Casters overall better than melee, is it a question of customer retention?

Well, on that bombshell.....everything is A-OK and this thread can be brought to a close.

Tune in next week when The Shiftie takes a Necromancer GT around our test track and we put Beimeith in our Reasonably Priced mount.....

I really do not want a triggered skill to stop rampage deaths, it absolutely needs to be an always on solution.

The problem with melee and caster disparity becomes extreme when moving into lower tier guilds, I would have less issue if the description against all melee dps had something about dependency on others to do their dps.

Lol Langya, but actually I agree (shock horror) with Shiftie on this one.

However it's orthoganol to our issues as melee. Guilds *will* take us still as let's face it most are desparate for well played characters and if you know your class most guilds will accept you. That doesn't mean we don't need any love, as that's all relative and right now rogues IMO are still behind monks and berserkers.

I'm not just saying that as I'm a rogue. I championed for monk upgrades along with many others when they were the sucky class of the month. However we still haven't quite caught up with their huge jump forward. It's always a game of leapfrog.

No one said certain things don't need reworked or that balance issues should be ignored. I said that using an argument that a guild is going to somehow turn you down as a melee because casters are better is a moronic statement.

The situation improved slightly for melee, partly due to a nerf to wizards... Mages got left pretty much alone though, even though they whined enough about their tiny nerf that you'd think it was actually large. Necromancers, meh.

The issue is only really what's coming next as balance was supposed to get tweaked later on and the mid expansion release is what really screwed balance last year.

Well, my perspective is limited. My server is mostly mid tier and below with tons of people who play OK. Not good but not bad. Brogett's guild dominates raids here across two prime time zones for what it is worth (US and Euro) so the server is not very what you would call competitive. Granted I have not had the desire to app anywhere either since I kinda like getting good grades and raiding is a conflict to that. Plus grouping as a rogue is fun. For time spent in game, its vastly more fulfilling.

What I posted about the "which class would win" is hypothetical. Is that Ok to do here or not? I know Shiftie will tag it as moronic or idiotic but I really don't give too much of a F about that because it is the default anyway. There was the caveat of "All things being equal for AA and gear" and recruitment had to pick and chose ONE player based on a mid tier raid environment, who would get chosen? Caster, Zerker, Monk or Rogue? That is also removing any popularity contest stuff too. You would like to think that it would be first come first served, but my money is on the caster.

Still, its just a rhetorical question at most. Being mid tier though if offered a wizard, zerker, monk and a rogue ALL AT ONCE, they might pinch themselves and take all of them. Than it is just a matter of benching people according to when the raid fills up on first come first served and let the natural attrition run its course.

The thing is, unless your group maker believes in spreading the adps love around, the Flavor of the Week is going to get the support for the sake of Min/Max. Its just business and nothing personal. If you have limited adps to go around you are going to put it where it does the biggest bang for the buck. Then it is just a matter of being thankful to even make it in the raid at all and be offered the chance to get upgrades. Still, who wants to work hard to do their best and still end up being just So-So because some other class by design trumps you effortlessly and takes all the support classes to boot? Kinda bull crap if you ask me, but that is just one moron's opinion.

Guild problems are not game problems. You are lacking the ability to distinguish between those.

That is where you are partially wrong. I understood it well enough to quit raiding.

In my opinion you are completely wrong here. If the game is such that it pushes people into classes that no longer form a well balanced raid/guild then that absolutely is a game problem. Devs need to look carefully at the lowest population actively played classes at raiding level and act accordingly.

For instance, Bards are rare as rocking horse S*** on my server, if its the same across other servers then the devs should throw them a bone as a class (best option would be to give them the ability to do some form of soloing again, perhaps not swarm kiting but SOMETHING), obviously as a berserker I don't want more dependence on bards, but as a raider right now they are absolutely required to meet the dps of others on sustained.

Ah you're on Rathe then. I was in that guild (TSM) for some time, but I moved several years ago to Antonius Bayle as I disliked being on a server where euro is the minority and finding groups was, well, you had to box basically.

