I’ll have to adamantly disagree with your disagreement. After 20ish years of mmo/rpg gaming, have had way too many “ok guys, who’s playing the healer?” to *crickets* conversations to not see an obvious trend, in EQ and elsewhere. Many gamers like to be actively in the thick of things, leading the charge, blowing stuff up, etc. Support roles, from ADPS to healing, is a far cry from that. Balance and relative power plays a big role too and not trying to ignore their importance, but it’s plain in EQ that healing roles don’t appeal to a decent portion of the playerbase (you may not be one of those people, but they do exist). At the end of the day, what’s fun is ultimately pretty subjective. That’s all I’m saying, so we’ll probably have to agree to disagree.
Cleric players not embracing the battle-oriented domain of their powers isn't a cleric class problem, imo, but a player one. The stun level cap of course effects them, too, but a Glorious-Intra-Contra heal setup with their 10k base chain-procing hammer flailing away is hella active and a heck of a lot of power that players, not the game, leave on the table as you put it. The fact is that many "old school" clerics signed up for a job so that it was in a developer blind spot. Just refilling hp bars against nearly-trivial mobs for days on end was considered so basic that it could be handed off as a player task to paid bots… unintentionally costing those extremely self-limited players their self-appointed place in the game.
I’m mostly with you on these points when worded this way. I especially wouldn’t doubt that a number of folks that indeed don’t enjoy healing others are also very quick to gravitate toward SK/WAR classes as well. Which is why I’m careful to factor in assertions of a “lot” of folks don’t enjoy healing classes from those communities. I look at it as even if the notion of “lots” of people don’t enjoy playing healing classes is completely true, then out of virtue of there being so little heavy healing classes in EQ, number spread should even out nicely with proper balance in play. Tank wise, War/SK compete against each other more so in many contexts and also lose numbers to one another when it comes to selection. If someone wants to be able to heal others and tank, Paladin is the only option. Generally this distinction alone keeps a classes number extremely healthy in MMO’s. I haven’t played any where it didn’t besides modern EQ anyhow. But yes, definitely a ton of factors in play that we appear to mostly agree on This all inadvertently solidifies my point as well IMO. Some folks love to heal so much, that getting them to ever focus on anything else is an extreme struggle lol. We all have ran into many players like that. They don’t even view it as leaving power on the table because many of them simply don’t want to be in DPS role. Just give them a group to keep alive and their completely happy.
that depends heavily on the spell linup you choose, FJ_EQ. Paladining is modal like that. Load a bunch of heals is way different than load a bunch of nukes/stuns is way different than load focused agro/tanky stuff.
I'll second almost everything Maedhros has said in this thread (this post and his previous) - including the 18 year part (I was only level 35 when RoK launched, so I suppose there may be a *few* in the game longer than I). Paladins are knights. To damn with 'hey --- you can HEAL'. Guess what, back when Paladin had better aggro in every way, SK could still pull, warriors could melee. I SHOULD (outside of some limited use emergency abilities) heal poorly. I SHOULD swing a damn sword FAIRLY WELL I SHOULD be DAMN TOUGH in this plate. The only point I disagree is with regards to his 'SK's are the king of AE aggro'. Although he may not have meant it in 'all things aggro' way... some others certainly do. That may be a statement of fact, but how lame we are in that area coupled with no really compelling reason (aggro + survivability) tank elsewhere makes paladins frankly... irrelevant. Want a compelling tanking ability? Just one example - if our single target hate was triple the value with tripled the range of others (say if others happened to be 50' ... for example) it would have solid 'grab the add from across the raid' niche. Say if stuns on immune mobs would cast a mighty mitigating recourse for the paladin. Many ways to do it. However, I predict continued lameness with more abilities that trigger more group heals/cures and more buttons to mash to be less effective.
Just from the perspective of class abilities.... Once you have the number of Paladins you need to cover splash cures for an event, you don't need any more. If you can, you're better off replacing any of the remaining Paladins with a mix of War / SK / Cleric depending on what you need. You might take an extra Paladin but it's mainly because of a lack of numbers (ex. you don't field a full raid force) or because they're a better player / person than your other choice. It has nothing to do with the class abilities. Compared to a Paladin, Warriors and SKs are better at aggro control and DPS. People like to pretend that having a huge advantage in AE aggro doesn't matter for single target aggro but it does. AE aggro abilities work on a single mob and there is no situation where a Paladin controls aggro better than the other two tanks. Both classes are also better at the roles of a pure tank or even an add tank. The extra healing from a Paladin is nothing compared to what a Cleric could provide if that's the class that replaced an "extra" Paladin. So if you "need" the healing, you're better off with a Cleric. If you need the tanking, then you're better off with an Sk or a Warrior. If you don't need either, then the DPS of a Paladin certainly isn't getting them a spot compared to a spare SK or Warrior. Right now, a Paladin is the: - 3rd choice for a tank of any sort. - 4th choice at best for a role as a healer (there are cases to be made that a BL or Ranger could be a better choice once you add in their value for DPS) - Way down the list for DPS
Always fun how people don't take the whole picture when they complain their class is underpowered. A paladin can solo current group content 1 million x better than a warrior, because a paladin can be its sole healer, pop a DPS merc, and kill current expansion named. Not speaking of trash mob, this is a breeze. The real question is can you hold aggro over DPS and tanking well enough so that you can do your job ? Yeah You received big boost on your single target aggro, and now your AE aggro match warrior's AE aggro power. Valiant Defense AE hate being better than Harmonious expanse because you can use it at will while the other one will run out of procs.
Statement has zero validity when you're talking about using a 20kdps merc rather than a cleric merc which gives you the safety blanket to use 2hander full time. Any paladin's running sword and board and healing themself while using a wizard or rogue merc is a newb and not to be taken seriously. Also anyone that thinks paladins are a better ae aggro tank than warriors should not be taken seriously.
A paladin can solo 1 million x better than a warrior has 0 validity ? Feel free to show us a video of a warrior soloing (i mean really solo, without merc) current group content named. You should take it seriously. Go have a look at the fast reuse warrior AE aggro tools and compare to the fast reuse paladin AE aggro tools. I did not say it was better, I said it was roughly equal now.
