Oh and BTW... The Dev that removed my post... I seriously got 8 cross server tells from people I don't even know, that said I was spot on with everything I said. I found that entertaining. Basically everyone wanted to say what I said, but knew it would get modded out, so I went ahead and did it.
Vouivre, Your points are noted but I feel still a bit off the topic of the OP. If you want to post that tank mercs are overpowered or PC tanks are underpowered vs mercs then start another post. This is more about how difficult it is to get a tank up to par and usable in the current group game more so than any other class. And to those that have said it has always been that way, so true but the gap is ever increasing as the game moves on, mostly for the tank class and not for others really. I personally dont care too much, I box and can box fine on my tank, I was honestly just surprised at how bad it was before I finished augs and AA even when I was out leveled and out geared otherwise for the content.
I'll address the stupid merc situation for you. Your are undergeared for lvl 92 with HoT gear. With only 2500 AAs your woefully under developed even for VoA. Mercs are so-so for their lvl at best, you are way behind the curve for your lvl. Your about 7K AA and numerous gear/aug slots short of what a current geared 92 toon in VoA would have been. That is why your merc is better than you are. You arent even close to where you should be. Tank or healer, mercs pale in comparison to their player counter parts if they are current and even remotely able at the keyboard. You have said that yourself several times in this thread. You are no where near current with 2500AA. Your complaint about it being difficult for tanks to catch up is valid. Your complaint that its not fair other classes arent as hamstrung by gear isnt. A tanks job is to take hits and hold aggro, thats it. If a tank cannot do that, it cannot do it's job. DPS' job is to do damage, not take hits. Healers heal, they dont take hits either. DPS/Support classes that have a tank (even a merc) shouldnt be getting hit, hence their gear/AA doesnt matter much so long as they can do their primary function (heal/DPS) decently. More people play the flashier DPS/Support classes than tanks/clerics. Any 2 DPSers can get together and pop a cleric/tank merc combo and do their thing. Tanks/Clerics need either a healer or tank, and DPS. A Tank or a Healer that is behind the curve as much as you are, needs another Tank or Healer as well to make up for the toon so far behind. People choose merc tanks/healers over players for simple reasons. Mercs dont care about loot. Mercs dont care if they die. Mercs dont care where they go or when. Mercs are always there and you dont have to wait for them. Mercs are just good enough to do the job, and thats good enough for alot of people. Mercs dont talk, dont have a personality, and allow people to basically be anti social. As for making changes, current toons are light years ahead of their merc counterparts. Any changes to make tanks tank better, will carry over to current tanks. Mobs will be designed around them, not people that are behind. You end up right back at square one. It sucks for tanks. You basically need a sponsor to catch up or grind older content solo/duo till your caught up. A sponsor is someone that can basically carry you along till your caught up and can start doing your job. In a game where people are able to basically do whatever they want, where they want, when they want on their own or with 1 other that isnt an easy thing to find these days.
I have substantially upgraded my AAs, gear, level, and even some of my augs since the time of the scenario. I understand that tanks get hit and that is their job. It's what I signed up for, but making tanks required to upgrade their gear to accomplish their job at all is a bit harsh if no one else is required to do so. I know it's always been this way, but it doesn't always have to be that way. I appreciate your insight Kunon and Taurline. My biggest gripe at the time was that I have a bard, mage, and druid friend who were less geared and AA'd than myself at the time and they were getting groups easily and easily doing their jobs, while I was still camping augments while boxing. I think that should change and not in the direction of punishing other archetypes.
Higher content with new gear... That is the entire incentive to play the game. Fighting harder stuff requires new gear. That's a fairly simple concept.
I agree, but my point was that tanks are the only ones who require new gear in order to function in their roles. Other archetypes do better with newer gear, but they function fine with lesser gear. I like getting new and improved gear, I just sometimes resent having to get it all together before I move forward while everyone else moves forward the whole time.
I'm not looking for anything, I understand and agree with him. I don't want other classes "hamstrung" by gear, I would prefer they find a way to keep tanks from being hamstrung by it so much. Not all, just some. I skipped VoA because I had pressing real life concerns. When I came back, I got to sit around and watch everyone else play in the new content while I got to sit around hoping for drops in VoA so that I could upgrade myself enough to move into where everyone else was. My normal group members, which I mentioned previously, also stopped playing during VoA (they had a baby and a rough pregnancy and the other one got bored). They moved back in seamlessly into the new content entirely skipping VoA, and I got to go back and go through it mostly by myself. Why can't we come up with better way to get people into current content? You know as well as everyone that is the main goal of the devs when new content is released. There has to be a better way. I was luckily able to use the tank merc to carry myself and my shaman through some of the content alone and caught up. It was a vast amount of work and all my play time focused entirely on gear and levels.
This^^ We are not getting much sympathy though I do like the autogranting AA idea, personally I really hate AA.
I love autogranting. Been behind it since they first started talking about it, but unfortunately the way it's been outlined it won't be current stuff, and many tanks will already have much if not all of the AAs they will be autogranting since most of it is likely to be mostly general and some archetype. Maybe it will be more, but with how coding seems to be backed up all the time and autogranting being a low priority, it could be years still before it happens.
