edit: rant incoming, buckle up. as the kids say, "you have been warned" I seriously wonder on many days why developers even bother taking swings at game balance. All anyone plays, regardless, are Shadowknights and Rangers, with Magicians a strong third, all a million times more populous than core archetype classes (war, cle, wiz, ber(?)) and borderline OP support classes (brd, bst, enc). It's no wonder the fourth category of "oh those are also in EQ?" classes slip completely out of control (hi Paladin prenerf rage AA. Druids & necros since, like, Veil) and/or fall into abysmal disrepair while no one is paying attention. So what's a dev to do? Any adjusts to the couple classes anyone plays is hugely magnified in impact, but it's not like 90% of those classes' players even know what's up - naturally, since nearly all of them are gd terrible. How frequently some ****heel ranger in public channels still calls the Headshot change that made it work on actual mobs even in raids a "nerf" reflects just enormously poorly on EverQuest players as a gaming community. Should those players be accommodated with nice things, to pluralize happiness? Or should those classes be most carefully controlled, since any slip is instantly everywhere. On the flip side, if any class other than sk/rng are touched, it's either positive and there's low impact because there's less players - or you're accidentally generating an OP class since there aren't enough testers "in the wild" to make problems obvious -, or negative and you're, like, committing a hate crime on a Norrathian minority. Like this month's messy shanking of the Necromancer "Scent of Terris" AA? Ugh, just why? One of the very, very few signs from the dev team in 2 years recognizing that the necro class exists and it's that. It even plays out on a different scale within the popular classes. The defacto deletion of mage's Elemental Union AA? It might be a year before 90% of mage players notice a line on their cribbed burn macro being worthless, and they won't care when they're told since they only hit it 1/week or so anyhow. But the change 1.5 years(?) back to re-normalize pet tanking? Despite that being only a partial nerf, that came with a hugely beneficial change to agro rules as regards pet tanks, and it didn't touch the juicy core of legit magician power (the nukes), you'd think from public discourse that devs had cast Meteo on them. "Nerf mages" became a meme. Anyhow, it is a super frustrating and stupid-feeling exercise trying to build legit raid forces around 12x as many SK & ranger apps as anything else, and all of them gd awful at EverQuest. Just the pits. There are maybe a double handful in the whole game actually good. I almost hate to say it this way, but it's like they all just love their class too much, so they don't ever even bother to learn the actual power in them.
The uneven popularity of classes also effects the usability of alliances. It might just be my guild that is an isolated case, but half the raids im in, don't have enough wizards to manage alliances. And I wouldn't be surprised if other less-popular classes have that problem too. Back on topic: I think the devs have just given up on some of the classes, and just hope enough players phase them out(the looong awaited dot revamp for example), for it to not be a problem. I also suspect that the devs are trying to find the right power-balance by utilizing "binary search": the infamous "buff too much, nerf too much"-pattern. And I can fully understand why players find that annoying. I suggest they instead try to make gradual and smaller incremental changes over time(the "linear search") until each class and ability is inline with what the devs envision. The downside to this approach is that they can't bunch all the buffs up in a neat and marketable "expansion-package", in the way they use to.
Curious where this rant is coming from. Guild is stuck on something? ST2-3? From another mid tier guild, our wall this year was ST2 traps. Learning those prenerf with ~1 wiz box, 1-2 necros and 0-1 Mages was not fun. Seems like every year there’s a new wall. But yeah...group friendly classes are usually over represented in raiding, since they are more populous outside of it? Has been the way of the game for a very long time, and a symptom of there being too many classes to begin with, really.
