EQ TLP 2024 Teek (Random loot) & Tormax (Traditional) #neckbeardnostalgia

Muligan

Trakanon Raider
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I guess Bard is "Hard" comparatively to the other classes. I never felt it was hard per say but I did play an Enchanter through Agnarr and felt some of those pressures but I had a blast doing it. Bard is very active more than difficult but maybe I'm just not remembering what it was like playing without a lot of the conveniences of today. I also forget sometime how braining numbing some of the other classes are.... while being a cleric made be stress at moment since you're pretty well the life or death of the group, I ultimately was pressing one button every so many seconds and if the group was solid, I would press it once every pull.

Poor rogues on soloing.... talking about painful.
 

Kharzette

Watcher of Overs
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4,053
I wonder if they can do kunark start but with a couple weeks of guise of the deceiver dropping.
 

Xevy

Log Wizard
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I dunno man. I mostly agree, I do, but not wholly. Cleric should be s tier aside from soloing. They are 90+% of the time the bottleneck for what you can get done or how much you can split raid, and in groups their complete heal is the only reasonable way to keep a charm pet consistently going; alternative tricks to heal pets seriously impede how well you can use said pets as tanks, as I think they all require out of combat gimmicks.
I actually agree, but when I started this I didn't even have S tier. The other people working on this wanted me to add S tier and F tier. I agreed to S tier, but F tier is a fucking waste since it's going to only be Rogues in soloing basically so what's the point. I think C tier conveys that. They also wanted S+ tier which I think is fucking redundant. I will admit I could've maybe, and still can, S-A-B-C-D-F, but in shit like classic so many classes end up as "not the best but not bad" that there's no really fleshed out caste of classes. Like druids in Classic raids aren't great, but are they better than Paladins? Yeah probably. But are they better than Warriors? Yeah maybe? It's very weird. And then there's all sorts of specialty shit like Paladins in Crypt of Decay soloing or druids quad kiting aviaks and like I've mentioned Shamans soloing Dragons. Yes they can do that thing, but put into any other situation outside of that specialty they're not nearly as good.

The rating at the bottom is pretty much the "S" tier ranking beyond the color coded graph. As you can see, clerics are always the best healer in every slot. It even lasts this way until maybe PoR or beyond when you might want a druid/shaman for their aura/epic click over a cleric for simple grouping. I will admit after thinking about it, I think you COULD, possibly, do raids without clerics up until Velious if you had enough druids. It'd be pretty hard, but I think you could. Once you hit Vulaek and AoW type fights you need the efficiency of a CH rotation or you're boned. Even with 20 druids there's just no way their shit "big" heals would be enough for AoW spikes.

That said in the grand, grand scheme of thing. Enchanters, Clerics, and Warriors(beyond classic) are S tier picks for raids and only warriors fall off in group content, but they come back MUCH stronger in SoF+ expansions. I just wanted to use a single S-tier classification to point out the importance of these certain classes in their scenarios.
-Enchanter is still, in my mind, just the fucking most important tool for a raid via clarity/haste/CC/ and charm pets. Bards can do some of that but they sure as fuck aren't keeping Xegony packs or Rathe Council mez locked. But the problem with enchanters is their actual raid dps is locked mostly to their charm pets. If you don't have access to good charm pets, you start hitting saturation after about 4 enchanters in most raids. If there's plenty of pets the more the better if they know how to control them and you're not fighting a dispeller.

-Clerics always good. CH is king whether it's for long fights up until GoD where the rotation falls off, or just to top off charm pets with massive 32khp health pools. They're the only source of AE heals for quite a while and shit like NToV they're crucial. In groups they're very nice, but honestly a druid/shaman combo offers more if the druid is willing to be main healer than a cleric as you'll probably have a shaman as well. And as your raid gear scales in a lot of group content there's not much for the cleric to do outside of healing charm pets. Clerics have a much higher saturation point depending on expac, but you CAN have too many clerics if you have enough good ones. At that point they offer nothing but being able to rez/rebuff the dead because their damage is pitiful outside some undead fights where unless they crit Turn Undead they still won't break top 10.

