Beginning of the end for Brigands? to a much lesser degree Swash...

Please do not change our dispatch! Making it melee only and damage will just make it the same as Debilitate or however that lvl 80 CA is spelled. Please don’t make us weaker to make another class appear stronger. In fact Brigand should be a class you should be looking at helping not hindering. We are the debuff scout and should not lose that.

My wife plays a brig, and the only reason that character was created and PLed was due to the wizard nerfs that lead them to perform poorly as intended in comparison to other casters. Yes the wiz can do great DPS, if they have TC, choker, a bard, and at this point a Brig.
After hearing the rumor of the class being nerf, she has come to terms we may find a new game because she refuses to start over again.
I see no point in diminishing a classes primary strength to share with other classes to make them more appealing. In theory Brigs primary role is DPS, but can they compare with Preds in general, or swashs in AE situations?
I have also seen summoners do decent DPS, especially necros if they get heals through life burn. They are considered to be the best soloing class's. Do they really need to fill two niches, Debuff and Soloist?
Make some of the abilities they already have stronger. Let them cast a tank pet that can actually fill in the absence of a off tank. Have hearts/shards be a buff that procs off the mob always refreshing to a new stack of each, shorten the recast time on them, have them use up less health. That along would make them more desireable and lessen the need for so many chanters on raids.
I would really like to see EQII keep going strong for awhile since there does not seem to be any good alternatives in the near future.

Fracus@Guk wrote:

Well thats probably why SOE said that Brigands and Swash are also going to start sharing abilities. You know, like HURRICANE.
Also, to the person above that posted about how the Swash and Conj will debuff more....it is definitely still equal because decreasing the defense of the mob significantly helps the entire raid put out a lot more dps and get the job done faster. Decreasing the mobs DPS output really only affects the tank most of the time, or can usually be healed through and becomes trivial once people gear.

Bruener wrote:

While we don't know the specifics yet, I'm sure what they talking about is more along the lines of giving Brigs our offensive debuffs and giving us Brig defensive debuffs.
They stated that they planed to have us share abilities in order to make it so a raid does not require both a swash and brig and that would open up raid slots for other classes. Since raids don't chose a Swash because we have hurricane I doubt Brigs can expect to be getting that. Swashy is wanted for our offensive debuffs, agro transfer and AoE block. Since our AoE block is a Swashy tree AA I doubt Brigs will get that. That pretty much leaves debuffs and agro transfer.
That's happens to be the real issue imho.
First, why is it that we are the only ones that have to basically become the same class in order to make room for other classes in a raid setting. I think we can all agree that the current dev team is certainly not the brightest bunch we've seen, but this is beyond dumb for even them.
Second, of they do give us same debuffs and agro transfer than thats going to screw over Brigs big time as there will be no reason to take a Brig over a Swashy since we have AoE block and they don't.
Regardless of the outcome, this whole deal proves only one thing. The current dev team is not up to snuff in terms of game design for EQ2.

i said this before on this thread i think. brigs and necros need to be the defensive debuff classes and conj and swash need to be the offensive debuff classes. there just aren't enough defensive debuffs to go around for 4 classes unelss they remove ALL defensive debuffs from ALL the other classes.. and that point soloing and small groups will become lame as hell, specially with current mob resist and avoid.

I play Brig since the beginning of this game and I tasted all the nerf we took, but I think that this one will really distroy the class... I went along with the others because they didn't touch our debuff. It was ok for me to drop AR or to drop dps as long as I can still do this: debuffing...
I agree with Serenade. If the change go through, you can just delete the Brig from the game...
I don't know what's the problem with Brig on raid. Ho, he takes 1 place on 24 (I can remember there are 24 class in this game...) and you can still do raid without it... You can't do raid without healers, bards or coercer/illu and you need far more than one for that (even with the incoming changes on buff)... But everybody is ok with that.
I really want to understand why it's Brig that need to give everything he had to others class to balance raid force... You don't need a brigand for another thing that their debuff...
If you want a non magic dps, take an assassin/ranger or even a swash. If you want debuff, if the nerf go live, just take a swash, he can do the same debuff and even more dps. If you want group buff, take a dirge/troub, Brig only have two buff to give and one is share with swash in shadow AA! If they only give us an aggro transfer in return it's just incredibly insane...
I never whined on this forum in 5 years, never. But those people who say that it's a minor change or not a nerf just balancing have never play Brig or just don't care of what he will become...
Sorry for my poor english but I just wanted to talk on this subject (even if it will change nothing if SOE really want to do that..)
My only last request will be to rename this class if the changes go live, because it will have nothing to do with Brigand and the identity it had in the last 5 years...
ps: By the way, my guild's raid is full of magical dps. I leave you a quizz: who do you think will loose his slot in raid after all these changes?

My original main was a templar and I played him for 3 1/2 years before he was retired.
With that being said, my current main is a brigand and has been for nearly a year. He was originally a swashy but I betrayed because the guild I was in needed a brigand for the debuffs in raids and already had a swashy. It took a little getting used to but I wouldn't trade my brig for the world.
If you plan on nerfing the class by moving some of our debuffs to summoners, you need to give us a lot more back than what you are taking.

