Druid or Cleric
 

I am a bit of a solo artist these days. Can't decide if I want to level my Cleric or Druid? What say you, good people of P99?

druids for solo imo

If you wanna solo, port, and PL, play the druid. If you wanna group, raid, and rez, play the cleric. Both have decent options for farming platinum (druid has porting and PLing, cleric has AoE groups, money camps, and rezzing).

Edit - just noticed you said you're a bit of a solo artist these days. Druids are leaps and bounds better than clerics at soloing.

Solo artist..

Until about 14 both classes are bad at soloing. At 14 Druids get charm animal and Clerics get Expluse Undead.

14-19 Druids can charm Griffawn/Griffenne in North / South Karana
19-24 Druids can charm Gorge Hounds/Griffawn in East Karana
24-29 Druids can charm elephants/centaur in South Karana
24-34 Druids can root/rot 2nd/3rd/basement undead in Unrest
29-60 Druids can charm Kedge Keep
34-39 Druids can quad aviaks/split paw gnolls in South Karana
39-44 Druids can quad hill giants in Rathe Mountains (you need a great mana pool for this)
44-52 Druids can quad seafury cyclops in OoT (again great mana pool and buy a Luminescent Staff)
52-60 Druids can charm polar bears in Permafrost (dangerous camp to get to, but very worthwhile)

14-19 Clerics can root/nuke undead in Unrest (start outside, around 15-16 find a nice place inside to set up. Near the back porch there are 3-4 spawns you can single.)
19-24 Clerics can root/nuke undead in Unrest (low 20s you can move upstairs)
24-34 Clerics can root/nuke undead in Unrest (2nd/3rd floor and basement are your playgrounds)
34-52 Clerics can root/nuke frogloks in Lower Guk
52-60 Clerics can root/nuke basement in Karnors

Cleric soloing is very one-sided. You will always want to hunt undead, your strategy will usually be root -> nukes -> root -> nukes; healing as needed.

However you have the ability to find a group pretty easily at any level and once level 50+ you can make bank doing certain cash camps

Druid soloing varies more. I suggest doing charming 14-60. However at certain levels you can root/rot quite effectively and in a few level ranges you can quad decently well (more content is quadable with Velious release... Arctic Wyvern in CS for example).

At 40-60 Druids are less desirable in groups but can make cash porting and powerleveling.

Thanks Daldaen, those are all good infos. Will I have to fight what I charm?

Ranger is the best solo choice out of the two options you gave.

Note that while clerics make pretty poor soloers, they feature prominently in the duo artist challenges.

Generally that is wise yes.

You charm a Griffawn and attack a 2nd Griffawn.

Always keep the mob your pet is fighting rooted (at lower levels you can snare since root duration isn't great). When your pet is low on health (less than 10%), invis yourself. The reason you want to do this is two fold.

1. If you let your pet kill your target, it will yield 50% less EXP because your pet did most of the damage. However once you break charm, the damage done doesn't count, assuming you didn't cast on it, it is as if no one has done any damage to either mob.
2. Building on the above, you have two mobs now at 10% or less that haven't been hurt by anyone. With two quick nukes you can get full EXP on both mobs.

Sometimes fights aren't even and you will have to break your pet early or just suffer that 50% exp hit, if you charmed a higher level mob and it destroys your target. Conversely if your target is getting destroyed it is wise to break charm, kill your pet then find a new pet to fight the mob that beat up your previous pet (keep in mind this mob is still chasing you around while all of this is happening).


When you charm something and attack a non-charm able (see animal) mob, you run the risk of more uneven fights and if your pet gets beat up early you can't charm that mob you attacked to replace it, you have to find a new animal to fight the non-animal.

@ Falkun - mostly that is due to CH BP. I'm curious how many of those duos were done without CH BPs. Atleast those involving clerics.

Oh and it should be noted. If you think you will solo to 50 or 60 and then find groups as a main healer, don't go Druid. Healing as a Druid is painfully inefficient. Once Velious comes out and we get Nature's Touch, it will be better. But even then, high end groups basically mandate a cleric healer. Druids facilitate groups with root CC, pulling, snaring, DPS and utility buffs like regen, DS, SoW and with Velious, Mana Regen!

Shaman or enchanter imho =D