[TERA PC & Console] En Masse is closing, but TERA lives on! We will continue to support TERA PC (NA) and TERA Console until service is transferred. Stay tuned for more information.
[TERA Console] The Grotto of Lost Souls update (v85) is now live! Read the patch notes here: https://bit.ly/TERACon_v85
[TERA PC] The 64-bit update (v97) is now live. Check out all the changes delivered on August 11 here: https://bit.ly/tera64_patchnotes
[TERA PC & CONSOLE] Summerfest Part 2: The Beach Bash is on from August 11 until September 1! Participate in event activities to earn tokens redeemable for costumes, consumables, mounts, and more! Details: https://bit.ly/tera_sf20
Comments
I started out maining a priest. It was alright. But it didn't take long for me to get bitter over it. I always felt trapped. When the group had some newbie DPS, the fights would take ages and I never felt like there was anything I could do to help outside of using estars and triple nem and keeping up mana. It wasn't that I had anything against healing newbies in IMS, otherwise I wouldn't IMS. It was just ... like, it'd take an hour to do one dungeon. And I've got multiple dailies to do, you know? When I queued for a channelworks that took the better part of 80 minutes, I decided I'd had enough of that [filtered]. So I made a DPS, a zerk.
The zerk was a lot of fun. I didn't even care too much about how unbalanced it was and how I had to spend a lot of gold on crit stuff and really bring my A-game to every dungeon so I wouldn't be complete dog-[filtered] while newer classes could rely on cheat-death passives and a bag full of iframes to weave around the boss and avoid iframeable one shots and the like, while still churning out intense DPS. It didn't bother me. I liked the way zerk felt, and as I geared up I loved being able to get my dailies done in a timely manner through dungeons alone. But as I continued to play it more, and as I started to learn about timing my big buffs/brooch stuff with enrages and the like, I began to get frustrated when I wouldn't crit at a time when it absolutely counted. I began to hate those runs where some guy would post information from his DPS meter, because I'd know that -- in my case, at least -- a lot of the end result was based on whether or not I could crit at the right moments. I loved how I felt as a dps at first, and I loved being That Guy who handled dps mechanics when the others were too worried about their ePeen to break away and make sure we didn't wipe, but I *hated* the in-party competitiveness I felt whenever I played my zerk. Eventually I realized that I wasn't having as much fun as I used to have (though I wish this had been before, not after, I made her a starfall axe) since so so much is determined by RNG. One day, as I was waiting for thunder strike to finish overcharging, I felt like a man in Vegas pulling the reel on a slot machine, hoping for a lucky roll. On that day, I decided to start playing my mystic more often.
After playing priest for nearly a year and a half, mystic felt different. Healing while out of combat felt hectic at first, and nothing really felt natural until I played it for about a week. I liked that I could help my team far more than I could as my priest. Even in groups with bad dps, I felt like I could make somewhat more of an impact by giving them more critical hits, or by dropping contagion debuff during burn phases to help them out, etc. But I wasn't enjoying it. I just felt bitter, mostly. Every time my mystic's focus heal would crit for almost as much as my priest's non-crit healing circle, I'd scoff mentally. Every time I abused vow of resurrection's cd glyph with my own cdr rolls to give my entire party an auto-res in 5 minutes, I'd find myself rolling my eyes instead of being happy about how useful of a feature it was, since priests, who are supposed to be the safer option, can still only auto res themselves. The question of whether or not to stop playing became moot when suddenly everyone and their mom started making mystics, and I found myself forced onto my dps instead. But I wasn't enjoying my DPS as much, so I made a lancer.
The lancer is where I'm at now. It's fun. I like it. I made one before the buffs, got it to 65, toyed with it a bit, really enjoyed the class overall. With speed boosts it feels great. I love how sometimes I can just get into a groove and forget about everything else. Let the DPS fight over their ePeen. Let the healer struggle to keep the fools alive. Right now it's just me and the boss. I really enjoy those moments. And so far, my only gripe is that lancer occupies a single role in the group, so anytime another tank's already present I pretty much have to switch to something else or find another party.