Best farming class?

[NammyTheShammy]

I haven't played since the Shadows of Luclin came out (I was and still remain disgusted with the characture models), so I can't speak about the newest lands.

I played a 53rd level Shaman and would occasionaly go out to East Karana(I think that was the name) to farm all the spiders out there (and the hill giants and evil eyes when they popped).

I had a pretty easy time of it, i'd whoop up a pet, slap SOW on us and beat every thing walking on 8 legs to death within seconds of popping.
I could sick my pet one one target and take another out myself (with melee) at the same time.

So in my opinion Shaman and Druid are the best for farming silks (and bears), but would welcome disussion to save us traders some precious hunting time.

Nammy the Shammy

This topic comes up a lot.. and everyone has a slightly different answer.

Any class with a Pet seems to be the 'easiest' for farming greens, if they are plentiful you can sick pets on one, go kill another etc. Shamen are good in that respect. Some people swear by bards with their manaless dots to agro things.

For farming named, or specific creatures that are overly farmed, you almost Need tracking, so you have to be a druid or a ranger (maybe that bard again, i don't know if their track is even usable).

Most people tend to think in those situations druids are better, because they can get around a lot faster than a Ranger.

[Lilosh]

There is NO best class.

There is no BEST class for farming.

There is no BEST class for Raids.

There is no BEST class for exping.


There is no best class.


-Lilosh

I always wonder if you take kickbacks from Verant when you say stuff like that.

Let me know if a check arrives in the mail

[Draggar]

There is NO best class.

There is no BEST class for farming.

There is no BEST class for Raids.

There is no BEST class for exping.


There is no best class.


-Lilosh

Yeah there is. Rogues. Especially one with perfected skills.

As for farming, I'll give the same answer for every "best class for.." question, which ever one you like the most and/or work the best with.

I love Rogues. Speed, stealth, picking pockets, etc...

Some people love enchanters (I could never play one).
Some people love shaman.

You have to find what works best for you and you are best at.

I've tried just about every Race / Class combination. Some I like, others I despise. Everyone is different, and that is one of the great aspects of Everquest.

[Khoren Stonefall]

The best class for farming could be argued for a long time I'm sure. But the best level for farming is 65, and you'd also like the most AA possible and a lot of really good gear. All classes farm just fine if they're high enough and well enough equipped. You might not think of paladins when you think of good farming (and at the lower levels, we probably aren't good farmers), but I assure there isn't much that drops important skilling components that I can't just walk up to and beat into the ground.

I'm a big advocate of skilling on your main, and working with the character that you already have for things like farming. To me, tradeskilling is all about personal achievement and making my character better. Take good care of your main and s/he'll get strong enough to farm better for you than any alt you tried to stitch together for stuff-gathering.

[Arou]

There is no best class.

You have to have context to rate the strengths and weaknesses of various classes. Fortunately, we are given a context here. This context is "farming". I take farming here to mean killing large numbers of monsters to collect components for tradeskill practice, especially where those monsters are a great deal inferior to the character used to kill them. Also, I will assume that the player is usually not in a group. Ideally, to make a better decision about this, we would need to know what sort of components the person wants to farm.

Having tried many different classes, I would have to say that Ranger and Druid are the most generally effective in this endeavor. Tracking, foraging, animal control, and movement manipulation are features they both have. For farming in the widest array of places for the widest array of items, these two will be in general more useful than others.

Warrior, Shadowknight, Monk, and Paladin are roughly similar to Ranger in their abilities to farm effectively, but they lose the forage and tracking benefits. To some extent, Shaman, Wizard, and Enchanter are very like a Druid without the forage or tracking skills. Necromancer, Mage, and Beastlord have a strong pet to support them, giving them flexibility between the melee and spell approaches to farming. In my opinion, Cleric and Rogue are less well suited to some aspects of farming, but any character of sufficient level can be effective. Bard is an excellent all purpose class, but is something of a challenge to play. If the particular skills of Druid and Ranger are not needed for farming, say because the mobs in question are plentiful or no components are foraged, then these other classes offer just as good if not better abilities in this area.

A melee class will not have much down time killing many small monsters, but they put themselves at risk if the monsters are a bit tougher. A spell caster with a pet is slightly more versatile than a melee for general killing of monsters, providing some extra flexibility in farming. In general, the ability to find quickly and kill quickly and efficiently are all it takes to be good at farming.

