Can’t decide a class and can’t twink

[Lhancelot]

If you hate iksar appearance as many do, feel free to not make the cookie cutter iksar necro and choose any race. Necros are super strong, even as non-iksar.

Mage is a great class that relies on the pet so gears are not a necessary component to be effective.

Druid gives you many ways to make plats as you level up with porting as a viable option, as well as giving you a class that can be used to easily gather mats for quests and tradeskills.

Enchanters are fragile without gears, but are very viable without twink gears. In the end the class becomes one of the most powerful, is always wanted for groups and can solo nearly anything.

Shaman is extremely powerful, but it's a slow developing class and you won't really feel it's power till you are in your 40s. The biggest drawback is the amount of plats you have to dump into their spells/gears to maximize their effectiveness. Still it's a beloved class in groups and can solo awesomely.

[Hordequester]

Druid can be risk-free-practically-afk money and leveling for sure with high demand TPs and Snare-Kiting. Quite quick if you go the animal route and learn to charm kite as well.

Shaman can easily solo to 40s without much gear.. I know many (including myself when I started over here) that are still wearing pieces of banded because it just wasn't all that important. More gear means less downtime though. The snare item suggestion is a good one. My recommendation though is either Ogre for face stun immunity (when you are trying to reapply spells or start Slowing+Tanking it pays off just in annoyance removal) or Troll for regen to help mitigate Cannibalize.

Necro Iksar is a good choice for low gear as well because the regen offsets lich and is a big help until your lifetaps start getting better returns. After that point, it doesn't matter But, they also get the best starting zone for Necro and one of the highest xp modifier zones for 10-20 (Kurn's). Being an undead area means you get huge mana value making use of undead nukes/fears/roots and enough chips to set you for most of your life. There's a reason it's popular. Of course, you could get a port over to there easily enough and I have in the past. But, time crunch easy method is just make an Iksar.

Magician is excellent and can summon a great deal of money savers. It does take good micro-management skills though to handle it properly. They're good solo and in groups it doesn't matter and they can farm pretty much anything anyone else can. Unfortunately they don't have a lot of tools for handling downtime. So, it does help to have some basic starter jewelry at least.

Enchanter can be great solo but they need a good base mp/hp pool to do it effectively. Their pets are not amazing and charms unreliable at lower levels so you'll be taking hits. But, you can get full xp at least if you kill off your charms right. They have Clarity for mana downtime but hp is another story.

Wizard I did solo to 50 on live classic. It was surprisingly easy but a lot of downtime until you can start doing quads. Root and nuke is pretty effective early on if you stick to low hp+resist mobs. But, again, it needs a decent mana pool or longer downtimes with no way to mitigate it solo.

Bard.. but you already knew that. Good grouped and solo if you know what you're doing (or just aoe kite..pff) and they aren't necessarily gear reliant thanks to hp+mp regen songs. You could use yours to farm jewelry money for another class with a few hours of bronze-drop-mob farming.

Pet classes are definitely at an advantage solo but you have to keep in mind they'll have lower xp if they don't have the stats to keep up with pet damage to stop them from leeching xp. Most of the other classes are pretty gear or party reliant... in my experience. Played everything to 40+ back before PoP came out and Bard/Shaman/Monk/Mage/Necro here so.. ymmv on p99.

[Alphablue]

Thank you all for the thoughtful responses!

Given all the info you’ve all provided, I’m leaning toward a few choices:

Druid: the ability to port is a big plus to me. I’ve done charm kiting and I’m ok at it, got to level 23. What I’ve heard about later levels / endgame scares me a little, but not something I’m focusing on.

Bard: being able to do everything is something I love, and I already have a 46 bard, so it’s kind of ready to go. I fell into just swarm kiting (and was pretty good at it, not that it’s difficult) but stopped playing once the exp slowed to a crawl. Fear kiting seems like it could be fun and I’ve done it a little, albeit a little tedious.

