Oow concerns / innate "...." aa / melee fest

Right now, being a caster isnt verry fun. Im completly fine with being behind on rogues/monks. Just not with the 30+% it is right now. I fear in OoW things will get worse. With the new AAs/new weapons and all the syngergy comming in with shaman/ranger clicky etc.

The innate AA for mellees was not ment for this era. Melees were already top of the bill in OoW. It was from i think TSS where casters were getting realy strong and the Mellee started to need a lil edge. There is no reason for the AA being live in this ERA on TLP.

I fear ill be doing like 60% or less of the dps or rogues and monks (And prob zerkes when they get volley). This gap is much to large for me to be able to enjoy the class.

I know some of you will say "go role a rogue then". But thats just a void comment. As i said i dont realy have to beat them. Its a natural thing that some classes are more powerfull then others specialy when switching expansions. It keeps the game alive and give you there feeling of power when its your turn. I just think the gap is WAY to large and it will get worse. And TSS is like a year away.

The solution would be removing the innate mellee AA and put it back in @ TSS. But that would result in many tears i bet.

If it's some comfort. The general increase on all the classes with this AA stops at lv 65. Then it starts to scale comparing to classes. Take my class Monk as an example. The ranks from lv 40 - 65, which are 9 in total gives me 50% improve dmg to all melee attacks. the ranks from 10 - 17 ( 17 at lv 105?) only improves it up to 70%. I even think the monks are the class that gets the highest modifier moving on. So it will slow down significantly compared to earlier lv cap increases.

Well if you take wiz, from 65 to 70 he gets like 700 more dmg on his prime nuke. His Frenzied AA is on a 1hour 12 min cooldown, so is Manaburn. So you can use it twice on a raid rather then Melee where most Disc timers are on 22min. Spell haste foci does not increase. I dont even thing dmg foci increases appart fromt he OMM foci. He gets a lvl of destructive fury and thats about it. This as apposed to extra discs (rogue) shaman epic click, ranger AA/click. And increase weapon ratios the Gap will surely widen. While its already 30% ish. And its not like a wiz brings more utility to a raid then a monk or a rogue. (TL vs corpsedrag) If its going to be 40/50% is realy not worht bringing a wiz to a raid at all. ...well 1 ...for tl when your done.

Retuning for progression is reasonable, if needed.

Encounter difficulty/challenge is more important than class balance. Class balance is a can of worms that generally impacts itself before and after whatever change you make at a specific point in progression. Whereas tuning an encounter to be challenging-ish in a progression era has minimal impact on the rest of the game (i.e., live servers).

Keeping things exactly on the spot they were originally put in is not always the best idea. Sometimes a "fix" was long overdue.

Until all the dot changes are done (where are we at with that? I've lost track) I wouldn't expect other DPS to be messed with much.

You remove that melee boost and you're gonna be punching dragons for 3 on Agnarr with MoTM.

Motm also reduces spell dmg. Dont have any AAs to compensate for that.
Its the price we have to pay for them pet changes i gues.

The expansions have always swung either hard meleequest or casterquest and very few have had a middle ground. The AA changes are a big factor that will likely mean more meleequest expacs but I don't foresee daybreak doing major balance tweaks just for the TLP crowd. Melee(rogues/rangers) sucked it up in classic/kunark while casters dominated. Velious was probably the closest we've had to an actual middle ground expansion. And now we're in the era of melee pulling ahead because of much improved weapon ratios.

Phinny is going to be blowing through expansions quick enough that trying to ensure that classes are balanced for each one when there are so many different AAs/Spells/Clickies added is way too much to expect. If not being the FOTM class for each expansion will drive you nuts I'd strongly encourage you to play another game, because EQ will drive you nuts in almost every era.

I don't want the melee in my guild to be nerfed, because it'd just mean all our raid fights would take longer.

I dunno, it's a group game, play with people you enjoy being around and have fun with. Parse envy just isn't something I understand. Your group or guild wins together.

Omens of War is a super rough expansion for raiding magicians and wizards, the worst that I've ever experienced (done classic-UF, RoF-TBM). You're gonna be doing really crappy DPS. Don't mess up any emotes! Your concerns about OOW are definitely real, but it's only 5 months and we can find ways to contribute for those 5 months, especially Magicians who have loads of ways to be valuable members of the raid without doing damage (modrods, malosinia, pet toys, coth, damage shield). Magicians and Wizards were very bad in OOW before they made the innate AA changes which will obviously expand the gap further. We might be out DPS'd by warriors in Omens of War.

In DoDH you get silent casting, gift of mana, and your first real swarm pet if you're a magician or your sorta first ethereal if you're a wizard. Still likely won't be enough to compete with monks except that 1 time per week where you have staunch up.

