Just as you forget the decade prior to VoA when most events were burst AND then also dominated by melee to boot. No changes were made for you to keep a lead but allow everyone else to get within reason. In fact you and Brogett were two of the most vocal people in game on the matter when necros could very rarely hit 40-55K on a burst fight back when true burst classes were hitting 65-75K. You cried foul, game imbalance, screamed it wasn't ok for one class to be good at both burst and sustained back when most events favored burst and sustained classes were lucky to have one or two events a year aimed at them. Yet here you are pleading for exactly that with your only argument being wizards are broken but we want to be like them and events became more sustained in nature or at least don't hurt casters as much because my 500K dps AE burst abilities break all things related to burst. So please ignore that I can do that and now give me sustained on top of it. You have to have tradeoffs. Want 30-45 seconds of ramp time for every fight, then ok. Want your cool downs to go back to some being 20 minute waits or longer like just about every other class, then ok. Want to be blinded, rooted and self damage for dps, then ok. You don't want any of that. You want to be 1 or 2 always every fight no matter the duration, script, mob or scenario. Otherwise you cry foul or complain.
You should read what I say not imagine what you think I have in mind. About tradeoffs I think rogues are well served with no buffs, no heal, no solo, no tanking skills, rear arc dependancy, adps high dependancy and low survivability in raid being in melee range with all effects like rampage ae etc...
It's clear as day what you want based on your posts, likes and history the past 5 years. I am not imagining anything if your aren't number 1 or 2 at something you complain. And when you are 1 or 2 you downplay why or how it happens dismissing it entirely as a means to get to 1 or 2 elsewhere as well. You have some amazing self buffs that as I said refresh in 10 minutes or less when most classes have to wait 15, 20, 30 minutes in some cases for the burn buffs to come back up. You want to harp on the fact that you can't add 200 ac and 500 hps from some self buffs. When most classes would prefer a version of knifeplay over that any day. Neither do wizards, mages or zerkers. You tank and solo mobs as effect as many other classes, poorly in some areas and lethal in others. Your rear arc dependency is completely legit but its also not as harsh as it used to be. Welcome to everquest every dps class now faces at least a 25% or more loss in dps without full support. The difference being higher baselines without it or when its not done properly. But for the most part those are sustained classes ie mages and necros. Almost every class faces these same issues to varying degrees depending on if a rune or shielding type spell is up or based on the event. You spout these things as if you are the only one facing them as if it gets you some special double my dps card. Which is the farthest thing from the truth.
With just the AC changes as many of us claimed was all that was needed. We see sustained events becoming burst events for many guilds and events. We see increased burst and sustained out of melee for everything, even if they didn't win the parse because events still run longer for them. They are still way up. We see some guilds flying threw events they previously couldn't because their 6 rogue, 5 berserker and 6 monk dps teams are now hitting for more. IE they stuck to the roster make up of heavy melee like back in the day or just had no choice to get more casters to balance out their lineups. So 300-400K burst spikes in 30-60 seconds isn't enough? So 150-200K sustained for 3 minutes or greater isn't enough? Novelty of 400-500K burst spikes in older content isn't enough? Ability to burn every single raid fight with everything you have isn't enough? Refresh of your tools, if that was too confusing. As many guilds don't wait for every ones burn stuff to refresh for every event because its a lot longer then a 10 minute wait.
Have you ever solo'd as a rogue before? The way you laughingly glossed over of how terrible it is ("lethal" because of assassinate? Lol) made me chuckle. You seriously want to compare int caster soloing to rogue soloing as an argument about balance? Also burstained! You haven't said your catch phrase in the last few posts so thought it needed to be said. Buuuurstained!
Knifeplay is not part of our burn. It does not stack with any of our burn AA (I think it did at one time and they changed it). It's required for our sustain. I'd love to not be dependent on it to just sustain any normal amount of dps. It's a noose when recovering from death. Have to time use of breather around it and our fade being down for the rest of the event to sustain endurance. And due to its long duration and refresh interval, we also have to plan our usage around timing of when burns are called, otherwise our sustain can take a hit if we drop it when it is early in its run time to burn thus impacting our sustained. Our burn discs and aa are on the same timers as other classes. Some other classes have multiple burn setups or some mini burn setups giving them more on demand burst. We do not have those tools. All our non-burn discs are to make our sustained not laughable. I believe that the AC change was overdone. 45% says that it was either very broken or that they just pulled a number from a dark hole to make us all shut up. A late Friday afternoon, unannounced patch does not scream careful tuning of the change. I don't think they care about balance in TDS content at this time. Just care about getting us to all stop whining while they work on the campaign. We can probably all be a very annoying lot to them.
