So how many / which of those classes do you think you should out damage with your nukes, and by how much?
Ideally, I don't think I should out damage any class with my nukes beyond clerics. I do think, in the absence of enough desirable content that needs cc, that we should boost the real dps classes damage enough to be noticed and preferred over just stacking those other classes in a group. I'm not looking to replace them (well not the first one or two anyhow), but to be additive to them. 1 wiz >> 1 enc 1 wiz + 1 enc (dps + adps) ~ 2 wiz (slight edge to 2 wiz) 2 wiz + 1 enc (dps + adps) > 3 wiz Mages should fit in those wiz spots as well. I'd also like to see us do enough for mele dps so that we're not just pigeon holed to caster groups.
additionally, You know who's useful in an exp group when you just want to grind exp that was in that list? A tank, a healer, and the deeps. Not an enchanter. Our abilities have been farmed out so much I bet you could do those events without an enchanter if people really played their classes to the fullest. Ever see a raid with 5 wizards complain that they had too many wizards? I'm sure if you had 5 necros you would be necro heavy so I don't want to say that this problem is exclusive to enchanters, but how come some classes it's fine to have more than 3 of, and other classes if you have more than 3 you're practically hurting the raid? Let's give this a word so that maybe it can become more established and thought about. Let's call in "raid elasticity". Wizards are really elastic, and honestly it's because the role of dps doesn't have a cap to it, wizards have no limiting factors such as raid mob buff slots, and there are so many dps classes. Enchanters are almost non elastic, and I would call their situation honestly negative elasticity past the first enchanter. If you have a group, and it's a dps group on a raid with say a bard, 3 dps casters, and a druid, or ever just 4 dps casters and a druid, it is really a desirable thing to have an enchanter in that group, Usually I would think a raid would have 2 groups for dps casters. Not only do the dps classes have the positive elasticity that it could be a random mixture of wizards, magicians, and necros (to a degree on the necros), but enchanters have the negative elasticity that the structure of your raid really determines if an enchanter will be useful or not past the first. If you have only 1 caster dps group, and you have 3 enchanters, you'll put 1 with a bunch of hybrids for their nukes (in many points in history I've heard rangers specifically say that they don't even bother nuking because it lowers their dps, and sk's have buffs that overwrite mana reiterate which is going to lower your dps contributions, so that leaves the hope that you have a whole group of beastlords just laying around? hmm...) and the third one? I don't even know. I would say that they wouldn't have a truly validating place in that raid. I'd love for someone to say something that I can respect as a real place of value for that third enchanter in that case (or if you have 2 caster dps groups and 1 hybrid group, the 4'th enchanter, etc.. etc..). but I don't know what it is. This is one of the reasons why back in the day I pushed for enchanters to have better dps instead of more adps (I also prefer doing things to standing there), but if we're going to be adps, I think we should share in with melee adps too since bards get a bit of both. It's fine to have bards be the better choice for melee adps and enchanters be the better choice for caster adps, but having enchanters share in that elasticity with bards might make creating a balanced raid easier and more inclusive.
I raided back when enchanters never cast on the actual mob. Once we buffed the entire raid, our job was to hide somewhere to not die so we could quickly buff everyone up again. Monks dispelled the mob with clickies, shamans slowed and tash was instant summon and slaughter unless you timed CH and/or LoH with a cleric/pally. I don't want to return to doing nothing during fights. I'd like adps to be procs from casting other spells or some other mechanic that requires active playing/interaction. I think giving straight dps just makes us wizard wannabees. DPS by charm I'm all for.
If you want to argue about what class we should outdps, I'd say fine leave things as is, and take away every utility ability that other classes that can outdps us get that they got from us or even from bards in some way, so that our low dps class can still be great to have (I'm taking the liberty of matching your tone. I'm really a polite guy if you get to know me though..) No other class should have a mob punting/MEMORY BLURRING ability ever. No other class except bards should have a mez of any kind ever. No other class except for shaman , bards, and necros/undead should have a slow ever. No other class except for shaman should have other mob melee debuffs like cripple /weakness ever. No other class except for bards and necros should have a clarity like ability that ups mana/tick ever. No other class except for shaman and bard should have any way to haste another person. Ranger's harmonious arrow should basically kill them when they cast it instead of pulling mobs half the time. That ability is just absurd. No classes other than bards should have a fade ability. Enchanters should keep their mez self ability as this is fundamentally different from fading. and furthermore.. No items should exist that allow any other classes to use this sort of ability EVER. I could go many more routes with this, I haven't even touched how dispell was handled after level 50. Beneficial only dispell? Great, give that utility to WIZARDS, but enchanters? nooooo....Even in velious they were giving it to monks, necros, and later berserkers and beastlords, and now rangers have it too..These are all dps classes given utilities outright OVER a utility class. So honestly if you're talking about a hard line of fairness, I should be able to outdps all of those classes as they are now utility classes and not dps classes based on who is getting what first, and the duration of this occurrence. If I want to pull straw mans out of my hat, that's the ultimate one. Based on those circumstances I should outright outdps berserkers all the time due to their superior utility in the area of enchantments over the enchanter class.
