my take on classes

[AirIIDII]

I just feel that MCW are best of the nine classes exculding rangers and bards.

A paladin cannot tank/hit as well as a warrior or cat as well as a cleric. Same with antipaladins, but I really should try antipaladins
and sohei more. I sort of like evil jedi, Ninjas are hard to level up
without help exping. Thief is ok if you have hitroll , but I don't see it played much anymore. Sohei seems like a warrior mage, I don't see them played much either. I'm pretty sure they can't cast as well as a mage or tank as well as a warrior.
If it's less exp than warrior though to level and is remorted I could see it though. I'd love to see people remort mages , but people just make an army of naked ones now to make a squad to throw at mobs to suicide themselves and kill
the mob. I think Some of the higher level mobs should resist magic based on this and the armor that mages actually need to run to wear is not what they try and reset,
except for maybe Count, Andrus, Grand Master and Honorius.
Onivel should resist magic/WOD! Maybe Siawyn and Jupiter too. Anthing that loads warrior type equipment.

The bonus for stats , regen and gains just make clerics and warriors the classes that are most powerful of the 9 classes.

Bards do have their use , I don't see to many of them either.
I must admit I'm rusty playing them and rangers.
Rangers seem to get very bad stats though and take a while to level from 29-30 as do bards in thier levels 25-29.
I see lots of Rangers , but I don't think they remort so much as run equipment with their pets. Which is fine, but lets see some more remorted rangers , most of those were already remorted bards.Rangers are not "broken" just because you can't summon large amounts of pets with your mana to reset eq. Exp up and skin more!

Also if you get bored regening . Maybe run canned or group
or find ways to use less mana, lose less hit points, or move around less if need moves.

[AirIIDII]

I just think that our clerics can do too much damage, for example causing critic, dispeling, and earthquake, in the past petrification was taken away. I don't see why these skills by our
" healers' are necessary for them . Look at the past idk 11 pairs Gauntlet winners for example. I mean you can enjoy any class , but if competeting in a quest as a group of 2
W and C has been prover the way to go. I suppose a perfect mage and cleric, or a remorted paladin and antipaladin could do well, or a remorted cleric and remorted evil jedi, maybe 2 rangers,
a Ranger and cleric, or maybe a Bard and cleric. I just think That the Cleric and warrior pair group would win most of the time and thats why Tam and Ching are trying something new with the pair gauntlet quest and also now the solo gauntlet quest.

I can understand people like to play antipaladin, paladin, Jedis, and thieves even. We even have/had a couple crazy people like Lavos and Daphne and Mudstud for a while who liked
to play ninja and sohei. I'm just saying that they seem to be ,hmm not that word , disadvantaged compared to other classes. Another word used in golf just doesn't sound right or very good. I suppose if you like lots of slow exp and just like to kill big mobs slow Bards and Rangers are good too. Idk Bunny probably has played every class with perfect stats and
lots of regen. I'm sure he'd tell you Cleric is best solo class of the 9 and when grouped with a cleric warrior can be pretty awesome too. I've seen a perfect mage kill Mars even and been told one can kill Tiamat, probably both debuffed though.
I know clerics heal sanct and quake. paladins are always 1k align, live by sword, and hit and block evil mobs, and antipaladins hit good mobs well and shield bash. Thieves steal and backstab and circle and umm (what else do they do?).Warrior types have weapons knowledge, rescue, and berserk.Soheis have mana channel ( anything else better or unique than mage and warrior?).Ninjas can pretty much disable procs(I suppose warriors an now with grapple too though), stun, etc. Jedis can Brain implosion and orb.
Bards can fly, inpsire, slow, petrify,etc. Rangers can skin, fumble and call lots of animals

I agree you could use all of this help for an eq group, but even today 2 clerics and 2-3 warriors can be an eq group . idk maybe even just 1 cleric. So are Ninjas, jedis, paladins, antipaladins, and sohei's just reduced to helping out nowadays in an eq group? and ranger come on fumble and rent , and bards slow, enrage, hoplessness, group fly, and then rent?
Maybe if they stick they get to petrify and illusion too. And mages just squad together now?
I just miss the mixed eq group of 2 Clerics. warrior or two, bard, ranger, ninja and maybe even a mage, paladin, antipaladin, thief, jedi, or sohei in there if thats what they want to play. to use some different skills in killing eq type mobs.
I mean classes are supposed to interact and group, right?

[Tarbal]

i know where you are coming from....it was fun to have a WCBNR eq group....but as the saying goes...if it aint broke, dont fix it....and with todays skillset and mobprocs....warriors and clerics are the way to go....why bother with all of the other crap if you can do just as well...if not better with just a few classes....and i think that the gauntlets prove this point....you say you want to see some other classes run...but when elessar/elixir tried going R/C...they lost....so why change what is prove to rock (W/C)....and look at the solo gauntlets.....what class tends to win the majority.....so why would anyone deviate from the classes that have proven to work? aside from a little fun from time to time....but running eq is the time to be serious and do what works...not for playing around.....anyways...let me get my damn kids out of the house before they drive me nuts....later

[Maranta]

In regards to eqgroups, I can clearly remember back when they were run daily by just about anyone at any given time. A cleric, two ninjas and a bard were the basic crew with any solid hitter(s) for backup, regardless of class or alignment. Of course those were some of the 'glory days' when stun disabled procs and other classes besides thieves could circle off the stun and do some heavy damage. Hell back then it was more about just getting out and killing the mobs, regardless of loads. At the very least you probably got a few trinkets, some decent cash and a whole pile of experience while having fun. Now its just a bunch of minigroups summoning in a ranger and bard to debuff, renting and bringing back the two warrior grapplers to keep the mob pinned down and the group as small as possible.

