Cleric Race Choice

[rcasale42]

I am wondering about the various advantages and drawbacks of the various races for clerics.

I am thinking of making a human, dwarven, or halfling cleric. I am slightly leaning towards dwarf, because of the night vision and I have never made a dwarf before. Any thoughts?

[Raavak]

DE's have hide. Halflings have a racial bonus. I think HE's have highest starting Wis, but its not a hard stat to raise.

My cleric is a dorf, because they are cool.

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[Ele]

Halflings: short race, good starting wis/sta, sneak, hide, +5% racial bonus xp

Darkelves: medium race, robe wearer, hide, bad faction to overcome in good areas

Dwarf: short race, dorf roll, best starting str/sta, second best wis

Highelves: medium race, robe wearer, good starting wis, poor starting str/sta

[Bubbles]

Just for the record, dark elves and high elves can wear both medium and small armor types. :)

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[Orruar]

Once you go dite, nothing else feels right.

[Bubbles]

I'm finding most of the gear I wanted to transfer off my Barb doesn't fit my halfling, guess that would make sense but it still sucks

yeah, Barbs are MED/LRG combo.. halfling is SML only.

[Heavydrop]

If you play a halfling be prepared to be asked for SoW by everyone that comes along until you can be decked out in plate mail and its obvious you're a cleric... but even then be prepared for it anyway

[Extunarian]

brell dwarf clerics have the best cultural armor!

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[Furniture]

dwarf is the way to go, good stats and enough STR to carry around all that plate armor, plus you can do a barrel roll when you jump

[Bubbles]

Starting off untwinked the bone chip quest in Kaladim is simply amazing for xp and armor.

4 bone chips to the dorf in the pally guild nets you either a rusty weapon or a piece of small patchwork armor, plus a nice bit of xp till level 7ish. Since there are a zillion skeletons in the dorf newbie area, it's just an amazing place to start out as a cleric new to the server. By the time you ding level 6 you'll likely have a full set of patchwork armor and enough cash for your level 9 spells.

[ArumTP]

Human. They have the best gearing options if you bother to look deep enough into it.

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[Vayder]

Human. They have the best gearing options if you bother to look deep enough into it.

This.

[Faywind]

Human. They have the best gearing options if you bother to look deep enough into it.

Could someone elaborate?

[Greegon]

Dark elf clearly the only way to go. Hide can help a lot sometimes, and they look super fucking awesome. Especially in purple armor.

High elves have the best stats by far but who wants those igjiot sleeves and a-hole helm graphics. Dwarves, just suck. Gnomes are OK and can see through walls :D But yeah just go dark elf--human stuff aint even worth it, is junk even in kunark. Halflings mostly suck too.. although I think that they can hide/sneak and have an xp bonus.

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[Ele]

I had a hard time deciding between DARK Elf and Halfling.
So I spoke with a lv 60 Halfling cleric and he told me to pick Dark Elf for the robes and said you can't sneak and hide at the same time anyways.

The sneak/hide combo working together only works for rogues; however, you can move around while sneaking and as long as you stay behind a mob it won't see you while sneaking.

In terms of picking a race don't think you can go wrong either way.

Dark Elves and Halflings both get Hide (50).
Dark Elves have Ultravision. Halflings only get Infravision. (Not that big of deal on this server).
Dark Elves can wear robes (cool at lower levels, allows you to put on one of these end game Sal`Varae's Robe of Darkness (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=6402) or Robe of the Azure Sky (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=4070))
Dark Elves can wear small and medium armor. Halflings small only.
Dark Elves have bad faction in good areas (something to watch out for). Halflings are generally liked the world over (obviously not in evil areas/iksar/outpost).
Halflings can use sneak to get around mobs that would otherwise be impossible for a Dark Elf, also helpful for quest turn ins, vendors, and banking.
Dark Elves get the snare necklace.

In terms of min-maxing your character Dark Elves are probably the route to go due to being able to wear those awesome end game robes.

As a 60 Halfling cleric, I would probably roll DE next time around partially for the robes, but also the evil race experience, since I haven't really done that before from the ground up.

[ArumTP]

Too much value is placed on a necklace that casts snare that takes 6 seconds to cast in this thread. There might be a brief period of time that you use it, but its just so terrible, I haven't seen a single human or dark elf that worships inny that still uses it.

Hide COULD be useful. But to hide in a spot where you good as dead anyways isn't going to help.

Sneak would never be useful for any quests because your faction would generally good already good because you are halfling. If you were kos, the mob will turn and kill you after turn in anyways.

With the client the way it is, infra ultra vision doesn't matter. Nobody is night blind.

The endgame cleric robe is a valid point, and I suppose you want to be a race that can wear it. So for cleric don't be a halfling or dwarf. On the other hand there aren't that many robe of azure sky, and the odds of you acquiring one is like zero.

Starting faction is a grey area. Neutral race with evil gods will generally be less KOS than > neutral good god > good good god > evil evil god.

[ArumTP]

MY PERSONAL evaluation when it came to deity/race combo. Endgame is where it is at, starting stats won't matter, only what you can wear and racial abilities will matter.

INNATE ABILITIES
Hide COULD be useful. But to hide in a spot where you good as dead anyways isn't going to help. On the other hand you could hide in a good spot, wait for the mob to pass by and gate off. This mechanic is iffy at best given its level cap.
+1 for dark elves and halflings

Sneak would never be useful for any quests because your faction would generally good already good because you are halfling. If you were kos, the mob will turn and kill you after turn in anyways. There might be something that you want to be evil and do a turn in for.
+0 halflings

Night vision, with the client the way it is, it doesn't matter. If they were to come up with a way to adjust that, +1 to everyone but humans and erudites and an additional +1 dark elves. In live I had a ring of the frozen flame to offset this problem, so meh.

