My problem with melee dps being so dominant.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Samithekittycat, Mar 7, 2021.

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  1. Lejaun Augur

    In less than 1 minute, I found 3 guilds all recruiting monks on Aradune.
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  2. Glowerss Augur

    Monks are basically the single most consistent DPS class across the entire lifespan of a TLP. You may occasionally fall slightly behind (as in Luclin), but you're basically always a top 3 DPS class.

    Even on Phinny, which is a stones throw from live where monks are meant to be bad, there were monks who were right up near the top of every parse, only behind the necros, and necros are fairly overpowered at the moment as a result of the dot revamp.

    Any guild turning monks away is foolish and shortsighted, and you're better off not joining such a guild.

    I'd also say now is a perfectly fine time to roll up a caster. There are several very important augs out of LDoN raids and such coming up that you'd be sad you didn't have later. You might not be at the top of every parse during the 70s era but it's fine and expected.

    Once you come into TSS casters start to come right back and will be fine.
    Skuz likes this.
  3. Karanthal Augur

    I'm currently playing a 6 box group on mangler (DoDh), no automation/kvm just 4 laptops 2 PCs and a lot of mice...

    I rerolled half of my group from caster to melee during DoDh, I was getting tired of being unable to 1 group some of the old raid content other people were doing easily with melee groups. I always loved my casters they make life much easier to get around, ports and coth really help with /follow being so useless. However once you get to where you are going and start to play, the melee group is so much less effort and so much more powerful.

    I went from war/clr/brd/enc/mage/wiz to war/clr/brd/sham/monk/zerk. My caster group still have more AA, with max FT and focuses. I just got my melee's some decent weapons and had tutorial gear at the start.

    I always though positioning would be a pain boxing melee, but its really not, just /follow the tank and hit your assist macro. Some observations

    Short Fights (xp - Roaming)

    For both groups each mob is 1 macro press per box.

    1. Melee start to DPS instantly, mobs die faster
    2. Casters on /follow interrupt spells if tank is knocked back
    3. Caster wasted mana on large nukes when mobs on low health
    4. Caster mana regen, have to micro manage sit/stand
    5. Can't use rain spells while on /follow or you self nuke
    6. Wizard snare is AE (snare self) and takes cast time, Zerker instant cast, resisted far less and straight back to DPS

    Overall, melee take less micro managing, kill faster and need no breaks.


    Long Fights (eg Cyno in Qvic)

    1. Melee DPS > Casters even with less AA and worse gear. Spells are just resisted too much.
    2. Melee still require pretty much 1 macro at the start + some discs if you want to burn use them. Long caster fights takes a lot of managing to make sure they all keep casting.
    3. Casters run out of mana.
    4. Casters pull aggro unexpectedly if you spam too many rains or get some big crits.

    Overall, way too much micro managing needed of a caster group. If you are fighing a mob with AEs or needing cures its almost impossible to keep casters doing DPS while you manage healing. Now I would say i spend 50% of my time on the shaman in during long fights. The 4 melee are on auto attack, the cleric I heal the tank. The shaman is then free for spot heals, cures, panther and debuffing.


    Caster Improvements
    1. Stop self nuke/snare, melee don't punch themselves when they rampage
    2. Faster/instant nukes. Monks/zerkers get instant dps abilities.
    3. Less interrupts for movement.
    4. Sit/stand mana regen mechanic is bad, mounts are too big and slow for xp roaming groups. Pre out of combat regen, caster mana regen should be the same sitting or standing. Melee dont sit for endurance.
    5. AA pets specifcally for xp groups, low damage, short cooldown

    Random ideas for long fights - focus on background dps
    "/Autocast" - /melody for casters maybe just 1-2 spells slots max.
    "Barrage" - 5% mana for a background spell barrage that will proc an unresistable DD on your target every ~20 seconds until it dies. No global cooldown.
  4. error Augur

    OoW was probably the low point for mages so far from my experience on Mangler. They regain a lot of ground in DoDh. In fact, very competitive dps if I'm boxing my chanter and keeping Mana Flare up and hasting my Raging Servants, although hard casting swarm pets on cooldown without waiting for GoM procs is a major mana killer. And good luck getting an actual non-box enchanter to haste swarm pets.
  5. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I only partially agree.

