What classes do you think today are underpowered?

I feel like at this point, the devs are trying to create some sort of meta each expansion, similar to newer games when they release new "seasons".

The issue with the "meta" thought process, if indeed that is what they are doing, is they are making the top and and lowest point so far apart, it kills the enjoyment of playing the class that's been stagnated. I believe a 5%~ difference regarding DPS between the top and the lowest would be significant enough to achieve their overall goals. Having one class able to pump out 20% or greater of another DPS class, doesn't make sense to me.

They can and do. Shei event our BSTs did it quite a bit, but that was a pure burn event so not the best example.

In NoS, occasionally on Mean Streets, not common but does happen. Gumdrops maybe on adds if they stack up, but pretty rare.

I will let others judge my skill, but my guild runs 3 SKs (+1 new one), I have watched our BSTs pull aggro on burn events from all 4 of us.

All this aside.




Most underpowered class:



Tank: for me hard to say, in context probably War. But overall the tanks are all in a solid place relative to the other categories. Relative to one another maybe Pally. But again it's a pretty small difference.

Melee: Zerkers, they really need decap doing headshot/backstab lvl dmg. Maybe a special dmg bonus to 2h slash weapon bonus like BS dmg.

Caster: Wizzies

Hybrids: Rangers

Priest: Clerics, they really need a solid boost to their DPS

Let’s please not. As far as I’m concerned decap can die in a tire fire. I’d prefer they do something of substance and not use cheesy abilities in an effort to boost berserkers.

Based on prior posts, I will agree paladins cannot tank and hold aggro on multiple mobs like an sk. If that is the criteria for making paladins the worst tank; then by your examples then you are correct. However, I think presently the balance amongst all three tank classes is in a lot better shape than say melee v caster dps. With that said, any competent paladin on a raid has enough tools to be able to hold aggro on their assignment while also being able to provide healing for: themselves, group (wave/healing light proc, confluent procs), and the entire raid. My suggestion also is to try 2 tanking when the sk in group hits their epic. The dps from this vs snow cone is 'knight' and day =p

Worst melee is all melee. Aside from the dps disparity; once you include event mechanics like silence (either they move away to avoid it and lose time on target or stay on target but are silenced), pb effects that suppress focus effects (same as above), and some achievements that include being inside an aura that includes melee slow or amnesia; the gap widens even further. Take into account less than optimal raid forces that do not have the luxury of having bards and other classes (for melee groups) for adps/synergy and the gap between melee and caster is even bigger.

I don't think there is a worst hybrid, as both are in pretty good shape at the moment. The only thing which has been suggested ad nauseam is for some form of mana recovery for rangers. I personally have been advocating for mana reduction (as recovery has not been added despite it being constantly asked for) to our guardian aa similar to the druid wolf form. Another option to help with mana preservation could include: archery spells/ecliptic use endurance instead of mana either innately or with an activated aa. I'd also like to see gift of mana work while scf is running or at least work for base mana cost of the spell being cast. Or, a mana return option similar to how night's calming works; because currently coming back from a death I can regen back endurance without using anything that needs more than 2% of my current endurance pool. Ask any ranger on a raid coming back from a death; how much they felt they contributed to the raid. Answer is most likely, "I was able to mgb auspice at least." Lastly, perhaps in the next reflexive upgrade it can also return a decent chunk of mana or some mana over time (I dislike this option the most as it is too similar to bard reflexive and paragon, but mana is mana.)

As for clerics (I know there are many posts regarding them gaining/increasing dps), I say this half-jokingly but maybe they can have some kind of adps ability. I'm sure the tanks who excel in the dps department wouldn't mind it!

Would a fair balance be that SK are better at maintaining aggro on a large number of mobs, and paladins should maintain aggro better on a single mob? I am not saying this is how it is currently, but something to work towards?

A fun aggro challenge would be to pick some boss with a ton of health, and then have aggro wars between the tank classes to see which classes generate more aggro. Would have to restrict the use of taunt and other abilities that would suppress the aggro of other classes.

no

One thing a lot of people miss, is that anything you can do to a group of mobs can be done to a single mob. So if it's just 1 mob, all of those SK AE tactics work just fine as well as anything that they can do to a single mob. Same for Warriors and Paladins

Your idea of an aggro war would need too many rules just to be fair to Paladins.

