Focused Scout Feedback

It is an <extremely> modest change that would allow for audio triggers for when Cadence is at max potency and about to do its Grand Finale thing, to facilitate timing of RO/VC. As it is, there's only a visual signal available about Cadence's progress, because there's no combat text to me that it's been cast (unlike many other CAs).

Part of the fun for playing a dirge for me is trying to max RO/VC for my group (while also attending to all those corpses, ofc), and the ability to set an audio trigger for Cadence timing would help lots.

Brigs and swashies should be neutral. That would make them more fun to me.

AS someone that returned to EQ recently with limited knowledge of my class but one thing I knew was that we could debuff like no tomorrow and no one was as good as we were, now that is pretty much gone while not gaining much of anything. I am fine with being a debuff machine with some DPS but at least give us that back...

I looked at logs yesterday and the WtP damage component is landing and working on the overland named but the force direction change is not. *shrug* basically boils down to a long drawn out toe to toe fight instead of a fast lockdown and burn.

It's already been said but I'll add my agreement to it.

Rangers

Fun wise I think they're a fun class to play. The range issue is very valid though. It's our defining ability that we use a bow, yet we have to be in the sweet spot to use all of our abilities, which is melee range. If we were on par dps wise without using our close attacks, I'd understand. But we need to use those close abilities to actually be a T1 dps. Having an increased maximum distance for our current melee attacks I don't think would unbalance us. By all means have a lower max distance than our ranged attacks and CAs, but make it so we can at least stay a little away from the mob all the time, because a slight shift in the mob and he's too close, we lose our ranged abilities and maybe miss an autoattack round.

It's either extend maximum range of our melee CAs or remove min range of our ranged CAs. I'd prefer the first one.

As also pointed out, Trick Shot and Hawk Attack are pretty pointless compared to what they could be. Others have already given ideas as to how to improve them. And we need a HP debuff like all other scouts to be desirable on raids or at least a viable alternative. But these are not fun things, more balance vs other scouts.

What Mae- said:

Free the last 8 classes in 2013!

Yeah, I wasn't questioning the DPS part of WtP, only the lack of it flipping the overland named 180 degrees away from the rogues.

I debated about mentioning the "fun" spells, but I decided to bring them in my first post because the theme of Xelgad's thread was to make the classes more enjoyable and he wanted to included everything from the Prestige Abilities and combat arts that everyone gets at early levels. I didn't want my post to come from a "raider-only" perspective, and wanted to bring up something that also addressed issues that casual players might have with their classes.

I agree that the first round of changes should be focused on taking the frustrations out of scout abilities (pretty much Buffrat's first post on this thread.) After that first round of changes are done, then come back and ask for more feedback regarding other issues. THEN go and fix the fluff once all the higher priority issues are resolved. By no means did I mean for our fun spells to be priority #1 for the upcoming changes. They have higher priorities with these changes versus dinking around with the fluff stuff.

Hello, I'm an Assassin from russian server and i'd like to post feedback from some part of our community.
Sorry for the wall of text below, but I tried to highlight all important things!

General Scout issues:
- Evade has been useless for years, plase change it into something useful, or just add two-three '0' to the right of dehate value.
- like previously mentioned - Get rid of the behind only requirement on combat arts.
- When my target is moving and i'm running right behind it - All my melee combat arts are shown that target is in reach but they arent usable. It is very annoying on encuonters that require a lot of moving.
- Double checks of requirements (stealth, position, etc) - it is very frustrating when you begun to use your 0,25 second casting CA, but something has changed and game just dont let you finish it and gives you annoying reject message...
- But the most frustrating thing for me as a scout is brawler mob. This is horrible. When I start a fight and realise that my enemy is a brawler - I just stop pressing my buttons - whats the point anyway? Mob just ignores half of my actions, I cant even finish any my damage chain - something will always be evaded. And when the raid boss is brawler (hello Teku!) its just a huge moral down for me.
Please stop using brawles classes in encounter design, or better fix them entirely: make them like all other class in the game so they cant parry/block/deflect etc. attacks from the behind...

Assassin fun issues:
-Assassinate - lower the reuse timer to 3-5 minutes (like you've done with ShadowKnight's Harm Touch)
-Mortal Blade - lower the reuse timer to 1 minute or 2 minutes - so it could be used in every Fatal Followup chain, or every second one.
this two skills used to hit really hard years ago, so their reuse timers were justified, today they do moderate (in comparison to other nukes) damage, so please change it's reuse, or make them hard-hitting again.
-Make Massacre a pbaoe instead of a frontal.
-Exacting - make it's reuse timer start right after we used it - not when it wears off. there is no reason to cancel this ability earlier (I guess this is the main reason it's reuse currently works this way)
-Frontload - make it's reuse timer start right after we used it - not when it wears off. - same as Exacting
-Exploit Weakness - remove low damage component and make usable onty if Weakness Detected is triggered, so we will not rely on ACT triggers just to be able to use our skill, more details are below
-Death Blow has the problem with and Ability modifier applying to it like Exploit Weakness, more details are below


More focused assassin feedback:

KoS AA:
---
Int line:
Intoxication is almost useless due to it's casting time and reuse, Potent Toxins gives almost nothing to it - you get the same amount of ticks per 1 cast of Intoxication.
Wis line:
Smoke Bomb's reuse time is too long, Obfuscation's +10% damage to the next CA is interesting, however the choice of spells that trigger it (Stealth and Stalk) is bad and makes it difficult to use during our Fatal Followup chain.


