LOL - that's about right - Jump-Feign ftw!

Shaman: In most group play, you serve as the buffer/debuffer and, if noone else is there to do the job, healer. You'll struggle a little to do it all at once, but it's doable with a good group in a non-hellish dungeon. On raids, you mostly buff melees and slow mobs, and occasionally patch heal. In Kunark, shaman start to really come into their own when it comes to soloing as three of their most important items become available there, but Velious is where you can actually have +hp items in every slot, and where some of the more challenging solo mobs are. I would say that the shaman solo powerhouse is born in Kunark and fully applied in Velious.
Grade: 8/10 for being well-rounded, a strong solo class that's also highly desirable in groups, and overall a very solid class

Cleric: Your universal main healer. Noone can heal like a cleric. That is, however, pretty much all you can do. If you like being the undisputedly best at something, cleric is a good choice. If you dislike being useless whenever there's not a group in need of a main healer, cleric is a horrible choice. This class is just one of those absolutes, sort of like warriors: the best at what they do, but pretty much incapable of doing anything else.
Grade: 7/10. During Velious specifically, with its emphasis on raiding, clerics should do pretty well. It'll depend on your playstyle, however, and anyone wanting more out of their character than a healbot that has to be in a group might find the class lame.


Druid: This class was never great, and especially not during Velious. Well, if you like solo kiting outdoors a lot, to the point where it's all you ever want to do, druid is fine. If not, consider another class. The thing about druids is that they're excellent soloers but really sub-par at everything else. You'll struggle to be a group's healer, you won't properly fill a DPS spot, your buffs aren't amazing, your debuffs are virtually non-existent, and you can't ress or anything. You have the ability to sort of fill a number of roles, but not well enough that anyone would invite you to do it. Druids are notoriously bad in raids, and in Velious the only reason you really want one is because they have slightly better elemental resist buffs than the other priest classes.
Grade: 2/10 for the dr00d. They get a bit of credit for being versatile soloers and having the convenience of SoW and ports, but that doesn't amount to much. Noone wants a druid in their group if they could choose something else.

Necromancer: I frankly don't know a whole lot about how necromancers operated during Velious. I assume they filled a DPS role and did it no worse than most other classes in that category, and on raids they feed mana to clerics and maybe help pull if they're good. I see no reason why a necro would be desirable anywhere, and while they are really strong soloers, so are several other classes that can do more than that.
Grade: 4/10 for presumably being good DPS and a traditionally powerful soloer without much to add to a group or raid. This is a very uneducated guess.

Monk: Let me start off by saying that I don't know how this server plans to handle the Velious monk mechanics. On Live, before they got nerfed sometime during Velious, monks were overpowered as shit. They were top DPS, #1 pullers, and could tank surprisingly well. A monk was the best choice for rampage tanking, for instance, so a monk could fill three roles in a raid: main puller, secondary tank and top-competitive DPS. After the nerf, monks were still fine DPS and the best pullers, but their tanking took a noticeable hit.
Grade: 9/10 before nerf, 7/10 after. It's still a pure melee class that isn't absolutely #1 DPS, and a raid only ever needs one monk. Great if you can be that monk, not so great if you're the second or third one there who just gets to do "really good but not the best" DPS.

Enchanter: Always been a fantastic class that noone else can really replace. You can also do some crazy stuff with charm in Velious, and mez becomes more and more important in dungeons as the expansions progress. Chanter slow is only 5% below shaman slow, so they can easily fill that role when required. Strictly a support class, however, which deters some.
Grade: 7/10 for having a pretty much uncontested role as crowd controller and crack provider, as well as the best haste buff by far and a fine slow. Can't really deal damage very reliable, though, and can't heal, so not amazingly versatile.

Warrior: The main tank. The only main tank. Velious is where hybrids finally lose the ability to main tank anything that they don't out-gear, more or less. Okay, a really good knight caaaan tank some of the less brutal raid mobs, but in general, you'll need a warrior to tank a raid and noone will consider any alternative unless it's, like, a NToV-clearing guild taking down Zlandicar for fun. Warriors truly come into their own in Velious, and we start to see weapons itemized solely for them, role-defining ones like Blade of Carnage. They still can't solo for shit, of course, and are a pure melee class that isn't actually DPS, which can be a bit of a bitch. Nevertheless, having the most monopolized and universally required role is a hell of a luxury. Even clerics can be replaced by other healers in a pinch, as long as you have a few of them left. You usually can't even attempt a raid without a warrior or two.
Grade: 9/10 if you raid. If not, uh, 3/10. Hybrids are still far better tanks in XP groups, and a warrior has absolutely no utility of any kind.

