just a question for you all. my guild is a mid level family raiding guild we have beating hate but nothing more in tbm. For Mastro we win by having pallies chain cast splash to cure the dt. Meaning they cure the mana drain one as well and get mana drained themself. The pallies are able to maintain their mana by a combo of clickies aas and the current version of this bard song. (we put 1 or 2 bards in the pallies groups to chain cast this spell). Normal takes us bout 7-10 mins to kill mastro depending on how much dps shows up for the night. Any suggestion how this change might effect this raid strat?
You are gonna want to have your healers cure one and the pallies cure the other. I cannot remember which is which atm, but that is the better way to do it so that you don't get mana drained.
Well it certainly does make my tinfoil hat twitch when I consider that they left this dicho spell extremely strong for almost the entire period that TBM was the "newest" expansion. My friends convinced me to pony up for TBM just 2 months before the next expansion because "Bard dicho would change my life," and they were right that it did! So now that the new expansion is coming out, we nerf all the OP'd stuff that you had to buy TBM to get and release some new OP'd stuff in the next expansion. Will this Kunark expansion have some OP'd stuff that doesn't get fixed until a sudden wave of nerfs around this same time period next year? I wonder.
I'm glad I have cut the cord on eq. It's been tough walking away but well worth it after I come read the boards.
I will admit it has been some time since I was in what is perceived as a "mid-tier guild", so maybe I am just out of touch nowadays for what I am about to say... If you design a raid for the high end, then it is generally considered too hard for the mid tier. If you design a raid for the mid tier, then it is generally considered too easy for the high end. So what is a developer supposed to do? Either way there is going to be complaints from someone about an event being too easy or too hard. Here is the thing. TBM raids are designed for 54 players with an appropriate amount of tanking, healing, support, and DPS. Whether you consider yourself to be high end, mid tier, or casual... this is what the game is asking for. If a high end guild brings no healers and 35 people to an event, they are not going to win. If a mid tier brings 44 people and no ADPS, then chances are they are not going to win. So sometimes it is hard to support others who fail to bring the bare minimum to an event. Also, I am always fascinated with what the differences are between a high end and a mid tier guild. Generally I have found three key differences- availability of players (which breeds familiarity and consistency), good mixture of classes (although this is debatable, especially with DPS classes), and members working on their characters (parsing with guild hall dummies, trying different disc combos to maximize their character, obtaining necessary augments and group items). If you look at those three differences... how does that matter to a developer designing a raid event? If a player doesn't want to work on discs to maximize DPS, that is not a developer issue- that is a player issue. If a guild wants to bring 5 warriors, 9 shadow knights and 0 paladins on a AOE heavy event designed to have consistent splashing every ten seconds- that is not a developer issue with the raid, that is a guilds. If a guild only has 35 people log on each night wanting to raid a designed 54 player event, that is not a developer's fault. I have a hard time saying that high end guilds have more talent than mid tier, because I have met many talented mid tier players in my gaming time. Consequently I have also met some poor high end players as well over the years. Granted high end guilds tend to have a higher quantity of strong players than mid tier, but I would guess the mid tier has enough to be successful. Finally, you keep bringing up necromancers being ultra nerfed from a few patches ago. Last night we did Wither and Decay achievement with killing wrong one twice in a row. Top three parsers were all necromancers. Which on a long event like that, is to be expected. Good players have adapted to the changes and have maintained a strong standing in the game...
Its doubtful that the data collection points are being generated from observing family/low and mid tier raiding player bases. Most nerfs, bug fixes or whatever come from the high end raid crowd more often than not. The aggravation is the top tier always does beta testing and they commit the most time to it. Since they want to learn the raids before launch so the expac can be finished before the life cycle of a fruit fly. If anything is out of whack, typically it shows up as early as beta.....and then nothing happens. So many of these "bugs" just ride it out for the whole expac's duration, only to get "fixed" a month or two before the next launch. That is after the high end has at least 6 months of riding on the gravy train, if not longer. Now, perhaps its just a good ole' boy network going on, the dev team being busy or maybe they are just lazy. Who knows. Thing is if the lackey high end guilds reveal issues that need fixing, than kill them in beta before it becomes a pain point that drives away subs when some far sweeping nerf rolls out 8-12 months after the fact. That is long enough for people to get comfortable with abilities and have generated a degree of confidence that the rug maybe is not going to get pulled out from under. It would be worth it to take the time and get it right the first time. Its not like expacs need to be rushed to market to beat out some competition. That is unless of course the current haphazard way of doing things is exactly how the dev team and the top teir guilds like it to be.
