There's the advantage of not having to stand within range of the AoEs that practically all Velious raid mobs have. A competent raid should be able to deal with that, though; there's not much else but heals for the shamans, druids and paladins to cast once the fight has begun, after all. Caster DPS was appreciably less than rogue/monk DPS, especially because Velious mobs tend towards low AC and high resists, but you'll have problems if all your DPS is melee and thus gets molested by AoE. What's best largely depends on the gear level - if you're still in the gearing-up process, you might benefit from having a heavy caster crew. If your guild is well-geared, melee is the way to go because 1) they get loads of resists with gear and don't get hit as hard by AoEs and b) melee DPS actually scales with gear while casters don't at all. By and large, caster damage is sub-par throughout all of early Everquest, but the circumstances can make it more appealing. Since our playerbase is both raid-obsessed poopsockers and shameless min-maxers, I'd expect melee to be the winners of Velious. Caster itemization doesn't get decent until later on, and it never gets fully balanced.
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