First of all, hello people, first post here, bought the game yesterday.
I'm pretty much an MMO addict, played almost all of them since EQ1.
Now, i started toying around with a Dark Elf yesterday and now that I'm bored at work, trying to think about which class would suit me.
So far in every MMO I've played damage dealers (with the exception of one controller in CoH) : pet summoning casters / rogues / archers.
Every time I've played an archer, it got nerfed (Hello DAoC), every time I've played a summoner, it got nerfed damage wise (hello EQ).
So, my question is, which class would you guys recommend for a new player, knowing that I like to dish out damage, would prefer something melee or ranged, but no caster for now.
I also intend to *never* solo (have a duo partner, which, incidentally, is a my wife) and not being useless at PvP would be a plus.
Pretty much any race but dwarf is ok with me :)
Also, if you have any good duo's in mind, would appreciate the advice :)
Edit : forgot to add that I picked Franz (I'm Euro), the only reason being that it had a better ping than Teon
Welcome to L2, the deepest, best and most difficult MMORPH.
There are some great player wirtten guides in the 'player guide' section of these boards, more than anyone can hope to digest at once. Check them out and read the ones that look most useful, remembering that they are opinions and what worked for one player might not work for you. This is an interesting part of L2, the design is so subtle that much of the game is player driven rather than determinied by the game designers, so in many ways L2 will be what you make it to be.
For example, some players get bored at the 'grind' of killing mobs to level up. They, however, chose to play the game with levelling up as a maini goal so of course they got bored and it is their own fault (tho many blame the game). Instead, choose a variety of fun things to do...like getting gear, exploring, making friends, making a clan, fishing, raising pets, getting rich....and the levelling up will just happen as you go along and have fun.
I came from Diablo 1 and this is my 1st MMO, been playing a
year now.
knowing that I like to dish out damage, would prefer something melee
Then you want to be an Orc Fighter, then Raider>Destroyer!
You can use many weapons and get skills for them.
Sword - Power Smash, Power Strike;
Blunt - Stun attack and Power Smash/Power Strike;
Polearm - Wild Sweep
And later at 40 you get Whirlwind and Hammer Crush. It rocks
:cool:
Maybe your wife could try the Orc Mystic, thats more magic
oriented. Would be a cool duo!
Welcome to L2, the deepest, best and most difficult MMORPH.
There are some great player wirtten guides in the 'player guide' section of these boards, more than anyone can hope to digest at once. Check them out and read the ones that look most useful, remembering that they are opinions and what worked for one player might not work for you. This is an interesting part of L2, the design is so subtle that much of the game is player driven rather than determinied by the game designers, so in many ways L2 will be what you make it to be.
For example, some players get bored at the 'grind' of killing mobs to level up. They, however, chose to play the game with levelling up as a maini goal so of course they got bored and it is their own fault (tho many blame the game). Instead, choose a variety of fun things to do...like getting gear, exploring, making friends, making a clan, fishing, raising pets, getting rich....and the levelling up will just happen as you go along and have fun.
Welcome!
exarctly.
listen to this man!
i have two things to say to the OP: Franz already has a bad reputation as a whole. as to a darkelf class thats not been nerfed - AbyssWalker (when coupled with a prophet or Shillien Elder for buffs) can really prove amazing. but as RumPunch stated that might not be something that will suit you if you and your wife arent able to cope with the conditions for levelling these two classes for maximum efficiency.
ok for starters since you will more often than not be hanging with your wife its important that you chose a nice combination of classes
as for the buffer part if you plan on going melee one of you just has to be a war crier, its the only buffer out there that doesnt mind getting a bit of blood on their robes
if you decide to go mage you dont really have a choice and someone has to be a shilien elder :/
if you decide to go summoner well you could either make a warcrier or another summoner, those guys can live without a buffer
as for the DD and pvp part i really need more info on your playstyle to make some suggestions
Been browsing through some stuff on the boards and and some sites regarding classes, and a HawkEye or a Silver Ranger sounds appealing to me (still trying to find an archer class in a game that doesn't get nerfed to hell).
My wife's looking to feed her newly found Tank hunger, which to me sounds like Temple Knight / Paladin / Dark Agener , right ?
How is the game viable without a buffbot / healbot ? We don't mind teaming at all, but seeing the amount of people (inexistant) in lowbies areas, I think it's safe to say we'll duo more than everything at the beginning...
