Can we get an explanation as to why the RoF raid weapons were nerfed? They are now equivalant to VoA raid weapons...
Well I guess we will sit idly by with our thumbs up our and bank on our new AA's to keep us competitive with other dps.
Or, find new games. Because any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions concerning weapon ratios fall upon deaf ears.
Only one class can be first on a DPS parse. Naturally only one player can be first on a DPS parse. The moment the other 15 classes and 53 raiders realize that, the sooner people can stop worrying about everything and just have fun with trying to be the best they can be.
We all want to be the 'best of the best of the best of the best'. Its human nature to be competitive, and I get soooo bored of posts saying we should all just 'relax and enjoy the event'. Its a very blinkered view that does not take into account that different people enjoy different aspects of the game. Its also a cowardly and lazy cop out that means any developments in the game with respect to dps never have to make any sense at all. Sure in the short term it makes life easier for developers, but what of the long term repercussions?
It's really past the point of wanting to be the best, etc. It's more of the fact that there really isn't a weapon upgrade available this expansion. We might as well keep using T4 weapons from VoA. It's funny. Half of the argument concerning Spell Focus Degradation is the Devs believe casters won't upgrade previous items with the same focus solely for H/E/M upgrades. But, at the same time, they talk out of the other side of their mouth and think that melees should be ok to "upgrade" items with the same weapon ratio solely for H/E/M upgrades. Part of the fun of EverQuest is the ability to progress your character and reap the benefits of your hours of dedication to the game. Not having viable upgrades removes that fun.
nice way of putting it.... Also occurs to me that zerks are in a similar position to monks here. You have access to weapons that are not an upgrade, while monks don't have new weapons (uber rare drops or essentially none at all in NToV), so are stuck with the ones from last expansion (until we decide to forget all other upgrades, and save raid coin to buy weapons) .... Meanwhile, casters are pretty much kitted out by now, and stuff that used to be rare (pet focus for example) is not overpriced. Funny that. Not.
Plus their reason for stagnating us is because of our "burst dps"... and their solution affects our sustained dps as well, which is already way below where it should be... The method in which they've tried to fix this perceived problem is completely illogical... not to mention, the 'perceived problem' I just mentioned is based primarily off a VoA raid that presents a rare opportunity for the berserker class to align the planets in such a way that huge parses are possible, but is FAR from the normal raid encounter. There are plenty of arguments of why berserkers should be top dps anyhow... mainly on our complete lack of other redeeming qualities... the only other real benefit we bring to a group or raid is a little bit of ADPS. But the amount of added damage a berserker adds to a raid is by no means enough to warrant stagnation of the berserkers individual DPS... (especially our sustained damage) This is an obvious problem... I just wish the devs would at least consider the fact that the points we've listed above DO make sense, and that we're not just trying to OP our own class. Most berserkers chose the class because they wanted to take a pure damage route, and now we're being left behind.
remember when we upgraded weapons because it had more +fire sv... neither do I because it has been so long that stats like HEM or sv fire really mattered on a weapon. Sure the weapon is an upgrade or has a unique graphic but sidegrades or parallel transitions are pretty ho-hum. How hard is it to increase weapon ratio by a few points and then up mob hp values to compensate. Sure the person looks at their parser and sees an increase in dps relative to where they were previously but when you increase mob hp it ends up null, which is the same as not increasing the ratio but has less of a negative impact on player perception. Zerkers were doing quite well, so stagnation is to be expected to some degree. But the only meaningful upgrade these days for melee classes is the increase in weapon ratio as all other stats are relatively pointless in terms of player power, would be nice though if +sv vs fire mattered. Kinda funny that the short sighted vision of obsoleting other stats couldn't be envisioned to pigeonhole one stat as the only relevant factor. padding a magelo with HEM is not the same as increasing weapon ratio, 200 more HEM on a weapon is a drop in the bucket of the 130k hp that players have these days. one would think getting relative dps values of all the dps classes in a vacuum would be fairly simple. There are even guides on fansites explaining exactly how to burn or what the parses are looking like. An intelligent person could beta copy a toon read a 3 paragraph post on a fan site and come within +/- 20% of what the best players are capable of producing in a controlled environment. the right hand never knows what the left is doing... rogues for example were competitive with zerkers last expansion, then they got an increase to the duration of one of their high impact AA at launch extending the meaningful portion of the "short burn" and instead of peaking and dropping off they can maintain a bit longer and so their overall peak averages out to a higher burn. Meanwhile other classes in norrath are seeing a lack of weapon upgrades and disc omission... it doesn't make sense. The pendulum swings aren't necessary... longer beta durations and a more prepped product at launch could solve all of this, it isn't like the players are unwilling. Instead the unpolished product ends up causing people to quit. *edit to add... the devs could easily add a 6k/tic persistent dot to each raid npc that is blocked by weilding a particular weapon of the previous tier , at that point you would be happy to upgrade despite the ratio increase, because your character power and overall raid success would be contingent on upgrading in the lower tiers with the final tier offering a dmg increase and the dot blocker making farming that much easier.
