Your face is useless. If I were to order the desirability of scouts in a raid I'd go: Dirge Troub Assassin Ranger Swashbuckler Clown's face Beastlord In all seriousness swashbucklers dps has been left behind, and guilds are clearing stuff without them.
^ You forgot Brigand You were close though, it's dirge, troub, brigand, sin, ranger, clown's face, swash, beastlord :3. Census data from 2 days ago, there's apparently only 4 beastlords in wing 2 of Guardian's Edifice, one of which has kill Klandicar / Zlandicar. Swash is not much further ahead, 8 in wing 2 and only 3 have killed Klandicar. To compare, 23 brigands have killed Klandicar But more of that when I make a fancy thread on class progression It's not that swash dps has been left behind, it's an issue of we need too many mobs to dps - heroic content supports this with the fabled KoS zones and a few ToV ones, but raid cannot support it without causing lag. Basically in raid when there are enough things to trigger a Lucky Gambit reset (which, by the way, is 20% of our maximum dps...) there's so much combat data you get lag, which means we can only get one AoE off between auto attacks and thus we can't do full dps anyways. In short, our dps exists in the lag zone.
Combat art DPS and debuffs, at least compared to the debuffs a brigand brings to the table. When we do more DPS on auto attack vs. hitting 2-3 combat arts, there is something wrong. Weren't our debuffs supposed to matter in ToV raid zones? Apparently not, because top end guilds are doing fine without swashbuckler debuffs.
I'm fine in the solo zones with my healer merc that tags along to cure me. My ACT CA/AA trigger never has any problems, even if I pull a bunch of mobs and AoE them all down. My biggest problem in regards to lag comes from raid zones. Even on single target fights (or fights with a few adds that die fast), the ACT CA/AA trigger either doesn't ding at all or it's just dings non-stop; it is to the point that I just turn off ACT. Sometimes, I just don't button mash at all, because I'm unable to time my combat arts with my auto attack because of the lag. I know I do more DPS auto attacking at this point, because our CA DPS is worthless, as are our debuffs. I'm using 6.0 weapons instead of 4.0, because of the lag, and I am treating a few of our blue AoEs like they are for single target fights. The fights where we are supposed to rock it on the parse, are hindered because of the lag.
To be fair. every class, AoE or not experiences the same performance issues with lag on big multi-mob pulls like DC trash. While my parses would be higher if my commands triggered in a timely manner, I am still where I should be on the parse (First or second, but we do not run a Warlock) due to the lag taking it's toll on everyone. That said, please fix it kkthxbai Trying to heal with that sort of command lag is much worse.
True enough. I'm also where my class is supposed to be on big AoE fights. If everyone is lagging like what is happening to me, then it just works out that the parse is pretty much "right" because it's hitting us all at the same time. It's just frustrating to sit there and do nothing like how the game is supposed to be played, especially since they can't figure out how to fix it. If my role was to heal through all of this, I'd have punched holes in the drywall by now.
I raid on my Swash, http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/433793997296. But it's not my favorite toon to play. I do ok for the most part, usually no# 1 or 2 on the parse if a large AOE fight and if single target I'll be anywhere from No# 5 to No# 11 depending on who's in raid and which group I'm in. Many still like me in there for the debuffs, same goes for our Brigand. My biggest selling point though is that I listen to instructions and play my toon fairly well.
I'm going to try using 4.0 vs 6.0, now that I've picked up my 2nd fabled 4.0 weapon. I know my DPS is going to go up, but we'll see how that goes with raid zone lag. I'm usually in the top 5 on all the parses (it just depends on the lag), and like you, the what other classes are in my group. I know I'd be helping my guild if I went brigand, but I'm not a fan of the class, so I'm staying swashbuckler. I show up all the time to raid, I listen, I play my class as well as I can, and most importantly, I play during non-raid times to get gear from instances and quests, and I'm stocking up on etymas to put gems on my gear.
