Raid Composition and Class Balance

So this thread is partly to vent, partly to ask for some changes over time and partly about class balance. I am raider in 2 guilds (Euro guild weekends, US guild weekdays). I am an officer and recruitment leader for a mid-tier guild and a member in an end game guild.

So I know developers are looking for classes to be largely interchangeable within an archtype. I completely agree with this line of thought so long as each class has its perks and flavor development that makes them fun and worthwhile to play.

In my opinion, each class should ideally have about 3 people per class (16x3 = 48) with an extra per arch-type (+6 with how I am breaking them up which is largely arbitrary) to get up to the full raid compliment of 54.
1. Healer - cleric, druid, shaman.
2. Tank - paladin, shadow knight, warrior.
3. Fighter/melee - berserker, monk rogue.
4. Caster - magician, necromancer, wizard.
5. Hybrid - beastlord, ranger.
6. Utility/CC - bard enchanter.

However, raid design and guilds recruitment reflects a very different picture than roughly even between classes and archtypes. Some classes are much more "required" (like clerics) and much higher on the "want to have" (like bards) than others. Which in principle does not even bother me that much other than the fact it is really hard to keep some classes "in stock" so to speak since you want to have a disproportionately large number of them and they are often not hugely abundant as a class anyway.

You can see the discrepancy easily by looking at the number of characters of each class in end game rosters and what they are recruiting for now. (Everyone is recruiting for bards - and lots of them, clerics are always high demand and in high numbers for totals, and most guilds have an abundance of tanks, which I argue is because tanks gain the most from raid gear. However which tank class is the most represented varies from guild to guild it seems).

What can be deducted from the actual player response to raids is of course disputed, but I contend that the follow is true.

1. Healing requirements are too extensive on raids. Most raids will have or want to have more than 10 healers (what the average should be), usually preferring something from 12-15. Consisting of 6 clerics, 3 shaman, 3 druid. Most shaman and druid I know don't want to heal outside of their groups and is often like pulling teeth to get them to do it as they would rather DPS.

2. Utility is under valued other than ADPS contributions.

3. When there are adds, they have too many Anti-CC effects. (I personally like having a fair number of soft hitting adds with a reasonable number of HP).

4. ADPS contributions are huge for melee (often doubling or tripling their output) and there is not enough overlap in who provides it to reduce the impact of not having a perfect group with perfect timing. If you don't have the ADPS then don't bother, or they get so many boosts they become untouchable.

5. Casters are either godly or sucky. They don't get as much ADPS (which I think is good) but their other mechanics are not flexible enough.

6. Tanks have to have really fast responses to survive and gain the attention of the mob. Most guilds have a bunch of underwhelming tanks who just don't bring enough to the table but you need a lot of redundancy with tanks to cope with high death rates (and an excuse to use them since they are so prevalent in raiding guilds). Both of the guilds I am in have 15+ tanks most of the time. Often hitting 20 or more.

I have been of course making lots of raid set ups to try to come up with optimizations to encourage developers to pursue, not that it matters since I don't have that much sway.

In general, I would like to see raid groups move more toward the following styles of format which are again largely arbitrary, mostly varying due to whether BL/Ranger want to be more DPS or more ADPS, but they should provide similar levels in my opinion of whichever they end up being and should have lesser versions of bard/enchanter abilities. I think if they don't get some of the bard ADPS utility balance sorted out there will never be good balance for melee without just giving melee lesser versions of what bards offer. Bards I feel need more draw other than being ADPS monsters, and BL utility for berserkers is also out of whack. When ADPS and personal DPS is added for a group, it shouldn't be more than 120% (arbitrary number) compared to a group of straight DPS without the ADPS boosts. The ADPS classes should offer more personal DPS and raid useful utility instead of huge leaps of ADPS.

