P99 Much Less Skills/Rotations/Combat Depth?
 

Hey guys, i'm wanting to get into Everquest in some form or another, but i'm not sure where to do with P99 TLP and Live.

I love the look of the oldschool, the challenge, complexity, community, group play, freedom/exploring/adventuring etc and see almost everything i could want in P99, but:

I hear since it's ooold school that it has much less abilities and/or rotations and so much less combat depth to it.

Not just a bit less but much, much less abilities/rotations/combat depth.

That's probably the one thing i couldn't trade for everything else. I know i'd end up getting bored before long spamming the same buttons on the same grind over and over and over. Especially with the grind being alot more hardcore than most other places.

It's hard to even enjoy a favorite class when you're just spamming the same couple of things over and over. None to minimal rotation and/or rotation options, strategy/skill choice etc.

Is it really as bad as it sounds? I know the community and challenge and all the rest would make up for it, somewhat, but at the end of the day the majority of game time would be spent in combat grinding, so it'd be great if there was a little more to it.

Any thoughts?

depends on your class. Positioning is more important than 3 rows of hotbars if you are the tank for instance. if you are a cleric you will pretty much sit, stand to cast heal, then sit again for 60 levels ( with the occasional root or whatever). Bards are polar opposite can be very active and always pressing buttons

If you want complexity, play an enchanter, bard, necromancer, or shaman. Don't play a melee type character.

Cleric is only straightforward if you play the class like a healing bot.

Clerics can lull, memblur, root, nuke, stun, blind, fear and whatnot. A cleric who knows his class is actually fairly versatile and can be challenging, fun and rewarding to play.

The problem is a lot of people get mad if you play outside their expectation of a class's role.

I was lucky enough to be in a double shaman group in Seb. We wanted to do disco, but had no cc. I borrowed my static's cleric and used a line up exclusively consisting of roots, stuns, paci and mem blur. Was pretty entertaining seeing the excess adds just Jason Statham home when hit with the paci/atone combo.

I think OP would most enjoy Enc or Bard depending if he wants a melee or range based character.

I think OP is coming from modern MMO where you stand in one spot mashing the same 12 abilities as they refresh.

In EQ there is none of that. New games have no strategy beyond what order to use your abilities to minimize refreshes.

EQ is all about strategy. Some people play the game as straightforward as they can and don't do anything fun. But you can push the limits of the game and really explore what everquest can be about.

OP -
Rotations as such don't exist, unless you want to count debuffs before attacks. You do get strategic timed abilities later called disciplines. EQ is deceptive, don't count the lack of a giant set of abilities as an indicator. Get in and play for a while, there's a lot of subtleties that will become apparent via numerous deaths. As was mentioned, Bard or Enchanter are probably the closest to what you're looking for. Melee char play is mostly around positioning and aggro mechanics, although they (except warrior) have some amount of spells.

Live does have a huge set of 'AA abilities', but the process of acquiring them is a grindfest and they don't really have a 'chain' aspect if I recall correctly. My advice is to go ahead and give P99 a shot on a chanter or bard. If you are a masochist you can play a Ranger, which is a class that has a general utility but usually isn't played up to its full potential. Necro is another such class, although survival is much easier than on a Ranger. Necros are underappreciated and usually not played up to the full potential, with people mostly soloing whereas in a group a well played Necro can do just about anything.

Agree with this completely. It's also a blatant exa.ple about how things being straightforward is a choice. If you play a clefic in a full group of an xp zone it's bound to be boring. Making a change friend and diving into howling stones together? That's gonna be a challenging adventure where both of you use a wide range of tools. The cleric has to be just as attentive and active as the chanter.

Live doesn't really have that many more tools... It's all the same stuff, it's just a little less flash here... It's still just nukes, dots, slows, hastes, fears, snares, roots, mezzes etc.

Classic EQ has been way more about things outside of pure combat though.

Dying costs you way more (time) than in modern MMO's, making deaths way more 'exciting' than "Oh hey I respawned, let me pay 2 gold and run back and continue where i left off". EQ has a much higher skill requirement for CR, depending on if you can camp a cleric, if mobs aggro on corpse drag, if they see through sneak, etc.

Depends on playstyle, AFAIK modern MMO's dont even usually use a calm / lull to single pull or have FD style pull.

As stated above, bard / ench for varied playstyle.

Bard will rotate songs continuously throughout fights.
Enchanter will (at least decent ones?) have to re mem spells pretty often given the 8 spell mem max.

If you look at types of combat, I dont see many other MMO's having the varations on ways to kill mobs as in EQ. Snare / root kite, charm kite, AE kite, fear kite, etc.

For melee there is absolutely 0 combat depth, for charming on Enchanter/Necro or quading/charming on druid there is much more to it and it can actually be a bit of a pain to get good at.

If you are looking for a replacement for WoW this isn't it