Perhaps the top end guilds don't need them any more, but mid-range guilds definitely make use of the swashy debuffs. When the tanks aren't fully (or over) geared for the zone, the healing load between a mob with swashy debuffs and one without is quite noticable.. at times it can be the difference between a tough heal fight and a tank getting one-shot.
I think upgrading swashbuckler CA damage to rival that of brigands would put them in a much more favorable position than they are in right now.
Then I'm playing the right class for my guild's current progression level. It's the few swashbucklers in top end guilds that are the ones that are getting the raw deal out of all of this. Well, them and BLs, but we all knew that adding more classes to the game wasn't going to help anyone out in the end. Trying to make all 24 classes "worthy at any level or raiding" was hard enough to do, but then they toss in 2 more classes to the mix and it just taxes an already limited number of EQ2 devs.
My personal idea would be to combine all the evil/good classes into one. Combining abilities and such. I know there would be a lot of work involved with this but it would be a lot easier to form raids and give everyone play time without leaving some classes hanging out to dry in the guild hall. I read that so far only 1 swash has been present for a Zlandicar kill. Granted only 10 or so guilds have killed Zlandicar but it gives a picture of how some classes are left out. Sometimes less is more.
I am not opposed to this but it could offset some class pros and cons between the two. Swash is to Brigand as Warlock is to Wizard. It seemed the idea was for wizard to have really great single target dps and the warlock to be superior in AoE dps. Much like a brigand having superior single target dps and the swash having superior AoE dps. When I played as a swash I knew my single target would not stand against that of a brig, ranger or assassin but I knew my aoe dps could often do quite a bit more than those classes. The problem now is dirges are doing the same single target damage as most swash. This is due to weapon damage bonus, dps mod and their flurry proc from myth buff. Something should be done to set the swash single target apart of that of a bards but it would also set off a chain reaction of class balancing being in required in other areas.
Rogue, summoner*, crusader*, and shaman* would be the names of these 4 hybrid classes, and then we'd go from having 26 classes to 22 classes. This could also finally give all classes the ability to be neutral, which has been one of my rants over the years. If you are currently a swashbuckler in Qeynos/good city, you'd be allowed to betray to Freeport/evil city and you'd be tagged as a "rogue", likewise with a brigand going to Qeynos/good city from Freeport/evil. I'd be all for having the beneficial swashbuckler and brigand debuffs. Give us an AA tree that leans towards single target DPS or AoE DPS, but it will allow us to flip specs to be better suited for a single target fight or a fight that has several mobs involved. Keep our DPS equal to that of BLs, but below that of predators and sorcerers and balance us out with summoners. Wait, did I just make this new swashbuckler-brigand-rogue hybrid class to be too overpowered and too desired to be in a raid at an level? =P I'd be happy with my group utility to be focused on being able to AoE block every 30s and being able to do things Traumatic Swipe. You can take my useless taunt(s), 22.5s mez, Sleight of Hand, group smuggle**, etc. and toss them out. *Those who play summoners, crusaders, and shaman can do their own discussion of this idea in their respective class sections. **I actually made good use of my group smuggle for the first time since launch this past weekend doing the new HQ quest in Forsaken City! None of those mobs see through invis. =D
swash dps is where it should be I don't have mine shared so +1 to swash kills Honestly, we're hardly a transfer anymore so change Sleight of Hand into a nice offensive debuff that people want for raid mobs :3 At the moment the only debuffs of ours people care about are rogue AA choices - meaning a brigand can get all the debuffs, might as well run a second sin instead of a swash or something. Fun fact: only 4 beastlords in wing 2 of GE. 12 swashies, and like 35 brigands
I love how someone has come in and changed the title of this thread. It used to say "I feel useless as a swash", now it is "Swash Feedback" as the title. The original title hit the nail on the head, yet it seems that someone has come along and get rid of anything negative sounding regarding this class and the imbalance between swashbucklers and brigands in regards to the class desirability on raids.
Try to take it as a good sign, I guess - there has been a mini-trend of other whitewashed threads getting dev attention. kono
