Factual state of affairs for EQ2 PvP

[Ozgood]

<p>I did the work so you don't have to.  This is all from SOEs character stats pages.  It shows a lot of interesting trends and should help those wanting to create a PvP toon to decide how well they fare.</p><p>These are game wide numbers.  These are the truest indicators of class balancing in PvP.  Skill and gear does have a lot to do it.  But, I would imagine the toons at the tops of their respective class, are also very skilled and geared.  </p><p>Top Game wide Kill versus death ratio (top 2 scores blended to give more accurate reading):</p><ul><li>Swashies 324</li><li>Guardian 134 (one person had 215, next closest was 53.62)  bit misleading...</li><li>Beserker 131 (one person had 224, next closest was 39) bit misleading</li><li>Brigand 120</li><li>Ranger 112</li><li>Troub 110</li><li>Warden 101</li><li>Assassin 93.25</li><li>Templar 89</li><li>Dirge 74</li><li>Fury 60</li><li>Defiler 59</li><li>Shadowknight 58.3</li><li>Warlock 57</li><li>Mystic 52.75</li><li>Inquisitor 52.52</li><li>Bruiser 52.46</li><li>Coercer 45</li><li>Wizard 44</li><li>Monk 38.17</li><li>Necromancer 31</li><li>Conjuror 27.65</li><li>Paladin 26.44</li><li>Illusionist 25.51</li></ul><p>Top PvP kill streaks (classes) 3 of the top 10 are Swashies.  Over 70% can stealth of some sort.</p><p>Top 20 PvP total kills: 4 Rangers, 3 Wardens, 3 Brigs, 1 Swash and 1 SK. The rest are a mix and match.</p><p>Top PvP Deaths:</p><p>Top 5 are wizards, and they make up 39% of the top PvP losers.  In fact, clothies make up 64% of the top PvP losers.</p>

[Ozgood]

<p>Now for my opinion:</p><p>1. Swashies are OBVIOUSLY the head and shoulders best PvP class in the game.  To a tune of three to one.</p><p>2. Brigs aren't all that and a bag of chips.  Guess we should nerf them even more.</p><p>3. Bards do better than I ever imagined perhaps moreso at lower levels and in groups at later ones.</p><p>4. Furies with EV and PoTc still get dominated in PvP by Wardens, yet no complaints about them.</p><p>5. I guess that SK Harmtouch isn't that overpowered</p><p>6. Tanks do ok all around, with the Paladin needing serious, serious help.  Mitigation must be fairly decent.</p><p>7. Clothies don't do well at all overall.  Pet classes are even worse.  Lowest KvD ratio all the way around.  Perhaps resists are a little [Removed for Content]'ed?</p><p>8.  This is a game made for stealthers, period.  6 of the top ten and probably more like 6 of the top 8 are stealthing classes.  Stealth, track, sprint and evac is a deadly combo.  Not to mention if you can debuff and do T1 Dps.</p><p>9. Most of the Guardians and Beserkers were in that 50 and below range.  There just happen to be 2 really good players on Venekor I guess.</p><p>10. The very people asking for nerfs to other classes are so much higher on the food chain it is ridiculous.  Developers please balance this!</p>

[Eybietie]

KvD says NOTHING- i repeat- NOTHING about the ingame mechanics.

[Qanil]

<p>What was your algorythm... you said ...</p><p>"Guardian 134 (one person had 215, next closest was 53.62)  bit misleading..."</p><p>If I read this right, next closest was 53.62, then an average of all the people following would net an average of less than 53.62.</p><p>You need to do some more math.</p><p>Troubadors aren't even CLOSE to some of those classes, as well as the Dirges.  GTFOOH.</p><p>How did you figure this out? Seriously. </p>

[Groma]

Are those KVD ratios pvp or all around?  Cause that warlock looks a bit high on the list considering most i've seen are very lucky to have a 5:1 pvp kvd ratio.  If you are including mob ratios your numbers are WAY out of line, and of course evac classes are going to be the clear winners with cloth wearers in dead last.

[tass]

lol any kind of numbers recorded anywhere are bs. I can tell ya right here what the factual things are. If your a scout and not a bard your up there. Next comes your druids then the sorcerers if they a dont suck, and b have some ultra gear and aa. Then comes ur brawlers, and then the rest are odds and evens.

