Making Avoidance Tanks as effective as Mit Tanks in a Raid is "Really Risky". [Archive]

tt66

08-13-2007, 08:30 AM

Well, there you have it. The official EQ2 Dev response. Taken from a transcript of the <a href="http://eq2.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=1057" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mechanically Speaking Panel at FanFaire</a>. Avoidance tanking: are we ever going to get that working? This is a tricky one. Mitigation is traditionally always more effective that avoidance and it's been hard to balance monks and bruisers without making them overpowered because in group and solo situations they're very powerful tanks. And to have them be more effective than the mitigation tanks group/solo and be as or more effective in a raid situation is really risky, especially when they can do as much DPS as they can. The minimum deflection chance is an attempt to bring more parity between brawlers and the mitigation tanks. Well, regardless of the very arguable assumption that brawlers do higher DPS than mitigation tanks, at least we've now got the official SoE word. I guess that now we can only hope for extra raid utility.

Antas22

08-13-2007, 01:13 PM

Better group tanks? Since when? Are we capable? Certainly. But you'll be hardpressed to find a group out there that would take generic brawler "X" over generic plate tank "Y". The DPS assumption is questionable, at best, but to say that we're actually BETTER group tanks (or better soloers than Shadow Knights) is just plain absurd. Basically, what this is saying is "The class isn't working as we intend, but we're completely oblivious to that fact".

Kaycerzan

08-14-2007, 02:41 AM

Brawler + warden makes a very nice tank / healer combo for just about any group. Sure you'll have issues in overcon areas, such as Unrest or Nizara, in same tier gear as a mit tank, but even they have issues sometimes. I think it's more the general opinion of most people that warrior / crusader = tank and brawler = dps, and that's where you get screwed in groups. Not because we can't do it, but because a few times people try to let a bruiser tank with a mismatched healer, and their opinion gets jaded.

Antas22

08-14-2007, 04:28 AM

<cite>Kaycerzan wrote:</cite><blockquote>Brawler + warden makes a very nice tank / healer combo for just about any group. Sure you'll have issues in overcon areas, such as Unrest or Nizara, in same tier gear as a mit tank, but even they have issues sometimes. I think it's more the general opinion of most people that warrior / crusader = tank and brawler = dps, and that's where you get screwed in groups. Not because we can't do it, but because a few times people try to let a bruiser tank with a mismatched healer, and their opinion gets jaded. </blockquote>Re-read what I said. Of course we're capable. I love tanking, and get compliments all the time about the job I do of it. I have a problem with this dev's supposed perception that brawlers are somehow BETTER equipped for group tanking than mit tanks. The truth is, if you take a Bruiser and a Berserker, both equally skilled in their class, with same level, high end gear, and number of achievements (placed in abilities that improve tanking), the Zerker is going to be the better choice for 99% of groups, and will likely out DPS the Bruiser in many situations, to boot. Same situation, a Paladin or Guardian is going to be a much better agro controller and easier on the healer. An SK...well, they kind of get screwed, too, but many groups will still take an SK over a Brawler simply because of the plate armor. SOMETHING needs to be done about our avoidance against higher-con mobs, because a big part of the group and raid aspect of this game is fighting those. It's not very risky, it'd just require some actual thought to be put into it, and that's such a pain in the [Removed for Content].

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-14-2007, 04:44 AM

Assuming all things are equal (gear, player skill, etc) in all parties involved, this is the current situation: Brawlers are equally good with Shaman and Druids as other Fighters. Brawlers are not as good matched with a Reactive healer compared to other Fighters. Brawlers have less AE aggro handling than other Fighters, pre and post AA choices. Brawlers have higher pre-AA DPS. Other Fighters have equal or higher post-AA DPS. Brawlers have 16% uncontested avoidance at the cost of doing anything Offensively. Other Fighters have 18%+ uncontested avoidance, even if in Offensive stance. So my answer to that quote? Mitigation is traditionally always more effective that avoidance and it's been hard to balance monks and bruisers without making them overpowered because in group and solo situations they're very powerful tanks. 1. Mitigation IS more powerful than Avoidance. However, there is no "Mit tank vs Avoidance tank" these days, so the point is moot. The disparity between mitigation values for fighters is reduced by diminishing returns. That, and Brawlers are not the "avoidance tanks" these days... Anyone with a Tower Shield, or a Kite Shield + Block AA's is. 2. Brawlers are Powerful? Maybe. As powerful as regular tanks? Not in any way. Look at my list above. Better AE aggro handling and can work fully with all three healer types. We need a boost, even in heroic situations, to become EQUAL. We won't become overpowered. And to have them be more effective than the mitigation tanks group/solo and be as or more effective in a raid situation is really risky, Risky? I'd like an explanation as to how we'd suddenly become "more" effective than the other tanks. And seriously, we aren't talking about "mitigation tanks" vs "avoidance tanks", because they have better avoidance than us against Epics. And we've explained how things can be changed to reflect better avoidance AGAINST ONLY EPICS. MULTIPLE TIMES. especially when they can do as much DPS as they can. I'd like an explanation as to how Brawlers are doing "more DPS". Have they tested this in house? Have they geared two tanks, one a brawler, another a plate tank, and spec'd them for DPS with DPS gear and DPS AA's, and found that Brawlers have more? Because that has not been the experience of EVERY SINGLE PLAYER IN THIS GAME. The minimum deflection chance is an attempt to bring more parity between brawlers and the mitigation tanks. As I detailed above: Brawlers -> 16% uncontested when in Defensive stance. Non Brawlers -> 18% or higher when in Offensive stance. This is NOT parity. This is WHY we have problems being a Tank. This is WHY we are not even considered a good Offtank to give our avoidance. Literally everything that we need to be an effective tank is lesser than any other tank class. The only thing we had was more DPS, but that was two expansions ago.. before AA's were added making non-Brawlers amazingly better at DPS. This is a tricky one. Yeah, maybe for someone still stuck in a version of the game 20 updates ago. Otherwise it's pretty clear: 1. Change uncontested avoidance in favour of Brawlers. I don't care how, nerf or buff, just make Brawlers better. 2. Change Brawler AA's to buff up autoattack better. Double Attack, Multi Attack, etc. None of this "proc" stuff that doesn't scale with weapons, and thus falls behind when you get better weapons (fabled, or gear expansions like EoF). Those two things alone would make Brawlers viable. How hard was that?

Arathy

08-14-2007, 01:54 PM

Kaisoku@Mistmoore wrote: <blockquote>Assuming all things are equal (gear, player skill, etc) in all parties involved, this is the current situation: Brawlers are equally good with Shaman and Druids as other Fighters. Brawlers are not as good matched with a Reactive healer compared to other Fighters. Brawlers have less AE aggro handling than other Fighters, pre and post AA choices. Brawlers have higher pre-AA DPS. Other Fighters have equal or higher post-AA DPS. Brawlers have 16% uncontested avoidance at the cost of doing anything Offensively. Other Fighters have 18%+ uncontested avoidance, even if in Offensive stance. So my answer to that quote? Mitigation is traditionally always more effective that avoidance and it's been hard to balance monks and bruisers without making them overpowered because in group and solo situations they're very powerful tanks. 1. Mitigation IS more powerful than Avoidance. However, there is no "Mit tank vs Avoidance tank" these days, so the point is moot. The disparity between mitigation values for fighters is reduced by diminishing returns. That, and Brawlers are not the "avoidance tanks" these days... Anyone with a Tower Shield, or a Kite Shield + Block AA's is. 2. Brawlers are Powerful? Maybe. As powerful as regular tanks? Not in any way. Look at my list above. Better AE aggro handling and can work fully with all three healer types. We need a boost, even in heroic situations, to become EQUAL. We won't become overpowered. And to have them be more effective than the mitigation tanks group/solo and be as or more effective in a raid situation is really risky, Risky? I'd like an explanation as to how we'd suddenly become "more" effective than the other tanks. And seriously, we aren't talking about "mitigation tanks" vs "avoidance tanks", because they have better avoidance than us against Epics. And we've explained how things can be changed to reflect better avoidance AGAINST ONLY EPICS. MULTIPLE TIMES. especially when they can do as much DPS as they can. I'd like an explanation as to how Brawlers are doing "more DPS". Have they tested this in house? Have they geared two tanks, one a brawler, another a plate tank, and spec'd them for DPS with DPS gear and DPS AA's, and found that Brawlers have more? Because that has not been the experience of EVERY SINGLE PLAYER IN THIS GAME. The minimum deflection chance is an attempt to bring more parity between brawlers and the mitigation tanks. As I detailed above: Brawlers -> 16% uncontested when in Defensive stance. Non Brawlers -> 18% or higher when in Offensive stance. This is NOT parity. This is WHY we have problems being a Tank. This is WHY we are not even considered a good Offtank to give our avoidance. Literally everything that we need to be an effective tank is lesser than any other tank class. The only thing we had was more DPS, but that was two expansions ago.. before AA's were added making non-Brawlers amazingly better at DPS. This is a tricky one. Yeah, maybe for someone still stuck in a version of the game 20 updates ago. Otherwise it's pretty clear: 1. Change uncontested avoidance in favour of Brawlers. I don't care how, nerf or buff, just make Brawlers better. 2. Change Brawler AA's to buff up autoattack better. Double Attack, Multi Attack, etc. None of this "proc" stuff that doesn't scale with weapons, and thus falls behind when you get better weapons (fabled, or gear expansions like EoF). Those two things alone would make Brawlers viable. How hard was that? </blockquote> All awesome points, and I just wish that a Dev or someone with the ability to address these points would wander into this forum and read this. It's just sad that, and I'm sorry to point out another class here (oh wait, I'm not), a berzerker does everything we do but better. Better tanking, better dps, better utility. I sense a disturbance in the force.

