Because right now it's pretty dismal. Paladins especially, we are even getting out-parsed by the healers by a large amount. And before you OMG YOUR A TANK LTP BLAH BLAH BLAH just remember one thing. The gap keeps getting wider and wider (and the switch from auto-attack to potency changes aren't even finished yet) and there needs to be some parity in the game.
It'd be great, but you'd have to convince the developers that players "want" that. As far as I am aware, they're under the impression that fighters want to itemize for defense because it was something they actively complained about. The CoE->ToV itemization shift, which allowed fighters to do just that, was a direct consequence of those demands. To compensate for fighters having access to increased defensive stats, mobs were coded to "hit harder". Additionally, as a consequence for opting for defensive equipment, fighter EncDPS dropped. Taunts were later buffed during ToV (roughly 4x) to assist with threat decrease which originated from the EncDPS drop. Fighter CA base values are actually quite good in most cases, and kind of absurd in others. You will need to convince them that current fighter itemization is a mistake and to revert it. The "gap" between fighter & other EncDPS will only increase with the continued introduction of "role based" items. Additionally, the necessity of fighter-based itemization furthers the "one shot" nature of non-fighters getting hit by trash/names. You have my vote for the change, but that means very little in the grand scheme of things.
There's a couple of issues that I'm sure is hampering any changes. Mainly that each class is so different and can be geared to both a turle and dps extreme. I see some stupidly high numbers on dps geared tanks, but then stupidly low on turtle stance. Changing one thing for all (like the current potency buffs), massively increases SKs power, as they're all about offensive spells that also happen to heal, but they don't do a lot to brawlers and warriors. Paladins are kinda a unique case as the potency effects heals more than damage output. Tbh I don't know enough about paladin to comment. But if you make dps higher in turtle stance with turtle gear, they need to make sure it doesn't blow the dps in dps gear out the park. It's a very fine line to cross, but I don't want tanks (of which I have 3), doing similar dps to a T1 dps yet they have plate armor (even if it's not the +mit stuff), and invulnerable temps and feign death and self heals, etc etc.
I wasn't talking about Tank potency. I was talking about the upcoming scout changes and the dev's new PUT POTENCY ON EVERYTHING C.BONUS BE DAMNED! mantra regarding all new gear. I average 2.9 Million in defensive stance (using a mix of dps and mit gear)... and if this was still ToV I'd be jumping for joy over it. However the Inq is doing on average 4 million and the Warden 6 million. I don't want to do T1 DPS and I don't want to do T2 dps... but when a healer who is healing at the same time can do that much damage... then I think it is time for a buff. And to be honest I'm happy they (the healers) are doing that much damage, I've been in groups where the healer only heals... and with the huge amount of hitpoints current mobs now have, the fights drag on forever. And like I said the gap is only to get wider, and its time now to do something about it, since I doubt the mobs in the new upcoming content are going to get less hitpoints or hit softer than those we are currently facing.
Every expansion I have said the same thing: There has always been a split between the defensive and offensive tank gear (even if earlier expansions was as simple as two hander vs sword+board) Issue #1: you don't need the defensive gear to tank This causes every other class to moan and demand nerfs as we are able to do our job in offensive gear and the more offensive tanks take preference. to compensate fights tend to be heavily scripted and annoying with memwipes/blurs and control effects to help the more defensive tanks get places in raid guilds. What actually happens is tanks with the most "snaps" who can DPS heavily get preference - crusaders in TSO brawlers in later expansions Issue #2: you NEED that defensive gear or you die this causes a massive drop off in offensive power and agro can become an issue - soloing becomes problematic but its "OK" you are just tanks.. you arn't meant to do DPS. To compensate fights tend to revolve around "survive this or die" scripts and to compensate this ads and AoE encounters are added in abundance in order to allow the less defensive but more DPSy tanks to earn a spot on raids. What actually happens is the offensive tanks moan and end up getting defensive buffs so they are as defensive as the less DPSy tanks... but do more DPS and other classes moan about "needing to get tank gear" and "solo mobs hit too hard" - so the mobs health is increased but their damage output reduced... everyone is happy except tanks who now solo for longer.. but its "OK" as you are only tanks. ------------------------- What IS needed... and has been needed since day#1 (well... DoF started it...) is dropping the whole offensive/defensive thing all together tanks WANT the defensive gear to matter but WITHOUT trading too much offensive power to do so... I've only ever seen it ONCE in the expansions (TSF where the T4 gear used both offensive and