Omg... seriously? No one even mentioned the precious heal crystals and the other comment was a joke in response to a different post which obviously was clearly way above the clouds.
I didn't bring it up. I think myself a pretty sane person aside from that I'm posting on an internet message board about a video game. I'll stand up for myself though when people call me insane if I feel like it.
No, Battleaxe is not Frodlin, and I'm offended that you'd try to make such a comparison. Frodlin has always recognized that there are 3 tanks and that they should all be more or less interchangeable in all but the place that gives warriors their value, which is the tanking of raid bosses, and that content should be where knights are given their own tanking role where they excel using their own skillsets. Frodlin has also always believed that warriors deserve a lot more parity in downward scaling skills where the gap between knight and warrior are idiotically insurmountable. Battleblade on the other hand is a warrior supremacist hack who is only capable of communicating in clichés.
Out of curiosity, what roles do you see knights fulfilling on raids then if they shouldn't have the capacity to tank actual bosses (with it being MUCH more difficult/intensive for a Knight to pull off relative to a warrior doing so)? Glorified kiters? Splash cures? I mean... you have to look at actual raid design these days before making arguments like 'give knights a legitimate raid function'.Um... what function exactly? There is minimal CC so outside tanking, healing, and DPS... well, that's a wrap. Sure, there is Splash -which is easily worked around by about a million other things- so there is very little aside from offtanking some trash and being a sacrificial lamb. I'm just curious what 'niche' warrior want these tanks to be able to fill since apparently having knights be an acceptable, but not ideal, raid tank is causing tankpocalypse 2016.
Most will tell you "off tank", ignoring the fact that it's a limited role at best, and one they currently do better than Knights in many raid situations already, with the exception of a few fringe cases.
Let's start by being realistic for a moment: We all know that tanking is a job that doesn't stack. Only one person does it at a time. EQ has elegantly done a good job around that through creating encounters that exceed warriors' time based skillsets. This allows for several warriors to fill the job of tanking without having just one, and the rest doing low-mid end damage. There have been lots of encounters throughout EQ which have taken the skillsets of knights and created significant offtanking roles. Things such as low hitpoint/high death consequence NPC's which require tanking without killing them (Vishimtar was a classic example in it's day, as were several Solteris events), things like tanking based crowd control which require AE agro generation skills as there is not enough time to target and position oneself as a warrior tends to need to do in order to generate hate, yet both knights are fully capable of performing. These, and many more content based additions give both knights AND warriors good, solid, important roles to fill which do not displace warriors. I think the crux of the argument tends to be the very real fact that warriors as a class, utterly depend on having a protected single role which requires multiple warriors to fulfill, and most would really like Knights to also have an important role, which doesn't displace their function as well. The additional issue is that there is no such thing as "acceptable, but ideal", tank survivability is completely binary, if you can do it, then you can do it, there is no "not ideal, but acceptable", because acceptable is all one needs. Once the "it's not a danger" threshold has been crossed, then other factors come into play, and warrior displacement begins, it's happened so many times throughout the life of EQ that it's impossible to really argue otherwise. What's a shame is that so many knights want to displace warriors at the one thing that gives the class value, innately devaluing warriors and rendering them obsolete rather than asking instead for more creative content which gives knights AND warriors value. The answer isn't "what do we do with the classes today, considering today's raid content" that's short sighted, and leads to the idiotic balance teeter-totter that has permeated EQ forever, but rather "how do we find a solution which doesn't lead to the obsolescence of either sub-class?"