-Warriors suck in classic. They've got no defensive, and their threat is 80% tied to procs. Once Kunark comes out they not only get some decent 14/24 epics, but they get the big D, Defensive discipline. This fucking thing is the crux upon which all boss tanking will be built on from now to forever. If you don't have a warrior/enough warriors, outside of glyph blasting, you are not raiding. Bosses hit so fucking hard later on unless you're in a 12 cleric raid situation, it ain't happening with an SK/Pally. We had a few SK/Pally tank AoW at the end of Velious and some even survive, but it was rough. And that was with geared clerics and geared dps as well. Warriors get really good dmg/delay weapons and around Luclin they CAN do very respectable damage in groups where you don't feel like they're a waste. But again, they're mandatory for future raids. There's no way around them. Entire guilds have crumbled due to losing "the geared warrior" or "the good warrior". They are crucial. That's why a Kunark start is great because they come with Defensive at the ready and they don't have to suffer through being plate rangers for 3 months.

So if I were to add more than one S-tier to classes, yeah, Cleric and Warriors are definitely S-Tier for Raids. I think they're the least valuable in Clasic raiding, but their stock just goes up as expansions progress.
 
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xmod2

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But, if you want more chill, enc enc nec is a lot less crazy than enc nec nec, and enc pulls way better than nec for leveling content if you need that.
Second enc adds nothing except a second charm pet. Dealing with a second charm pet seems like more trouble than casting dots on the necro.
Make OW raid boss areas pvp enabled. Gives you pvpers what they want and makes OW raids more interesting instead of 1 zerg guild controlling it all.
You would just pay the local box crew to sit at the zone in and merk anyone who zones in.
 

Greyman

Trakanon Raider
712
953
Enchanter has the easiest time charming, they have their own tash, they also don't need the group to fuck around as much trying to find the right mob for them to charm, eg undead or animal. Nec is probably second easiest as at least they can ST their pet on break, Druid a distant third because they get long ass cast time on charm, no mez or stun worth a damn to assist with recharming. So they often need a Chanter or Necro to help them out while getting their ass beat trying to channel charm, either that or they snare and spend half the time kiting their pet around to recharm, or they root it and then you have to yell at the tank to bring it over, then in the case of Chardok they fucking rabies everything.

All 3 benefit from having a Shaman or Mage there that's not a retard and will keep malo debuff on charm breaks.

Double or Triple charm groups are OP, at least one needs to be an Enc though, after that who cares, a second Enc still beats out something like a Rogue or Ranger in that spot.
 

Rajaah

Honorable Member
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I already know what my ideal static group makeup is gonna be, just need to find the right players now.
 

Xeris

Trakanon Raider
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28
Wizard is the best DPS in pop/LDON era and it's not even really close. If wizards are losing a potime parse to anyone they aren't trying or the tanks are horrendous.
 

Razzes

Trakanon Raider
848
536
Wizard is the best DPS in pop/LDON era and it's not even really close. If wizards are losing a potime parse to anyone they aren't trying or the tanks are horrendous.
They're terrible against the hardest bosses of time TZ/VZ who have aggro debuff. They are also not the best for overall trash clear if the pace is fast since they go oom (ex: p1-p3 clear). They also don't do that well on quarm splits (quarm has super high resists).
 
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yerm

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Enchanter has the easiest time charming, they have their own tash, they also don't need the group to fuck around as much trying to find the right mob for them to charm, eg undead or animal. Nec is probably second easiest as at least they can ST their pet on break, Druid a distant third because they get long ass cast time on charm, no mez or stun worth a damn to assist with recharming. So they often need a Chanter or Necro to help them out while getting their ass beat trying to channel charm, either that or they snare and spend half the time kiting their pet around to recharm, or they root it and then you have to yell at the tank to bring it over, then in the case of Chardok they fucking rabies everything.

All 3 benefit from having a Shaman or Mage there that's not a retard and will keep malo debuff on charm breaks.

Double or Triple charm groups are OP, at least one needs to be an Enc though, after that who cares, a second Enc still beats out something like a Rogue or Ranger in that spot.

If you have a necro or druid able to charm and undead or animal, you USUALLY want the enchanter to do the same. They can buff their pet and them the enc take it with an hour+ nec or druid buff. Its like 50% more dps at times, I think. There are exceptions but thats usually the case. If your enc doesn't bother, they're just leaving like 50% or so attack speed off.
 
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Sterling

El Presidente
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They're terrible against the hardest bosses of time TZ/VZ who have aggro debuff. They are also not the best for overall trash clear if the pace is fast since they go oom (ex: p1-p3 clear). They also don't do that well on quarm splits (quarm has super high resists).
concussion pants and manarobing helps with this kind of stuff. I really enjoyed raiding as a wizard through this expansion and GoD is fine if not great as a wizard, but once you hit the level 70 expansions it becomes meleequest for like 1235 expansions and feelsbad.
 
