Sippin wrote:
The only surprise for ME here is the popularity of the Paladin and the lack thereof of Shadowknight.
Doesn't surprise me. Most of the people who love the Paladin have played it for years, through it all. I grew to love the Paladin for one reason: Slay Undead. When Luclin launched, the kludge that the devs used to eliminate class-based xp penalties didn't work with AA xp. In fact, it turned what had been an xp penalty....into an xp bonus. A Paladin friend of mine took to hanging out in the basement of Karnor's Castle and PL'd several of us with Slay Undead. I was like 'WTF! He's one-shotting everything!" (proc rate was seemingly MUCH higher at release and may have been stealth-nerfed at some point). Conversely, many people were drawn to the SK due to its relative power in comparison to other classes in its role group (tanks). Snap agro, FD pulling, and later, swarming capabilities (which I'm sure we can all agree created an explosion in the class's population), creates a lot of 'fairweather' admirers.
Bards have always been a 'love the class but wouldn't play one' example, even after /melody was introduced. You had a bump in the number of bards once charm burning became widely known (and when a single bard could monopolize multi-group xp camps like werewolves in PoN) but it doesn't come close to the explosions seen in the SK and Ranger (and to a far lesser extent, berserker and rogue) classes.
I loved Kunark, at least before they nerfed its drops (when the Necklace of Superiority (BiS neck at Kunark release) ) was moved from The Kly in Dalnir......to Drusilla Sathir in HS, as one example).
