I personally like keeping the timing between attacks as part of the skill to playing the class. I'd hate to see changing that as opposed to fixing the lag. That being said I 1,000% agree that once more scouts have to start hitting all their buttons to DPS the lag issue is going to become a much bigger complaint. It's already the number 1 enemy of those that have been going down the potency route. As Azian said not only do we miss CAs, but when the timing falls apart due to lag we delay auto attacks which means we miss poison procs. You also have to figure more people now actively hitting more buttons is going to contribute to that lag a bit. A bit of a catch 22 there.
Speaking of lag.... How is the E.T. tweaking coming along? Until that gets fixed first, adjusting our CA damage seems secondary. I was checking last night in raid. When E.T. hits, the 40 mill EncDPS during my normal FFU chain gets slammed to 11 mill while E.T. is running because of CAs faux firing/getting lagged out/not working. I'm going to have to ask the summoners to send me a tell before they use it so that I can just autoattack for 15 seconds and maybe hit a CA or 2.
Playing a ranger isn't that fun to begin with considering I'm playing whack a mole the majority of the time. The majority of my dps comes from hemotoxin, auto attack and procs. The only CAs that make any difference to my dps are blazing shot, ember strike, sniper shot, sniper squad and daggerstorm. Everything else is procs from flaming weaponry, makeshift arrows and blazing shot. Everything else in a Rangers repertoire does minimal difference to a Rangers parse. If you were to lower autoattack and hemotoxin damage and increase our other CAs damage it would be more enjoyable to play a ranger. Maybe even add traps that actually work and do something worthwhile to add some challenge to the class.
Swash still wins on AE transfer for tanks who don't have their own hate siphon. about 50% more hate xfer with AE spam out the wazoo. Sadly, we're really just a special-case AE transfer at this point in the game, nothing more. Anyways, yea pretty spot on - our only HP debuff is brigand-shared, utility / debuffs are underwhelming or affect areas that are so bogged down in other debuffs / player stats / mechanics, and some of our better abilities from the past have been annihilated by stat inflation. annoyingly over-written response: DPS: our dps exists in proc damage and AE spam. More importantly, our CA dps is entirely reliant on reset spamming Lucky Gambit. A friend asked for Swash advice the other day / cast order... Swash cast order in AE: Casting anything else while Lucky Gambit is up is wasted, always Lucky Gambit -- if not, cast a random AE (NOT STORM OF STEEL!) and then queue up Lucky Gambit - it'll probably reset. Single target cast order: it's kind of irrelevant, but still cast Lucky Gambit when available and use dragon claws with sunder. I'm not saying I hate that setup, but it has its problems. We're a continual AE casting machine, and we need an endless sea of mobs to support it. The burst / wave of add design is cool and all, but the moment the fight becomes one mob we lose almost all CA dps potential and become bard-level dps, just without VC to offer. Debuffs: offensive debuffs are cool in theory, but.... auto attack debuffs are hard when other classes debuff them as well, and tank mechanics rely heavily on their mitigation and never taking a hit - maximum avoidance / temp rotation. Pretty much the only time they're even useful is when we have scout-tank raid mobs who don't have all those tanking temps. Spell debuffs (int, pot, abil mod) again, fights designed around have 180k resist or die!!!! or have 2.5 mil hp or die!!! or Do this thing exactly right or die!!!, don't lend well to debuffs being meaningful. When the player stat weight is so high, the survivability order pretty much becomes hp -> personal resist -> do scripts right -> damage reductions / prevents -> heals -> all offensive debuffs. We're only a portion of the last thing factored into survivability. Stat inflation / planned obsolescence: One of the interesting aspects early on for Swashies (up until TSO - SF or so) were the dps temps. It was really cool how that was set up. Now I dread casting any temp other than Inspired Daring mid-combat. Ruthless Cunning / Perfect Finesse, which at one time were visibly noticeable on the parse, provide almost zero gains. Their only worth is the debuff AA when a non-fighter has to tank a mob, and even then it's just a small benefit. En Garde I will cast in AE fights, single target not worth it so much - not group wide. Hurricane... Used to be that Swashies had more AE potential than any other scout. Now, the value of Hurricane - formerly one of our strongest abilities - saves us some reforging / an extra purple adorn slot. Add in that other classes balanced around not having Hurricane have gained more blue AEs / 100% AE auto, the one job we had anyone can do. Utility: We offer some minor damage bonus to the group through Inspired Daring, and +12 CA damage (soon to be +6% to raid, 8s dur / 30s recast), but that's about it at this point. It might be more worth while to get a second bard in the group for alternating VC's... Subclass Balance: Name something useful about Swashies, it's either a Rogue-shared AA or Brigands probably have a better version of it. Really, the only strong suit for Swashies is for heroic zones - if you plan to run heroics and never touch raid zones, the Swash class is amazing.... top tier hate transfer, awesome AE spam for all those heroic AE fights cause you don't have 24 people + pets to worry about, all around debuffs to kind of help out if pug-healer isn't the best... The class is an all-arounder, and it really is amazing in heroic play where you only have 6 people, but it's severely lacking raid desirability. ~~~~~~ Anyways, this is why I'm hoping the Scout changes aren't just throwing a blanket + damage modifier to abilities, unless you plan to double the damage of Swashy AE's so that we're stupid AE parsing machines, we need some tweaking :3. Recruiting a Swash? Everyone else wants me to betray to Brigand
You could remove my poison damage, changing all poisons to debuffs if you allowed our Combat Arts to be effected by 100% of our Ability Mod so that combat arts came closer to making a difference, when we clicked them. As is our combat arts do so little, you would have to increase their damage by a crazy amount just to make them matter over an auto attack, or our procs. Back at level 80 the lag was crazy, and you guys said procs were the problem. Yet here we are years later with more procs, and our primary damage is from procs. Why?
