Class Balance

"Balance" complaints, in a game where you are 100% free to play whatever class you want, are the height of victim mentality.

The difference is that most bard abilities are still useful; for BST 95% of our buffs are unwanted, our slow hasn't been updated since HoT, so without decent DPS there would be no reason to have more then 1 BST on your raid. (Spiritual [Whatever] for mana/hp/end regen and Ferocity are our only desired buffs these days in a raid setting)

I don't disagree that they need to make a tuning pass or two over everyone, but they probably don't need to make huge, sweeping changes. Just a few tweaks here and there. (oh and maybe its because I'm mostly RoF raid geared and lv100 still, but 200k? I'm happy to see 100K-ish on short burns)

At the risk of sounding dumb, what is "adps"?

Awful damage per second.

Hey, I'm not wrong. Shaman, enchanters, and bards, are bad dps.

So, like a ranger or shadowknight are currently?~

Rangers ended up in the same "give them more deeps" bucket as BST did; but they went about it the wrong way (IMO) by making them meele again instead of ranged. Pretty much while I was still raiding RNG were my... competition?... on the dps meters

SK's... Would be nice to see them and PAL as viable raid tanks (other then in the "oh crap we have no geared WAR's on; any volunteers" scenarios).

As a raid leader...I LOVE ME some MGB paragon...1 BL is never enough. Additionally...their ADPS is very useful...I like to have AT LEAST 3 on raids...granted some of that does take into account their personal DPS.

Bard slow hasn't been updated since Planes of Power...though we did recently get an AA so it isn't resisted 90% of the time without full debuffs (and its on a fairly long recast so if its resisted the mob is likely dead before you can cast it again).

The biggest issue for Bards is that at least melee dps is balanced around them being present for all DPS groups...but they are godawful boring to play in a raid environment, and don't even have personal dps as a goal to see. They are the class everyone wants in their group but no one wants to play (at least as a main). /melody 1 2 3 4 5 and hit epic + discs every 3 minutes and you are 99% as useful as a bard who is going all out maximizing their personal dps mashing everything as fast as they can. A Zerker doing the equivalent of that would pull 20k dps (I know, I've seen it) vs 150k+ of one that is going all out...thats a huge difference in value.

That doesn't even get into value for gear. Bards focus don't go down over time and due to caps aren't upgraded over time either. A bard in HoT raid gear is just as effective songs wise as one in TDS raid gear. There isn't one piece of gear more valuable to bards than other classes. Tanks get the good ol "Everything is important". Rogues get daggers, monks/bls get class only weapons. Other classes get 10x the use out of weapons that bards do. A small upgrade for even a Ranger >>>> a HUGE upgrade for a bard in terms of DPS gained by the raid. Casters get focii they have to continually upgrade to maximize their character.

Bards aren't even the second most important class for a single piece of gear in the game...really wish they had given bards a mini backstab instead of selo's kick so they could at least claim second most important dagger user. I also think that the rogue only daggers should have bard on them as well...though that could mess up charms that gain power based on class only gear. For bard it becomes, "Can I survive AoE damage." If yes, no upgrades are needed. Keep in mind, Bards resist a HUGE Amount of aoe damage in the game so even that isn't much of a consideration. If a guild were to assign gear 100% based on value to the raid, Bards would be in 4 expansion old gear on a few slots with group gear and weapons that would have otherwise rotted...no other class can say that.

I find myself fortunate to play both Bard and Cleric.

Bards: Awesome utility and power in group game that has been in large part phased out of raid game. Just about nothing to do in raid game with few exceptions.

Clerics: Awesome utility and power in raid game. Lots of heals to mash, deciding who needs heals when (hint, MTO isn't always the most important thing to keep alive), rezzing / rebuffing on the fly without missing heals, etc. In group game? Healing needs are diminished greatly (I don't even really need a healer when going all out on my SK in group game). Combat rezzes aren't needed as much and cleric mercs get rnk 2 buffs a lot easier than player (though upping the drop rate helped a lot). No Personal DPS and no real utility once survivability has been attained at all...

So by combining both I get something to do in both group and raid environments...shouldn't have to be like that though and I feel bad for people stuck in one role or the other.

~MrGPAC

Assisted dps, or attributed dps. It basically means any dps that one class adds to another through buff/song/AA etc that makes them do more than they would have before.

example is enchanter IoG, shaman epic, or bard songs/epic.

How many classes (aside from "buffing" classes) have more than 2 or 3 buffs that are desirable on a raid? Also, are you familiar with how slow mitigation works? You are at 65% and Enchanters 70%. Post-mitigation you're looking at a peanuts worth of difference. If you have decided that helping initially slow mobs on raids isn't worth it then that's your choice, not bad design. There are plenty of reasons to have multiple BST on a raid so no way I'm going to buy this pity party.

Kindof disagree with Enchanter in that statement but okay.

Yeah, Bards could definitely use a personal DPS boost though. That does make me sad; seriously.

Some classes need boosts, sure. A bigger issue is content that punishes specific classes though; it's not always a balance issue. Why isn't there some huge melee uproar post about Arx raids? Anyhow, after 16 years I would think people would be used to the ebb and flow of the class balance tide though.

Protip: when trying to fix your class it's a bad sign for your argument when your selling points are "problems" with other classes.

Sustained classes in my mind are classes that can put out ~50-60k+ DPS continually without the assistance of other classes.Or ~80-100k DPS continually with the assistance of other classes.

Burst classes in my mind are classes that can, for a short period (1-2 min) put out ~120k+DPS by themselves, or ~150k+DPS with the assistance of other classes.

