The Al`kabor Project (EQMac) - PoP 1/5

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Leon

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FD split pulls. Also with snare and fd life is good.

With shaman slow handling multiple mobs isn't so bad anyway.
 

Arden

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Guess I'll go with the sk/sham/wiz trio. Went with pally/chanter/mage last time. Worked really well but this will be a refreshing change.
 

Leon

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Id recommend sk/cleric/bst.

no ports but you gain much better heals, pacify, rez.

bst are crazy dps due to their pet and you get mana buff, mini shammy buffs and slows.

wiz are better dps ultimately but having a cleric is just so good, and bst are a good dps/slower hybrid
 

Kithani

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How do you like the classic Bst/Mag/Cleric instead of SK? I’m thinking about rolling up a new trio at some point
 
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Leon

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it's very viable. I'm a huge fan of plate tanks tho (maining a warrior and all that)

Ultimately you can probably level and have a great time doing bst / mag / cleric. Mages are insane dps especially if you complete their epic. The pet is just nuts. BSTs are very capable tanks and add many benefits with buffs/ slow etc. And cleric is just the king healer of EQ.

The one thing SKs are amazing at is pulling and they make amazing off tanks / group tanks. If you're aiming to take down semi hard targets in your trio (harder group named or planar stuff without many people), SK would be the way to go.

Wife and i usually duo with a setup of War / cleric / enc (boxed by myself) and BST/ druid / mage (boxed by the wife). Sometimes i'd bring a bard instead of the end. Mages are just low maintenance DPS with the pet. Even if you opt to totally be lazy and don't nuke with the mage, the pet still does insane damage and the stun proc is crazy good.
 
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pharmakos

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Not sure if there is an advantage of rogue over wiz or nec tho

Letting yourself into the crypt in Sebilis 😂 I am stubborn and love hunting down there so almost rolled a rogue myself way back lol
 

pharmakos

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Feel like you could also toss a mage in with the pally/sham and it would work well.

I feel like if you're gonna do that, tho, that you may as well just go Necro? What advantages would mage have over necro when it comes to PAL/SHM/x?

Edit -- oh, kept reading, and I see you're going SK instead of PAL since you went PAL for your last similar run. Yeah, mage might be better then, Necro is mostly cool in that other trio for all the added utility, but there's so much overlap with h SK obviously that MAG probably wins out then.
 

pharmakos

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The one thing SKs are amazing at is pulling

So many people say this in conversations comparing all the plate tanks, but when it comes to any sort of three-box levelling, Paladin is way better for pulling. Yeah, sure SK can split the absolute hardest end game camps better, but the whole way there PAL is going to do better, and even once you get to the end PAL is good enough for enough camps that there's very few times that the PAL will find themselves wishing they were an SK

Another common thing I find in these conversations is that the people adamantly recommending SK over PAL often haven't actually spent much time playing both.
 
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Kithani

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I also think Pally stuns are underrated against caster mobs. SK bash can only go so far there IMO. The only thing that I haven’t loved about Pally is the weaksauce DPS, but then I’ve usually been a guy who plays the tankier DPS class and tries to turn them into a semi-tank with raid gear.

I’ve been toying with making a new trio based around Beast or Ranger... wish ranger auto-fire didn’t require a laptop dedicated solely to that toon or it’d be a lot more attractive.
 

Leon

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I'll take SK any day, and it's not for lack of experience. Snare + FD + pet for pulling makes for some really fun combos. let's be honest here, you're not gonna need to split the run of the mill exp dungeons any time soon, especially not with slow in your combo.
 
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pharmakos

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I also think Pally stuns are underrated against caster mobs. SK bash can only go so far there IMO. The only thing that I haven’t loved about Pally is the weaksauce DPS, but then I’ve usually been a guy who plays the tankier DPS class and tries to turn them into a semi-tank with raid gear.

I’ve been toying with making a new trio based around Beast or Ranger... wish ranger auto-fire didn’t require a laptop dedicated solely to that toon or it’d be a lot more attractive.

Even aside from this particular conversation, Paladins in general are super underrated in classic. I know it was P99 instead of TAKP, but I soloed a paladin to level 50 on Red, and was fighting dark blues the entire way. Was handling yellow and low red caster mobs up to my high 30s... those necro spiders in Kaesora were tasty. Root the necro, let it run itself oom as you cancel / cure each DOT, then once it's OOM (doesn't take long if the numbers for that mob are in the DB right) just jump in and mop up.

For melee mobs, a solo paladin (or paladin in a group with casters) can do PVE root jousting... If you've ever cannidanced it is easier / makes more sense. Put on the slowest weapon you have access to, root the mob, stand right at the edge of it's hit box... Swing, take a step back, sit, watch your inventory for a server tick, step forward, swing, step back, sit, wait a tick, repeat etc etc. I was using this method to solo dark blue con dar ghoul knights outside of AM in LGuk. No twinkage aside from the Argent Protector I was handed as a noob.
 

Leon

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Oh ya i know the mechanic, it's a good way to get torven to get you the fuck out of the server in a hurry though :p

The only time i'd take paladins in a raid in mass would be PoTime and some EP fights (Blazzax and babnoxis to name a few). They make for some really good group healer in PoP.

Right now they are very meh in all the content, but we're in luclin so everything is bland and meh i guess? :p
 

pharmakos

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The only time i'd take paladins in a raid in mass would be PoTime and some EP fights (Blazzax and babnoxis to name a few). They make for some really good group healer in PoP.

Right now they are very meh in all the content, but we're in luclin so everything is bland and meh i guess? :p

Oh, and yeah, the question of what's desirable for endgame right now is different, but I don't think that's what Arden was worried about. He knows his stuff past needing basic advice I suppose is the divide here. You've been giving top notch general advice. :)
 

Leon

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Aye end game is a completely different beast. just throwing my own preference out there, which obviously is biased towards harder / more end gamy stuff ! :p

Truth being told as long as you have a healer and someone who can tank and hold ok aggro you're going to have a good time. the DPS spot is really up to personal preference, but there are really no wrong choices there. Rogue might be the most niche and specialized and the less flexible of the dps picks, and positioning 2 melees constantly on a trio can get tiresome.
 

Locnar

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No twinkage aside from the Argent Protector I was handed as a noob.

Was gonna call BS on the whole post until I got to this part. I was a Paladin too there, and soloing untwinked was hell.

Paladin is the better group tank, the best group tank. SK works better for duos but people should just choose what they feel drawn to.
 

pharmakos

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Was gonna call BS on the whole post until I got to this part. I was a Paladin too there, and soloing untwinked was hell.

Paladin is the better group tank, the best group tank. SK works better for duos but people should just choose what they feel drawn to.

I could have done it with any slow two hander even aside from that AD. And have to an extent on other servers. Once you get down the rhythm of sitting for meditate ticks in-between melee swings, all you need is time. I can log back on that paladin and do it with fine steel and banded in a video if you want. She's still level 50, I quit playing because I refused to guild with any of the toxic collectives running at the time and going lone wolf past that point was gonna be impossible haha.

The dream weapon for that would actually be a Weighted Axe if any Paladin race could use it! Much worse ratio than AD, just as an example of why twink weapons actually aren't great for it. I think even they realized how OP Root + Weighted Axe would be together tho. But yeah, you want a weapon no quicker than 60 delay anyway, ideally, to match a server tick. Not many twink weapons that slow.