Fiiiiine, but only because the swash AEs are great at applying VC and related procs, not because swashbucklers deal any damage themselves. ;__; Not that it matters, because C-Shout does it better than anyone (raidwide warlock//wizard transfers, assassin..., etc.).
I'm also fine with having to time my combat arts with auto attacks, but because of the lag, it can be difficult to do. I wish my combat art damage did more and that I didn't have to rely on poison for my DPS/debuffs, and having to swap out specs and gear for certain fights as a poison using scout is annoying. Every time I swap AA specs, it causes me to lose poisons that are in the maintained window.
As it stands, it's not a huge deal to get scout combat damage to go from master to GM for scouts and tanks compared to healers and mages. Imagine the extra money you guys might be able to make for people who play scouts and tanks to quickly upgrade from master to GM if our combat arts really did matter. This is especially true for poison using scouts who have to use this crutch to keep our DPS up. If I run a heroic zone without poisons, my DPS looks horrid. As soon as I turn on the mid-level hemo poison, I look like I'm actually contributing to the fight and my swashbuckler is nearly GMed out. And yes, I'm still peeved that MV has been useless since the launch of AoM and that I wasted a lot of saved potions to get MV to GM level. As in, had I known MV was borked, I would have used those ability leveling potions on other combat arts...like Sleight of Hand!
Fixed that for ya. I'll be your guild's official stable boy, watching after all them ducks and bunnies running amuk.
Adding to my previous statement. If you guys allowed 100% of our Ability Mod to effect our combat arts on top of the current changes on test you might create a situation where people reforged stats into Ability Mod over say; Attack Speed, DPS mod, and so on. After doing this you can change AAs for procs, so that you choose whether or not you want proc damage, or proc buffs. If I had a choice to increase my potency and/or crit bonus as a temporary proc buff over a damage proc, I'd choose it. Especially if my Combat Arts would make a difference. I am of course assuming a proc buff creates less lag than proc damage. I would LOVE to click to do my damage. That's why I made a radical proposal before. If you really want to create a game where you have to click to success, read below for a radical change. Scrap the auto attack theme and apply those stats to combat arts. Remove auto attack all together, and greatly decrease the damage poisons can do, and make the following changes to combat arts, and spells. Fighter & Scouts Combat Arts are effected by; Main stat (Agi or Str), Weapon Damage Bonus, Damage Per Second, Flurry, Multi-Attack, Potency, Crit Bonus and Ability Mod. Instead of Casting Speed effecting the cast time of Combat Arts, now Attack Speed can effect the casting speed of Combat Arts. Remove AoE auto attack completely since AE combat arts will now be effected by Flurry and Multi-Attack. Mages & Healers Spells effected by everything they are now you just add Spell Weapon Damage to their spells. Healers can benefit form both, the mage combat style, or the martial combat style based off the type of spell, or combat art they choose to use.
.. that's fine and dandy if all you are a DPS class - but healers and fighters are very autoatacck dependant in order to deal damage. choice: click button so you will survive or click one to deal damage. Now I've done the whole pull mob and not be able to do a single thing whilst being bounced round the room or stifled/stunned to oblivion before and removing autoattack completely is going to completely ruin it for me. increase CA damage - yes - but removing or making autoattack useless is going to ruin more classes than it fixes.
I agree with most your post about swahie save aoe part. So other scouts can now at end- game can reforge into 100 aoe ( which only hits 4 targets) the swashie has so many blues ( which hits more than 4 targets) and aa- reset. No other scout can fire that many blues in succession esp aa reset, Swashie is still aoe-master esp if they 'tone down' pocket warlock - hemo-toxin.