One could easily argue it all started to go downhill when stun was changed or when rent was removed but I for one believe it simply boils down to the other classes not being needed or wanted. All the classes have their useful skills in some regard, otherwise no one would play them at all but between the sheer power and huge hp of the warriors combined with the ability to stop procs like ninjas did in days of old and the unrelenting magic of a cleric, both offensively and defensively... eqgroups don't want single hitters, disarmers or classes nearly immune to magic when the mob can't even get off an area spell or a throw.

This has nothing to do with our shrunken playerbase either, the diversity still exists just in smaller numbers. Lots of jedis around lately, a few thieves, the occasional lunatic running a ninja and even the odd sohei. Pals and Apals are rare, played more by those who favor the class, a fair mix of bards both damage and mana as well as rangers which is a nice change but clerics are still the overwhelming majority as you all know already with a sizeable amount of mages in doing various things.

The scales are broken, regardless of who declares them to be "balanced".

-Maranta

[gambler]

Interesting how all these important discussions only seem to occur when we aren't busy hacking down mobs. While I agree with Maranta for the most part, I would add that in the 14 years that jedi has been up, there was never true 'balance' between the classes. Furthermore, I think you would find that on any mud.

The classes seem to be developed for different playing styles. In truth, most people get bored of the cleric/warrior classes at some point and it takes a bit of knowledge and skill to do well with some of the others. Changes to make weaker classes more powerful or stronger classes more in balance would make traditional equipment groups even less likely to happen with a low player base because of the greater risk of loss. It would also encourage more mage squadding. Here are some suggestions that have come up in recent discussion though.

Clerics: Lessen the experience gain from damage spells.
Allow the cleric to gain experience based on number of hitpoints healed (to encourage grouping). Reduce the amount of in game MEGA low armor class items clericable. While I love having the ability to take my cleric to -300 armor class, I must admit its insanely ridiculous when my tanking warrior can only hit -160ish fully spelled.

Warriors: Grapple needs to be changed (not eliminated). It should not stop the mob from doing anything at all, and honestly, it does NOT make sense that a warrior can grapple a mob 50X his size effectively. Maybe the failure to grapple could be determined by mob level OR maybe grapple should simply have a penalty to movement points. Outside of that, the class is in great shape equipmentwise, and skillwise. It would be nice if kick, pound, bash actually DID something other than a smallish amount of damage. Those skills are worthless once you have dhirt and WK.

Paladin: Certainly still have their uses. People just do not know their potential (and I'm not going to say ). I do wish they had a LARGE hitting advantage over evil mobs. Ie- A single hit on a evil mob should be more damage than a warrior with the same damroll.

Antipaladin: A self-sufficient class capable of the largest damroll in the game and able to hit some very low armor classes. The problem with AP is the relatively weak spells they get for the cost of mana expenditure. Also, one of their coolest skills only works on LARGE evil mobs. The entropy blocking proc that they have should be more wisespread. I like the idea of a AP tank.

Ninja: Would become more popular again if the grapple proc did not stop tossing. The bad thing about Ninja is the relatively SLOW pace at which they gain experience. Maybe instead of boosting the up with additional skills, the total experience necessary to remort one is simply lessoned. Would be nice if hurl actually stopped the mob from doing some of its actions for a round as well.

Jedi: An extremely fun class to play. Good to xp with. Capable of tanking, clericing, delving out reasonable damage, and great potential to do heavy spell damage. I wish the fail on brain implosion wasn't so drastic though. I think a failed mob (by my calculations) only receives 1/16th damage.... and it fails a LOT. If you're in an !magic room with heavy hitting mobs, there is NO better tank than a jedi. Their low level skills and some of their spell damage skills need to be kicked up a notch though. The spells are unused because they are simply too weak.

Theif: Lesson the damage multiplier for ALL other classes (sleeping mobs) and remove the flee loss experience (its annoying anyway). If anything, you ought to gain xp for calculating how a fight is going and know when to get out and save your neck. That's just a smart move!! Anyhow, I know someone would abuse this so I know a 'gain' won't happen, but the xp loss should be gone. Theif class has been hosed for years on this. If any class needs a few new skills its theif though. Maybe something could be put in based on movement points. Double circle, decapitate, slash, parry come to mind.

Sohei: The comments would be too lengthy to list.....

Bard: no changes needed!
Ranger: I had an idea in bringing back rentable skins (naturally).
Obviously, it wouldn't be fair for a ranger to just sit at the statues with a restoring cleric ALL day to make up an UBER set. However, if certain high level mobs corpses could be coded differently in order for these corpses to be made into rentable skins, it would make it interesting to play DMG/eq rangers again. The class was extremely slighted and I'm sure anyone who plays ranger is tired of spending days to remake sets only to do it again and again. If this were instituted, it would still take a LONG LONG time to make a rentable set. But skins would have value to them!!

Gambler

[guts]

Very astute observations on all clases... except for mages! What ya think of mages?

[gambler]

Mages: Ahh, I knew I forgot them for a reason! Despite all their massive spell damage, mage skills do not need to be changed at all. There are a few things that would make squads less powerful (a couple seconds lag to reenter game after death is one expample). For the time being though mage squads are useful because: 1) lack of player base to take down a large mob when it needs to be done. 2) zones like DOOM which imho need some fixing.
Their spells are in line (expect I do disagree with the maximum 'cap' for word of death, petrification, slay spells). Their equipment is well balanced as well.

Gambler.

[guts]

And....

They need to get more mana than Clerics! max for a 7 remort mage should be 9/18 or 9/19!

Guts