Community Class Descriptions for Noobs

Welcome to the wonderful realm of Hibernia! You may enjoy your life as a Bard. While bards cant solo..pretty much anything (even with the pet you can charm), cool off in the shade with your group killing Water Beetles and providing all of the realm's hip new buffs, heals, and ressurects to your team mates. Everyone is sure to love you with your group movespeed songs and SoS, making team leveling a breeze. Sure it is a tough class and the skillcap in weaving songs is quite high, once you get to RvR you will know why youve worked this hard leveling.

You have now evolved into the shot caller, congrats! Leading the group train as the #1 aoe mezzer (one of the biggest things in rvr) you ensure victory from the front lines (before promptly moving to safety) as a support class. Watch your faithful teammates hurl their bodies in front of damage aimed at you, because with you dead - everyone else is too!

They are the main dps casters amd always welcome in groups. They get unique spells called 'bolts', highest damage spells with longest range in game, but can occasionally be blocked by shields. Youll be 2 shotting people in no time, with some backup utility.

Edit: This is critically important in RvR (large scale pvp) because of the crowd control system. There are generally only a few people putting large groups to sleep. We need you to snipe them

So there's really 3 tiers of pet classes in DAoC:

Traditional pet classes: Enchanter, Cabalist, Spiritmaster

These are classes with a pet more as a utility. They still have a full array of spells they learn and cast themselves, and their various pets have their own (chanter has a pet that heals, a pet that nukes, etc). You control who and if the pet attacks, guards, etc but do not choose when they use abilities (theyre usually just on timers). These classes get 1 pet.

Specialty pet classes: Animist, Bonedancer, Theurgist

So these all have their own style.

Animist has a main pet that follows them around and performs similar to the traditional. However, they do have a few spells that they case and instead of coming from you, they channel through the pet. YOU spend the cast time, not the pet. However, Animist's shining feature are their short term pets. Animists can create stationary 'fire and forget' turrets. They last 2 minutes, do different things depending on your spec (roots, damage, debuffs) and attack anything close. You can also stack these. Im not sure about this server, but they used to be unlimited number..they probably capped it to a reasonable 10 at a time. This is the most mana hungry class in the game.

Bonedancers are the only class that gets more than one mobile pet. You summon a commander, and then every 15 levels unlock another pet you summoner that follows him, depending on your spec (healers, casters, archers, etc). A bonedancer with 3 pets is a force to be reckoned with and can eliminate targets incredibly quickly, pvp and pve. Since they do damage, it can be a lower power use class as well to reduce downtime. They also get spells to cast independent of their pets, like the other specialty and traditional - though generally less options than traditionals

Theurgist summons 'fire and forget' minions as well. They are mobile minions and only focus the target you cast it on, never redirecting, but they can focus down a target incredibly fast. Theurgists do NOT get a pet that follows them like the rest so far, however they get a wider spell array like a traditional pet caster. Their pets do various things by spec, like increase duration, attack ranged and slow, or stun.

Now, Necromancers. Necromancers are truly their own tier. When you cast your pet, you become an untargetable shade. This is hard untargetable, nothing can reach you..until you pet dies. Then you're back in reality, in ugly armor (why dye it if your pet is always out and youre in shade form?" at 15% health, squishy as the day you were born. All of the Necromancer's spells either a. Are cast by the pet (pet has casting time for them) or b. cast by you in shade form (you cannot move and have casting time, pet can fight and it just channels through). There are instances where you will do both, effectively casting 2 spells at once. This is arguably the best pve class and one of the more difficult pvp classes.

All melee classes and hybrids have positional styles, so let me know anything specific and I can give an overview.

I would consider anyone getting serious with the pet classes to check out how pet xp distribution works, google should help out there.

Keeping within your caster and backup healer role, look into playing a Mentalist if Hibernia. They have powerful DoT's to damage, and arent necessarily made to solo but can. It is a jack of all trades class; can charm a pet, has the most wanted thing in game (crack aka PoM aka power regen) as well as health regen (HoT), can heal, has baseline nukes and the Hib op stun. I won't lie and say it isn't a tough class though.

A sorcerer would be a more offensive approach to this, in Albion. They have devastating lifetaps and fill an interesting role: aoe crowd control but not on a healer. Their aoe mez can be cast very quickly since they are, in fact, casters. They can charm a pet and can also spec power regen spells. Edit: They also have group movespeed buff, beit lesser than Skald/Minstrel/Bard

Midgard would forefront the adventurous with the Skald. Not a caster, the Skald has midgard's best group move speed and some great group buffs in the form of chants. Power regen is NOT one of them, however, but they have health regen for downtime reduction. Skald pair best with melee teammates, but they are purely a single target class offensively. They have some minor crowd control, are great in PvP and PvE, but can be overpopulated at times (historically in classic, may be different here i guess)

Edit: The Minstrel is also an odd beast of a class. Stealth (basic, not really focused on usually), insta stun, weapons styles, instruments (power, health, movespeed, etc), some instant DD's, AoE mez, chain armor..lord - almost forgot about this one