No, Frodlin is not Battleaxe/Battleblade. At the start of LDoN I argued that ~186HP after knight self buffs was not enough of a survival advantage, Warrior random procs and semi-broken taunt left us with a competative disadvantage vs knight at-will and at-range aggro. During GoD I opposed giving knights Warrior defensive disciplines or abilities that Brenlo quite wisely agreed should not be shared. Frodlin argued they should be shared. ... I've played throughout the last 14+ years. Some haven't. It is nice to see the argument that Warriors are designed to MT or stand in line to MT while knights are free to pursue other tanking roles, and some not tanking roles given that they have outside of the tank archetype skills. It's also nice to see the argument that unmatched survivability does not mean takes a little less damage. It's a little less thrilling to see the how do we preserve the value of each class question. It's been answered and partially put in practice for years: 1. No one MT in the corner nothing else going on raids. Mix it up - Boss mob is dangerous. Boss mob ramps. There are mini-bosses and/or adds which must be attended to properly. The MT can't survive if the raid wipes on other parts of the event. 2. While Paladins have a healing/curing sub-role that is frequently important in raids, SK's have group firendly utility that has much less impact in raids. SK's were told that they would fill their oppoenents with fear and cripple them. IMO this aspect of the class has become neglected and it could have a lot of impact in clearing adds. Knights chose less tanking and more outside of the tank archetype abilities. They should have the choice of less tanking assessed AND the choice of having not tanking abilities be a benefit. That takes event design and providing them with the appropriate tools. In group content its pretty reasonable to argue that content which grants flags, items desired by tanks, and exp content requires tank parity. For 13+ years raid content has shown no such requirement and it's presented a variety of tanking tasks keeping knights quite busy despite seldom being the MT or standing in line to become the MT.
Honestly, the only role a knight currently has in a raid is AE curing with splash. If you truly want to min-max the raid force, you eliminate all knights with the exception of 2 paladin alts who only come out on a few raids and do nothing but splash non-stop or whenever Simon says - depends on the particular raid. Every other knight (every 3rd knight you replace with a cleric to offset the loss of Paladin healing) is replaced with a warrior that can tank better than either knight in every single situation. Currently, neither knight is able to consistently self-heal through the add / off-tank roles available without outside healing. If you have to assign healers to cover knights, then you're better off using warriors in the first place. Especially since it gives you more flexibility with the MT role if someone doesn't show up for some reason, there's a lag spike, etc... From the Class descriptions that you're so happy to quote when it serves your purpose: "Paladins are holy warriors who use blessed spells and strength of arms to fight the evil and undead of Norrath. Paladins are primarily a melee class, able to wear plate armor and wield many kinds of weapons." On March 24th, 2000 I chose to play a Paladin which was described as a holy WARRIOR (see EQ definition of Warrior for additional details) - there was no mention of inability to "tank" something / anything. We're talking about when Nagafen and Vox were the toughest creatures at the time. Sand Giants were feared and there was no concept of what raiding in its current form meant or entailed. Back then, I paid a heavy experience point penalty (so did my group mates) to do what Warriors did plus some very minor clerical stuff. I was primarily a melee class, I wore the best armor, and I tanked the hardest encounters available. You guys had the easy path of exp bonuses and getting some abilities earlier than I did. Other than that and not being able to use bows (the tools of a coward), we had the exact same role in the game. Although I never asked or expected these changes, I can see why they are making them. It isn't really balance that you guys are fighting for. It's obvious to everyone what you want. Unfortunately for you, the game has changed and developed and progressed beyond that.
