Do you think "Tier 1 DPS" labeling is purely player opinion based on past or current game implementation? Or do you think the developers must abide by rules or a code they abide by to make one niche of classes more powerful than the other? Discuss.
At one time tiered dps was a reality and was balanced around. That line has been blurred for a very long time and has lost it's true meaning.
No I don't think developers design one class or another to be in a tier. There is a spectrum of course, from glass cannon (aka cannon fodder if played poorly) to pain is not a thing tanks (that if played badly usually just wonder why their group is always lying about dead). Do changes to classes affect their success rates? Yeah. But I feel like so much of a person's success is in their knowledge of the class, spells, order, etc. It really takes a bit of research on your own, and being humble and asking for help from one's proverbial eq2 elders. Most if not all have always been happy to offer me tips and help, and from them I learned that tier one or two wasn't a matter of absolutes but merely a formality that could be crushed by stupidity and pride, or made great with some commitment and know how.
'Tier DPS' is very outdated. For example many consider summoners T2 DPS. Why? What function does a conjuror have other than DPS? Giving out shards? Give me a break.
Summoners were considered T2 dps because they had a pet and could do very well in heroic/solo content, so weren't mean to be on top in raid encounters as well. Old tiered dps set up looked like this T1 - Sorcerers and Predators T2 - Summoners and rogues T3 - Chanters and bards T4 - Healers and tanks As I stated before, this ideal is no longer in place and has been phased out for many years now and has shifted multiple times over the last 5 expansions.Some systems that have been added have broken this idea entirely. Reckless for tanks (removed), Poisons for scouts (nerfed), mimicry (nerfed), and now summoner pets (awaiting dev response to outcry). It is a constant push and pull, but it just depends on who got overtuned at the time. Given the statflation and broken mechanics, where you end up on the parse depends more on what class you play than the skill of the player as of late. I wish I could say it was different.
Low healer dps is frequently a player.... decision.... and not class limitations. I've come across an amazing number of healers that seem proud of how little dps they do...
True and unfortunate. I was the #1 dps defiler world for all of TSO, back when this game had a relevant playerbase! It's frustrating now to play a fighter and deal so little damage compared to everyone else. Even min/maxing you wont beat a t1 in equivalent gear despite an infinite differential in player skill.
The tiers were based on how much utility a class offered. Summoners/Rogues offered stuff like shards, heals, stoneskins and debuffs so the trade off was they did less dps than Sorcerers/Predators which offered little utility. Most of the utility that dps classes had has been rendered obsolete so the tier system isn't really there anymore.
There is still some (not much) utility remaining for every class. I would absolutely love a broad rebalance that brought back meaningful utility again, thus justifying DPS tiers. Some of the best fun I ever had in an MMO was crowd controlling stuff in hectic fights in EQ1 on a chanter (Sebilis!) The main problem DBG has is an inability to smoothly itemize with a long term balance focus in mind. Every xpac we get crazy stat scaling, and some new stat gets hard or soft capped, and then whatever class offered that stat as part of their utility gets marginalized a bit more. We keep "losing" meaningful mechanics (think power management - used to be a real thing) and the game gets slowly dumbed down. There are several ways to fix this. My favorite would be to have items lose effective power based on the relative level difference between Player and Item level. They wouldn't have to hyperinflate stats - just let the mechanic take care of item obsolescence as level caps are raised. They could set realistic soft caps for each stat (e.g. "We want raid geared mages to sit around 60% doublecast; heroic mages around 45%; and solo mages at 30%" and thus leave plenty of headroom for player utility buffs to means something again. The other way to slow down this problem is a massive AA overhaul that changes static amounts to "% of base". Stuff scales smoothly forever when you do that.
See you can't go off a tier list atm cause even bards and chanters are not much utility as they are used for things like bard VC charge so the bard must do dmg or chanter good mimicry. conj/necro and swash/brig utility is lacking bad brig has debuffs yes but swashy is pure dmg now/hate transfer warlock/wizard and assassin/ranger at the point in the game almost have as much utility as all the ether dmg classes so what it comes down to is gear and knowing the class ive seen warlocks and assassins put out 600mil just like conj and necros ive seen dirges and illys put out 500mil there are some tanks and healers that are puting out 200mil+dps just depends on gear and stacking multiplyers anymore
Tell me how do you balance classes when you have hammer procs in game you automatically get 2 tiers of dps game wide . How do you balance content dps checks ect some guilds have multiple t1 with it others have none.
In raid, they balance content dps checks by having roadblock mobs where you should not/cannot overdps at certain percentages of health or conditions, or else it creates a high condition of failure. I see no reason for these stopgap measures other than providing amusement to non-raiders.
Over the years of raiding the bulk of strats can be simply over come by pure dps and the ones that cant dps certainly helps win ie time limits on mobs with the strats ect ect , there a few fights that cant be burnt down but the bulk you can if you are unaware of this I don't know what to say.
[quote=" The other way to slow down this problem is a massive AA overhaul that changes static amounts to "% of base". Stuff scales smoothly forever when you do that.[/quote] This is what needs to happen regardless of dps tiers. So many AA choices are obsolete because of current stat levels.
