Class Balance

Yeah, I remember all of these things, and unlike the vast majority of the sore loser crybabies who post in the forums, not once did I call for--let alone think about--a nerf to those abilities. I think people should pick a class that they love and enjoy it to the best of their ability. Through thick and thin, through pet nerfs and other nonsense, I've been a mage because that's what I love doing. I wish the other clearly disenchanted people would find a class they love and spend their time bettering themselves rather than attacking others.

Can't we all just get along?*

*sarcasm

Skip to 55s.

Just throwing in a counter point......(not that I disagree with yours), but people play and enjoy many different aspects of the game. Some people like to compete and be #1, some people don't want to feel like a detriment or a waste of space, some people like to overcome obstacles or find creative solutions, or being the underdog that surprises others.

I think most current players understand the ebb and flow of the power pendulum. I have no issue with people pointing out relative strengths and weaknesses as we come across them so we can have enriched character abilities that improves our play options.

Oh yes... a fraction of the population utilizing the ability in this way will completely ruin an entire expansion because "reasons". Fear monger much?

The only reason casters are joining the 'nerf/fix it' train is so that they can purge themselves of any guilt associated with using it now that it was bust open to the public. I don't think I've *ever* heard a DPS caster (including BST, RNG, etc.) say 'please stop proccing haze!'

Like someone else already posted, all this thread will accomplish is a nerf and no change to the original "issue". Melee DPS - in your next attempt for balancing try and make sure casters are already nerfed so your thread doesn't get derailed.

Precisely. If your only way to improve yourself is to hurt others, well, you're doing it wrong.

Respectfully, I'll never understand how screaming for nerfs to another class enriches ones own class. If I honestly saw some productive dialog amongst the player base genuinely trying to help each other, you might have a point... but all I see is finger pointing and the green-eyed monster coming out in a mighty big way.

When used as designed, Haze is a worthy and good improvement to Enchanters abilities. I don't think anyone disputes that. I also don't think most enchanters are exploiting the bug that allow it to be procced on demand.

This thread wasn't created as a melee vs enchanters rant, but a melee vs casters in general. Some are claiming that this is because of the enchanter Haze spell, but to be honest I don't believe this is the root cause of the problem.

Rather conveniently the haze bug offers a get-out clause to certain int casters who don't wish to see any melee adjustments. They can blame the inbalances on exploits and then walk away from the matter. None of this explains how come melee dps vs bosses has gone DOWN in TDS.

But you know as well as me, that nobody will use this as "intended", when you can ensure your casters do damage through the roof. And WHO know, it might be intended that they stack....

But I see can a talk between a guild leader and an enchanter. This a totally 100% imagined conversation....

GL = Guild leader, En = enchanter

GL: I heard that there some way you can enhance our casters damage through the roof.
En: Thats true, there is a way we can do that.
GL: So, what is required for you to do it ?
En: You see, we do this and .....
GL: So what you waiting for ?
En: I am really not so sure we should do it, dont think that the devs inteded for it to Work that day.
GL: If you do that we can win that event that we been strugling with for 3 months, so start doing it.
....
After fight.
GL: So if you done that b4, we could have won that a lot earlier, better tell me something like that b4.

Result as I see it, ANY guild/chanter, will use whatever power they can. Not doing so would be like cutting an arm of yourself.

So as it is in the game atm, it is unbalanced, because of stacking problems.

You correct, if the devs get stacking solved, it might be balanced then, but until then .... NO.

The fact you think that mad-proccing haze will grant your guild auto-win for raids is beyond ridiculous. If you can't beat the event without haze, you're not going to beat it just by using crazy-haze.

Now that caster DPS will be completely destroyed (lulz) melee have a better argument for changes since they will die to AE ramp 10X more since the mobs die so slow, right?

This particular thread isn't very useful, and sadly it probably will only result in nerfs.

However, you will see much more productive conversations in the class forums much of the time. For example, when content was very "anti-enchanter" with mobs/adds that were immune to everything enchanters could do, or would take on immunities after 1 cast, is where Chromatic Haze, and Group Gift of Mana and several other ADPS/support oriented abilities originated.

