The Bruisers role is High damage output

Here we go, the post I was looking for:

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=3&message.id=5033

That is a lvl 35 guardian getting around 90 to 95ish DPS.

Yes, you heard me right, a guardian.

Although i agree we can tank, as been previously stated, that has alot to do with how you have built your character, if you like me focus on str in favor of agi youll suck hardcore without an agi buffer in the group, and then you should (like me) have someone else tank as long as the beforesaid group does not have an agi buffer.

The impact agility have on our overall tanking cant be stressed enough, as a barbarian focusin on strength im in the low end spectrum but i have no problems whatsoever of tanking when agility buffed, unbuffed though im tanking like a caster.

I think alot of the confusion regarding our ability to tank is based on the fact that you have certain players playing large strength focused races like myself , and on the other side you have small agility based bruisers. The strength based players claim they have a hard time tanking while the agility crew have no problems at all buffed or unbuffed, so the real problem is not with the class as the class is only a set of skills, how you then use those skills is up to you.

If you want to focus on doing damage , well then go with strength crank it up as high as you possible can , if you on the other hand want to be a efficent tank then search high and low for the armor pieces that favors agility, and dont forget theres a middle ground which tries to keep str,agi and sta at roughly the same level, and as i advance in levels (41 atm) i find myself moving more and more towards the "middle ground" type of bruiser.

Skull

They need to be educated nontheless, so they stop posting here with their nonsense and not add to a falsh perception that's still wildly apparent among the masses.

Mez , Mend , Fear, FD, dps, build-in shield, tank ................... urban class.

No one will play other class !! 5 Brusiers + 1 healer is perfect group !

jack of all trade is always fun but never outstanding

EqAdam and Lordofthedragon are two of the main reasons why we are not taken seriously as tanks.

These two idiots spread so much misinformation on this site and thank god Gage is active enough to show why they are wrong on every thought they put out on this site.

Kassel


I can't wait for the technology that will allow me to one day reach through a computer screen and slap someone silly.

Gage-Mikel,

my, you've been busy. First of all, at this point I have 2 weeks of log data. I view with with 2 different parsers. Guess what, the DPS numbers chnage, the amount of damage done during the encounter stays the same. No one but you is looking at DPS *numbers* in a isolated fashion. Surely you are smart enough to know that DPS number vary by parser, group buffs and the mobs you are fighting. What doesn't change is the ranking of who did the most damage in a given group during a specific enounter. So again, the damage ouput issue is not worth discussing any further. I know for an absolute fact what my milage is, perhaps you damage output relative to your group mates is less.


The tanking issue. Again, my point was not that we can't tank. I specificly said that we can tank. I Only said that we don't tank as well as plate classes like guardians. You point out a few Bruisers on the board that say they can tank better than guardians. Sounds silly to me and I can point out level 50 bruisers that will admit that we don't tank as well as guardians. Whatever, this is all getting to be pointless. If we a re all happy with our bruisers, then it's all good.


Many people are like the scout I was in a group with a few days ago. He's going on and on about how he was out damaging us all and how he never gets beat in damage output. I had been watching the logs out for hours. I was smoking this guy, and so were others from time to time. I would do 5k, he would 3.5k for exmaple. I was simply doing more damage per encounter over the course of hours. I'm not talking DPS, I'm talking about damage done on the same targets at the same time with the same buffs over a long period of time. Yet, there he was, yaking and wrong the whole time.


I will admit this, tanking ability is much harder to judge objectively. Some bruisers might tank better than guardians. I'm 99% sure that most don't and it was never, ever intended to be that way in terms of game balance. Mitigation > Deflection for main tank most of the time. Thats the way it has been in EVERY game of this type I've ever seen or heard of. Look at the skill lists, ask the healers.


I will gladly standup and admit being wrong tanking issue, just show some data, making a good case.




PS, for those of new to Sony games. They WILL nerf a whole class because of abilities that only a very small percent of the population have. They have done it before, they will do it again. Yes, they will nerf 10,000 people because 10 people can something that was not intended for the sake of game balance. Anyone wanna argue this one?
Message Edited by lordofdragons on 01-24-2005 01:45 PM

Your misconception is that we weren't designed to be tanks, you are wrong. That is because of your preconceived notions.

