Archived from groups: alt.games.everquest (More info?)
So at this point I've played almost every profession allowed to the free
accounts (Keeper and Shade require an expansion, and any expansion not
only costs money, which wouldn't bother me, but changes the account from
free to monthly fee... and at the moment, I'm not committed enough to AO
to start paying a fee). Here's my breakdown of the professions:
Adventurer. This was the first profession I played, and I need to go
back and revisit it, because I didn't know enough about the game to
really know what was going on. From the start, though, its a pretty
good one, with healing nanos and a skill set which makes dual weilding
eitehr ranged or melee fairly cheap. From the forums, it appears that
this profession is second best at healing, which makes it sound very
attractive particularly for soloing. Groups don't seem to be very
excited about the class, at least at low levels, demanding doctors since
they seem more dedicated to heals.
Engineer. Again, I still didn't know a whole lot about AO when I ran
this guy, so my experience was tainted, running 7 levels or so with just
the starting nano, which in the case of engineer is somewhat crippling,
like runnning around in EQ at level 8 with your level 1 pet.
Enforcer. I found this the least likable profession I tried, although
possibly part of that was going the Atrox route; everyone says that you
should use a big two hander, but the first nano you get increases your
1hb skill instead. Only did 3 levels with the guy, very hard to get
gear on or do much of anything due to his twisted starting stats; I
imagine some of this was inexperience on my part, and also that after
getting out of the starting levels the difference caused by a few low
stats wouldn't be so noticable, offset by the high starting stats in
other areas.
Doctor. Here, on the other hand, is a very viable profession at the low
end of the game, of course it helps that by here I finally had a good
idea of how progression should work. Sort of the flip side of an
adventurer, concentrate on one ranged weapon, perhaps dual weilding, but
better at healing, best in the game for this, plus some decent buffing.
Surprisingly this worked really well for soloing too, because in AO
you don't seem to get interrupted much, and the targetting system means
you can primary target your prey, secondary yourself, and heal as
needed. From the web forums, apparantly you can still do this in the
200+ range, and the highly efficient heals means that a somewhat lower
damage output doesn't matter, you can still solo bosses nobody else can,
because you can simply outlast them.
Soldier. By this point I had a pretty good idea how the game works, at
least in the low end; I decided to commit to this guy up to 25 before
going back to playing the field. No heals, but a variety of buffs, from
skill ups to HP boosts, to AC increases, to some that reduce incoming
damage and in some cases reflect a portion of it back to the attacker.
Biggest problem I found was not having the NCU to run all the buff lines
on myself! Well, that and running low on IP points trying to keep
weapons and nanos and so on all in good shape. Finally at 24 I found
out I could buy more NCU from stores, and almost doubled my NCU
capacity. I still know comparatively little about the game over 10, and
this characters suffered from that, but its a foray into the realm anyway.
Martial Artist. Many people love this one, I'm not one of them. I
tried going weaponless, what this means is that you can't upgrade your
weaponry; every other class can get upgraded damage output within a few
levels of starting the game, to a point where you won't be able to do
better till your mid teens unless you have a rich uncle on the mainland.
I tried Bow as an alternative, but then wasn't able to use any of the
special martial arts skills I was in the class for in the first place.
Metaphysician. Didn't go too far with this one either, basically a pet
and nuke class, but as with all classes at the low levels, the nukes
were underwhelming, and I didn't like the pets much either. Apparantly
at higher levels you can run multiple pets, some of which will heal and
so on, which might be interesting; I didn't get that far.
Trader. Never did figure out the point of this profession; relatively
poor at combat, skills geared to a variety of buffs, one interesting
thing was the ability to charm a target... but doing so, at least at low
levels, means being rooted in place yourself, and given the spacing
between mobs in missions, this means you end up putting the charmed pet
on "hunt" mode, and sitting around waiting for exp messages to roll in
or the pet to break charm. Oh the thrill.
Agent. Nano's oriented around concealment, and the profession is
oriented around sneaking and sniping. Trouble is, in my experience, its
difficult to set up a sniper shot, because the mobs tend to know you are
there unless you've been sneaking from well away from them; their
awareness range is much larger than their aggro range. If you do manage
to set up a sniper shot, its unimpressive, similar to the damage done by
a weapon on full auto... but unlike this shot, no matter how long the
combat goes on you are never going to get another sniper shot in. I'm
told that eventually the damage done by sniping becomes very dramatic.
The other thing that agents can do is fake other professions, using this
talent to put on gear restricted to other professions, and to use nanos
from other professions. I didn't manage to do this at all, you need
100NCU just to run those nanos... and at the time I hadn't figured out
how that was possible. Of course its by getting a good multislot belt
and loading up 5 good memories into the deck slots; some expense
involved, but not impossible at even a low level I guess. Off limits,
though, are the pet nanos, which is a pity because that was my first
thought for using this part of the profession.
Bureaucrat. This is my current project, its another pet class, starts
out with no pet oddly, but several are in the package sold on the
island. In addition, you've got direct damage nano, and something that
looks like a mez; the latter hasn't been useful so far because mobs
don't come double on the island much, and its not hard to pull singles
in the subway or on missions, at least at low levels. From my soldier
experience, it should come in more handy at higher levels. Of the three
pet classes, this is the one that looks most interesting to me, in part
perhaps because the pet looks much more cool than the automaton of the
engineer or the Anger Manifestation of the metaphysicians.
I haven't tried the Fixer yet, nor the Nanotech. I'm not sure what the
fixer is supposed to be, the Nanotech looks like a nuke oriented class,
which my experience with other classes suggests is going to be painful
at low levels, where there are no nano replenishment devices to be had.