Community discussion was also a source that helped improve timer conflicts for melee and DPS disc reductions so that all the main melee class disc timers were brought down to the 10-12m refresh time from their 30 minutes and more time frames. Also knights were given more tanking disciplines and rejuvenated HoT's and Regens are all things the community at large lobbied for that helped make things more equitable and bring back value to long neglected spell lines.

Nerf calls are not totally horrible so long as cooler minds prevail and give a wide variety of possible solutions, so developers can be inspired to what direction would create the game everyone wants. One where we all have fun and enjoy our time.

Also, this notion that enchanters can proc haze on demand is ludicrous.

I haven't tried it personally with my enchanter, but usually the way these kinds of abilities are "creatively used," is by using a beneficial/detrimental AA that resets immediately when used on an inappropriate target. It is just a matter of finding the right combination of something that casts fast, resets on fail, and will trigger the ability.

Usually the fix is changing the ability so it will only trigger on spells that use more than 10 mana or whatever they are currently using as the default number.

*cracks knuckles* Alright... time to go roll a heroic character for every melee class and get to testing! I'll be back when I have some nerfs to report class balance concerns.

Eh, talking about a bug as if that is where class balance needs to be applied.... really denies the class and how it is played by the people who actually know what they are doing. Sure, you can bug some procs. I can do somethings with paladins and clerics too that bug them to do some amazing things. that's not where balance comes in.

^this. Haze isnt the sole reason for the discrepancies between melee and caster although its worth mentioning. What alot of ppl are overlooking is the overall amount and duration/uptime of caster ADPS compared to melee ADPS. Ruaabri's Fury for instance, probably the biggest melee ADPS effect lasts 36sec with a 20min recast (3% uptime). Illusion of Granduer on the other hand has a 2min duration with an 18min recast (11% uptime). Then look at the secondary options for HHE ADPS and we have Bards QT at less than half the value of RF(~39% of RF), whereas DD Casters have Group Spirit of the Black Wolf at 80% of the strength of IoG.

Going beyond ADPS and looking at the personal gains of casters and we'll see that over the past 4 expansions the minimum focus on top end gear continually climb yielding higher and higher avg focus for better sustained performance. VoA: 65% avg focus on max raid gear, RoF: 72.5% avg focus on max raid gear, CotF: 75% avg focus on max raid gear, TDS: 77% avg focus on max raid gear.

13.5

Lol when Behelit and myself agree you know it must be a serious issue. ;-)

Gotta love it how your only looking at the ADPS options and not including the strength or cycle time of actual burn options (abilities/discs)

I don't think I implied anything other than fixing a possible bug with chromatic haze with a possible explanation as to how it is being used inappropriately by likely a near negligible number of people. I did neglect to quote the person wondering how it was possible to proc something on demand so I suppose I can be critiqued for that idea.

Anyway, as a separate thought more on topic, there have been plenty of idea posted in the class forums to help address some of these concerns. Changing raid NPC AC, changing the nature of some ae effects, reducing rampage chance/damage, giving melee more personal ADPS options, giving more innate AA that erode the effect of ADPS abilities. At this point I think it is mostly an issue of posting parses with specific recommendations since the nature of this thread reeks of "nerf calls" rather than supportive data.

IMO, the only reason this thread isn't locked or has received a dev response is because they're trying to tease out as much detail and other potential bugs for as long as possible. They've already got Paladin and Enchanters and someone mentioned there is a Cleric one as well. I'm sure they absolutely love Class Balance threads for these reasons. It's like free labor.

They are already aware of all the actual fixes melee would like [if they read the (class) forums]. And if they don't read those, this thread isn't going to be any different aside from the reasons stated above.

I like how you chose the least relevant part of my point and jumped all over that with the pious "*I'm* not a nerf supporter!" jargon. Nice.

The point is some abilities end up broken or unintendedly powerful. Be it dev ignorance, typos, design mistakes or player ingenuity. While I certainly don't agree with all of their changes, in the haze example there's currently two "problems" with it, one making the ability more powerful via (likely) unintended creative play, and the other some kind of glitch causing the ability to not function properly sometimes. Hopefully they fix both. If saying that makes me an evil nerf supporter, so be it.