Class order and how it can affect you

[Bandit]

This isn't meant to be a guide on what order you should pick, but more of a post on how the order of classes can affect your character's stats. The caps are based on being 9x40 (max level) and should be used to plan out your character. As you're leveling the caps for some things will be lower and will increase every time you gain a level 40.

Warrior

This will influence your weapon damage cap, which applies a bonus to your autoattack. 1 weapon damage = 1 point of damage done, does not work with some weapons equipped such as daggers. You will also get more hps per level if this is higher up in your order, but I don't know what values that would be.

1: 25 weapon damage
2: 23 weapon damage
3: 21 weapon damage
4: 19 weapon damage
5: 15 weapon damage
6: 13 weapon damage
7
8


Thief

This will influence your stab damage cap, and I believe thief prime gets some extra damage on their backstab. Prime thieves will also have circle damage cap, while anything outside of thief prime will just be 0.

1: 67 stab damage, 75 circle damage
2
3
4
5
6
7
8: 32 stab damage


Monk

This will affect your hand damage and damage reduction caps. Monk prime also seems to have a bonus modifier for strike damage.

1: 29 damage reduction, 33 hand damage
2: 25 damage reduction
3
4
5: 17 damage reduction
6: 15 damage reduction, 23 hand damage
7: 13 damage reduction
8: 11 damage reduction


Bard

This should affect your charisma cap, but I don't think anyone outside of bard prime would make use of charisma on a normal basis.

1: 28 charisma
2
3
4
5
6: 16 charisma
7: 14 charisma
8


Mage

This will affect your saves and spell bonus caps.

1: -31 saves
2: -25 saves
3: -23 saves, 92 spell bonus
4
5
6
7
8


Cleric

This will affect your heal bonus cap. Also class order reflects what you can summon with supplication, which won't be listed here since it's clear in the help files on what class order does with that spell.

1
2
3
4: 77 heal bonus
5: 67 heal bonus
6
7
8

Druid

I don't think druid has any specific caps tied to it, but they tend to get more mana the higher in your class order and there's some sort of bonus mana regen that is applied to prime and secondary. The exact value of the regen isn't known. Druid class order also affects what forms you can shift into, but the help file in game is clear on this.

Necromancer

This will affect your undead control cap. It also affects what creatures you can summon, but the help files in game are clear on this. Generally prime/secondary can get swordwraiths, 4th can get phantoms, and beyond that the pets would be too weak to be useful at high levels.

1: 27 undead control
2
3
4: 19 undead control
5
6
7
8: 11 undead control


I'll fill this in as I get more data from players and my other characters, hope this helps on making the choice on where you want to place something. For anyone wanting to contribute for this you can view the values using msdp at msdp.CHARACTER_STATISTICS.BONUSES. If you can provide the value listed under CAP and your class order I can fill this out more.

[Gorka]

Great post, I had started doing this earlier as well. Sharing what I have...

Dam Reduct Caps - ?, 25, ?, ?, 17, 15, 13, 11
Weapon Dam Caps - 25, 23, 21, 19, 17, 15
Charisma - 28, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?
Hand Dam - ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, 23, ?, ?

However, as you pointed out, the mud kind of obfuscates this data with hidden bonuses on prime, damage and regen rates. Then some classes have more hp, ma and mv's than others. Then some have different THACO's. Some stats are easier to cap than others, and some stats have weird things going on like Dam Reduct where most of what you end up getting is BONUS anyway. All these factors contribute to kind of hiding the true results.

I also have a post brewing comparing a totally capped Warrior vs a totally capped Bard. It's kind of an analysis between what is probably the strongest and weakest prime classes. Interestingly though, a capped Bard singing gods and wearing the right eq, can almost do as much melee damage as a "warrior prime without gods." Basically I am of the opinion that the imbalance between classes, is not stat based, but skill based... because even though the Bard can do similar damage, the rate of solo xp is almost halved. This difference mostly comes down to Massive Critical Hit, Second Wind, and -15ac. Second wind after a backstab to change your weapon adds almost 200 damage to the first attacks for instance, and Massive Critical Hit is a x3 multiplier. Combined with -15ac meaning you get hit less, Warriors I suspect are the strongest class not because of higher numbers, but more because of skills.

You could close a significant gap between the classes in 3 changes... 1) by introducing a weapon switching on stab function to the mud, or including weapon damage with pierces. 2) by making second wind work on skills only. 3) I also think a change to the -11ac cap would go a long way for Bards, Necros, perhaps even Clerics and Monks - as the current difference -4ac between them and prime warriors is exceedingly large. My Bard for instance can actually wear eq to the value of -13.4 I think, but doesn't get the benefit of it.

[Josiah]

I agree, it is time to revisit the AC cap for non-warriors. Equipment power creep has left everyone else in the dust.

How about a Christmas gift of -1.0 AC cap for all the poor crunchies?

[Guinex]

19 is weapon damage for W4

[cnl]

127 is spell bonus for mage prime

(actually, could be a little off on this due to int rounding on shown percentages -- will try actually get to cap exactly to see)

[Ker]

127 sounds right!
- M

[jayclimbs]

This thread begs completion.

A few observations that go along with these class-position caps.
From my inspection, there appears to be little difference (any?) between reduceDamage (rDam) and +rDam(BrD). One is capped, the other is infinite. They appear to get lumped together, so my total rDam, for example, is the sum of both.
This is in contrast to both Heal Bonus/Bonus Heal Bonus and Spell Bonus/Bonus Spell Bonus, where one extremely important difference exists. That difference is that B-X-B is NOT a factor unless a character also has on-person, equipment of some type that has "plain old" X-B. For example, Joe with no Spell Bonus gear will get nothing from a piece of equipment that carries Bonus Spell Bonus 10. A quick check of score stats2 will show "inactive" for those ten points!* (I found this out the hard way, btw)
The tie-in - the reason this is pertinent to this thread - is if rDam via "monkness" is innate, and therefore anyone reaching 9x40 can, for example, place BrDam on their Avatar Light and receive that additional rDam, it frees the player from dealing with that restriction. That cannot be done with the available BSB or BHB - neither are active unless the character has/acquires some "normal" SB or HB and has it on-person.
So I'm wondering, what else is available for Av Light (or purchase in AvShop/Reborn Shop) that requires/does NOT require supplementary gear. If a character is not using a weapon with "extra" Damage (that is: just plain dice roll), is Bonus Wpn Damage inactive? What about plain old Damage, where does it fit in? Charisma? Knowing this in advance will steer players' equipment choices.
Finally, assessing the true differences between XB and BXB requires some serious data-crunching. My warrior is currently interested in purchasing as much BSB as possible. Will it be effective? At what point will it be exp/gold well-spent vs. totally/mostly-totally wasted?
Scuttlebutt has it that "soft-caps" exist for some things, like to-Hit, where a to-Hit of (for example) 34 is not "truly" 3 pts better than a to-Hit of 31.That is to say, the value increase from 29 to 30 is greater than the value increase from 30 to 31. Is this true of anything else? It would seem like rDam 31 should reduce damage 1 more than rDam 30 ... is this the case? Likewise, with Damage/WpnDamage/SB/BSB/HB/BHB; a difference of 1 should show up consistently in counters. Anyone done the crunching to confirm this?
I'm interested in knowing if some sort of soft-cap exists in these seemingly clear-cut categories, and further, if some other marked difference exists between BXB stuff vs. XB stuff.

* BTW, for those who might be wondering, the workaround for BSB/BHB is runes. Runes are "plain old" SB/HB, so socketing one of each to your gear kits gets you access to all those niceties you want from the shops.