PostSecret Nod to EQ

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

Healing in EQ took skill.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Healing in EQ took skill.

Agreed. Still though, the class structure in EQ1 was highly imbalanced. Without the Holy Trinity of class mix (tank, cleric, chanter), anything more than non-dungeon grinds were mostly impossible, unless you had a good group of people that played together constantly. But for pugs, those three classes were make it or break it classes.

Of the three, I'd say the enchanter's skill was paramount, followed by the cleric's skill, and lastly by the tank's ability to grab and hold aggro, and grab it again if it bounced (probably THE most important skill a tank had, from a cleric's standpoint)

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

Healing in EQ took skill.

Agreed. Still though, the class structure in EQ1 was highly imbalanced. Without the Holy Trinity of class mix (tank, cleric, chanter), anything more than non-dungeon grinds were mostly impossible, unless you had a good group of people that played together constantly. But for pugs, those three classes were make it or break it classes.

Of the three, I'd say the enchanter's skill was paramount, followed by the cleric's skill, and lastly by the tank's ability to grab and hold aggro, and grab it again if it bounced (probably THE most important skill a tank had, from a cleric's standpoint)

A good healer can keep up a good tank even with a bad enchanter, a bad tank gets everyone killed, and a bad healer gets everyone killed.

[Ariannda Kusanagi]

Ima good healer. I don't promise people they won't die, my gear isn't that great and in eq2 that seems to make a difference. I can keep a normally geared group up, mostly solo healing in most instances, however i can't keep a greatly geared tank solo healed in the tougher instances, likewise a terribly geared tank. If it's me with my non raid gear in a raid geared group i can normally solo heal as well, because shits dead so fast ! I remember playing an eq1 cleric, and it was HARD ! I much prefer the eq2 clerics, although i wish there were more... heals. I have 2 reactives and a hot, i have a ward and only 2 direct actual heals, making a warden (good druid) have more heals, but they're simply not on par for healing with the cleric.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

reactive healing = lose. Always.

[Select]

In EQ1 when the chanter was shit, I'd take over as best as I could. If I could mezz, I'd mezz. If I could kite the adds for a bit, I would and sometimes I'd end up killing it before the group finished with the others. If I could sacrifice a pet to keep an add distracted, I would. Necros = <3

[Ddrak]

Reactives are good if there's a bunch of mobs that don't hit hard individually. It's also good to have them precast because they take some of the healing load off when the shit hits the fan - they're just not something you cast in response to spike damage.

The problem with reactives is a shaman in the group means they're next to worthless because the mobs only blow through the wards on massive spike damage and then you're tossing direct heals on to get it back while the shammy drops the next ward on. Druids have it the hardest because they really don't have as much direct healing and have to hope their HoTs keep up.

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

We mostly duo an SK / Defiler, sometimes with a friend or two. We're really casual players but it seems to me that just like EQ1, the shaman is a tank's best friend, and it's not a bad partnership. Seems like everything I do as an SK has some form of heal, so it makes up for the little bit of mojo her defiler seems to lack.

We're both level 78 in mostly kunark quested legendary gear with whatever the broker can provide and we do pretty good. Doing dungeons with 2-4 people in average gear you die a lot, but I've gotta say that her defiler is surpisingly robust. And just like EQ1 there's some wiggle room for skill and strategy, so we have a great time pushing the envelope of what we can do.

[Harlowe]

I switched characters because I wanted to have fun damaging shit and honestly I just got burnt out playing a cleric. I played it up to raiding ToV with Poison Arrow back in the olden-days. That was some of the most fun and stressful times I had playing EQ1. Then I had character ADD between playing a rogue & a wizard. Both were far, far less stressful and less work than being a cleric.

Of course, anything was better than spending your pre-Kunark days as a warrior. I don't know how I got to level 50 with that character.

[Arathena]

... We sorta put the clerics through the wringer. It can /not/ have been fun to have been responsible for keeping my little blue ass alive in ToV in the early days.

[Xican]

Healing in EQ took skill.

I've never heard such a blatently false statement in my life.

Playing EQ, or any other game for that matter isn't about 'skill' it's about experience and attention. Lets face it, it doesn't take any 'talent' to play a game like like Everquest. Regardless of your class, or its role there is really only 3 things that effect your performance - Attention, Understanding and Gear. If you're paying attention and know your role, you can perform it well. Gear/AA's play a certain role, too.

