Turns out classes easiest to play in pvm (bard, eld) are hardest to play in rvr. People are not telling you expicitly to reroll another class.
The tell you that you will have a rough, and I mean a really rough, start playing an eld.

You will die instantly (being first target of your enemy in any fight), you will be unable to use most of your class specific skills 90% of the time, you will watch many fights 90% of the time dead without being able to interact, for MONTHs before you know the RvR abilities in such detail that you can perform good (and eld CAN perform very good, its just darn hard to...)

Even many seasoned daoc players avoid playing because eldritch it's rocket science compared to playing, say a bard/druid ("flying an airplane") or BM ("driving a car"). If you are up to that, and like challenge beyond anything else, and don't mind eating a lot of dirt first, then eld is a good choice. Who knows, maybe you will be faster/better than anyone expected.

The message is just that in realm fights, elds are not that 2-button-toons that they are for levelling.

EDIT: The interesting thing about elds is that while they can deal really high damage, their true potential lies in the loads of utility that they also get. You can disease enemies, snare enemies, debuff them (reduce their stats), interrupt them from doing their stuff, nearsight them (greatly reduce their cast range), mezmerize them .... this is not really needed for levelling, but is worth so much more than damage that you will spend most of your time doing that, while avoiding any tanks or casters to engage/kill you, that you will spend only a bit of time for doing damage. Add to that a wise choice of spells to save your mana (which you will run out of quite fast) and an always open eye on the whole battlefield to use the right one of your numerous spells, and you start to get a clue why people are telling you eld is a hard-to-play class.

ZaiQQ wrote:

Artefact wrote:

ZaiQQ wrote:bard is harder and alot less unforgiving then eld. So not true about it being the hardest! :>

it's just easy to see if a bard suck :p

and its easy to see, since bard is hard.... xD

No, it's just easier to see if mez/rupt are done mostly on inc :p

Mcl= mystical crystal lore, instamt mana regen out of combat only. Active/time
Lw= long wind, use less endurance while sprinting. Passive
Purge- remove all negative effects . Active/timed
pd- physical defense, take less melee damage, passive
rp- ragng power, instant mana rwgen while in combat. Active/tmed

. . .all of these are pretty straight forward. Once you get those you can work on, as example. . .
Aug dex- incrase dexterity for casting speed
Wild power- chance to land crit damage
mastery of magery- ijcrease spell damage
mastery of focus- decrease spell resistance

Also, unless you enjoy light to xp, id suggest respec @20 if you want to group xp more, pba being more useful than anything in light groupxp wise. You have damage/snare and disease cc if you ever have to xp solo. And mana still works in the bgs very well.

Azural Kane wrote:Don't know how many people here have played classic T2A era UO... but this class so far really doesn't seem too difficult. It really seems like bad advice to tell someone to go play an entirely different breed of class than they started with. I've always played a pure magi, and enjoy the class so far. Won't be rerolling just to pick something "easier", heh.

no class is difficult to play in PvE...and if PvE is all you intend to do here then eldritch is not the best choice either. if you do want to play in PvP and you dont want to change to an easier class to play then when you get your first taste of PvP (braemar i guess - dont go there till youre level 30+) dont be surprised if its very bitter. DAoC is a one of a kind game when it comes to PvP (imo), it only takes 1 bad or inexperienced player to make a full group of 8 wipe over and over. what people are trying to tell you here is that there are classes with easier responsibilities in group PvP.

