors. I can find most components to just about any spell if I check enough vendors.

[cd288]

Actually you would be amazed if you went around looking at NPC vendors, they usually have most of those rare spell components for sale because most players on P99 don't even realize and just sell everything to NPC vendors. I can find most components to just about any spell if I check enough vendors.

I mean sure, but to say that it's a guaranteed way to get your spell components is an exaggeration. I've never been able to guarantee that I can find research components that way on any of my casters (Blue & Green). Sure if you could port around everywhere then you could probably eventually find what you needed after checking a ton of vendors, but unless you have a porting alt or a friend willing to help you out, that's not really feasible.

Also, okay great you found the words on a vendor for a spell. You probably only found one pair of the words and you're possibly not trivial at the level you need to be yet. If you fail the combine, you're back where you started.