Tuning for both mid and high tier guilds is difficult, but I think that we (most of us?) can agree that raids getting more difficult as the expansion ages is bad design. Some raids have been changed to be easier, but a number are notably harder than when the high end guilds beat them at expansion launch. I want challenging raids, but I want them to be challenging when it actually matters. Having to work harder to beat an event for the first time is cool; having an event get harder 8 months into an expansion farm is just annoying. In mid tier guilds, having events get a bit further out of reach with every patch is pretty terrible. The only justification for doing so is that the devs don't have time to properly balance raids, which I think should be considered before they completely gut abilities.
Yes, it's the fact they are (regularly even) doing this every year lately. This isn't even a topic about raid tuning; it's about them pulling the rug from under players' feet, stomping on their fingers or even them pushing them off the cliff as they climb up the progression of events, or whatever other analogy fits. I could reply with a huge opinion post about difference in raid guilds and tuning and such but that has nothing to do with this topic.
This thread of tears could drown out Louisiana. Come on folks, things aren't as bad as some of your noob-cynical minds are portraying. In the group game it's not always worth using the dots for dps, or possibly only hitting them for gift of mana. To me, that gives the choices we make value, which is good. With Cany spirit and Paragon, do you really have any reason to complain about beastlord mana? Sheesh, which bush do some of you folks crawl out of? Millenials or?
If you've been grouping paladins with bards during the maestro encounter, you've been doing it wrong. A paladin wearing normal mana regen buffs passively regains enough mana to Splash when Maestro recasts his AE-doom-DT-thing. When the paladin Splashes, the paladin immediately goes OOM from "accidentally" curing Maestro's targeted mana drain also. The result is that any more mana than the Splash's cost completely goes to waste. This change to bard Dicho, since it led to you finding this out, should result in your raids being hella faster & easier as you group your bards with a dps group instead like you should have done all along. Alternately, if your Paladins want to be using their entire mana bars on dps (the right plan), just teach each of your priests to load their group corruption cure. Unload Splash entirely.
So as part of a top 10 guild (I would consider it mid-top tier) we had a hypothetical discussion. Personally I'm no mathematician, however if the person who posted the numbers in private wants to put them here that is their choice. As of right now, you could ignore bards, wizards, rogues, beastlords, rangers, monks, druids, shadowknights, mages. You could build three tank groups consisting of 3xwar 2xclr 1xpal You could build 1 or 2 caster groups with 5 necros 1 enchanter. You could build 3 or 4 melee groups with 5 berserkers and 1 shaman each. Even if I take our 'mid tier' berserkers damage and 'mid tier' necros damage, you could complete every events DPS checks and mechanics by almost triple the required damage. Paladins/clerics/shaman's can all AoE heal and group cure (or raid cure) when it matters. SK's bring nothing required, none of the other classes listed bring anything required. The only valid argument we had was bard for aria (spell damage for necros and flurry for zerkers) neither of which matters by simply considering the fact 15 berserkers hitting dicho nullifies it and necros have hand. At this point, what exactly is the point of playing anything other than any of these classes in raid unless it's for pure enjoyment?
Well, finding that many good people of those classes is really difficult. Also no guild has cared about min maxing in the past like 10 years and dropping members (friends) to fit that. The devs like to try to re-balance each expansion so those might not even be strongest in the next expansion (but who are we kidding they've been OP since day 1 ).