Novusod

08-14-2007, 05:15 PM

I have given up all hope on Brawlers ever getting fixed. I going to level up my swashy because he can tank better, has more dps, and more utility. 70 Bruiser FTL

Harpax

08-14-2007, 06:52 PM

I asked this question at the panel and Lockeye was the one who gave the answer after Hartman jokingly said "never! next question!". <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />There is some key information missing out of that transcript that is fairly important. Lockeye said that they are aware that brawlers don't stand up to mit tanks when it comes to tanking raid content, but at the same time avoidance just doesn't balance the way mitigation does due to its random nature. They have to make small changes or they end up with what you had a long while back where people pumped their avoidance sky high and were tanking naked. As a result, any changes they make in the future will be small incremental changes and they do have a few things they were looking into to better equip us in raid situations. I also had the oppertunity to chat with a few other dev's over the course of the pool party and there should hopefully be some things coming "if all goes as planned" that would make us very dersirable in raid situations. What this means, I don't know though <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

ganjookie

08-14-2007, 06:52 PM

"especially when they can do as much DPS as they can. I'd like an explanation as to how Brawlers are doing "more DPS". Have they tested this in house? Have they geared two tanks, one a brawler, another a plate tank, and spec'd them for DPS with DPS gear and DPS AA's, and found that Brawlers have more? Because that has not been the experience of EVERY SINGLE PLAYER IN THIS GAME." I agree most heatily with this. I see plates Out DPSing brawlers ALOT of the time. These are fabled/legendary tanks, and the plates do more DPS WHILE tanking!

mellowknees72

08-14-2007, 06:54 PM

Antas@Oasis wrote: <blockquote>Better group tanks? Since when? Are we capable? Certainly. But you'll be hardpressed to find a group out there that would take generic brawler "X" over generic plate tank "Y". The DPS assumption is questionable, at best, but to say that we're actually BETTER group tanks (or better soloers than Shadow Knights) is just plain absurd. Basically, what this is saying is "The class isn't working as we intend, but we're completely oblivious to that fact". </blockquote> omg, I would. And that's not me talking from my own monk-ish perspective...but I have a friend who is a monk who is an incredible tank. I'd take him over a random plate tank ANY day.

Darkdourden

08-14-2007, 07:11 PM

I cant agree on many things that ppl says about "brawlers" i been bruiser from the first day of this game, at all i am so happy with my class, im hardocre raider and im in a raiding guild, im good geared with most fabled set pieces. 1º I tank good in raids and in groups, never had problems with that. 2º If i dont tank in raid i do 1300 to 2500 dps easily 3º Got 2 different equips 1 for dps that have procs + critics + str + haste -- And an other for tankeage, that gives me a lot of mitigation and parry, deflection and defense, also a lot of hps. Why i say that i can tank good, well, my mitigation self is 3563, and my avoidance is 67,3 Raid buffed Shaman + warden + dirge my mitigation is 5100 (5800 with temporal buff) and my avoidance around 75% (Sometimes reached 9k mitigation and 80% avoidance with temporal buffs on group). The difference betwen mitigations with the guardian of my guild is 6% and he is almost full fabled set, but the difference on avoidance is around 8 to 10% that i win over him. Why i say all that? because those ppl that says that we need to be fixed must make sure that they all play good they class.

tt66

08-14-2007, 08:54 PM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>Why i say all that? because those ppl that says that we need to be fixed must make sure that they all play good they class. </blockquote>Well aren't you the special and unique snowflake? I'm sorry, but "it's fine, learn 2 play" is just totally unhelpful. So you're a raid MT? And can easily do over 2k dps otherwise? And the reason everyone else can't is that we don't "play good"? Awesome! Hey everybody! We can pack up the <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=366834" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">All Encompassing Brawler Change</a> thread and go home! It's not that brawlers have issues in a raid, it's that we all suck! I guess it's obvious that we need your help Darkdourden. How do we become better brawlers? Please, enlighten us poor lowly mortals. Um.. but do it in another thread, okay? I don't want the brilliance of your dazzling insights searing away the retinas of those who merely want to discuss comments made by developers.

Darkdourden

08-14-2007, 09:42 PM

Yeah yeah tt6. (im not the mt of my guild, all i try to do is let our comunity see that we r not that useless as they say.) All i dont want is a big revamp to our class, we r good as we are, we cant cry to be good on everything, its simple, if u r very good at soloing u cant be also great on raid, thats the balance, 1ºso why guardians r the best tanks in the game and do low dps? if they do great dps and also tanks like now, we all must be guardians. 2ºso why dirges and troubys r the lower scout dps? if they do a lot of dps and buff like now, we all must be dirges and troubys etc... etc,,, Also here r ppl that think the same as me, and if ya dont like those opinion, just ignore them and keep waiting for a revamp to let us be crap at soloing and great at raids.

EQ2Luv

08-14-2007, 11:30 PM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>Raid buffed Shaman + warden + dirge my mitigation is 5100 (5800 with temporal buff) and my avoidance around 75% (Sometimes reached 9k mitigation and 80% avoidance with temporal buffs on group). The difference betwen mitigations with the guardian of my guild is 6% and he is almost full fabled set, but the difference on avoidance is around 8 to 10% that i win over him. Why i say all that? because those ppl that says that we need to be fixed must make sure that they all play good they class. </blockquote>The problem is that you dont actually have 10% more avoidance. The number shown in that box is not your real avoidance score. Its your score versus a crappy solo mob thats lvl 70. Read up on uncontested avoidance, and like tt66 suggested check out the threads on brawler issues. Even if you capped your deflection skill your avoidance will not be as good as a well geared plate tank, and certainly high enough to compensate for the difference in mitigation. Your mitigation is also not a 6% difference because again the mobs on raids are not level 70. No one is saying that we arent able to tank a lot of things, but there's no reason to use us as the tank over an equally skilled zerker. This dev is acknowledging that we are worse, and they dont want to fix it because they think we're better group tanks, and better at soloing. Not only is the first reason untrue (for hard zones with above-level mobs), but the reasoning itself just doesn't make sense. Your analogy to dirge/bards not having dps as high as other scouts doesn't mean that the same disparity is acceptable for fighters. Also , bards make up for the lost dps in other *raid utility*. They're not undesirable on raids like brawlers. If some classes weren't meant to be on raids, raid mobs wouldn't drop gear for that class. No dev has ever said we shouldn't be desirable on raids. No dev has ever said that we shouldn't be able to tank equally well, until now. This is what really sucks. Fighers are meant to tank. I made my brawler because I liked to tank. The fact that they have adopted this mindset makes me seriously consider a new class. This sucks since I have two level 70 brawlers. It's not the way we were led to believe things would be. They used to say all tanks would be able to tank equally well. Now they've decided that its too hard to fix it so they'll just let us be subpar tanks instead.

PhozFa

08-15-2007, 12:40 AM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>i been bruiser from the first day of this game, </blockquote>but your account wasn't registered till over a month after

Taiken

08-15-2007, 02:04 AM

dbl posted somehow.. sorry.

Taiken

08-15-2007, 02:12 AM

<blockquote>Well, there you have it. The official EQ2 Dev response. Taken from a transcript of the <a href="http://eq2.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=1057" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mechanically Speaking Panel at FanFaire</a>. Avoidance tanking: are we ever going to get that working? This is a tricky one. Mitigation is traditionally always more effective that avoidance and it's been hard to balance monks and bruisers without making them overpowered because in group and solo situations they're very powerful tanks. And to have them be more effective than the mitigation tanks group/solo and be as or more effective in a raid situation is really risky, especially when they can do as much DPS as they can. The minimum deflection chance is an attempt to bring more parity between brawlers and the mitigation tanks. Well, regardless of the very arguable assumption that brawlers do higher DPS than mitigation tanks, at least we've now got the official SoE word. I guess that now we can only hope for extra raid utility. </blockquote>OH FLICK OFF SOE! SOE has done a horrible job at developing the monk class. PERIOD. I dont care who you are, how good you are at the monk your fabled gear all that [I cannot control my vocabulary].. GOOD FOR YOU! BUT!!!!Any class that has fabled gear will rock. It's when the expansions come out and the mobs start wiping out monks left and right regardless of fabled gear.. That's when SOE will be hooped. AND that's when all these other "monks are good" dudes will realize how WRONG they are..Haha rediculous, oh god, I wish I was there when the dev answered this question.. I woulda socked him right in his norrath. Idiot.. What an idiot.. Jerk... Fine, lets go by his theory here.. ALL MITIGATION TANKS ARE BETTER! SO! WHY NOT GIVE US SOME PLATE ARMOR THEN!? WHY THE FLICK NOT?.. Idiots, this is a simple problem.. People that play the game all know the monk class is gimped.. Yet.. Every dev seems to be pulling a paris hilton... "The monk class is like so hott". If I were a judge, I'd sentence all of the devs to spend a month as a level 70 monk - that has to tank anywhere in KOS/EOF... Without their mythical items.. With the items the majority of the monks wear.. That is the only way these..RECKLESS, INCONSIDERATE, NO SENSE OF MORAL DECENTCEY DEVS WILL LEARN! SOMOENE GET JUDGE JUDY!FLICK OFF SOE! FLICK OFF!!! THEY HAVE SCREWED US AGAIN!!!

