Massive Nerfs Inc - Melee, Tanks, Berserkers

So.... don't die

To be completely honest, I think this is just one stage of the changes.
I think some good is going to come of this.

Good luck for tanks, and all the rest of us that get randomly 1 shot by wild rampage in various events.

If that were the case, the devs could speak up and say so. With the recent record you have more faith than I do.

Just like every other time classes got hit with heavy nerfs that paid off in an overall benefit for the class.

Oh wait, that's never happened. It's more likely a dev get transferred to EQN and the whole project gets scrapped in whatever state it's in.

More nerfs for the nerf god or ruining of current abilities in order to give us back weaker versions at a later date are all we're going to get.

Why did you do all this work to entice people to come back to EQ just to nerf classes to drive them back off? You should be making characters stronger not nerfing them and then adding time sinks to bring them back to where they are now. It's like running a 50% sale after you marked up your goods 50%.

The rune nerf for my chanter made me cancel that sub, it's not about making the char stronger or weaker for me in that case...but i loved being able to agro and take the coming hits.
It was a replacement for the decreasing rate of CC needed (which was why i picked the chanter for my main long ago, and the development here was sad enuf over the years), so if that nerf goes live both of the things that did bring me fun were taken away. Without telling me why, which is another quiet shocking aspect in a 15y old game. The bad news just keep rolling in, the game feels done the community is alive (cept the friends you see leaving) which makes this situation painful for gaming.

That's not what he was saying. The group game, as a whole, is becoming (has become) a hack'n'slash.

This kinda reminds me of what DC comics did with Superman. At some point he got so powerful that they ran out of things to challenge him and make the story interesting so they did the next best thing and put limits to his powers. Superman got nerfed. hehe

The thing is, they're proven that they can make challenging content at both raid and group level with classes having these abilities. VoA was challenging, or too hard in some cases (for reasons not related to player power recovery). PoWar group and raid content is also hard (too hard?), again, for reasons not related to player power recovery. One of the PoWar encounters even punishes recovery abilities if you're greedy with them.

RoF and CotF were deliberate design decisions to make easier content. And even then, the initial RoF raid-copy group missions weren't tuned well for group level players. And again, none of these encounters were easy or hard because of player recovery options.

There is one very specific encounter type that is made easier by these abilities. Long duration attrition/endurance fights. And the devs have tools to enforce encounter specific rules for those fights to reduce/remove recovery effectiveness in those fights.

Spot on.

The endurance regen change does make some sense *IF* it was what limited our dps. However it's not - we have timers on all the abilities to tightly controll what we can do and when. If they wish to go to an endurance based game where we're juggling resources more then we should have the power to do that - juggle them.

It needs to be noted though, that going down this road will massively simplify game play for melee. Is that the intention? Eg I'll drop 2-3 of my regular clicked abilities because they're no longer worth the endurance costs. Some of the spells (even new ones) become completely irrelevant.

In my typical group i pull with smokescreen = 1575 endu then cycle my dps discs to be able to out dps my wizard merc, doing that im OOE in 10-15min (and i have a high end raiding rogue endurance pool/regen), the only thing that let me continue fighting and have fun is rest, becaue i click it and can continue playing with still the limitation of 29% max endu and out of combat to click it (means chain pull can be complicated anyway, same with knifeplay disc that doesnt allow me to click rest).
You really want us to be out dpsed by mercs? or med for 5min each 10min?
Dont make that mistake, rest with this change will be useless as theres no point clicking something to regain 29% endu, waiting 1min for it to fade, and 1-2 minutes later rinse, repeat. Better med to full than use this...

I have a feeling they are about to boost base mitigation and base dps via AAs in trade for less constant rotation of burning / defensives.

Right now on EQ Resource I see:
2 Handed Proficiency (Greatly increases damage from 2-handed weapons while reducing parry, block, and dodge - duration 6 hours)
Dual Wield proficiency (Increases dual-wielded damage, parry skill, and gives a slight increase in damage mitigation while reducing block and dodge skill slightly - duration 6 hours)
Defensive Proficiency (Increases damage mitigation and blocking skill -35%- while using 1-handed weapon with a shield. Does not stack with Defensive abilities like Final Stand. - duration 6 hours)

Warrior only?
Probably not.

That is interesting. Looks like this thread is only focused on half of the story. I applaud the dev team if they are finally putting priority on digging into class balance.

There's been a lot of talk about these Warrior stances, and I'm pretty sure Elidroth said this was for Warriors only.

Edit: Yep, here's that post: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/warrior-stances.210573/#post-3085455

Yeah. You can see what they may be doing.
They make it so your disc by itself is more mitigation than Shield Proficiency, but you can't stack them - so you still have reason to pop your defensive disc on nameds etc.

Tanks can now sub in as a non-tank in groups.
DW Proficiency or 2h Proficiency and my 14k DPS with a 2 hander is now 19k DPS (probably more like 17k since a lot of my DPS is from spells). Which effectively makes all melee players better than all DPS mercs... as it should be. Screw that wiz merc when I can get a paladin (that's right lol) to 2 hand it while I'm tanking = MOAR grouping.

Lots of other awesomeness that could come from this that would make the game more like it used to be. SoE needs to stop bowing down to people saying "the game is too easy" because that's what is killing the player base. People used to play EQ because it was the best interactive chat room ever made Can't chat.... need to rotate lifetaps, bash, taunt, reprieve, epic, and discs for trash mobs...

I've been playing on test as a "simulated returning player" and this is NEEDED.

Oh... I see...
Yeah... I'm quitting.

Not because this would be a bad thing, but because I play MMOs to socialize while I play a game.
I can only do one or the other right now...

Good for warriors for sure. But I need to find a new game.

From "some good is going to come from this" to "Yeah... I'm quitting." on the very same page. How interesting.

Interesting as in I was hopeful for some good (because I don't play right now because there are 100 better things to be doing than developing carpal tunnel at my keyboard)

Quitting as in: I'm going to get carpal tunnel playing a game full snarky people like you.

NO NO NO Class balancing needs to die a long painful death. IT is the worst thing that has every happened to this game.

While you could be right, i think this is being done to create more design space for the developers rather than any true desire at class balancing.

For 2H it's mostly a convenience change (That comes with a cost - we'll avoid a LOT less) and not really a significant boost to DPS because 2H proficiency is not stacking with other Warrior activated abilities that produce similar results (which also have significant drawbacks)

In terms of DPS I parsed under 5K autoattack with betabuff 2H (VoA T4 group) and 200% haste

Replace that with a PoWar 2H, factor mammoths and overhaste... 7.8k dps