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Rajaah

Honorable Member
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I'd say someone needs to get on the red phone and page D Dima at the Kremlin to really spice things up. Not happening though unless something wildly changed in the past year or so.
 

Ryoz

<Donor>
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If you have a necro or druid able to charm and undead or animal, you USUALLY want the enchanter to do the same. They can buff their pet and them the enc take it with an hour+ nec or druid buff. Its like 50% more dps at times, I think. There are exceptions but thats usually the case. If your enc doesn't bother, they're just leaving like 50% or so attack speed off.
yup, those nec/dru pet buffs are so nice. i could always tell how good a time i was going to have in a group based on how long i took me to explain to the dru/nec to drop their pet so i could have the buff.
 

Razzes

Trakanon Raider
848
536
concussion pants and manarobing helps with this kind of stuff. I really enjoyed raiding as a wizard through this expansion and GoD is fine if not great as a wizard, but once you hit the level 70 expansions it becomes meleequest for like 1235 expansions and feelsbad.
Some parses, only time i see wizard on TZ/VZ is on a full raid where the tank gets insta purified of any debuff. These are the bosses that limit your ability to split and get more loots. Keep in mind this is with close to full bis gear on oakwynd, and ranger are better relative to monk in elemental gear since they get 0 dps increase from time (hdex does next to nothing to archery at low numbers, and bow of tempest is outdps'd by featherwood bow). So Ranger would actually be better in "progression" than these parses show.

One thing people forget is that they have buffed elemental damage one year ago, which buffed ranger in luclin/PoP a ton since they have 4 elemental dmg on their arrow. I would also argue they are top dps in luclin with wizard since the elemental dmg buff (ranger are top dps on seru/emp, and 2nd dps to wizard in VT with their bane bow).

Tallon zek
570 Ranger
486 Ranger
447 Ranger
429 Monk
427 Monk


Vallon zek
503 Monk
432 Ranger
385 Monk
370 Rogue
328 Monk

Quarm
505 Ranger
473 Ranger
444 Monk
394 Ranger
389 Monk


Tallon zek full raid (tank always cleared of aggro debuff)
411 Monk
403 Wizard
394 Wizard
378 Monk
377 Ranger

Xevy Xevy bard can effectively mezz rathe council with lullaby of morell btw, and can kite xegony waves, no mezz needed. Also chorus of marr is higher mana regen than voice of quellious, and bard haste is higher (rizlona + warsong=225%) than enchanter haste.
 

Evernothing

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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8,879
I'm waiting for that Faceless vs. Vicious drama.

Remember the good old days?
 
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TheRealmOnline

Golden Squire
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12
I have played just about all classes from classic to PoP as solo leveling but weekly raider. Bard is by far the best solo class in the hands of someone putting forth the effort and it is not even close. Obviously, once they get Mana tick gear in Luclin and PoP Charm they are godly, but even before that, you can do much more solo on a bard than any other class. Necro is a close 2nd though. I Imagine shaman is up there as well with the power of Slow, but I never tried a shaman in the early stages due to buff cancer. I'd rip my eyes out with the spam requests during raids.

Lull crawling through dungeons, Dirge-ing, Mez juggling, Charm swarm kiting, Selo speed, clickies while moving, slow, snares ... you name it.

My favorite duo is a Bard with a Mage box. Pet assist with Mage, malo charm targets, CoTH for stuff later on, and the secret sauce of having mage pet heal in combat while a mob is mezzed by bard. Lets you safely over tank targets with mage pet in the early era before Bards get their high level charms.
 

DickTrickle

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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An enchanter can do a lot more than a bard solo when it comes to killing harder targets (if we're restricting it to typical TLP player peak periods). It's not even remotely close, especially in the PoP era and beyond. Bards get excited about charm-kiting werewolves in nightmare while enchanters are doing C2 in fire solo.

And if you're going to duo then they become even more powerful with a cleric.
 
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xmod2

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Esp with selos mounts / sow pots the benefits of bard are slightly diminished. I was bard on live and go enc on TLP and I've never regretted it (except gear is boring).
 

Xevy

Log Wizard
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4,085
Bards are the best 6th group slot character, that is 0 question. They also have one of, if not the highest, skill cap.

That said, 1 bard in a raid is having magnitudes less impact than having 1 enchanter in a raid. And I don't want to hear about raid-wide mana song, because that shit ain't pumping during boss fights.

If you're looking to challenge yourself, bard is definitely a good choice. But at the higher end so is enchanter.