(Iksar) Necro: I have a level 17 and it feels a bit sluggish compared to other classes so far, but I’m always jealous of seeing Necros soloing guards and seeming super powerful.

Enchanter: the only reason I’m leaning this way at all is because I love the idea of providing absolute control over every fight, with the constant fear that one lapse in concentration could be death. I have a 17 enc but it feels slow at this level.

Shaman: I’ve simply never played a shaman and the thought of playing something new seems interesting. I’m open to trying it but I want to stick with whatever I choose.

[kjs86z]

Iksar Necro 100%

By far exactly what you're looking for.

[Hordequester]

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

Druid: later levels / endgame scares me a little

They can use the same strategy til endgame no prob so long as targets are picked well.

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

Bard: exp slowed to a crawl. Fear kiting seems like it could be fun and I’ve done it a little, albeit a little tedious.

I cant speak too much on it for p99 but charm swarming is some of the fastest solo xp in the game on live. Though here I'd imagine it's a bit harder since Mosquito boots aren't in yet and Gazughi ring is ever-camped.

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

(Iksar) Necro: I have a level 17 and it feels a bit sluggish

They pick up steam after 20 with new lifetap that is big enough to do lifetap tanking and 24 with pet buff and proper dual wielder. Making use of undead nuke and fear/root in kurns leaves you with one of the fastest untwinked paths to 20.

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

Enchanter: I have a 17 enc but it feels slow at this level.

They start to shine when you get a charm>break>kill groove going. I dont recall what level this clicked for me.

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

Shaman: I’ve simply never played a shaman

This would be my ultimate vote.. because you've never done it before, you're far more likely to stick with it longer than the others. It can easily fund itself if you stick to high plat camps for most of your time.

[Dreenk317]

Necro, can solo almost any camp youd want to be at, for exp or plat/items.
Can level to 60 pretty much naked.
Can be Iksar (for the winsar.)
Get to be a skeleton at lvl 30 ish +, which means you can sell in neriak, OT outpost and paineel without problems. Unless you wreck your faction in OT via kaesora/KC/HS which most necros do, and its really not a big deal, can still invis in and FD to bank, and EVERY merchant in that zone rips you off anyway, so no big loss there.

[Renlin]

Ever considered a monk? I made mine completely untwinked, and leveled him to 43 solo so far... obviously necro or druid would probably get there faster, but if you're interested in a melee I would say that it's the way to go.

[Vinylblair]

I have just bought the EQ titanium pack for the same reason of rolling a character. Note, I haven't played EQ since 1999, so this is going to be hilarious to say the least!

I have no idea how busy the server is going to be in my time zone (UK), and I'm going to need a lot of time to adjust back into it, so I'm also interested in a solo character to begin with, but I'm not ruling out groups either as they're great fun with like minded people.

My half baked plan at the moment, is to level to 12 or so, and then go straight to the estate of unrest, for mainly nostalgic reasons and I remember the xp was pretty good there, and I miss the trains. Even if there aren't enough people to make trains anymore, just revisiting the place will bring back some funny memories [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I was thinking of a necro, but am I going to have a hard time getting to Faydwer from the Iksar starting zone?

I have zero knowledge on the game nowadays, but any advice will be gratefully received.

See you all soon!

[aubie]

Depends on your gaming style and time available.

If you truly don't care about end game raiding, and you like to hop on and solo for an hour, or solo afk and do stuff around the house, Druid is by far the best and easiest choice. No need to summon pets and if you go with racial hide, then you can treeform and afk fairly safely.

Iksar regen does make necro a lot easier.

I'm sure Troll makes shaman the same, but having an Ogre wedged into a corner and never getting a spell interrupted is pretty nice too. Can't count the number of times it's saved my life on a gate with a ton of mobs beating on me.

Enchanter takes practice.

Mage frustrates me because I like to armor up and weapon up pets, but it's just more efficient to chain fire pets and not worry about that stuff.

Pick what you like in the end, cause if you don't like it, you won't play it.

[Gwynn]

This is a wonderful thread. It should really be sticky.