I Love You! fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Aug 29, 2014

• Warrior - A PVE Tank used specifically for tackling high-end raid content. They need gear and groups to be useful in either PVE or PVP. In PVP, they do respectable damage and are hard to kill, but they rely on others (Bards for speed, others for snares or unresistable stuns) to help them stay on target.
  
• Paladin - A PVE Tank that's useful for the daily experience grind, and low-end raid content. They can help make a variety of exp groups work, even filling in as a back-up healer if needed. They have some challenges in PVP however - their spells with high utility in PVE (blinds, roots and stuns) are largely resisted by players. Once geared, they do okay damage when jousting and they're incredibly hard to kill.
  
• Shadow Knight - A PVE Tank that's useful for the daily experience grind and low-end raid content. In addition to tanking and pulling for PVE groups, SKs are great in PvP. Why? Harm Touch, Lifetaps and DoTs that are hard to resist, Shadowstep, a Damage Shield and Feign Death make them very formidable in a variety of situations.

• Cleric - A great healer in high-end PVE. They are also strong healers in PVP, but healing (for all classes) can be difficult. The range of heals is very short, and PVP often happens in large and complicated areas. People are constantly ducking around corners, running miles through zones, diving underwater and so on. It makes healing very difficult unless you're coordinating it well with others. Cleric buffs are great, and they're incredibly hard to kill even if they can’t do much to their opponents.
  
• Druid - A great jack of all trades for PVE and PVP. Druids can fill many roles in PVE, even if they aren't the absolute best at one thing for the purposes of an endgame raid. Druids can make just about any exp group work. Their buffs are great, and they fill a variety of roles in and out of combat in PVP. Druid spells can actually land in PVP! And against targets with super high resists, they still provide buffs, heals, tracking and mobility. Don't underestimate the benefits of being able to quickly gather up groups using druid portals.
  
• Shaman - A buffer, debuffer and healer in PVE. Shaman are a great class for tackling PVE content either solo, in a duo or in a group. Their slows make raids and grinding much easier. Shaman are their own worst enemy in PVP however: potions make it very easy to negate their highly damaging and efficient DoT spells, meaning that they're mostly relegated to resist debuffs, dispels and healing.

• Enchanter - A caster that provides buffs/debuffs and controls the pacing of fights. Clarity and Haste buffs are always welcome, and Enchanters turn chaotic dungeons into peaceful orderly affairs. In PVP, their impact is more limited but still effective. Enchanters have the strongest dispels in the game, unresistable debuffs and eventually unresistable mana drains and mesmerizes. They're very cool but very fragile.
  
• Magician - A damage dealing pet class and nuker. Mages do great damage in PVE even with poor gear since part of their strength comes from their pets. PVP is difficult for them - pet pathing often cannot keep up with players and their spells are easily resisted. Pets also do reduced damage to players. Worse still, pets don't come with you when zoning and PVP fights often take place across multiple zones. Mages primarily provide damage shields and dispels in PVP while their pets disrupt casters.
  
• Necromancer - A caster that focuses on damage over time, their pet, and efficiency. Necromancers are known for being effective while alone, to a fault. The spells that make them such great soloers often don’t translate as well to groups or raids. In PVP, their difficult to resist DoTs and lifetaps make them very difficult to beat unless you’re prepared for them. Feign Death means they can fight in a variety of situations safely. Sadly, consumables (which are commonly carried on P1999 Red at higher levels) largely negate the impact of their DoTs and keep them from being as strong in practice as they would be otherwise.
  
• Wizard - A mobile caster with big nukes. Wizards have spells that actually connect against players with high resists. Additionally, their Shadow Step line of spells makes it very difficult to kill a Wizard without some luck. While they can kill you quickly, you usually have to pin them down for long periods of time and hope they have unfortunate shadowsteps in order to return the favor. Wizard portals are also very valuable on a PVP server when getting to a fight quickly can be the difference between owning a zone for an evening vs. begging to loot your corpse.

• Monk - A PVE melee damage dealer / puller / offtank for groups and low-end raid content. Monks do alright with average gear and become menacing with good gear. In PVP, they hit very hard and become deadly with a Tranquil Staff (which stuns their targets, allowing the monk and friends to unload on them with a discipline). Feign Death lets Monks fight in environments others have to run from, and Mend helps them be more self sufficient than other pure melees.
  
• Rogue - A melee damage dealer. Rogues are reliant on friends but do great consistent damage and burst damage in PVE. In PVP they can provide big damage as well, but their impact is more situational. Additionally, they struggle against classes with strong damage shields, and a snared Rogue is easy to kill and does little damage. They really need gear to shine against targets who can fight back. Also know that Rogues are the premier low-level twink PK class due to getting their most effective tools earlier than other classes.
  
• Bard - Jack of all trades and PVP enabler. Bards grease the wheels of PVE, making everyone better at what they do. Bards can help with pulling and crowd control as well, and they generally have something they can add to any duo or group. In PVP, bards are incredibly mobile and share that mobility with others. Their resist songs are strong enough to make traditional spells ineffective. Their only failing is that they don’t murder people as well as some of the more offensive classes.
  
• Ranger - A flexible melee class with ranged options. In PVE, Rangers provide solid damage, pulling and control in the form of roots and snares. Their tracking is incredibly valuable for scouting rare and wandering mobs on timers. In PVP, Rangers are a harassing menace that alternate between safe shots, nukes and jousts and all-in high damage melee. Their tools make them very self sufficient compared to other melees.

• A Tier: Wizard, SK, Druid, Bards. Wizards and SKs are deadly classes that are difficult to pin down due to their Shadowsteps. Druids do everything pretty well, and Bards are virtually unkillable while enabling other classes to be great.
  
• B Tier: Monks, Rogues, Rangers. Monks, Rogues and Rangers do great damage once geared, but are vulnerable before that point and are often reliant on groups to help them stay on-target or alive.
  
• C Tier: Warriors, Paladins, Enchanters, Necros. Even once geared, these classes still have some structural issues that keep them from being able to use most of their kits reliably in PVP or they are heavily reliant on others to fill in gaps in their toolsets. Enchanters and Necromancers can struggle against prepared opponents who use consumables.
  
• D Tier: Cleric, Shaman, Mage. These classes have few options in PVP against geared/prepared opponents and are relegated to using just a few of their classes tools in PVP.

• A guild will need both strong PVP and strong PVE classes and players to do well in the long term. PVE feeds PVP and vice versa.
  
• Even offensively ‘weaker’ classes like Clerics, Magicians and Paladins can still bomb people with Dispels in combination with Crystal Pumice.
  
• Exp groups on red servers rarely work out perfectly in terms of class mixes. You usually have to be flexible to make things work. I've been in groups where we had a Ranger holding aggro on a snared mob, walking slowly away from it while the rest of us followed along behind smacking it. We had no tank, or healer, or slower. We just had to make due with what we had.
  
• Some of the raid-centric PVE classes like Warriors and Clerics become more valuable if we have many players. If we have few players, we'd be better off with more well-rounded hybrids since we won't be doing a lot of endgame PVE anyhow.
  
• One element of PVE is tracking to find that a spawn is up, and then racing to get everyone to it. Classes like Rangers, Bards, Druids and Wizards become invaluable here.
  
• Classes that can help new players (Druids, Enchanters) are very helpful for growing the guild as random people hop in and look for help
  
• A class that can easily farm without gear (such as a Magician or Necromancer) can be a great way to acquire gear for a melee class down the road.

I Love You! fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Aug 29, 2014

I Love You! fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Aug 29, 2014