Why should pure melee outdamage others?

A long time ago, there was the argument that since rangers/beastlords and casters get spells, pure melee (rogues, monks, and more recently berzerkers) should do more damage.

Things have long since changed, as pure melee for years have had slows, snares, stuns, fades, lulls, mez, ect. I don't think there is any reason that a pure melee should have a dps advantage over hybrids or casters anymore.

Before people address you with serious responses you should take the time to actually point out the benefits of hybrids as well as pures. Otherwise you are simply looking for discussion on conjecture with no meaningful starting point.

They don't

Should is easy.

Since a Cleric can provide considerable benefit to the group/raid while doing little or no damage they should do considerably less damage than classes who have little or no non-DPS value to the group/raid.

The hard parts and the reason this thread is destined for low places is ranking classes by potential non-DPS benefit, actual non-DPS benefit in typical situations and so on can't be nearly as easily explained.

Basically what you are saying is this:

• Being ranged is no advantage
• Being able to heal / FD / pull / mezz / slow etc. is no advantage
• Runes are of no use
• It does not matter that melee drop to 1 / 3 of their potential DPS when they dont have beastlord, bard and shaman in group on a raid, and of course get auspice from a ranger

Agree that this is advantages being caster? good. then you also got your answer, because you cannot get a class that is the best healer / tank / dps / utility, because if you could there would be 1 class in everquest and it would be a very bad game.....

In my mind there is no question with the latest mana tweaks where wizards have near endless mana, that melees must have the highest potential DPS on bursts. If this isn't happening, then there is only disadvantages to playing all melee classes in a raid. Never in the history of EQ have casters been a nonfactor, which is what pure melee is now....

News to me, melee have a dps advantage over casters? You should recheck your statement because currently casters have a dps advantage over pure melee. And in all reality I believe pure melee should have the advantage over a caster because a caster can cast from anywhere as long as they have line of sight. Melee has to constantly keep up with the mob and be looking directly at it.

So say someone pulls the mob away well now melee has to chase it down while a caster can just keep casting. Or say the event has an emote that forces you to run away from the mob or not look at the mob. The melee has to run away loosing dps while the caster can just keep distance never moving and or just keep their back to the mob the entire time casting.

So in reply to the OP casters have the dps advantage currently in the form of dps and positioning.

casters have a huge advantage at the time.. we have provided a ton of logic as to why melees should top higher, i have heard no sound argument based on logic as to why casters should top.

There are other advantages that aren't being discussed, that have to be taken into consideration. Mobs with spell reflects or immunities for instance? Or the entire idea that rogues can sos anywhere in the game, etc. There is more to the balance game than just "casters can cast from distance so we should be stronger" argument. You have belly casters, mobs that take more damage from melee etc.

I agree that melee should have a nice benefit, but I don't agree that casters should suffer for it.

I also see the argument above that melee can only do any dps if they have X classes with them. How many wizards do you see topping the dps meters without a chanter in their group? Without clarity? They also need support. For instance, a wizard unbuffed is not going to do as much damage as a wizard + chanter + bard. So that's not an argument either.

Another consideration: melee DPS is incompatible with fights centered around a pet tank.

They shouldn't. That style of game is extremely dated and has no place in modern gaming. All dps classes should be competitive. If hybrids are hit with a hybrid tax it should be so low as to require hours to get a sample size large enough to discern the difference. I play a wizard (pure), and still believe this.

Caster vs melee argument is also archaic. Caster dps and melee dps take the same damage from all unavoidable AOEs, and basically every encouter in RoF involves fights with static placement bosses, where being ranged offers zero advantage over being melee.

They shouldn't, nor should they be out DPS's by non-pure melee.

You have asked a question that is so general that any response is a correct response and nobody will agree with anybody. You won't even get agreement within the archtypes. As an example: Utility is held up as one of the reasons as to why one class should out DPS another class, so go ask a berserker if pulling is utility then a monk the same question.

Melee should always outdamage ranged because:

1) Melee have to melee to do damage
- Many bullet points that fall under 1

This is true in every game I've ever played, MMO or otherwise. I could even throw in a Call of Duty metaphor if you like.