One aspect of seasonal games like Path of Exile that I really appreciate is devs will announce major balancing / feature changes for a new season and shortly after everyone rolls on the new server with new characters. Veteran players will look at the balancing changes and make decisions on what builds they want to roll for the new server. Nobody is nerfed or buffed because nobody cares about their current set of characters. EQ is the polar opposite. Most EQ veterans don't "play" a class, they ARE that class. Even if they have a few boxes and alts, if their main is a monk, they ARE a monk. So if another year goes by with monks falling behind berserkers in melee DPS, or necros spend another year being burdened by having to roll out dozens of debuffs on mobs with a debuff cap while other classes get new and powerful debuffs to apply, it's perceived as a personal attack. This is compounded by EQ's D&D roots where utility is considered in class balancing and each class isn't there to get dead in solo, grouping and raiding environments equally. Warriors, clerics and berserkers aren't there to solo or have utility, but they are there to be the absolute best at what they do. If rogues are boosted to approach berserker DPS, what's the purpose of a berserker when a rogue can replace it while also having other utility? This problem is one reason why I enjoy running a box group. It insulates me from the impact of balancing changes because even a severe nerf to some of my characters won't hurt me too badly. I don't have to open up patch notes with the dread of feeling like I might lose some efficacy in soloing, or that I'll get nerfed and now be holding my guild back on a tough event we're this close to beating. There's no easy way around this problem because solutions like, "At each expansion, do a really good job of balancing stuff by buffing classes that lagged behind in the last one." are too difficult (read: expensive) for DBG's dev staff to perform. I'd wager the teams doing itemization, AAs, spells, raid events etc are busting right now to get everything done and relatively bug-free before release. Whatever pass they do after that for balance has to be rushed to get it out the door so the skeleton crew of a dev team can move onto the next expansion/content release. Frankly, my advice to devs is to be ambitious enough to NOT do a good job, and don't sweat it if you accidentally buff a few classes beyond what's balanced. If in the next expansion paladins and monks are suddenly competing for 1-10 spots on raid DPS, let it happen. Some variety keeps the game interesting even if people make a lot of noise about why they're a wizard who is there to blow up and the puller and tank out DPS them. I think this year's ridiculous sha/enc/dru/bst/rng DoT buff and subsequent nerf made the game more fun. Go crazy and don't sweat the whining when you give and take away.
Ya whenever I began to learn that some high end guilds have like 7-9 bards on staff I just shook my head. I still remember whenever Triality was able to use their rogue team to blast through Redfang and Demiplane of Blood events. DPS is king in Everquest. That's the issue the top end is able to be more selective and get a better class distribution while the lower you go the less variance in class distribution there is and more towards the normal group distribution. I think that touching Shadowknights, Rangers, and Magicians would be bad design at this point. Instead asking what makes these classes "work" better than their peers and adjusting other classes to be better. Necromancers making better use of dots for example would be a large step forwards. They "should remain a different class" however they could use rework because of the way they function. I feel one of the strongest examples of how not to do a class is the cleric class with Complete Heal which was left alone for several years until Prathun took hold of the healing situation and made fundamental changes to the class in TSS. Most of the rework was welcomed or yawned at. There was a select minority who quit when they realized that CH wasn't coming back, but we don't miss them. The cleric class revamp in TSS gave the class the legs to stand on and made it fun again to play. Nerfing class doesn't really work well, there will always be flavor of the month classes I'm sure. However, lingering deficits like necromancers and the infamous "dot stacking problem" gut dps for having multiple necromancers on raids. That's a perfect example of a necessary design shift for raiding and encouraging necromancers to become raiders. A lot of classes are in a good place now, but a part of the issue is invariably different areas of design. For example, because of the really bad design of Skyfire people cluster into Frontier Mountains (excellently designed zone) and Overthere and then go to Howling Stones and Gorrowyn. Skyfire is a "tough zone" however the mob immunities to take on combined with effects like drunkeness and strange AE's for a tier 1 zone were out of proportion with the risk versus reward. That also puts a strong favor towards people hunting sarnaks with headshot from rangers. So game design is in part the problem there as well. Anyway, in short there needs to be environments for classes to shine. Paladins with undead zones are a fair instance of a necessity in design and for their utility to work it has to be pure undead. However, that's also where cures being used in the game are also something that needs to be looked at. These "uncurable dots" are problematic because the curing classes can't well you know cure, which means people either pile on more healing or avoid those areas.
