Zerkers/Guards still out parsing T1 dps

Drocca@Venekor wrote:

i'd have to say you haven't played a zerk long enough then. if you want to rule the parse without an optimal group then all you're asking to do is pull aggro and cause headaches for the group. this issue relates back again to the aggro system in this game where 1 DPS= 1 hate, you should already know our taunts make up ~5% of our overall aggro generation. without a hate buffing/transfer class in group if you still want to be T1 DPS over the tank then you WILL pull aggro, which i'm sure you still also realize.
most groups won't optimize a group around the DPS but moreso around the tank to make sure they survive through the zone, it's tough to accept but that's the truth. not saying you can't create a group focused around caster DPS and blow up a zone either but in single groups it isn't always easy to throw together a perfect group for a wizard aka zerk/troub/fury/illus/swash/wiz. in that scenario you will be at the top of the parse but then the melee suffers and unless everyone is on the ball then the zone may even take longer.
the only fix they can do is lower fighter DPS and up our taunts so we are still able to hold aggro. currently as it sits i'm not 100% against nerfing some of the tanks DPS if they fix this mechanic, i only say that as i play a zerk and our primary role was as a DPS tank. if they do this though they should bump up some of the T1-2 DPS to compensate to keep things equalized.

There's a certain amount of ACT noobishness that goes on as well.
The tank will invariably be the first person to attack in the fight. They never have to hesitate to avoid pulling aggro. They are in every fight for 100% of the time. If they die the entire group parse will likely go to hell.
This adds up on zonewides. I play my guard I usually top the ZW in any heroic instance against wizzies + assassins who can do 6k+ on raid mobs purely because of the way ACT parses dps and the short duration of heroic encounters. A lot of tank DPS is also credited to them on ACT despite the fact it's other classes buffs that are generating the damage.
This doesn't mean the game is broken, it means using ACT as a measure of total dps contribution is ********. Parses have definite uses, but theu're misused far more often.

TuinalOfTheNexus wrote:

This is the exact reason that I don't like EXT DPS. In a 20-second fight, losing that first few seconds while the tank pulls and gains agro means losing alot of your dps potential. I'd rather know what I do from the second I enter combat, than what I did while standing there waiting for a few seconds. Especially on raids, when sometimes you have to wait 10-15 seconds after combat starts, before you can start really putting out DPS.

Savanja wrote:

Honestly, as a DPS monk, we have about the best burst damage in the game (not quite, but we're up there, even without devastation fist. I do not bother holding back unless I get serious complaints from the group tank - or unless the mob has a frontal AE that makes facing absolutely vital. If I pull aggro, so be it. That's what Tsunami, my racial positional detaunt, FD, our selfheal, mongoose stance and, oh right, our AA aggro transfer on our avoidance buff is for.

I'm a fully DPS specced monk - I've litteraly gone to lengths to exclude stuff like resists, HP and power as far as AA builds and gear goes in preference for more damage-related stats and effects. If I'm running with any tank other than a shadowknight (who take time to build aggro) this usually does not give me any kind of trouble.

Over all, not matter how bad the tank is at holding aggro, if you position yourself right so the mob does not run when you take aggro, you can put out as much damage as possible until you rip, then feign death, wait a second or two for the tank to reestablish aggro, stand up and get back to it - assuming you don't just decide to tank the mob yourself anyway.


If your tank does not understand this, you need to explain to him that he should worry too much if you take aggro. You can take a few hits (tsunami is handy if it gets really bad), and have the best tool in the game (FD) to get rid of the aggro if you really need to. If your healers do not understand this, keep yourself alive when you take aggro (again, tsunami is really good for this) and FD as the last consequence.
Have I mentioned how FD is the patent answer to never having problems with aggro again?
Even better, if you have healers who do know you and how you play, you can likely get away with running most of the lower-end instance with one healer, in full DPS mode, and never use tsunami even if you do pull aggro from the tank. I wouldn't count on this in Maiden's Chamber and the nameds save for the golem thingie, and it gets chancy in Chelsith on a few of the nameds due to forntal AEs - but that's it.

For the reasons listed above, aggro management for a monk should never be comparable to the ordeals of any of the caster classes, and it hence does not form a good basis for comparison. On this one count, they have it much, much worse than we do.