Typical Classes that can do sustained (AKA decent players that know wtfish there doing)
rogues, monks, beast lords, wizzy, mages, and necros

Typical Classes that can do burst (AKA decent players that know wtfish there doing)
rogues, monks, beast lords, wizzy, mages, necros, berserkers, and enchanters (go on argue the enchanter one!)

Mills, yes they should fix haze, by making the charges WORK every time. It doesn't always provide the automatic critical that it should.
Being in a raiding guild that does Arx and COTF T2 still i see almost no problem with the way things are currently balanced from a raiding DPS perspective. I say almost because I do see two things that should be improved upon. Bards should become more melee ADPS orientated, and SK's particularly the ones named Sheex) need to take higher damage hits so they die more often.. . . okay maybe not that last one

Your 'problems' with enchanter Haze is that we now provide a semi active role in caster adps (not necro's though) thus making it very beneficial for enchanters to be played, not botted. Arx raids further this by there design to need more strategy than the 'go here beat this' or the 'kite this' mentality that COTF raids had, after all enchanters and bards are the 'toolbox' classes.

By your own "groupings" the only two classes not listed in both burst and sustained are Zerkers and Enchanters.... one of those classes can only dps.... and you then say you see almost no problem with the way things are balanced with zero mention of Zerkers glaring weakness compared to other dps classes. Well I'm glad to share the dps specialty of a non-dps class with none of the buffs/utility/immense adps/survivability of said non-dps class. Tell me why anyone should bother playing a Zerker in TDS again?

They shouldn't

Considering how far out of balance things are pretty much across the board for archetypes

And the fact the raid design made several classes almost irrelevant.

Yes Balance is a valid complaint.

When people are presented with 2 options, one being terrible and the other being good, no sane person chooses the one that is terrible. They have thusly removed the choice. Some parity is an expectation otherwise why do the classes that fall by the wayside Even exist?

Its a valid complaint and to believe otherwise is just plain dumb.

The dps one class does or how they function in all dps settings does not occur in a vacuum. If one class does everything well then they either fix that class or allow everyone to do everything as well. Its not crazy for all dps classes to expect to be roughly equal to their peers of another class. It is crazy for one class to have no downside and everyone else having it. Haze makes a burstained problem even bigger in addition to mana not being an issue for the once burst caster dps class that did go out of mana before 7 minutes of critical mods. Feel free to leave it as is but I can't wait for the nuking whine that will ensue when once again the pendulum swings back to far in the other direction and melee have mob AC lowered and make major gains setting them apart from everyone again.

Its ok Mills Necros will still crush parses when that happens

Unfortunately this thread shows why it is so difficult to balance classes. Trying to pigeon-hole classes into arbitrarily defined categories, making up random numbers, etc isn't particularly useful.

I think what is clear is that melee are lagging this expansion. The first step has to be to remove the ridiculous AC and anti-melee mechanics on Arx raids. Tuning around idiotic event mechanics will inevitably lead to significant balance issues in the future. After that's done, then we can reassess the situation and come to a (sane) conclusion on any further steps.

P.S. If you really think the issue here is Burst classes encroaching on "Sustained" classes (i.e. Necros)... I think you're missing something.

The necros are so far out of range they aren't showing up on the parse?

Although Balance wise its not just DPS, Theres a decent amount of Disparity amongst the tanks and healer classes as well.

I do not want to see any classes nerfed but I think few things need to be changed if possible:

1. Chronohaze for one thing is overpowered needs some correcting.

2. Melee classes both burst and sustain classes are hurting and not even close to the output of casters. I don't mean they need to be equal in terms of dps but there should be somewhat even ground between them.

3. I just want to see a more even spread of dps of all melee and caster dps classes. Being a monk all I see on top anymore is casters it getting very rare for 3 melee dps classes to be in the list of fights anymore.

4. I know that some melee have higher survivability then most caster but this doesn't compensate for the higher average dps output that casters are producing in the game now.

5. I understand that on burst fight that my class wont be that high on the list but you should still see some zerkers or rogs in that list. Now on sustain fight monks and nercos should be on the top of list.

6. I know EQ has changed several times over the years and still the best game ever made. I think that this should be addressed hopefully something that can satisfy the majority of players.

Well, how should we fix it? Kindof hard to answer when you just throw a dart at a board of different caster ADPS options.

Do you actually have the proc rate and/or any sort of parsing that this is actually the problem or did you just pick the most obvious thing that can go *BOOM* related to DPS casters? I'm going to guess you don't have any proof. And if you forgot, there are a lot of melee classes that cast spells too. You know... outside of those 9 raid hours a week, Enchanters usually don't group with 4 Mages or Wizards in a normal setting. So that zOMGHayz helps Rangers, BST, etc. Or are you suggesting we should completely balance DPS around 4 wizards and an Enchaner in a raid setting?

Oh, for your parses: Don't forget to make note every time a haze proc is eaten by something other than a nuke. Also factor in the casting rate of the Enchanter and I guess we are assuming that they are doing absolutely nothing else but nuking on every event ever. Oh, and calculate how often it lands on a spear vs. a rain when evaluating Mages. Might as well parse it with Necros too... oh wait

Yeah, yourself and others are valid in asking for better DPS spreads and usefulness. Pointing the finger at a single class and one ability and saying it's a major issue is laughable though. It's a great ability and a fine example of active ADPS. A raid caster group has access to Bards, Enchanters, Druids, Auspice, etc. on top of personal AA and Glyphs but it's definitely Haze ruining caster-melee balance, right?

obviously what we need to do is make Chromatic haze affect DOTS so all casters are affected equally.