Lot of solid information in this thread. The reality is if you know what you're doing in any given situation you can always maximize. If you end up in a top guild on a class that's rarely in the top 10 on any given night and you're magically top 3 sustained for several months at the launch of an expansion you're probably doing it right. No two guilds in my experience are ever the same.
Doesn't seem like a fair fight. Stubs is Canadian, and when he 1 v 1's he leaves the Canadian at the door.
I should have qualified earlier by saying "I eat our beastlords for dinner". We have good beastlords... I just think my own personal results are somewhat anomalous. Don't know stubs, but - come at me bro! ; ) Well, my guild is no slouch - but, perhaps you're right. Because, as I understand it, I really shouldn't be beating "pure DPS classes" ever (adps support, or lack of it, being equal). Then again, says who? And by what standard? /shrug To be clear, I'm primarily talking about sustained dmg output, which - I'd hope you'll agree - is a much more important/relevant benchmark. Afterall, anyone can throw their kitchen sink at a mob for 60-70 seconds. BFD. But yeah, rangers are way behind in that department. In general, my point is that it seems careless to definitively rank classes from best to worst when it comes to damage output and making parses. Ultimately, it boils down to individual skill-set relative to one's guildmates and, of course, the specific event at hand.
For the Record us blowing everything = more sustained dps overall. As the mods stacking benefit our dps more than splitting them and using them in stages.
I'm not sure I understand this. So if smash everything at the same time for 1/2/3 mobs and then have a full cooldown, then my average parse for the night would be higher than staggering each of the burns? I have never parsed that, and I'm unsure if that is a fair representation of "sustained" dps? I was kinda of the opinion that the burns partially mitigated each other so aren't properly additive but perhaps I'm wrong there. I'm still really curious to see where I sit in terms of group-geared bsts. Life doesn't lend me to a raiding environment so it's hard for me to benchmark myself in the group game. Stubar has said in the past (if memory serves) that he can sustain 60K dps. I'm hoping that was with adps?! If any raider happens to have a full set of group gear and could set a benchmark without adps whilst they're bored then I would be much obliged to see where I sit, as would other bsts I know. I'd like to think I do a decent job but it's hard to tell when I have nothing on a level playing field to compare to. EDIT: Actually on second reading, I'm thinking you mean higher average burn dps? iirc, consensus used to be that longer fights benefited from staggered discs; has this since changed?
Sustained DPS is a term loosely associated to an end of the week parse. You cleared all current content, have an accurate parse for 99.9% of damage done and combine the fights. Some classes are stronger in certain expansion because of mechanics, however it's usually fairly accurate from expansion to expansion. I can give you an example of my sustained DPS on a 10 minute fight, but I also have proper buffs and support and we communicate to min/max. Prince Tarant Thex in 621s --- Warbanex + pets 31198k @69951dps Sustained DPS for a group geared beastlord would depend on your group. If you have a bard, it's going to increase significantly. If you sync proper mini burns and large burns it's going to increase. If you have a shaman it will increase. If you have an enchanter or mage it will increase. Easiest way to test something like this is go hit Beta/Test do a /betabuff 100 beastlord and do a 10 minute parse (or until you run oom) and get a baseline. Then try different things to improve it. See what classes best compliment it (I can already tell you this is Bard>Sham>Enc>Mage>Zerker>Ranger>Other beastlords).
Cheers for the info Zahrym, 70K over 10 mins is impressive! I was more curious about the specifics of what Stonereq was saying about burning everything and getting higher sustained dps. The "sustained" that you have described in your post is how I understood it. But if I take Stonereq's advice, that means burning the hell out of a couple of mobs then sitting with no burns for 10 mins or so, then burning it all again.... results in higher average dps than staggering throughout the evening? In my regular group, I might have an ench as adps, nothing else. Bards are rare, then it's a different game. But adps also adds another level of player skill, which is why I am curious on what a bst can do with no adps to level it down to skills alone.
Hybrids are behind pure dps classes. Its that simple. The entire game was, and continues to be balanced around the notion that utility has a price. I think everyone here is overcomplicating and overestimating the role of 'player skill.' There is a reason Warriors tank and Wizards beat Druids in parses. That's one of my favorite aspects of EQ, in that you don't have classes that can do everything and still be the best (see druids in WoW). At least for casters, once you know the correct situational rotation, you can easily multi-bind the optimal spell set and bind it to every key you have. At that point, its a question of how fast you can literally bash your headagainst the keyboard. Set a couple macros for first burn, second burn, third burn, and periodically bash your head towards that key. This isn't an overexaggeration. I believe that for *most* dps classes, i could, quite literally, faceroll my way to optimal dps. There are some obvious exceptions, such as more complex 18 DoT necro rotations. Some people just suck, I get it, but most apt players realize there really isn't *that* much to what needs to be done. The real magic happens with your support team and how well they coordinate adps support and cooldowns. Can we hold up for a moment and just admit that what we all do isn't exactly rocket science?
Well... you start your argument by saying that hybrids fall behind dps classes, then go on to talk about casters (dps classes) with some respect for necro skill. How is that relevant to any discussion here?
For the most part it isn't (answering your part on relevant). EQ isn't insanely hard, with a skill cap as high as an FPS or RTS game, but there is a reason there are people that perform, in their class, well above the average (double/triple other people's dps/damage). What he is doing is oversimplifying the game, while, seemingly, discounting player skill. People sometimes do inflate the difficulty of EQ, but to negate player skill, which is a biggest part of successful play, is also an understatement. We have apps come to RoI that are considered super stars in their old guild, and they will do 1/3rd the dps of our top in class, even after a month. They're in the same group as those players in certain situations, but still fall significantly short. If player skill was extremely trivial, every guild would be as successful as RoI in EQ, or Method in WoW (if someone wanted to stretch the skill statement to other games). Most dps rotations are not insanely hard in MMO's, they have to be accessible on a certain level. But player skill is the single most important factor that separates the men from the boys. Edit: We had a beastlord join several months ago that was suppose to be very good. Talked to some that knew him and they said he was solid. Stubar literally did quadruple his dps/damage. This is obviously not an "empirical" example to support my point about player skill (though i have years of logs to show "skill" as the most important factor for dps between the same class), but if EQ was faceroll easy (you can do similar things with beastlords as you can with casters (making macros and multibinds to make your job easier)) as some would suggest, that situation never would have occurred for a month straight.
It was a rhetorical question really. I have a PhD in Engineering so I could probably get my head around rocket science. I was the 7th oldest active bst on my server before EQplayers went down. I've probably "PLed" (if you can call it that for bsts) more people on AB than any other person and never charged for it. But I still rely on the people that parse all the small things out and post strats on here to make sure I do a good job when I'm in a group. If I have access to people who are the best in the game then I will ask for clarification on things, because that's the sensible thing to do, especially when I then give advice to others. I know his post was nonsense but it was well written so I wasn't sure of the point of it Everyone can improve.
