Greetings all, my 3 friends and I are intending on playing Albion when the server comes up. We played Hibbies on Uth 1.0 and live back before ToA (Bors) and a tiny bit of Midgard on Genesis; so this will be our first foray into Albion. So far our group of 4 will consist of a cleric, sorc, and minstrel. Leaving me to have some type of tank. Our end goal is RvR, but I also want a class that will be useful/picked for Prince/Legion/Diamond Seal raids. After searching through and sifting through the 3+ year old posts, it seems the Merc was the way to go. Is this still the case with old RA's and patch 1.65 for Uth 2.0? Would the reaver be a decent class to play in the role of some tanking but also dpsing if other tanks are available? Or is the lack of Det to much of a hurdle? Before anybody says 'play what you like' I have never played a character like the reaver so I am curious about it's viability in the areas I have mentioned above.

Last (set of) question(s): when my friends aren't on; I want to play a class that can be used to solo farm the mobs in I believe Dartmoor (equivalent to Sheeroe Hills) for Arcanium tier salvaging. If I recall the mobs were orange to low purple. This would be done an hour here, an hour there when I have some time to kill. Would a friar be good for this or should I look more toward the necro (if it is working properly) or a pally or some other class?

Thanks and can't wait for the server to be back!

Hey,
I ´m not an expert of Albion but I ´ll try to answer your questions . Your 4 man setup is looking ok so far, reaver has a decent backstyle with big damage and is a bit more viable cause of shield specc and rupting auras then merc, but as you said Det is a huge advantage for merc, CC will be more important this time and as an off tank you want be as mobile as possible.

If your group need to kite and you ´re cc ´ed first row for eternity it kinda sucks . For me Reaver is the cooler character and I had fun playing one for a while on live servers, it ´s great in one vs one fights but in group I would prefer merc if you pick between these two.

For raids/farming reaver might be better then merc cause of shieldspecc (I ´m not a fan switching shield against offhand) even if Paladin and armsman are better suited for dealing with bossmobs.
But I want to consider a third option for you,- armsman can have both: high shield specc and det and 2hand specc for damage, I ´m not sure if polearm damage was decent at this patch level, but if I remember right it was so. You would be more flexible, you can act off and def in your rvr group and you ´re good choice for raids.

About solo farming necromancer is the way to go. You can specc for single pull with petheal and can kill without downtime or if duo with cleric masspull specc. Albion looked pretty ugly these days while you mostly seen necros all the way solo farming, spot claiming/stealing or pushing level grps by petpull but it was quite effective.

So, if I would play Albion my choices would be necro, armsman and a cleric (they are always needed) as backup to be flexible.

regards
Meg

Just throwing this out there but have you considered Cabalist?
It would go perfect in your 4 man being able to debuff for the sorc, and the cabby can pretty much power level you all with the pet damage shield spec aswell as farm any bosses you need to farm.

Thank you for the responses.

I had considered the Armsman, not really sure why I didn't mention it in my first post. I think I'll give it a try, I can always roll something else if I don't like it

I am not a huge fan of playing casters in RvR, which is why I didn't consider the cabby. It's probably something I will look at when I want to do some named mob farming.