Parsing heroic instances is about as useful as decapitating a lvl 1 rat then asking for a parse. Playing a troubador here, and I have no problems beating a tank on a parse where it matters.

As a guardian who has done solo, group, and raid content to great lengths I would have to say that anyone parsing lower than a warrior aside from priests (not including fury), bards, or crusaders is not doing their job. Every other class in the game with the same teir gear and level should be able to parse higher than a warrior even if that warrior is fully offensive spec.
That being said I would now like to say I do not agree that warriors should be parsing as high as they do. A warrior parsing close to that of many DPS classes while being able to tank mobs is just too good and should be changed. Offensive stance should be for that, offensive. Make damage takin in offensive +10% or do something to offset the increased DPS. In defensive warriors should be doing increased threat and less DPS so that overall TPS(threat per second) should be about the same. Many top teir guardians agree that offensive and defensive stances should be changed and that guardians should have more threat gain abilities and less DPS abilities. If we wanted DPS we can always betray to a berserker as I feel they are offensive tanks much like brawlers.

The real problem is not tank vs. dps, it is the more general melee dps vs. mage dps. Why take a mage that will do 2k zonewide in an instance over a scout that will do 3k+? Those same scouts I outpares in raids outparse me in instances. Why? Because I'm lucky to get 5 spells off b4 the mob dies.
Simply put, in group instances you are better off with melee over mage.

Kriddle Kraddle wrote:

try playing a berserker and say such things, we can only really fight in offensive unless we stack a group perfectly for defensive tanking and then aggro issues can still arise. all this would do is 100% demote us to using our tier1-2 defensive stance since the lack of attack skill in higher tiers takes its toll on our tohit ratio and destroys our DPS which was used to hold aggro. tanks already take their beating while tanking in offensive, there is no need to only give us 1 stance(defense) unless they balance everything out between ALL tanks perfectly and that is honestly asking for a friggin miracle or to subsidize all tank classes into 1.
the term offensive tank given to berserkers wasn't something we took on by choice, it has been forced upon us as the only viable way we can now fight unless an ideal situation occurs or the players allow us to tank defensively(deaggros anyone?). we don't prefer being forced to tank offensively and spike damage is our enemy, that comment about more damage in offensive just struck a nerve with me because many just totally misinterpret zerks as a class who does our job just because we want to where the truth is it's all we can do to help our group survive.
as a guard you should hug your attack skill buff every day and cherish it and keep it warm at night, same goes for reinforcements. be happy you have those tools as not everyone does.

AdamWest007 wrote:

So what you are saying is in heroic instances everyone would pick the scout because he does 1k. more DPS. What does that net you in a heroic instance? 2 seconds quicker kill per mob?
You guys seem to forget that heroic instances are kind of a joke. Get a tank, a healer or two and ANYONE else. Boom there ya go instant group that can clear CoA in 45mins. You could take a Monk tank, troub, dirge, illy and two of any healer and clear nearly any instance. Point is there is no challenge to them to need any one class.
Sadly I started EQ2 as a Warlock but changed to a Monk shortly after launch becuase of this very reason. And after years of thinking about it there is no way to fix casters in groups without breaking them in raid.
And for the record a manashielded Sorc could top the parse every time just by going all out from the pull. Not like a mob will kill you because the group kills it.

i think the casters are just taking this a little too personally, perhaps due to that one time some group leader wanted a scout over a caster to clear a zone quicker. are instance groups really that hard to find on any server or are guilds really being that **** about grouping within their own guild? i honestly just toss a group together and move out, it's not worth it spending 5 minutes finding a scout that i know can out DPS a caster to save time, that 5 minutes spent looking could have saved us more time overall in clearing the zone..

