Phinny's Current Era and Dps Classes Status?

Monk > Rogue > Beastlord/Berserker/Ranger/Mage

the third group is too close to call. Fight dependent as well.
(Phinigel)

I feel you should recruit some wizards!

Or zerkers that know how to hit their buttons in the right order.

The disrespect. Gotta loan out Dunedigger to let em know.

eqresolute.com

Ahh but before the TLPs, as a Necro I was topping parses with regularity all the way up until I took my break in SoD. I was competing usually with Zerkers. Monks and Rogues were just below them usually. So the parse went something like this:

#1/2 - Necro/Zerker
#3/4 - Monks/Rogues
#5/6 - Wizards/mages

on some fights there would be a shakeup of classes but this was generally the case.

First off, I'll have to call BS that you used to top parses, "Before the TLP's, all the way up until SOD." The first TLP server launched in 2006. Nearly 2/3 of Everquest's existence has taken place after that date. SOD launched in 2008. Looking back now at the SOD launch, more than half of Everquest's existence has been after that date.

You should be aware that some significant changes have taken place to the game in the last 12 years, and that the state of DPS prior to 2006 or 2008 is nearly completely irrelevant today. Any argument that "Necros used to be dps kings in 2001!" is going to be met with the same stony silence as "Rogues used to be dps kings in 2013!" or "Wizards used to be dps kings in 2015!" or "Berserkers used to be dps kings in 2017!"

You are better off trying to make the case based on class utility and role. But even then, progression server balancing is not likely to happen in any significant way. Progression servers to date have hit 21 of the 24 different expansions, and Phinigel at least is poised to go farther (whether anyone is still playing on it or not.) It is a pretty daunting a task to try to simultaneously balance all the classes across 24+ different expansions, and neither DBG nor SOE before them ever have even made an attempt at it.

Should necros get some love? Probably. But not because you parsed great in 2003.

TLDR- it all depends on your guild and the support people get.

I remember necros topping parses when we actually had to dodge some AE's last TLP. Now we just sit in it like men. Looking at you Delvin.

Well considering I was in the top 2 for necros on the server, I had the gear and the skillset to do just that. Even in Pop, only a true-shotting ranger could match the DPS of a well played necro. In Luclin, long fights and nasty AE's meant better necro dps. In velious, only a manaburning wizard stood a chance at getting close to a necro's dps. In classic/kunark it wasn't even close, necros simply were the best at vs one large target with a ton of HPs. After Pop, in God and beyond, the zerkers started to come close on a regular basis, but again, I was in the top guild on the server and melee hadn't gotten their ridiculous 55% damage buff yet. Only on resistant mobs was there an issue. Maybe the necros you had experience with were lazy. I never was.

All this great raiding dps came at a cost though. Necros simply didn't get groups easily. Not many would take a necro over any melee. It was that simple, necros couldn't hang in grouping roles vs other dps classes.

But we necros were ok with the drawback, we could solo if we wanted. Sure it wasn't near the XP of a good group but it was passable. We accepted the drawback BECAUSE we knew that we would really shine in raiding DPS. Now that melee are blowing up the parses and doing 2 times a necro's DPS on a consistent basis, thereby shortening fights that used to take longer and setting necros back even further, we no longer have that raiding advantage to offset the piss poor grouping ability. There is a reason they added swift DoTs to the necro arsenal later on.

All the BS about the game changing blah blah through 2017 is just smoke. We currently are in the era I am speaking about and as such it matters. Everyone else understands how the melee DPS buff has trivialized a tremendous amount of encounters. So how is it that you don't understand the obvious.

Oh, and there were multiple balancing passes made by Sony in the past. This recent massive melee DPS buff is just a broad easy mode brush stroke to help melee so people could do more content with less people.

As far as after SoD, people left the game in DROVES thanks to mercs. So all the crap about EQ's existence means diddly when we are talking about the reason people came flocking back to the game for this new round of TLP's. Here's a hint, the majority of people didn't come back to play after SoD.

Way to miss the entire point. I am not disputing that you topped parses, back in the day, or that necros used to be great dps.

I was the very first person to post that the melee DPS buff would trivialize virtually every encounter on the TLP's. I posted extensively on it on this forum before it was even patched to live. I was the only guy around at the time who thought it was a terrible idea. I've consistently posted in favor of removing it from the TLP's in a sensible way. "Mitigating" the problem by giving even more dps to players is not the solution here.

Again, should necros get some love, yes. I am all for them doing the dot revamp. The dot cap is a serious issue and should be addressed. That has little to do with the TLP's though. It is a live issue, that will only impact the TLP's tangentially, just like the other dot revamps have.

Regardless of whether you or most TLP players want to play SoD+ content, the reality is that the TLP"s are not and will never be an accurate recreation of how things were prior to SoD. The game has changed, that genie will never be put back into the bottle. You can argue till you are blue in the face that necros should top parses in PoP because they did in PoP originally. But, we aren't ever going to go back to the same dps order that existed in 1999-2006. Even if they wanted to put the time and effort in to rebalance all classes across all expansions, too many core game mechanics have changed. Lots of classes have been top dps at periods in EQ's history and no longer are. Necros aren't special in that regard, and you're probably not going to get what you want here except by accident. I'm sure necros' time on top will come around again eventually, as the game continues to evolve, but it won't be because devs are trying to recreate 2003.

So basically what level/expansion will things start to balance out between mele and caster dps? When I read through older archived discussions it sounded like Wizard used to be destroying everything both in group content and on raids with little support required.

If you are a competitive player that wants to play a dps and compete on the parses, it seems like playing any sort of caster would be out of the question. Not sure why anyone would do anything other than box a caster then unless you are just dead set on playing one.

I'm not sure how you knew you were topping parses on a Necromancer in PoP...

http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20030611a.html

It wasn't until after LoY that DoT damage was even reported in your chat. But perhaps you're bundling PoP-LoY-LDoN as a single era.

I eat wizards for breakfast

I think the change you are referring to was where the damage reporting became centered on the caster. Prior to this it was centered on the target like other DD spells.

Maybe, but it was at least into mid 2002 that ppl were testing dots on npcs just to figure out what the dot spells were doing. Poor Watchman Halv.

I'd forgotten all about how little info we were getting back then until Darchon's post.

Nope. It simply displayed nothing each tic, regardless of your proximity to the mob. The only way to know when each tic was happening was to see the glow on a Burning Affliction focus.

Also in that era you didn't have an option to display other's direct damage spells/procs. Only your own. But you could see other's Critical blasts because reasons.

Ok, so there is someone in this thread with a link to a patch that says "Heroic Dexterity will no longer incorrectly affect all damage types. It should now affect ranged damage only." So, Hdex doesnt affect melee, or did they switch it back?

What is this garbage, are your wizards really so bad they they still allow your melee to speak before spoken to? I suppose they’re still wasting bards on you too.

What is this garbage, are your wizards really so bad they they still allow your melee to speak before spoken to? I suppose they’re still wasting bards on you too.