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-15-2007, 03:42 AM

Pipes@Najena wrote: <blockquote>omg, I would. And that's not me talking from my own monk-ish perspective...but I have a friend who is a monk who is an incredible tank. I'd take him over a random plate tank ANY day.</blockquote> This isn't a direct reply to Pipes, but rather to the mentality of this thinking. Player skill, AA spec's, Gear choices... all these things can drastically alter how "good" a person is at being a Tank or at being DPS, often both at the same time. You simply cannot compare a person who knows how to play well, gear well, and spec'd well with tons of AA's... against a random player who you don't know their style, nor their skill as a player, their gear and AA specs. Imagine that same friend, guildmate, or yourself, playing a Plate tank.. equipped the same as the Brawler, with the same skill behind the toon, and smart AA choices for the goal at hand. This is where the arguments fall apart. Try comparing without those influencing factors and you'll see just how off kilter things are for Brawlers.

the

08-15-2007, 04:12 AM

<cite>tt66 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well, there you have it. The official EQ2 Dev response. Taken from a transcript of the <a href="http://eq2.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=1057" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mechanically Speaking Panel at FanFaire</a>. Avoidance tanking: are we ever going to get that working? This is a tricky one. Mitigation is traditionally always more effective that avoidance and it's been hard to balance monks and bruisers without making them overpowered because in group and solo situations they're very powerful tanks. And to have them be more effective than the mitigation tanks group/solo and be as or more effective in a raid situation is really risky, especially when they can do as much DPS as they can. The minimum deflection chance is an attempt to bring more parity between brawlers and the mitigation tanks. Well, regardless of the very arguable assumption that brawlers do higher DPS than mitigation tanks, at least we've now got the official SoE word. I guess that now we can only hope for extra raid utility. </blockquote> It's just so annoying that SOE totally dropped the ball on this and they wont fix it(reminds me of EQOA days were there was no FD because it was too hard for them to do the animation). Brawlers went from straight melee in EQ1 to tanks because SOE saw that in FFXI there were the "blink" tanks(ninjas using magic that was 100% for a certain amount of attacks) and decided to bring that to EQ2. But they realized that they couldnt have us do similar DPS as in EQ1 nor total avoidance tank as in other MMOs. So instead they make Brawlers a hybrid class which is good in tanking and dps, but not great in either one thus really kicking us to the curb in the end game. Granted there are some great Brawlers out there, but we are not a priority when getting a raid together. And of course, SOE is just backpedaling and not realizing their mistake.

tt66

08-15-2007, 07:09 AM

Darkdourden wrote:<blockquote>All i dont want is a big revamp to our class, we r good as we are, we cant cry to be good on everything, its simple, if u r very good at soloing u cant be also great on raid, thats the balance, </blockquote>Oh, now you're just being silly. All you need to be good at soloing is DPS. Are you telling me that a root-nuking wizard isn't great on a raid? Or that a dispatch-mashing brigand can't solo well? In fact, the only classes I can think of at the moment that are very good at soloing, but not great on a raid are : Brawlers and Shadowknights! Maybe your argument should be "if u r a non-warrior fighter class and dont have amends u cant be also great on raid, thats the balance"? Unless your definition of "very good at soloing" is being able to feign train to the bottom of SoS. In which case, I can't really fault your argument. But it might be more honest to state it as "if u r a brawler u cant be also great on raid, thats the balance"

Darkdourden

08-15-2007, 08:45 AM

tt6 u cant compare our soloing, with the soloing of other clases really. Yeah we can FD / train so thats why i made claymore and SoD almost alone tell me any other class that can do so? is there a brigand that did solo as fast and easy those quests like us? I didnt like that devs said also but i still like my class, i play the same role as i played from the begin, and if u r prepared to says that we r crap because a dev said do, u must be prepared to hear that someone thinks that we r good as we r. PD: tt66 dont need to insult me as u r doing, im not silly i only got a different opinion.

Novusod

08-15-2007, 10:13 AM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>tt6 u cant compare our soloing, with the soloing of other clases really. Yeah we can FD / train so thats why i made claymore and SoD almost alone tell me any other class that can do so? is there a brigand that did solo as fast and easy those quests like us? I didnt like that devs said also but i still like my class, i play the same role as i played from the begin, and if u r prepared to says that we r crap because a dev said do, u must be prepared to hear that someone thinks that we r good as we r. PD: tt66 dont need to insult me as u r doing, im not silly i only got a different opinion. </blockquote>I say so what. That is hardly an accomplishment if you ask me. I solo'ed SoS claymore myself but who cares, what good did it do me? What would happen if the devs took our FD away. What would you think of the class then? How would you rate our solo'ing if you couldn't FD everytime you start to loose a fight? I think without FD we would be one of the worst solo'ers in the game because the mechanics of the class are total crap. Well I would actually be glad to loose FD if it meant the class would get fixed in a meaningfull way. In the long run we would be better off we didn't have FD and we survived by using avoidance the way a plate head survives by using their mit. From now on I must advocate that the bruiser must die for it to be reborn.

Darkdourden

08-15-2007, 11:20 AM

So what a about, KO combo + stun skills + daze + 52% heal self + mitigation buff + 50 pts of skills melee debuff + inmunity to mental effects and a casual fear / mezz.... U telling me that without FD we r the worst soloers? so u sure u did SoS claymore alone? FD is not all but im not saying that is not important for us, i can agree that we sont be able to do that without FD but we still can solo very good without it.

Amphibia

08-15-2007, 11:54 AM

EDIT: Whoopsy, I just realized I was in the bruiser forum. Sorry.

Cornbread Muffin

08-15-2007, 12:51 PM

roces9

08-15-2007, 01:33 PM

I'm not a Brawler, I'm a Troubador so take this with a grain of salt. As far as I can tell Brawlers do just fine on Solo and Heroic content right? I mean you guys could use some tweaking to be *perfect*, but who couldn't, right? The problem is that you guys cannot tank Epics. It is really screwed up that Plate Tanks have more uncontested Avoidence than you guys do. Admittedly I don't know that much about tanking mechanics but think about it, Mit tanks should have the highest Mit and Avoidence tanks should have the highest Avoidence. That seems self explanitory. It would be kind of weird that if as soon as you got to Epic encounters, Druids could Reactive heal better than Clerics could right? Brawlers that want to tank should be able to do so on raids. I understand that the very nature of Avoidence tanking could (and probably should) make some Raid Leaders a little nervous to put a Brawler up there in the front taking the hits. Forget the Min/Max'ing contested raid crowd, with a good geared/skilled player with healers that know what theyre doing Bralwers *should* be able to tank raid mobs. Atleast make them Off Tanks... they are in the fighter tree, aren't they? And for the record I often run Unrest with Brawler tanks and they do great.

Couching

08-15-2007, 01:49 PM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>So what a about, KO combo + stun skills + daze + 52% heal self + mitigation buff + 50 pts of skills melee debuff + inmunity to mental effects and a casual fear / mezz.... U telling me that without FD we r the worst soloers? so u sure u did SoS claymore alone? FD is not all but im not saying that is not important for us, i can agree that we sont be able to do that without FD but we still can solo very good without it. </blockquote>If you think bruiser is fine, ok, I respect your opinion. But stop saying brawler is fine since monks didn't have burst damage as bruiser and monk has less debuff, less utilities in raids. For solo, without fd, brawler isn't any better than any other class since we have worse mitigation than most classes except casters. For rogues, they have better burst damages to kill mobs faster, also, they have better mitigations so that they get hit less hard. For plate tanks, zerker has similar burst damage as brawler with better mitigations so that they get hit less hard. For crusader, they can self ward/heal or hp drain with better mitigations. That's why crusader has advantages in solo. Only full defensive spec guardian will be worse than brawler in solo. Even Devs admitted that avoidance is too risky and unreliable for tanking. That's why without fd, brawler is doomed since we can't fd when we have bad roll on avoidance. Most brawler understand what I am talking about unless you are not a brawler. With good luck, we can kill a mob without hurting much, with bad luck, we may get own in few hits. In other word, your claim that brawler is still good in solo without fd is idiotic.

Cornbread Muffin

08-15-2007, 01:55 PM

<cite>roces9 wrote:</cite><blockquote>As far as I can tell Brawlers do just fine on Solo and Heroic content right? I mean you guys could use some tweaking to be *perfect*, but who couldn't, right?</blockquote>I think so, but then again I have a bunch of fabled gear. I really have no idea what a mastercrafted brawler looks like compared to a mastercrafted plate tank. I know I've been in groups with alts in the 50s with a treasured bruiser that died in 2 hits. =PI also don't think the solution is to make us tank epics. There's only so many people that can be tanking on a raid - usually 1, with an off-tank and maybe a backup. Adding more to the mix of raid-capable fighters just changes which fighter classes are brought along to tank, but doesn't increase the number of needed tanks in total. I know we're in the fighter tree, but hell bards are in the scout tree and you don't see them whining for 3k parses - because they bring something valuable to the group/raid. The real problem with the brawler/plate tank disparity as I see it is the DPS gap is tiny at best and the utility gap is in favor of the plate tanks currently. Warriors have the option to keep more of their uncontested avoidance in offensive stance than brawlers can get in their defensive stance and do roughly the same DPS as a brawler in offensive stance is doing. They can still tank better than a brawler while doing so, and have more and better buffs to boot (though they are working on changing that - jury is still out as to whether they've succeeded). Crusaders are not as well off - they bring some utility, but their DPS tends to be lower to compensate. Good SKs and really good Paladins can still pump out some nice DPS but it is more difficult to pull it off and requires superb gear (especially for Paladins).Personally I think making our KOS AA options worth a [I cannot control my vocabulary] (stuff like AE autoattack and double attack that appears on other fighters' KOS trees) would fix the problem. Our DPS will go up enough to warrant a slot in a raid. In groups we'll be more powerful than we are now, though I don't think we'd be any more powerful than a berserker already is. Solo we would gain a lot of power, but I don't really know what they can do about that. The key to soloing is the stuns, just like many scout classes. So maybe a high AE autoattack and a low double attack would be a good route to take.

Couching

08-15-2007, 01:58 PM

<cite>roces9 wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm not a Brawler, I'm a Troubador so take this with a grain of salt. As far as I can tell Brawlers do just fine on Solo and Heroic content right? I mean you guys could use some tweaking to be *perfect*, but who couldn't, right? The problem is that you guys cannot tank Epics. It is really screwed up that Plate Tanks have more uncontested Avoidence than you guys do. Admittedly I don't know that much about tanking mechanics but think about it, Mit tanks should have the highest Mit and Avoidence tanks should have the highest Avoidence. That seems self explanitory. It would be kind of weird that if as soon as you got to Epic encounters, Druids could Reactive heal better than Clerics could right? Brawlers that want to tank should be able to do so on raids. I understand that the very nature of Avoidence tanking could (and probably should) make some Raid Leaders a little nervous to put a Brawler up there in the front taking the hits. Forget the Min/Max'ing contested raid crowd, with a good geared/skilled player with healers that know what theyre doing Bralwers *should* be able to tank raid mobs. Atleast make them Off Tanks... they are in the fighter tree, aren't they? And for the record I often run Unrest with Brawler tanks and they do great. </blockquote>Who can't tank in heroic encounters with proper gears? People invited swashy or brig to tank castle of MM or Nizara over fighters since they have better dps and good enough in tanking. Not to say unrest, it's a fairly easy instance. Even in raid, top end guilds let swashy as off tank over fighters in avatar fights/Cmayong since swashy has better aggro and better aoe dps than any fighter. Moreover, brawler can tank or not in heroic encounter isn't the problem we complain. The problem is that mitigation tanks have higher mitigations and higher uncontested avoidance than avoidance tank. That's why it is ridiculous. We have zero uncontested avoidance and plate tanks have higher uncontested avoidance no matter in any stance.