I don't think you'd like that system at all. All the classes would be roughly balanced, and I'd accept Enchanters being a little behind if it meant better overall balance for the game. What Server/Guild gets you 6 different well-played classes when you LFG? Maybe I should join? If you want to talk balance for overpowered players in easy group content, why do you need the tank or healer? As far as you elasticity theory, it seems like a double-edged sword to me. Sure, there are more DPS slots than anything else on a raid, but there are far more DPS classes to compete with, including the Legion of Exceptionally Well-Played Rangers who can't get a guild simply because there are so very many of them! P.S. The ship has already sailed as far as classes sharing abilities you wouldn't think they should.
High level, based on total DPS I personaly think it should be grouped as follows (No ordering in the groups) #1 Wizard/Necromancer/Monk/Rogue/Berserker #2 Beastlord/Magician/Ranger #3 Bard/Enchanter/Druid #4 Shaman/Paladin/Shadowknight #5 Cleric/Warrior Even this is iffy to me. It should be rated upon how much diversity any given class has to offer to a group. The top classes being only offered DPS and mabey 2-3 things more. The bottom being classes that offer the extreme ends of diversity or being just dammed good at what they do thats not DPS. Cleric/Warrior are lowest due to being the absoulte best at what they do, with true utmost group diverisity (that is every group wants them). This is where enchanters WHERE when the enchanter class was required to do everything. I placed Druids above shamans because i see shamans as having more diveristy (heals, critical debuffs, buffs, and damage) compared to druids (heals, damage, buffs and ports) but i dont know if this is right. It also might be fair to place bards in a lower group since they do everything. Based upon pure DD numbers we should be behind Wizards and Magicians but not by a whole lot, once again as a result of our now limited use in current groups. Remember the orginal holy trinity? not a problem that enchanters didnt have any DPS back then, they were wanted in every group (perhaps to much)
My point was that you seem to be mixing dealing with how things are up with actually balancing things. It's great that you see a guy that's on a less powerful character and ask him to join over someone that may be more powerful as a groupmate, but that's not class balance. That's relying on a separate system of social justice. If you're going to bring in that you'd martyr your own class to the conversation, you again are not talking about actual class balance. You're talking about how you're a nice guy, and that's not class balance. Classes aren't balanced around that qest is a nice guy. Those things aren't related. Honestly? in the overpowered for group content area, now you REALLY want a tank because they enable swarming which meshes wonderfully with the rogue/berserker and to a lesser degree wizard/monk/mage ae abilities.. They are an essential part of doing easier content as fast as possible. So is a healer. I'm not trying to say that we should all just balance everything around that, but you shouldn't balance it all around the hardest possible content either. Real balancing involves considering every type of content, and how the classes would perform in it. Sometimes it helps to go to an extreme so I will. Hypothetically let's say an enchanter in a group spot is 0 dps in the current content, but you need them for raids, do you think this is ok? Do you feel like it's balanced? I don't. I mean if you want to go that way why not go further and say the only class that can dps at all outside of raids is monks, and in raids it's just how it is now, so the onus of levelling every single guildmate to 105 and aa'ing them will just be entirely on the players of the monk class. Do you see how this would kind of be bad as a situation? That's why balance is important. Interesting in that your argument is based on the economy of available players of classes in the game. I wonder why people would choose rangers so often, but the enchanter class is just dying out... Or maybe you could look at this as another balancing issue. Two possible scenarios occur for these rangers. One is that the class overall is too good, which leads too many people to choose it, and the other is that it's dps is not high enough to compete for spots with other dps classes, and it's utilities are not cumulative (remind you of anybody?) But you're such a good guy you'll just invite all these expert rangers to your guild and raid with 53 rangers and a Qest because balance is based on who Qest likes right? Seriously though this seems to me from a debate perspective like you're trying to deflect from my point by emphasizing the negative side of it, but even in doing that you sort of prove it right. First off, how come you don't say that there is a legion of rangers, magicians, wizards, necros, rogues, berserkers, monks, etc... that can't find a guild? I would say in a grouping perspective rangers are amazingly good, but in a raid perspective, they aren't as good. That's why having a good balance between raid effectiveness and grouping effectiveness is vital for classes. Secondly, unless we really have just more rangers that play than all of the other dps classes combined, it proves the point because you could go light on rangers, which may be down right now, so that you can go heavy on wizards which are probably amazing still. So yes, it can be a double edged sword IF CLASSES AREN'T WELL BALANCED. It's not a concept wherein you can just say "well let's just get rid of raid elasticity altogether by forcing it so that you can only have 3 of each class in a raid". You'd be killing the game. Nice remark,but that's bad logic. So if a guy cuts in line and then says "The ship has already sailed on your spot in line", do you just walk away? Personally I would laugh him out of the store. Even if it was already done, you can still make up for it. Are you trying to say that once anything occurs historically you can never restore balance from it? That's pretty silly. If you can't take away all of those abilities, then give enchanters something that might be of equivalent value to those other classes for their loss. Pretty simple...
I personally don't care about class balance. Just give me all of it and I'll be a nice guy and let you in my group.