This seems to vary enormously between servers, and even guilds sometimes. (If there are a limited supply of a class they may all be snapped up by a few top guilds.)

On my server (AB) it's shaman. Eg last night for the first hour of raiding we had 0 main shaman out of a raid force of 50ish. We brought along one alt, purely for rebuffing. We also had 0 berserkers too though. That's not to say Shaman are rare, but shaman that aren't boxes of a melee toon are rare... If any decent shaman is looking for a euro time zone guild you know where to go ;-)

he we need shm too ! don't keep them all for yourself Bro !

My point is your guild lack shaman support, my guild lack bards, meaning melee don't get the support they need to compete with casters, ultimately meaning melee either quit or main change to casters, that is what I would call bad game balance if that is seen across all servers/most guilds.

Maybe I'm bias, its hard to be objective with something to do with my own class but the berserker channel went from a maximum of 30 during reign of fear to a maximum of 5 people currently.

It almost feels like other classes could do with some of this pain so they can empathise a little more, paladins can only tank to their best degree with clerics In the group, shadowknights can only tank to their best with shaman maybe while warriors always tank well without either? Who knows, maybe this is already the case but if so I don't remember reading about it.

Id say that is a lack of content in an aging game rather than a balance issue.

People are bored till the content comes out she it releases you will see more people in channel I'm sure.

Curious. Our server lacks Shaman as well.. 9 out of 10 nights we have 2 shaman, rarely 3, occasionally just 1. We run 3-4 melee dps groups (bards, bsts in each), 0 zerkers.

If there's an overall lack of Shaman mains across multiple servers, and melee dps is tied to the class, this issue is far worse then any simple fix. Would be interesting to hear from a guild who has more shm than they do melee dps groups and hear how their melee dps was doing.

Perhaps another issue is making the Shaman class far more desirable and rewarding to play as a main class.

Curious as to why druids are so loyal to their class raiding while shaman are not. Only thing I can think of is playing a raid shaman is stressful. They get grouped with melee, who are constantly taking a beating so they have to heal their off while needing to provide adps and debuffs/slows. Plus playing any buff class, especially if you are the only one in attendance sucks too in addition to doing all the other duties. Then there is the fact that any heal class needs to focus on tanks as well as whomever is in their group. Casters have the means to mitigate some of their damage. I could be wrong but I don't think a druid has to work nearly as hard as a shaman does.

There are plenty of shaman out there and bards too. They are just boxed alts or not very good group/casual players who know nothing about raiding and are happy to keep it that way. Before I gave up on raiding, the guild I was in went through a series of shaman apps. They never passed muster and would not follow advice on improving their raid game. One ended up completely quitting their shaman. Bards would usually do OK but there was only 1 that was really a high attendance raider and to my knowledge, he recently reroled to a mage. Boredom I think was the reasoning. Some guilds would just assume go with casters than have to lower their standards and have support classes that don't/won't do their job or have random attendance.

The good ones can write their own tickets and will go off to the top destination guilds. Can't blame them. If you are going to play a class that few seem to want to play on raids than you are not going to want to waste your time with amateur hour. The devs seem aware that the majority of guilds raiding other than those at the top have holes in their rosters. They test with the perfect guilds but do not design the difficulty of current raids around those perfect rosters. They can be won by flawed raid forces.

That kinda sends a message that they don't know why people do not want to raid as class XYZ, but they are going to design the raids in such a way where you don't exactly need XYZ either. Who knows what would happen if they decide they are going to put measures in to encourage more bards and shaman to raid, but if they become central to winning, than the raids will have become more difficult and will only be doable by the perfect roster/top 5 end gamers. If the need for adps goes away, than a solid role for a shaman and especially a bard needs to be figured out. There is next to no pulling to do for bards in raids and maybe some assistance in crowd control once in a while. Otherwise you are just singing songs and doing terrible dps.