[Draggar]

[In my opinion, Cleric and Rogue are less well suited to some aspects of farming, but any character of sufficient level can be effective.

I'll have to disagree with your first statement. I am a rogue, and have played them since I started playing EQ (over 3 years ago).

Sure, some classes do have an advantage in farming (mainly rangers for tracking) -- but Rogues are able to sneak in rather highly agressive areas without being detected. We also get backstab which, at higher levels, can knock the socks off some DD spells.
Intimidate is self explanitory, the monster runs, allowing us to persue and backstab more.
Picking pockets allow us to get items without fighting them (I've stolen a HQ bear pelt off a Kodiak in WC, and didn't get caught...)

Noone else gets backstab and pick pockets.

We are also able to use ranged weapons, suck as bow and arrow, so pulling isn't that hard.

As for foraging, I always recommend wood elves for Rogues because they have foraging at skill 50 from day one.

As for the second statement, you are absolutley right. I'm sure most of us here would have no problem going to Everfrost to hunt pears and spiderlings.


If you know how to play a specific class, and know how to well, then that is best for you.

[Lunariel]

It all depends on what you want to farm. A ranger with tracksort range and some good weapons is best for scattered wandering monsters. If the monster is low enough, a backstabbing Rogue rocks. Up to a certain level, classes with PBAoE can be extremely effective. Bards are great for taking out multiple monsters at once. Charming classes can do miracles if there's a high level near by to charm. Kiteing classes have their strength farming higher level monsters like Velious pelts. Melee and especially pet classes shines farming acrylia and velium in confined spaces.

I'm a druid and can do PBAoE, but a cleric can pull more due to better armor and can rez when it goes horribly wrong. I can charm an animal if there's one around, but an enchanter can charm anything. Kiteing in Cobalt Scar would have been my thing if I hadn't been doing Solstice robes instead. Several classes can farm faster than me in most situations, but I can handle a wider variety of monsters.

Lunariel

[Liwsa]

I feel it depends on what you want to farm. If just farming low level spiders, bears, or wolves any class is good enough. If you want to be able to farm ANYTHING efficiently then it is a different story.

If you are talking a single character(no 2 or more boxing) to be able to farm anything trade skillers may need a druid is best(since they can track, forage, and get around the easiest). Yes rangers can track and forage BUT a ranger has a tougher time getting around(unless he has a pocket wizard or druid).

ANY single class can farm but with all of their talents a druid makes for the easiest farmer of any type of farming you may need.

[Petercorbin]

agreed it totally depends on what you are farming and where.

When i think of farming I think of tailoring.. mostly because once upon a time tailoring was the only skill you truly needed to farm stuff for every step of the way.. from patchwork to velious and luclin armors.

For tailoring, druids are the most proficient farmers, bar none.. you can disagree with me if you want, but heres the 411-

Druids can port to cobalt scar, wakeninglands, EK, NK, PoK, Nexus, Grimling, WC, Surefall, etc. Non-porting classes still have to get a ride or run for several minutes to get to some of these spots and wizards dont have a couple of these ports.

Druids have tracking.. ever hunt panthers in WL and theres a druid in the zone? notice how you never get any of the haze panthers?

Druids have foraging.. they can glean drake eggs, yew leaves, surefall sap, plant shoots, etc while tracking and kiting mobs.

Druids can heal, have pets (albiet a weak one at 55, but slap a DS and regen on it and it can kill level 10 mobs pretty easily), have DS, have heals, have sow, have AE nukes, have snare, have good faction w/most areas.

a druid can beat most classes in this regard.. a druid could bind in Western wastes, kill the velium hounds and mastedons that are up, port to Cobalt scar, kite some wyverns or othmir (or check merchants), port to WL, forage some yew leaves, track some panthers, port to EK, kill a bunch of spiders, port to PoK for dumpster diving, port to Surefall and kill griffons etc in JPF while foraging plant shoots, port to dawnshroud kill some rockhoppers, port to grimling/twilight for easy access to 3 or 4 other zones that drop acrylia, port to iceclad and run over to crystal caverns, etc etc etc etc etc.. meanwhile your rogue or whatever is still running from great divide to wakening lands or whatever.