Its funny that you mention nerfing due to a few people being too good at something within a class. If anything you'll get bruiser DPS nerfed as that is not the intended primary role of the class you are playing. DPS is in fact the primary role of mages/scouts, something you should've rolled if you wanted to be a pure DD.

I don't care about your opinion of mitigation vs avoidance tanks, I don't care if you've played 2093840283403982 MMO games (most people have). I care what the developers of this game say. After all its theirs, they program it, they designed it. Not you, you play it, just like I do.

You can say all you want that SoE lies, and blah blah and I know this and you know that. It doesn't matter. The day you get paid for an 8 hour shift of coding on this game is the day you can tell me what SoE intended for the bruiser class.

The fact that you say you know lvl 50 bruisers who say they can't tank! Whoop ti do! Congrats, more opinion to back up my statement: "Getting lvl 50 doesn't take skill, it takes time".

As for you having 2 weeks worth of logs (I have several weeks worth, I ALWAYS log) they don't prove anything. Look at the context of your parsing experiment:

1) You know that you are logging DPS and you are trying hard to get the most damage. Does everyone in the group know you are parsing every encounter or are they semi-afk and auto attacking, not paying attention to recast, not drinking, etc.

2) You need a TON of logs from more than just YOUR group. Logs with various other players of various other classes in various other scenarios, all who are aware that damaged is being parsed, over a broad level range. You then need someone to take this data and average it out and get a good median damage class effectiveness. Do you do that? Ooooh no you don't, thats because like I stated you don't work for SoE and get paid to do things like that.

So in the end I don't really care what you say, I just think its sad that someone with your opinion happens to post so loudly on the forums. Considering a small amount of us read/post here, I for one always hope that the louder yet misinformed folks will steer clear, while people who push to play their class as intended will speak up.

Have fun DPSing, but I'd recommend assassin or brigand if you want to do big melee dps.

the problem here is that from what Moorgard posted, the Scouts and Wizards are supposed to be the definitive dps classes while fighters are more secondary, now that agility is being nixed at 40+ i have grave concerns as to what will be done to the bruiser as far as dps goes. From what i have seen and read the tanking of mobs at 40+ is not way way harder to do, which is going to make the bruiser obsolete as far as even a situational tank.

Reolas,

good wizards/warlocks can out DPS bruisers, some have a hard time. The problem that wizards have is that they don't live long once they get argo. Wizards should out damage us, and some do. Coercers can out damage us and Conjurers out damage us. I have no data on necromancers but my guess is that they can as well. I concede, all the robes wearers should be able to out damage us. In practice though, they often don't... not up to 40 anyway.



As far scouts go. Scouts offer many advantages to a group outside of the damage that they do. Few groups want a bruiser to be main tank, Feign Death is rarely usefull to a group. Both classes offer some group buffs. Outside of damage, what does a bruiser bring to a group? Why shouldn't bruisers out damage scouts? The game is unbalanced if we can't. Bruisers should be, and at this point appear to be, the highest damage dealing melee class on single targets.



Scouts offer
Disarm trap
Group run speed
Sneak or group sneak
Track
Evac
Positional DPS


Bruisers offer
Any angle DPS
Tanking (My opinion, decent but not the best)
Feign Death

ROFL you never give up.

It goes: caster - scout - fighter in order of DPS, they changed it from beta when it was: fighter - caster - scout for DPS. They did this because they wanted fighters to be tanks, all fighters.

You don't do much reading I can tell.....first off Moorgard posted they are looking at DPS, not what "other" benefits each class has or doesn't have they are focused in on DPS, and according to alot of higher lvl parses a assassin might do more 1 shot damage, but as far as overall dps goes the bruiser is higher due to consistant dps. I know alot of classes have this and that, Im not the one that works at SOE telling everyone they are re-evaluating the dps of ALL. So if a bruiser is doing dps similar or on par with a scout, you tell me what they will do to us, if your answer isn't nerf dps, well your mistaken because they will...and no matter how much dps they nerf even 5% with this new blunder that was done to agility and avoidance, lvl 40+ just became a hell of alot harder and if not impossible for us to tank now.

If scouts are meant to be the highest Damage dealers, bruiser will get nerfed or scout DPS will get increased. From what I've seen AND reports that I recieved from many other bruisers and monks is that both classes out damage scouts on single targets. The EQ Dev team had to know these before EQII got too far into beta, let alone went live.

