Here is my feedback about playing a dirge. Playing a dirge is currently a bore. Nerf after nerf has killed what used to be a fun class. Root is useless, Daze is useless, Fear is useless, Stun is useless, Invisibility is useless, Speed is useless,Slows target is useless, Autoattack is useless, VC is almost useless, all our naturals CAs and Spells (all!) are useless, Bria's Inspiring Ballad is useless... and I think you get the picture. There is very few little love for our class, Dirge's Refrain 2 is exactly identical to Dirge's Refrain. Bria's Inspiring Ballad X is identical to Bria's Inspiring Ballad IX, Songster's Luck X, ancient +75 combat arts, +56.000 abily mod (Did anyone really see this and think, yeah, it's okay), Riana's Rentless Tune XI, Ancient +8Cb overcap. Also, few people play a Dirge, few people vote for bugs, so no bugs fixed since I dont know when. Good luck if you think Gravitated Healing will increase your Dirge Refrain. Right now I only play because my wife is playing. As soon as she gets tired, I'm gone.
Unfortunately, this is the case for nearly every class but DPS, 2 healers, and a coercer. The rest have been entirely forgotten and or ignored.
It's so damn sad that invisibility is useless. I've tried it, but pretty much everything sees through invis, so why have it in game at all? Like you, I only play because my GF likes it and I've paid for the year-long account. I have about 6 months left and whether my GF plays or not, this is likely my last time. This game is a broken mess and there is literally no communication from the company - at least, that I've found. I did like the fact that they released a Road Map, but, that's not communication by any stretch of the imagination. Suggestions: Quit trying to balance the classes and let each one be what it was intended to be. Let the players decide how to use the skills and spells; one of the best unintended consequences in OG EQ for character skills was FD pulling, and it's now an integral part of raiding and splitting (e.g.).
Playing a bard has become unrewarding. In my raid it is difficult to have long term utilities. A lot of work and a lot of effort that is not reflected in ACT. And no, giving buffs to others so that they have a great parse while yours is garbage, is not fun. Those who always say others should settle with it, don't play a bard. In the end, players get stuck in a character that is no longer fun for them, but there is no room for them if they switch to another class. So they leave the game. Please give the bards some love in a hurry. Stop mistreating some classes. I think it's not complicated to get all their spells and combat arts to do double or triple damage, they will still be the least dps scout. There is no room for more conjurors, rangers and furies in the game.
I wrote this because I almost quit the game after seeing that the pet of an almost unequipped conjuror, parses more than my Dirge in the contested zone. My Dirge is perfectly equipped, has all the buffs, all the bonuses, the best merc, mount and familiar. Last expansion I posted on Discord the best parse of a Dirge all year. I am not a beginner. I find it very frustrating that an auto pet of a character who has 200 fervor points less than me, does more dps than me. I think the developers have never cared for the Bards. They nerfed in the worst way a critical spell for us (VC) without even putting a note because it was the easy way to solve a single combat of a zone that nobody does anymore and without evaluating the consequences it would have for us. They nerfed all the CAs because melee-based DPS were doing too much damage, without thinking about how little Bards parse. They increased the spells values of all mages to compensate for the mitigation difference with respect to CAs and left us in oblivion again. They have not fixed a single bug that affected only bards and whose end result benefits us. And it's not because they don't exist. They have duplicated spells between different tiers without even changing a comma. We have spells with ridiculous bonus values that do not improve from expansion to expansion. They simply do not evaluate if the value is correct. They force Bards to be power feeders but they forget that Dirges are not able to keep the mana to a group all the combat. Who wants a Dirge as a power feeder? I'll answer you, nobody. This is frustrating and I'm giving up.
We have dirge's that solo power feed raid groups and through contested H3's. Yes, we are wanted...Hmm. You simply have to swap some stuff around, but thats not the point. It's great that you posted the Best parse last xpac... there lies the problem.. u worry about the parse and not the success of what you bring to the raid. Whether its powerfeed, ability to off tank adds if you don't have a 2nd tank or dont' want those "OP" pets doing it. Yes they nerfed auto attack when u could simply reforge gear into certain stats and afk while you raided lol.. yes AFK.. it wasn't hard to parse.. not sure why that was super exciting for u. They fixed mages because well.. they are DPS lol.. Are there things wrong.. sure.. are you not wanted as a bard.. hardly.. do YOU get bored playing a bard. .probably because you said it simply enough when u don't show up on the parse high enough, what you're intentions are.. You've been spoiled by broken mechanics from 2 expacs ago.. then when classes like mages were completely borked and needed the boost to help them even achieve a group you complain. A bard is there for support.. not dps.. is it fun.. it's as fun as you make it /shrug.. if you don't have fun playing it and want to see yourself on top of the parse. then play a dps class that should be on top of the parse lol. I see my class success when raid mobs die and we move on. This is why class forums this summer will not work.. you didn't talk about anything on this feedback of anything other than this sucks, this sucks, and not enough dps for me.. A pet class with less stats beat me... blah blah blah.. SO where do you want to see bards in relation to t1 dps.. Should we always beat healers.. should we always beat dpsing tanks? What's your thoughts... Oh yea, i Play a dirge and power feed just fine with 0 issues as well as the other dirge in our raid.. why are we solo powerfeeding.. well our chanters decide to take the same nights off all the time lol.. just is what it is. Yes some spells are cookie cutter as last expac.. bug them.. there are even current ascensions that are worse that last tier ascensions.. they've been bugged.. maybe they get fixed.. maybe they won't.. but I know one thing.. they won't get looked at if you don't submit.
