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Post by FenrilPolar on Jun 17, 2005 3:04:20 GMT
I've been playing (if that's what you can call it) for a while now, but never with enough focus or time to get good. And I've realized for a while now that I'll need to learn to play with others to perform better, rather than putting up my own pitiful solo numbers.
I guess maybe I was just scared of putting up a loss instead of profit, and of not pleasing whatever bashers I have at my back, but you never learn without trying, right? It takes the rare player to get it right the very first time...
So anyway, I want to figure out how to play, and what better way than with my first class (and best class, though that's not saying much) in the mud?
Anyway, the gist of it is that while paladins are kind of rare on the mud in general, the best players seem to know how to use them, so I thought I'd ask for some advice - what kinds of areas to cut my teeth on, what heals are better (I'm an orc, so Nepeth is a kind of pain. Which is a shame because otherwise kniggets would seem the best food and chickers one of the better alcohols.), what kinds of equipment are useful, and just how to make a profit... and aliases that might be useful.
that's a mouthload and I'm not asking for all of the answers, or tanking skills to be handed to me on a silver platter - just some direction. And if the best advice is just to go out and give it a shot, then just say so *mgrin*
Thanks in advance.
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Post by tehlung on Jun 17, 2005 3:11:16 GMT
if you are that eager to learn to party...and want to do it tanking, i'd advise making a dwarf cleric.
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Post by Tempest on Jun 17, 2005 5:02:10 GMT
And when you get to 14 with a dwarf cleric, tag behind Constantine or Calvin's pally and watch. At least, that's what taught me the most. Constantine takes his time enough that you can see what's going on, and Calvin's pally is fast enough to show you at what speed you need to act at. I think (not an expert at all on the game or any class specifically) that playing any tank is really just about knowing your class and the game enough to stay alive at first, and anything else is just icing on the cake. When I tanked for the short while recently, I was scared quite a bit when my fixes would fail, or I didn't manage my weight right and I couldn't pull potions out of my pack in time. However, cleric (especially dwarf) is quite sturdy, and those scares probably would have been death if I were playing an elf. My only tanking before my cleric was necro a few years ago, so I was really just a wimp hiding behind a revenant, and that required less work for the most part. I also rarely ever had bashers because my undead had a habit of turning on them (ask Listerine and Hed about that one). My biggest problem was also knowing which areas to go to. Any downtime trying to think of where to go is the biggest waste. Also, timing heals and such was something that I had to learn (and didn't fully learn well). I think that I pulled some good kills, but my downtime kept me from pulling good numbers. Also in agreement with Lunger, a cleric isn't dependant on alignment, so you can get a lot more kills in to practice on without having to think about the right aligned areas. Once you get cleric down, tanking with pally would really just be learning the specifics of the class, I suppose. If you're bent on learning to tank with a paladin, I would guess that it's not much tougher than cleric, as opposed to a weaker non-(normal)-tank class like rogue or a usually-solo-tank class like ranger. These are just my opinions, of course, and I'd hope that other people have different views so that you can see it from various perspectives. I'll stop rambling now.
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Post by Pillar on Jun 17, 2005 15:30:27 GMT
If you're bent on learning to tank with a paladin, I would guess that it's not much tougher than cleric, as opposed to a weaker non-(normal)-tank class like rogue or a usually-solo-tank class like ranger. woah! i'd say that a rogue-led party can def do better than a cleric-led party. i've pulled my fastest parties while tanking as a rogue. granted, i did my fair share with p3 (human cleric), but siaynoq (orc rogue) was def my best tank to date.
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Post by CalviN on Jun 17, 2005 15:49:25 GMT
*nod Lunger* Yep. Just like I tell every newbie I meet to join Knigglets... if you want to learn how to tank, do it with a cleric. You can learn with a pally, but there's more variables involved. Until you really learn HOW to tank, what kills you can do, in which order, what heals to use and when, how to manage the weight of the heals and the weight of your armour.... then you won't really be able to concentrate on fine tuning your tanking skills to another class. With a cleric, you can kill anything... there's no allignment issues, no worries about any one npc or area being harder than others, no making sure you vary your areas to adjust for allign... just get heals, kill, sell.
Simplicity. Learn how to walk first, and when you stop falling down, THEN try to run.
Of course, if you're stubborn and/or don't want to waste the time creating a new dwarf cleric alt... send me a tell sometime and if I'm not busy, I'll walk you through the basics.
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Post by FenrilPolar on Jun 17, 2005 15:59:40 GMT
Actually already raising a dwarf cleric - I figure that the logic in it is solid enough...
Thanks for the tips so far though.