[Ozgood]

<p>Lol, you people crack me up.  This is taken verbatim from SOEs site.  They are FACTUAL.  So you are telling me they got a few classes wrong and the rest right, based on your personal experiences, on your specific server?  These are Gamewide PvP stats.</p><p>Kill versus death ratio is pretty self explanatory.  It has everything to do with in-game mechanics.  I have no agenda, by posting this, other than to give people ACCURATE information so they can be educated so they can form their own opinion(s).  Go to eq2players, hosted by SOE (not third party) and click on either leaderboards or best of the best.  It ranks the top 100 players by class for every imaginable stat.  I simply grabbed Kill versus Death ratio and listed the top player in each class and their score.</p><p>There you will see the information I posted here, albeit it broken up and viewable one class at a time.  I simply condensed it.</p><p>Regarding the algorythm, if you go to the page mentioned above and look at Beserkers or Guardians, there are a few players with 215 KvD, all with the same name on the Venekor server.  Just below them though is the 96 others, all starting around 53.62 or 36 respectively.  Therefore the score is not really indicative of that class as a whole when the majority are leaps and bounds behind that player.  Other classes, including Troubs and Swashies, had an accurate score.  No algorythms, just reading comprehension for the win.</p>

[Ozgood]

<p>For those that must see to believe, here is a link to the troub leaderboard as an example.</p><p>Click it <a href="http://eq2players.station.sony.com/leaderboards/classLeaderboardReport.action?report=highest_pvp_k d_ratio&classId=36" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a> and apologize. <img src="/smilies/908627bbe5e9f6a080977db8c365caff.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Groma]

You cannot just blend the top 2 toons and claim its an accurate reading of a classes survivability in pvp, or anything else for that matter.  Those are level 10 and 11 toons, who are pure twinks, and do nothing but gank in the lowbie zones where people go right when they leave the newbie island. Also, to claim that what eq2players has is 100% fact is way wrong.  Just looking at my own stats it says i have a 116 kill streak, when i lost that days ago, and more than half time i check my own stats it shows me listed as Qeynos or Freeport, when i am in fact exiled.  Hell, the server leader in total kills doesn't even show up on the list with just under 12k kills.

[Groma]

Remove the possibility of twinks from the list by only looking at the data from 61-70 players shows this. This is the top KVD ratio, no mixing of top 2 and dividing. Assassin - 44.88 Berserker - 16.64 Brigand - 110.78 Bruiser - 31.33 Coercer - 13.31 Conjurer - 16.86 Defiler - 28.82 Dirge - 25.17 Fury - 44.05 Guardian - 42.14 Illusionist - 14.42 Inquisitor - 17.39 Monk - 26.61 Mystic - 19.77 Necromancer - 15.48 Paladin - 17.37 Ranger - 27.55 Shadowknight - 34.31 Swashbuckler - 35.36 Templar - 32.64 Troubador - 78.52 Warden - 27.69 Warlock - 12.06 Wizard - 18.07 Thats the list alphabetically.  As you can see, brigands on top, Warlocks on bottom.  Going 61-70 on the levels removes twinks and assumes that the majority are on a somewhat level playing field.  All the top KVD ratio players are level 70, and you will notice that almost all the numbers are way off from your original list.  Some classes REALLY shine in the low levels, but once they pass 50 their Ancient Teachings really make or break the classes as far as pvp is concerned.  From the looks of it, armor doesn't play much of a factor in who has the highest ratios, but the top 3 all have evac being about the only notable exception to the list.  Notice, a cloth wearing non-pet class with no 1shot ability is dead last on the KVD ratio.

[Groma]

And like some other posters said, KVD ratio might say a a lot about pure scouts(Brig/swash/assassin/ranger) but for everyone else it really depends on their groups.  I promise you the highest KVD trouby did not get there solo ganking in T7, nor did the lead Guardian.  Obviously the people who get out there and group pvp regularly with a very well rounded group are going to skew the numbers if you are trying to prove soloability. And your statement of how a warden owns a fury, what exactly do you mean?  If its in a 1v1, i would beg to differ and in the end it boils down to whoever has the most power regen in MOST healer on healer fights, but FURY can definitely DPS more than a healer and could always run away with PotC if it gets bad.

[EatThisShoe]

Well I'm not going to call you an idiot, like a lot of people did. But I do think there are better methods to determining what classes are the most powerful. 1. Level matters. Although I don't think only taking 61-70 is the right choice. To simply ignore T2-T3 characters is not very helpful. But to separate their statistics and show them separately so we can see which classes change in power as their level changes. 2. The top two players is not a very good measure of pvp capability. Perhaps you could use a median instead? This would help eliminate the effect of outliers. I don't think most statistical analyses use the top values as they are often outliers and not in line with most people. A median might be more reflective of what the average player experiences, which is actually probably more important than one or two super players, or on the other end, complete PvP failures.

