We all agree casters are ahead of melee. We all agree melee need buffs/improvements. I am curious what do melee want to have happen after all the buffs are administered? Do all three melee classes want to do more DPS than the current #1 necromancer? Do all three feel they should be equal, and RNG decides which class wins the raid parse that event? Should a zerker do more DPS than a monk and rogue because they cannot effectively solo? I personally would like to see 3 raid events that are won under 4 minutes, 3 events that are finished around the 10 minute duration mark, a d three lengthy 20 minute raids. A zerker and wizard should win the first three and be competitive with each other, a rogue and magician the next, and the monk and necromancer should top the 20 minute parse. I say this as someone who is not fully aware of the strengths/weaknesses between monk and rogue (never played a rogue). If melee are improved but still finishing behind necromancers, is that good enough? I am just curious what melee want as the end result. Only one class can finish first on a parse, unless we make the six pure DPS classes identical on raid parses, subject to RNG. Problem with that, of course, is that some of the six can solo significantly better than others which is important for some.
My personal hopes are that all classes labeled as a role of "DPS" (who cares what they can do out in the wild) can be competitive DPS and viable and desired by group starters and raid leaders to have in a group and/or raid setting It is never gonna be perfect, this I personally understand but I want effort to help this happen, not complete and total ignoring of the fact.
Not perfect but off the top of my head after thinking about it a few minutes. There are no more long, medium, short dps classes. Dps is dps is what they have said its just how they get there. Currently mages are the top dps class with necromancers right behind them. Unless guilds purposely slow roll everything and their aren't enough adds up at all times for mages to pull ahead like is possible. Or adps is lacking. The wizard stuff on beta might flip this all on its head having it be # 1 Wiz, # 2 Mage, # 3 Necro but will see how that all plays out. Melee need a boost to both single target and AE dps to catch up. In terms of single target IMO melee discs all need to be down to 10-15m reuse period. They also likely need their durations extended out to 90-120s. Some of the big mage and wizard burn tools are lasting 3, 4 or 6 minutes at this stage. Zerkers can definitely use some more bumps to offset what rogues and monks are getting while also gaining more crit rate from another 300-400 hdex from gear. For AE melee need much faster reuse stuff but something that can't just make it so a melee toon can burn 70 mobs down at once every burn cycle. So they really need like two 3 minute reuse 60s duration things with like a 50% chance to repeat primary melee round on 8 targets for like 50% damage or something. This would allow them a lot more AE dps without setting up a zerker full burning 70 mobs at once while a tank is under a deflection type disc.
I feel like we need a total revamp of everything. To me it would be fun, if we had something like, I don't know, a 15s massive burn on a short cooldown like two minutes(just throwing some numbers out there). I cycle through 6 - 7 discs. Outside of my main burn which lasts about two minutes, most of the discs I use barely even impact my DPS, they're just filler while waiting on my burns to refresh. Let's just get rid of them, FFS they "upgraded" ragged edge. Who the hell cares, it's a garbage disc. Just give me one or two short cooldown burns. Let me use repeatedly, I do 10m DPS for 15s and then 500k DPS for 90s and let it average out. Then we have more on demand burns for different phases and even if necros at the end of the night have higher average DPS those moments of high burn damage could be valuable. Also much less punishing. Nothing worse than popping off only to get called on an emote. That's just how I'd like it to work. I love it when we get huge spikes in damage, that's part of what always made raiding on a melee fun. I still see zerkers putting out some nice numbers like at the start of Queen but they just fall off so quickly and the damage doesn't amount to much in raids that last as long as these do. But it doesn't matter, we'd be lucky to see a small bump in weapon damage.
To not hear well you are a nice person, you don't mess up emotes so we will not kick you out of the raid but if we get a few more topend dps classes your place will be reconsidered. To not find out DB was too lazy to fix a technical limitation that hampered your class for years. How we get there I do not know anymore, none of the suggestion for class improvements has being done.
What technical limitation? Is this regarding the crit cap? Only thing that comes to mind at this moment. I wonder also how they'd get there.
Melee weapons have a damage cap. You can read more about it here. While it does require a code change, they can just choose the cap. Hard to fathom why, if that was really the reason for melee stagnation, it wasn’t raised for years. Or why they didn’t pursue other options like SPA 482 passive modifiers, which literally just add a modifier on weapon damage (that bypasses the cap). Glad they’re fixing it now, but the explanation is befuddling.
