Here We Go Again.....

[Danth]

My above post was directed towards Deathrydar specifically, so I skipped a couple of classes he's already much-familiar with. I'll add blurbs for 'em here:

Shadow Knight: Can solo "well" for a melee (who typically solo only poorly, if at all) using fear and snare, but with old world weapons and a 40% experience penalty it's still mediocre solo compared to numerous caster types. Same desirability in groups as the other tank types. Late-bloomer that gets critical utility (feign death, invisibility) rather late in life (level 30). Bring patience or pick something else.

Cleric: Notoriously slow solo, notoriously in-demand by most groups. If you want your guild of choice fawning over you, be a Cleric main. Main limitation is they stack poorly in regular groups so they sometimes do sit LFG for a bit if all present groups already have clerics. The moment a group needs a healer, though--you're in. Almost no-one will pick a Shaman or Druid as a healer if a Cleric is available.

Danth

[Verityn]

Originally Posted by soronil [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

oof... I did not know this. I really was toying with the idea of an early Ranger, particularly with guise and rubicite in play.

The cons are obvious, exp penalty, master of none (group wise), but fear animals was a cool part of the kit I was looking forward too. That makes it much harder....

Maybe just keep it on the slow burner and slowly level it up to 50 before Kunark comes out. I know personally I'm going to be in awe every time I see a ranger past level 30. Although, their snare is pretty nice in dungeons since most of the druids prefer to solo. I prefer not to do dungeons like lguk and solb without someone who can snare.

[Aaramis]

Originally Posted by Danth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Ranger: No animal fear in classic, no SoW until level 39, bows suck as always, and low AC armor means solo is....lets say it tries the patience. Tiny heals mean you have to cast them a billion times to heal up too. Doable in theory but you'd need more patience than I have. XP penalty hurts them the most in groups because they aren't usually sought as tanks and numerous other classes deal comparable damage. Not terrible, but not as good as its proponents claim.

I'll play devil's advocate here, as I've mained Ranger on live, here, and on the most recent live TLPs:

- yes, your heals suck. You won't be using them except to reduce downtime. Your main spells are going to be self-buffs such as the Skin line, Coat and Thorn spells, SoW, invis, levi, etc.
- you can track. That alone can be a huge boon when needed. Sure that Mage can nuke down Quillmane before you can, and steal the kill.... but they have to find the mob first.
You have tracking and SoW. You win.
- you have snare, root, and SoW at your disposal. Much like Druids, you're effectively immortal in outdoor zones.
- for vanilla EQ, a Ranger can tank just fine in a pinch. Once the twinks start rolling out in rubicite, with twin yaks, haste, and your Flame Lick and Snare lines of spells, you're essentially a slightly less durable Warrior but with 100 x better aggro control.
- you don't have "low AC" solo. In fact, chain + your self-buffs (Skin, Coat, etc.) puts you in a pretty good place. Later on, you'll be going more for crazy regen (Chloro + fungi) over AC, but that's much later on.
- you still have DD spells to augment your dps too, as well as DoTs which are essentially fire and forget spells. Pull with a DoT, melee weaving in DD spells, and you can be doing pretty awesome dps for vanilla. It gets better with later expansions too, with Sky cloak haste, epic slow + DoT, and so on. You become a pretty crazy dps machine.
- bow dps sucks right up until you get Trueshot disc. Then suddenly every stops talking.... for 2 min of glory, anyways. Then they go back to mocking you.