• Our agro issues are well known. Give us a fixed % dehate buff or increase the effectiveness of our deagros.
• Our dps is lower than our counterpart, the swashbuckler, in both single target and AE encounters. Increase our base CA damage by 10-15% on single target encounters. There's no denying we are Single Target DPS and NOT AE. With so many AE encounters in the current content, we do need something to make our spot viable in a group. Adding another AE or adding a 25-30% chance for our auto-attack to hit all mobs we are currently facing would improve that.
• Amazing Reflexes is negated by damage and almost every raid mob has a damage shield. Why not an AA that would allow AR to continue even on damage?
• Shenanigans is useless in all settings. Mobs in instances hit hard enough without crits and requiring us to be hit to do the damage makes this Combat Art suicidal. With the snap agro abilities from tanks, 95% of the time its used its simply a waste. Alter it into a 2min reuse CA for a 5k+ hit that reduces our defense and parry for 1min and keeps the positional jump but does NOT require us to be hit.
• Will to Survive doesn't do enough for the amount of AA's required to get it and for being an end-line ability. Instead of a 2% health debuff on an epic mob, you could alter it into a 20sec temp buff with a 1min reuse that adds a positional drop to our attacks and procs a DD on a successful melee attack. This would resolve some of our agro issues and bring the CA in line with its name while adding some dps.

Our class is defined by our ability to debuff the defense of a mob. Summoners are defined by their ability to control pets while still being casters.
You want to make summoners more "desireable" in raids by moving some of the brigands debuffs to them. Why? So that after that patch you can listen to class-X cry because they are no longer desired in raids because of reason-Y?
It is and will always be a never ending battle.
The solution is NOT nerfing another class to make another one more desireable. With the mechanics as they are currently, you require 4 enchanters and 4-5 bards in a raid due to the buffs they bring.
Altering some of those buffs, but not all, to be raid-wide enhancements would reduce the dependancy on those classes. Due to the way AA's are setup, most classes run a "cookie-cutter" style selection. Making buffs such as Fortissimo, Allegro, Don't Kill The Messenger, etc go raid-wide would still allow for "thinking outside the box" so to speak. Altering Illusory Arm, Time Compression, etc to be cast on multiple players with a set limit to 1 person per raid group (max of 4) would reduce dependancy on enchanters. Allowing power regen of both archetypes to go raid-wide would also help.
If you want to help summoners, give them something to bring to the table for the GROUP they are in. Take their fire seed buff for example. Have it go group-wide with a single conc slot requirement and increase its dps by at least 200% and up the proc rate substantially. With the alteration of one spell, you've increased what they bring to the table. Have their AA's enhance their pets to help the class they are based off - i.e. air pet (scout) could increase the groups haste and dps by 30 if the summoner spec'd for it. Their earth pet (fighter) could decrease the hate of all non-fighters in a group by 25% (group-wide moderate if you will). Mage pet could increase the base damage of all magic based spells by 5%.
All of this ties into the same thing in the long run... Do NOT nerf the brigand class to help another class that lost their place in raids because of the way the mechanics are in the game currently.
Reduce the dependancy on utility in raids and increase what the less desired classes bring to a group.

Honetly I think this would have been a good idea if it was implemented years ago. Doing it now is too late, too many people have grown into their role in groups and raids.
IMO there are plenty of other options besides stripping one class. I normally play an Inq. If you took away the restrictions on Fanaticism, I could keep it up all the time and still be able to heal. And make Inquest a group wide proc like Temps combat glory, mana would be less of a problem. Give another class a decent DPS buff and we could fill in for one of the very necessary utilities.

I've already abandoned my Brig and returned to my SK as raid main...ironic really, since I rolled my brig over a year ago when SK's couldn't buy beg or steal a raid spot.
Brigs are doneskis as a raiding class if these changes go live.
Now just waiting for the tank "re-screw" which will probably cause me to cancel all my accts and ban SOE products forever.

It's totally pointless to play a game with a rotating list of useless classes.

P.S. i've stuck with SOE through thick and thin since '99 so for me to cancel and ban = kinda a big deal on a personal level

Wow, all this class consolidation sucks!
So, a Brigand is going to be basically the same as a Swashbuckler.
A Necromancer and Conjuror summon creatures... but also debuff because that's a cool random thing for them to do.
Bards and Enchanters aren't going to be as useful, so you know what this means right?
It means we're going to have a LOT of healers (I even hear Warden's are getting some groovy debuffs)

*severely edited*
The heck with it. If they decide to nerf us in this manner, I can always find another game.

Fracus@Guk wrote:

Please stop posting. If you don't know anything about a class, don't give your expert (read: wrong) analysis. That goes for most people in the thread when I look back on it.

But since you didn't even bother to figure out what's really wrong with summoners, above all else, is utility (As in when a summoner goes to a raid, other classes can easily bring what they bring to a raid and then some. As in when the rest of your dps turns the suck stance off, summoners are no longer needed since they'll be replaced by a T1 DPS and the utility they would've had is already covered by other classes that outperform their utility and dps capability).