Heroic:
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-Exploit Weakness has 2 lines of damage - the first -low damage one and second - the high damage one, due to game's mechanics Ability modifier works only for the first one and has cap of 50% of its damage, that is basically nothing.
Could you please swap this damage lines or entirely remove the first one( and make ability usable only if Weakness Detected is triggered) Also it is strange that our skill - Exacting doesnt work with Exploit Weakness - it has reuse timer lower than 1 minute!
It would be nice if Exploit Weakness can be usable only if Weakness detected is triggered (Like Warlock's Dark Aggravation), so trigger in ACT wouldnt be "must have". Or just make the icon to flash on our hotbar when it is triggered (like all abilities with reuse timers refreshed by prestige AA)
-Dexterous attacks - could you just double the damage on selected CA's insted of adding second damage line in the description.




Prestige:
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-Both new prestige lines are WORSE than double convertaton for following reasons:
New left line is worthless, its DPS improvement is worse than all other combinations ( Double convertation, pure right line). Nightblade is very frustrating skill to use due to it's behind only requirement AND it's damage is a joke. Endline - Nightblade's Intensity is useless: it only harms our gameplay - it is very difficult to get 12 increments RIGHT BEFORE our main casting order chain, for example if you got 11 - you have to stop usind stealth CAs until you want +25% potency to be triggered. this only harms our dps..
this endline is similar to Beast lord's one, but our stealth abilities have different reuse timers, and that, like I mentioned above, makes it extremely useless and frustrating. Please change this line completely - to be more in old-left-line's style.

New Right line is better than left one, but worse than Double convertation, abilities here are boring.

Please Allow us to pick old prestige AND new one separatly, for example old left + new right - it is not right that 2 prestige trees from different expantions are connected

Combat Arts:
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-Death Blow has the same problem with lines of damage and Ability modifier like Exploit Weakness, but it is worse: ability modifier affects only the first line BUT if target is under 33% health - only the second - the higher one damage line works, so basically it doesnt get ANY benefit from Ability modifier when the highest damage is triggered.

General issues:
-There are too many buffs/icons in our maintained / spell window, so it is really easy to miss an important thing, and that windows have around 50+ icons cap. Today it isnt enough, even solo I can reach a state when i have more buffs than it is shown in UI. For example I cant find effect Weakness detected in my maintained window, because it is full of useless(useless to know about I mean) effects like Paralytic Venom and Advance Scout, or gear prosc like +10 potency/cb.
Could you please remove all unimportant effects from our maintained window and increase the icon cap!

if you make Assassins "big" attacks lower re-use, please don't lower them in PvP.

I find that the assasssin has been over looked in genral, giveing us 2 endlines that are way to weak for a t1 dps to force us to take dual conversion, thats just to lame, talk about lowering times might sort out some of the problems but one big time loser for all scouts is the fact that posions dont crit anymore. u have overpowered BL warlocks and not to forget the tanks reckless stands, and the list just keeps on going, Make some chances to the dps for assassins to let them back in the role they where born for.

Heroic:
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-Exploit Weakness has 2 lines of damage - the first -low damage one and second - the high damage one, due to game's mechanics Ability modifier works only for the first one and has cap of 50% of its damage, that is basically nothing.

I know you aren't asking one of the absolutely most powerful skills in the game to be better... Is your wallet too full with 100 dollar bills too?

This.

And this.

And this would be nice, even if just to make it flash so we don't need the ACT trigger.

Bards

Run Speed -- in Everquest Bards have been able to run the fastest... why not make them run at mount speed while out of combat (with a little buff so it compares to normal mounts).

If you are looking for simple tweaks, then a simple change for Beastlords would be to give the same HP and survival stats to all the BL warders at max level, then we can actually see some variation in warders at endgame, because otherwise all we see is the same few skins of the spiritual warder. This is really just a cosmetic change but I am sure everyone would enjoy the chance to vary appearances. This 'should' be easy to do and is not a class balance issue.

Edit: There may be extra dps issue for some warders but to be honest the actual warder dps differences are miniscule.

Greetings, another long time veteran Brigand here, although I rarely post. Was just discussing with Ruckus on what can be done for Rogues. I won't touch on DPS, as that's more of a balance issue. We're here to talk about what makes us fun to play, right? I'll tell ya what makes us fun to play - being effective at what we do.....or once did.