[Mildavyn]

<p>You realise that most bots play clothies right? And bots get farmed more than ANYTHING.</p><p>This is all BS. Also, those numbers look like they're taking PvE kills into account.</p>

[Ozgood]

<p>I never claimed this is the gospel, just a measuring piece if you will.  Gromann, I respected the way your addressed my post, so I shall do the same in return.</p><p>Being a couple days old or a week old for that matter doesn't change the fact that the top KvD classes will all be lagged a bit.  Therefore all on the same scale.  Do you think it is coincidence that the top Swashies were in the 300 range to be the best and that Paladins were in the 20's?</p><p>Again, these figures are the "best" swashie versus the "best" Paladin gamewide.  Maybe people who play swashies are just 10 times better as the numbers indicate...</p><p>Again, use it as a guide, not the gospel.</p><p>There are a ton of classes that are consistently in the 50's and under and a few that are 100+.  Look at the list again, choose your server.  I bet plat that the majority of higher titled toons are in that same 100+ group, regardless of tier.  So as a guide it is a lot more spot on then people starting threads asking to nerf XYZ because (insert Fotm complaint here) is overpowered!</p><p>This shows that in general, most classes (70%) are within the same ballpark.  10% need extreme help and 20% are easier to win with in this current PvP system.  Do I want them nerfed?  Honestly, no, I don't care to.</p><p>But it does show a pattern that I pointed out earlier, that you must have not seen, but agreed with me on; casters are at the bottom, any way you slice it.  Stealthers on top, and the rest trickle down quickly from there.  Therefore, this is unbalanced as a whole.</p><p>Some did get them in groups, I agree.  Some were low level twinks, some were not.  </p><p>To the person that didn't call me an idiot, I appreciate it as I am most certainly not.  Show me a better source to get factual from SOE data and I will gladly use it.  But I know, as a non-idiot like yourself, that player skill, level locking, gear, AA's, server population, and whatever else will ultimately tell the tale.  How do you measure that?  You don't.</p><p>You allow all those people to perform at their best and compare them to others at their best.  Which I did.</p><p>Kill versus death imho is risk versus reward.  Those who have low risk (stealth, in-combat speed, evac, tracking) to get the reward are on top.  Those who have to risk everything (clothies) to get the reward are at the bottom.</p>

[HerbertWalker]

<p>Empirical evidence is great.  What did we learn that we did not already know?</p><p>On your next analysis, please use a median rather than average.  Perhaps we'd learn something if you can get the median KvD per class per tier.</p><p>Also, after you are done with total KvD we'd like to see an analysis of KvD in solo battles only.  I'll need this by Friday.</p><p>Thanks</p>

[Raven_Ancient]

Not being a flamer here as the top KvD ratio per class is a useful bit of information but as you stated yourself with the Guardian and Beserker there CAN be huge gaps between one toon and the next. The information provided shows what people have been able to do with their class. Now from that you can gain some good information such as most of the top ones are the scout classes. The information is a little limited regarding overall survivability as in this case a more in depth statistical analysis involving mean, median, standard deviation and all that sort of business would be potentially more useful in an OVERALL survivability perspective as not everyone one is going to have the you beaut gear and masters and so on. I'm sure the average kills for a Swashbuckler is probably no where near 324. The problem being is that unless you can get a data dump sorted into excel or something to work that out in my opinion is just too much hassle.

[EatThisShoe]

Ozgood@Vox wrote: <blockquote><p>To the person that didn't call me an idiot, I appreciate it as I am most certainly not.  Show me a better source to get factual from SOE data and I will gladly use it.  But I know, as a non-idiot like yourself, that player skill, level locking, gear, AA's, server population, and whatever else will ultimately tell the tale.  How do you measure that?  You don't.</p><p>You allow all those people to perform at their best and compare them to others at their best.  Which I did.</p></blockquote>I tend to disagree with your conclusion here. If you can't measure these factors how do you know they are all equal between the leaders? Sure it's easy to assume gear and masters are all maxed on the leaders of each class, but what about how often they group? Obviously grouping makes a huge difference, as shown by the guardian and berserker who were so high. But yet the top class is one notorious as a solo king. So maybe this is a factor which is not equal between the leaders of different classes. This is where the median is useful. The method you have used is not very good from a statistical standpoint. A Median is likely to give an idea of what most players on a PvP server are experiencing. The best KvD ratio could be a statistical fluke. It could be dependent on a factor which we cannot isolate with the information available. If we don't know what the variable is, we can't be certain that it is in fact equal between these players. We don't even know if the biggest factor in getting a good KvD with a rogue is the same factor as it is with a cleric. I think that assessing what most players are experiencing is much more useful to any discussions of change on a PvP server, which obviously is what will be discussed when these sort of statistics are brought up. For example say that the KvD ratios of one sample were: (1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 10, 10) And the KvD of a second sample, of a different class was: (9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10) If we use your method, then the conclusion is that the classes are roughly equal. But if you ask players in the game most people will from experience tell you that the second class is much more powerful. Outliers are relatively common in statistics, and your method actually inflates their influence to seem even larger.