Basically we want a decent combination where she takes the hits and I destroy everything :)
Not particularly looking for FoTM classes or uber PvP gankers, something fun would be a nice start hehe.
Orcs look cool, some casters seem interesting, but I think we're gonna focus on humans / elves (both light and dark) melee/range until we get a better feel of the game.
Edit : to nameless, when I played DAoC the best fun I ever had was playing my stealthy archer, going into the enemy's realm cloaked and blasting away as soon as I'd find a prey. I guess you could say I like to stalk :) Then again, I also like to rush in a crowd and decimate people. It's all about burst damage really =p
My wife isn't so hot about pvp (she knows L2 is mostly pvp though), so she'll have to go with trial and error before finding a pvp style that suits her I guess. One thing is sure, she likes to be in the middle of mobs.
Edit : to nameless, when I played DAoC the best fun I ever had was playing my stealthy archer, going into the enemy's realm cloaked and blasting away as soon as I'd find a prey. I guess you could say I like to stalk Then again, I also like to rush in a crowd and decimate people. It's all about burst damage really =p
**** so many conflicting interests :/
ok the stealthy thing is your basic L2 dagger, they cant be invisible or anything so they just kinda run in and stab a few ppl and try to get out before someone kills them
the decimation you want can only come from one class and that is destroyer (names says it all :P)
the class has its limitations but under the right circumstances its basically run in and annihilate everything /laugh over corpses
buffs are everything in L2 the reason summoners shine is because they come complete with their own set of buffs and DD ability
take away buffs and pretty much every class except summoners, necro (human mage) and SH (dark elf mage) start looking pretty pathetic and all of those classes get a huge boost with the right buffs and recharges (mp heal)
archers are the current FOTM but im not sure how they compare to archers in other games
basically their pve playstyle is target and shoot and their pvp playstyle is use stun and shoot
ppl have been begging for an archer nerf for ages but L2 is kinda random in the way it nerfs classes
think i need to talk to your wife (nothing suss :P) to get an idea of what she wants as a class before you decide what to do
EDIt:ignore the low population in noob areas it is not a reflection of what is going on in the server
its just how we roll ><
I think I'm gonna go for an archer, I just can't resist.
Thing is, we want to pick the same races so we start in the same place and can start teaming right off the bat.
So I guess it comes down to which melee type / tank would go the best with an Hawkeye or a Silver Ranger :)
I picked Franz purely for the low ping, but will more than likely pick the other Euro server. While I have absolutely nothing against non Euro's, I'd rather be on the same time zone as everyone when it comes to teaming and pvping :)
man you are just gonna hate me for saying this
archers and tanks just dont mix
archers have way more damage output than a tank and frankly dont need anyone to tank mobs for them
Edit : to nameless, when I played DAoC the best fun I ever had was playing my stealthy archer, going into the enemy's realm cloaked and blasting away as soon as I'd find a prey. I guess you could say I like to stalk :) Then again, I also like to rush in a crowd and decimate people. It's all about burst damage really =p
Ahh, the days when my Hunter could sneak in, 1-shot a group's Runemaster, and vanish before they even knew I was there. Honestly Myrddin, I don't think you'll ever see anything like that in another PvP MMO. I could definitely be wrong here, but I don't think it's possible here for a HE/SR/PR to sit on the edge of visual range and take out an SE/EE/Bishop/WC without their group being able to see or detect them before it's too late. I've read a lot of the archer nerf threads and never heard mention of anything like that.
RumPunch's post is spot-on though. I've met a lot of people (both ingame and out) who just don't get it. And nowadays, I tune out certain things (like, if someone says "L2 sucks! In WoW..." I change the channel, figuratively speaking. You cannot compare those two games fairly). Since you've played other games, you'd probably understand that L2 is on one end of the spectrum, difficulty wise and WoW is at the other end (with EQ1 close to L2 and EQ2 close to WoW, DAoC pre-TOA fits somewhere in the middle, leaning toward WoW and post-ToA leaning toward L2). By 'difficulty', I mean the ease at which one person with one account and one character can get to the end of the game without having horrible gear/skills (spells/spellbooks), relatively quickly without 3rd party assistance (program or otherwise). But then, as you've played EQ (and long enough to have experienced a class nerf, by omission or otherwise), you're probably very familiar with farming for cash (by necessity) and/or "working the market".