Who is ready for a Saturday morning hot take? EQ is an old school game in that some classes are designed to be singularly focused while others are capable in a variety of situations. EQ should maintain this and class balanced should be based with that in account. For DPS, the classes with little to offer than DPS in a group/raid setting should be at the top, while DPS-focused classes with high self-sufficiency or other contributions should be lower. I'd contend that the classes with the least self-sufficiency and non-DPS offerings are berserkers, monks, rogues and wizards. Berserkers vs monks vs rogues is funny because what is the real difference between them? Monks can't tank, aren't needed to pull, rogue's SOS is situationally useful and berserkers are somehow ADPS hybrids. Should just merge the three of them into warrior at this point (kidding). I'd also contend that the class that should do the least DPS is the noble cleric, which I'd argue should aim for 40% of the DPS of the highest classes (They're probably at 10% now). A DPS distribution where the top is at 100% and the bottom is at 40% would look like, presuming solid ADPS is offered to each class There are, of course, considerations around single target vs several target vs swarm dps, dps rampup vs instant, sustained vs burst dps. But I'm going to ignore all those details intentionally. 100%: Berserker, monk, rogue, wizard 80%: Ranger, Magician, Necromancer, Shadowknight, Warrior, Beastlord 60%: Shaman, Druid, Paladin, Bard, Enchanter 40%: Cleric My personal investment is mostly focused on the overall health of the game. In terms of my lethality the #1 best thing is massive swings to overpowered and easily boxed characters (so hugely OP mages or berserkers are great), but I'll be fine pretty much no matter what. This has been a Saturday morning hot take, carry on.
SOOO my initial response to myself after reading what Aristo posted about this was.. "sounds like smoke and mirriors" Guess I was correct. Whatev.. now its being addressed. THIS is gonna bring some life back to the game hopefully. It will for me.
This topic kind of opens the "DPS Hierarchy" can-of-worms. And everybody will have differing views on exactly how that would look, while there might be some limited amounts of broad consensus. So what I would say right off the bat & before we disappear down the rabbit hole of player-devised hierarchies is that Melee "should" want is "relative parity" - that rather vague term meaning that within a basic range of circumstances Casters & Melee DPS classes are going to be performing more DPS on average than Classes which are not considered pure DPS classes - such as tanks priests & support but within a reasonable range of each others dps. What we should not be seeing is Tanks beating out supposed dps classes, nor Priests over the course of a raid night. My own personal hierarchy for melee/caster pure dps which I am sure many will completely disagree with goes something like this: Wizard / Berserker - Biggest AoE damage Necromancer / Monk - midway between Wizard & Berserker for AE & midway between Magician & Rogue for Single Target. Magician / Rogue - Biggest single target damage Now the differences between these "parities" shouldn't be that huge, they should be a reasonable edge/advantage in those situations but not ridiculous something like within 10% or less of each other given similar gear aa & skill levels. So for single target damage something like: Rog 100 /Mag 97.5 Mnk 95 /Nec 92.5 Ber 90 /Wiz 87.5 Rng 85 /Bst 82.5 Enc 80 /Brd 75 Pal 70 /War 67.5 /Shd 65 Clr 60 /Dru 55 /Shm 50 And for AE damage something like: Wiz 100 /Ber 97.5 Nec 95 /Mnk 92.5 Mag 90 /Rog 87.5 Bst 85 /Rng 82.5 Brd 80 /Enc 75 Shm 70 /Dru 67.5 /Clr 65 Shd 60 /War 55 /Pal 50
Melee have not gotten much attention. Monk class: Master's Synergy, the only aDPS a Monk brings to a group or raid, hit count could be doubled from 90 hits to 180 hits. This brings it more or less in line with other classes' group aDPS benefits. Swift Tails' Chant could include a mana regen component, but requires melee or range physical damage on part of the recipient to trigger. Providing another method for melee group centric mana users an avenue of recovery. Fists of Wu could be reworked to be a watered-down version of Technique of Master Wu, providing a chance at an extra third or fourth attack. And have its duration extended similar to other pure melee group discs.
some of the raid emotes don't help melee , when they have to move away for this or that . while ranged dps can still do damage even if they had to move.
I think casters and melee should have equal damage. What gets ignored alot is that melee have WAY more survivability than casters. Any melee in raid gear can tank any group content for example. I ado agree with some that tank dps is too high and priest dps too low. If tanks are beating out dps classes, then whats the point of the dps class?
Your melee survivability assertion is mistaken, at best casters and melee are on equal footing with survivability.
EDIT: Oops you said survivability not chance of death. While large AE certainly add an element of danger to casters, hybrid, and melee the melee are ALWAYS at greater risk of death due to proximity to the target. Ramp, adds, short-range AE all are dangers casters are more or less immune to. Additionally, melee DPS suffers from time transiting between targets, targeting time, positioning. All of which, in most cases, has zero impact to caster DPS.
Idk, casters shield spell is pretty great for damage mitigation. Can keep it up all the time. Ironically, the casters who b%$#@ about dying all the time are the ones that never use it.
When fighting a boss on a raid, yes melee have a higher risk of taking damage. The other 99% of the game when your not fighting a raid boss?Melee have huge survivability over casters. There are also many people who do not raid.
I am having trouble envisioning a group scenario where melee are better off than casters. Can you elaborate?
A mob attacks your character. If your a melee, you can take more hits than a caster can. Its not that hard to figure this part out. or at least, if you were trying it wouldn't be....