defensive stats) - outside that is it a constant trade off between survival and DPS - bouncing back and forth between the two. Another factor is tank Combat arts are pretty much worthless outside of procing spells such as "peace of mind" - so like healers (and to some degree bards) we *need* to focus on our autoattack in order to increase our DPS - factor in in hit rates and control effects in some expansions can massively impact our DPS/fun level. (RoK and TSO ere big offenders in this regard - pull mob get stunned for rest of fight is *not* fun.) Since we are obviously going the whole "potency over everything else in order to make DPS more fun" angle remember that many *many* classes use autoattack as their DPS and the only classes who win are the DPS classes who have high powered attacks and mages. Itemisation has screwed tanks forever what is needed really is something like a set of "class runes" (prismatic adorns?) you can add into your gear maybe even have them level with you like green adorns and set bonuses? so tanks and scout share the same DPS jewellery the same way mages and healers share and their armour has the same/similar stats... so weapon damage bonus, health% and stuff. Tanks then slot in their prismatic adorns into their armour giving all their +mitigation, +defence, +health scouts slot in their prismatic adorns giving potency bonuses to their rear attacks and other DPS things Mages slot in their adorns giving bonuses to crit bonus and potency healers slot in their adorns giving bonuses to their healing power. (such as +xxx% to base heals, power procs ward procs) So everyone gets the same DPS oriented gear without compromising their core roles as they are on the "runes" you slot in. what is most annoying about the current itemisation is the "here are all the things you can use... but will never get chance to"; a proc which does 80 crit bonus buff, or +5% mitigation.... sorry but mitigation it is else I DIE. that is just one example but its for every item... nice DPS item.. or +mitigation/block (which often has no spare stats to reforge) - make the defensive decision on *every* item and you are loosing like 500 potency/crit bonus in comparison. Knowing you can equip the DPS items but never actually use them in a group/raid makes this even more frustrating. (I mean who ever heard of mitigation stats on a sword?) dump all the tank stats into special class only adorns you can swap in and let tanks have fun in choosing gear again!
I'm confused by your post good sir. Changing the itemization from jewelery to adornments does not fix the problem, only the location of said problem. The existence of, and thus requirement to design encounters around, defensive itemization is the problem. Again, fighter CAs (on average) are quite strong. Below is a simple chart I created that shows the base value of crusader vs. swashbuckler CA base values to emphasize this during the recklessness era. Yes this is a bit of an extreme case, but it does illustrate the point rather well. Fighter CA base values are by no means "lacking" in this example, RIP reckless.
as long as fighters and scouts use the same method to generate DPS there will always be issues with "this fighter class is too pew pew" and "my scout combat arts don't hit hard enough a fighter [insert one case] is better!" the original problem is this game was designed 11+ years ago Originally: * Scouts used a "higher autoattack damage rating" than fighters (except bards) * Scouts had similar strength "normal" combat arts * Scouts had rear and stealthed attacks which did more damage * Scouts had poisons. Scouts and Fighters use the same autoattack rating now - but the basic combat arts remain the same- compared flat like this it always seems like "fighters have same combat arts as scouts" start factoring in the AA choices and gear the combat art difference starts to show.. but scout CA damage is not that high - fighter's is even lower even in the new offensive stance. Fighters HAVE to gear for defence in this expansion which forces us away from the DPS options. my idea was remove all defensive gear completely and put the stats on a special "runes" we slot into our armour pieces - so we gear exactly the same as scouts. - with our defensive bonuses in return scouts can equip a similar rune which fixes their short comings (such as low combat art damage) with massive potency - so the difference between fighters and scouts becomes less about "well you got the DPS gear and I got... oh look 5% more block chance" to skill using their combat arts as well as poison to accentuate their "base damage". fighters shoudl not have to give up so much in order to do their job scouts *should* be about the skill of pressing buttons its not a great fix but its one which will work with the current enviroment.
NB: I'm actually in favour of a FULL overall of all the combat arts/spells/AA. * lot of "useless debuffs" (streamline to more powerful debuffs on few combat arts / spells) * useless AA (every class has them choosing AA is more about avoiding the bad choices than getting the good ones.) * they do not scale well to end content (e.g. need to scale almost exponentially rather than linear or gain bonuses from MA/DPS/Haste/AoE/WDM/Flurry) and keep class balance to the combat arts / spells and buffs rather than using broad strokes which effect every class at the same time.