I think some of you are in too big of a hurry to have everything done right away. You in fact have it a little bass ackwards, struggling with content and needing to work hard and progress is one of the perks of the tank class. While the other classes get to see the content, watch it go by quickly as they do just about the same thing while possibly adding a new hotkey or two, tanks get to work their way through it, push their limits further, try to figure out better combinations of old tricks or implement new tricks into their arsenal. RoF came out in what, November? And it is barely into January, yet having difficulty with T2 is a problem? Why even bother playing if the content doesn't challenge you? In my mind, it is the non-tanks who should be complaining about not having enough to do here. 2 to 3 spell focuses to get, I guess maybe 4 for necroes, spell range mod for pure casters. Oh and the slight pet boost item. Pretty much done! Cleric? Extended duration mod, healing boost mod, done! DPS Melee classes, maybe 1 or 2 spell focuses, ever so slightly modded cleave focus, ferocity focus, perhaps a slightly better atk boost clicky, done! I realize that I have oversimplified for the non-tanks, a LOT. I'm merely pointing out that they don't get to struggle much at all like a tank does, or get the full kind of experience of content that we can. This game should be more about the journey, enjoying yourself on it anyways, not just being the biggest most uberest tank EVER. I highly recommend against getting to that point too, was there on my server for 7 months straight, was so amazingly boring. I decided to give it a rest for a year and a half after that, as exciting as raiding another few months for a 1600 HP boost or so would have been... So just try enjoying the journey will you, don't need to be full T2 slot 3 right away.....
I am going to restate, I find that a warrior who doesn't suck at his class is easier to heal than a tank merc. ROF is not a hard expansion group wise.
It's depressing the way in which discussions about game balance inevitably devolve into so much posturing about "player skill" vs those who "suck" and want an "easy game", etc. The difference between 2500 AAs and 10k AAs is not skill, and nobody is a better player nor person for spending more time on the EQ treadmill. You can't acknowledge that someone is drastically under-AA'd and then, in the same breath, declare their problem is probably that they suck at the game. The game is set up in such a way as to punish even the most skilled players if they don't meet certain requirements that can only be obtained by expenditure of time. While I have no doubt there are many terrible tank players out there, the ones who at birth removed the Taunt button in confusion because it didn't seem to do anything, I'm pretty sure the majority of people who contribute to these discussions have the rudimentary skill and intelligence it takes to play a tank well. So the crux of it is this. We believe that tanks should require more time and gear to participate in current content, or we believe that there is no such disparity, or we believe that a disparity exists and needs correcting. Most people seem to agree the disparity does indeed exist. A lot seem to prefer the first option, which acknowledges the satisfaction of finally getting a tank to where they need to be. However, not much has been said about new players: those who roll tanks to play with their friends and then can only watch in bemusement as they get flattened by TSS mobs, are baffled when the merc tank comes out and steamrolls the mobs in return, and never consider they need to stop and grind out 1000 AAs first because, after all, their mage and shaman friends seemto be doing okay on 200. It's not as if the class comes with an advisory warning label - don't pick this class if your friends don't want to wait while you grind interminably between levels. The end reality is that MMOs bring together different people with varying ideas about what constitutes fun and progress. Disagreement is inevitable, but we do need a game that can accommodate multiple styles of play. Personally? I think autogranting a certain amount of CA/CS ranks would go a long way.
This probably comes under autogranting, but just build in as standard equipment the equivalent of CA/CS, planar power, armor of wisdom and all those innate defensives that are the bread and butter "must have" AA for a tank You would never see them on the AA list because as they say about the gravy: "Its in there" and it should be in there. They are tanks after all. There should be some built in advantage to roling those classes and there should be no reason why a warrior should have to put in just as much time and effort to max out CA/CS as a mage or a rogue. There would be no "congrats you have been autogranted this" spam. The math just automatically adjusts in the same way your hp/endo/mana pool goes up. The rogue and the mage? Yah they still have to buy those. All the stuff that requires player input to activate should still be earned and bought. People still need to learn how to use those skills. That's about all I can think of and someone else probably already mentioned it.