I do like farming stuff w/my shaman and my rogue though.. my rogues good for collecting spiderling silks and pelts like in Everfrost.. nightmare compound bow kills most everything w/one hit and backstab kills the rest in one hit.. the looting takes 3x as long.. shaman get sense animals which helps collect pelts (although druids get this too) and with PoK if you can gate youre usually only 2-3 zones from almost anywhere.

/shrug thats just my opinion... if i'd have to start over as a tailor i'd have picked a druid instead..

[sir0die]

i would have to say any class with a controllable pet would be the best class.

but also depends on what you are farming.

[Emelyn]

I have to agree with all pet classes also being good choices.

Even uncontrollable pets are good farmers. I agree that its very situational. I have both a druid and an enchanter. For porting, foraging, tracking, etc, the druid is great - but when it comes to killing said mobs, she's mana dependent (hehee, or you wanna watch me melee a crag spider for 4 minutes?), which eventually means downtime for medding.

Everyone knocks the enchanter for farming, but for mass killing of greens, a hasted dual wielding enchanter animation (level 49 and up) isn't bad. Pre-61 the trick is to use bedlam - a 350 hp componentless rune line spell (it also boosts str and drops agi). Put it on the pet, put it on you. Who cares if the mobs have to hit you to get the pet engaged. You get hit once or twice by a greenie, ooooo. And these days, arcane rune makes it laughable - when I do mobs in hollowshade or crystal caverns, the arcane rune usually times out before it gets used up. And the 62 pet doesn't need the bedlam. And I think I farm as fast if not faster than most classes there. If the mob does happen to hit too hard, you slow it. So for places where the mobs are always up, its just run through and kill kill kill, I far prefer the enchanter. She never has to sit down to med, the spells she uses have such low mana requirements its no biggie. level 4 tash, level 4 root, level 4 mez, level 4 stun, bedlam and occasionaly slow. The animation can handle light blues and even low blues in non-pop zones.

For stuff that's higher level, then there's charm or dire charm. I usually only use regular charm for farming when its going to be a quick one mob hit. Like when doing the glowing shardwurms for the shawl, see one glow, charm its neighbor, kill it (though the level 55 animation could do even the ancients fine too). I'm not likely to extensively "farm" with regular charm (I exp grind with regular charm though).

And then there's the dire charm for the hardest stuff. Now you've got a controllable pet that hits hard for its level, and has a lot of HP. Usually looking for mobs that will dual wield when handed 2 weapons, and then do the regular hasting on them, slowing on the target, etc.

So, use what you like to play, and make the most of it.

I admit, I have the advantage of dual boxing them, so I can combine their strengths when needed (porting, tracking, killing).

[Mridule]

I vote Ranger

I would vote for a Ranger as the all around best tradeskill item farmer but I am probably a little biased.

Pros
-Biggest Tracking Range
-Forage
-SoW
-with Headshot AA Rangers have the ability to assasinate like rogues with a bow
-with AM3/EQ AA even non critical bow shots will kill a greenie in one shot.

Cons
-no ports, this dosen't really matter anymore since PoP TP books go almost everywhere.
-No pet, Can't get around this one,when you can setup a static camp to pull to pet classes are much more effecient than Rangers.

Using a bow really speeds things up because you don't need to stop moving, its "insta-cast", it has a huge range, and it never runs out of mana. With EQ or a Tolan's bracer you never need arrows either.

[Liwsa]

I love to farm velium with my 52 monk in Crystal Caverns(52 monk + fungi tunic = zero downtime in CC). Most people agree that any class can farm 1 zone efficiently but to move around and farm many different things in many diff zones a porter is best hands down.

Any class can be used to farm any one zone period no one disputs that. The only thing is you are mainly limited to that zone.
Closest POK book to EK is what Qeynos hills = longggg run thru West Karana to North kanara to get to East Karana where you want to farm. A druid will port right into East Karana(succour East).
Want to farm in Cobablt Scar as a non-porter, beg a port or run thru EW to Kael to WL to Skyshrine to CS woohooo fun. Druids port right in.

Anyone can farm. Porters farm the best. Pet classes rock farming however they only rock in the zone they are in, transporting to another zone or 2 or 3 to farm sucks.