1. cler cler war war war pal
2. cler pal pal sk sk sk
3 sham bard bers rogue monk bl
4 sham bard bers rogue monk bl
5 sham bard bers rogue monk bl
6 dru ench wiz mage nec ranger
7 dru ench wiz mage nec ranger
8 dru ench wiz mage nec ranger
9 extras of whatever your guild seems to collect

1. cler cler war war war pal
2. cler pal pal sk sk sk
3 sham bard bers bers bers monk
4 sham bard rogue rogue rogue monk
5 sham bard monk bl bl bl
6 dru ench wiz wiz wiz mage
7 dru ench nec nec nec mage
8 dru ench ranger ranger ranger mage
9 extras of whatever your guild seems to collect

Sorry for the rant, just thinking about how annoying it is to always have these kinds of balance issues regardless of which level of raiding you participate.

I read this all and...

You want rangers to get lesser versions of bard abilities because you can't get enough bards? That's about all I'm getting out of this.

I would not be in favor of seeing rangers being turned into an adps class. Ranger "utility" on raids has never come in that form (save for auspice). We've traditionally been decent dps with weak tanking/healing/CC ability. Introducing a bunch of adps abilities would likely detract from these other roles, which frankly are in need of some tweeking after this past expansion where we saw virtually no new abilities worth mentioning.

while i agree that balance needs adjusted so taht all classes have about the same chance at a spot on a raid, i dont think farming each others' abilities out is the way to go, but more balancing the ones taht are there. taht said, your proposed groupings are extremely..weird. id probably do more like this, 4war 4pal 4 sk 4clr 4shm 4dru 3 of each else.

clr dru war war pal sk
clr dru war war pal sk
shm brd zerk mnk mnk bst
shm brd zerk rog rog bst
shm brd zerk rog mnk bst
dru enc wiz wiz wiz mag
dru enc nec nec nec mag
clr rgr rgr rgr enc mag (thisis the wonky group but rgrs shoudl be pretty much selfsufficient , keyword should, without adps since burns are best from afar and cant share with melee adps if the melee are at the mob. with rgrs and enc in here this can be a cc group or range dps group with mag pet/spells as nukes or as an offtank etc, wahtever)
clr shm pal pal sk sk

these may seem a little off in today's raids, but that's the point he's trying to make. currently each class SHOULD be wanted in 3-4 per raid, but some classes are barely wanted 2 of and others are wanted 6 of, making it much harder for some classes to find a place, on top of that most of the ones you want 5-6 of are lowest population outside of raiding and thus get graded more on a curve when apping, while the higher population classes that are in the least demand on raids you ahve to be beyond great while others barely have to be tolerably breathing.

war war war clr dru clr
war war pal clr dru clr
pal sk sk clr dru dru
nec nec nec nec nec brd
mag mag mag brd dru ench
wis wis wis brd dru ench
shm brd ber rog mk bl
shm brd ber rog mk bl
shm brd rng rng rng bl

druid x 6
cleric x 5
bard x 6
warrior x 5
necromancer x 5
magician x 3
wizard x 3
shaman x 3
beastlord x 3
ranger x 3
rogue x 2
monk x 2
berzerker x 2
shadow knight x 2
palidun x 2
enchanter x 2

Honestly most caster dps is interchangeable with each other. The same goes for melee dps. Cleric and druid can replace each other in raid groups. Bards are really just another dps class in disguise for the most part. Necromancer are limited by mobs max debuff limit.

^ that's the point. we werent saying how to set up a raid perfectly we were saying ways groups could be set up if it was balanced enough to have a more fair distribution rather than what you just posted which is moreso the norm

This is where I take issue. Bards are just another dps class ? Bards contribute over 30% to melee dps if not more.

You either give melee a bard or you accept 20-30% less dps from them classes on top of that you give them a bst or accept another 30% + reduction in burn dps.

ADPS is out of control for melee dps these classes have become requirements for melee where casters do better with them, but they lose a fraction of the dps without them while melee lose 50% + that screams unbalanced in a 14 year old game where new people are not coming in to fill the places of the people leaving these classes.

