How many people play without a rezzer in their trio? How is that working out for you? Since I played a wizard and a cleric on A'K, I set out to play completely different classes... you know, mage and shaman. The more I play (and I haven't even broken 20 yet) the more I already miss cleric and wiz. (Imagine that.) With Gaters I think I can survive without Wiz, but I'm not sure I can handle it without a rezzer and I'm not really interested in playing Paladin.
No rez. Fine til about 40. Making up exp is fast. After that, make friends. I am hitting point its taking too long now to get back exp. Or level a cleric and camp it out where u wanna play. Especially if it sucks to get back. Or its deep in a bad place. H
The main benefit of a cleric to me is not getting back exp, but saving time on a CR if they were able to camp out. I hate running back to a dungeon naked.
essentials to making boxing much more fun/easy - having a porter (we all know pok books exist but its way more useful porting OUT... 1 of my toons can't gate (ogre BL) and I farmed up sarnak braids for an OT hammer, if I didn't have that hammer then life would suck even more.) - having a rezzer (means you can be more risky when pulling, or scouting, basically saving time on CR.) I live without a porter and its brutal, i couldn't imagine living without a rezzer too
I don't have one, but my toons are still only 20. It does stink when one toon is 25% or more lower than the others (toon has bad luck). I actually find that one of my toons being a non-gating class more of a pain. Gate two toons and hope and pray you can run back okay (no invis) OR trail your inviser and pray it doesn't fail randomly in the 5 minutes it usually does. Something to keep in mind is that the Cleric class is probably the easiest to power level by far. Especially if you have a Druid or other DSer in your arsenal.
Surron and I play almost the same trio, but he uses BST where I use Ranger. I don't have a porter and because of that Lenas has become very well versed in his gate options. On my person I always have: Leatherfoot cap, lizard blood potion, OT hammer and potion of the swamp, which I got during Kunark launch and that's my only non renewable option.
As a casual player, who sometimes has to jump off the computer quickly and may only get 20-30 minute sessions, I really wish I included a porter. The ability to get out of a dungeon quickly, and to port melee back to POK is just too convenient. I have a Paladin for rez, however, I still end up running back to my corpses, because typically my tank dies first if there is an issue. Of course if you choose porter AND rezzer, you lose a lot of utility in your third box. If that third box is a melee, you're missing out on haste and possibly mana regen. With a mage and shaman, if you're looking to add a third, I would go cleric over ports. The three can gate. You can eventually get a priest stone on the shaman and cleric that will teleport to hometowns as well.
I started my trio with a cleric...beastlord, bard and cleric, but dropped the cleric for a druid. Although I do miss the rezzed from time to time, I feel like the utility from snares, better dots and nukes, comparable buffs and ports/evacs is worth the trade-off.
A lot of people say similar things about having a chanter in the group i.e. they are must haves. I personally don't mind not having a porter (OT hammer is really good). My main trio is Monk/Beastlord/Cleric. Monk for the tankiness and great damge, BL for slow, mana regen, stat/hp buffs and more DPS than the usual support role, and the cleric for the heals/buffs/snare (is a DE with the OP clicky neck). This trio was rough until level 60 (BL slow is pretty crap until 60 and no mana regen buff available until 59) but extremely strong now. I personally love having a rezzer available but could definitely imagine a life in EQ without a cleric. I think Shaman/mage would be a fine duo all the way to 60 (could go troll shaman for the OP clicky neck snare). Part of what's fun with boxing is coming up with combos that work for you, that achieve your objectives, and works with the classes you actually want to play. I have a friend that started on this server that wanted to play a rogue. Playing a rogue in a trio is tough as for them to be optimal you need a tank. It's fun to design a team around it though and think of the possibilities. I really enjoy the min/maxing aspect of the game. Enjoy your time coming up with a duo/trio that works for you and is fun to play!
A porter becomes less and less of an issue as more shamans make gate potions, and more port items become available to melee classes. I've been using my Leatherfoot Raider Skullcap since classic server, and I'm thinking about doing the quest again so I can have one to recharge it. Gate hammers in Kunark are a big boost, and make the game bearable for the non-gating crowd. Destiny started killing Trakky so I'm hoping for ranja BPs to start dropping. Getting around rezzing is another matter, I specifically chose Cleric so I could zero percent rez the death prone ranja/chantie combo from the early stages. The cleric has survived many hairy over pulls, trains, planes and automobiles full of angry mobs. My favorite zone of EQ ever is Old Seb and it's nearly completely unworkable without a functional rezzer.