After the change, what you say about summoner will be true for Brigand, except if they do a really good job at giving us something worth it (I'm maybe pessimistic, but after 5 years bearing SOE policy, I'm quite desabused ).
Brigand bring nothing but debuff. We don't have groupe buff, we don't do fantastic dps, we don't have cool solo buff we can give to other people. So they are going to give you our magical debuff, and they will, whatever arguments we will bring to them because they have just decided to do so (SOE way of doing). I really hope it will help you having a spot in raid, really .
But what about Brigand? While we have info on your changes, it's hard to get some on ours. They are talking to merged Brig and Swash because they are both need in raid, I though it was the case for most of the class: you need both illu and coercer, both dirge and troubi, both defiler and mystic etc... So why rogue.
About mitigation debuff, lots of class have one and the mob it's already caped anyway, so I hope they will give us something different. If they give dispatch to Swashi too, I hope they will give us a new thing that nobody have because in the state of our skills, no way we can compete with swashi.
My problem is more about information. We have none. We are just waiting to be hit by a big nerf we know that anyway will come, but we don't know how we will be finish off. I'm sure you can understand that.
I'm quite disgusted. I never thought we will finish to loose dispatch and I hope they will bring back the stuff they took from us because of this debuff. Now I just wait and see. I fell like I want to just quit but I'm a junkie I guess lol

Vanand@Nagafen wrote:

And you are one of these people, who think that taking class defining skills from a class that is allready used only once in a raid, is the correct way? Back in the day on some major kills like Druushk we didnt even had a brigand. Some times we just happen to not have one arround and we raid successfully without one. So you take stuff from a class that barely has a raid slot and make it worse? What about those 4 enchanters and bards? Enchanters are T1 dps nowdays and still bring lots of support. Go take something from them.
The Brigand has not been fun for ages. Swashys compete with us in single target dps. On aoe fights swashys completely smoke us. We are nowhere near the dps of T1 classes like Assassins or wizards. Our debuffs are good but lets see it from another point. So many classes bring Mitigation debuff that the cap is allready reached on raids.
End-abilities like will to survive are utterly crap. We completely miss any type of aoe dps. We bring zero group utiliy (expect thieves way which is, compared to other 80 ancients, completely junk). We have no cool selfbuffs. If you ask me, the dev are going into a complete wrong direction with the brigand class. The fun factor went downhill in the last 2 years

Darkor@Venekor wrote:

Well for starters. Live in that boat you describe that is so bad, and you've had the life of a summoner and ranger for quite some time, and to a less degree, brawlers and druids. Though i do feel your pain. SOE shouldnt fix one class by taking an ability from another balanced class, take it from one thats overpowered. I just can't stand how ****** out utility is and how necessary 4 bards and 4 enchanters is. And how no one feels like that is an issue... BTW if they make one illy able to give 4 TCs to a raid members(1 per grp), that only means that:
1. If you can only cast 1 tc per group, that means when your illy is gone, you /fail the raid.
2. if you can cast more than 1 tc per group. why not bring 4 illys???
Either way, it will backfire.

I guess I'm upset they picked brig for the nerf. There are other classes that bring more to the raid that could have given up something. If this change is going thru we need to ask for something in return.. AOE's, etc

You can ask, beg, and scream until you're blue in the face....once your class is targetted for the nerf bat, the only thing you can do is watch.
Rangers have screamed since RoK that they needed a bump...they got their focus aim buff to go group wide and a few minor tweaks to it.
Summoners have screamed since EoF...they're finally being thrown a bone which is being ripped out of the brigs.
If you honestly think about it, at least from what info I've heard, the only thing they are taking is the magic debuff off of rake. If thats all they take, I'd be fine with a 25% increase on the damage in return. If they want to take the cold debuff from the snare, sure - just make sure you add a damage component to it instead so that its still worth having on the hotbar.
The best part of all though - Regardless of what we, the paying players, ask for... SOE will do what they always do - whatever they want. No use in posting anything further, the only thing the players can do is wait and watch while the gods toy with their puppets.

Backpayne@Everfrost wrote:

Do you really think that a little accuracy for 15 seconds out of every minute is keeping us in raids?? Be better off bringing another coercer for the troub illy grp than putting the ranger there.
Sure you lose some dps but you gain the optimized dps of the coercers buffs and his own dps, but again, dps isn't like heals/tanking. All it means is that the fight is a smidge longer.....

Why pick on BRIGANDS ????

classes created worldwide, from most to least.
Wizard-------------301501
Berserker----------236620
Shadowknight-------226727
Necromancer--------221519
Ranger-------------194134
Fury---------------191461
Gaurdian-----------183670
Monk---------------180840
Paladin------------174953
Conjuror-----------165128
Warden-------------164662
Assasin------------164390
Warlock------------163677
Bruiser------------135315
Dirge--------------123375
Swashbuckler-------120261
Templar------------110285
Troubadour---------100431
Illusionist---------99730
Mystic--------------88249
Inquisitor----------87865
Defiler-------------84078
Brigand-------------84067
Coercer-------------81899

"talking to merged Brig and Swash " And what's a raid guild gonna do with 'extra" members?