They need to start spreading ADPS out to other classes to fill the gap or reduce the need for it. How they do this is up to them, but it needs to be done.

or boost personal dps without adps for those melees, lower teh adps the bards and bsts add and boost their other utilities in various ways. thing is bards wars and clerics are probably the lowest populations of all the high-demand classes in raids, so there's always a want for more because there arent so many in the game to choose from muchless of quality. on the flip side of that sks are the highest of all teh low-demands listed and thus while a mediocre bard clr or even war gets in a mediocre, good and even great sk doesnt, only the phenomenal and only if there's room. chanters are prett ywell balanced tehy're low population and it can be hard on some servers to keep 2 active raiding ones in yoru guild all the time. main shaman are thesame case as so many are boxed (like bards) and bsts there jsut arent too many great ones to spread around. rangeres are very high population but also not all taht high demand, though higher than sk/end etc.

if class balance at least allowed or even required a more event distribution of theclasses it would allow for both a fairer distribution of raid slots and a more even keel for quality of the player rather than some classes not having had to play but a few weeks in teh game and others needing many years jsut for a chance. just look around at those guilds that do allow boxing on raids and which classes get boxed the most behind mains, due to higher demand and lower expectations and which ones are NEVER boxed behind a main.

Bards are a very high dps substitute class. Bards bring a % gain to other DPS classes that is balanced upon the group game. Raid dps groups remove tanks from dps groups. The result is bards % increase is increased from increasing three dps classes on average in group game to four and up to five in a all necromancer group. That causes adps added by bard to be much higher on raids then in group game.

But sense they don't top the parse no one ever complains about the fact that there the highest dps in the game.

Necromancers gain just as much adps from bards as melee. Five necros and a bard will be highest dps group in a raid. Mage pets gain allot from a bard as well and to a lesser extend so does the mage. Wizards are the ones that gain the least but there is still a gain.

My raids generally look something like this, occasionally I end up making a half tank/melee dps group.

war war war war clr clr
pal sk war clr dru shm
pal pal sk cl dru clr

wiz wiz wiz wiz enc dru
mag mag mag mag dru enc
nec nec nec bard enc dru

monk ranger ranger ranger bst sham
ranger monk monk rogue sham bst
ber bst rog rog bard shaman

I average 5-7 druids, 5-7 clerics, 4 shamans, 4-5 wars, 2-3 sks, 3-5 pallies.

During the last AA chat, several Enchanters pitched ideas on how the class could become the bard equivilant for all caster dps classes (which was stated as the vision from devs as well) and we were given 1-2 things that boosted all casters but most of the other stuff is "weezerd only". If these 2 classes are to remain the "essential" aDps, the gap between what a bard can do and what an enchanter can do must have a core revisit. Bards can still boost both melee and caster dps while enchanters are mainly the wizard and mage help.

I don't think trying to prop a 3rd or even 4th class into the bard/chanter type will help if there's such a disparity already happening. Giving enchanters Illusions of Grandeur was a good starting place, a much needed one. Giving enchanters abilities that only help wizards...while good in theory...isn't.

1 warrior, pally, sk, cleric, cleric, shaman
2. warrior, pally, sk, cleric, cleric, shaman
3. warrior, pally, sk, pally, cleric, cleric
4. bard, shaman, beast, zerker, rogue, ranger
5. bard, shaman, beast, zerker, rogue, monk
6. bard, shaman, beast, zerker, rogue, ranger
7. bard, druid, ench, mage, mage, ranger
8. bard, druid, ench, necro, necro, necro
9. bard, druid, ench, wiz, wiz, wiz

1. badger badger badger badger badger badger
2. badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM
3. badger badger badger badger badger badger
4. badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM
5. SNAKE SNAKE badger badger badger badger
6. badger badger badger badger badger badger
7. badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM
8. badger badger badger badger badger badger
9. badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM

Can't ever seem to recruit enough snakes.

Really why change the classes in such a way that changes raid balance then that just screws all the guilds who have the correct balance now

I think what this really shows is that most people have the same general ideas on which classes go where, but that no one has a fully optimized roster for every individual member of their raid- no one.