Nameless1 has a point; archers tend to draw the aggro from tanks causing them to run all over creation. If your wife is set on a tank class I would recommend either a bladedancer or swordsinger for you. That way you still get good buffs with out playing a non-combat support class. And being the same race is not so much an issue because you get newbie travel tokes, which would let you get to the same location for free.
Archer/tank is not really a great combo.
The best combo is an archer and buffer of some sort as archery is insanely good with buffs.
However, if thats what you both will be passionate about playing, then go for it.
Try paladin/hawkeye
At least the paladin can heal the hawkeye on the off chance the hawkeye takes some damage. (paladins are amazingly underrated healers 52+)
Note this becomes more useful later in life when the hawkeye will eat health for mana to use their bow.
Paladins are also very good at control (root, aoe root, taunt, aoe taunt, shield stun) and thus can save the archer's if things turn south.
If your wife doesn't mind being slightly less tank-like she might try a prophet... later in their life they can wear heavy armor and they get most of the best buffs in the game (being the best buffer for an archer is good too) They only downside is that Prophets are almost completely a buffer and considerably less tank-like than the knight classes.
Swordsinger/Silver Ranger might be interesting...
Swordsingers are more tank-like than their other buffer brothers and you would critical insanely well.
For best results, your wife would use a bow more often than not but on the off chance she wanted to tank, she sure could.
This combo also has the benefit of being the fastest moving combo (runspeed) in the game.
BD and PR, mmmm. If you wanna be an archer 100% then I'd suggest PR or HE, not SR. They're just horribly ugly and LEs have no males etc. and end game PR is just one mean [censored].
Anyway, one possible class for yer wife is WC. One of the orc casters, has good buffs(altho gets them slower than SE for example) and can deal out some dmg, or take some if you so choose.
You wanna grind together, no probs. But it doesnt mean you have to choose same race classes as with all the port tokens and all it is pretty easy to get to other newbie areas. And remember, you will be spending most of yer gametime outside those areas. Only the _few_ easy first lvls are done in there, so do you really wanna base your class solely on those?
Anyway, possible duo's meeting all your criterias would be:
HE/DA
HE/Paladin
SR/TK
SR/SwS altho it is not a true tank class.
Other duos with close to similar style would be:
For dark elves, both being the same race and all
PR/BD not a true tank but still.
PR/SK
and for totally mixed (change HE to PR or SR)
HE/Prophet
HE/WC
Or you could combine them the way you want.
If you switch from Franz to Teon, you might wanna look for an Academy too, so pm Aspecti on these boards, he might be able to hook you up with one ;)
Weee, so many good advice in here :)
I just remembered about the tokens, so race definitely isn't an issue after all.
I'm dead set on a HawkEye for my toon, just need to find something for the wife.
Back when we played EQ, she played a druid, and loved it. In WoW she played a cleric, and hated it. She kinda lost her love for healing and buffing along the way hehe.
I'm thinking Paladin might be doable : she'd be biased at first because of they suck in WoW, but the taunting might win her over.
Phantom Ranger / Shillien Knight could also be doable, just means I'd have to get out of the HE mind set hehe. Gonna toy around in game while she gets home, and we'll see where we go from there :)
I'm indeed gonna switch to Teon, and we'll see about an Academy once we've decided which classes we're gonna play :)
PS : RemianenV, played EQ from Kunark to PoP so yeah, I'm a bit familiar with grinding ^^
if your wife plays the SK i recommend getting a one handed mystic weapon as well as the sword shield combo. the mystic weapon will make her magic skills like lightnig strike land alot better. you can place the weapons on the hot bar to change them out fast.
Back when we played EQ, she played a druid, and loved it. In WoW she played a cleric, and hated it. She kinda lost her love for healing and buffing along the way hehe.
Man, I'm like the exact opposite. HATED playing clerics in EQ (unless boxing them for raids) but shadow priest was my first (and 6th) 60 in WoW. Melting faces, ahhh.
PS : RemianenV, played EQ from Kunark to PoP so yeah, I'm a bit familiar with grinding ^^
Then you'll fit in quite well here, I think. L2's xp system feels like a throwback to the Velious era of EQ, progression wise. Except here, you actually get pretty decent xp for killing raid bosses. Honestly, I might have to go with the clichéd advice and say let the wife play whatever class appeals most to her. The two of you together can find ways to make pretty much any combination work well. If she plays a class that fits well with yours, she may not like it as much as if she just chose a class she liked the sound of and you two found new and inventive ways of making the combo work.