Along the lines of what Shiftie said, at least we could have significant bumps in other stats on the weapons like ATK and such. Then, if you're comparing VoA T4 weapons vs. RoF T1/2 weapons it would look more like a personal choice on selection if the ratios were similar but foci and other stats varied by quite a bunch. It seems like RoF took away a significant amount of ATK on gear so why couldn't a decent amount have been put back on the weapons that got stagnated? At least it would have been a bone for the class...
I could be wrong but atk doesnt even matter anymore does it? With a full set of gear now days its overcapped. At least I thought it was.
I would like to see said concerns, and what events they are on. I highly doubt any of the information used to make this change is from the current expansion, the one whose weapons were changed. If the event was the one most of us think from T2 VoA, then go back and retune those weapons.Honestly, any parse I have seen recently from T0-T2 RoF raids has mages, wizards, necros, and occasional rangers and rogues doing more dps than our zerkers (and many of us were top 5 dps in the guild prior to RoF). This "concern" is all based on the ability given to us in VoA, Frenzied Resolve. This ability is grossly overstated in power (much like our warcry is with all of the other classes and their HHE abilities these days, but that is another arguement). It is only really usable on rooted mobs without a knockback AE... which is about 1% of targets we engage.I am all for just playing to have fun, but if there is no way to improve our class anymore it loses its fun, then I ask myself why I play at all? Would it really kill someone to actually listen to the playerbase and come to a rational decision once in awhile? And when they come to those decisions, maybe provide some reasoning backed with data, not just "Because soandso said this and that?"
You could be right sir. I just came back to the game a few months ago from a 3-year hiatus and may not be aware of all the current situations in regards to caps. If that's the case then yes, extra ATK would be useless, but the devs still could have given us SOMETHING while the ratios were stagnated.
What bothers me the most is the way this was done. Waiting 3 months after the expansion release was a terrible idea, and utterly disrespectful. Some compromise is deserved. In choosing a berserker, we sacrifice utility for damage. I'm sure anyone understands that. I'd personally like to see someone on the team besides Chandrok justify this, because it's obvious he doesn't understand what he's done. Bad show. Boo. Hiss. /throws rotten tomato.
Well said Shiftee. Well said Fatbuk. I remember the painful past 2 years of HoT and VoA. Wizards getting rofl curb stomped on parses. Nothing we can do to beat rogues and zerkers. Nothing. Game wasn't fun. Wizards quitting left and right. We want to compete too you know, that's "Part of the fun of EverQuest is the ability to progress your character and reap the benefits of your hours of dedication to the game. Not having viable upgrades removes that fun." Now in RoF, Wizards are doing great. Class is fun again. Logging in more. Spending SC. All in the SoE vision. But now other classes are not happy. Shiftie said it best. Players are willing to help Devs predict and project DPS upgrades via spells/AAs/gear in Beta....if they just let us have more input and/or spend time with us 1on1 burning mobs and collecting data. It would result in a much more solid product. Until then, I am going to enjoy being on top of the DPS food chain for now, knowing full well next expansion we will be stagnated to the stone ages and other DPS classes will curb stomp us again.
rofl well I quit my zerker after HoT, but last zerker stagnation was due to the nature of SS.. I pointed out that our discs were stagnating group dps through the choice to give us dps upgrades via endurance use over weaponry, and how that was a mistake. Dont get hung up on the group dps explanation, its all VERY connected. Coincidence or not, whomever was doing AA at the time for expansions came out and said that SS was not to beupgraded again because of the "multiplicative" ways of zerker dps. This held true for a good amount of time and weapons were back on track. Now not only did we upgrade the discs, but we have things in addition to stack with them. I pointed this out the moment I saw the disater coming in beta but I doubt anyone cared at the time. As mentioned I quit before this really hit again (I cannot stand having to be blind and rooted to even have a chance at being competitive, its not fun...), so if this is not the case really then I apologize, but this is what I already saw coming... On a side note I found it pretty entertaining that they nerfed natures fury and bards flurry contributions to try to tame it first.
I replied to this before and it got removed by a mod. I won't say the exact same thing but will paraphrase it - maybe it'll stay this time. Berserker sustained isn't too high. It's certainly no match for wizards, which are the flip side if we want to compare burst melee vs burst caster. So this "fix" seems more like a kludge as it produces other problems. *IF* you feel that berserker burst was too high, then nerfing the weapons is IMO the wrong solution. The primary reason berserkers had such a high burst was due to shaman, bards and beastlords. I expect this is what got my last post removed, so let me be clear here... monks and rogues get a self HH proc which means they attack more frequently. This is a good sustained dps gain. It is absolutely not a burst gain unless we happen to be without optimal support (all too common alas) as the beastlord HH spell is better. This is a good thing - it partially removes dependency on another class while simultaneously keeping them as desireable for burns. I know the devs have said no to more HH, presumably because it puts undue lag and load with yet more attack messages, but there are other 3rd party mods that all pure melee could benefit from gaining weaker forms of. It would boost our sustained (sadly lacking now compared to every other dps class, including hybrids and caster burn classes too) while having no affect on the peak burst dps. If they did this in conjunction with the 2H nerf I could understand it more.
Our burst is only high enough to be a concern if mob is rooted, period. Unroot the mobs, problem solved and please give us weapons with ratios back.