Every time a bard complains about how little dps he currently does compared to the past, someone pops up throwing it in his face that he wants to be a T1 with a bard. No one here has said they want to be a T1, no one has said they want to be AFK while auto-attack does all the work. Simply, bards want to be just as competitive as they were before. Just look at all the bards with over a decade playing who quit because they are no longer satisfied with their class. They all suddenly want to be T1? I doubt it. Something is wrong with a class when it has less and less players.
I knew that people would reduce it to "you want to parse like a T1" and I had already planned not to answer that kind of comments. But you ask me a fair question, why do I complain instead of opening a bug? Well, the truth is that I did it, I did it again, I did it again, and I even did it again adding test videos so that the developers had it as easy as possible to fix it. The result? Nada. Nothing at all. Not even a verified bug tag. Now, you'll understand that I ask you a question. Didn't you notice that Gravitated Healing doesn't affect Dirge's Refrain? Didn't you notice that Degradadate doesn't work correctly? Didn't you notice that March of Blades only works depending on the order in which you cast the spells? Didn't you notice that Percussion of Stone doesn't work correctly? If so, why didn't you support the bugs or open them on your own. And if you didn't realize it, why do you come here to tell me how to play a Dirge when it's obvious that you just push the buttons without checking the results?
There's validity on both sides of the argument in this thread. It is a problem that the most popular measure of success in EQ2 isn't even part of EQ2...ACT. Bentenn is absolutely right that the measure of success should be beating the progression of the game and players should choose to play classes that allow them to fulfill the play style they desire. That said, the problems stated in the thread about playing a Dirge are actually rooted in a fundamental problem with EQ2. The development process is irresponsible. I don't know of an industry that uses popular vote to not only fix bugs, but to even bother looking at them. It's one thing to take customer opinion into perspective in prioritizing bugs, but that's not what's going on here year over year. Releasing broken code or ignoring numbers and their impact on content is acceptable in EQ2 development. Some of the issues we experience are seen as soon as we start playing so how could they have not been seen in development? Also, various AAs across just about all classes have been broken for years even after the last 2 AA revamps. How can something so centralized and impactful on everyone be ignored for so long? Then they keep building new mechanics on top of legacy broken code/values. What do they expect when we find and report new bugs because old bugs were never addressed? The foundation of the game is perpetually broken because the primary focus is on an annual expac release cycle which isn't just about new content, but also new micro-transactions, mechanics to combat, loot, etc...all while continuing to ignore the most important aspect of any character and that's how their class functions and performs. I agree that class forums will likely not work. We already have class, feedback, and bug forums. How will adding a new set of forums with the same rules of voting for changes be better than the existing forums? It's just another place to potentially be ignored from the players' perspective. It would be good to hear that they decided to invest in QA and hire more full-time employees to test new development as well as regression test existing features as well as new programmers to fix these legacy bugs and help minimize new problems. Instead of new PvP and TLE servers, we need a new Test server that acts just like Beta. It's not a mystery why bugs are quickly found in new Live content because that's where people play on their mains. Not enough people play on the existing Test server with characters who can adequately expose enough bugs in new code before release. However, when we do get new code pushed to Beta we often find many bugs very quickly. The problem with Beta is many issues uncovered there don't get addressed or acknowledged before being pushed to Live, so from a Software Development perspective, what's the point? This is my perspective based on what I've observed over the years. I'm open to being corrected though if I've simply misunderstood. Good luck all. Keep the bugs, feedback, and discussion coming.
They were only truely competitive because of a broken RO/VC in the day and then auto attack being out of control lol... that's competitive? They were happy because they were able to bring all those needed buffs and still be competitive on a parse, like up top, because dirges could do it insanely well lol, again due to broken abilities. We field 5 bards currently, 3 dirges and 2 troubs. and Yes.. read every single post people make, they compare themselves as a bard to a t1 dps.. every single time... why, because they used to be able to do it. Bards as support you should be competitive, but not with T1 dps (which by the way, from what I've been reminded, there is no such thing anymore lol). The only support class that is out of this world high is chanters because of mimic but we won't even go there. Look at the sheer amount of people that quit because mages were messed up for 2 months last expac, resulting in a lot of raid guilds losing mass amounts of people. Again, I've said in numerous posts we can be fixed by increasing our support, not our dps. Sure we can boost some of our CA's but CA's are pretty borked across the board right now, and it sux because we are both spell and CA sure, but comparing ourselves as bards to T1 dps'ers and saying we should be close is just simply going to get overlooked as it has so far.