How many of what classes exist is not just an issue of class balance. For example, my main is a druid and I will play him on raids forever. For grouping, I usually play my monk. Daybreak would have to institute some truly massive nerfs to make me change classes. Considering most of us have no interest in starting new characters from scratch and leveling them up to 110 and then getting all the flags and AAs and other fun things needed to maximize a character, nerfs aren't going to change that class balance. Nerfs just add to the straws on camels' backs until most people just stop playing EQ rather than see their beloved character become annoying to play rather than fun. Now there are people who have multiple alts who will switch between them or even are willing to start over if they perceive their class has been over-nerfed. But I would not call them the majority of players. Here's the current breakdown of our raiders in my guild, listing the ones who raid most of the time: Bards: 3 Beastlords: 3 Berserkers: 3 Clerics: 3 Druids: 5 Enchanters: 3 Magicians: 7 Monks: 3 Necromancers: 5 Paladins: 10 Rangers: 8 Rogues: 4 Shadow Knights: 4 Shaman: 4 Warriors: 6 Wizards: 3 Even though no one would say Paladins are overpowered, we have more of them than any other class. This list is not perfect because who shows up on raid nights can vary enormously. The class we need more of are clerics, with wizards and berserkers also needed because so many raids are dps checks.
Stop comparing and have fun enjoying content. I box two out of vogue characters (Necro/Ench) and, outside of raiding, I can do pretty much everything with these two.
I logged in just to highlight that the reason none of us can find Paladins to recruit these days is that they're all in Fanra's guild. Also Brohg this is a good post.
Offer advice to a new player who has no intention to raid. War and Pal are pretty much inferior to SKs. In terms of fun and flexibility you're going to want the broad tool set. Making content that only a Warrior can tank outside of raids has terrible consequences which essentially obsoletes their survival tool set so the main thing they bring to the table is Call of Challenge for snare immune mobs that flee, all 5 of them in 20 years of content. The Paladin's tool set is largely obsolete in any group with a DPS merc that can switch to a Healer merc when necessary. So other than turning content into EverCure you should recommend SK. Priest and Pal, for ~1000pp an hour and an occasional willingness for someone to play their buff bot alt for specific content it's hard to recommend a class on the basis of well if no one ever dies and you can mix in some damage you could develop a really good rep and have a long ignore list of raid recruiters if you're not interested in that aspect of the game. Bard and Enc, again you have the specific content potential but a random Bard or Enc can much more easily suck than the various classes than can reach ~80% of their potential with auto-attack or multi-bind and using various abilities when they refresh. Nec lacks the specific content potential and can't easily reach ~80% of their potential. Recommending these classes to a new player is probably not a good idea. Zerk, Monk, Wiz, Rog, specific content is rare to non-existent. It's rarely a good idea to watch a new Monk flop around like a beached fish, eventually they might turn the tool set into something genuinely useful but playing any class you can develop a rep, make friends and/or be part of an active guild to massively improve your grouping opportunities. Rogue tool set comes into play about as often as Call of Challenge, especially if anyone has an AAAA. A Wizard alt with TL (or group port and buff block) provides most of the utility of a Wizard main. The most compelling argument for Zerk is that 2-handers rot the 2nd week of a new expansion and with friends/Krono you have an easy path to excellent group damage. Ranger, track is just so incredibly useful outside of current content. Once you go back an expansion or two (or have raid gear) the Ranger being able to find and tank most mobs is a really desirable combo. Some named being on find in HA is the only legitimate thing that limits the value of track. It's a pretty easy class to recommend for whatever they want to do except for raiding where specialists are often more desirable all else being equal. Mage and Bst, Beastlords have a worse public relations staff but otherwise share many of the desirable traits of Mages. First and foremost, player, pet and healer merc is a phenomenal starting point. Next up if you find another pet class and there are a few of those going 2 pets, 2 players, healer and DPS merc and then switching to double healer merc when necessary is pretty much a full group. Completely different situation if you're recommending to a new player what to play if they want to raid or what class a friend should make if the intention is they will often be part of your group. But for 10 years less 4 days you have SK, Ranger, Mage and Bst which pair really well with a Healer merc to get a new player off and running. Beastlords have had various (perception) issues and lag considerably behind the other classes in popularity. As a result you have the current class distribution and for various reasons some players of those classes will be applying to guilds at any given time.