MY OPINION is that bruisers should do more damage than scouts. I never said that it was tended to be that way, just that it currently is that way. In my opinion, Sony comments on the Golden rule of "Game Balance" is total BS if scouts get more group usefull abilities and more DPS.


I looked for a post from Moorgard about "other" benefits not being taken into account for game balance. I couldn't find it. I'd appreciate it if you could point it out to me.

I did read a post of his a some time ago semi related to this issue. I posted part of it below. Please note, his comments do support the idea that you can have DPS *OR* Tanking but not both... and it doesn't look like we were meant to be the best tanks. Does state that scouts were meant to out DPS us though. The reality is that they don't though, and I'm sure they know this.


(http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=4&message.id=5006#M5006)

Quote from Moorgard:

Some posters in this thread want berserkers to be a class that can switch between being a tank and DPS class at will, on par with a scout or mage. That's like a wizard asking to be able to tank if they don't use their damage spells, which is not at all what their role is intended to be.

Fighters are meant to fall behind mages and scouts in terms of DPS, while being at the top of the heap when it comes to tanking. Every class should be aware that if they have any ability that disrupts this relationship, it will be adjusted. Because we want to anger our customers? No, because it's required for the health of the game.

Berserkers can wear the same armor and wield the same shields as guardians. There are no hidden mitigation bonuses for either class, so a berserker and a guardian of the same level, stats, and skills with the same armor/shield combo will have the same base avoidance and mitigation. Guardians have arts that give them increased defensive capabilities, while berserkers have arts that give them increased offense. That's the key difference between the two warrior classes. Keep in mind that if you play a berserker and are not using a shield while tanking, you're missing out on a huge part of the tank's damage avoidance capability. Crusader and warrior classes are intended to use shields while acting as a tank.

Some posters are citing the two-sentence class description on the website as a definition of everything the class should be: "Berserkers are chaotic warriors who inflict heavy damage with all manner of weapons. Their furious attacks overwhelm their opponents, to whom they show no mercy." Some of you have invested your own emotional reactions into what you feel this is supposed to mean, but those descriptions were written to give lore-based flavor, not define everything a class is. It can just as easily be argued that berserkers as they stand today fit that description just fine.

Berserkers continue to be effective tanks that deal out strong DPS. They were considerably overpowered before, because a few key abilities allowed them to surpass the damage output of mages and scouts. I realize you're looking for me to say that the class is now underpowered, but testing does not show that to be the case. Although bugs will be fixed and more arts will be adjusted, it is unlikely that berserkers will see a major DPS increase.

I realize this is not what most berserkers will want to hear, but I'm trying to give you a direct, honest response.



Those are his comments.




What seems stupid to me on the part of the EQ Dev team is that we have gotten this far into a live game and they are tweaking basic stuff like this.

There. You lose.
Now will you please shush up about it.
That is from Moorgard, a dev and also a bruiser.
Fighters (bruiser = fighter) are supposed to be tanks first. Their DPS is NOT supposed to bypass that of a scout or mage class (the true EQ2 DD).
Since your own logs confirm you are outdamaging scouts/mages be ready for a reduction in DPS similiar to what the berzerkers suffered.
You are a bruiser, a fighter, a tank.
Deal with it or reroll.

I'd add to this further, but I think Gage is doing well enough on his own. Consider me in full support of him.

In my guild group, we have a zerker and bruiser (me) for tanks, and necromancer and troubadour for "damage" classes. Technically, the troubadour does a lot of debuffing/buffing and power sucking, so he's not really intended to be DPS, rather to keep the group alive and going longer than we'd normally be able to. Hence why we have two damage dealers for tanks.

My experience has been that the necromancer has kept up fine with DPS the entire time. He's constantly on my tails for total DPS (as long as his pets and pet-like-dots are dispersed well), and if there's a massive group of mobs (thinking of the dolls in Nektropos) he can easily outdamage me.

My experience has been that the zerker tanking can do a heckuva lot of damage. Much of his abilities are reactive to being wailed on, so the position of tank affords some added bonus (riposting for them is great I hear). My logs show him being not that far behind in damage most of the time... I'm always just a little higher (usually 10 points higher or so, with all being equal).

My role in this group has always been to lay down as much damage as possible, and then occasionally tank or offtank when the situations calls for it. If needed, I can turtle up and barely get hit when our zerker bleeds too much. I've used my fear taunt and minimez to great effect in keeping down the nasty group fights. Hell.. we took down Lord Everling only because I feared on guy, mez'd another, and offtank'd them both while they wailed on the Lord himself. Both us tanks were only level 30 at the time... and to think we wiped the first time with a 36 Paladin tanking because they didn't want me to offtank.


