I put this up for a while and the only response I got seemed to like it. So either people just didn't read or nobody found anything to complain about. Too late now.
I simply edited the first thread with current information, so thanks to Brad for doing it in the first place.
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Every profession has its ups and downs. If you choose to play ...
AN ADVENTURER:
What You're Going to Love: Shapeshifting into so many cool forms, each of which has its own cool abilities. Being able to heal yourself during combat. Attacking so fast that the other guy gets half his attacks interrupted.
What You're Going to Hate: Soooo many nice abilities, so little IP to go around to them all. Finding half your morphs impractical, and the other half are likely to irritate your eyes in missions with strange bobbing motions.
AN AGENT:
What You're Going to Love: Having most of all of nano software in the game available to you and having profession locked items not be so locked to you. But even more than that, the awesome rush of power that comes from appearing literally out of nowhere. Seeing a 10,000 damage aimed shot for the first time. Seeing the words "Critical Hit", several hits in a row for impressive amounts of damage.
What You're Going to Hate: The other 99% of the time, when the target sees you before you can fire aimed shot, or turns out to have more health or armor than you anticipated, so they survive that first volley. Then, if your "root" attack fails, you get torn apart like a stewed chicken. Doing too much damage and having the target live, realizing that while you can dish it out you just can't take hits back.
A BUREAUCRAT:
What You're Going to Love: The incredible independence that comes from being able to handle any size crowd of monsters or NPCs. The even more amazing rush of power that you feel when you combine long charm and short charm, and have two of your enemies following you around doing your bidding and slaughtering their former friends. Your evil cackling laugh in team missions when you cast "area calm" and every hostile creature in the mission falls asleep. Demoralizing your oppoents at a tower battle by area rooting them all to one spot.
What You're Going to Hate: Seeing that words "targeted was unaffected by" your crowd control methods on much of any new content. Realizing that after you've rooted and init debuffed everyone on the battlefield, you still have to rely on other people to kill them.
A DOCTOR:
What You're Going to Love: No one in history has every been more popular, being the hero that keeps everyone alive. Being able to find a team whenever you wish.
What You're Going to Hate: No one in history has ever been so helpless on their own, or more readily blamed by others when things go wrong. Hassled by players who ALWAYS want you to team with them or give them a buff.
AN ENFORCER:
What You're Going to Love: Having more "hit points" than God and more armor than a planet. The squishing noise everything else in the game makes when you hit it. Seeing white all the way around an agent's or fixer's eyes when you "Rage" out of his "root," before you squash him like a bug. Being almost as popular as a Doctor. Being one of the most popular professions for teaming and one of the best professions for soloing.
What You're Going to Hate: Having all those taunting tools but unable to control the monsters from targeting everyone else anyways. But even more than that, when Rage fails to break the "root" and you stand there crying like a baby while some agent or fixer chops you down like a tree, from well outside of your reach.
AN ENGINEER:
What You're Going to Love: Big Robots that tank for you and do loads of damage without you having to step into getting hit range. And forcefields that give you (and your 'bot) even more armor than the Enforcers have. And getting paid by a quarter of the planet to fix or upgrade their weapons or install the nanoclusters in their cyberware implants.
What You're Going to Hate: Running out of suppression gas, even for a minute, and getting wadded up like a paper napkin by player characters not much more than half your level - even Bureaucrats. Feeling the need to beg for buffs in order to feel competitive whether its soloing, teaming, or tradeskilling. Having to level up high to be desirable for most tradeskills and having to search for 101 rare tradeskill items along the way.
A FIXER:
What You're Going to Love: Submachineguns, just about the perfect compromise weapon, fast and deadly. Using run buffs and grid phreaking to get to and from missions in half the time everybody else takes. Blitzing missions at far above your level to get uber loot and filthy rich. Using a blazing lockpick to ninja loot your way through team missions. Being one of the most popular professions for teams because of your NCU, speed, and damage. Never having to die whether in missions or PvP because you can almost always grid evac away.
