My question is semi-personal Elidroth. Do you consider yourself a programmer, a data guy, or a fantasy guy when approaching this game? The reason I ask is that at one point in your chat, you tilted toward data "No Headshot a Ranger was first to 100" and then on another point you tiled away "What does DPS meter mean, did you have fun if so what do you care." Those two philosophies are opposite and make it hard to get my mind around relating to your viewpoint. On a Different Note: I'm a data guy. And its difficult because data is cherry pickable. Numbers dont lie, but statistics don't speak truth. # Claimers for example can always phrase things in a procon way ProHS Data: Magelo Samples don't show more done with AA rangers standing out AntiHS Data: Ranger first 100 ProHS Data: Look at server now for a Representative Sample via who my server (Ber5 Rog7, War 8, Monk0, Clr7, Dr2, shm7, Nec11, Wiz5, Mage0, Enc2, Bard10, Pal2, Sk7, Ran4, Bea5) granted a snap shot but its raid time and its a representative sample. AntiHS Data: Rangers lesson totals ProHS Data: Rangers higher Max AA totals
Coruth, I can't recall if you were in the session during those snippits or just reading them from the post. Eli's no to headshot, 1st to 100 on almost every server was a ranger was in related to a ranger asking for more ranks of headshot. They are being stagnated for a reason. Eli's comment about DPS was when he was talking to the warriors about them wanting to be such good DPS (when they aren't DPS classes). So two totally different classes and points being addressed. (I don't see the inconsistency myself.)
Actually Crys, he said specifically <11@Elidroth> here's a hint.. I don't give 2 thoughts about parses.. people are WAY too infatuated with seeing their name at the top of a parse <11@Elidroth> who cares? <11@Elidroth> Did mob x die? Did you have fun doing it? Then why does your position in the parse really matter? In fact's its a really forum no-no to cut/paste a developer so I'll leave it to your imagination but cut and paste the word parse about XPing http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/mags-beam-kiteing.1919/#post-2648 Check out that data. One full group in 16 hours. and a SK in his guild beat him (thinking my server was a SK win server incidently). And in VOA that same bard did all 5 levels in 7 hours. I didnt see anyone on my server 100 in 7 hours. So your talking pretty small differences in XPing in the grand scheme of things. And again look at this quote <11@Elidroth> if everyone was doing the exact same job then parse numbers would matter <11@Elidroth> I'm just saying people have become much too focused on parse numbers <11@Elidroth> if I could hide numbers completely, it wouldn't be a horrible thing in the game Implies a strong distaste of parses/specific number crunching here. There's not really a right or wrong answer. But those two paragraphs are fairly inconsistant and I wanted to get a little insight.
Are you implying Shang doesn't play a ranger as a main? I play a bunch of different toons as ALTS, and I won't be in those chats since I can ACT like I know everything, but most likely I don't. The same with others...people should not try to change the game for their personal gains when they don't put In the time with the class as a main. That's all that is, nothing more. But then again, RoI beat the expansion so it's probably time for him the Brett Farve again anyways.
As for Eli not interested in people's feelings with parses...SoE is the one that drove play style to be like this. If you guys don't want to put in the effort to make the game like GoD or DoDH then this is how the players will adapt. Content has to be driven towards skill and not an arrangement of buttons to always be #1. I'd be all for a gear/AA wipe if the game was determined to become something for everyone again, not just max level raiders. You've built the game around being at the very top, with the very top getting access to things. Get out and promote things in game; give people an actual reason to start progression and pay attention to those servers (you guys drop a new server then ignore it 6 months later). Stop merging classes into each other and give each class defining abilities again with content built around those.
Evermad, your first post in this thread said "dont play it." It should have said "doesnt play it." Now, be mad!
