New player looking for some tips !

[webrunner5]

It's not easy to play a Cleric with no gear, and and not really easy to loot stuff. It is a thankless job playing one trust me.

[webrunner5]

Double, sorry.

[Ezrick]

Originally Posted by Estu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

First of all, yes, I've played and continue to play a cleric. Advising a newbie to solo a cleric for his first 20 levels so he can farm gear is just utterly ridiculous, I'm sorry. Yes, gear makes a difference for a cleric just like it makes a difference for any character, but one can do perfectly fine as a cleric in low-level groups without any gear, and build one's cleric-playing ability and grouping ability to boot, instead of being a crappy wizard who just follows the root-nuke-sit-for-five-minutes approach and decides to drop the game because it's too boring and isolating, because they decided to wait and farm money for some reason instead of just getting out there and grouping. People who first started out on this server or any server grouped with no gear and they came up perfectly fine, and anyone else, especially a cleric, can as well. The point of EQ is to group with people and have fun, not to run around at low levels farming plat so you can take a couple more hits in your level 20 group as a cleric if your allies happen to be too inexperienced or absent-minded to do their jobs.

Read it again, I didn't say do it to farm gear. I said do it for the defensive skills you wouldn't otherwise obtain. Again, you can't train defense at your guild, you only get it by being hit. It would be perfectly fine to say solo for only 20% of each level until those skills are maxed and group the other time. I only mention drops because loot is necessary, if you are going to fight, you may as well do it where you can get both xp AND make enough cash for some gear and to pay for your spells.

You seem to believe that inexperienced players don't exist, that they don't come into your groups all the time, and that all groups are perfect. You don't just have to overcome inexperienced players sometimes, you have to do it most of the time. Just yesterday I had a druid leading off on the mobs I just pulled into the camp in Unrest with his best nuke! Then he'd snare it and start meleeing! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] My taunt key has permanent scars just from that (I was playing my warrior).

I played a cleric on live from opening day all the way through level 70. I know what its like to play with no gear and I know what its like to be one of the best raid-geared clerics in the game. It's like night and day. Walk into an LDON dungeon with a completely high-end geared cleric with five players who can't even spell raid and you can carry the whole group on your back if you need to. I also know the painful reality of playing a cleric at level 40 with a 35 dodge skill and a 50 defense until I realized I needed to grab a group that would actually let me tank (yes you can tank as a cleric with stuns if you have another healer in the group) until I maxed those skills out. I know the difference doing it makes. I sure wished I had done it sooner so I'm advising to do it now, when you can actually do it solo.

Ezrick

[sachiel]

Hi again guys ! ive a quick question:
Do pets drain xp from mages and/or party members in a grp?

[xcyberpeenixx]

Not in a group. But if you are soloing and your pet does 50% or more of the damage on the mob you are fighting, you take a huge XP loss.

[Tecmos Deception]

Is there a class people can take to learn how to necro threads?

Like, how in the world did you stumble across a 3-week-old thread that must have been on page 40 of these forums and read the last post in the thread and decide to make a constructive (in a "better late than never" way) post?

Lol [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Weekapaug]

Originally Posted by Ezrick [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Read it again, I didn't say do it to farm gear. I said do it for the defensive skills you wouldn't otherwise obtain.

I also know the painful reality of playing a cleric at level 40 with a 35 dodge skill and a 50 defense until I realized I needed to grab a group that would actually let me tank (yes you can tank as a cleric with stuns if you have another healer in the group) until I maxed those skills out. I know the difference doing it makes. I sure wished I had done it sooner so I'm advising to do it now, when you can actually do it solo.

Ezrick

I would ditto that, and for any class, really. You can't train defense at a trainer...the only way to do it is to take hits. At low levels every class can take hits naked or in minimal gear and if you do die, the penalty is minimal at worst. Plus, the skillups are faster the closer to cap for that level. So if you wait, it will only be more painful to do later.

I started a new toon on a new server the day it launched for fun....Wound up getting into it and meeting some fun people to play with....FLEW thru the levels with a rogue and wound up a few weeks later around 50 with like 18 defense....That's literally hundreds of AC....As if you aren't even wearing half your gear.

Same thing happened a few years later when the first progression servers went live. This time I was playing a cleric but didn't sweat it....figured I could just spend some time at some point getting beat on by a mob, root, heal myself, repeat. So I merrily went on my way flying thru levels with my big 12 Defense figuring I would deal with it in the 40s when I could cap it all at once, which I did. It took me 3 days of getting beat on by a mob at a zone in, having to beg passing shammys for dex and agi buffs, and generally not what I cared to be doing for what seemed like forever.

Generally speaking, levels > all in EQ, but not if you let your skills lapse. Every class needs to be able to survive a hit or three when things go bad and having your defense skill capped is the difference between being one-shotted by a mob and not, even if you are a robed caster. Deal with it as you go and you won't regret it.