So are melee still crap?

Discussion in 'Melee' started by Norathorr, Jun 26, 2015.

  1. Songsa Augur

    I think you got some talentuous rogues in your roster that could easily compete like they should back in the days.
  2. ~Mills~ Augur

    Back in the days of Call of the Forsaken. Man its been like a decade.
  3. Songsa Augur

    There shouldnt be one expansion in EQ with some dps classes (casters or melees) left behind in every event without anything done for 1 year to balance things.
    I understand totally that its difficult to have a perfect balance and sometimes some classes would be better than others but this needs to be in the 15-20% range max to let people with skills or fight duration compensate and have a clean and healthy competition between players.
    In this expansion the difference in dps on a complete clear could be in the 100% and even more between classes that are all dps specialists.
    The raids should also have various duration, effects on the players, variety of things to do etc... to give everyone an important role and favorize one class than another on a different event.
    We are far from that in this exp. Cotf even with melee having an advantage thx to AE events was more balanced in general (but still far from being perfect), the difference in dps was never more than 30% in most events and lots of events were a close competition between best casters and best melees due to event mechanisms mostly. The complete night parses from best guilds often had wizards or necros at top, sometimes rogues, too rarely berserkers though.
    Brogett likes this.
  4. ~Mills~ Augur

    You must not have raided prior to VoA when basically it was 75% burst events, lots of trash clearing which favors one type of dps style. So it was on demand burst dps or go home, there is a reason ALL successful guilds carried 3, 4 or even 5 melee heavy dps groups. At best 1 of the 3 casters would hit a high point for an expansion or two, like wizards and mages with twincast, or an event or two when it lasted 3 or more minutes. Otherwise casters for the most part had to sit on their hands doing 50% or less dps for the night.

    Only back then you lobbied that rogues and zerkers should never be matched by anyone else because they are so bad off that can't do anything else ever but dps. Now that burst doesn't rule raids your song has changed, pun intended, and its ok for all dps to be relative to each other based on the content of the time.

    Melee are still extremely well off in burst, you just don't like it anymore. This just means more raid events need to go back to being burst.
    Melee are still doing well if mob AC was adjusted back to normal. This would be a bump up in sustained without anything drastically needing to change. Zerkers need more than this.
    Melee need to have their AE dependence changed. Either they keep it and some events need to cater to it so they can shine with it at the expense of it not being able to used at other times. Or its basically removed and they get a smaller always on boost to replace the once and awhile god mode.

    At no point do they need to suddenly sustain 90K dps without support and still be able to hit 300-400K dps if a mob has its ac reduced or cons dark blue to them and only lives 60-90 seconds.
  5. Songsa Augur

    Ok so to resume, you say basically the same thing as me with some personal attacks (like 90%+ of your posts) in the mix, but its not a problem as long as you recognize that this game is broken its more than enough for me.
  6. segap Augur

    Honestly, I don't think it is horrible. Is there usually a significant gap between wiz/necros and melee? Yes, and I'd hope the forthcoming campaign helps balance that better. Even with smaller numbers, I have more fun playing a rogue than I would a wizard spamming a multibind.

    Things that do annoy me as a rogue:

    1) Humanoid sized mobs. It's not fun not being able to see the thing I'm attacking through 50 swarm pets. Makes keeping the back arc a bit challenging, especially when all those swarm pets create heaps of UI lag. Caster can just stand at a distance and nuke away. Can we return to large raid bosses that tower over everyone and makes it easier for hoards of melee to attack and see? An option to hide swarm pets would be nice too.

    2) Ranged targets. If I wanted to turn on autofire and go to the fridge to get a beer, I'd have rolled a ranger. Not only do I do an insignificant amount of damage fighting these, but I'm bored to tears doing so. Adding a roaming blob and occasionally summoning us to keep us awake does not up the fun or usefulness factor. If we're going to have ranged targets, could we at least get all melee classes an endless quiver like ability? And how about raid quality throwing items?

