I went back and read through a few of my old EverQuest Legends posts from Blaugust, and I love how cheery and bright-eyed I was about playing the old school EverQuest game again (with a new twist). I was so happy about going through Kedge Keep again and killing mermaids and sharks.
Fast forward to today, I just finished grinding Kedge again for like ten levels, and I still have two more to go until I can enter into the planes, and yeah, I'm not so bright-eyed anymore. ON THE OTHER HAND . . . I accomplished a fun thing that I wanted to do!
STORY TIME! I was hanging out in New Sebilis one day and I saw the craziest looking red Iksar warder, and I was like . . . wait a second, what?! I WANT THAT! Come to find out, it's an enchanter illusion. It was at that moment that I decided to try swapping out Shadow knight with Enchanter (Making my build a Beastlord / Cleric / Enchanter trio).
Adding that Enchanter third class to the mix, you immediately realize that (just like everyone in and out of the game has been saying) Mezzing enemies is incredibly easy. Gone is the need to single pull. You just pull up to 30 enemies and recast Mez every 20+ seconds while whittling them down one-by-one.
So far swapping out Shadow knight for Enchanter has been interesting, so let me talk through some of that:
1- Gear -- Surprisingly, not a lot of my gear needed to be swapped out. I've been opting for plate with wisdom stats while I've been going down the Heavy Armor route anyway (vice plate with intelligence stats) and that means most of my gear already had cleric requirements on it. I did have to swap out my super sick ultra-modded out sword for the lesser modded out and less cool Baton of the Sky, but it's been working pretty great regardless.
2- Playstyle -- Beastlord excels with fast casting nukes (the .5 second variety), and it makes for a very clicky-clicky play style. Throw in the drains and debuffs from Shadow Knight and it's a pretty fun and busy playstyle, which I like. Swapping out the drains for the Enchanter Anarchy nuke, makes me feel like I'm just casting that nuke over and over to melt things down while occasionally taking a swing from my Baton in-between casts.
Of course, as I stated earlier, it's all about the mezz with Enchanter, so I haven't been really worrying too much about using the Cleric Calm to single pull. I've just been pulling everything and dealing deaths one by one. I am interested to see how this plays out once I switch from targeting trash mobs to fighting raid bosses. We'll see how it goes. No Harm Touch and health drains might make things tricky.
3- Mount -- The big miss here is losing the Shadow Knight's Unholy Steed. I had wasted a lot of my money on a lower quality bridle when I was goofing around with an all caster build, and now I regret it. I actually run faster than my purchased horse and even worse, you can't sell that bridle back . . . so that's just 30k plat wasted . . . I'll have to save up to atone for my mistake.
4- Illusions -- The best I could muster up before was a clicky dark elf or a skeleton illusion. Now I can disguise myself as any race and even cast illusions that give you cool benefits like the Boon of Garou. I can even cast that Boon spell on BOTH me and my warder.
5- Pet -- The thing I haven't tried yet is charming a pet in place of my warder or using the enchanter's animation pet. I figure, if I do, at least I'll still get the beastlord pet buffs to make, whatever pet it is, more awesome. It feels like I'd have to go deep in whatever zone I was in to find whatever charmable pet I want and then spend an additional 5 minutes setting up that pet with buffs . . . so why not just keep using my beastlord pet? It's working fine so far . . . I would parse it of course if I did do it (for the science).
6- Mana -- I don't know if it's the clarity buff, more efficient costing spells, or a combination of the two, but I haven't had to worry about mana . . . AT ALL. I typically use the mana regeneration stance anyway unless I'm trying to land a debuff and opt for the better debuff stance, but right now I'm not hurting for mana in the least.
7- Tradeskill -- If I ever wanted to take up jewelry crafting, now would be the time to do it since I can enchant metals now. I got Alchemy up to 250, but I haven't really leveled anything else so far. I've got a stash of black diamonds just waiting for me to take the time.
Anyway, gimme a week or so and I'll have another level 50 class to add to my collection. I know I did it in an inefficient way by not using three classes I hadn't leveled to 50, but I'm just kind of a sucker for the beastlord/cleric play style.
Have any tips? Drop a comment below.
Happy Dueling!
1 comment:
The beastlord is a great example of how a pet companion can define a whole class, and the warder really does feel like a partner rather than a tool. That bond is what keeps pet classes so popular across MMOs. I have been covering a lighter take on the same idea in Roblox, where players collect and ride their pets. The keyless Ride a Pet scripts at https://rideapetscripts.com/ let players jump into Ride a Pet without a key system in the way. Enjoyed this look at what makes the class click.
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