It hasn't happened yet, but as it is going in apparently it will be casting a level 52 version of the spell that has not been upgraded due to the implementation of the AA. It not only loses a whole lot of counters per resist debuffed, but some of the resists it debuffs are completely being lost due to backtracking. Not sure the impacts to re-use or cast time in proposed state.
TL;DR: Overtuning/nerfs are tools DBG use to mix up the game and make some people play different classes Great posts, great thread I have a few hypotheses on class balancing or the lack there off. Herding drifters (or the class drifter oriented population management hypothesis) DBG can see number of people actively playing classes, and they can see that when they shift the power around, a part of the population will follow the power, reroll, and as a function of that play more than they would have otherwise. 6ish years ago, mages had a "great period" if I recall correctly, then they where nerfed, nerfed, nerfed, until they where a semi-pariah class. A couple of years back, it started to shift, and it topped last month when Kizant from RoI told me I should be out-dps'ing wizards on raids :-D... now mages have been nerfed again, instantly bringing them back to tier 2 DPS. 2 years ago, Shamans (shamen ) where ultra rare. Then shamans and druids got boosted to top tier dps, and suddenly guilds where experiencing a large growth in these two priest classes (also increasing the number of healers, possibly indirectly at the expense of clerics). The inevitable nerfs brought made these classes a little bit less common. It could be by accident, that the DBG designers have no idea how to make small manageable adjustments, and that they do not follow the impact of their adjustments. I don't buy that. Nerf/de-nerf - Transparent and acceptable For (part of) the player base to start drifting, the changes have to be exaggerated and completely transparent. Please note that the pattern of nerfs is almost always overnerf, followed by a smaller de-nerf. Not only is a lot of criticism deflated after the de-nerf, the overnerf have made it very clear for the active player base that there was a nerf. A loud bark, intended to herd the drifters Overtuning/nerfs as content creation So, according to the hypothesis, nerfs are not random, they are population management tools, creating new preferences for drifters to level up, thus keeping some players more active. Also, Overtuning/nerfs changes the dynamics of both group and raid game. Thr changes create cascades of changes to tactics, group composition, etc, for all classes; this is stuff that a great deal of EQ players love to adapt to, in all its wonderful complexity, is my hypothesis. Ever-shifting game dynamics is a core content offering, that we as players recognize very little in our daily day discussions, but that I am sure MMO game designers are VERY aware of. With a couple of changes, a number of cascading effects impact half the gaming population, whom experience a new situation that they discuss and adapt to, analyze, and in the end, have fun with. Some people are their class - class loyalists Nerfs hurt people like me more, because I am one of those Fanra talked about. I AM my mage, and I am closing in on the second decade being a mage. DBG could probably make me leave the game, but they could not make me feel like something else than a mage. I have a piece of Malachite next to my PC ffs. (and yes, I look relatively normal in daily life, job, wife, kids, house, car, etc etc). Why necro's didn't get their dot revamp 1) I would think necros score extremely high wrt class loyalty 2) Necros do not attract drifters. The class is too complex and hard to play well 3) Necros can do incredible things even with the outdated tools they have, and the complexity is part of the appeal. They rotate effing spellsets continously during raids to keep dots stacked, it is insane! That is not what a drifter is looking for. A drifter wants 2-4 dots that are so insane, that it will put them on top or near the DPS top instantly (ring a bell, enchanters, druids, shamen?). Doing that to the necro class would kill the class for necro class loyalists. It has always been a class quite difficult to play, and please remember that in the early beginnings, necros would tend to not want to share their secret uberness know how. Necros are rightfully proud of being able to play the class. A few archetype players: Explorers, Powergamers, Zenists