Lyger@Mistmoore wrote:

Not sure what you think I am saying but you reiterated my point. Tanking should not happen in offensive stance and defensive stance should increase in threat to counter that of offensive DPS. My point is not to weakin berserkers by making them tank in defensive so they cant hold agro but instead of DPS being agro while tanking you get more threat.

it's just alot to ask, that would mean we would require skill buffs to hit the mobs and more powerful taunts to help maintain aggro. i'm not so against the idea though but i just find it one more way to screw up our class even further.

no need for skill buffs. Only thing that needs to change is you take more damage in offensive to make it less wanted while tanking and make defensive add 50% more threat or something. Increase the + hate from 50% cap right now to 100% cap making the perfect group setup you will have 100% hate gain in defensive but doing way less DPS. It could be done very easy but too many people complain then you nerf their DPS so SOE wont do it. If people cant see raw numbers they feel they are nerfed and there is currently no way to see TPS via a parser of any sort.

yes, they still would have to give us more skill buffs. perhaps you haven't talked to a zerker but offensively to defense we lose 71(seventy one) points to crushing/slashing/piercing with no self buff that guards get. it may seem minor since you have it but forget to buff it sometime and run in raid, you will see quite a difference in your damage output. a raise in hate transfers would help but for an offensive tank with alot less survivability you now suggest our DPS be cut as well... i'm not trying to be an [I cannot control my vocabulary] but i'm trying to remain constructive about how others view us and not knowing the inner workings of our class.

The best defensive tanks are also the best offensive tanks, this is wrong and should be fixed.

Kriddle Kraddle wrote:

So you want to lower the DPS of the offensive warrior? No thanks. You forget that if they gave warriors in general better tools to hold aggro aside from our dps overall group/raid dps would go up right? If my dps stayed exactly the same yet SoE gave me more tools for aggro management or made my taunts a lot more powerfull group/raid members could open up sooner and more fully thus increasing their dps. I probably wouldn't see a single person complain then. When you don't know anything about the class you talking about changing stay out of the discussion and away from the nerf bat.

Instance DPSing is just about how quickly you can start a fight. The whole 'give the tank time to build up aggro' thing phased out a few expansions ago for almost all occasions. As soon as you learn to forget that concept your DPS will dramatically improve. The 1st step is to make sure you have damage numbers set to appear over the mobs head. Then you simply watch for the mob to take dmg, and start attacking, that one is pretty basic. Giving the tank 5 seconds (or even 2) out of a 10 second fight to build aggro is just dumb. He'll do enough dps to hold the mob, or he wont and it'll die a few seconds later. Either way it's dead and you move on.

The next step is to actually learn the tanks tendencies and counter accordingly. If you can get used to the play style of your tank, you can usually estimate pretty accurately when he's going to pull. Once you can do this, start pre-timing your spells. If he's going to pull in say 5 seconds, wait like 3.5s then start casting a 2 second spell. It will land just after he pulls, which will drastically help your dps on short encounters. The trick here is just learning when the mob is safe from social and when it is not. I'll often start casting my spells before the mob gets out of social aggro range, knowing that he will be by the time the casting finishes. Also if you see the tank attack the mob, then you know it's either out of social range, or the tank already social'd his friends.

Mobs, even named, just don't have enough HP to sit around giving the tank time to build up hate before you begin. Either the tank will be good enough to grab aggro fast or he won't, in which case he's not doing enough dps for you to worry about him beating you. Guards putting out zonewides of 1500+ generally are going to know how to play fairly well & snap aggro from high dps classes quickly. If you wanted I could show you a parse from last night where I parsed almost 7k on the final named in CoA (which we killed in like 21 seconds) & the tank never lost aggro even though he was feared on the pull. And I promise you I had several spells cast on the mob before it even got within melee range of the tank. (Guard) Yes he is an amazing tank, but 7k dps is also much higher than what your tank will likely ever have to worry about no matter how early you start attacking. Group was Guard, Inquis, Dirge, Troub, Necro, & Ilus [me] (& no, guard didn't have the dirge hate buff, we were running full offensive buffs), and lemme tell you, groups that kill crap that fast are fun. Thats one thing about having everyone go all out right from the pull, it makes groups so much more fast paced and fun. Constant fighting from zone in to final named with no break longer than what it takes to pull the next one.

Something else I've noticed in exp groups is that tanks usually dicate when the fight starts, must pay attention, and can go all out. Casters usually have to pace themselves and are a few seconds behind.. which is a lot when the fight only lasts 20 seconds.

Alexiiya@Nektulos wrote:

That, or you'll get squished. I have no tolerance for folks who don't wait for me to get agro. If someone pulls agro because they're so concerned about their dps, then I don't want to hear them complaining when they take agro and die.

Lyger@Mistmoore wrote:

I hug all my attack skill buffs(Guard/Human/Mount/Gear). Between them, I can tank in defensive and still have positive/green weapon skills.