To fully support a warrior, you'd want a cleric (aura is limited to group), bard (songs likewise), shaman (epic ditto), paladin (aura again), zerker- and look, we're now already at five people, still don't have an SK there for lich sting, only one of them is another tank, but that warrior will put out considerable DPS (for a warrior), be healed for more (that's how paladin aura works, it's heal taken), resist more, et cetera, provided, of course, that outside classes also use their single target and TGBable stuff on them.

Druid aura conflicts with enchanter MR aura, which is superior. Group black wolf is TGBable- technically, a druid doesn't have to be in a caster DPS group to augment those casters. A group comprised of necromancers and/or mages would be better served by a shaman healer to boost their pets, with a druid augmenting their DPS from outside of group (though black wolf does very little for necros anyway, since it only applies to nukes, and the shaman is in all honesty better equipped to handle the kind of group damage casters usually take, by having a much faster casting group heal that casts additional waves over time and stacks with group HoT for dealing with AEs, and an additional survival/AI-type "rescue" in the form of their new BP click- particularly if the druid like to burn, when they're really relying upon group heal and Survival rather than single target patch heals (which is where their strength lies).

Are guilds going out to recruit shaman en masse to place one in pet-using caster DPS groups? Nope. They'd have a nightmare of a time of it anyway- there aren't that many shaman in circulation to do it.

Every group on a raid benefits from a bard, but few guilds are trying to recruit nine or more of them. Not only do they have some way to boost every single group, from heals, to tanking, to melee DPS, to caster DPS, but having more bards on a raid makes things easier on the raid too even for people that don't have one in their group- they can maintain Funeral Dirge (5: Increase Hit Damage Taken by 21%) on the mob much much longer that way. The more damage a mob takes, the faster it is dead, the faster it is dead, the less time tanks have to tank, the less time tanks have to tank, the more time they are spending in full discs, the more time tanks are in full discs, the easier it is to heal them, the easier to heal, the less mana used, the less mana used, the more mana and ADPS abilities can be given to other classes to increase their DPS, the more DPS, the more damage a mob takes, the more damage, the faster it is dead... this is part of the not-secret "secret" to DPS being king. EVEN on a raid that has HP locks and punish mechanics for too much DPS, it lets you get through the times when you can DPS quicker, dealing with fewer AEs, adds, et cetera.

Every hybrid can make use of all forms of ADPS, which means that to support one, I'm sure they'd love a bard, shaman, enchanter, druid, berserker, monk, rogue, beastlord, shadowknight in their group (though they don't usually get it, the ability to tap their considerable melee damage back means they can burn hotter safer, as they're getting healed while they do it), but groups simply won't hold that many.

Raid rosters are "best fit." Enough support that your melee don't get too upset, enough healers that your tanks aren't shaking in their boots, enough melee that a spell-immune mob doesn't completely cripple your raid, enough melee for the reverse situation, enough CC in case that's necessary too, enough meat shields to pick a fight with a big bad boss. After that, it's mostly making sure you have a little of everything, just in case- having been in a guild completely lacking in one class (and only a single member of a couple of other classes), it wasn't healthy, because if anything changes, you have to scramble to catch back up.

You simply cant optimize a raid for every single class in it ever. Your bards would need bards to let them focus on personal DPS. Of course then the other bard would then need a bard as well for the same reason.

45 bards, 9 healers. Best possible raid.

Of course all the bards would afk /melody and autofollow their healer.

I somehow feel that Qulas would make sure I didn't get a bard if we that many Illa.

I was thinking about today what class it would be smartest to mainchange into if I wanted to get into a highend raidguild.

Checking the top 15-17 raidguilds serverwide, it seem there is a huge demand for bards. All except one guild are actively recruiting bards, 3 or 4 of them are even looking for multiple bards

After that its Berserkers, clerics and wizards in highest demand. Warriors being clearly least desired. Only 4 of 17 guilds have open recruiting for warriors and then on low need

So what is it that suddenly makes bards being recruited with high desirabilty in so many topguilds and even to the point that some of them are wanting 2-3 bard apps?