I'm bored so I'll play for now. Fixed that to more accurately portray class balance in regards to just the raid game if we are going to assume class numbers are limitless and all toons played to their maximum potential. Regardless to the performance of the classes I'm unaware of any guilds min/maxing since it changes every expansion (and even mid expansion sometimes). Reality is player quality is so bad that there are a plethora of SKs out there I'd rather have than a lot of Pallies. Same goes for Rogues over Zerkers, Mages of Wizards, etc etc True enough, that is what SKs have been arguing about in numerous threads for a few years now. Assuming all of those Zerkers played at an elite level that might be viable/beneficial on a couple raids that play entirely to the strengths of Zerkers, but on most events not having the ADPS/support/utility/DPS from other classes would make them more difficult instead of easier. The debuff cap becomes an issue with just 4 Necros as they begin to cannibalize each other's DPS since they will be fighting for debuff slots. My guild has a 4th Necro who at the very least parses in the top 10 serverwide for the class, but he raids his Enchanter because it results in higher combined group DPS. Total Bard ADPS (Aria, Arcane, FE, etc) represents about 1/3 of Necro total DPS. Hand lasts for 1:40 and is useable once per event due to refresh. On anything longer than 3 minutes a group without a Bard will do less damage than a group with a Bard. You could probably complete every events DPS checks and mechanics by almost triple the required damage just by fielding a raid composed of clones of the top performer from any two DPS class combinations from a mid tier guild. **Edit: I believe the changes to Bard Dicho are way overboard. They should have either changed the group bonus aspect or the amount of the buff, not both along with the bug fix and increased casting cost. I argued previously that Bards needed a personal DPS boost, now there is no argument whatsoever as to why they shouldn't get the of ADPS of Dicho increased and get a sizeable boost to their personal DPS.
good luck with 5 necros all landing their dots on a mob, let alone 10 necros. you'd be better off with 5 enchanters and 1 druid if you were trying to get the best caster grp without bard, but even then 4 ench/1druid/1bard would probably edge them out especially on longer stuff. zerker dps without adps isnt that great. even under a full burn Dicho is hitting 6 times for a max of 750k (no bards/sk means no hit dmg mods so your capped at 750k per hit). so that's ~4.5mil max possible dmg over a 60sec recast for 75k dps and thats for one minute out of every thirteen when burns are up? and this somehow is meant to compensate for the lack of adps despite said adps being able to over-double the damage from Dicho? whoever "did the math" did a lazy job of it.
I agree. Anything after a 3rd necro and you cannibalize the others dps due to them having dots fade and not being maintained due the debuff limit being hit. Heck that can be hit now with 3 necros, 3 enchanter's and all other debuffs being used. Even if/when they consolidate necro dots, 10 necros would never be a viable option.
I'd have zero problem with this change if they appropriately buffed Consumption and Focused Para in the same patch, alternatively reduced the DoT costs, or came up with dps boosts in other areas. Unfortunately the meta right now is to maximize usage of DoTs if you want to be competitive on dps - without them we drop quite a bit on the totem pole. Maybe that is where we should be in the devs eyes? Either way, as is it's going to hurt me a lot. I personally have no interest in returning to the old days of para and fero bot, or simple multbind nuke spam. DoTs made the class more interesting and not so one-button-spamfest for me and this will effectively take them away outside of GoM procs, which is pretty boring to set up a trigger for GoM and press a DoT when it goes off. That is assuming I could even cancel a cast fast enough from my insane multibind spam so that a nuke doesn't eat the proc. I have no issue with placing value in certain abilities, or utilizing smarter game play, but this is going to tank the maximum potential of beastlords and rangers pretty hard without any attention being payed to them in that respect. I suspect the situation will not be alleviated at all until the new expansion arrives with new AAs - but also there will most likely be even more expensive DoTs. So only time will tell if it will improve at all. They haven't fixed something as simple Summon Companion AA not working on TBM raids (which was likely disabled due to some stupid pet tank exploit - I don't know and honestly don't care) to put my pet behind bosses upon re-positioning without having to back it and myself off - which is super annoying now with ripostes being re-enabled on bosses. Do they even think about things like this before they implement them lol? Functionality was removed from my class that existed in previous raids and that makes me rage pretty hard. So I'm not holding my breath and just expecting beastlords to be boring and lackluster in the raid game. Less disappointment that way. I know how to vote with my wallet when I've had enough