Personally, you have to look "Big" picture. To borrow a factoid from the raid game the partial gear resets and lack of focii is to funnel people into the new expansion. While I disagree with that logic completely, if I go to the dark side and accept that logic it raises a very interesting question..... "Why are players forced to go back to camp stuff in old content." Notice 100 Alaran is granted this expansion. You are not forced to go back and camp for it. So why doesn't the game simply put in a vendor that sells for Platinum all old augs from previous expansions. Make the vendor only work on people of current level. 96? Okay you can go buy all HOT and before Augs. I as a developer now know exactly what I have as a baseline available aug set + t1 tradeable set
Focusing on gear is not the issue though. A tank merc comes with all critical tanking innate AA "built in" just through virtue of being a tank. Why can't player tanks come with all that innate tanking AA also built in just through virtue of being a tank? At least the basic defensive abilities. Lets say you have a guild with people that raid a few nights a week. That is what they do as their primary time in EQ based on what their schedules afford. The warrior logs on and raids but doesn't AA much. The mage also logs in and raids but doesn't AA much. Think you all know who is going to be more effective at their job in the raid based upon time spent in game doing character development outside of raiding/gearing. Mage can skate. Warrior can't. Why? Because there is no built in tanking advantage to the baseline warrior template that has kept pace with the current levels. Maybe at lvl 50 there was, but not now. A naked warrior with no AA's is going to die almost as equally fast as a naked mage except it is not the mage's job to get beat on. Gearing is one thing that has to be left to players. Everyone has to do it. We all have the same slot count. Gearing is also completely dependent on social interactions between players in game. Especially with raid guilds since they have administrative processes in place to allocate loot. If there is going to be a fix to tanks broad spectrum to cover all play styles and player situations in order to at least get them on equal ground with a merc, than the changes have to happen with the math the baseline tank class templates are built around. Otherwise, everyone gets a fresh out of the box tank in merc form with all the latest tanking AA just by going up a level. You can't blame those that role the tanking classes for getting a bit discouraged. Otherwise that is about the only concession I can think of.
Merc tanks take a big jump in stats one level up in a new expansion, they do not need to wait till max level to do well. The level 91 plus merc tank was designed to tank in Voa which was an expansion that the names hit like freight trains, so I am not surprised that it can take on the easy trash mobs in RoF. The level 91 merc will perform as well as a real tank wearing full T3 Voa gear and with all major AA's done, while the level 95 merc tank will not have that much difference in stats then the level 91 merc. At max level wearing end game group gear you tank will be able to take damage better than a merc tank will, but until then the merc will do better. From my experience in Voa the tanking difference between a HoT T4 tank and a Voa T3 tank is huge, I am not sure why it is like this, since the stats did not increase that much, but when it came to tanking T3 names it made a huge difference. During Voa my level 95 tank wearing full T4 HoT found it very hard to kill T2 Voa names, until he got done all his Voa AA's, which was when he was able to tank only the easiest T3 names. But once he was wearing full T3 group gear he found it easy to tank T3 names, and the same pattern followed for T4 names. That was one of my issues with Voa, a group tank finds it hard to stay alive against names, until he was wearing full gear for the tier he was fighting in, and when you move up to the next tier level he can only tank the easiest names. The bad part about this, is that the non tanks, that reach max level, will want to move into a zone where they get loot upgrades, but the tank needs to wait until he gets full essential AA's for that expansion and then they can only tank in a few area's until he gets some new gear. At max level wearing end game group gear you tank will be able to take damage better than a merc tank will, but until then the merc will do better.
you have two complaints here. yes, indeed, the game shifted to using mercs. that part about having 2 ... or 3 ... or 4 dps sitting around wanting to do something, yes we like mercs. mercs are dumb and they die a lot, particularly when using healer and tank mercs together. pet tanking, root for cc, knowing when to use their abilities, the list goes on and on about why real players are preferred to mercs. in fact, i think that tanks have the easiest time beating their merc counterpart, mostly because the tank mercs are the dumbest imho. they do get beat upside the head a lot. all classes now have a baseline skill level. for a long time, only tanks and healers had to live up to the constant ai. now dps do, and we're learning that most folks don't keep up with an automatron that does nothing but cast. do you think i'd say to my friend thats returning ... hey, you can't join my group because you're not doing 7k dps. i wouldn't say that to a tank friend either because he couldn't tank the content. if you're friends ditched you because they could move on and you couldn't, thats another issue entirely. think of the merc as someone who stops to get upgrades, who gets all his aa, who gets all the rk 2 disciplines. someone, in short, that puts the time into the toon every single level. more than real tanks who are trying to level to catch up to their friends. they get some of the aa, some of the upgrades, and spend more time than other classes that are less gear dependant. the merc gets it all, or at least enough to sometimes not die in current content, tuned for grouping in the expansion that matches their level range. the 92 merc is tuned for voa, which is much more difficult than hot as an expanson. i've really enjoyed levelling a tank, but she's mostly my solo toon. i played thru the old expansions, in expansion gear, sometimes with a friend but mostly just the healer merc. i definitely take my time on that toon, getting the aa, getting level appropriate gear, getting her ac augs. with the dps of a tank, that's a lot of time. i make being better than a merc for her level a goal before moving on. she's stuck in hot right now, and i don't particularly want to play hot anymore. burnt out on it. mebbe some fun will be had in underfoot ... hmm... my point being, you have a choice to stop and smell the roses or be worse than a merc. we all have that choice. once you get to max level, decent gear, and fill in those aa you skipped you'll beat a merc, too.
The mag job is to dps with the other dps classes in a raid, if all the dps classes came into the raid with low AA count the raid will fail. The tank job is to tank it is not a team issue, so a tank has to come prepared to do his job, while one dps classes leaching will not effect the raid as much as a weak tank.