It was a very nice chat over all there was nothing super shocking so I dont understand all the negative feedback specialy from any one who chose not to attend /shrug I was very suprised Eli didnt say No to me once and some of my requests may be considered im guessing because I stayed within a reasonable request range, True there was not a lot of talk about new lines braught up by players but that just proves to me we dont need new we can just improve what we already have. I always learn some thing from these and actualy attending to try to help my class is some thing ill never get tired of
I was there, and I donot think the core problems of the warrior class were addressed. The core problem being that the class has a very limited scope which limits options to get boosts that enhance each other. This leads to the class being subpar in groups, as having a warrior in the group requires more group support effort to keep things running smooth (more healing needed, more aggro management needed, other classes having to provide backup healing as the warrior offers nothing in that regard). But for what benefit? The group gets nothing out of it, even the extra DPS warriors used to offer a group has eroded if not completely disappeared. Defensive used to make warriors unique in that named could be tackled more easily, but with the other tanks getting so many options in that regard, either some form of rune defensive or temporary heal effects or burst dps, nameds are these days better tackled without a warrior as well. I really feel like the level 95 tank in a group with all level 100 characters, and when I die, I get a rez thrown at me -- while the group, not even slowing down, happily proceeds with their "XP burn" with the pet/merc/ranger/monk whatever tanking. The advantages of a warrior have all been eroded to nothingness because the differences in the classes have only been maintained in an absolute sense (like a 10 point lower skill cap on skill X), but in a relative sense they've become smaller and smaller (a 10 point skill cap difference used to mean something when the cap was 200 or 250, it means almost nothing now that the cap is 400+). Warriors used to have a huge chunk of extra HP compared to other classes (20-25% more) but that's gone too. It's easy to justify giving a spell caster class somekind of spell that gives "temporary protection", as spells can mostly do anything as long as they remotely fit within the class' lore (or through some semi-plausible thought experiment can be made to "fit" the class' lore). How to justify giving a warrior new abilities? The class really needs something unique that is usable all the time. Not yet another ability that seems nice on paper but is locked behind a ridiculously long re-use timer. I'll add some suggestions: Warrior specific augmentations, tuned for warriors (ie, heal augs, rune augs, vie augs), perhaps fittable on warrior specific weapons only in a seperate slot. The weapon setup then becomes an integral part of what the warrior wants to achieve, and having a 10 slot bandolier actually has a purpose. Passive AA line to mitigate hits by X hitpoints. Let's say X is 50, and an ice giant hits you for 200 points. This would then be mitigated to 150 points. A firebeetle hitting for 5 would not do any damage at all (your plate armor isn't even scratched). This probably should be tuned relative to whatever damage the highest gray/green cons put out, or perhaps related to the AC value with an AA modifier (for example, if you have 8000 AC and an AA modifier of 0.1 then any hit would be reduced by 800 points (8000 * 0.1). Passive AA line giving significantly higher regen. I like the new shammy spells having significantly higher regen. It is something that would fit well with the warrior class as well, but as a natural ability. This should be tuned vs. the highest gray/green cons, perhaps in combination with the previous suggestion. Give warriors (temporarily) access to healing adept / healing gift to work around coding limitations -- you can remove and refund it if it ever gets fixed (which may be never -- and since a big part of heals these days comes from crits and percentage based AA extensions it becomes a bigger issue with each new healing adept/gift level). Give them different names if you have to, "healing attunement", "healing amplication".. abilities that allow warriors to squeeze the last drop out of a heal they proc themselves. It's not entirely unprecedented either with the Hold the Line ability that somehow "magically" allows warriors to increase heals cast on them. All of these should help close the gap in solo/group content, while having neglible impact on the raiding game.
Kewl, got to like 8 shiftie posts. I missed the discussion due to a personal emergency, feels bad man. Mob push is crazy if I ALT+Tab out for a moment. Because of lowered FPS the push makes me "coast" and I glide across the room, basically. I just try to live with it, but yeah, its crazy man. I'm hoping with the patch today that paladin DPS will finally be sufficient enough so I won't fall asleep during fights. I can't kill any named in RoF because mob health is so high, my merc (and myself) run completely out of mana even after triggering every skill and disc I possibly have. Compared to a necro I know who isn't even 95 yet just standing back and letting the pet tank while throwing DoTs and then adding heals with the merc. That, or as the discussion almost first landed on, less mana consumption. Never had an issue losing or keeping aggro. Crush line and enough ranks in Force of Disruption work just fine unless someone else vigorously tries to steal it or goes balls-to-wall DPS mode, and even then I have several hate-over-time and Ageless Emnity, etc. to use. It's a pain to keep seeing pets skewing the aggro list. lol I wish Leap of Faith actually implied its freakin' name, "LEAP". It's not "Scoot Across The Ground" that can range widely on distance per use. I didn't spend those AAs to move just an inch across the land. Guess I'll just stick to my rocketeer boots for now! Didn't see any mention of Hand of Piety when the AA turns the instant heal into a heal over time, which basically nerfs itself. Kind of sad about it, but I'm not upgrading it to a HoT. Thank you for posting the discussion. Shiftie brought up many things I would have.
Have fun using your 1h and shield for everything, no clue on how to make DW or 2H weapons viable again, but one thing for sure... Don't EVER think of tanking using DW... Because that is not what Elidroth wants. If you want to DW go work on trade skills or swimming.
Sadly it seems that many are OK with Warriors being a one trick pony for ubermob raid tanking. We need to turn that around first. Quickly I think people will start to see that our survivability against everything else in EQ needs to be improved, dramatically, along with addressing our complete lack of abilities to compensate for weak/interrupted healing.
I found this chat really constructive and I would like to thank all who contributed by suggestions and debating and of course Elidroth for holding it. Far better than the usual whining amnd moaning and crying for "MOAR DPS!" one often sees on this board...