    3) Mechanics that make you stay away from other people. As a melee, there's not much I can do when I can't be near others (I could throw knives, but there's no use). Casters can spread out and still possibly keep casting if in range. Similarly, effects that make you stay in one spot. A caster can keep casting, if a melee is stuck out of range, we just stand there stupid.

    4) Mobs not respecting zone geometry. Trying to kill something like a sparkworker that gets pushed in a wall when I cannot find where it is is no fun and does not help me do my job. Yet casters can just /assist|/target and nuke away.



    I'd like to see them make more an effort to not make mechanics and encounters melee unfriendly. They're going to balance classes the way they like, but don't punish us for being melee unless you want to reward us with bigger damage to compensate for annoyances.
    Attickus, Esero, Songsa and 1 other person like this.
  7. Brogett Augur

    See Rogue Raid Burn - TDS+ for a graph of my dps burn on vitio.

    You'll see that your guild as a whole can kill it in say 2 minutes then rogues can be "just fine". That however is misleading. Look at he graph as a whole and you see a complete cliff edge. This is where the bulk of the guilds see rogues moving away from the "just fine" portion to the "rather weak" portion. Our sustained is just dire.

    Now consider what it's like for berserkers without knifeplay disc equivalent (monks have one and do comparable to rogues overall); it's even worse for them.

    Put simply, we need perfected burn to be OK and then a fight that doesn't drag on too long. Another thing to consider is what actually is a burn? Rogue burn, and normally wiz too, will be from 100% to get a nice looking parse. Wiz trivially beat us there as their initial burst is significantly higher. What if you're a class whose burn peaks around 2 min in (eg necro)? I'd still call the peak in the graph of damage over time to be a burn, and guess work - it's MUCH higher than rogues. (They can burn at around double our peak.)

    So yeah, even discounting the sustained being poor, our burn is also significantly behind too.
    Attickus likes this.
  8. Brogett Augur

    Well said and a good list (cut for brevity). Fundamentally this game is meant to be fun and if something takes away from that then it ultimately, eventually, takes away the revenue too.

    There are simply too many annoyances that make raiding TDS plain dull and boring. We're losing people :(
    Insanekitty and Esero like this.
  9. Insanekitty Lorekeeper

    Hello folks , i thought i would add my 2 cents in just for fun, as a zerker who has dealt with beta forums for several upon several years trying to get any attention from devs , its amazing that there is a berserker population at all. I remember when zerkers used to parse with top end weapons on postings then decided to go backward and use a regular rusty sword for parsing purposes due to issues with everyone saying their beef about OP classes etc.

    Melee are suffering , plain and simple . I do have to admit that with the 1 shot amazing backstabs from rogues and the kicks that do a mil dmg its really hard to catch up as a berserker class when the mob isnt blue! yes blue since decap only works to a point. aside from event 4 and 2 in arx there are no decappable mobs , most of which is meaningless on event 4 since they are charmed mostly and cut off at the end if any. So mainly event 2 is the only situation for decap. Keep in mind the mobs get mind wiped and 1 decap at the wrong time = death , yes thats with 153k hp and 11800 ac.

    Many people dont realize but frenzy has a smaller range than melee swing so we have to get right up in there and normally we are dead, event 1 aoes going off on magus's, distracting strike being utterly useless. I am pretty much 99.99 percent of the time the next to die after a tank dies. why you ask?

    with a fade at 6.5 mins and 2 of my discs also not at the 10 min mark .. its interesting to compare the berserker class to any pure melee that cannot drop aggro in the same galaxy as it were with a rogue fading every 2 mins , hell my paladin can fade twice as often without reduction cooldowns.

    As far as burst goes , understand that yes 153k hp ... remove 11 percent of that right off the top so we can use our abilities.

    Perfect setup requires frenzied and being rooted, blind which yes we can now click off but not remove by buff blocking under any means.