In classic EQ2, Brigands were the #2 least played class, right behind Coercers. No one knew what they did, or could do, many didn't even know they existed. DoF changed all that with the introduction of Dispatch and Amazing Reflexes. Suddenly, they were awesome, and a must have in raids and groups. Their presence was felt considerably - mobs noticably dropped faster. But the importance and impact of mitigation has considerably lessened with every additional expansion. Nowadays, everyone debuffs something, to the point where a Brigand's addition seems negligible. Swashys have it just as bad, but at least they have AoE capabilities to fall back on, but that's neither here nor there. I'm not asking for more DPS or AoEs. I'm asking to bring back the specialty that we were once known for. What was fun for me was doing my role and being appreciated for what I once was, when it was considered useful utility.

Scouts -
- Someone mentioned making all backstabs back/positional instead. I agree that this is somewhat needed today. Nowadays, high DPS classes tear into a mob so fast and quick, they're constantly turning and running around to attack someone else. I find few things more frustrating than struggling to stay at and chase after a mob's backside just to have it die before I can do much of anything. Allowing me to get everything in from a mob's side would save a lot of time and trouble, and just make things more enjoyable to do.

- Evade - This has done almost nothing for years. As auto-attack damage has skyrocketed, little has been done for combat arts to catch up, and that goes double for deaggro abilities without hate position decreasers. To become useful again, Evade must become much more potent. What if, for instance, it had multiple effects? On top of the initial deaggro, have Evade apply an additional -50% Hate mod to the next 1/2/3/4/5 Combat Arts (dependent on CA grade), plus maybe an additional deaggro proc per CA while it lasts.

Rogues -
- There was a time when a Rogue's purpose was clear. They're debuffers, the best at what they do. But for them to regain this distinction in a valuable way, they need something else that gives them an edge over the debuffs of others. I've pondered on how to do this for ages. Only thing I can think of so far is one that's not likely to be implemented, but I might as well put it out there - allow Rogues exclusively to bypass the debuff caps to a certain extent. For Brigands, the maximum Mitigation/Resist/Defense cap. For Swashys, the Stat/Attribute/Weapon Skill/Focus etc. cap. Like say, if a mob had 20000 resist to something, a group/raid could ideally get it down to 10000. A Brigand's debuffs, calculated after everyone else's, could bypass this cap by, say, 25%, lowering it further to a maximum of 7500 if they can reach it.

Swashbuckler -
- Storm of Steel - Absolutely needs a complete revamp. Even if it just becomes an AoE like Stream of Arrows did for Rangers, it would be a huge improvement (and easy to implement). No one likes useless CAs, and no Swashy uses this today.

Brigand -
- Band of Thugs - I'm also in favor of changing this up entirely. Another example of a CA made useless and entirely unused. If swarm pet CAs will never be made formidable or greatly damaging, we'd rather just have it become something else. Only, I'm not sure what. Its name suggests a group buff of some sort, but I'm sure we'd rather have some sort of attack instead. Wizard's Rays of Disintegration come to mind (all mages in the Wizard's group cast it simultaneously when activated), but instead of just other scouts joining in, include fighters as well for a large, unified attack. Maybe give those eligible some offensive bonus for a short period afterward, with significantly increased hate modifier for fighters involved.
- Thieve's Guild - Interesting buff in theory, but my options on whom to throw it on are somewhat limited. I'm good enough to give whomever its on the maximum benefit, but getting anything back my way is another issue. For one, It only works on CAs cast, meaning spells used don't apply. If spells worked with it as well, I could greatly broaden my options on whom to put it on to get benefit back my way. It'd be good news for that Shadowknight in guild that always wants the buff.
- Double Up - I'm also in favor of something extending this to "Triple Up". Be it through AA, Prestige, straight up higher tier replacement, one way or another.

I wish I could think up more, but I was only just made aware of this thread, and since it closes up in less than a day, my time is limited. Still, I can only hope my input makes some sort of impact on making Rogues, and Scouts in general, a more enjoyable experience.

Brigand:
why i stopped playing brigand as main: the positionals are exhausting. you cant find the mob's back in many fights.
mobs even look like they are facing a different direction, but the visualization is not correct (game bug). so very often the back CAs go off allthough you look into the mob's face / the back CAs dont go off, when you are perfectly behind them.
suggestions:
1) It's ok to lower the damage or reduce the debuff amounts of positional CAs if the hit from other directions, but dont make the lowerence 100% as it is now.
2) Enhance in-combat and in-combat hidden speed for brigands

brig- soften the back stab requirements. improve double up thru AA or something.
troub - group/raid jcap
dirge - faster rez, group/raid wide gravitas, more damage on CoB
assassin-
♣ drop reuse of assassinate and mortal blade to 1 min(to be in line with primal).
♣ make intoxication a regular proc that triggers 1.2 - 2.2 times a minute, having to recast is not fun.
♣ for prestige make the right side the solo side (since you can cast conceal chain while tanking a mob) and make the right side the dps side. add substantial crib bonus to the right side as the conversions suggest.
♣ have each aoe target hit increment fatal follow up like it did for a short time in TSO. i actually didn't feel useless on aoe fights while that was around.

All above , ty Buffrat