But to say it takes 'skill' I just don't buy it. The game was never complicated, or difficult for someone paying attention, who knew what they were doing.

[Embar Angylwrath]

I dunno about that Xican.

I played a raid cleric. So I understand what you say about gear, paying attention, and understanding your class. That said, there were clerics that could do things I simply couldn't do. They were much more reactive to changes, quicker to make decisions (better decisions), etc. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't match the perfromance of some of the elite clerics on the server. And I tried.... hard.

So I guess you might say I wasn't able to focus as much as they did, but the ability to focus is a skill, as far as I'm concerned.

[Kulaf]

Didn't need an Enchanter in a group.....that was just a crutch. A good Bard could fill in for any enchanter on almost any group content.

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

Didn't need an Enchanter in a group.....that was just a crutch. A good Bard could fill in for any enchanter on almost any group content.

I actually preferred a bard over an enchanter in a group since I could just get on my friend's enchanter for buffs. Me, Cleric, Bard, Mage, Mage, Beastlord was probably the best group makeup I remember playing with. Excessive DPS always makes up for a bad Cleric if the tank is able to live through one mob.

[Arathena]

Let's be frank - if you had a Cleric, you were golden. The only use a Bard or an Enchanter had in the party of a skilled cleric was to provide mana regen and make crowd control require less abject stupidity on the part of the tank and melee DPS. My little ornate-and-Blue-Diamond-cultural twink cleric could do any two of tank, heal, and cc any where she didn't get one shotted, and could heal and CC in places FAR over her head. Slow was a luxury that saved mana, not much else - Dispel took the lethal bite off most mobs. And I was poor at the decision tree Embar identifies at best.

[Harlowe]

Jesus Xican, that seemed a bit of an overreaction. No one is talking about "skill" in comparison to things people do in REAL LIFE. Holy shit, people have perspective. It's "skill" relative to the topic - comparing classes in a game, not "skill" in the sense of what you do and learn in real life.

Games are entertainment and certainly "easy" in the scheme of every day life. That's one of those "no shit" kind of statements that go without saying. If they were truly "hard" and people weren't having fun doing it, they wouldn't be games.

[Kulaf]

I dunno about that Xican.

I played a raid cleric. So I understand what you say about gear, paying attention, and understanding your class. That said, there were clerics that could do things I simply couldn't do. They were much more reactive to changes, quicker to make decisions (better decisions), etc. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't match the perfromance of some of the elite clerics on the server. And I tried.... hard.

So I guess you might say I wasn't able to focus as much as they did, but the ability to focus is a skill, as far as I'm concerned.

Most of the people that I knew as Bards were some of the best people at exactly what you describe. We had to know all of the classes to choose the best song lineup.....had to react to CC......had to offtank.......all while trying to keep three or four songs running non-stop. Then when the AA's came in they tossed pulling on the pile of chores and we all had to know how to pull and split encounters.

[Select]

I agree decision making is a skill. The decision tree was all I had. My gear and AA (AA especially) were pathetic, but I managed to hold my own.

[Xican]

Jesus Xican, that seemed a bit of an overreaction. No one is talking about "skill" in comparison to things people do in REAL LIFE. Holy shit, people have perspective. It's "skill" relative to the topic - comparing classes in a game, not "skill" in the sense of what you do and learn in real life.

I don't feel it was an over reaction. It's not like I typed out a 6 paragraph essay or filled it with cursing and insults or anything. I'm just saying that Turaylon's use of the word skill seems out of place.

I stand by my statements, too. Maybe it's just because I'm so damn good... But healing in EQ just isn't hard at all to me. I mean, if you're paying attention and know the 'essentials' of the game (class roles, casting speeds, aggro management, damage increments, etc) it all becomes very cut and dry as to what you do in each situation. It shouldn't be something you struggle with.

I guess you can argue that reacting quicker to a change in situation (a spike in damage, an add, whatever) is a 'skill' but I don't. I see it simply as paying better attention than someone who didn't notice that health bar drop a few seconds sooner.

[Ariannda Kusanagi]

Dd made my power go off by reminding me not to use reactive heals... actually maybe USING them is what cut power to my whole complex.

THANKS A LOT DDRAK !