    Sustained was supposed to be solved for berserkers approximately 9 expansions ago or something with frenzy being our sustained solution which went into oblivion. with TDS gear and type 3 augs i cant even get my frenzy to cap out at 125 mod, there are only 2 items in TDS with a frenzy mod yet berserker only shoulders from the bloodstained have mana regen on them. ? seriously.

    low and behold to my trusting of coding , the information regarding our axe throw type 3 aug is fire spell dmg based which is even more hilarious ... yes it does nothing bye bye plat.

    being in a raid where i can take 2 rounds from lany on event 5 and thats about it before i get pummeled, this is of course with juggers resolve , and i also use vet armor aa and my self rune. keep in mind im always at 89 percent hp or less just to use my abilities.

    i would love to find a class that has that kind of handicap , melee range without being able to survive the hits the mobs are dealing out watching hybrid tanks drop like speed bumps its even more stupid. Warriors are way too dominating. I would love to see a raid do event 5 with hybrid tanks and no warriors.


    I have played my berserker since the class's inception, the berserker was the worst class in the game in the beginning. We were fixed and we were extremely OP for 2 expansions after. and slowly fading into the shadows.

    Yes on very specific fights like DH2 raid i can use furious rampage and top the meters if when i'm rooted the mob doesn't run out of melee range and i have to click it off loosing dps.

    Berserkers do most of their dmg via melee swing roughly 80 percent. so we are extremely dependent max overhaste from bards , accuracy from rogues , shaman click and rangers boots, almost everyone has a hundred hands effect ability now , ACOC is such a thing of the past that its almost irrelevant which used to be the tune all the casters used to about because it was an Adps ability that was significant in the past. just like Chromatic haze or hazy thoughts whatever you want to call it is now , its up there were ACOC used to be.

    In the end i dont care about casters , i care about pure melee and even hybrids sacrificing the requirement of being close to a mob taking ae ramp for what? , if you are giving your survivability away you need to be rewarded with the dmg dealing benefits of it , not the other way around im sorry i dont care what range player you are playing.

    Berserker AXES are a joke and they are expensive and i go through em like candy and they are required by several abilities not just for throwing. The axes need a severe stat upgrade or we need a range drop for berserkers that we can aug and it counts as a throwing axe as part of our abilities.

    Also Axe of illedara whatever its called , It applies 3 debuffs randomly which get resisted by bosses or anything that is higher than 105 which increases our dps but none the less does nothing for us in the raid game, as does our snare stun and we used to have a dot axe that never had a renewal.

    In the Group game things are even more skewed, caster mercs dominate , and dont lie if you had an extra spot you would load a caster merc.

    anyhow im tired its late and none of this will ever see the light of day , also if you look over many of the posts there was one relating to TDS current classes and their dmg reductions and beastlords and berserkers are tied for last as far as raw dmg mitigation while clothies are just behind the hybrid tanks , with runes that can make them a god and recastable.

    i get a fancy glyph rune too .. ya its nice , not that im asking for a defensive ability over a dps increase , i think we need both personally, even with diplomatic papers im lucky to get out of the way of an aoe going off on tita 1 off or event 1. getting by blue mobs on event 4 before a tank can even pick it up . its extremely disheartening.\

    anyhow thats enough for now.

    IK was here
    Sheex, Brogett, Esero and 1 other person like this.
  10. Norathorr Augur

    Wow insane what a great post. I think that sums up my feelings on the issue. The class has been pushed down and down so much and makes so many sacrifices yet sees no real reward for said sacrifices. I was just not having fun anymore. Outside raiding I was next to useless if solo and in groups without the right support I was next to useless too. I had to sit back and think is there any point to my class at all. I could have made a caster but I decided I did not want to reward Daybork™ for incompetence and did not want to level and gear a new toon, so I just quit. Still EQ is my favorite game of all time despite how inane modern content has become. I just wish they would address melee issues (All melee not just berserker) and either balance us out a bit or give us the dps we deserve for all the sacrifices we make.
    Insanekitty and Songsa like this.
  11. Splittin New Member