Novusod

08-15-2007, 02:49 PM

Couching is correct. Solo'ing a brawler is mostly about luck. Yes, chain stunning works good until the mob perries a stun and then takes half your hp 3 in seconds. But it is all good because you can FD and try again. Let's not forget about encounter mobs where you kill one and then FD and then kill another and FD again. When solo'ing heroics sometimes I can get a long streak of perfect avoidance and take no damage or my self heal will go critical and I will get 80% of my hp back. To take on a most named I need a string of good luck to win. It probably won't happen on the first pull or the second pull but that is what FD is for so I can try again and again with no penalty until I get my lucky break and the mob goes down. Without FD the brawler's bag of tricks does not work any more. This is where a brawlers problem's begin because there is no FD when tanking for a group and no FD when tanking a raid mob. When I am tanking for a group many times I will take a huge spike of damage. Oh I wish I could just FD and try again but I can't. I just have to hope the healer can get me healed up again. If our solo game is ballanced because of FD then our raid game is unballanced because it has no use while tanking. If brawlers had no FD our solo book would have to be rewriten and this would spill over in the form of positive changes for grouping and raiding. Say no to FD. Let brawlers die so they can be born again.

Cornbread Muffin

08-15-2007, 03:04 PM

I would be happy to give up FD or put it on a longer recast timer if that meant SOE would actually fix the other stuff. I do think its existance holds us back.

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-15-2007, 05:20 PM

As fun and as useful for travel as it is to be able to FD every 10 seconds, when I'm doing ANYTHING but soloing something I "shouldn't" or training down someplace tough, it's never even touched or the recast never comes into play. What I hate seeing is people saying things like "Avoidance tanking is risky against Epics", as if that's an excuse to not give us more avoidance or base our raid tanking on avoidance. The problem with leaving things as they are now, is that our offtank buff for giving avoidance to the MT is the worst of all the Fighters. If our avoidance was fixed so we could pull great DPS WHILE giving the biggest form of uncontested avoidance, then we'd have a reason to be on a raid. What is it.. 50% chance to give our paltry 16% uncontested avoidance while in Defensive (hobbling our DPS to do it)? When a plate tank can slap on a Shield and go Offensive and give up to 27 or 28% (if a properly spec'd crusader), and still land more hits and pull down better DPS with their other AA choices. Seriously... this stinks. I understand that having a high Avoidance at the cost of Mitigation tank would be riskier than the reverse... for a MT position. But fixing our Avoidance towards Epics, especially in Offensive stance, would drastically improve our ability to buff HIS avoidance. There's a raid position staring them Devs right in their faces, and they continue to ignore it. The first thing that needs to happen when the new person is announced after Lockeye leaves, is he needs to be PM'd a list of links to the various posts (not just the threads, but links to the POSTS directly) that show the ideas for fixes that were created with balance and logic behind them. I have a feeling people will just gloss over the good posts after reading 500-1000 posts of flames and arguing and naivety. Really, it's not going to require total class redesigns to fix the brawler classes... you aren't suddenly going to be playing a totally different character, that's not what people are asking for. Darkdourden's fear of "a big revamp to our class" is unfounded, because quite simply.. it's one mechanics change that affects raids only, and two AA abilities being asked to be changed. That's hardly a big revamp.

Madmoon

08-15-2007, 05:54 PM

Why does this load of hooey keep coming up? I'll grant the top end bruisers, brawlers, their issues with high-end, end-game EoF raids. Haven't been, but I have been the lead fighter on a few x2 raids, and it is hard as a bruiser, so I imagine that the high-end x4 stuff is nigh impossible.But solo and groups? PUH-leeze! Claiming we are underpowered here is such a load of manure! I soloed and grouped my way to 70 with no issues, none! I am not Fabled, the STR AAs served for only a brief time - most of my leveling was after the combat nerfs and stun nerfs and I didn't get Mastercrafted (much less Legendary) until well into my 50s. Groups were great, and I never had a problem getting them, where I was evenly split in the number of roles as a main fighter and as a damage dealer. I was the main fighter in Unrest a couple times; if we're fine there, we are fine everywhere. As for solo content, it was a breeze, even heroic encounters where at least one monster was even con. Sure I died, but it was almost always in my choices, not the setup of the class as a whole! Who are these guardians out-DPSing us? Sure would like to meet them. I imagine that the sword they use must be six feet long, weigh an ounce and can slice through mountains. As for 'Zerks, I've had them ask me to take off Rumble because I pull agro off of them. They may do better than me against a group, but I do better than them on singles.We can't solo nameds... duh! We're not supposed to! No one is supposed to! It's called GROUP content, people. I know many do, heck, I do, but that still doesn't mean we should, nor do we need to be any different than we are if we can't and INSERT_CLASS_HERE can!The high-end brawlers are champing at the bit for changes so they can provide meaningful help in end-game raids. Diluting the argument to the point where we are claiming we need help in solo and group content is as preposterous as it is false, and serves only to have the true claims rightfully ignored en toto.Redmouser Bruiser, AB

Darkdourden

08-15-2007, 06:34 PM

my experience says so, i can solo so easy, i can tank epics as good as crusaders do, most times i do tank better then our sk and paladin that r very good geared, cant understund those ppl that says we r worst at soloing and tanking than anyone in the world thats not right! When KoS began, and we started to clear labs, i was tanking in raids everything with mastercrafted and legendary stuff without problems of agro or dmg, when we started to clear DT i been tanking it to tarinax without problems, i cant see the problem on our class, i been on many guilds and on every guild i did leet all ppl know that i can roll my class on tankage and dps without problems, thats why i am parsing much better than our brigands in most raids but thats not me, thats our class that u guys didnt exploit the suficient to see how hard we can hit and tank. PD: im not saying noob to anyone just trying to let u all know that we arnt that bad.

ganjookie

08-15-2007, 07:32 PM

................

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-15-2007, 08:02 PM

No one said we can't tank heroic or that we suck as soloing. What WAS said was that we aren't "Powerful" at heroic tanking, and that if it weren't for the fact that we had FD, we'd be mediocre soloing. Without FD and Heal, we'd be sub-par soloing compared to the rest. And we are talking about yellow content here people. Not some easy blue content stuff. Non-tank spec'd scouts can tank lower level content in regular gear. What we are talking about is going through unrest or castle mistmoore. The simple fact is that Plate Fighters get full benefit from ALL three healers types, while Brawlers lose out efficiency from Clerics. If the players are good, then yeah.. "It can be done". But that doesn't make the Brawler MORE powerful than a Plate tank in the same position with the same gear and player skill involved. Nor would the Brawler become overpowered in a solo/heroic situation if UNCONTESTED avoidance were changed. Please read the beginning of the post Madmoon and understand we are responding to the Dev comments about how we'd become overpowered. We aren't saying we can't do it.. we are saying we aren't going to become overpowered with the suggested changes. Also, I still have yet to hear why we shouldn't have better uncontested avoidance than we have now, nor why we shouldn't have AA's that scale with our weapons. There has been logical deduction made behind these ideas, and before people start saying things opposing the changes, I'd like to hear that logic refuted first.

tt66

08-15-2007, 08:33 PM

To hammer home the point, there is no question that we are competent soloers. Nor is there any question that we are perfectly acceptable at tanking heroic content. Really, there isn't. It just got brought up because some bright spark tried to argue that we were so fantastic at soloing that we don't deserve a place in a raid. Which is just such a stupid statement I can't believe we actually bothered trying to disagree with it. We do have a problem when it comes to raids. We cannot tank an epic as well as a plate tank. Honestly, we really can't. I really don't care if you once heard of a brawler who tanked Vyemm, that's not the point. The point is, that we can't do it as well as a plate tank, and therefore will never be chosen to tank an epic by any raid leader with a brain. So, we're left with DPS. And Madmoon, while I have yet to be beaten by a guardian in the parse, I'm struggling to beat the guild 'Zerker. Although luckily he hasn't gotten the hang of not pulling-aggro from the MT with his AEs, which cools his DPS down some. Once we progress further into the EOF raids, I expect him to get better. As mentioned by others, DPS caused by additional attacks scales with how good your weapon is; whereas DPS caused by static procs do not. I could have the best weapons in the game, and my Mantis Bolt will still do the same amount of damage. So the DPS advantage of a brawer over another fighter slowly gets negated as weapons get better. Without the ability to tank, and no clear DPS advantage over another fighter.. what exactly does a brawler contribute to a raid that other classes can't do better? I'm hoping that the changes they have made to our group buffs will go some way to helping us, although I am yet to be convinced that an increase in taunt effectiveness is worth the difference in DPS between a bruiser and a proper dps class. (Can't comment on the changes they've made to monks). Maybe when the changes go raid wide, things will improve. In a way, I'm actually glad the Devs have made things official. A large part of the "brawler problem" when it comes to raids is that there was no clear signal from the Devs as to where our place lay. If they've now decided that we're not to be tanking, maybe we can hope for more raid utility, and enough of a DPS boost to put clear water between us and the other fighters.

