Ryzom

The only skill that really slows down significantly is crafting. That's because it takes a lot of dapper or a lot of mats to level up. I'm thankful that the crafting itself is fast. I couldn't bear having to wait 5 min or more to craft each item like in DAoC - just watching that bar slooowwwly go up was torture. So if you have the coin or the materials even crafting experience is pretty fast.

Harvesting is very fast if you use Dalwin's suggestion (hey Dalwin where'd ya learn that one? Once you hit 60 then you can pull Q100 mats for 2500-3000 exp each extraction. When this gets slow you can use your specialization plus Q100 extraction and go forage at Q150 nodes.

Fighting is very fast exp in the right group. I went from 50 to 62 in about 2 hours fighting cloppers. I would guess that I spend 10% of my time fighting and 90% of my time crafting and harvesting and my fighting skill is as high or higher than the others.

Kraak - Fyros Crafter of Fine Weapons

As for the benefit of various fight stanzas...

When it says that it works best for weapons up to level 35, it will deal its optimum for weaps up to that level, any weapon higher recieves a reduced effect, the bigger the disparity, the greater the reduction in benefit.

This is most easily seen in improved damage. Using ID1 with a q10 weapon will double its damage, but using ID2 with a q20 weapon will only increase the damage by 50%. I can't give specifics on other disparities because I haven't paid that close attention, but I do know you do get partial benefit when the weapon is greater than the skill used. Hence the benefit of having a lower skill/lower cost attack, and a matched skill/higher cost attack. The higher cost is most efficiently used in a team, since you will probably have a healer to watch you hp/stamina and keep them healed up, thus reducing downtime. Where when soloing/in a very very tight situation(healers down, prolonged fight, healer low on juice) the lesser attack would be ideal, lowering your drain on your juice, reducing downtime for soloing, and not being as big a drain on the healer.

The big thing is knowing what to do then, the more options you have, you can then use the best tool for different situations.

And for team hunting/solo(or small team) hunting, some creatures are designed to be optimal to hunt for one or the other. Obviously those critters with a ton of hp can be more easily taken down by a pt of 9 (and thus giving more xp overall per kill) than by a pt of 2-3 or solo. 9 people getting 2kxp but killing it faster is better than trying to take a long time to kill something with 2-3 people and getting 3kxp. Remember xp/hour > xp/kill.

Once again, it's all based on the situation you are in.

Which I would love to give kudo's to the devs for their inclusion of mobs designed for big and small(and solo) teams, making the playing environment more diverse, catering to many play styles.

And as for finding out which is designed for which? It is a game of trial and error, exploration if you will. Just like back in the ice age, where the hunter/gatherer tribes were required to kill the mammoth, where smaller game could be hunted by single hunters or smaller teams. We are those hunter/gatherers, and we have to learn how to survive in the world we live in. Just be happy there is only a dp, and not a character being destroyed and having to be remade.

I just hope people learn that this game is designed around a hunter/gatherer premise more than a hack'n'slash premise of so many other MMO's out there.

Sorry to ramble, hope some of the information proved useful.

Well,

Im 90 Melee, 93 Harvesting, 60 off mage, 40 def mage.

I would say Melee slowed down dramitically for me at about level 80, mobs became very tough to solo, and all my XP from 85-90 came from groups with other similar rated players. Sure solo is possible, but it gets pretty tricky. I can for example at my level take on a Gluttonous or if lucky a grunting Raspel, and get 3000 XP for it, but the massive number of HP's they have means it can take a minute or 3 of whacking on it to kill, which makes it feel a grind, and if i get adds im in trouble.

Harvesting is a piece of cake, you can quite easily get 4 or 5 levels and hour without even realising, 3 or 4 days of helping to harvest mats for the guild armour and equipment got me to 90, the only slow spot was lvl 50-60, which was a grind, Once i hit 60 and could get QL100 mats it went back to gettting 4 or 5 levels and hour without even noticing.

MAge is afairly easy so far, so long as you learn which mobs have less HP's. which i simply new from the melee levels i had, maybe it gets harder, but so far its fast.

Def Mage is obviously slow as it requires a group, many times im not in the mood to concentrate on being a healer, i dont particularly enjoy healing, but i took it ot 40 so i could res people pretty quikly, even if they have a load of HP's.