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Post by Tempest on Jun 17, 2005 20:10:32 GMT
woah! i'd say that a rogue-led party can def do better than a cleric-led party. i've pulled my fastest parties while tanking as a rogue. granted, i did my fair share with p3 (human cleric), but siaynoq (orc rogue) was def my best tank to date. Okay, let's see. (Rogue) hp loss hp loss heals hp loss hp loss heals hp loss hp loss no heals! (Cleric) hp loss hp loss heals hp loss hp loss heals hp loss hp loss fix! hp loss hp loss fix! hp loss hp loss fix! Ahem. We're talking about younglings tanking, not skilled players like your sorry ass. *bkiss*
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Post by Wolvie on Jun 17, 2005 23:43:46 GMT
I think it might be more beneficial to start tanking as a rogue (or paladin) first. You are forced to learn how to plan your kills better because you can get stuffed/drunk really fast if you dont and you learn what kills are super hard on your pots. Once you get these sorts of classes down, then go work a cleric and when tanking with that alt its almost like you are on cruise control (which is probably why I find tanking with mine so boring).
At the same time, along the lines of the suggestions to follow around someone else, I think the best way to learn how to tank is to make a basher and master the basics of bashing first. By this I mean not just being one of those followers who tag along letting all the other bashers do heals and eq. Heck, if you can learn to effectively juggle heals and eq at the same time, then you are that much closer to actual tanking. You will also learn when to tell them stupid newbie bears we can be stuck with sometimes (a.k.a. Machine) which kills not to throw their boomers at, how to access certain parts of areas (achyra, pknight, etc.), and such important knowledge.
So anyways, my first tank was a rogue and for a while I was stuck in the 180-250 range, 300 maybe if I was lucky to have 3 bashers (I think the only reason I got bashers was because I generally went for 4-5 hours to hit that 1mil party xp mark) . But the thing to note is that I think I only put up those numbers initially because I had been a basher for a long while previous to that and knew the areas to hit and what to do in them. Then I was able to work from there to improve my numbers.
When I made my cleric alt, these numbers were easily passed over only I was much more efficient on heals and cash.
As a disclaimer though: I am still stuck at the 200-250 mark with 1 basher. So I am by no means a master tank, but I did recently have fun with 400k in an hour with 2 bashers where I challenged myself to hit each area only once in that hour (there were only lik 2-3 excepts, and in those cases I wasn't able to kill the meaty critter in the area the first time) with my new rogue alt. The only thing is that, after having only a cleric alt as a tank since I wizzed my old rogue, I feel like such a horrible pot whore with my new rogue. But it still feels better playing the rogue than the cleric...
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Post by Lanstro on Jun 18, 2005 4:04:25 GMT
paladins can fix now? *calls over paldin*
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Post by Tempest on Jun 18, 2005 20:14:56 GMT
They can? Where?!
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Post by Machine on Jun 20, 2005 1:50:12 GMT
Somewhat new person wanting to become a tank? Choose cleric. Most simplistic tanking class. Does well solo, for those after reboot eq runs. No align restrictions. Just don't wait to pray fix until you're at 50. Fix at 80 or so. Give yourself time to recover if your prayer fails. Just be smart.
When you learned a bit more and wanna spice it up, go rouge/pally/necro/ranger. Rogues are fun for the stabbing/tripping. Using longsword as a rogue is cool too. I say fu<k the other three classes, I hate them. But, if you can figure them out and tank at least 150k/hr/person, send me a tell I wanna bash for you.
Screw kniggets/crutch. Get a Scythe invite and use knuggets/sunset.
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Post by Pillar on Jun 20, 2005 13:32:51 GMT
I think it might be more beneficial to start tanking as a rogue (or paladin) first. You are forced to learn how to plan your kills better because you can get stuffed/drunk really fast if you dont and you learn what kills are super hard on your pots. omfg, i laughed so hard when i read that. if some of you older players remember wolvie tanking, he was the biggest potwhore there ever was. no knock on wolvie, i just thought it was hysterical him talking about saving pots and the like. pot, kettle, black. hahahahahaha! *cuddle wolvie*
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Post by Wolvie on Jun 20, 2005 15:49:07 GMT
*snicker* I think that was my point... back then I knew I used up a lot of pots (and still do) but it at least felt normal since I didn't have a cleric yet. I was forced to do a little better planning so I could at least make the cash and xp to offset my whorishness. If I had a cleric from the outset, I dunno if I'd have ever been able to tank with any other class since that increase in pot usage would just seem too painful and I would have gone right back to the cleric. Although, they might not bore me to all hell if I had no other reference.
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Post by The Abyss on Jun 20, 2005 15:54:28 GMT
at least u can buy more pots since the levels came in
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Post by tuga on Jun 21, 2005 11:55:22 GMT
Okay, let's see. (Rogue) hp loss hp loss heals hp loss hp loss heals hp loss hp loss no heals! (Cleric) hp loss hp loss heals hp loss hp loss heals hp loss hp loss fix! hp loss hp loss fix! hp loss hp loss fix! Ahem. We're talking about younglings tanking, not skilled players like your sorry ass. *bkiss* ok lesse. (rogue) ambush trip hp loss hp loss hp loss npc dies (cleric) hp loss hp loss hp loss hp loss fix hp loss hp loss hp loss hp loss fix hp loss hp loss hp loss hp loss basher 1dies of boredom hp loss hp loss fix hp loss hp loss hp loss hp loss npc dies laughing ..
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