So at this point I've played almost every profession allowed to the free
accounts (Keeper and Shade require an expansion, and any expansion not
only costs money, which wouldn't bother me, but changes the account from
free to monthly fee... and at the moment, I'm not committed enough to AO
to start paying a fee). Here's my breakdown of the professions:
Adventurer. This was the first profession I played, and I need to go
back and revisit it, because I didn't know enough about the game to
really know what was going on. From the start, though, its a pretty
good one, with healing nanos and a skill set which makes dual weilding
eitehr ranged or melee fairly cheap. From the forums, it appears that
this profession is second best at healing, which makes it sound very
attractive particularly for soloing. Groups don't seem to be very
excited about the class, at least at low levels, demanding doctors since
they seem more dedicated to heals.
Engineer. Again, I still didn't know a whole lot about AO when I ran
this guy, so my experience was tainted, running 7 levels or so with just
the starting nano, which in the case of engineer is somewhat crippling,
like runnning around in EQ at level 8 with your level 1 pet.
Enforcer. I found this the least likable profession I tried, although
possibly part of that was going the Atrox route; everyone says that you
should use a big two hander, but the first nano you get increases your
1hb skill instead. Only did 3 levels with the guy, very hard to get
gear on or do much of anything due to his twisted starting stats; I
imagine some of this was inexperience on my part, and also that after
getting out of the starting levels the difference caused by a few low
stats wouldn't be so noticable, offset by the high starting stats in
other areas.
Doctor. Here, on the other hand, is a very viable profession at the low
end of the game, of course it helps that by here I finally had a good
idea of how progression should work. Sort of the flip side of an
adventurer, concentrate on one ranged weapon, perhaps dual weilding, but
better at healing, best in the game for this, plus some decent buffing.
Surprisingly this worked really well for soloing too, because in AO
you don't seem to get interrupted much, and the targetting system means
you can primary target your prey, secondary yourself, and heal as
needed. From the web forums, apparantly you can still do this in the
200+ range, and the highly efficient heals means that a somewhat lower
damage output doesn't matter, you can still solo bosses nobody else can,
because you can simply outlast them.
Soldier. By this point I had a pretty good idea how the game works, at
least in the low end; I decided to commit to this guy up to 25 before
going back to playing the field. No heals, but a variety of buffs, from
skill ups to HP boosts, to AC increases, to some that reduce incoming
damage and in some cases reflect a portion of it back to the attacker.
Biggest problem I found was not having the NCU to run all the buff lines
on myself! Well, that and running low on IP points trying to keep
weapons and nanos and so on all in good shape. Finally at 24 I found
out I could buy more NCU from stores, and almost doubled my NCU
capacity. I still know comparatively little about the game over 10, and
this characters suffered from that, but its a foray into the realm anyway.
Martial Artist. Many people love this one, I'm not one of them. I
tried going weaponless, what this means is that you can't upgrade your
weaponry; every other class can get upgraded damage output within a few
levels of starting the game, to a point where you won't be able to do
better till your mid teens unless you have a rich uncle on the mainland.
I tried Bow as an alternative, but then wasn't able to use any of the
special martial arts skills I was in the class for in the first place.
Metaphysician. Didn't go too far with this one either, basically a pet
and nuke class, but as with all classes at the low levels, the nukes
were underwhelming, and I didn't like the pets much either. Apparantly
at higher levels you can run multiple pets, some of which will heal and
so on, which might be interesting; I didn't get that far.
Trader. Never did figure out the point of this profession; relatively
poor at combat, skills geared to a variety of buffs, one interesting
thing was the ability to charm a target... but doing so, at least at low
levels, means being rooted in place yourself, and given the spacing
between mobs in missions, this means you end up putting the charmed pet
on "hunt" mode, and sitting around waiting for exp messages to roll in
or the pet to break charm. Oh the thrill.
Agent. Nano's oriented around concealment, and the profession is
oriented around sneaking and sniping. Trouble is, in my experience, its
difficult to set up a sniper shot, because the mobs tend to know you are
there unless you've been sneaking from well away from them; their
awareness range is much larger than their aggro range. If you do manage
to set up a sniper shot, its unimpressive, similar to the damage done by
a weapon on full auto... but unlike this shot, no matter how long the
combat goes on you are never going to get another sniper shot in. I'm
told that eventually the damage done by sniping becomes very dramatic.
The other thing that agents can do is fake other professions, using this
talent to put on gear restricted to other professions, and to use nanos
from other professions. I didn't manage to do this at all, you need
100NCU just to run those nanos... and at the time I hadn't figured out
how that was possible. Of course its by getting a good multislot belt
and loading up 5 good memories into the deck slots; some expense
involved, but not impossible at even a low level I guess. Off limits,
though, are the pet nanos, which is a pity because that was my first
thought for using this part of the profession.
Bureaucrat. This is my current project, its another pet class, starts
out with no pet oddly, but several are in the package sold on the
island. In addition, you've got direct damage nano, and something that
looks like a mez; the latter hasn't been useful so far because mobs
don't come double on the island much, and its not hard to pull singles
in the subway or on missions, at least at low levels. From my soldier
experience, it should come in more handy at higher levels. Of the three
pet classes, this is the one that looks most interesting to me, in part
perhaps because the pet looks much more cool than the automaton of the
engineer or the Anger Manifestation of the metaphysicians.
I haven't tried the Fixer yet, nor the Nanotech. I'm not sure what the
fixer is supposed to be, the Nanotech looks like a nuke oriented class,
which my experience with other classes suggests is going to be painful
at low levels, where there are no nano replenishment devices to be had.
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