Mostly this, actually. To give some insight into the numbers that were chosen and how they were generated: The combat model works on a 1-20 roll system with a defender's 'mitigation' rolled against an attacker's 'offense'. The higher the offense against the mitigation the more likely you're roll will be higher on the scale. Ignoring a lot of factors, at the most basic level if you have a 1:1 of mitigation v offense then a reverse bell curve of rolls is created, which is an intended balance point. The mitigation and offense values are obfuscated in the form of AC (avoidance + mitigation) and ATK (accuracy + offense). The AC values that were generated during the time that Plane of War content was being implemented were put in as a relatively balanced baseline of 2400~3800 compared to player offense values at the time. The above values were continually increased during the development of later CoTF raids resulting in values in events like Tower of Rot and The Void having 4500~5500 AC. Those values were increased further resulting in Arx Mentis bosses having between 5000~6500 AC and adds/sub-bosses were around 4500~6000. The problem that was created with increase in NPC mitigation was that offense values did not rise at an equal rate. To adjust this, I copied a handful of characters from each melee class to calculate the following data: Offense value of each class without buffs Offense value of each class with full rank 3 buffs (no ferocity, no short term effects) Offense value of each class with full rank 3 buffs (with ferocity) Using that data I generated the min, max and average of each category. To create the 'balanced' point I chose template AC values based on having full non-short duration buffs and half of the difference that ferocity offered (as it was the largest single adjustor of offense values.) Those numbers resulted in the following loose rules: End Bosses (raid): 1.0 of max template value: ~4300 Mid Bosses (raid): 1.0 of average template value: ~3950 Mini Bosses (raid): 1.0 of min template value: ~3675 Difficult Adds (raid): 0.8 of average template value: ~3150 Normal Adds (raid): 0.75 of average template value: ~2975 Bosses (group): 0.8 of min template value: ~2950 Mini Bosses (group): 0.7 of min template value: ~2550 Normal Creatures (group): 0.5 of min template value: ~1850 With those loose rules I queried for every NPC with values that exceeded 1850 and in the cases where it was appropriate, adjusted that NPC to have no more than the template value that was appropriate for the encounter. As to why this was done on a Friday hotfix; these changes were calculated during our internal design lock for the patch (about a week before the patch goes to live servers) so it was decided we would wait until the patch went out then hotfix the adjusted data for Arx Mentis afterwards. We, as a team, are primarily concerned with the balance of systems to content. It's primarily been a matter of when we can allocate the time necessary to make balance adjustments, and although not all of the recent changes have been popular, the last few patches have contained a number of system changes that should support the idea that it is something we're working on. Also this, but we still love most of you.
I have its one of my favorite alts to play when I want to escape. Well geared rogs do just fine in some scenarios not so much in others. No they are not going to tank anything in the most current content unless already decked out in current raid gear but they aren't supposed to be. My point wasn't that rogues solo as well as some casters. My point was rogues have things they can do and other stuff they can't. They can tank stuff for xp and for lots of plat if one chooses to learn how and where. Songsa wants everyone to believe rogues can do absolutely nothing at all but dps and even then they can only do that with 2 dedicated healers keeping them up and 9 other players supporting them. Lethal is when they can pull massive amounts of light to dark blue mobs depending on the zone and rip disc them dead in a few tics. Not nearly as effective as of late with the older content nerfs regarding xp but very useful non the less for certain things. Burstained is not my catch phrase pretty sure it was the infamous wizard or someone arguing with him that made it up a few years ago.
Rogues are an extremely singular class and one of the least versatile. The tradeoff for that being dps. If you want to call light blue humanoid moloing (or swarm via a 20m reuse riposte disc) a viable balance point you're pretty delusional. There are plenty of diverse melee classes that fall into what I think you're trying to express (hello monk, ranger, beastlord), but pretending like rogues have all these unique abilities and viable play styles that people are ignoring is pretty derp.
Had a big long reply but not worth it. I suggest you play your rogue without the sk for awhile forcing yourself to get out of your comfort zone to see what is and isnt possible with some ingenuity and practice. Good players do good things with any class and they figure out ways to get stuff done. Not trying to say I am good. Just saying that good players simply figure out ways to get stuff done or to do better then their peers at times when they shouldn't and sometimes they share this with others. Maybe I am just lucky to have known a few good rogues. Bad players do the same thing over and over for years without adapting or do one thing well and thats it. Alla I can dps in raids or group but am clueless elsewhere about my classes possibilities. This thread was about melee dps in raids mostly. Once that got addressed it was then well i cant do this and this and this so I still need more. For some people its always more and i will let their track record speak to that being true or not. Rather then try to explain what else they can do as what I say will just be dismissed anyway.
You're absolutely right, it's not, you're just arguing to argue out of some rear end hurt towards Songsa, Brogett and whoever else have posted in ways that displease you. Good players find ways to contribute and always will, regardless of if they play a singularly focused classs or a diverse ones.
Melee are still trash. If you think they're even close to casters you're not seeing real game results at all. Maybe casters are just easier to put up the big numbers because they're less ADPS dependent something melee would do anything for.
You can continue criticize Brogett, me or some wizards and make dream of uber rogues Mills, ill continue to support Brogett for the data he provides (as i cant do it too without subscribing again) to try to have a good balance between dps classes. If other people helped him and comment on his parses and posted their data too perhaps we could help devs a bit. Even if you dont share people point of view about what the balance should be data is data noone ask you to agree on some comments or conclusion just give your comment about datas, discuss and make things go forward.
We can agree to disagree then. I am not out to get them now for something they did in the past. I am arguing they can't do everything burst, sustained and dominance in old content in groups and raids now just because sustained is the flavor of the month in current raids for now. They themselves argued why this was bad only a few years ago and have since flip flopped on the matter now because its their class they are pushing for. Its bad design when one class does every thing about their respective role better then anyone else. There was a reason there were 8 rogue rosters for years and there is a reason their are 8 wizard rosters right now. Wizards are broken and seem to be heading in a direction of being fixed for sustained. So rogues shouldnt lobby their way into high sustained tacked on to the other stuff they can already do.
And just to be more clear I was all about the AC changes it was a bad way to stagnate all melee. I am all for toning down adps reliance so its more like the hit casters take when its missing or bad, instead of like a 45% hit like it is for berserkers. I am also all for some self rune or mitigation buffs like casters received to help with the insane damage all players take now so that tanks can face a challenge. I am not ok with rogues and berserkers copying wizards and doing insane burst and then beating or being neck and neck with sustained classes who don't have the option of 400k AE on demand dps any time its needed.
That's just a bard throw in the bst/shaman and it become stupid what ADPS contributes. Monks/Rogues lose some also and its stupid melee ADPS is out of control all classes should be able to do 80-90% of there potential dps with no help at all.