    Warriors are clearly handicapped versus knights as a group tank due to their "virtual hp pool" defecit. Clerics are clearly handicapped versus the two other priests as a group healer because their damage output is utter crap in comparison.

    You have Warrior+Cleric almost needing to be welded together at the hip wherever they go due to the Warrior being 100% dependent on a healer and the Cleric having such terrible DPS in group content while the Knights Druid & Shaman are all so much more interchangeable.

    Raids might be where Warriors & Clerics shine but their speciality/one-dimensionality is an absolute albatross around their necks in the group game.

    Except they shouldn't be.

    We can all argue where caster X should stack up in dps vs Melee X & the relative value of Caster utility X vs Melee Utility X but if you actually said to casters would you happily lose all of your utility in exchange for melee utilities I wonder what answers you would get?

    I am willing to bet most casters if they were put in that situation & forced to choose would keep the utilities they have, because by & large they are superior to what limited utility melee have.

    Hybrids by design sacrifice raw damage output for utility/flexibility.

    The fact is players of classes that have utility will always downplay the weight of those utilities in order to gain some more DPS or to project the idea that they deserve more as those utilities are as close to meaningless in value as they can get away with.

    Everyone wants to be doing amazing dps because it is one of the few visible yardsticks of displaying their relative worth, it is one of the few things that are truly measurable.

    Utility isn't measurable, how do you measure the value of Feign Death, of Mesmerisation, of Teleport to Bind, Bind Affinity, Succor, etc. Well you cannot and so everyone simply reduces their relative worth Vs Raw DPS numbers that they can measure - that's where players are going wrong, but it's understandable given the circumstances.

    Mostly I agree here, Players probably all have some imagined "DPS Hierarchy" that they think makes sense but which doesn't really exist.
    The developers likely don't have or work to some hierarchy of DPS either, I do know they consider the whole range of abilities that each class when they look at the development of that specific class but they probably have no way of "weighting" utility vs DPS either, it's all interpretative & subjective and in no way truly measurable.
    Players might think that something as low-level as the ability to Bind Affinity has zero value, yet a developer may see that as a powerful tool - subjectively speaking.

    And you are absolutely right that TLP complicates class balance a lot, players are seeking the kind of consistency that never existed, Enchanters in classic are uber powerful by by Omens feel like they are relegated to being little more than buff bots. Necromancers up to Luclin are one of the most powerful utility classes yet after that struggle then post DoT revamp are pretty much the Gods of DPS.

    Balancing across 27 expansions after the 22 years of development where classes were nerfed, boosted, stagnated or largely forgotten for multiple expansions is a nightmare to try and navigate.

    The other consideration is "how big a gap is too big?" when classes are putting out the kinds of numbers they can in the current live game are the gaps the problem or is it about the combined average of all the classes?
    Raids are designed with a whole raid worth of players in mind, if you have a few classes over or under performing by large amounts it can seriously skew raid design, do you build the raid to be too hard for a guild with 1 Necromancer or face-roll easy when they have 5 going nuts? When that 1 class can be doing 2x or 3x any other classes damage how do you manage that?

    I guess when you dig down you almost need analytics of what all players are doing in every situation all the time to even begin to see trends and I don't think EQ has the tools to do that kind of big data analysis.
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  6. TheTone Elder

    I haven't heard this much unfounded whining since that Oprah interview with the disgruntled royals...
  7. yerm Augur

    People need to remember that the classic era of release through ldon is LESS total time than the meleequest god through tbs period. A lot of people can stomach their class being bad for an expansion or two. Most people cannot deal with their class being crappy for years. The proof is easy to find: a massive lack of caster classes coming out of the 70s. Mains reroll or quit, boxes are swapped, and by the time a guild makes it to sof (if it even does) its probably going to have more monks than every int caster combined.

    Individual utility as a balance point starts to be less meaningful in ldon and dips hard with god+ content. Being a strong solo class or having cool gimmicks like ports becomes less and less consequential. The meaningful content gets moved into either instances or environments that aren't really being soloed. You have a few exceptions but it becomes more and more the norm. You stop caring that your wizard or whatever can solo better than any melee when all of those melee are downright better at everything you're looking to do. The game also in becoming more structured and regulated becomes less viable to take advantage of with abilities like kiting or charm on top of that.