What You're Going to Hate: Grid armor if you don't have it and how many people seem to hate you for it if you do. Oh, and the fact that other fixers' ninja looting makes you about as popular as a leper, with halitosis, on fire. Being the most popular profession means you'll be about as unique as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
A MARTIAL ARTIST:
What You're Going to Love: Being able to do almost anything in this game except tradeskills, heal yourself while doing it, and do it all so cheap that you can wipe your nether region with wadded up credits. Kicking butt, and looking stylish doing it.
What You're Going to Hate: Just as bad as the Enforcer, when you get rooted from 20 meters' range and "Dance of the Pink Cabbage in a November Wind" fails to break the root, you get effortlessly killed by laughing little children. Watching your nano formula bar recharge when you desperately need to get off one more team heal.
A META-PHYSICIST:
What You're Going to Love: Pets that do every part of the mission for you except collect the loot. You just float there in mid air ('cause you can fly!), holding your unique and stylish summoned weapons, at any busy intersection and being the center of attention. Being constantly busy in combat with 101 different strategies and techniques available to try. Being able to heal and do damage at the same time without entering combat yourself makes you one of the best soloing professions.
What You're Going to Hate: "My next summon-pet nano costs how much?" Having three quarters of the planet constantly begging you for buffs or to build their implants, even when you're trying to do something else. Realizing that all these people asking for buffs from you are going to refuse to let you into their team because they think MP = weakling. Realizing that half your nano formulas are bugged beyond functionality and have been that way forever without sign of being fixed. Then running out of suppression gas, even for a minute, and getting wadded up like a paper napkin by player characters not much more than half your level - even Engineers. Realizing that while others plan on having fun all the way to 200 (soon to be 220), your MP is effectively finished at level 150.
A NANO TECHNICIAN:
What You're Going to Love: Big Nukes. You take a long wind-up, right in front of most targets, while they stand there stupidly watching you, and then you blow away almost half their health in one shot. Plus lots of other cool little nano effects, like calms, and team teleports, Nano Programming buffs,
and temporary invincibility. Plus if you love Mass PvP, using area nukes means you'll launch PvP titles so fast you'll forget that character names don't normally have titles like "novice" prefixed to them.
What You're Going to Hate: All the times after that Big Nuke when your follow-up attack fails or gets interrupted, leaving you plinking away helplessly at an angry enemy that still has half its health as it effortlessly chews you up and spits out your tiny little fragile bones. Realizing that so much power concentrated in your nanoskills leaves you almost helpless if you get hit with nanoskill debuffs. Having to kill a dozen super tough unique mobs that require several teams to get any of your high level abilities.
A SOLDIER:
What You're Going to Love: Big Guns. Lots of Big Guns. And flame throwers. And grenade launchers. And machine guns. And chain guns. And auto-fire shotguns. Having more armor than a mountain. Total Mirror Shields on top of that, the next best thing to total invincibility. Being almost as popular as an Enforcer.
What You're Going to Hate: Blue nano skills mean that that Total Mirror Shield takes just a teensy bit longer to get than you were hoping ... like, "forever." That, and, "My next gun costs how much?" And spending more on ammunition than a Martial Artist spends on clothes. Plus being unable to heal means that after that shields runs out you're something's lunch if a doc isn't nearby healing you.
A TRADER:
What You're Going to Love: Massive self-only Comp Lit buffs mean near-infinte NCU memory. Add to this Ransack Skills and Deprive Skills. Congratulations, your shotgun skill just went through the roof; go ahead and self-equip a QL200 shotgun at level 40. A soon as you Ransack and Deprive him, the other guy's got a bad case of Combat Disfunction. For the next two minutes, nothing he does will do better than half damage. Bwa ha ha.
What You're Going to Hate: "Near-infinite NCU memory" costs enough to give you a nosebleed. Not being able to spare ANY IP points for tradeskills until much much later in the game. People insisting you give them buffs at the most inconvenient times and being rather ungrateful for it.
SO HOW DO YOU DECIDE?
Go over the list above. If the "What You're Going to Hate" part makes you especially queasy, cross that profession off the list. Then go back over the ones that are left, and look for the "What You're Going to Love" that sounds the most exciting. Then try playing that!
Edits: Spelling and Grammar
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