In theory, you would just need to give Paladins an extra aggro boost on a targeted mob, and would not need to reduce SK aggro abilities.

Tanks right now are fine. They shouldn't even be part of the discussion.

Tanks overall are fine, paladins are dramatically behind the other two.
Its no different than me saying casters are fine and should not be part of the discussion, even though most people believe wizards need help.
I assume you do not want wizards to be labeled "fine" because necros and mages are so strong

This is such a lot of wordplay that distracts from the fact that if there are 10 mobs, no class handles that better than sks.
If there is just 1 mob, no class handles that better than sks.
As for the rest.
No, absolutely not.
Paladin passive healing is abysmal. It is not even remotely close between SK and paladin passive healing.
Additionally, in order to get healing light procs a paladin most be using stuns. Stuns that rarely if ever work against raid mobs and typically generate less agro than our crushes. Thats a non-starter. I can't even imagine how you could bring healing light up in this conversation.
Healing light was really great for the paladins doing the exploit before it got fixed though.
Wave heal is far too slow and in modern EQ trying to tank multiple adds and cast a slow heal that generates next to nothing for agro is a freakin joke.
I suppose next you will recommend casting the Aurora heal line.
My best self healing options are the Grief line and Dicho line which each carry a one minute reuse timer.
Or the burst line, which has a spell bar cooldown penalty when cast.
All of these generate next to no agro nor obviously any damage.

Remind me again, how much healing, agro and dps SK lifetaps do in comparison?

If the distinction of a class being under powered is whether or not a competent player of the class has enough tools to do their job, then there are no under powered classes.

Enough with the gas lighting.

It's a fair comparison.

Wizards are a DPS class. They're comparable to zerkers and rogues and not pet classes.

Well whats the problem then? If you want to compare wizards to berzerkers and rogues, all 3 of those classes appear to be doing fairly similar numbers.
I thought you've been comparing wizards unfavorably to mages and necros for years now.
Glad we can stop worrying about that then, they are just pet classes.

It was like this once upon a time. Probably the last time was COTF. Single target, paladins were exceptionally strong, with nothing but a well timed taunt and dumping of agro abilities by a warrior or sk having any chance of pulling off a paladin.
SK ae agro was still very good then, but at least paladins could keep their one mob, solid, without much struggle, which allowed us to actually heal ourselves.
When people argue that paladins can keep agro on one mob right now, its mostly true, but we struggle to keep agro, and heal ourselves or our groups, which should be the greatest strength of the paladin class.
Meanwhile Sks are tanking a pile of mobs and AE dps, agro and healing off every mob in range.
Its going back a decade now, but when heal agro was changed to help stop priests from getting agro, I believe this is the start of the decline in paladins.
If I healed myself for 200k and that was all applied as agro or if I group healed for over a million healing, or splashed for millions and millions, I think we wouldnt be having these conversations.

I had a paladin and sk both at 115 in era, and then, and at 120, the difference in what you have to do as an sk and a paladin to fill the same role is somewhat absurd.

SK's in my guild have made Paladin alts because theres like 1 on our server at any given time, and just give up when I have to walk them through the flowchart of how to do things. "My sk just does those 4 things in 1 spell". YES I AM AWARE. "My sk doesnt even have to use aa's for threat" YES I AM AWARE. "My defensive cooldowns are just better on the sk" YES I AM AWARE. "My self buffs are better than that" "I have so much better self healing on my SK"... Just go play your sk then. "yeah, i dont know why I would ever play a paladin".

I havent even used my 1 unique group buff on myself since Strength of Tunare was a thing, which is still kind of funny.

Barraind, I feel like that as a monk. We have a ton of disc/aa's we need to use depending on what aDPS we get and where we are in the burn cycle. Almost need a flow chart to say if this is running do that, etc.

While one of our mages said something to the effect of " I just map everything to my programable mouse and spam 3-4 keys the entire fight " and he's consistently in the top 5.