    When it comes right down to it, it's just not FUN to be an int caster in the 70s, and the 70s last for a year. For int casters other than necro, it's a year and a half, as tss+tbs are miserable too. This comes off god where you arent awful YET but you're noticing yourself fall behind the physical damage. I'm not speculating or anything here either. Look at guilds on every tlp. The casters vanish. Nobody plays them. The caster boxes vanish. Even the priest classes start to vanish. Most people just don't enjoy playing these classes at this time.

    It might be different if the melee>caster situation was ONLY gates level bad through the stretch. OOW sees it go off a cliff with resistances being absurd on top of the already poor balancing.

    If I'm wrong and there isn't a problem, then prove me wrong. I am stating that int caster populations mostly vanish in the 70s while melee become the overwhelming majority. I am also stating that during this era there is the worst of mass attrition where guilds and even servers really plummet. So, while there's obviously more going on that just the balance issue, this problem is causing massive class-based attrition right at the worst time for attrition. If you want to deal with the fact that all these tlps start to downward spiral in gates maybe you could look at the fact (yes fact) that casters fall behind starting in gates and don't catch back up until sof (tss for necros) and as a result they almost all quit.
  8. Triconix Augur

    Maybe years ago, but currently, no that's not true about warriors. He explicitly stated current design so let's speak about current era. Warriors are more than capable. Just the other day before raids all I did was box my sham with a few mercs and was pulling 5-6 mobs at a time and experiencing zero issues. What more do you honestly expect? I don't even remember the last time i've grouped with a cleric to accomplish anything of value. All my progression has been done with a sham. Our dps is superior, especially if there are no undead around.

    In early eras? Yes, warriors are clearly the inferior group tanks for quite awhile. We are by far the worst aggro generators, worst twitch aggro players (global refresh on our single aggro ability being 30 seconds long), mediocre dps, and bring virtually zero utility to the table.

    If we were to use current design criterion for TLPs, warriors absolutely would need a massive overhaul. As would clerics. So what is your solution? Do we implement more modern design into a TLP or leave it as is and state that was the echo of the design back then? The zeitgeist if you will.

    Not according to current devs. Essentially all classes have very good utility and have a role in adps.

    Which hybrids have you been grouping with? Ones played well can and do compete very well currently. Heck, even this argument was false if we are speaking on current Aradune status as rangers are pretty dominant in dps while clearly being a hybrid class.

    Which is absolutely why you cannot use the argument that a classes utility in a single expansion is good enough reason why their dps remains subpar for 4-5 expansions vs other classes of the same "typing" ie dps. The argument is also ignoring the clear and obvious exceptions to that rule aka rangers being pretty much top dogs right now. So what's the rationale behind that? Rangers utility is arguably some of the best in game - tank, buff, they snare, root, kite, pull, etc. - so shouldn't it be obvious that they shouldn't compete for top dps spots? You simply cannot make a ridiculous statement like "necros shouldn't do as much dps as pure melee because of their utility" while completely ignoring the power of the ranger class in luclin.

    That utility becomes less and less useful, whether or not you want to admit it or not. A wizard's ports aren't as essential post luclin as they were classic-velious as an example. This isn't subjective. This is fact. You have viable options to use besides ports outside of 30 minutes of running like you did in classic-velious. So why do they continue to struggle in dps meters for multiple expansions after POP? What's the rationale? Again, are we to just say that's the spirit of the time and let it be? Or, with hindsight, start migrating over current design and inject it into TLP? Then you have the nostalgia pitchfork brigade coming out of the woodwork.
  9. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Where did I do that?
  10. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Did I say they were incapable? No.

    I compared them to Knights in the group game and the Knights have serious advantages way above Warriors.
  11. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    So, you can point me to where the devs actually said that or have you simply arrived at / invented this conclusion on your own and attributed it to a loosely collated recollection of things you think were said by the devs?
  12. Fohpo Augur

    As much as I like to fanboi SKs, there’s literally nothing a knight can do that a warrior can’t in group game.
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    All of them?

    I will hold my hands up I haven't raided alongside any Rangers in Luclin, on Live I didn't raid until late PoP as a Warrior and I only played as far as Velious on TLP & then I waited until GoD.