"Paladins are holy warriors..." Lowercase 'w" - "warriors" not "Warriors". Also from the Hybrid tab at https://www.everquest.com/classes "Rangers are warriors..." Lowercase 'w". In 1999 I read the Daily Developers' Chat and saw that Warriors were to be the best tank. After rolling one I was startled to see Rangers often tanking in raids.Needless to say there was an outcry (by all plate tanks although it was amusing to see knights kick their fellow hybrid (lowercase) warrior to the curb) - and incoming corrections. Back then a lot of us discovered experience penalties were meaningless. Just play more than others and they went away. Besides stun, clicking that helmet that gave instant/no refresh heals, Ghoulbane, blind. Nothing like Paladin with Ghoulbane /lfg when in Guk. (I played the OP Paladin class back then too and soloed what Warriors needed a group to kill). In any event Devs made good on the best tank situation offered to Warriors with defensive abilities. The best part was the Defensive line reduced the DI potion of a mob's melee. HI DI mobs were primarily group nuisance mobs and harder raid mobs. Vs lower DI mobs Defensive abilities did next to nothing. "Unmatched ability to survive the most dangerous" - check "Big advantage vs. normal mobs" - no check Naturally those who chose less tanking and more outside of the tank archetype abilities lost their minds. Here was something that was 100% justified and worked the way it should work. So placards were produced - "Defensive must be removed from the game or shared". Afterall, if your goal was tank like a Warrior and have clerical abilities as a free bonus can't be having the Primary Tank have a tool insuring it was the Primary Tank. Lessee...13 years with Warriors being the greatly prefered raid boss MT? And you suggest it wasn't intended/escaped the attention of developers? Really???!!! Hahahahahahaha. The game has changed? Indeed. It's at probably 100K players or less. They trying for 50K players, half the current number of progressing well guilds, and bad press (not that EQ gets any good press - man does this game get savaged).
If the devs are dumb enough to keep the stuff knights are getting in the game, no knight anywhere should complain about anything ever again. But let's get real here, other than the class whiners, everyone knows what these changes really mean for raiding: Nothing, except some encounters get easier with suboptimal class makeup. But it does mean that either 1) every non-knight class will be destroyed by any raid adds/bosses that just look at them if they balance them to what all three tank classes can do, 2) that knights will be able to survive tanking encounters that were impossible for a knight to tank before. Not optimal, but they can work with enough healing or at least enough time to not mean a wipe when the warriors drop. The real losers in these tank changes are non-tanks. If they balance anything to what all three tanks can do, then no one else can tank. If they don't, then EVERYTHING becomes a cakewalk to tank for the three tank classes. The only reason I'm taking a wait and see approach is that I think they either will revert/nerf these abilities (or maybe just nerf DP for all three knights) or they are completely changing how they intend content in raids to work. We shouldn't be getting these things. They should just nerf warrior DP and move on with developing more content. DPS boost from 2h prof will be nice and isn't unwarranted, but the mitigation innate boost and the knight version of DP is absurd.
I don't see why this change would mean a different approach in how you design mobs in the future. There will just be 3 warrior like tanks instead of 1, I think that's the goal of this change. I can see a problem with knight discs stacking with the DP (if that's the case) while warrior's Last Stand doesn't and that the added bonus of 5% mitigation will make this boost be over the top. We should be getting something, probably not both though. Other than that, 3 classes will be able to fullfill the same role, the events were already balanced around having warriors tanking the raid boss which means instead of having let's say 6 warriors to make sure to tank everything, you will be able to achieve more or less the same with 2 wars, 2 sk and 2 paladins. The gap between tanks and non tanks will be bigger because there are no knights inbetween war and dps anymore but why would you need to change content because of that? The game evolves, and it's one of its evolution to now have the 3 tank classes being able to fullfill the same roles. I personally don't have an opinion about how good/bad this change is but I don't think things shouldn't change based on "it never was like that before".