I disagree on a couple of minor points here. Paladins and SKs are still VERY gear dependent... arguably moreso than warriors since they have lower HP pools (have to make up for it in gear). On that note, Paladins and SKs will never be the preferred raid tank (except after AAs and only situationally then) because their top end HP/AC will never challenge that of a warrior. In a group, I think it's kind of a toss-up since it's much less of an issue.

Also, warriors are tough to solo but not impossible. With bind at max warriors can "heal" somewhat. As long as you don't try to hunt above blue you should be able to hunt viably solo... although you'll never be as good at it as most classes. This is especially true considering potion use (DS and SoW).

I would just like to point out that druids are the second best nukers in the game through Velious. They should be at least on par with mages as far as desirability is concerned. Sure pets add a bunch of DPS, of that there's no doubt. But there are times were DPS is not the issue but backup healing, porting is.

example:

Wildfire DRU/59 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 1294 320-mana

Seeking Flame of Seukor MAG/59 1: Decrease Hitpoints by 1024 320-mana


If you look at other comparable spells between mage and druid as they were back in classic-Velious you will notice the same pattern over and over again.

Druid nukes are significantly better accross the board plus they provide utility. Most mages simply provide DPS and not much else (there are a few exceptions to this rule... rarely)

Well, certainly, druids are on par with mages if mages don't use pets. Warriors are also on par with rogues if they don't backstab.

Back in the day, people tended to not let magicians and necromancers use pets in raids. That's because we were stupid. There's really very, very few raids where pets are a liability, and any trouble almost always boils down to the owner being a moron. One can assume that a magician will almost always have a pet up, and that makes up a significant portion of their damage. That's why their nukes are similar to druids'.

The difference is that magicians have some utility that's actually valuable. Look at druids: they can do so many things, but virtually none of it is needed in a raid. It's fine for 5-mans where there's barely any overlap, but when your utility consists of things that are mostly designed to complement soloing, it falls short in a raid environment. What are you gonna do, SoW people and buff their agility? Cast a damage shield on the tank? Track for mobs? Not only are these things far less valuable than real utility but there's almost always a handful of classes that can do it. The individual druid in a raid is probably the least valuable role in the game. The one and only thing that druids can actually provide over others is their Circle of Summer/Winter stuff, and that's not exactly a strict necessity. Magicians, on the other hand, have mod rods, an underrated but extremely useful thing to have around. They can also help apply malowhatever to mobs, something that usually has to be done in a hell of a hurry, so having an extra guy trying is great. Then you have Call of the Hero, a spell that you can build entire raid strategies around. And really, there is no sense in trying to argue that druids are better at dealing damage than magicians.

The OP said he didn't want a button masher, and was interested mainly in Velious raiding. The enchanter cant mez shit in Velious and the Warrior is most certainly a button masher.

Also, Necros will be more or less required for raiding in velious, unless you have about 10 clerics. The mobs last a long damn time and good luck keeping up a CH chain with not much Flowing thought or mounts.

Also, Druids will be valuable in Velious for PotG/resist buffs and off- and spam-healing. The Clerics will be in the CH chain, and there will be lots of AE damage to deal with or in the case of the Kael mobs, lots of spikey damage to assist healing with.

This is accurate. I stopped playing my monk after those nerfs because the change was pretty substantial. Before those nerfs, I was able to solo fairly well. Afterward, I had difficulty soloing blue mobs that were almost light blue. I guess the power I had for so long was not working as intended...

One of the most shocking abilities monks had was whipping out an OP 2hander and turning on the auto-riposte discipline (I forget what it was called) on mobs that attacked very quickly or quadded...Alternatively, I also had stonestance which decreased the damage i took substantially, and saved me from quite a few deaths after a low-probability failed FD...

PoTG was a significant source of mana regen, Druid FR and CR buffs were somewhere between 5-10 points better than normal "Resist X" spells, and the level of healing needed during your average boss fight is conservatively 10x more than Kunark. That means that druids aren't going to be DPSing unless you have a total glut of Clerics, not to mention of significant amount of poison and disease AEs that will need curing during the event.

If healing is needed, shamans are infinitely better. The thing about druids is that they have very, very little they can do that others don't do better, and they have no defined role. You never hear "we need more druids", or even "we need a druid". At most you'll want one for the few buffs they have that aren't done better by others. More than one druid is a sheer waste of potential, and while a raid will do just fine with several if people aren't idiots, it'll always be a compromise. Druid is primarily a solo class, one that unfortunately wasn't given much worthwhile raid utility compared to others. Since the OP is asking about raid roles, that's what should be said. Druids are alright in raids, but there's always going to be a better option, especially if the one druid spot is filled and the rest just overlap. Even shamans stack better because they're individually better healers than druids if they have torpor.

I would go wizard for velious. 2k unresistable during ToV is priceless.