Darkdourden

08-15-2007, 09:09 PM

<div align="left">I was that bruiser with vyemm, at least my guild let me tank because i got the stuff to do but i will never be better than a guardian or zerker at tanking if they r as experienced as me, if im not tanking im dpsing very good, just need 2 different gear to do that, i still dont see the problem, im conscient that we get less role in raid that any class, but at least i do a very good work on it on both ways. Anyway we got a very good guardian and im offtank and dragging mobs or named if have memwipe and things like that. PD: in the first time we killed tender, i was tanking tender and our sk getting adds, that worker so fine, also with rumbler. </div>

Antas22

08-15-2007, 10:10 PM

Kaisoku is hitting the nail on the head. I don't think anybody is claiming we CAN'T tank heroic content. Anybody who does is foolish, frankly. Rogues, Assassins, even Priests can tank blue group content. Heck, the group of alts I play with my guildies ran through the 30's-mid 40's with a WIZARD doing most of the tanking. What is being said is that we cannot do so as effectively as other Fighters. The dev specifically said that making us more able to tank epics was risky because then we'd be equal at raid content and BETTER at group content. I'm waiting patiently for somebody to explain that one to me. Don't tell me about your Monk friend you'd take over some random Berserker to tank, apples and oranges. If you were in a group that needed a tank, nobody had any tank friends online, and there was a Berserker and a Bruiser of the same level, niether of whom anyone recognized, LFG, you'd take the Zerker. Why? Once you start facing yellow or higher content, or anything epic, avoidance starts to matter less and less, except for the uncontested variety. With tower and kite shields offering more uncontested avoidance than our defensive stance, what chance do we stand? It gets even worse when you talk about orange content, because then, we have to be in defensive stance to keep our avoidance, while the Warrior or Crusader can switch to offensive stance so they can actually hit the thing to keep agro. So what do we have going for us that makes us BETTER? More HP? In the endgame, sure, a bit, but through most of the game we're stuck with crappy armor that was made for Druids and so have MUCH less STA than plate tanks. Yes, we're CAPABLE of tanking heroic content. If I just wanted capable, I'd roll an Assassin. If we're going to be classified as tanks (and at this point, you CAN'T switch that), then we need to be able to do so as well as other tanks. I understand that the devs don't want us to walk up to a yellow named and solo it. A comprimise then? Lower the total avoidance bonus awarded by deflection, but make part of it uncontested. Then, lower the uncontested avoidance on defensive stance. Make it so in offensive stance, we have about the same as a tower shield, and in defensive stance, maybe 5-7% more. We still may not be the preferred raid MT, but it would happen more, and we would be more welcome as secondary tanks. In groups, we could actually take the yellow content that a plate tank can just as easily.

tt66

08-16-2007, 06:19 AM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote><div align="left">i still dont see the problem, im conscient that we get less role in raid that any class, but at least i do a very good work on it on both ways. </div></blockquote>Nope, sounds like you've got it. "we get less role in raid that any class" is exactly the problem.

Madmoon

08-16-2007, 10:22 AM

Actually, people questioning solo and group aspects of brawlers, and bruisers specifically, was what made me post:Antas: "Better group tanks? Since when?" ".... [that we are as good] or better soloers than Shadow Knights ... is just plain absurd." "the Zerker is going to be the better choice for 99% of groups" "The dev specifically said that [bruisers are] BETTER at group content. I'm waiting patiently for somebody to explain that one to me."Kaisoku: "Brawlers are Powerful? Maybe. As powerful as regular tanks? Not in any way." "We need a boost, even in heroic situations, to become EQUAL." "Have they geared two tanks, one a brawler, another a plate tank, and spec'd them for DPS with DPS gear and DPS AA's, and found that Brawlers have more? Because that has not been the experience of EVERY SINGLE PLAYER IN THIS GAME."Taiken: "I'd sentence all of the devs to spend a month as a level 70 monk - that has to tank anywhere in KOS/EOF..." (not sure if this is a fair example, as I'm not a monk, but a) it's in the bruiser forum and b) I don't think monks are that much different than us. I am willing to be corrected.)Novusod: "Solo'ing a brawler is mostly about luck."This is all patent nonsense! As I said in my first post, I am willing to concede to my Bruiser Masters that EoF raids are impossible, or anyway, that we need to bring more to them. But to question solo and group content (which is, what, ninety percent of the game?) is ludicrous in the extreme, and worse, prone to making one ignore the legitimate concerns as equally hysterical exaggerations. Ask for, demand, raid improvements. But stop the nonsense regarding our "crippled" group and solo play.And whichever of you loons started a conversation about Feign Death, could you please just return to your padded cell and muzzle it? No sane and sober member of the community wants the developers to consider we would be willing to have THAT bonkered just for some more raid ability. Trash that talk now, for the love of Zek!Redmouser Bruiser, AB

Antas22

08-16-2007, 10:57 AM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>Actually, people questioning solo and group aspects of brawlers, and bruisers specifically, was what made me post:Antas: "Better group tanks? Since when?" ".... [that we are as good] or better soloers than Shadow Knights ... is just plain absurd." "the Zerker is going to be the better choice for 99% of groups" "The dev specifically said that [bruisers are] BETTER at group content. I'm waiting patiently for somebody to explain that one to me."Kaisoku: "Brawlers are Powerful? Maybe. As powerful as regular tanks? Not in any way." "We need a boost, even in heroic situations, to become EQUAL." "Have they geared two tanks, one a brawler, another a plate tank, and spec'd them for DPS with DPS gear and DPS AA's, and found that Brawlers have more? Because that has not been the experience of EVERY SINGLE PLAYER IN THIS GAME."Taiken: "I'd sentence all of the devs to spend a month as a level 70 monk - that has to tank anywhere in KOS/EOF..." (not sure if this is a fair example, as I'm not a monk, but a) it's in the bruiser forum and b) I don't think monks are that much different than us. I am willing to be corrected.)Novusod: "Solo'ing a brawler is mostly about luck."This is all patent nonsense! As I said in my first post, I am willing to concede to my Bruiser Masters that EoF raids are impossible, or anyway, that we need to bring more to them. But to question solo and group content (which is, what, ninety percent of the game?) is ludicrous in the extreme, and worse, prone to making one ignore the legitimate concerns as equally hysterical exaggerations. Ask for, demand, raid improvements. But stop the nonsense regarding our "crippled" group and solo play.And whichever of you loons started a conversation about Feign Death, could you please just return to your padded cell and muzzle it? No sane and sober member of the community wants the developers to consider we would be willing to have THAT bonkered just for some more raid ability. Trash that talk now, for the love of Zek!Redmouser Bruiser, AB</blockquote> I can see that your reading comprehension is somehwat limited, so I'll try to keep this very simple. Once again, we're not saying that we're poor at group content, we're saying we AREN'T equal, or even moreso, more powerful at it (as the dev suggested). Please, give some actual evidence to argue this if you're going to continue to do so. Oh, wait? You haven't because there actually ISN'T any evidence? Thought so. The argument the dev made here is that giving Brawlers the ability to tank epic content would overpower us because we're better at group content. In order to dispute that, we need to dispell the foolhardy notion that we are, in fact, somehow better at group content. It just isn't true, in any sense.

Darkdourden

08-16-2007, 11:05 AM

Well all i wanted to say is that im so happy with my class (bruiser) as it is, my guild let me tank epics in EoF because i do good and they have faith on me.

Madmoon

08-16-2007, 11:34 AM

Antas@Oasis wrote: <blockquote>I can see that your reading comprehension is somehwat limited, so I'll try to keep this very simple. Once again, we're not saying that we're poor at group content, we're saying we AREN'T equal, or even moreso, more powerful at it (as the dev suggested). Please, give some actual evidence to argue this if you're going to continue to do so. Oh, wait? You haven't because there actually ISN'T any evidence? Thought so. The argument the dev made here is that giving Brawlers the ability to tank epic content would overpower us because we're better at group content. In order to dispute that, we need to dispell the foolhardy notion that we are, in fact, somehow better at group content. It just isn't true, in any sense. </blockquote>My, someone is an angry little boy today! If someone says you are wrong and disagrees, start insulting them, eh? And as a matter of fact, those quotes are regarding solo and group content. Quibble, if you wish, as to whether each person is arguing whether we are simply not superior or is indeed arguing - as is my supposition - that we are inferior. The tone certainly suggests the latter. Do you think Novusod feels we are only unequal to other monks? Or are you only reading one or two quotes as a counter?In any case, what evidence do you have that we are NOT eqaul to any other fighters (excluding raids)? MY evidence is the many, many times I have taken over in a group as a lead fighter after a platehead had to retire for one reason or another. The only time we lost a step was in Unrest, where we had to move more cautiously, but that might have been because it was only my second time time in that role. And we still managed. Everywhere else, there are no issues, zero. At the very least I would argue we are equal. And likely better, adding in our soloing skills.MY evidence is the entire content of Norrath (excepting, again, EoF raids) where I have been the lead fighter. MY evidence is the quests, heroic and epic, I have completed where I gathered groups and even raids and was the lead fighter.Argue that we need help in EoF raids, if you will. But the idea that bruisers lack in solo or group content is false and does no justice to the legitimate claims bruisers do have.

tt66

08-16-2007, 12:54 PM

You really might want to reread some of the posts Madmoon. Novusod, for example, was pointing out that being able to feign death is what enables us to be superior soloers, and that without it we would have little recourse if the RNG had a bit of a fit and a mob hit us five times in a row. (This was in response to the looney "FD is so overpowered you can't expect a place in a raid" comment). The Devs seem to be saying that we are superior tanks to plate tanks, on the grounds that we can tank heroic content just as well as a platehead, and still do higher DPS. People here are just pointing out that, although we can tank heroic content, we don't do it as well as a plate. Again, we can tank heroic.. I've tanked through unrest countless times. (And boy is FD useful in there!). But when my guardian friend comes along, he does the tanking. And he doesn't have to work as hard as I do. Personally, I find it's more of an issue with aggro control than any sort of Mit/Avoid divide. We simply don't have the tanking arts and abilities that a warrior does. We can deal without them, sure, but they have an easier time of it. You are absolutely right in that we don't need any boosts to our ability to deal with solo and heroic content. We're perfectly fine. But, Antas is right in that, if the reason the Devs shy away from boosting our raid abilities is a mistaken understanding of our solo/heroic abilities, then we need to educate them. Hopefully, we can all agree that a brawler can tank any heroic content in the game. (I know, I know. Cue the jeers of "a flipping Wizard can tank any heroic content in the game".)