Well since u have ur eyes on HE atm I suggest your wife plays either BD or SWS .. Imho she will get bored with her tank very easily.. And those 2 chars can sustain a bit of damage especially the sws due to the Pdef song . That means your classes will fit later on 9 man parties ( who doesnt want a Bd or SWS in an archer group) and if you can afford it I suggest you buy another account and box a prophet (cause its a very rare "live" class .. 90% are buff slaves ) .
Welcome to L2 :)
Well, was able to get a bow, now trying to find arrows :)
DO NOT BUY ARROWS! DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT! (Well, at least not after the first batch). Many mobs drop arrows, as well as mobs who are vulnerable/resistant to bow attacks (don't ask me why). These kinds of mobs may not be common in Talking Island (keltirs and elpys are listed as being able to drop wooden arrows though) but I know my (DE) archer alt has gotten well over 2,000 arrows from Baluc Orc Archers, shrooms, and zombie lords. Alternatively, make a dwarf on one of your accounts and level him/her to 7. At level 7, a dwarf (with Create Item 1) can make 500 wooden arrows per combine with only stem and an ore (iron, I think). Takes about an hour to level a dwarf to 7 (or, it did for me). Level the dwarf to 20 and you'll be set for shots and arrows through the D range, as long as you get the mats yourself and don't buy them (crystallize your own D item drops for your crystals, for example).
Seriously, for an hour's "work", going the dwarf route might work best. A possible side effect is that the character isn't useless after you no longer need NG (non-grade or 'wooden') arrows.
Honestly, just use the dagger and the newbie shots... last time I did it, it took 30 minutes 1 - 10 with no twinking.
Granted, I have done this a few times and know TI perhaps a bit too well.
Bow costs 900 adena or so... best to get the money-making quests in the area and just splatter wolves and keltirs and orcs until you have a nice chunk of change... more often than not one of them just drop a bow and you are set...
If you get to level 10 and don't have something in each slot go buy the lowest grade for every slot... those 9 adena boots are the most money-effective upgrades you will EVER purchase in Lin2.
If you cannot purchase a bow by level 10, just keep using the dagger until you can... frankly, the newbie dagger works out quite well.
If your wife goes Swordsinger, join her in the elven village at level 8 for the 'shroom quest. That pays out quite well.
The DE village has a similar 'shroom quest if she goes that way.
Each shot will amplify your damage with a physical weapon (not sure if skills are affected). Magic attacks are amplified by spiritshots and/or Blessed spiritshots.
Soulshots multiply effective Patk for most physical attacks.
Place them in your bar and left click to use ONE use of them.
Weapons tell you how many soulshots you use every time.
Rclick on the bar icon of the soulshots to force soulshot spam (every swing/use of soulshot will activate soulshot for the next swing/use).
Standard melee attacks soulshots will cause double damage from usual.
Physical skills do more damage with soulshots, but the equation is different so it doesn't cause double damage overall.
Spiritshots are similar to soulshots, but affect only magic and speed up a cast as well.
(some abilities are physical "active" skills and others are "spells"... a good rule of thumb is if you used a book to learn it that its a spell and if you didn't then its a skill.)
Blessed spiritshots are just more powerful spiritshots.
All of them do more damage per unit of time for an adena cost. Most people have soulshots/spiritshots on spam when they can afford it.
There is no intelligent reason to not use every single newbie shot you possibly can. Free + faster = no brainer.
If your wife really wants to Tank, and Light Elf, she should go TK. Pre-40, Light Elf Knights do fairly well at tanking, but the Swordsinger receives no armour masteries after their second class change, which is definitely noticeable. With their songs, they can fill this role in a 1-mob vs 1-player fairly well, if there is a real healer standing by, but they don't function well without true buffs.
Soooo, I think i'll go for a Dark Elf, we're ok for the race now the class... I really dont know what to pick, a tank for sure, but which one? Anyone could help me to decide well?
I adwise BD. BDs do good damage, are important to any party (the Dances are 2minute buffs for the party, similiar to pally aura / shamy totem in WoW) and in case of emergency the have Ultimate Defense (just the 1st lvl of it, but still the pdef/mdef boost is extreme good). BD can also help Archers with arrest and have hate.
SK, as a tank, doesnt do good damage. SK can get aggro and hold it (sometimes). Tanks are needed on raids, thats their major role since most PvE partys dont need a tank nowadays.
Approaching level 15 now on my Human, and I was wondering if I was really gonna go for an archer.
