This was the main reason why I stopped playing my Illusionist 3 expacs ago. The dps gap between utility and T1's was just too much. And Its True that if your grp is not carrying a semi decent T1 dps in H1 heroics, it takes forever to clear one zone.
I feel like this is more of a tabulation issue rather than a class balance issue. The main reason T1s do so much damage is because of buffs from other classes. Without those buffs the T1s are nothing. A group with a tank two healers and three T1s isn't effective at all. The T1s need buffs to do proper damage. What should happen is all the damage coming from those buffs should be attributed to the buff class rather than the T1. This doesn't really change anything other that what gets parsed out on ACT. The group damage would stay exactly the same but the T1 parse would be lower and the utility class parse would be higher. This is purely a tabulation change. What the classes actually do would stay exactly the same. However, ACT would more accurately and fairly parse out what utility classes are bringing to the group and raid.
It will need lot of work on the backend to accurately attribute damage to buff and then to who cast those buffs etc. I don't see this happening.
7th most viewed feedback thread since these forums were created and not one person has offered to tell me how SK buffs are in any way comparable to Zerk or Pally. I think youre on to something here.... Its almost like theyre not. Nor are any other fighters offensive buffs.
I feel like if SK's were really that bad off, then they would all betray to pally. [We see this happen with other classes alllllll the time when one is way worse than the other]. So there being relatively even numbers of pallies to SK's, and pallies + SKs tying for most amount of tank class above 9350 resolve from census data tells me SKs are in a decent spot[this was followed closely by zerkers and then a giant jump to hit monks, guards, and almost non existent bruisers]. Yes, some people will stick to their class and never change no matter how bad it is, but even with those people if one class is significantly better in a pair we see it in the numbers played usually[for example, there being nearly 3x as many furies as wardens, even though both could heal any content] Also the "nerf" to the crusader ward wasn't much. Crusaders still have over 1 billion hps from that ward alone in some content.
I didn't say they're bad off. I said that zerks and Pallies bring far more to a group/raid than any other tank. They do. Hands down. Ok, let's compare Pally vs SK. Divine Inspiration (Pally) vs Unholy Hunger (SK): Inspiration at Journeyman is better than Hunger at Celestial. The damage isn't even close for the group damage aspect. It was 3 or 4 times the damage when I looked at it again in December. Thats massive when spread across 6 people all hitting buttons. Then we have raid wide buffs. SK gives 20 spell effectiveness. Pally gives 67 fervor to Priests and Fighters. Not really comparable buffs. Both classes have a power regen mechanic that is typically enough to get them through power drains. Both classes have fear immunity. It takes 22 AAs and most of that line is a waste, but hey. Its OP, right? Lets talk about heals. SK can life tap once every 2-5s with spells only. Pally can hit their group heal on a 3.5s recast and its got a small ward to it. SK has a 5 trigger reactive heal while Pally has a 24s duration ward thats hitting the ward cap with a recast of 27s. I use my reactive heal for damage as its more efficient than about a 1/3 of my damage abilities. Both classes have Crusader's Faith. Heals a portion of the damage done by the group. SK can add 28% DR to it. That ends the SK abilities that primarily serve as a heal. Shadow coil can have a life tap, but its always pretty low Paladins get Blessing of the Paladin. Its essentially the crusader ward, but specifically for the Pally and wards against physical damage. Thats cool. Pally gets Marrs Favor. It heals for 20% of the damage received. Should we look at utility? SK can either FD you, or if they spec for it, give a whopping 3.5 Fervor OC. You can even put this on multiple players! The downside? Its a 2.5 minute recast and falls off if the target or you die. You got it onto all the T1s and then fall off a cliff, get wrekt. SK gets evac. Thats useful. If not for the fact there are now 4 ways to evac available in game from different sources not sharing a reuse, not including class abilities. Pally? They get the best rez in the game at a range of 30m. They get Amends essentially guaranteeing that your T1 never worries about agro again. They get sigil of heroism which is another group mit/DR buff. They get Faith which is another group DR, damage proc, and damage reflect. Yea, those 2 classes sound similar and equally balanced. Not that Pallies weren't pretty terrible for years. Im happy they have great buffs and utility. I just wish some of the rest of us could get some of those things without folks being ******** because an SK does 20-30% more personal dps than the other fighters while essentially bringing jack all that folks actually care about or get excited for. Actually, as I sit here and type this. I have no idea why I'm even still an SK.