This all sounds very egalitarian, however it makes some incorrect assumptions, the most crucial is that all 3 tanks are equal with the sole difference being the ability to tank raid bosses. Any cursory overview shows that in group content, while levelling, and in all non-raid boss tanking roles, that warriors are simply the weakest link, that being "better" at a role which doesn't have any meaning once the survival threshold has been crossed. The gap in power between knights and warriors in every other aspect of the game (including non-tanking roles on raids, AND sub tanking roles on raids, AND group encounters, AND general survival, AND self-sufficiency) is so large as to be insurmountable, and was a gap that warriors have historically been willing to bear as long as there was a payoff, and that payoff has always been raid boss tanking. No one in their right mind should ever choose to play a warrior when these go live, I know Frodlin will never see the light of day should these go live, I'm simply not interested in being 3rd rate in group content, 3rd rate in utility, artificially low DPS on par with the Knights who have such a significant survival advantage in downward scaling content that it would be impossible without a complete retooling of the warrior class to even begin to close it. Being interchangeable simply means warriors are obsolete, because it's a FAR lesser package to have similar survival vs. bosses and zero usefulness outside of it. There's simply no reason to bring a warrior any more when both knights are TankPLUS, in other words, when not tanking, still providing significant benefits, and even when taking non-boss tanking roles, requiring significantly less resources devoted to their success. 6 knights is better than 2+2+2 in every single conceivable aspect. This game is about to go down a very, very dark path for the warrior class, whether it cares or not isn't my call, maybe they don't, but the warrior class is pretty much dead with it coming.
I'm surprised you're still there then to leave this comment and didn't retire before 2014, when stances were not yet introduced. You also won't be the 3rd choice to tank in group content and raid content, that's simply not true but whatever fits your agenda right?
Agenda? I have no agenda, I don't play my warrior at all, and probably never will again, but that doesn't mean that the facts and math can be ignored, just because I no longer have any skin in the game. I obviously have a ton of experience playing a warrior, but no agenda, no benefit to me at all, my necro has no benefitting from this discussion. In anything outside of the raid boss tank role, and especially in group and solo/molo and general survival roles, the warrior class is so weak relative to both knight classes that it's shameful. The typical knight response is "you chose the wrong class then", which is an outrageously self serving and dishonest statement, since the argument could only be legitimately made if there were an aspect of the game where warriors carried an equally insurmountable advantage, and there was, which was the binary survival of tanking bosses and the risk/reward with using other than warriors for boss tanking. Once that offset is removed, then the "you picked the wrong class" argument evaporates, since it is simply being wielded to justify such a massive imbalance in power that obviously MUST be addressed if warriors are to have any future in this game. EQ's history is replete with long periods of time where after knights were given "parity" that warriors were obsolete and not worth the trouble to carry. There were at least 6 different eras where warriors were in such bad shape in this game that it was absurd to have them as part of the game, on at least one occasion it was so bad that they had a "walk out". It happened again prior to stances, and it's about to happen again, and it's all because the development staff in this game cannot comprehend just how weak the class is outside of it's primary role, and how being forced to share that primary role with no corresponding change in the core power of the class for the rest of the game is crippling. The only real solution to this dilemma is going to be to shore up warriors from the bottom up, to give them a level of downward scaling power that gives them the same total class power as Knights have as long as they have to share the tanking of bosses. Anything else is just downright imbalanced and wrong. It's funny, I actually was pretty proactive during the times in the game where Knights had seriously crippling and legitimate issues (Such as Gates of Discord, where single group NPC's were untankable by Knights), but it seems the pendulum only swings one way. It seems knights like you simply want to take and don't even want to comprehend what warriors clearly need, instead you'll convince yourself that the massive advantages you have by being knights don't exist, living in denial while watching your fellow players fade into obscurity and misery.
Just as is the idea that because knights receive more appropriate tools to fulfill their raid roles, warriors will become under utilized in the group and raid setting. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
History bears me out, it's already been shown to happen, this is not a Chicken Little prediction, it's a simple inevitability. Warrior underutilization in groups is already happening, and has been for years, and the imbalance in class power already exists, but warriors tended to accept it as the cost of maintaining their special role in raid content. This isn't about knights receiving more appropriate tools to fill THEIR raid roles, main boss tanking is a role that has never belonged to knights. It's the receipt of tools to fill warriors' raid role, and you're living in a state of total denial to not have seen the various eras where this type of selective egalitarianism has led to warrior underutilization.
Then warriors should spend their efforts requesting improvements for their class within the group setting instead of spending their efforts worrying/ about the possibility of others SHARING the role of raid tank.