There's something that doesn't really please me with the archery animations, not sure what, but it's not as enjoyable as I thought it would be.
On the other hand, melee combat is proving quite funny, and thus I was wondering if going for a Gladiator was a good idea : how good are they damage wise ? Must say the idea of dual wielding tickles my fancy quite a bit...
Well, Gladiator are good PvE chars. Together with BD they are the only ones that use Dual Weapons (Masterywise), but compared with a BD they lack the dances. Solo, a BD will have more dps I think, but a glad in party with a BD will outdamage the BD. In PvP, Glads get their true strength after they are duelists.
As for your wife, what kind of caster she want to play? Nuker, summoner or healer? ES+Glad seems to be a bad combo, but not sure here. Maybe WK (human summoner) would be better (dmg wise), or PS (dark elf) support wise (PS have great healing and debuffing skills). Sps, since a lot of nerfes, and considering the worst mp management among the nukers, are a bit tricky to play, but in general Nuker+Melee isnt a good thing. EEs are good Healers. They are not so good as the Bishops (Human), but better then the SEs (dark elf). However, SEs have better buffs that would help ya more.
Been browsing through some stuff on the boards and and some sites regarding classes, and a HawkEye or a Silver Ranger sounds appealing to me (still trying to find an archer class in a game that doesn't get nerfed to hell).
My wife's looking to feed her newly found Tank hunger, which to me sounds like Temple Knight / Paladin / Dark Agener , right ?
...when I played DAoC the best fun I ever had was playing my stealthy archer, going into the enemy's realm cloaked and blasting away as soon as I'd find a prey. I guess you could say I like to stalk :) Then again, I also like to rush in a crowd and decimate people. It's all about burst damage really =p
My wife isn't so hot about pvp (she knows L2 is mostly pvp though), so she'll have to go with trial and error before finding a pvp style that suits her I guess. One thing is sure, she likes to be in the middle of mobs.
problem with L2 is that buffs do mater, A LOT. and tanks generally dont do great in parties with archers.
edit: gladiators do not own in pvp really. they might in interlude but by the time you have leveled one to a grade they will have been nerfed again. my advice is to play a treasure hunter (dagger class) with the wife playing a SwS (swordsinger). her crit boost song will help a lot and she can explore her class as she sees fit since SwS can use just about any weapon in game. if she wants to tank she does get hate skills up to a point. and you will be fairly powerful in PvP if you sneak up on someone. (if you are behind someone their shield cant block your hits, and you crit more often). play in areas that drop those herb thingys, not everywhere does. have fun ^^
And of course now the wife wants to play a caster instead of a melee
Probably Elf too, what would go well with a Gladiator ?
hmmm. what kind of caster, like a support class, hybrid support/melee, hybrid nuker/melee, straight nuker, dubuffer, summoner?
see if you can poke around and find some pictures of the summos that warlock (kitties), elemental summoner (unicorns) and phantom summoner (shadowy things) get. my bet is that she will think one of the summon sets is really cool or cute. in parties she will be buffing and healing but she will also be right in the thick of the fight with her summon. if she wants to nuke, debuff, and use a summon, hands down necromancer is the only class. if she plays a necro though you wont be complimenting each other in any way (as a melee). on the upside no one messes with necros in open PvP becasue they have SEVERAL "i win" skills.
its no competition, in open PvP, his damage can be outspammed by pots and if i get frenzy on he cant outspam my damage. in interlude glad will win because of the sprint skill, but i think they're going to redo gladiators after interlude so who knows.
scratch that whole thing about summoners. have her try a tyrant. yes, its green. but give it a look over at least. they have these "totem" skills, such that when you use them your stats change pretty extremely, so you can pwn mobs in any situation. if That is the sort of thing that she liked about being a druid in WoW its definately worth looking into. glad+tyrant is a cool combination. wont work too well at later levels without buffs, but definately fun until 40+ and you find some buffer friends.
you're absolutely right. if a gladiator were to use some skill that did 3k damge to my hp, at Exactly the right time, while im spamming cp pots and a cp exiler, i would lose. thats the risk i run for using low-hp skills. im just saying it hasnt happened yet.
you're absolutely right. if a gladiator were to use some skill that did 3k damge to my hp, at Exactly the right time, while im spamming cp pots and a cp exiler, i would lose. thats the risk i run for using low-hp skills. im just saying it hasnt happened yet.
thats the point you use your cp elixer though
with that and a few normal cp pots there is no way a glad can kill you before you activate skills