Divine inspiration on a pally is still negligible damage. [In raid my templar's damage from clicking scepters is more damage than the pallies' divine inspiration].I get doing less of small amount is still doing less, but the damage is so small it shouldn't be something people care about. [Especially when SKs can put out a decent chunk more damage overall. Heals differential really doesn't matter when all content can be solo healed just fine with any tank, sure is it nice that your tank can carry lesser healers yes. But you can also just have an okay healer and be just fine without any of the tank stuff. The only tank I ever hear people wanting for buffs is zerkers for the cb. But like even with what you just listed 20 spell effectiveness for just mage dps will do more than 64 fervor for priests and fighters.[Most fighters are already capping fervor anyways]. So an SK would do more for my raid just from the spell effectiveness than a pally does, its not much but its still something; plus bringing more DPS. The big advantage of pally is aggro is easy, whereas other tanks have to dps to do aggro. But get enough overcap pieces and can dps, not near t1, but enough to do the trick. I guess my point is SK's are in a decent spot, still. While there are tanks that are in a bad spot. No one gets excited for what a pally brings beyond amends and fear immunity on some fights. SKs have the fear immunity to plus more dps. Like trading some healing capability and the ability to rez for a chunk more dps is about as balanced as it can get. If you prefer defensive stuff go pally, if you prefer dps go SK. The reality though at the end of the day is most people don't care what the fighter brings, they just want a tank
I've got just about full ancients on the pally as well. The masters were pretty cheap last year when they were still dropping
If we're going to discount the difference between the crusader group wide buffs and the fact that pally is at least that SKs higher dps worth of damage for the group combined, we're also going to discount that the SK does marginally more dps than the pally. Its still a net win for the pally. Our guild runs primarily scout dps and if youre telling me a necro or wizard are noticing 20 spell effectiveness, I'm gonna laugh. They dont notice it. I can test the stupid buff and even tool tip damage increase, its around .87% more damage for my spells. Its a non factor. Now, if folks dont notice 67 fervor, why's everybody want a Fury? I get that they also give OC and the pally doesnt. You know what that 67 fervor does for my SK in groups/raids? Lets me run another blue weapon adorn in place of the one not giving fervor OC. Some folks agree, others dont. I personally dont, and havent, gotten those Fervor OC buffs in almost 2 years because regardless of how great you think SKs or tanks in general parse, its negligible compared to buffing even a garbage T1. You can move around a lot of adorns across your gear opening up a blue adorn. I have almost an entire 88 slot bag of different adorns I can move in and out, given a little flexibility
Fury gives overcap, so the people can do stuff with the extra fervor. Regardless 20 uncapped fervor for mage dps does more than 67 fervor for priests and tanks, even if they were uncapped because of how much more mage stuff does. If your point is that the 20 effectiveness is useless because they don't notice it, then no one notices any of the dps buffs you are saying a pally has in a meaningful way so we are back at square one. I don't think you are going to get much closer between opposite classes as pallies and SKs are right now. Some people will prefer the pallies stuff, some the SK's stuff, but there's not a strong this one is always better pull between the two, which is rare looking at all the other pairs.
Thats not square one. 20 effectiveness is .87% damage increase for a class thats not constantly bombarded with the best buffs available. Its going to be FAR less noticable for a necro riding 1800 fervor compared to an SK hitting 1250 in raids. The more buffs your T1s ger, the less they care about small amounts, like 20 effectiveness. You understand diminishing returns, Im sure. Now, lets take into account that after last years debacle, a good number of mage T1s just dipped out, said no thanks, not paying for this circus anymore. That leaves a majority of T1 being scouts. Some guilds/raid forces still have more mages, but the majority are scouts. They dont care either way about either crusader RW buff. Cool. So, we can boost lets call it 3-4 mages at best that are actually T1s or, we can boost 6-12 combined fighters/priests, allowing much more versatility in their gearing. For instance, a blue rage adorn if youre slightly short ADC and cant get the item drops. There are dozens of options available. I havent even begun to touch seeing the pally group buff being 2% of a T1s parse, let alone how high it is for the rest of us. 2% isnt much, until you realize our top 2 T1s are regularly throwing out 12T on T1s. Thats 240B dps from a group buff. Hold on while Unholy Hunger does 39B though.