[Lev]

I am sorry, but I think an average of worldwide KvD has nothing to do with how well said class is in PvP. I mean do you know how many variables go into that? Millions for sure Especially since most of what would affect your KvD rate has so much more to do with induvidal stuff, like play-style and level of play. KvD rating have a lot more to do with the player behind the character than the class of the character and in my opinion is a bad way of comparing classes.

[Ozgood]

<p>I didn't use a method.  I simply took classes that had one person that was way out of the norm in comparision to the other classes and averaged it to at least give it a more realistic representation.  Which I agree, probably wasn't the best way to do it for those two classes and two classes only.  The other classes were shown directly from the SOE site itself, no methods or interpretation on my part.</p><p>With that said, I would argue that the median, which I will not take the time to do, would show the same thing.  Take a look for yourself, there are trends that present anywhere you look.  Calling this post BS is basically calling anyone who quotes themselves at one of the tops on the server, quotes their Kill streaks, KvD ratios a liar.  I have read a lot of posts, and if they are using that signature that shows their performance, I have never seen it disputed.  They got the data from the same place that I did, not unless there are there are third party programs that do this.</p><p>Either way, is anyone on this thread saying that people that can stealth, track and evac don't have an inherent advantage over those that don't?</p><p>That clothies are at an disadvantage, regardless of being grouped or not in PvP?</p><p>That SKs are indestructable, PvP Gods?</p><p>That Furies can't be stopped?</p><p>That brigs need to be nerfed again?</p><p>That Pallies don't need some love?</p><p>That casters don't have a problem with resists?</p><p>Whatever, I digress.  I didn't do this to get into a statistics discussion.  I did it simply to show what they best of the best are doing and allow others to form their own opinions based on that data, or the lack thereof.</p><p>I thought it would be better than, "This [Removed for Content] (insert class here) musta been hella l33t, cuz he pwned my [Removed for Content] every time and hit me for (insert inflated amount here) and I culdn't even hit them.  [Removed for Content] is up wit dat?  I call BS on this class man, you can't beat them..."</p><p>Perhaps not.</p>

[shagr1414]

<cite>tass wrote:</cite><blockquote>lol any kind of numbers recorded anywhere are bs. I can tell ya right here what the factual things are. If your a scout and not a bard your up there. Next comes your druids then the sorcerers if they a dont suck, and b have some ultra gear and aa. Then comes ur brawlers, and then the rest are odds and evens. </blockquote>you cannot classify all mages as one class, there are major differences that fare into success in pvp.  Pet classes have major issues especially necros. Warlocks and wizards have great burst dps actions yet necros have DoT's which require time to be effective IF the spells even land at all. Most times a necro can get 1 or 2 dots onto a scout b4 they die IF there is any luck involved.  Its not about talent its about balance which with a dot class this doesnt exist.

[natasha]

I see what you're saying Ozgood, and I agree the classes are a littel imbalanced. You do need to take into account however, that some classes are simply more popular than others. When I created my first PvP toon, I made a scout because I was told stealth was the most important thing in PvP. I now know otherwise. I do know a couple warlocks for example, who have no problems with scouts, and hold their own just fine both in titles and PvP death/kills ratios. It could be argued then, that perhaps some classes are a little easier to play, and that it really boils down to the player behind it? For this reason I am now picking all the supposed 'weak' or unpopular classes to prove my point. So far, I have had great success with all the supposed weaker classes. It's all a matter of strategy and how well you know your class. Also-how well you pick your stats and which AA line you choose to go down. I will say one thing though, that I have read over and over and that I agree with-stealth is a HUGE advantage in PvP. I understand every class cannot have stealth, but I think some classes that are particularly weak to getting 'jumped; i.e. cloth classes or tanks etc...should perhaps be allowed to see stealth? Just a thought. Although in a fantasy world, I would expect that mages would be, well, mages-powerful spells but very little mitigation. It means that they will be a more challenging class to play, and not an 'easy win' like some of the others. I don't know about you, but I don't want anything handed to me. I like feeling like I've mastered or earned something.

[Badaxe Ba]

<p>Anyone in the game can buy totems to see stealth and see invis, once they reach the required level.</p><p>True Story.</p>