Brawlers - 4 year break. Then and now. (aka - wtf?)

So I haven't played EQ in 3-4 years. When I originally played I chose to roll a monk. I played a monk in the original EQ in a high end raiding guild on Veeshan server (before switching to Beastlorrd). I was part of the group that helped FoH clear PoP before anybody else. I thought I would enjoy playing a monk and hoped I would due to the fact I really don't want to play any other class. Maybe it's a little too much for me to assume that my class would have some role or niche in the game. Maybe it's ok for some classes to be damn near useless. Maybe I would call that a design flaw that should be hotfixed instead of waiting for an expansion to come out to address.
4 years ago - Monks were in the fighter archtype and thus were supposed to be tanks. However, they did high damage and most people would say that they were never meant to be tanks. Sony did not seem to have an answer. Some people tanked as a monk and did "ok". Though tanking as a monk required 3x the effort as tanking with any other fighter. Why is this? Because we have cool animations? We were a class that didn't have a defined role. Nobody wanted us to tank and there was much better DPS to be found. We could solo. Good thing too. See nothing being done or mentioned about my class being utterly neglected I left. This kind of reminds me of how paladins were treated in EQ1.
** insert 4 years of WOW
Two days ago - Monks are in the fighter archtype and thus we are supposed to be tanks. However, we can't tank end game content at all. We even have a hard time tanking group content. You could say we were DPS, but that would be a lie. Even other fighter archtypes (who are legitmate tanks) will out-dps us. Some people tank and do "ok". Why does tanking as a monk require 3x the amount of effort as other tank classes? Nobody wants a monk as a tank (Plate tank only plz) and they can find much better dps. I can solo. Good thing too. I look on the forums and see no development responses to anything. I see plenty of Monk/Bruiser flame wars, but even those are starting to die down since basically both classes are equally screwed.
4 years? 4 years??? How has this gone on for 4 years? Is the brawler community too busy fighting amongst itself to get anything noticed? Are developers blind? Do they even care? What in the hell is going on?

I'm not going to just flame and point without offering any type of suggestions. I'll offer some advice and who know, it may actually be read by somebody, somewhere, who can make a difference.

1 - The hybrid fighter. You want the monk to be the hybrid fighter. It can DPS (though not as well as pure), It can Tank (though not as well as pure). How do you do this?
- In my opinion the easiest way to accomplish this is through stances. A stance system is already in place so all we really have to do is alter the stances and base abilities themselves. It goes without saying that as it stands right now, the monk does not do enough DPS to compete and does not tank well enough to compete. So the absolute easiest thing to do in order to fix this is to buff the hell out of their stances. Make their defense stance increase their mitigation to plate levels and make their dps stance increase damage (%dmg! not haste, not anything that can be capped). A third stance that is combination of dps and defense which is used for soloing and pvp is a no brainer.

Paperninja wrote:

You answered your own question. They don't care. Even the solutions they have going forward to make them raid desireable doesn't actually make them tank better or make them dps better. Sounds to me like their plan is to make you a support class for other fighters.

Brawlers avoidance issues are suppose to be re worked to actually be of worth in the future. If so then both brawlers will possibly have more tanking appeal.
My issue is that most brawlers have always seen themselves as just dps when in reality they never really were a true dps class.

Aull wrote:

I'd argue that they were never really anything. They were trying to find a role for themselves and hiding behind the illusion of a DPS class was easier than pretending to be a tank. When you claim to be a tank and aren't, then the truth will be revealed quickly - especially to the healer. When you're saying that you're a DPS and you're not, then the truth is masked behind a wall of numbers that is not easily identifiable.
AT LEAST WE SOLO WELL.

Aull wrote:

So - Are they reworking Strike - Through as well? Or can we tank almost anything except --------> these (everything) <--------- mobs?

Paperninja wrote:

Not sure on the strikethrough.

biggest problem i see is the assumption that because you're a fighter you're supposed to tank. bards arent melee dps, despite being a scout; and thats not broken. chanters are more utility despite being a mage. thats not broken. brawlers dont use shields and wear inferior armor; i think its obvious SOE should be looking to make them the bard or chanter of the fighter class, not something that is going to be main tank of many raiding guilds. give them the utility so that they're desired in raids despite their inferior dps, and give them to tools to tank 6-mans when a plate tank cant be found, including a healer buff that would make them desirable in 6-mans if there is a plate tank in group already *brawlers fixed* the brawler fix is so much simplier then the plate tank fix; not really even need a discussion for it. the only reason why brawlers arent fixed yet isnt because SOE hasnt thought of a way to fix them, theres just so many ways to fix them, they cant decide.