Arathy

08-16-2007, 12:54 PM

<cite>tt66 wrote:</cite><blockquote>So, we're left with DPS. And Madmoon, while I have yet to be beaten by a guardian in the parse, I'm struggling to beat the guild 'Zerker. Although luckily he hasn't gotten the hang of not pulling-aggro from the MT with his AEs, which cools his DPS down some. Once we progress further into the EOF raids, I expect him to get better. As mentioned by others, DPS caused by additional attacks scales with how good your weapon is; whereas DPS caused by static procs do not. I could have the best weapons in the game, and my Mantis Bolt will still do the same amount of damage. So the DPS advantage of a brawer over another fighter slowly gets negated as weapons get better. Without the ability to tank, and no clear DPS advantage over another fighter.. what exactly does a brawler contribute to a raid that other classes can't do better? </blockquote>Just wait until that Zerker gets a Harmonious Link thrown on them. <img src="/smilies/136dd33cba83140c7ce38db096d05aed.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I'm not saying I'm the greatest Bruiser in the universe by any means, but I have to fight my butt off for every .01 of DPS I do.. While I have no problem doing this, it's [Removed for Content] sad when you see the numbers a Zerker w/ buckler can dish out by hitting a few AE's and a CA or two. I'm of the opinion that if they cannot/will not fix our ability to take a hit from an Epic, fine - Increase our DPS instead.

Novusod

08-16-2007, 01:23 PM

Is what I am saying is Brawlers are so inferior to other fighters when it comes to group content it is hard to classify Bruisers as fighters. So what if we can tank Unrest. I have seen a dirge tank Unrest and I have seen an Inquisitor tank OOB and I have seen a warlock tank HoF to say nothing about what rogues are capable of. This is not just coming from someone who plays just a Bruiser. I am a 70 troubador and 70 warden so I know what a PITA it is keep one alive. When I am healing a Brawler I have to be ready with my emergencies and death interventions at all times in addition to spam healing on every pull. Healing a guardian is a totally different experience. I can be half asleep and [Removed for Content] drunk and he can pull a whole room of yellows and we still won't wipe. Most of the time I don't even have to heal a guardian. Spores and melee heal proc are enough to keep a real fighter up. A brawler does not hold a candle to what a guardian can do. I have seen a guardian tank a x2 with one healer. There is not a brawler world wide that can even dream of doing that. These comments by the devs at Fan Faire are so far divorced from reality they make me want to give up. This is why I ask for drastic measures to be taken such as removing FD. If there is anything overpowered about brawlers it is FD. Once upon a time Brawlers could tank but we were far overpowered solo'ers so the devs nerfed our ability to tank into irrelevance when what they should of done was take away our FD. Without FD a brawler is no better a solo'er than a guardian. Say no to FD. Brawlers must die for them to be reborn again.

Madmoon

08-16-2007, 01:31 PM

<cite>Arathyen wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm not saying I'm the greatest Bruiser in the universe by any means, but I have to fight my butt off for every .01 of DPS I do.. While I have no problem doing this, it's [Removed for Content] sad when you see the numbers a Zerker w/ buckler can dish out by hitting a few AE's and a CA or two. </blockquote>Oh, say it, brother! The best 'Zerk in our guild was eager to test his mini-arena he built in his home in Qeynos, so to humor him, I said I'd fight him, but since I was the one being challenged, I got to choose the weapons."Fine," said Wartorn. "What weapons?""Bare fists," said Redmouser (not STR specced, but STILL, a brawler vs an unarmed fighter, right?)A moment's pause."Can I keep my buckler?""Sure," I said, grinning in anticipation.Well, the results were very one-sided, and not in my favor. He wiped the mat with me. His armor is all Legendary and Fabled, as was his buckler, I'm sure, but STILL - unarmed, barefists, and he was only down to 25 percent health. It's just not fair <img src="/smilies/1cfd6e2a9a2c0cf8e74b49b35e2e46c7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Redmouser Bruiser, AB

Darkdourden

08-16-2007, 01:41 PM

u guys should delete ur brawler and make any other class, so i can be the only bruisrr worldwide

Novusod

08-16-2007, 01:46 PM

I would delete my brawler on the condition I would get a free respec into a level 70 gruardian or zerker.

Madmoon

08-16-2007, 01:49 PM

<cite>tt66 wrote:</cite><blockquote>You really might want to reread some of the posts Madmoon. Novusod, for example, was pointing out that being able to feign death is what enables us to be superior soloers, and that without it we would have little recourse if the RNG had a bit of a fit and a mob hit us five times in a row. (This was in response to the looney "FD is so overpowered you can't expect a place in a raid" comment). The Devs seem to be saying that we are superior tanks to plate tanks, on the grounds that we can tank heroic content just as well as a platehead, and still do higher DPS. People here are just pointing out that, although we can tank heroic content, we don't do it as well as a plate. Again, we can tank heroic.. I've tanked through unrest countless times. (And boy is FD useful in there!). But when my guardian friend comes along, he does the tanking. And he doesn't have to work as hard as I do. Personally, I find it's more of an issue with aggro control than any sort of Mit/Avoid divide. We simply don't have the tanking arts and abilities that a warrior does. We can deal without them, sure, but they have an easier time of it. You are absolutely right in that we don't need any boosts to our ability to deal with solo and heroic content. We're perfectly fine. But, Antas is right in that, if the reason the Devs shy away from boosting our raid abilities is a mistaken understanding of our solo/heroic abilities, then we need to educate them. Hopefully, we can all agree that a brawler can tank any heroic content in the game. (I know, I know. Cue the jeers of "a flipping Wizard can tank any heroic content in the game".) </blockquote>Fair enough. And Novusod is probably dead on when pointing out the, uhm, challenges a healer faces with a brawler in front of him. But, for pity's sake, aren't we all in agreement that work is needed for raids, especially in EoF, and likely Kunark? I just take umbrage with the idea that solo- and group-wise we are somehow inferior. It just doesn't pan out, or maybe I'm just the lucky recipient of legion silently suffering healers, masochistically lining up for more when I talk to them a second and third time into coming along. My only point, which I clearly am doing a poor job of presenting, is that if we go running to the devs screaming about how awful we are in solo work, and in group work, well, why shouldn't they just write us off as a mob of incoherent rabble? It's one thing to say, "Your estimation of the ease with which we work solo is too high," quite another to imply anemic anteaters have more chance as lead fighters.And, please, no, Feign Death is absolutely integral to me as a bruiser <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Really, if you offered all bruisers better raid abilities in exchange for Shadowknight-equivalent Feign Death, how many would bite? I wouldn't! Let's try and fix raiding without giving up class-defining abilities, please!

Couching

08-16-2007, 02:04 PM

Whenever I read comment from Devs that brawler will be too good or overpower in group and solo if they fix the problem of avoidance, the only thought in my mind is that they knew the problem we have but they can't find a solution. In other word, they admitted the problem of brawler avoidance in tanking epic. Then we deserved to be gimped in tanking epic mobs? Since brawler can't get a fix of our raid tanking capability, the only way is nerfing other classes. Why should plate tanks have higher uncontested avoidance than avoidance tank, moreover, they can have same uncontested avoidance in any stance comparing to brawler with zero uncontested avoidance in offensive stance? I can live with it if we can't get a fix in tanking epic but the bottom line is that plate tanks should avoid hit less than brawler while tanking epic mobs. Uncontested avoidance on plate tanks needs a fix. Otherwise, how about let brawler wear plate armor and kite shield so that brawler won't be totally gimped in tanking epic mobs. So anyone if you want to wear leather armor for role play, you can keep it. When we are in raid, we can get plate armor and shield to tank epic mobs.

Novusod

08-16-2007, 02:12 PM

Feign Death is not a class defining ability. Avoidance tanking is our class defining ability and has been totally borked over in favor of a dangerously radical ability called FD that is being abused by named farming solo'ers. FD is a hold over from the EQ1 days back when groups just stood in one spot and brawlers pulled the mobs over to the group. Those days are over and so is the need for FD in its current form. Right now FD is holding us back and those who insist overwise are only using FD as a crutch. It is like when the troubador lost it's ten minute mez and six minute charm. It was something that needed to be done dispite the whinning. This is something that should have been done a long time ago. Say no to FD. Brawlers must die for them to be reborn again.

tt66

08-16-2007, 02:23 PM

Couching

08-16-2007, 02:25 PM

The worry of brawler to be too good in farming is really not needed since casters are by far better than any melee in farming named. The reality is that most bot plat farmers are wiz rather than any melee. Whenever plat farmers start leveling up a brawler as farming bot, then we should start worrying if brawler is overpowered in farming, otherwise, it's unnecessary whining from Devs or just an excuse to not fix this game.

Darkdourden

08-16-2007, 02:26 PM

omg! go to WoW and make a rogue and stop repeating the same.

tt66

08-16-2007, 02:36 PM

<cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think without FD we would be one of the worst solo'ers in the game because the mechanics of the class are total crap. Well I would actually be glad to loose FD if it meant the class would get fixed in a meaningfull way. In the long run we would be better off we didn't have FD and we survived by using avoidance the way a plate head survives by using their mit. From now on I must advocate that the bruiser must die for it to be reborn. </blockquote>Heh. As an intellectual exercise, I'd be quite interested in knowing people's opinions on nerfing FD to a 5 min recast, if it meant that all other brawler problems were fixed. But it would only be as an intellectual exercise, I certainly wouldn't support such a measure. If only because I severely doubt that in reality we'll ever get avoidance that is the equivalent of a plate-heads MIT. Because, of course, that would be "really risky" <img src="/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

EQ2Luv

08-16-2007, 02:42 PM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well all i wanted to say is that im so happy with my class (bruiser) as it is, my guild let me tank epics in EoF because i do good and they have faith on me. </blockquote> I'm glad that you're lucky enough to be in a guild that will use an inferior tank. (You admitted yourself that a guard is better. The devs have now admitted it as well.) Not all of us have a raiding guild that's as generous as yours. The rest of us would like to be able to tank in EoF also, and thats why we want to be brought to an equal level with plate tanks. (Not even equal - if we are given more avoidance than plate tanks we still wont be equal because mit is more reliable than avoidance.)