I never took a Rez til lvl 45+ never had a Rez'r in my trio never needed one, exp comes so fast it's not even worth the time to seek one out unless there's one on hand in the zone. I'd rather just keep truckin' along, other than maybe a hell level I can usually make up the experience pretty quickly. Plus it's really annoying when people are begging for Rez's and they are like lvl 28. LTP
Fun thread here, thanks for the replies. For now, my trio is SK/Sham/Enc ... all of the utility, none of the dps I'd get with a pet class. In some other threads I read that Sham is a deceivingly active class and I can see it, so I'm jumping between the SK and Sham and barely getting a nuke in on the Enc. I'm thinking that I'd get better mileage if I swapped in the mage or nec there... DPS pets are so OP on A'K and I'd rather just "set it and forget it" than worry about a charm pet. This is something I'd forgotten about - particularly if I can FD the SK to make sure the coast really is clear for the CLR to login. That's what I'm already starting to see. Having a wizard was just way too convenient, even with PoK books. But somewhere along the way I realized I'd be playing without Evac! I still haven't rolled the wizard yet but it gets tempting. Boring class for me, really, but such utility. Definitely would have to get the OT hammer on the SK. Uhm... tell me more Right, at least you're the first person in the thread to suggest druid - I was expecting more so I guess I'm not doing it completely wrong! For some reason I am not so interested in Druid but it might just be the old Clerics vs Druids thing in the heals channel. Druid does seem like the best fit if I'm willing to do it without a rezzer, but I still think I'd rather take a sham for the haste/slow and the dots. I think that's the other issue here is that playing these classes at level 10 is different from 60. I am burning off all of my sham's mana on heals and looking at the spell lists for Cleric and wondering why I'm torturing myself. But I think that down the line Sham heals will catch up and with Canni it won't create so much downtime. Plus, I picked the Iksar just for that regen. Nice thinking with the monk, though - is this the time when monks were super OP as tanks and Furor went crazy on the Steel Warrior forums?
PL Clerics using the reverse DS method. Buff up your pseudo tank (high level pulling and tanking cleric's xp mobs), throw on a DS. I like Druids for this since they have a self only buff with a DS that stacks with their target-able DS. Pull a ton of mobs in the Cleric's level range for good xp, settle into a corner somewhere for best results. Move said Cleric (make sure they are not in group) into range of the mobs after making sure enough aggro is on the tank that they don't turn on you. Fire off a PBAE hitting all mobs. Finish off mobs using only the damage from the DS. Cleric gets all xp. Actually any class that gets PBAE spells every so often is easy to PL this way. Druids are another one.
Rangers are really great at PL'ing alts with this method as well with the increased AC/HP. Their self DS + 2 other additional damage shields gets close to druid's max ds. Just have to avoid riposting.
I forgot to mention druid DS. Throwing the DS on my Gum and his warder makes a huge difference while fighting, allowing for passive damage even while backing off to let the warder take some hits. Right now I just use the bard as a mana battery with Clarity song going nonstop, but once I get Gums lvl30 pet spell I'll prob spend a little more time on the bards screen twisting in haste and/or stat song as well.
Play what's fun for you. Will you wish you had a rezzer some days? Of course. If you miss playing wizard cleric, then play the wizard cleric. Shaman mage is a great duo that you will be able to play up to 60 duo'ing if that matters to you. You'll be able to tackle some fun stuff with that duo, whereas the wizard cleric... I'm not sure how great that works 50+, but you can make any duo work if it's the duo you love to play.