Atavax311 wrote:

Chanters are great utility and t1 dps and to me the dps portion is far to high for what all they bring. When chanters are parsing equal and above sorcerers then to me that is an issue because sorcerers have very little utility.
Back to the brawlers. I for one would hate to see brawlers become a some what utility class. If anything monks could have more appeal if soe would allow superior repostie to become a group aoe prevention and fix raid wide buff as it was once before. Also rework med healing and they would be in much better shape than now.
Bruisers never had any utility so to speak for group members. They basically were never known for defensive abilities anyway so dps is where bruisers always were. If anything boost bruiser dps.
Then soe could actually fix brawler avoidance altogether helping both bruiser and monk. Fix it to where brawlers are immune to strikethrough. Make monk dragon rage to proc as encounter threat and do the same for bruiser's manhandle. These abilities would then be good for st and ae use.
Then it could be monk as tank, dps, & utility. Bruiser could be tank and strong dps but lacking the utility that a monk has.

I came back a year and a half ago and, even though SoE refuses to recognise the problem, there seems to have been improvements in that at least most players will admit there's a problem. Of course the downside of that is that, now that it's getting well known that brawlers have issues, it's even harder to get invites into raids. Harder to bluff your way in.
Now that my bruiser has his mythical, 200 AAs, is pretty much mastered out, and has gear of T2-T4 I can tank tough group content and some raid mobs (this will come to an end with the expansion of course). When I can get someone to let me do it. Which only happens when no plate tank is available. People will usually take a brand new level 80 plate tank (any class) in mastercrafted over a fully decked out brawler. You can't blame players much, because if you compare an equally geared brawler and plate tank there is no comparison.
It's already been said why brawlers usually pass themselves off as DPS when they really aren't. It's easier to pass yourself off as a DPS class, especially in a raid. Just hope that nobody is running a parse.
The fact that this problem has gone on so long and the fact that SoE has never given a clear acknowledgement that there are problems indicates to me that they'll probably never fix it. I don't know if it's because they can't; because they don't want to spend the time; or because fixed up brawler classes would encroach on some dev's favorite class. In any event I don't think they're going to do anything but cosmetic tweaks.
It's really in the players' court. People playing brawlers have to decide if they want to continue to play the game knowing they're the least desired of any class. Or they can reroll. I don't see any alternatives.
As for me; I'm looking for another game. Once I find one I really like I'm outta here.

To much time has been wasted already for brawlers fixes. So I rolled a swashy to go with my zerker. Much easier to get groups with these toons than my brawler.

Like some of you, I left for a while and came back to find brawlers still underpowered, much to my disappointment. It particularly sucks to be a brawler just starting to collect shards for shard armor. It's very frustrating to be LFG for hours, and then when you ask to join a group, they say (for any role) "we've already got a brawler", (for dps) "we don't need a fighter"/"we need a dps class", (for tank) "we need a plate tank", (for tank) "do you have your myth?" (expecting raid-acquired item for a freaking group!), etc. etc. Then the feeling of being dead weight when someone flashes a parse or the healer can't keep you alive (even if it's only b/c they are undergeared too). SOE has really dropped the ball, and kicked it around the floor for years. It's simply inexcusable.
I will say that if you manage to grin and bear it for a while and get into some t2/3/4 shard armor, dps/tanking is finally respectable enough to get into groups/raids w/o feeling like you're not carrying your weight. It's still not as good as it should be, but at least respectable.
I agree that our role should be tied directly to our stance. The t4 armor set bonus does this to a mild degree. If you're in Offensive, you get +8 mc, and in defensive you get +6% riposte chance, balanced is some of both. It's just a shame they didn't think of this 4 years sooner and that it requires fabled armor to get even a mild glimpse of what we should already have on our stances by default...
If I chided them night and day until the next expansion came out about neglecting brawlers, it wouldn't be enough to compete with the years of crap they've thrown our way. But since they are supposedly working on something for next expansion, I'll let it rest for now and see what they come up with.
Heck I'm even afraid that if they do "fix" brawlers then there'll be so many brawlers taken off the shelf that we'll be in the same boat of having a hard time finding groups just because there will be so many of us. But at least in that circumstance, I wouldn't be the class that the group settled for.