This is incorrect, as "originally" the fighter AA multiplier is 2.1 vs. the scout 1.9. SF increased the predator AA multiplier to 2.2 (with rangers able to achieve 2.4 from epic repercussions) and DoV increased the rogue AA multiplier to 2.14. There are other factors which influence AA damage but fighters (specifically crusaders w/ knight's stance + forced ranged auto) tend to "beat" scouts in this regard. On the topic of combat arts, the figure clearly shows that crusader CA base values exceed swashbuckler base values. If your "fix" was implemented, fighters would not deal damage unless they had "dps runes" equipped. This does not fix the problem, only "moves" it from jewelery to adornments. Interestingly, these adornments already exist (e.g. fighter's potency vs. mitigation, bulwark of malice vs. core of fanatic, etc.).
tanks should not have to spend *all* their gear, AA, on required defense JUST to do their job... that's not flexibility and personalization... its "you get this gear/AA spec or you die" approach. Some things should be given to classes by default (such as +mitigation and block for tanks) and scouts NEED their combat art power increasing. I suggested runes/adorns as they could be graduated by upgrading them but it could just be as easy as another AA/Prestige thing you level up and once you get to 100 you have like +120% mitigation | +100% health | +50% block for free... but these stats are no-longer available from gear at all. likewise scouts have +50% health | +100% CA damage | +300% stealth CA damage for free then gear becomes all about balancing up the Autoattack and casting stats whilst improving potency/crit bonus with as many cool procs as possible. As it is compare: http://u.eq2wire.com/item/index/4100978744 to http://u.eq2wire.com/item/index/2262099189 (I chose items with the same resists so they are comparable value) the scout one has two blue choices to reforge - the fighter only one (as he is required to keep +mitigation) the scout has 2 "improve DPS options" - the fighter only has one the scout as a DPS proc - the fighter has a defensive one as well as a damage proc. this is only one example - but you can do this for *every* item. thats 21 items, 2 food+drink 3 green adorns 5 warrunes, 7 purple runes and 21 white adorns. almost every time the fighter is required to pick the defensive alternative; there are less options to reforge and the small difference in DPS is massively exaggerated. Healers on the other hand can spec offensively as their bonuses(potency/crit bonus - and some times outright DPS) actually benefit their healing power. there is no defensive stat called healing% where every healer was REQUIRED to take it on *every* item/adorn/food+drink where possible. that's the issue. RE your example: the "average" swash vs paladin for example favors the swash... but you multiplied one by 2 and the other by 1 (I presume the old reckless stance numbers?) so that is not really a valid test.
Right, so you're doing nothing but reallocating the existing gear differences to adornments. This doesn't do anything. Use the min, max, and avg columns. These are the values used in defensive stance. You are correct the 2x is from old recklessness (which conveniently was a flat multiplier). The new offensive stance, due to the inconsistent increase in potency relative to a starting amount, cannot be easily expressed in terms of flat multipliers.
As it stands from gear the tank wants the following: +mitigation +block +max health + Dodge + Extra Riposte chance + Extra Dodge chance + Extra Parry chance + hate + strikethough + healing received by target (subjective) on this sort of gear the +weaponskills is replaced with +defence/deflection in addition he also needs everything a scout does +multiattack +damage per second +attack speed +flurry +AoE Autoattack + weapon damage modifier + Ability Modifier +accuracy +weaponskills As well both need the required casting stats: +casting Speed +recovery Speed +ability reuse speed and crusaders/bards also desire + doublecast if we assume resists, stamina, and primary stat are given then that is a LOT of stats a tank needs from gear - and the defensive stats take priority over everything else. even the addition of strikethrough is frustrating as a tank's hit rate is not only based on +weapon skills and +accuracy but also on strikethrough as well; and tank based gear rewards us with removing +weaponskills and replacing with +defence.
Right, two sets of stats. So remove those stats from itemization completely, *poof*, gone. Encounters can no longer be designed around defensive based itemization, and fighters get to focus on the second set of stats you listed.
SKs got a flat boost to their spells and CAs in TSO (previously they were about 30% lower and more DoT based) the swash vs paladin a more accurate representation of most tanks and swash are slightly higher the gear difference is tanks need almost *every* stat (crusaders do in fact use every stat/skill but subjugation and deflection) until / if new "scout only" "healer only" "mage only" stats are introduced fighters will always be running with lower stats simply because of gear.
that's what I'm suggesting/suggested... take them off shove them elsewhere for free and get balancing the classes elsewhere
No, it isn't. I'm suggesting to remove them completely, no longer itemization choices, vanished, aka gone. You are suggesting to move them elsewhere. These are completely different ideas with drastically different consequences.
I think they just need to adjust fighter ca's a bit, since at least half of them are **** for most fighters, same with scouts I suppose. They need to look at tank balance in general too =/.
The only problem with that is you complain "combat arts need a boost" and now we are left with all the autoattack gear being scaled out and replaced with massive potency gear. I would say that: - AoE Auto over 100 is converted into BaseCombatArt% (zerker's everywhere would love this... ) - Multiattack is removed and replaced with BaseCombatArt% Would significantly boost combat arts of both tanks and scouts and dropping multiattack reduce server loads (plus the curve of MA is not really beneficial to get more than 114% MA) oh and mitigation% and block% is given FOR FREE on all fighter only gear - its not just the reduced stats fighter's get (and the fact we need more of them) its the lack of reforging possibilities in order to maximise gear which stings the most.