Well Filatal, aside from mana the Paladin class is really well off. I really hope they do something about that, the rate at which I run out of mana when I'm not slacking off is insane.
I still say Warriors need more DPS, lots more....... ..... .... While Tanking. As said before, its the group game where warriors suffer compared to having a knight tank. They take more healing to survive. And need more support. As such warrior tanks need a group niche. For me, significant group dps. BUT warriors are not a dps class. They can't be so good a DPS that you invite a 2nd warrior to a group and tell the monk, etc go home. Solution: More Riposote Damage. Warriors need an AA that either fires a proc (Mini funeral dirge) or an AA that upgrades thier damage on ripos only
I'm not understanding the thought process of replacing this with DPS. Half the classes in the game fit the bill of "needs more healing to tank, while providing more DPS". We need to go in the opposite direction - meaningfully reducing both the amount and frequency of healing required for a Warrior to tank group content. If content is easy enough that Monks, Rangers, mercs or pets can tank it, then we should have the breathing room to break out our DPS bandolier and make stuff dead faster (though not quite as fast as a DPS class would) while still keeping a degree of defensive edge over lesser tanks. Speaking of mercs, why is it that Warriors are expected to tank everything with a shield, while Warrior mercs are dual wielding?
Cause honestly, while a Monk can tank some and a Ranger can tank some (some is acceptable for light tank) A warrior is not competing for an invite for tank spot, with them. I have never seen a group say well lets not grab a warrior when we can while xping and invite a wizard and let monk/ranger tank. A warrior is competing with Sk/Pal. If all 3 ask in guild chat "LFG" I know which will tend to be last picked. The warrior. So I am looking for a way to differentiate a War Tank vs a Knight Tank. And since the knights take far less healing because of thier stuns, taps, self heals, the edge for me is to go Tank DPS
Wouldn't it be better to look into ways to lower the gap between the healing taken? Passive AA that increases incoming heals by a set %? Increase mitigation on the Staunch Defense Disc(the sustainable one)? Something along those lines. Seems like the idea of increasing dps while it may be desirable is ignoring the problem. Warriors, the number 1 tanks, are not the number 1 tanks outside of tanking a single hard hitting boss mob. They are a distant second to knights. That needs fixing. Warrior aggro discs cost a good bit of endurance, i can easily run a warrior OOE just keeping up with aggro. Take an SK/Pally and they can go for hours without running out of mana just holding aggro. Self healing and dps is where their mana goes. It's just not the same for warrior. Elidroth spoke about an aggro effect added to taunt which sounds promising, but there's still plenty of reasons why knights will be better in group situations. I did read that elidroth felt DW was for dpsing, as is 2hander. The warriors I play with all miss their DW. For years it was the the only way to tank, you rarely saw a warrior pull out a shield. At some point it was decided shields would become the norm. Now it's very weird, tank/dps = shield, dw = slightly better aggro for a loss in tanking, and 2h = riposte disc. THe warriors I play with would like to see it become shield = turtle, dw = normal tanking, 2h = dps. I don't know exactly how it can be done but i do hope the devs reconsider their stance on DW. Perhaps some form of DW specialist that increases defenses when using DW, sorta reverse how shield specialist works.
Personally, I thought that they should have went SB (Full Def) Dual Wield (Half Def / Half DPS) 2H (Full DPS) in theory you could reverse Dual/2H For the half mode, give an AA that allows some block (staff block 2h or off hand block) and then one that multiplies the weapons AA by 2 or 3 (to put it between shield and not) My prob Jerus is really I was looking for Group Desirability WITHOUT adding Raid Tanking Power. All your ideas would make Raid Warriors stronger too. Hence the idea of Ripo DPS or Ripo Proc
healing and tapping is a functional part of knight tanking it is part of why they have lower mitigation. Pretending that group geared knights are not required to supplement healing and thusfind themselves running out of mana much faster than a respite using warrior is laughable at best. There is no magic I win button for knights once they reach 30% mana, that means they are soon either going to die or med.
I didn't mean to imply that shiftie, i realize that the heals/taps are part of playing the knight. What I was trying to point out is that I can run a warrior dry (and no i don't leave time for respite) pretty quickly with them just trying to keep aggro off the dps, while a knight doing the same goes for a long time with low mana cost aggro spells. OF course every knight runs OOM because of all the other stuff they do. All I'm trying to say is perhaps the costs on warrior discs should be looked at and less cost placed on the burst aggro tools they use in typical group play and put the focus more on the other things they use. I think they have too high of a cost while running just the bare bones keeping aggro and letting their gear do the work. It's one of the reasons I like knights is that if I push them they can still do what i need them to do (keep aggro) where I can push a warrior to the point that he can't without giving him break. Of course those knights(like the dps and healers) begin to hate me sometimes for running them OOM and still pulling but they still get the job done as far as i'm concerned