    So Luclin, the one expansion where Rangers are allegedly topping parses as DPS is something of a blind-spot in my knowledge, I know they were great in groups during PoP purely due to tradeskilled Bows that were probably too widely available given how strong they were but I always considered that an anomaly.

    Hybrids in my experience don't compete with Pure Melee on TLP, the really good ones are not miles behind though.
    For a time on Live during the Level 70 Era at least Rangers were quite strong versus pure melee, the guild I was in back then had next to no raiding Beastlords with competitive DPS but we had 3 Rangers who were real close to the Berserkers & Rogues.

    On TLP GoD to TBL there have been 1 or 2 exceptional Beastlords I have played with but the Rangers have been generally mediocre or really poor overall.
  14. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Depends on the rest of the group actually, Warriors are simply more dependent on a healer any way you want to slice it.
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  15. Fohpo Augur

    That doesn't mean that in the group game, where you're kinda insinuating they have a group, that they aren't able to do everything the SK can...

    Sure they aren't solo tanking crap without a healer, but most groups will have at least some form of healer for aDPS if they have half a brain. Which only goes further to say that outside of stupid outlier scenarios, they're perfectly capable of all the same crap, including group swarming in GD caves or anything else. Niche scenarios are really the only time you can make a blanket statement like SKs are the kings of group content, and at the point who cares.

    Also, rangers are competitive for top spots in more than just Luclin... good ones will know to use Runed Bolster Belt, Darkened Cone, and Obulous Tome during TBM, EoK, etc. and can definitely compete if they know what they're doing.
  16. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    You're missing the point that I was making and I never said that they couldn't get the job done, I would say that the Knights do it way better however, the argument about parity is a matter of degrees.
    Just about getting it done with difficulties versus doing it without even breaking a single bead of sweat are not what I consider parity.

    Well as a self-confessed fanboi of SK why would you care indeed, your favourite class is the king of group tanks.

    Yeah PoP, due to the bows, I mentioned that.
    Beyond PoP - not in my experience.
  17. Fohpo Augur

    There were far more modern expansions where they were largely melee focused and could compete, or were atleast dancing in and out of melee/ranged. Hell, in EoK/RoS, they were almost more caster-like than archer fantasy.
  18. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    You may have had the luxury of having played alongside the small selection of Rangers who gave a crap about their dps.

    In my experience the vast majority of Rangers are lazy players that DNGAF about DPS and hang back plinking with bows even when bowing is their absolute worst DPS option because they don't want to have to deal with melee ae rampage or are adamant that bow DPS is their only option for some kind of roleplaying reason they will not negotiate about.
    Then they piss off the enchanters by swapping targets using cycle NPC breaking mezzes because they still had autofire on instead of simply using an /Assist Raid macro.
    In short I think most Rangers absolutely suck on every level, the best you can hope for is that they know how to be useful in a CC/Kite/Aggro-Build capacity and often then you have to educate them on how.
    This is based on my experience of playing with around 6 good Rangers but about 100+ terrible ones across 15 years of EQ.
  19. Triconix Augur

    Stating warriors are severely handicapped strongly implies we are incapable. It's just untrue. I'm not sure what warriors you are with but I absolutely destroy group content with a box healer. What are you expecting warriors to do that knights can do so much better? Heal? There is so much overhealing already that it's trivial in group content.

    Raids? We are fine. Sadly the warrior class was severely neutered in raids with the power levels dragon glyph. The class is almost too easy to play at times now when a click of a single button gets you 50% uptime of the most powerful mitigation tool in the game. DPS wise on raids, stick me or any well-played warrior in a dps group and we'll be top 10 dps almost guaranteed.

    Also, if you want to speak rangers you may want to reach out to the experts. The top rangers in this game will vehemently state they are in a good place in terms of dps and have been for quite some time. It's not uncommon to see a cluster of rangers in my group consistently in the top 5-10. Using anecdotes of bad rangers playing their class badly is not a valid argument of stating ranger dps is not competitive. That's a terrible fallacy.
  20. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Hence my use of the disclaimer "in my experience" - maybe you are unfamiliar with that literary device.
    Perhaps read what is actually being said instead of inventing your own narrative.

    No fallacy involved if I am clearly & explicitly only speaking from my own experience, unless you are going to try and invalidate my own experiences and tell me my memories are lying to me.
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