Paperninja wrote:

I doubt that you're going to see the strike-through mechanic go away; it was added for the high avoidance rates that plate tanks can achieve these days. Basically, I think Atan is right: it seems the direction they're going is for Brawlers to have more of a utility role, rather than a tanking role. I guess a simplistic way to put it would be that as Bards are to Scouts, Brawlers will be to Fighters.

Kordran wrote:

Exactly what evidence suggests that they're pushing us towards utility? We have what exactly: a raid buff (recently nerfed, while other tanks were all given one as well), no group buff (while plate tanks were given one), and an avoidance buff (which the plate tanks get as well). The idea that we're utility is nonsense.
On the other hand, recently they've given us chain mitigation, another tsunami, more snaps, terrible dps options, more deflection chance, etc. Basically everything they've given us of late has been tanking tools. Unfortunately, the +mitigation increase stat that's being handed out like candy to plate tanks far trumps anything we've been given, which more or less makes our tanking increases useless in comparison, but I think its pretty clear that the evidence suggests that the devs are thinking of us as tanks. It's just that for every one step we take forward plate tanks take two.

Next expac plate fighters get no increases to any tanking and dps abilities. Next expac brawlers get increases to any tanking and dps abilities. If that could happen maybe brawlers could be only one step behind.

At least most people put the Bruiser/Monk arguments down and focused on the overall issue of being neglected. What can we do to this fix this?
I'm going to keep this thread alive until I see some official sony response. Even if it is just from an admin. So instead of just bumping which would probably get me banned, I'm going to throw out my monk moments. I encourage you guys to join in the fun.
Tonight in guild -
Me - "Hey, if any of you guys have a "If I could do this over knowing.... " moment please don't be shy. It's been a while since I've played and could use all the help I can get.
Guild Member - "Scratch your monk and reroll. That's not a joke."
I can do is say, "wow".

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Nothing set in stone, just third-hand comments I've heard from people who were at Fan Faire. I won't get into a back and forth over what they should or shouldn't be doing for you guys, I don't play a Brawler so my only experience is playing with them, not as one. I wish you the best of luck with the next expansion.

Kordran wrote:

The extent of what I have heard from the brawlers who were present at fan faire was that they planned on making sure that the brawler avoidance buff was the best of all tanks'. Yes, this buff is pretty powerful, but avoidance lend alone does not a utility make. Battle Cry is an awesome buff...but that doesn't mean people would take dirges if they didn't have fortissimo, dKTM, hyran's, resist songs, crypt, etc.
And on the flipside, the greatest "utility" roll we had in RoK (peel/tsunami combo) has been killed by the rampant target lock immunities on everything and its mother. And despite pushing us towards a tanking roll (which I support fully), the deflection chance they've given us available less often than shield effectiveness (which does the same thing), and the % riposte chance they occassionally toss on set bonuses is wholly inferior to the +mitigation increase that is passed out on practically everything plate...in short, while we've made definite gains in tanking, we're comparatively worse off.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

The idea we're utility IS nonsense, I think people make that conclusion from the fact that the only thing that came out of fan faire about fixing this issue was they were going to give brawlers that improved avoidance buff. It IS a pretty big stretch from one passive buff to utility class.
Also agree that the TSO AA abilities seem to revolve around tanking as well as the brawler specific shard armor. So at least at the time they were putting together TSO it looked like they were still thinking of brawlers as tanks. Of course, if they'd actually tried to TANK with a brawler on a raid they'd have found out how tankworthy brawlers are.
It's like (probable) that SoE doesn't know what to do with brawlers (and doesn't spend a lot of time trying to figure it out). Most likely they gave them those tanking abilities in TSO without any deep thought.
"What do we do with brawlers?"
"They're fighters aren't they? Give them some tanking abilities."
"Ok, done. Now lets work on classes we care about."

Gilasil wrote:

Brawlers tank fine on raids.

dude give it up brawlers have issue big time why do you think there are so many complaining quit trying to act like your gods gift to the brawler world. akashut your mouth your hurting more then you are helping the brawler class