if you are going to stick with the eld, congratulations, you have picked one of the most powerful caster classes available in the game. with this class (and with the proper spec at level 50) you will have a powerful direct damage spell. you will also have other very powerful tools to use - a 65% Nearsight spell which when casted on your enemies causes them to lose range on the spells they can cast by 65%, this spell has a long range and a fast cast time and is very effective against enemy casters and healers. next you have a casted stun - stuns will stop an enemy in their tracks and prevent them from doing anything for the duration of the stun, but be aware that some enemy classes will have a realm ability called Determination and on top of that some will have a class ability called Stoicism. if they spec Determination to the highest rank it grants them 55% reduction of all crowd control spells (mez, root, stun) and the classes that get Stoicism will have 25% on top of the 55% reduction, making your stun (9 sec duration at best) last all of half a second on these melees AND gives them stun immunity for a while, whereas a stun from a shield or weapon is not affected by anything. you will also have a Mesmerization spell - mez spells are similar to a stun, they prevent the enemy from doing anything for the duration, but the spell will be broken if that enemy is attacked in anyway. so if you see someone mezzed its generally best to leave them alone until the spell wears off on its own. your mez will have a longer duration than your stun but a class you will be playing with in rvr, the bard, has a longer duration mez than you, so its best to leave the mezzing to him unless you see a good opportunity or the bard is unable to mezz at that time. as with your stun mez spells have an immunity timer when your enemies cant have that effect again for some time, and as mentioned before most melees in level 50 PvP will have Determination reducing your mez to just a few seconds. these all come from your Light spec line, now for your Mana spec line. you will have another very powerful spell called a Disease. a Disease spell will cause your target to move slower, be weaker, and cause heal spells to be highly ineffective when casted on them. Disease can be cured by the healing classes, but it has no immunity timer and due to the fact that it causes your enemies to move slower its very useful against the melee classes when you need to run away or when you see one of your groupmates taking heavy damage from a melee assist train and they cant out run them. then there are your baseline spells in the this spec - armorfactor shield, absorb shield, bladeturn, and damage shield. the first 2 are very important, always have them up or youll get 2 shotted. the bladeturn will absorb 1 melee hit while its up, and as a caster that can make a huge difference, so be sure to keep it up as much as you can (that doesnt necessarily mean casting it in the middle of a fight - there are probably better things you could do with that time). lastly is the damage shield. its crap, never use it in PvP. yes it does damage when people hit you (or the friend you casted it on) but its not really enough damage to make a difference and if you run passed someone who is rooted and they hit you it will break their root, and that can make a huge difference in a bad way. lastly you will have an ability called Quickcast. this will allow you to cast 1 spell when you would normally not be able to due to the fact that youre being interrupted. you can use this ability every 30 sec but it causes the spell that you choose to cast cost more power than usual. other than all these spells there isnt much else to cover. youll have some instant casted debuff spells, but dont get too trigger happy with them - they cost valuable power which you may wish you had later on in the fight, and your Bolt spell which you may use sometimes to knock a target out of speed or get that last bit of damage you need to drop a target who has managed to run just out of range of your DD spell with a few % left on the life bar.

now after that brief bit of information here comes some more. a huge part of DAoC is the realm point/level/ability system. as you play in PvP and kill enemies/capture keeps you will make realm points, these realm points are like experience points in PvE - the more you make the more levels you will gain, the same works for realm points - the more you make the more realm levels you will gain. with each realm level you will make 1 realm skill point. at level 20 you are given 1 free realm level which will make you Realmrank 1 Level 1 (commonly shortened to just 1L1) and gives you 1 free point to spend. for a caster i would recommend spend that point on serenity, which will increase the rate at which you regen your mana. the first battleground and probably the first place youll see PvP action and actually be able to compete is Braemar. the highest level you can be in Braemar is 35 and the highest realm rank you can be is 2L2. if you count up all your realm ability points you will have 12 to spend. after Braemar is Wilton, cap for that bg is level 43 and 3L2 (22 realm ability points to spend). the last bg is Thidranki, this is a very important bg where you will start to get a feel for what level 50 PvP will be like. the cap for it is level 49 and 4L2 (32 realm ability points to spend). i would recommend staying in this bg until you completely cap out as it will give you the most experience and the most realm abilities going into level 50 PvP.

since you are new to DAoC i think the most important thing for you to worry about at the time being is: watch, listen, and learn.

if you want to look at different specs i use this and if you want to look at realm abilities and specs for them i use this. theres also this which is a combination of the two.

Wow, impressive Toaky

Now I just want to add: When you pick a target from an enemy realm you will simply see his race. That's it. You gotta determine by the way he acts what class it is and if it's wise to use your stun, mezz, nearsight, whatever on it. It's not eneough to know your own class very well, you should know every other class in DAoC as well. As a newbie this ... might take some time.

As others said already: MANY experienced DAoC players avoid playing an eld even if they know how powerful he can be if played well, simply because they lack skill and they know it. That's what we are trying to tell you

Mythic went bananas on toys for eld when they first created classes. Almost like they robbed some abilities from light spec enchanters.

Myth: "New Hib fotm is 2 bard 1 druid 5 elds."

testytesty1234 wrote:Mythic went bananas on toys for eld when they first created classes. Almost like they robbed some abilities from light spec enchanters.

Nah, they robbed it from mentalism ments.. Even though many spells would have fit perfectly in its style

Kirillow wrote:

testytesty1234 wrote:Mythic went bananas on toys for eld when they first created classes. Almost like they robbed some abilities from light spec enchanters.

Nah, they robbed it from mentalism ments.. Even though many spells would have fit perfectly in its style

I prefer 1 overpowered and 1 broken option to two average lines. Just go for the OPed one, forget that the other one even existed and have fun

Ench and Ment have OPed Lines? Where?!

Kirillow wrote:Ench and Ment have OPed Lines? Where?!

mentalism and void!

Think the big picture. Just play eld ^^

Toaky, I'd like to see a write up for every class you've played.

I feel better with my toon just from reading it :thumbs up:

im glad someone read it