However, I don't think there should be much of any difference within each archetype. melee dps > ranged dps > tank > healer. And EQ is hopelessly broken in that regard.

Most games I've played that isn't the case at all except EQ at different times in the last 14 years.

This hasn't been our experience with RoF raids at all. AE ramp is a very real threat on several events and ranged DPS has quite an advantage on others. I'd suggest playing a melee class for a raid cycle in RoF if you really don't see any benefits to being a caster currently.

I would suggest you check out how many mobs are belly casters or pull you to them/adds or that force you to follow some script that equally hurt any dps or that have immunities to entire spells or that have changing immunities to spells or that trap/silence you away from everyone or how many spells/AA require you to be very close to use or maximize their effect.

I don't believe pure melee dps should do much more damage than hybrids or casters. Problem is that casters do better in parses than melee for various reasons. Not being forced to be in melee is a big advantage. You don't have to deal with wild ramp or melee damage unless summoned. Dps is not affected by push and not being in melee range. Unless resisted casting a spell always works.

Melees do more damage during burns but once end runs out they have to med to get it back where casters many of them have abilities to get mana back. Also, a lot of raids are sustained fights with mechanics not allowing for burns. So classes that never run out mana and keep burning all night long will always parse better than pure melees.

All classes should be competitive but hard to do that when casters and melee dependent dps classes are so different in how they do damage.

People are actually trying to argue that there is no advantage at all to being a ranged class, and they even seem to believe what they are saying. The internet truly does have everything.

If you've played EQ this long, you know not to expect anything even remotely resembling balance or even common sense. But it would be nice if they toned down / buffed up the crazy outliers, like wiz/necro and, well, practically every melee outside of a 2 minute fight.

I seriously doubt any dev has actually taken a serious stab at giving the classes any kind of parity in the entire history of EQ. Much less worried about the topic of ranged vs melee. From the very start classes were not designed with any sort of balance in mind and over a decade of ability bloat makes fixing things now a laughable thought.

Anyway, in truth it's only a problem if suddenly everyone starts needing to bring 20 wizards to beat some sort of dps check. (a big F U to enrage timers from that other game)

I agree, there are pros and cons to both melee and ranged DPS.

That's quite a bit different than what the person I quoted was saying.

I don't think anyone, at least not myself, is saying there are no advantages to ranged dps. There are pros and there are cons just as there are for melee as rasputyn said. Prior to RoF is was pro to be melee for 5+ expansions. In RoF it has been very beneficial to be a caster in some raids and for others not so much. Is it perfect no but its also not so bad as many of the more vocal outlier melee toons are trying to make it out to be, especially after the recent test patch notes.

A pure melee is nothing without their support. That means some hybrids (beastlord, bard, and to a lesser extent ranger) and a priest (shaman) are required for them to reach the numbers that are a fair amount above hybrids in most cases historically (I'm aware of current imbalances in this regard). If the hybrids themselves did more damage than the pure melee, for what purpose would the pure melee be there? Why not just stack 2 beastlords, 2 rangers, a bard, and a shaman then, since they'd have higher uptime on the ADPS buffs? Not even mentioning that group is going to have higher survivability than 3 pure melee + BL/bard/shaman, since everyone in that group but the bard can heal anyone else in the group.

As to the melee vs. caster argument, I feel like many of the current events either punish everyone, or punish the melee. I don't see much that punishes just ranged classes, and I see this as a justification for melee to be slightly above casters when you also factor in the above support requirements. Under optimal circumstances, a melee should win, since optimal for a melee is far harder to achieve. Under suboptimal circumstances, casters/hybrids will outperform melee, and suboptimal situations are generally the norm. It just happens that optimal situations are the ones that lend themselves to parsing.

I'm sure every class has their annoyances, but melee have a lot that prevent damage. Time spent moving mob to mob in situations with adds, including locating said add if you just assisted MA, having to cancel an offensive disc to use a defensive one, or back out for rampage/aggro reason, and push causing missed melee rounds are some of the most notable ones. That is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means.