Old School PlayerFollow

To start, let me introduce myself. I enjoyed the world of Everquest about 7 or 8 years ago when I used to boot up my personally customized desktop computer and raid SSRA with my guild on Povar well into the evening, even on school nights! However, due to my immaturity at the time, I took quite a bit of abuse from older player and eventually strayed away from the game, and in the end, my character was sold to some guy that informed me, "I can't let my wife know that I bought this character, but this is sure sweet." Near the conclusion of my previous EQ career, I mainly played a Paladin that was decked out in all the latest Planes of Power gear and every single clicky item you could find. For some reason, I really enjoyed the ability to morph into any race and recall spending countless hours and cash gambling for the dark elf mask.

Anyway, if I were to make a return, it would be in a much more casual setting as opposed to joining a serious raiding guild. Additionally, I do not see how I could make myself start up a new paladin, since it would be rather boring leveling up another one. If my memory serves me right, it took me FOREVER to level up and the dynamics of a paladin were somewhat limited and finding a group proved often to be difficult. In raids, I recall not having much of a role since I couldn't hold agro like a warrior or an SK, and on top of that, my dps was horrendous with my slow Plane of Time sword.

Regardless of my past experience, I want to pick a class that is wanted for groups. I am pretty much open to any class, but a bard does intrigue me, but after some research, it appears to me that everyone plays a bard nowadays. Are there any classes that are obscure at this point? Back in the day, bards were very few, but even so, they were still useful at a myriad of tasks. I am also intrigued with necromancers, but I remember there being hordes of them in newbie zones but less that actually raided. I guess it would be beneficial to have a class capable of soloing at lower levels, but this seems to be less of an issue with mercenaries. Any information would be great on the current class ratios! Thanks for listening.

P.S. - Are paladins good for anything nowadays? I was looking at some of their abilities and it appears that they suck for dps just as before, aside from when you are taking down undead. The only upside appears to be their group heals that are beneficial on certain raids as long as you do not take agro.

I have a level 85 pally. He is sweet against undead with slay undead maxed. Leveling in todays game is pretty smooth. You have a lot of tools to help you level. You can hire a healer merc to heal you. If your a gold account go with journeyman 1, if not get the highest apprentice you can get. It is common to go with a warrior merc, but as a tank class i want to build my defensive as I go.

Players make skinspike potions you can find for sale in bazaar. The most common is skinspike VI which gives 35 damage shield required level 25. If your lucky there might be some lower ones until you hit 25.

Defiant gear drops zonewide random. There are stronger pieces as you level. The armor pieces are very nice for there level, the weapons not so much but they are cheap. It will be easy to cap all stats to the 255 max until planes of power ups it.

There are also hotzones which gives a huge xp boost. There are hotzone quests in pok that can yield some nice gear.
There are haste potions and mana potions in planes of knowledge you can buy.

O random drop https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=110621 /barter for a lot of pp at leasy on xegony surely other servers too.

Come have fun !!!!!

You can reach level 50 in about 24 hours of gameplay time, maybe less depending on class.

Welcome Back, before they introduced Mercenaries I would have said make a cleric. They are always needed for raids or groups. Was the most desired class at one time. Ive seen guilds fold because the required amount of clerics didn't log on for raid calls. Fast forward to today, most people solo with a Merc Cleric or Warrior. My opinon is make a Magician. Good DPS good for grouping and if you cant find a group pop a merc cleric. Anyway the bottom line is ultimately you should pick something you want to level too 100 and be happy. Good Luck

Yeah, listen to the excellent advice above. It's soooooo easy to level up any class these days that you should just roll any class that appeals to you and spend the time needed to get them up to say 51. Buy some AA's, see how those work and then make the call whether you want to commit to the class. If it turns out you don't like the class, you haven't wasted much time, you've had fun and re-learned some of the basics you'd need anyway.

It's also reasonable advice to recommend NOT hurrying and to enjoy the game at a leisurely pace as you level up. But on most servers unless you join a guild devoted to lower-level gameplay you're generally not going to find a lot of players to group with at lower levels. This is why a lot of newcomers and returnees tend to try to power-level themselves up the ladder kinda fast. There are quite a few players in the 80s range up to low 90s, because some players have been resistant to buy the recent expansions that raised the level caps. Plus silver (Free) account players tend to be more casual and hence are at lower levels.

I thought paladins kinda made a resurgence in recent expansions and I've been told that for some raids these days pallies and SKs are preferred to tank bosses over the old mainstay of warriors. (I'm not raiding these days so I'm just repeating what i'm told here.)

As always, pallies aren't great dps but they hold agro well due to their specialized stun spells. If you wanted to play a tank, right now I'd have to recommend a shadowknight. They're pretty damn "bad" and I mean that in a GOOD way!

Well-played bards are always in demand. It's a challenging class so if you learn to play it well I don't think you'd have to worry about there being a glut of bards, which is not my experience on FV.

Mage pets were recently nerfed a bit so mages aren't quite as over-powered as before. But they're still pretty potent.

I wouldn't recommend playing a cleric today as your main unless you were going to raid seriously. Merc clerics are pretty solid and I don't run into many PU groups looking for a cleric unless they're tackling an instance which doesn't permit mercs. I was surprised to see that both druids and shamans got 96% rezzes in the latest expansion, which is a real slap in the face since that level rez was a cleric "class definer" previously. But since merc clerics can cast the 96% rez maybe the devs figured there was no point in preserving that privilege for cleric PCs anymore. That's sad...

Druids and wizards are great solo classes and both make traveling painless with their port spells. Druids are more self-reliant since they can heal as well as do dps. Wizard caster dps is unmatched these days.

It sounds trite to say but it's true that every class has advantages and disadvantages. Finding groups is going to depend a lot more on how social you are, what friends you make and what guild you join than in playing a class that you perceive to be in big demand for groups. The days of the "Holy Trinity" (cleric, enchanter, warrior) always being able to find groups are long past. One thing EQ has done in recent expansions is to "blur" the distinctions between classes. For example, in the latest expansion druids got an AA that allows them to fade. I LOVE this AA! But I have to admit it's a HUGE change to gameplay for the class and it's part of the continuing trend to blur the old distinguishing strengths and weaknesses that used to define classes.

Mages still can't snare yet, but who knows with the next expansion? ;)



Edited, Jun 28th 2013 9:13pm by Sippin

What server, gbaji?

ALSO: Yes, pallys are awesome.

Nice.... but 15 min recast delay? Makes for slow grinding... ;)