Yet another "help me pick a class".

Tsuujin

First, I understand how old and tiring the questions get. My apologies in advance for asking another of them. I promise I spent time reading through the forums before opening a new post.

I'm a returning IRE player, having played fairly extensively nearly a decade ago, and once or twice briefly since. The game has changed pretty wildly, and I'm having a hard time getting back up to speed.

So, I need help choosing a class that will work well for my time and financial constraints. I've been reading through the forums over the last few days, and it's tough to get a balanced opinion of classes without artifacts. Nearly every class discussion I've read compares classes with an assumption that several artifacts are going to available; I will probably never purchase one. I'm willing to tri-trans my class, but that's probably as much as I'm going to be able to invest.

With that said, I need suggestions for a bashing-based class. I do plan on getting back into PvP at some point, but realistically most of my time for the foreseeable future is going to be bashing and working on building a new combat system. Here are my thoughts so far:

• I tend to favor physical classes, and I tend to prefer higher speed classes in general; this is not a hard rule though.
• Again, I will not be purchasing artifacts anywhere in the foreseeable future.
• Blademaster looks appealing, but if the forums are accurate, they're probably not my best bet.
• Bard seemed to be heavily suggested and was my first attempt to come back, but I just can't wrap my head around the class flavor and is out of the running.
  
• I played Monk in the past, so I'm not sure that I'd want to do that again. If it's great, I may go that route anyways.
  
• I will need help! Suggestions for an active city with friendly players is necessary, and I know that some classes are only available for certain cities.
• I will have maybe at most an hour a day to play—I work full time and am also building my own business on the side, so free time is not a luxury I have. As a result, I can't pick anything with a high learning curve or a lot of time investment required (e.g., countless hours forging weapons).

Thanks for putting up with another of these threads!

Nazihk

Tsuujin said:

@Nazihk this is great information. I have a couple of followup questions:

• Do you still need to trans a class skill in order to wear the best armor?
• The runes seem like kind of a pain to upkeep from what I have read. If I were to say that I don't care about being non-factional, would that change your opinion on which of the knight classes to take?
• Regardless of the above, is there a particular city you would recommend?

No, you can wear fullplate right from the start, you don't even need to make it yourself.

Runes as a Runewarden are not a pain to keep up at all. Once you learn Runebinding(Fabledish, I think?) your runes will last a LONG time before they fade. I generally only have to sketch my runes once per RL day. 

Whichever city you like the idea of the most. They're mostly pretty healthy right now. My personal suggestion would be Eleusis, Mhaldor, or Targossas. They've all got fairly conflict-oriented ideologies that regularly see them picking fights and getting involved in things.  

• Targossas is militant Good. If you've ever played WoW, think Argent Dawn. Light and Good and all that jazz. Very into serving Good by killing not-Good.
• Mhaldor is Evil. Conquering the world, demons, blood sacrificed, etc.
• Eleusis is Nature. Protect the wilds from encroaching civilizations, etc. Raze the cities and restore the world to its natural state. That kind of thing.

Those are my big three because they're easy to jump into and they are very conflict oriented. You're not usually going to see those ideologies sitting on the sidelines during events, because they're always going to have some motivation to get involved.

The other cities are fuzzier.

• Ashtan is about the Court of Chaos. Honestly, I think that this sounds pretty awesome in theory but I know absolutely nothing about it.  When Ashtan is on an upswing they tend to be very aggressive as far as PvP is concerned, enough so that I'd almost put them up with the big three. I might not know WHY they get involved in fights, but I know that they do and that's honestly enough for me.
• Cyrene is neutral, almost aggressively so. No raiding. No crusades. No helping other cities defend against raids because that might make somebody raid Cyrene in retaliation for you helping. Not a terrible place to be if all you want to do is bash and chat and maybe do some arena spars, but nothing that I would choose for myself or recommend to somebody else.
• Hashan is neutralish in that they don't have really have a "We kill things for _________" ideology, but they will raid and crusade when they have the people. As for what their ideology is, well. I spent several RL months there and I can't tell you what it is, but the people who do like it tend to really like it. 

Nazihk

Runewarden. 

• It's a non-factional class, so you can take it anywhere.
• Runewarden, unartifacted, is one of the tankiest professions around. 
• Bashing powerhouse
• Physical class
• Weapon and armor stats are largely static now, there is no repeated forging for stats.
• It has four different specializations. It costs 100 lessons to switch between them, but it's still basically 4 classes in one.

Specializations:

1. DWC. Two scimitars. Fast attacks. PvP is limb breaks and toxin usage, will require some affliction tracking.
2. 2h. Bastard sword or warhammer. Slower attacks. No real affliction tracking needed, combat uses special 'fractures' that you cure by applying health instead of drinking it. Very simple to get started with. 
3. DWB. Two morningstars. Fast attacks. No afflictions. PvP is limb breaks into a instantkill.
4. Sword and Shield. The PvP is fun, but it is complete and utter dogshit for bashing, so you can basically disregard it.

For unartifacted bashing, I'd suggest 2h or DWC. I feel like 2h is a bit better but DWC is also very strong.

Kiet

For a bashing focus and no arties, nothing really beats knights. You have three flavors, depending on what city you want to join (if any), and then the specializations that Nazihk mentioned.

Tsuujin

@Nazihk this is great information. I have a couple of followup questions:

• Do you still need to trans a class skill in order to wear the best armor?
• The runes seem like kind of a pain to upkeep from what I have read. If I were to say that I don't care about being non-factional, would that change your opinion on which of the knight classes to take?
• Regardless of the above, is there a particular city you would recommend?

Kiet

Tsuujin said:

@Nazihk this is great information. I have a couple of followup questions:

• Do you still need to trans a class skill in order to wear the best armor?
• The runes seem like kind of a pain to upkeep from what I have read. If I were to say that I don't care about being non-factional, would that change your opinion on which of the knight classes to take?
• Regardless of the above, is there a particular city you would recommend?

Everyone's just going to recommend their own city. Just pick a city whose RP (or lack  thereof, lol) you'd enjoy. All the cities but Ashtan are currently pretty healthy, population-wise, and even Ashtan's not doing as badly as it was a few months ago.

Tsuujin

@Kiet haha, fair enough.

Mathilda

Knights can wear the best armour (fullplate) without needing to Trans anything. As for runes, Runewardens have an ability called runebinding that basically makes runes last 12 RL hours on themselves, so it isn't a pain to upkeep.

Tsuujin

@Nazihk awesome, thanks again! Think that gets me what I need.

Achad

I would like to thank @Nazihk and everyone who is on this thread. Wealth of information and helped me a lot, as I am roughly in the same situation as @Tsuujin.