We do have an initial leg up on the competition in the massive trash AE fights, but that's about it. Brigands can use Double Up on their AE's to obtain similar results, Sin poison hax, weight of WDB / proc dps across the board. Surrounded by equally competent scouts, the slight advantage in our AEs doesn't make up for the lacking single target potential - let alone everything else. We also live off of that Lucky Gambit reset, without that it's sad times. I need to con my guild into pulling nameds with a bunch of trash mobs
Actually I just had a thought: .. even if combat art damage was *vastly* increased you'll end up just doing what I do on my tank - order them in "most deeps to least deeps" and press them in order as they refresh with a slightly different order for AoE fights. Pretty much the only difference is you'll have something to point at "that Assassinate pushed me over the edge on that fight"; this happened a lot in KoS / EoF when I started raiding - a good crit at the right time and a person could jump to the top of the parse. In fact I vividly remember times when the assassin or other dps class called out "all my good abilities on recharge can we wait 5min for the pull". Now I'm not saying that increasing combat art damage is a bad thing - I just prefer that it was done in a more "fun" way. perhaps the best thing I've enjoyed about the new abilities since I've returned is vital trigger (timing that so I get all 4 triggers off and not wasting it if I'm halfway through a sequence) as well as trying to keep my 15% max health from maintaining my taunt triggers - combine that with my spells triggering extra crit bonus and weapon damage bonus as long as I keep hitting the correct buttons means my DPS is a lot more active in this expansion as it had been in previous. What melee DPS needs is similar combos or "charge" abilities. - hit quick strike and masked strike to charge up - "spend" those charges using caltrops and cause your next combat art to have a 300% crit bonus providing you are in stealth - or spend those charges with stealth assault to cause massacre to have a recast of 0s and no-longer need to be stealthed for 20seconds or using paralysing strike gives assassinate a 30% boost providing it is the next combat art. make pretty much every ability generate charges to spend or have bonuses or effects on everythign else - so combat art damage will increase, yes - but at the skill level of the player not at the "hit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3" button press level.
Again, swashbuckler AEs are simply a tool for applying proc damage. The same can be said for druids, AEs deal no damage but are great proc engines (i.e. sandstorm & whirl of permafrost, Raging Whirlwind//Stormbearer's Fury//etc.). The only reason any of these classes "parse well" on AE fights is they have tools available to apply damage procs to a large number of targets. They actually don't deal any damage themselves, which is why if they are provided a group without procs the damage disappears. I'd say this is fine for a priest, but its fairly depressing when your "AE Scout" needs VC in order to perform.
Playing a swash as a main since EQ2 day one.. and Katanallama nailed it 100% with his long post above. It is truly sad how meaningless most of our abilities have become. In groups the DPS performance is okay - but the class feels bland, uninteresting. Keep pressing blues, yay. Performance is consistent but is also extremely flat and lacks inspiration. What used to be about having a nice good rhythm has changed into something quite boring and repetitive, without a sense of achievement or cool. I miss the days when fencing was an interesting choice and classes were not all looking the same.
To be fair, I did start my DPS section with "DPS: our dps exists in proc damage and AE spam" I even put it in front of the AE spam bit :3 I don't dispute this statement at all lol.
Since I left playing tank and started playing scouts I have played a swash, ranger, dirge and brig. My main is a brig but i at one time i did main on both swash and ranger. My best friend plays a sin and i nag at him all the time about how sins are easy mode. Sins are way op right now with everything they offer plus the big dps they give. Not that long ago a sin didn't consistently destroy the other scouts like they do now. i would say the players on my server would consider me a pretty good brig. Yet consistently I have been beat by sins with less gear. I do not want to get in the topic if sins should be t1 or not... but based on everquest devs passed comments that damage vs utility should place each class at what tier they should then sins would not qualify as t1. What I would like to see...since I know for some reason sins will always be the love of the devs it seems, is if sins are t1 let them only beat rangers on single target and rangers dominant on aoe. A sin can sneeze with hemo toxin and destroy an aoe parse. I also left playing swash because even though the refresh became a dps boost to swash it made the class dull and many bad players stop casting other spells such as debuffs. I always like when a swash asked to join our guild and said he would debuff for us...then you check act and he's not casting anything but mainly blues. It would be nice too if something could be done to help rangers with one issue. Sometimes by the time a ca is off for a ranger the target is dead so now you have start recasting. As a swash the aoe isnt locked on a specific target. As a swash you can just hit your clues without target and do damage...a ranger has to have a target and if that target dies before the ca is off its a huge annoyance. If this update is done wrong sins are just going to be even more extremely powerful. I hope this isn't the case that we have true balance on the adjustment. Believe it or not sins aren't the Gods of scouts and the rest of us have to watch everything continued to be given to them. I welcome any flames against me, I don't care what people think of my statements, and if my statements hurt you well don't be so sensitive...it's just a game! I love this game, through all the years its the only game that I can continue to play and enjoy. Nothing is perfect, nothing will ever be perfect, but it's obvious things need fixed. I can't rant anymore...HEY KAT my friend hope to see you in game again soon...haven't been on much and miss seeing a great swashy. P.S. I hope dev's still see this...i don't do the reddit thing!