Oh.. speaking of which. You guys want to know a good use for Feign Death for your group? Make sure you have a summoned rez item on you at all times, and make sure your group is prepared for you to Feign Death when things go south. I've personally saved a total wipe in zones like Nektropos (no evac, btw) because of this tactic, multiple times.
Gee, what's easier... wiping and waiting 3 days (now 2 hours) to go back in? Or having one guy FD and rez the healer once the coast is clear and in 5 minutes be ready to fight again. Heck, it can even be better than evac since you don't have to fight all the way back in... although you'll want everyone to die in a "safer" area.

Lesson? ALWAYS get a rez item from your group healer. You are about as important as a scout with Evac... if not more so, depending on the situation.


*Edit*
One thing I've noticed with my experience at parsing... there are a lot of things that can screw up your logs of other's damage output.

Proximity: If you aren't close enough, you will miss out on some of the damage people do.
Lag: If you or the other person is experiencing lag, two things can happen... you will miss their display of damage despite it affecting the creature, and lag can affect a person's ability at having their specials go off.
Chat window screwups: So you don't have spell effects being displayed... that means it's not going into log, and now all wizards show up with crap DPS. How often does your chat window get mixed up and you have to set things back to normal? Are you sure it's really displaying right?
Unnamed damage: It's listed directly in some parser webpages... some spells have no name attached to the damage! If there's no name, there's no way to determine who is doing that damage, and someone is losing out on their true DPS. I'm thinking of damage shields and probably quite a few dots. Sucks to be wizards... again. Good thing ALL bruiser specials are named (i've checked).
Timing and Misses: So you use all your huge hitters at the first few moments of the fight. You do tons of damage, and suddenly the mob drops dead! I've hit 200+ DPS doing that before, when in a group facing solo mobs on the way to group mobs I've seen it frequently. DPS is damage per second... remember that.
Ever have it set to "when you get group xp", then fight a solo mob, run around for 5 minutes, THEN kill a group? Everyone's DPS is like 2 or 3 because it's still counting during those 5 minutes.
This one is one of the BIGGEST killers of legitimizing the parsed information.

And last, but definately not least, how the combat is being approached. If someone is in the middle of typing (to group, or anything else), they may miss out on the initial boost of damage at the beginning.. or in the middle even. They may get our of their routine they do, so their timers are all off from their "perfectly timed for maximum DPS" routine.

It's so very different from the guy who starts the fight looking at the realtime DPS.. because he's started the fight looking at maximizing his DPS.
I've gone into some fights trying to type out to not get to close to such'n'such mob, and to not click on whatever item.. I miss out on a lot of my potential DPS. I've dropped from 80 DPS normally in a fight to 40 DPS because I started the combat typing, pause to move around and start some specials, finish typing, do more specials, respond to the responses to my typing, etc.

Face it.. a lot of things can blow your parsed DPS all out of whack... I don't use it for anything legitimate, just to see how well something is working, if HO's are affecting our progress/worth it, etc. The necro wanted to know if his summoned undead dogs not only looked cool, but were worth the casting... a ctrl+V later and he was happily surprised.


I'd take any parsed info we as players can do as worth a grain of salt.


Message Edited by Raidi Sovin'faile on 01-25-2005 05:54 AM

As I've been saying for a while now....if you don't like your parsed damage get a new parser.

You're all crazy. It doesn't matter what the Bruiser is best at or if he can tank aswell as that full plate tank or outdamage that mage. What really matters is that you're having fun and enjoying your class. If you're spending all your time concerned with doing the most damage or trying to out tank a plate tank you're missing out on the fun.

Just play in your guild or usual group or even in a pickup group and be the best bruiser you can whether you're needed to do damage or tank a mob or do some crowd control. As long as you're having fun and you're helping your group stay alive and kill the mobs then your job is done.

Remember people it is just a game.

Slarti.

This guy nailed it. End of that story.
*recalls the disturbed drooling monk*
Oh, and BTW, Cage go play your MONK and leave us BRUISERS alone you are cluelessly lost. (Hint hint monks=bruisers wroooooong!)
Someone show this poor chap the door *smirk*