Darkdourden

08-16-2007, 02:50 PM

EQ2Luv...... we r not inferior... we cant compare a guardian with us at tanking they r made only for that that.... and if u feel inferior u must have a mental problem not brawler class fault

Couching

08-16-2007, 03:07 PM

<cite>EQ2Luv wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well all i wanted to say is that im so happy with my class (bruiser) as it is, my guild let me tank epics in EoF because i do good and they have faith on me. </blockquote> I'm glad that you're lucky enough to be in a guild that will use an inferior tank. (You admitted yourself that a guard is better. The devs have now admitted it as well.) Not all of us have a raiding guild that's as generous as yours. The rest of us would like to be able to tank in EoF also, and thats why we want to be brought to an equal level with plate tanks. (Not even equal - if we are given more avoidance than plate tanks we still wont be equal because mit is more reliable than avoidance.) </blockquote>EQ2Luv, don't waste your time on him. When I read his post that he can tank better than pal and sk, it's unworthy to read anymore. He has no clue of how this game is. Guardian, best survivability and best aggro on single target of all fighters. That's why guardian is always the first choice of MT in raid. Zerker, 2nd best survivability, 2nd best aoe aggro and highest aoe dps of all fighters. That's why zerker is sometimes MT or one of best OT in raids. Pal, best aoe aggro and highest uncontested avoidance of all fighters. That's why Pal can be MT or one of best OT in raids. Sk, highest mitigation and good single/aoe aggro of all fighters. Though, sk is a bit shifted since mitigation return curve is screwed. Do we have better mitigations? NO. Do we have better uncontested avoidance? NO. Do we have better aoe aggro as OT? NO. Do we have better dps than plate tanks while tanking in defensive and they can tank in offensive? NO. Zerker and Guardian were reported with 2k+ dps zone wide while tanking! Now, give me a reason why a brawler can tank epic better than any plate tanks?

Darkdourden

08-16-2007, 03:28 PM

If u cant tank a raid mob, its ur playability problem and look at ur gear also. Stop crying and try an other class thats not the crying forum because u say we r crap.

Couching

08-16-2007, 03:30 PM

No, it means you have good healers so they can keep an inferior tank up. Just as I said, no matter what gear you have, you still have less mitigation, less uncontested avoidance and less aoe aggro. We had an nec tanking taranix. Can she claim that nec is a good tank as other plate tank now?

Darkdourden

08-16-2007, 03:31 PM

u r begginig to say things senselss

Couching

08-16-2007, 03:35 PM

How hard to admit that brawler is inferior tank comparing to plate tanks? It's game mechanics and even Devs admitted that brawler is inferior. Seriously, this is a discussion thread, can you stop trolling and back to discuss? If you think brawler is as good as plate tank or even better than sk or pal as you have posted, why can't you post your reasons?

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-16-2007, 06:19 PM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>EQ2Luv...... we r not inferior... we cant compare a guardian with us at tanking they r made only for that that.... and if u feel inferior u must have a mental problem not brawler class fault </blockquote> If we can't compare to a Guardian who is built only for that (so you say), then how is it that we aren't inferior. You JUST said that you think Guardians are better tanks! If one is better than the other, then the other must be inferior! You are directly contradicting YOURSELF. Do we really need to go into the whole "tanking KoS with an EoF geared raid"? Do we have to go into Single Target named end boss vs tanking the entire zone with multiple target aggro? Do we have to go into fighting lvl 74 mobs AT ALL? Seriously... by your comments, the most you've experienced is KoS stuff, which has seen MAGES tanking bosses. A mage tanking happens because of the quality of the HEALERS. YOU are not special in any way. It is your HEALERS that are extraordinary. And please, parse yourself against a true, DPS spec'd Guardian for a change, and witness how wrong people are about Brawler DPS. Most Guardians don't spec for pure DPS, but I've seen one done because their guild already had a Guardian MT. He parsed right up there with the Zerkers. There is a massive gap between KoS content, newb player tanking and DPS... and EoF content, skilled player tanking and DPS. It's literally as big a gulf as a whole tier in difference. My Bruiser can solo Palace of Awakened for virtually all the mobs and named. This is nothing. Mobs in KoS are so much weaker, they seem to have half the health of EoF mobs... I have a harder time killing things in Loping Plains than in KoS heroic zones. If you are at End Game, then you MUST compare your abilities at End Game content.

Antas22

08-16-2007, 06:27 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>Fair enough. And Novusod is probably dead on when pointing out the, uhm, challenges a healer faces with a brawler in front of him. But, for pity's sake, aren't we all in agreement that work is needed for raids, especially in EoF, and likely Kunark? I just take umbrage with the idea that solo- and group-wise we are somehow inferior. It just doesn't pan out, or maybe I'm just the lucky recipient of legion silently suffering healers, masochistically lining up for more when I talk to them a second and third time into coming along. My only point, which I clearly am doing a poor job of presenting, is that if we go running to the devs screaming about how awful we are in solo work, and in group work, well, why shouldn't they just write us off as a mob of incoherent rabble? It's one thing to say, "Your estimation of the ease with which we work solo is too high," quite another to imply anemic anteaters have more chance as lead fighters.</blockquote>Your argument falls flat, as I've attempted to point out repeatedly, by addressing only the ends, not the means to get there. You can't receive the argument of "You're better at X than this person, so you cannot be as good at Y as him" and argue it with "I want to be better at Y". That is what actually sounds childish, because to the person who believes the first argument, it seems as though you're only looking to be "uber powerful ZOMG". You have to dispute the REASON, not the result. The reason, here, being that we are better at tanking heroics. The evidence is there that we are not. Yellow con and above mobs ignore more avoidance, we have less uncontested avoidance (for which we must be in defensive stance), less mitigation to absorb the increasing number of hits we take, and we have less AoE agro control. All that said, we still handle group content fine. Just not--and here's the word you seem to keep overlooking--BETTER than other tanks. With that point disputed, you can now fashion the argument "We're not BETTER at X than this person, therefore he should NOT be better at Y than us." Little lesson in debate, no charge. It's about building up, you don't start a house with the roof. You have to establish foundation for your argument. As for Darkdourden, why are people even attempting to argue with him? He cannot even fashion a coherent sentence, how can you take anything he says with more than a grain of salt?

tt66

08-16-2007, 09:07 PM

You might want to turn down the hostility a touch Antas.. rememver, Madmoon is on your side. You both want brawlers raid utility to be increased. The only disagreement you're having is how strenuously to refute the Devs apparent case that we're a stronger heroic tank than the plateheads. Yes, you're right in that the current Dev concept of the brawler classes respective strengths differs wildly from reality. But Madmoon makes a darn good point, in that we have to be very careful when we challenge their belief, for fear of seeming as partisan and as blind as.. well... Darkdourden. If you're going to challenge the central premise of someone else's belief structure, you have to start small and intricitely well-argued. Otherwise you'll just be ignored. Seriously, we're all on the same side here. We all want additional raid utility for Brawlers, and we all think such a move is necessary. I agree that we do need to inform the devs that their ideal of the Brawler class hasn't really been valid since EOF, but let's do it constructively, coherantly and with as much as united front as we possibly can. Editted for spelling. I mean, "parsitan"? Sounds like a revolutionary cheese...

tt66

08-16-2007, 09:19 PM

<cite>Darkdourden wrote:</cite><blockquote>If u cant tank a raid mob, its ur playability problem and look at ur gear also. Stop crying and try an other class thats not the crying forum because u say we r crap. </blockquote>You know, just because your raid lets you tank a blue 68 epic out of pity, doesn't mean that brawlers are a valid raid tank. It just means your raid group has come up with a neat way of getting you to shut up for a bit. If only the rest of us were so lucky.

Antas22

08-17-2007, 08:44 AM

Hostility? You misunderstand. I'm simply advocating my point. A bit irked that I've had to repeat myself because some of my quotes were taken out of context and used to imply I was saying more than I was, but with no hostile intent; rather, healthy enthusiasm (and perhaps a bit of sarcasm, I've got to have some fun). The points where I've disputed that we are, at least, a bit underpowered compared to other tanks in groups would be fixed by the same fix that would improve us in raids: Change our AA's around to make us, once again, the undisputed top of Fighter DPS, and give us innate uncontested avoidance (lowering uncontested avoidance on defensive stance to compensate, but still a bit more in def stance than a Warrior with a tower shield in offensive). Those two things aren't going to break the other classes, they still have a lot going for them (better agro control, more AoE damage in the case of Zerkers, different utility, and, obviously, more mitigation). What they would do is put Brawlers back into the roll that was originally intended for them: DPS / Avoidance tanks.

Cornbread Muffin

08-17-2007, 01:41 PM

Antas@Oasis wrote: <blockquote>more AoE damage in the case of Zerkers </blockquote>Guardians have more AOE damage than we do thanks to their 40% AE autoattack. For that matter, all of the other fighters except Guardian have more AE damage without even considering their AE autoattack AA lines, which makes the difference between our AE capability and theirs huge.I don't understand why SOE is shying away from making changes. We are powerful group tanks...so are the other 5 fighters, but they still make superior raid tanks and, with the exception of Paladins, can DPS right along with us. We do have the edge in soloing, except for perhaps vs SKs, but a lot of that is from feign death and our heal. I'm with Novusod - if our ability to FD is holding us back in the group and raid portions of the game, please get rid of/change it and fix us.And seriously, if we are such fantastic group tanks why do I always see "group lf plate tank". Good brawlers are skilled players - I've played with some mediocre brawlers recently and it isn't pretty. I've also played with some mediocre plate tanks recently as well and while it is annoying (slow pulls, mediocre agro control) it isn't even in the same class as a mediocre brawler. The people who make brawlers work are skilled players, and could take their skills and do so much better on other classes - that is why many of the good ones have successfully moved on to other classes that actually bring value to their raid. If you succeed as a brawler, don't be fooled into thinking that its the class.

