Lucky 13

I started playing EQ2 a few days ago and have been enjoying playing a Conjurer, now i've got a feel for the game i was wanting to start a Priest alt.

I've done a little reading around about the various priest classes and this is the general impression i got.

Shamans = Slow soloers, good at preventing damage but not so good at healing it, used as MT healer in raids.

Druids = Relatively fast solo'ers, pretty good healers, fun to play as but the most commonly played healer classes by a large margin.

Clerics = Average soloers, large heals, their main heals don't happen if a ward is up?

Templar/mystic/warden have slightly better heals then their evil counterparts, while the evil counterparts have slightly more offensive power.

Is that impression correct?
I started my conjurer so i could have a class to play when i'm in the mood to solo, consequently i want to create a priest class when i want to group. For that reason i was hoping to find out which of the priest classes is best and worst for finding groups and raid spots?

Any advice or help with this would be appreciated

Fiyy

I'd have to say wardens = slowest soloer ever, they do close to no dmg but can throw the green up faster then anyone

Altho you might just wanna hop down to the class forums on this site and see what each class has to say about themselves in their posts. Wardens hate how useless they are in raids because they do little dmg and have no useful debuffs; for example.

Aside from that your other assumptions are correct.

Hesster

Just wanted to point out that conjurors are also welcome in groups due to their high DPS. I rarely have problems finding groups on my conjy when I'm not in the mood for soloing.

the_mo

clerics use reactives, these heal X, after theyve taken damage. if the ward from the shaman eats every single point of damage then theres no effect on the health-bar of your target, so the reactive is not triggered at all. on the other hand if theres currently no ward present, a reactive works kind of like a small ward against every hit (but you cannot prevent lethal strikes with it)

as for solo speed.. if you mean the time it takes to kill things solo, your best bet is an inquisitor. you will even be able to take out mobs designed to be killed in groups later in the game... if youve got the right equip. im not saying wardens couldnt do that as well, which they can, but they tend to need like 30 minutes to kill a heroic guy which doesnt take 2 minutes with an inquisitor (im exagerating on that part, but warden do friggin low damage and it takes forever to kill something)

first: both druids are consiered neutral, you can play a fury or a warden in both freeport/neriak or at the tree-huggers.

considering templars, the above statement is correct. where an inquisitor got reactive damage spells (target takes damage for doing a specific action... theres 3 reactives for that: when inflicting damage to anyone else, when using a combat art and when using a benefitial spell), the templar got additional heal procs and a ward against magic damage

as for druids.. a fury usually has TONS of wis and int, meaning a huge power pool and does lots of damage when using its spells... whereas the warden has got melee abilities which need STR to use and do less damage then fury-nukes afaik. comparing the healpower... a warden got multiple HOTs (heal over time, cast once, ticks small heals every X seconds) which all need to be kept running to reach a nice heal-amount. whereas the fury only got one single-target and one group-HOT which are not important at all because they have way better heals: a heal, beeing cast very quick, and the heal triggering 10sec after casting it... triggering a groupheal of 2000 per target (avg.). the other one is a heal which is very quick and can be reused often which does more healing, when the target healed is below 50% health (you can bring a non-tank from orange to green/full with one cast of that spell)

as for shamans: defiler exceed mystics by far. theyve got more warding power, more important debuffs and do buff more hitpoints. mystics on the other hand do also use STR like wardens to do some damage and buff strength and some other nice groupbuffs, which dont necesarily belong to a tank-group in a raid-environment

hennyo

If your considering soloing alot, remeber that fury and inquistor will be your easiest soloers. Also mysitcs have a single buff that will in the forseeable future making them always have a raid spot, called bolster.

Both clerics, templar and inquistor, are the strongest tanking style soloers in the game in high end gear and capped aa. While inquistors tend to solo faster than templars and lower gear requirements as well, templars tend to solo slightly slower and have higher gear requirements but are also can kill the hardest mobs of any class while tanking solo due to increased defensive ability over inquistors for slightly lowered offence.

Clerics do extremely well as soloers in low levels as well, they just require alot more twinking than other classes tho. The speed wont compare to a dps class, and what you can solo wont match an enchanter. Even then, higher levels and high end gear you can begin to witness the true strengh of cleric soloing where other classes cant keep up. Granted in ANY circumstance where tanking style soloing isn't required enchanters will always be king in hard soloing, while summoners will be king of fast soloing.

It could be argued tho, that inquistors are the fastest ^^^ soloers in the game. It should be noted, when doing continous pulls, because bruisers can probally drop a ^^^ fastest while tanking but they have downtime between every pull, while a high end inquistor will be able to continuously pull mobs non stop without ever needing downtime.

Ethar

Just remember that soloing is largely gear dependant. As a new priest you shouldn't count on soloing much at all until you improve your spell quality/equipment.

Ti'iesinyo'face

Bad Ass post for the Inquis here. I have to agree w/ tho. If you can afford it, inquis/temp FTW. M1's and PLUS wearing plate...pshhh...better be slingin' rock yo'! U be spendin' more at Sizzler on yo' babies MAMA than pimpiin' these classes out!

Nahh, for da' realz'... YOU'RE A HEALER!! you can find a group more than any class no matter what kind of hlr u r!! Might as well go as a Inquis/Fury. Both are great healers grp wise. While one does bad ass melee dmg and the other does bad ass nuke dmg. And both are arguably the best soloers in the hlr catagory.

Sheeeeeiiit!!! Go Inquis, might as well tank it while u healing it! Then slap a Guard on the ass and tell him good game

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3/75th Rgr Rgt. Running 6min miles, providing calluses to yo' mama's vagina, bustin' nutz on ya lil sis's chin, and shitn' in ur muh'fuckin' cornflakes....NIGGAAHHH!!!!