Tinkering +0 re-breathers for warriors is the only purpose for this mechanic in the era of this server.

Racial smithing/tailoring etc. AS A CLERIC. The dwarf stuff is pretty damn good, stat wise fall in-between planar and kunark armor sets. This stuff has demand to sell in EC regularly. High elf stuff, still pretty good, stats not as good as dwarf, pretty equivalent to planar. This stuff sells frequently in EC depending on how many people want bard twinks that day. Dark elf armor, stat wise close to planar armor and high elf, but with none of the saleability of high elf. Human armors, imbued sets are a mixed bag depending on the deity, the enchanted stuff is lackluster, the components are pain in ass to get, and it never sells in EC. Erudite armors are plagued with the same problems as humans, but it is so bad I literally have never seen any of it. Halflings make nothing that a cleric wants and needs, and gnomes will never get culture racial armors in the era of the server.
So maybe +2 Dwarfs +1 High elfs +1 Dark elfs + .5 Humans +.25 Erudites (yep that bad, but something they can use)
But then velious comes out, and none of those made armors are good anymore. Maybe dwarf stuff will still be good just because their stats are such an outlier compared to all others.

Starting faction is a grey area. Neutral race with evil gods will generally be less KOS than > neutral good god > good good god > evil evil god. This comes mostly into play when someone died hunting guards or hunting on OOT, or something of that nature. The more places you can freely walk around in, the more places you can rez and make some $$$. It breaks down to something like erudite CT clerics > human bertox = human inny > everyone else > dark elves, when it comes to innate freedom of movement.


GEAR
Gets grey because I don't offhand remember all the the gear options in velious, but here are a few key points outside of the culture gear.
Ivandyrs hoop. Solid WIS and AC. . Though many end up going black sapphire ears, it allows you to play around with slots and will do solid till you decide or not to get black sapphire ears.
+ 1 Humans +1 Erudite +1 Dark elf +1 Gnome.

"robe gear" I know velious has alot of that. Ele pointed out a few good ones.
+1 Humans + 1 Erudite +1 Dark elf +1 Gnome + 1 High elf

Belt of the cenobite. Its not and endgame belt, it can last a long time for you however. It falls in something like CT belt > draco belt > yael belt > wither leather > fear belt > belt of cenobite > other belts that have +wis.
So maybe + .5 to the small armored people.

Imbued Granite Spauldors. Aweome AC and resist set. But then if you got weight of the gods its less nice. MR is the primary resist stat they want, plus there is mana and wis with the weight of the gods. Imbued Granite Spauldors still proves good when you are in situations where you still need a spectrum of resists, and still is the best thing you can wear untill you get weight of the gods.
+1 to everyone that isn't tiny.

Dread forged shield, fright forged helm, and terror forged mask. The Shield is better than a charred guardian shield, debatable depending on current stats vs strathbone shell shield, and pretty much worse than any other High AC resist mana wis shield. The shield has its time and place. Fright forged helm, fixes night vision issues, worse than planar stats, but it might be a clickey? Terror forged mask. Like the Ivandyrs hoop it allows for playing around with stats. Likely in the endgame you have an enshrouded veil, torbins, gangrenous beetle or seb scale mask. The terror forged mask comes into play on raids for the +5 MR while still retaining WIS. I don't know offhand what velious has to offer in masks.
+1 humans +1 Erudite for the mask option, and the other items are meh but nice to pimp in.

PoG items. I can't remember what they are likely +1 High elf tunare and maybe +1 human tunare ( i think human tunare cleric is option?)

Imbued jewelry (aka my god is better than your god). Imbued black sapphire > Imbued diamond > + WIS Gems(at this point black sapphire ears are better, and likely you can get better rings to drop) > other junky ones. This gets back to the point of everyone wearing black sapphire jewelry in their ears and likely neck. 35 mana earrings become 40 mana earrings when imbued, and a 55 mana neck becomes a 75 mana neck. The Imbued diamond stuff is fun because it offers nearly the same stats as regular diamond jewelry but + wis. That being said some of this may or may not matter for rings and ears for a long time cause raiding in velious I recall has some insane stats on rings and ears.
+1 humans +1 gnomes.

If anyone has any other velious stuff they can remember offhand that may have some racial restrictions that may be relevant, please post.

Me personally I came to the only logical conclusion that Bertoxxulous Human clerics made for the best clerics.

[Pyrion]

My new cleric is a dwarf. Why? Clerics are plate wearers. Don't want to be a weak race. And i gave my new level 1 cleric the bonechips of my other chars (less than 3 stacks) and Blam! Level 4, just from bone chip quest. Not a big deal, but its nice none the less :)

[ForeverLost]

How is vision not a factor? My erudite is blind as a bat at night, having to move the camera angle around to see if NPCs are silhouetted behind something if they're too far to see their names, just to see if they are there.

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[ArumTP]

How is vision not a factor? My erudite is blind as a bat at night, having to move the camera angle around to see if NPCs are silhouetted behind something if they're too far to see their names, just to see if they are there.

Have you ever played original EQ? The vision the nightblind races have damn near feels like ultravison compared to what it was orginaly.

[ForeverLost]

Have you ever played original EQ? The vision the nightblind races have damn near feels like ultravison compared to what it was orginaly.

I strictly played elves and darks on live, so I don't know just how bad it was back then. Even so, the poor human vision on this server has affected me, and I don't think it's fair to call it a non-issue just because it used to be even worse :)

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