I don't think it's possible to do this, but they could possibly re-tune the values of these AAs, that's what I'd advocate for. Right now their AA (lvl 65) is 50pct and scales to ~65pct by 105 (higher for some classes), maybe they could start it at lvl 10 instead of 40 and make it a much less steep climb to the top, so that at lvls 65 and 70 it's not a 50-52 pct increase something like a 35-40pct. This would be an easier way to attempt to balance melee dps on these servers without impacting what 105s do on live servers.

first off, your wizard is very comparable to melee throughout most of the meleequest expansions. alot of those extra boosts that melee enjoy, your wizard will enjoy as well, auspice, better bard songs ect ect. If you Really wanted to feel pain, try playing a necromancer pre-revamp... not only are you playing one of the more difficult to max-dps classes, the fights are Alot shorter, leaving your one "good" feature, sustained damage, unwanted. Besides, you will enjoy being the top class come the SoF era anyway.

first off, your wizard is very comparable to melee throughout most of the meleequest expansions. I got like a bazilion parses that bag to differ. 30/40% less is NOT comparable

It's only 30-40% if you're looking at short disc burns.

Casters start to even out the disparity at DODH because of manaflare, but you have to have a bard in group also. It took awhile for most guilds on fippy to catch on to the fact so casters appeared to stay behind melee until tss/tbs where manaflare auras and bard amplification of caster dps was undeniable. From there on out mages and wizards generally outparsed everyone except on token fights where mechanics supressed a caster's ability to ramp up into full wallop.

ok, good, raid geared parsing. shows that wizards/mages are still within the ballpark of melee on alot of fights. being within the melee innate boost,... is great. 30% of melee is comparable on content where melee have stupid good ratio's and discs. if melee didnt have the current innate boost you would be likely, way ahead of them. Again, i cant stress this enough. alot of these fights are burst, you will do fine as a wizard. k?

You have no idea what you are talking. But thanks for adding.
Show me those parses dude. monks parse 2500+ at 90 secs parses. Wiz being good at burst is nice internet wisdom but its BS im game. Unless ofcourse i mana burn i giant rat. then yeh. my "burts" is awsome. Fight of under 2/3 mins will still be EASLY won by monks. And as i said, i dont mind being beind. but i do like 1200/1500 dps on a burn. thats like half of it. Thats just BS.

The innate melee AAs were made for a reason.
I suggest you go play WoW or cry somewhere else.

Go roll a rogue then.

Sigh, they were made for a good reason. But they were made in a MUCH later stadium of the game. This stadium was already ruled by mellee.

But im done talking with goldfishes. Thought i would find some better folk here then on the avarge forums /salute.

/rsay Ixt Quall Nalnn in 68s, 989k @14539sdps --- #1 Monk 98k@1437sdps (1656dps in 59s) --- #2 Rogue 59k@867sdps (966dps in 61s) --- #3 Rogue 53k@781sdps (965dps in 55s) --- #4 Wizard 53k@776sdps (942dps in 56s) --- #5 Ranger + pets 52k@767sdps (855dps in 61s) --- #6 Berserker 47k@693sdps (785dps in 60s) --- #7 Monk 46k@676sdps (753dps in 61s)
this era, melee discs are powerful. Stop whining please. You arnt even a necro, just stop.
/rsay Ikaav Nysf Lleiv in 47s, 996k @21196sdps --- #1 Monk 82k@1736sdps (1897dps in 43s) --- #2 Monk 75k@1606sdps (1677dps in 45s) --- #3 ShadowKnight 65k@1386sdps (1386dps in 47s) --- #4 Rogue 63k@1347sdps (1347dps in 47s) --- #5 Monk + pets 59k@1258sdps (1313dps in 45s) --- #6 Monk 57k@1206sdps (1259dps in 45s) --- #7 Rogue 55k@1167sdps (1305dps in 42s) --- #8 Wizard 48k@1028sdps (1464dps in 33s)
this is just simply Not the current era for casters. innate melee or not.
/rsay Ixt Quall Nalnn in 68s, 989k @14539sdps --- #16 Necromancer 30k@436sdps (605dps in 49s)
/rsay Ikaav Nysf Lleiv in 47s, 996k @21196sdps --- #10 Necromancer + pets 42k@898sdps (1172dps in 36s)

This is how I tend to think of balance issues in EQ generally. But if you are a Rogue or a Wizard -- all you really do is damage and your class is supposed to shine at Raid DPS. It sucks when that -- in reality -- it is not the case and other classes with all kinds of abilities and conveniences are dealing more damage.

If this happened in a modern MMO there would be lots of complaining and eventually a fix. There would also be the equivalent of some Enchanter on the boards arguing that the Devs intended them to do more damage than Wizards -- and soandso can reroll or quit.

Then the guy afraid of conflict comes in to say that they both have equally good points. But its not the case...Wizards should top or near top in all eras -- so should Rogues. Anything less was a failure in design. Considering they were telling everyone that Wizards/Rogues were the best DPS classes and trying to design them that way.

When you make any other kind of argument -- your essentially arguing for the status quo and the imbalance to continue. This argument is usually coupled with some statement about how DBG makes everything worse -- even though back here in reality most of what they actually implemented change-wise has been popular.

That being said -- nerf all melee is probably not the answer.