Decap is junk & since it's a proc I would happily see it removed & the damage it did added to regular melee damage, removing procs and putting their damage somewhere less processor/ calculation intensive is what the devs should be doing with every class IMHO.
The change to Bane (from Slayer achievements) was exactly what this was for example.

Backstab-like weapon stat, something like a 2hs Bonus Frenzy Damage flat damage addition on all Zerker useable 2H weapons I could see the benefit of.

Not the worst idea I heard of, but I wouldn't want to be effectively locked in to just a 2hs, at varying points the 2HB or 2HP weapons have been preferable. Adding it to all 2-handed weapons that aren't class-restricted (i.e Knight or War only 2-handers) would leave more flexibility and a stat that benefits one class but is not detrimental to others is a decent solution if its powerful enough & creates a "well this benefits that class more than it benefits mine" situation at the same time without restricting anyone.

Berserkers need some juicing up of their discs, Mangling timer, boosts to the weaker discs to bring them up to snuff & make them deliver more damage.

The two main issues for Zerks are firstly crit stagnation since they have been at the crit-cap a while, but all of the other melee still have room to improve their crit from HDEX, secondly is their discs & abilities were most likely balanced against a broken Dicho & then after their dicho was fixed were not rebalanced resulting in an overall DPS loss affecting the class across multiple expansions retroactively (i.e. Every expansion from TBM onwards).

I'm not sure if the crit cap issue requires a bespoke solution of some kind but it for certain needs to be accounted for when improving other Berserker abilities & discs VS classes who can still improve their crit rating, and I would hope to see this retroactively done to a certain degree to address the dps loss from TBM onwards which will affect TLP zerkers.

I never disagreed that Sk's are the best option for getting initial ae aggro and have the ability to hold aggro on multiple mobs (especially in this example if they have initial aggro on a wave of adds from stream, chances are they are going to get beguile) through insidious and/or bargain after their initial explosions/stream. I know of many raid forces that use sks on add phases to ae everything into a pile with flash/deflect and then tanks peel off mobs. As for only 1 mob; I tend to think warriors handles the ability to lock down aggro better than both knights. Outside of unrelenting/dropping harmtouch, if a warrior is pushing all the buttons it is near impossible on either knight to generate enough aggro to overtake that warrior. I do agree with you that passive healing on the paladin is an area that should be looked into. The heals from the preservation buff could be higher considering when you compare the Sk skin line and how much damage it mitigates; it certainly feels like the damage mitigated is substantially higher than the heal values on a hp to hp ratio.

To preface, I am not a raiding main paladin (hoping other main paladins can chime in here) but I don't think I was out of line for bringing up healing light. Rather than start the debate on spell line ups, I'd like to see a parse for a full clear that includes those that use multiple stuns for aggro vs those that don't use any for quantity of healing light procs and heal values. The reason I did bring it up is that even though it is less aggro than a crush it also provides passive healing for the entire group if it procs. Please feel free to add a healing parse to any paladin mains that see this. Again, I agree with you that the wave line is not ideal to cast while tanking multiples due to the cast time; however situationally (not every raid force has 2 clerics per tank group and 3+ shamans squalling on cooldown) it has it's place and even more so when you have imperator's command. With that said though, based on your comment it's kind of moot because the sk's are tanking multiples not the paladins.

In conclusion, I've agreed with a lot of things you bring up; I just personally believe that the class is not in as bad of a spot as you describe. A few things could stand to be improved but currently a well played paladin can fulfil their role of tanking their assignment, provide direct heals on target's target, heal the entire raid, heal the entire raid over time (can save a lot from death on a failed emote or provide healing through a silence), and do a little burst dps every 20 minutes. Didn't think giving an honest assessment constituted gas lighting.

Didn't zerkers get extra 6.5% dps boost this expansion in the form as BER-only weapon:
https://items.eqresource.com/items.php?id=169973&aug5=42073&aug8=164569
with DMG/Dly ratio of 29.46 vs ordinary(multi-class)
https://items.eqresource.com/items.php?id=169961&aug5=42073&aug8=164569
with DMG/Dly ratio of 27.69 ?
I haven't formed my own opinion yet, as my zerker does not have the newest raid weapon yet.