    I played a Zerker from the start. RL kind of got in the way of EQ but i come back here and there. Seeing what has become of the class and playing, I no longer touch my zerker. I dont even bother to log him in.
    I went about playing different classes to see what I will play instead and i just have a hard time settling on anything because I liked my zerker. Though it seems my who is now 2 level higher than my raid geared zerk from awhile back is decent and I get a little giddy seeing the uber crits. Atleast I can find amusement in something else instead of playing a class that has become garbage and with so many drawbacks to justify its dps. The zerker class that was once good now is a serious joke and then we got crap damage with all the drawbacks that no other class gets.
  12. Zarakii Augur

    I wont complain about where melee stand right now but zerks... seriously daybreak stop ignoring these issues......
  13. Brogett Augur

    It's not really zerks vs monks vs rogues as to who comes off worse, but rather sustained vs non-sustained. All melee suffer outside of burns (berserkers more than rog who themselves suffer more than monks), but frankly all 3 of us are in a weak state when it comes to non-disc dps.

    The HH procs and massive strike / kick-equiv helped monks and rogues though so it's the obvious first fix for berserkers.
    Songsa likes this.
  14. ~Mills~ Augur

  15. Sancus Augur

    That's... actually a wonderful patch (better late than never). I'm sure some classes (*cough* berserkers *cough*) could use more, but that change was sorely needed.
  16. segap Augur


    I'm interested to see how this turns out. AC was only part of the problem, but a huge change like this might help mask the other problems. Nothing can salvage AM3 for melee.

    My concern is this seems rushed and a reaction to player reaction to the patch. I get the sense someone higher up told them they have too many unhappy players and made an edict. And the dev team now no longer cares about tuning of TDS raids. They've moved on to what they're working on and will just cave to the user base and be done with it. We can farm all we want. Regardless of the reason why (which I have no real clue what it was) and the rightness of the change made, I'm happy to see some acknowledgement and change.

    Let's hope they've learned from design decisions in TDS and we have some great raids in the Fall. Was excited to see Prathun comment he's working on some. Will be good to get some different ideas infused.
    Iila and Sancus like this.
  17. Zarakii Augur

  18. Brogett Augur

    I don't think any melee has ever asked to sustain like a necro. But sustain like a wiz (our caster counterpart)... why not?

    AC will make melee look good in the uber guilds so that some events they're top and others not; a fair balance there. But it's only one part of a bigger issue. The graph of damage over time compared to similar graphs 5 years ago show that we're gaining more and more ADPS and burst power *at the expense of sustained*.

    Eg my most recent Vitio parse (only one run emote, right at the end - it's visible):

    [IMG]

    Cut that fight short (as it would be in a more dps centred guild) and I start to look pretty hot dps. Drag on to our low-dps centric guild and it's still "OK"ish, but not remotely close to the caster dps. While we have such a huge burst/sustained ratio no balance will ever be possible. I get that some classes are burst while others are sustained, but the growing that ratio year on year is a bad thing.
  19. RangerGuy Augur

    Glad to see the devs listened at least now we can see how much of a part this played. Allowing for classes to see what they can really do well before devs get locked into possible stagnation for some classes or over boosting for others.

    Mills you want to be asking for more sustained friendly events I think as many events just became of the 90 second variety or at least the parts of the parse everyone liked. Based on the wizard burst changes and melee now free from raid mob AC.

    Wizard sustained should be reigned in on the longer fights with these changes but might need further tweaks. I am a solid supporter of keeping burst classes as burst classes so that spike growing is what it should be happening not suddenly also then pouring out higher baseline dps like a necro while also spiking that high when desired or needed. The only argument people had was well wizards can do it just means wizards were broken in that regard not that it was good balancing for everyone else to just do everything.
  20. Songsa Augur

    You always seem to forget that some burst events for Best guilds can be sustained for most others. In that case we let necros decimate everyone in low dps guilds and wiz or melees let no chance to necros in high dps guilds ? The difference between dps classes in sustained and burst should be significant to let classes their specificities but not to the point we are atm or the one you reclaim otherwise no balance is possible.
    Brogett likes this.