I PLd my cleric 1-52 in one day, maybe 7-8 hours total play time. Clerics get low level pbae which is win for PL
It sucks. I levelled all the way to 60 without a rezzer, most of it by myself, so it is doable, but it can be a huge pain depending on how you play and what you do / where you go in the game. Occasional deaths are no big deal with no rez, you recover the xp soon enough and get back to making progress. I did have a few catastrophes while levelling up where I ended up with several corpses, but I just got help from a cleric at these points. But now at 60 I still miss having a rezzer. The XP isn't important but like Lenas said, the CR is often a major problem. If you just mostly do the common areas like Karnor or something then you probably wont miss it at all, but if you like to go to the depths of dungeons by yourself, then one death completely screws your plans. For example I spent many levels in The Hole and I still visit sometimes (my epic required a lot of missions there). Not only is it a very long way and past a LOT of mobs, some of which are really tough, but there are see invis mobs too. So if you die down there, it can take around an hour to get back. Part of that is dragging my corpses all the way back up top but you can't get all the way because it is blocked, so then I have to evac, then run back to the drop, and drag the corpses the rest of the way, then med up again, buff up all over again, spend all that mana on a new pet.... and then travel all the way back to where I was. In places like Seb it can be just bad, or even worse if you have not bound outside. And if you die somewhere and can't drag back, it can be a major problem. Again using the Hole for example, with see invis mobs, if your corpse is beyond that and you are naked... how do you get your corpse back? You can't fight your way back down with no gear. The only option is to have a rogue drag it for you or to summon your corpse with a sk/necro using a coffin. I have a SK so in these cases I have managed to get my corpses by dragging the corpse 20 foot then FD, and repeat over and over, but with no gear it is super dangerous. One failed FD and you can end up with two corpses. The worst thing is that sometimes you have one slight mishap and you lose one character, and that's all it needs to ruin you. You can't carry on without that character so you have to get your other two characters out of there and do a huge CR and then start all over again. Compare this to being in the depths of a dungeon, and having a dead character. You rez them, and are instantly back on your feet. You might need to go easy a while as you med/rest the rezzed character, but at least you are still where you are. If some day you intend to farm Juggs in Seb or whatever, and need to be deep in a dungeon by yourself, then you need to accept that one mishap that causes a death will result in a huge painful CR. For me if I could start again, I would have taken a pally instead of my SK. I still prefer my shammy over a Cleric though. Life without rezzes is harsh, but it is still doable. I am living proof At the end of the day the only thing it costs you is time. A death can seem like a total nightmare but if you just keep calm and don't mind running back to your corpse and starting your camp again and working off what you lost, then you can get back to making progress without a rezzer, and all you lost is some time. And because Clerics aren't all that great at DPS, then the time you lose on occasional bad deaths can probably be mostly made up by having a better dps trio. Take a Druid instead of a Cleric and you miss having rezzes but you have all those ports and all that extra dps from dots and ds's. Or a shammy, they have great dots and a really good pet and some decent nukes too. Also if you play a lot, you eventually figure out most of the things that cause your deaths in the first place, so you can just avoid dying. I rarely die with my guys when I'm just questing or xping. I know my limits and I have been almost everywhere by now, I know what dangers await. If I try to rush something I often get wiped, but if I just go carefully then I can do almost anything and survive. And having a wiz means that if the worst comes to worst, I just evac. I have probably avoided 100+ deaths thanks to evac, and I try more dangerous things because I know I can rely on it (when it doesn't fail).
No monks have some bonuses to AC but not the crazyiness that was what Furor was complaining about. This server is basically locked in time at 2001 so have mecanics from that time as well. However a chanter can tank a slowed kunark mob, and geared monks hold their own all the way through pop. Most compositions come into their own around level 20-30 and will generally play about the same way until 60 with some power spikes along the way. Level 10 is definitely not a good representation of what your comp is actually gonna play like and yes a low level shaman is not providing nearly as much as a mid level shaman.
I play 3 wiz. So I don't eveN have a heal. But the reason for my setup. Was I thought every one would play tank healer cc.. so I would have the counter for that to make perfect groups
I play pally-druid-chanter. I like the tanking play style and the pally can hold aggro pretty well on auto giving me time to nuke/slow/haste/heal/debuff/snare/mez/root etc with the other chars. The combination of buffs (clarity/ac/hp/ds/str) is really nice. Two healers is handy, and ports/evac yay. As someone mentioned, the pally rez comes in handy but as tank is often the first to die. For me its about the utility but also being able to orchestrate and enjoy the team play. I tried necro and bard (vs chanter) and found them not as "balanced" for me. I hope the server lasts a long time so I can level up lots of classes and try out more combinations
I don't know how much effort has gone into making monk mitigation era-accurate for AK, but our code was a bit later than this, generally dating to PoP's launch at the end of October 2002. Like so much else on AK, monks got frozen at an unfortunate moment: we had the mitigation nerf that was a huge overreaction to the kind of Velious-era monk-tanking Lumah is talking about, and none of the adjustments that subsequently came about as the developers realized the nerf was perhaps a bit excessive (and also went about making a serious of changes to make melee toons more effective across the board). Cromis, who put some effort into researching this stuff, thought that monks saws negligible returns on AC over the softcap on AK (less, in fact, than int casters, although of course int casters had a lower softcap), and I can certainly confirm that monk mitigation was abysmal. Furor's complaint was that monks often made better ramp tanks than actual tanks, but on AK, monk ramp-tanking was usually ... very brief.