Explorers want to experience content. They prefer being a bit overpowered to the content, which is necessary, because they are not very interested in playing their class to the max. For them, EQ is a 2D virtual reality they can go adventuring in. When they meet a Powergamer, they will be friendly and invite the Powergamer to join them in their adventures. Powergamers... well you know them. The people who will analyze EVERYTHING to the max, extract all possible knowledge, explore all synergies, etc. They write posts that are frustrated with the other two archetypes of players, because not playing "le game to the max" (Sheex to Sancus a few years back, when Sancus had been slacking on shawl or something) is an offence to the holyness of Everquest :-D. There is a sub-class of Powergamerwannabies and hangarounds. They typically write way too long posts, and try to compensate for their lack of ability in game with being verbose and trying to be funny, while also being self-referencing in the post-modern generation X kind of way. You know who I mean. Zenists just want to log on, and do stuff in a few zones that they know very well, XPing slowly, and basically avoiding what drives Explorers and Powergamers. They are the silent majority, are rarely active on boards, and always disapoint especially powergamers if they become part of their game, for being only playing their class to the very minimum. They are often quite unaware of the difference, but also don't care. They have fun playing the game they like, alone or with friends, and being max level is way overrated anyway.
Fairly good post Brohg. i agree with much of what you say, but i also think a large part of your problem is your in game social circle. While there are boxers in every guild (probably) NCM has a reputation for taking it a bit to the extreme and relying heavily on boxes (and pretty good box players as far as i know) to fill out and execute raids. There's nothing wrong with this, but it might skew your perspective somewhat. Naturally the classes with the greatest flexibility and excellent tool sets to bring to *most" situations is going to be advantageous to box, and perhaps, an exorbitant number of the people you know and play with utilize those classes- SK, Ranger and Mage specifically. Personally, i have played alts of every class (not to max level, usually if it's not interesting or just doesn't grab me, i'll stop at level 60 or so) and it just so happens that SK, Ranger and Mage are all top 5 in terms of fun, ease of use, and stress free derping around. i main a cleric, and while incredibly powerful, i would not list this class anywhere near the terms fun, ease of use, or stress free. Mostly because the developers try to give us new or interesting things, determine for whatever reasons that we shouldn't have those things, and then take them away and stagnate our power a little bit more. Why do i play a class i like less than other classes? Well, for me it's a sacrifice to be a more successful raider. It was a need, and i could do it, so i did.
While I do think DBG know what they are doing(tuning classes with exaggerated nerfs/buff-cycles takes fewer iterations after all). I do suspect that they sometimes just experiment with new ideas(if they sound fun), and just (sometimes harshly) tune them in the next iteration, after they have seen how the players adapt. I doubt they do it just to keep the game "dynamic" and/or herding masses to underutilized classes. With limited resources it takes less work to tune classes separately to some spreadsheet calculated "power level", than to micromanage the "drifting"-population. I think they take tuning and balancing more serious than class popularity. They can "easily" tune expansions after those predetermined "power levels". But manipulating "drifters" towards what the expansion needs, is much more complex and probably not worth the effort. Afaik the "necro-problem" is not how powerful the class is, but is a fundamental design-flaw in the dot-mechanic itself, that prevents more than a few skilled necros to unload their full arsenal on a raidmob. My guess is that none of the "easy" solutions are good solutions, and that DBG simply doesn't have the time to go all the way back to the drawing-board and redesign the dot-mechanic from the ground up.
Yes, 1-4 players with a single alt each in typical raids Also dunno how that would inform my perspective on whether or not any wizards have apped in the last 4 years