This is my personal experience so it may not be representative of everyone, but I was never able to cap my fury's fervor in combat even last expac with the weapons that gave 48 fervor. The 60 fervor oc priests get from the prestige tree put the cap so high It didnt matter what i did. So I spent most of my time somewhere between 1.15-1.2k fervor not Including buffs from people in my group. So in my experience if a priest is capping fervor in combat they're either getting good group buffs or doing something very wrong. So with that in mind a pally being in raid let's priests utilize all of that fervor oc, and if even half of them are awake and arent only pressing heal buttons then it'll have a bigger impact than 20 effectiveness. You're right the sk's buff is objectively better for mages but for raidwide dps the pally's has a lot more potential. That's not even mentioning the effect on the tanks in the raid. It could be because I'm usually in a stacked group but I spend probably half to a third of my time uncapped on fervor and having an extra 60 fervor lying around would do a ton. As for divine inspiration if divine inspiration is doing less than a scepter from ros then that pally needs to upgrade their spells or you arent attacking often enough to proc it, it's a really good proc even on a dps. Lastly from what I've seen a lot of pallys jump ship to sk because of the dps difference. Again this is what I've seen personally so it may not be representative of everyone but most of the pallys I've seen swap have seen a good sk parse and they want to do it too. That's sort of why I started playing sk, they're a self healing tank that can do dps and it's a lot of fun when done well. That doesn't mean that sk's are in a good spot compared to pallys, just that they're fun to play and satisfying to play well. The problem stems from the fact that sk dps isnt close to offsetting the dps a pally brings to a raid. MAYBE it's not as big of a difference in heroics, but in raid it's very noticable. All of this isnt even mentioning that pallys can give 35(iirc) fervor and oc to the whole raid. Dont get me wrong though, I think pallys are in a good spot context to where other classes and archetypes sit. I'd just appreciate it if the other tanks were brought up to the pally standard. Sk's and bruisers doing more dps but offering less buffs than pallys, and guards doing less dps but offering more buffs, etc.
The problem is your 3-4 mages T1s (plus chanters) do so much more dps than your priests+tanks combined that a small buff to them is bigger than a slightly smaller buff to your priests/tanks. It's not much, but still something. We are not seeing anywhere near that much dps out of the pally buff, hence my scepters outdpsing. Regardless even if its 240 billion dps, if SKs are 20-30% more dps than pallies, as you've claimed, and I've seen, they are doing more than that much more dps than pallies personally so it balances out. So overall they are very close to each other, which is a good place to be.
Again, thats a hypothetical. We run 2 T1 mages and 1 is a wiz. Only 1 enchanter is outparsing even our zerk and that only lasts for the first minute or so of the fight because of mimic. I dont remember if mimic is affected by the casters stats, but theyre not mimicing the mages. If its not, a disproportionate amount of a chanters dps comes from mimic making the effectiveness a moot point on chanters. As to the SK outparsing the pally, I'll use my own experience. Math isnt hard, figuring out what to cast and when is easy. Ive betrayed multiple times and the SK only outparses the pally by 20-30% max. Less on AE fights when Ancient Wrath can shine. Also, based on the only Pally thats listed as a raider or anything more than an alt, their AA spec is far less than ideal. Im Not sure id use that as my focal point for comparing to the non existent SKs as mains in your guild
Yeah that's why I specified tanks capping fervor, all priests get so much more overcap from AAs that helps use the pallies fervor, but once again fervor on a priest does less than fervor on a mage. I agree pallies are in a good spot, I just think SK's are as well, and SKs and pallies are overall really close to each other. Both are highly represented as far as tanks go
Again, because they're fun. SK is the most enjoyable class Ive played and Ive played most. That doesn't mean that theyre at all comperable, nor is any other tank, to a Pally or Zerk.
We have more than one pally. But if you think our pally with less than ideal stats is not a good comparision, then your 20-30% more should definitley be welll over 300 billion dps more, easy. We don't have a zerk to compare to, but a good chanter can maintain 1-1.5 trillion, with mimic being only 5-10% of that, everything else will benefit from the effectiveness. Yes if you dont have any mages its wasted, but that just means which one is better depends on your specific setup. Overall I haven't seen anything that pushes one to be wayyyyy better than the other. Different setups will have a different one as better, and that is a good spot to be in balance wise
Ok, lets say that you Pally only does 1T dps in a pure burn fight. Simple maths. SK is lets say 50% more as you claimed further up. Thats net 500B for the SK. Lets assume my numbers are wrong for SK Unholy Hunger and its really double. Thats 80B dps/member of the group. So an added 400B. Let's assume Divine Inspiration is only half of what I claimed. Thats 120B/member, so 600B. In this situation, the SK wins, right? But, I had to make extreme concessions in order to make it work. Thats still only a 300B SK advantage under circumstances assuming wild SK dominance. Lets use the numbers I actually have parses for. So 40B for Hunger/member and 240B/member for Inspiration. SK is 1.7T, Pally is at 2.2T. putting the win firmly in the pallies realm. All while impacting the raid further through better agro control of problem T1s, rezzes, healing factor, and flexibility or increased efficacy of your fighters/priests. I'm happy to do this all day, but you're going to need some actual numbers instead of arbitrary feelings about what you think is equal. They're not and even the Aura of the Crusader nerf affects the classes unevenly.
Also, you dont show a single SK in your guild over 8k resolve. Idk what you're comparing to as far as similar guilds, skill, gear. If you're comparing your pally to an SK like Rasheti, you're not doing yourself any favors. Granted, I compare myself to him, but I cant even break 9455 resolve, so I probably have no idea what I'm saying in regard to tank balance.
