Test Update 08/12/15

Yes

This is a great patch but seriously guys let's unnerf the rains. In fact you should never ever ever nerf anything ever again aside from actual legitimate mistakes that are game breaking. If you went to cash your check or check your bank statement and it was nerfed by 40% how would you feel? Would that inspire you to work harder and continue to do what you do or would that inspire you to look for something better? Food for thought anyway.

I agree! Can we get Dzarn as the new CEO/President of Daybreak or if not move Holly to CEO/President and have Dzarn as Producer of EQ?

Only a little surprised that all the tanks are at the same value, I thought there might be a little variance. But I am really surprised that Monks and Rangers are set to the same value as the tanks.
Cursory look at DPS definitely shows improvements to basic output, nice to see these changes and will need to do some before/after parsing.
Very nice to see Auras, Flash of Anger, and the Field line finally unlinked after it had been requested for a couple years.
Bonus: Flash of Anger is not overwriting 2H Proficiency for Warriors.

Still nothing to address the melee dps disparity between monks and everything else though(on TLPs). Still it's x-class waits for y-expansion. TLP's are pseudo-classic so might as well actually balance everyone.

LoL I remember my old computer this would happen once in a while. When I went into super speed mode, it was like Selos on crack, which was amazing. I could run across any zone in about 3 seconds. Of course super slow mode was annoying as hell. Either way I would need to restart EQ any time it happened because it messed with timers and spells and such so it was annoying in the end, and sometimes It would happen over and over. Good to see it's getting fixxed finally.

Shadowknights rejoice! You can now be rampage tanks and not die! #Dreamsdocometrue

This is pretty awesome. As a warrior, flash being tied into our aura and Group AC buff was a bit annoying, so having them no longer on the same timer is neato! Also being able to use flash while in 2H proficiency is maybe one of the best parts of this patch perhaps! I will now be in 2H mode all the time ~ Will also need to put throat jab into my mash key I'm thinking.

This will make a lot of people very happy, and it's good to see something finally being done and put in game about melee dps to balance out the game more.

Good stuff, now to just get the pet owners to use this on most raids!

No change documented in the notes here indicates Flash will now work while 2H proficiency is running. Unless you have some other information you'd like to share...?

Hrm perhaps I read this wrong then, It's late for me.

Back to sad panda now

Beastlords are already ahead of Monks and Rangers DPS-wise so this is a bit dispiriting.

Keep in mind that bst dps is split 3 ways between melee, spell, & pet, so the melee boost has less net effect on total dps.

No, you read correctly. I happened to test Flash of Anger and Field Protector independence while in 2H stance and noticed that it didn't overwrite the 2H Proficiency buff. It is an undocumented change, which is why I listed it as a Bonus. Try it out for yourself.

That has been on Live for a while. Flash doesn't do anything outside of taking up a buff slot though last I tested.

I'm a bit confused over the disc changes. We see Rogue's Duelist line mention, but nothing regarding Rogue's Fury say (which is the strongest disc we have). No doubt the same can occur with some of the other classes. I haven't yet had a chance to test things out though so it may be more than I realise.

Many thanks for looking into this. For ages I've been banging the drum on the ratio of burst to non-burst dps being radically higher for melee than casters, making interclass balancing essentially an impossible task. I look forward to seeing how it pans out, and remind people that it's a major step in the right direction even if it does turn out to need tinkering and fine tuning later on.

get yer tin foil hats on casters

Your rangers must be doing something wrong

Thank you for your honesty! Someone else at least gets what people are saying about this being far to much of a swing in the opposite direction. The same applies to the disc knifeplay and I am sure a lot of other abilities that other classes have that simply are just better now. Burst will go up which might let you catch 400K bursting wizards but your sustained is going to up a lot.

When will other classes that can't on demand burst for 400K or more when AE friendly expect their boost to burst dps? I would also like my ramp up time removed as I shouldn't have a trade off for my high single target sustained anymore if everyone freely gets to sustain and burst. You can't just let some dps classes do it all you need to make sure all dps classes can do it all in regards to dps.

Beastlords are quite capable of pushing 200k over several minutes. I've not seen a Monk or Ranger do this.

The numbers do look rather large from an initial glance but you need to remember where melee sits currently. I tend to look at the overall picture for DPS, end of the night, all events combined. I want to be able to compete at that point with the other DPS classes. There are going to be burst fights and sustained fights. Overall is what you should look at IMO. With that being said, and even with the AC changes, melee isn't coming close to the output of casters using this metric from what I have seen (two guilds through arx 5). So, yes, a 74% buff seems large but we are also in a large hole.

Its on test too. Lets test it out some and see if its bonkers.

Monks are well below hybrids right now in terms of sustained and burst, and I have yet to see a beastlord parse 200k over 180s(Several Minutes) on Vitio with no backaway emotes. We have a ranger that sustains around 70k on A1 over 900s and does 160k+ vitio burns as well.(i'd pull parses but website isn't working atm)

Will the melee changes be applied to Warrior and Rogue mercenaries?

I also find the Class tiers a bit odd, having beastlords with rogues? and monks/rangers with tanks and bards.

I would think that the 3 pure melee dps (Berzerker, Rogue, Monk) classes would be about the same, and the two Melee hybrids(Beastlord, Ranger) would be the same, then Bards/warriors the same, and finally Tank hybrids(Paladin, Shadowknight) be the same. In that order from highest to lowest ~

Either way still glad for the boosts!