Agaxiq

08-17-2007, 03:19 PM

Cornbread sums it up with my exact thoughts - which is why I switched my main to a Warlock. If the class stayed the same and they took away our FD, I would transmute all of my gear and delete the character. It's really the only thing left that I care about on the character. It makes doing quests, and two-boxing alts up through dungeons easy - I can just FD all trash to get at named for AA. Heck if a low level group is there I'll give them the master that drops if they could use it. If I could betray to any other fighter class I would - that is - other than a monk, which ironically is our only option. agressiv

Novusod

08-17-2007, 03:36 PM

Agaxax@Unrest wrote: <blockquote>Cornbread sums it up with my exact thoughts - which is why I switched my main to a Warlock. If the class stayed the same and they took away our FD, I would transmute all of my gear and delete the character. It's really the only thing left that I care about on the character. It makes doing quests, and two-boxing alts up through dungeons easy - I can just FD all trash to get at named for AA. Heck if a low level group is there I'll give them the master that drops if they could use it. If I could betray to any other fighter class I would - that is - other than a monk, which ironically is our only option. agressiv </blockquote>Did somebody say overpowered group tank. Highlighted in red, you are not supossed to be doing that. Brawlers should be clearing trash just like everyone else. This is exactly why the devs call improvements to brawlers really risky.

Cornbread Muffin

08-17-2007, 03:51 PM

Also, for anyone who is looking for a replacement for their brawler but still wants to capture some of the "feel" of the classes, I think brigand probably does it best.

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-17-2007, 05:27 PM

Yeppers... I've had a brigand since nearly the beginning, and spec'd him down the Stamina (Tanking) AA line. Adding in Crits and the EoF line to increase AE and defensive skills, too. He's only lvl 50 though, and was made before AA's so he's got a lot of catching up to do (hence why I don't play him much). But, here's his list of Tanking benefits... - Single Target Taunt that also debuffs Divine buffs. Major aggro increaser. - Group Taunt at Adept 4 quality if wanted (KoS AA) - Proc Taunt when hit (KoS Final) - 3 proc Intercede ability + dethreat on target, for when someone takes aggro. - Additional 1 hit Intercede ability that reduces damage, AND replenishes power for the Brigand (EoF Final) - Defensive Stance to increase mitigaiton and avoidance. - HP% increases (KoS) - Chain Mitigation - Block% increases off a Round shield (basically, along the same levels of uncontested Avoidance, but not tied to stance), (KoS) - Mitigation buff, as well as a spell mitigation increase (EoF) - Only 1 AE, but with a fast reuse timer (EoF alters reuse timer) - Healing poisons - Attack art that increases hate position so you get hit, deals massive damage.. but in a sense, could be used to bump your Hate position up if you lose aggro. The only thing they lack in comparison for tanking is the "give a chance to avoid attack" buff... And of course in the way of DPS, tons of single target attacks, and debuffs of every nature you can possibly think of (-haste, -dps, -mitigations vs all, snares, stuns, etc). All those add much more than just the listed damage for how much aggro they create (hence why Brigands tend to be aggro machines). Only a couple require positioning.. about as much as you'd need as a Bruiser (one big one, with a couple even requiring frontal). Get your local Brigand to stop using his Detaunt proc, and detaunt poisons... and start using his taunts, and watch how much aggro he can pull down. You don't even need the Stamina/EoF AA's to be a decent tank in Heroic settings... comparing to Brawlers, Brigand's choice of tanking ability is unreal.

tt66

08-17-2007, 08:33 PM

Jumping on the bandwagon, don't forget that the Brigand also has all the benefits of a scout class. You can stealth both yourself and your group, you can track, you can evac.. if I remember correctly, there is an AA line that will even let you feign death! And of course, there is the raid viability. Every raid wants a brigand along.

Cornbread Muffin

08-17-2007, 09:57 PM

The FD doesn't really compare to brawler FD, but its something. Though, with stealth most places you don't need to FD every 8 seconds like the brawler does so you can get around alright.

Bladewind

08-18-2007, 02:08 AM

Kaisoku@Mistmoore wrote: <blockquote>Yeppers... I've had a brigand since nearly the beginning, and spec'd him down the Stamina (Tanking) AA line. Adding in Crits and the EoF line to increase AE and defensive skills, too. He's only lvl 50 though, and was made before AA's so he's got a lot of catching up to do (hence why I don't play him much). But, here's his list of Tanking benefits... - Single Target Taunt that also debuffs Divine buffs. Major aggro increaser. - Group Taunt at Adept 4 quality if wanted (KoS AA) - Proc Taunt when hit (KoS Final) - 3 proc Intercede ability + dethreat on target, for when someone takes aggro. - Additional 1 hit Intercede ability that reduces damage, AND replenishes power for the Brigand (EoF Final) - Defensive Stance to increase mitigaiton and avoidance. - HP% increases (KoS) - Chain Mitigation - Block% increases off a Round shield (basically, along the same levels of uncontested Avoidance, but not tied to stance), (KoS) - Mitigation buff, as well as a spell mitigation increase (EoF) - Only 1 AE, but with a fast reuse timer (EoF alters reuse timer) - Healing poisons - Attack art that increases hate position so you get hit, deals massive damage.. but in a sense, could be used to bump your Hate position up if you lose aggro. The only thing they lack in comparison for tanking is the "give a chance to avoid attack" buff... And of course in the way of DPS, tons of single target attacks, and debuffs of every nature you can possibly think of (-haste, -dps, -mitigations vs all, snares, stuns, etc). All those add much more than just the listed damage for how much aggro they create (hence why Brigands tend to be aggro machines). Only a couple require positioning.. about as much as you'd need as a Bruiser (one big one, with a couple even requiring frontal). Get your local Brigand to stop using his Detaunt proc, and detaunt poisons... and start using his taunts, and watch how much aggro he can pull down. You don't even need the Stamina/EoF AA's to be a decent tank in Heroic settings... comparing to Brawlers, Brigand's choice of tanking ability is unreal. </blockquote>Rogues play extremely similarly to brawlers. My 70 brig is specced str/wis with eof AAs specced on boosting debuffs. Without the sta line, you only have one weak aoe, so it makes tanking multi mob encounters even tougher than it is for a brawler. In addiiton, your max health is much lower than a fighter. My decently geared birg has about 6-6.5k health with a non sta spec. That isn't a big deal on easy stuff, but on yellow+ heroics or raid mobs, it will handicap you quite a bit. The 8% riposte from the wisdom line is the only passive aggro generation a wis-spec brig has. The beg for mercy 3 shot target deaggro proc is good, but it does not work on fighters. That is the only thing rescue has over it.With the sta line, you get the aoe taunt, shield boost, extra health, extra mitigation, and the defensive hate proc. As far as positionals go, there are quite a few that require flanking attacks (including the good mit/resist debuffs). You can use stuns and position forces to flank attack while tanking, but it is not totally reliable because you get screwed when the mob does something to root/stun you. There is only one attack (medium damage + parry debuff) that requires you to be face-to-face with the mob. You can definitely turn a brigand (or swash) into an effective tank, but you have to dedicate the vast majority of your AAs to it. A wisdom dps spec can do some tanking, but it is not any easier than it is for a brawler. By speccing sta to tank, you do give up on one of the three dps AA lines, so your dps will be a bit gimped, but still solid. In short, I'm not really disagreeing with what was said above, just qualifying some of it.You can focus on increasing the potency of health tap poisons as a brig (power tap as a swash), brig tanks can benefit greatly from that. They might not be as reliable as the brawler heal that is there when you need it, but the proc rate is high enough that you probably get the same net benefit, just not always on your terms.I think a brawler will always be a superior tank to a non sta-specced rogue, which is both expected and good. The problem is that a sta-specced rogue can easily become a better tank than a dedicated tank spec brawler if the rogue is skilled. This is messed up, and the reason is uncontested avodiance. The enhanced round shiled gives the rogue nearly the same uncontested avoidance as a tower shield (ie, more than a brawler), and they are wearing chain armor with an additional ~1000 (for a brig at least) in extra mitigation bonuses from buffs. Once again, uncontested avoidance is not tied to stance, so a rogue tank gets just as much flexibility as a plate tank. Until brawlers have their uncontested avoidance (at least a large base portion of it) divorced from stances and made to be greater than what shield users have, we will be the bottom of the tanking totem poll, below sta-specced rogues, even.

Bladewind

08-18-2007, 02:09 AM

Cornbread Muffin wrote: <blockquote>The FD doesn't really compare to brawler FD, but its something. Though, with stealth most places you don't need to FD every 8 seconds like the brawler does so you can get around alright.</blockquote> It is at the end of the deaggro AA line, which is something you'd never (sanely) take if you were bulding a tanking rogue. Even dps brigs do not take it because the dps lost from dumping a dps line negates the need for additional deaggro.

Arathy

08-18-2007, 06:02 PM

Short and sweet as I'm in a rush right now, but I would not give up my FD ability for anything. That is one of the key reasons I play this class, and no.. not for farming purposes. It's a class ability brought forward from EQ1 monks and something that I'm not willing to let go of for all the raid utility in the universe.

Antas22

08-19-2007, 08:39 AM

Yep, rogues are great. I absolutely love my Swashy. About equal DPS to my Bruiser even though he's 14 levels lower, better AoE agro control, more mitigation, and groups are actually generally more willing to accept him as a tank without me having to say "let me proove you wrong" (Could be because, for all the complements I get about being "a great tank for a bruiser", it's even better as a Swash). In some ways, it's kind of disgusting, in others, it just makes me wonder why I haven't made him my main sooner.

Madmoon

08-20-2007, 12:02 PM

Antas@Oasis wrote: <blockquote><blockquote>Your argument falls flat, as I've attempted to point out repeatedly, by addressing only the ends, not the means to get there. You can't receive the argument of "You're better at X than this person, so you cannot be as good at Y as him" and argue it with "I want to be better at Y". That is what actually sounds childish, because to the person who believes the first argument, it seems as though you're only looking to be "uber powerful ZOMG". You have to dispute the REASON, not the result. The reason, here, being that we are better at tanking heroics. The evidence is there that we are not. Yellow con and above mobs ignore more avoidance, we have less uncontested avoidance (for which we must be in defensive stance), less mitigation to absorb the increasing number of hits we take, and we have less AoE agro control. All that said, we still handle group content fine. Just not--and here's the word you seem to keep overlooking--BETTER than other tanks. With that point disputed, you can now fashion the argument "We're not BETTER at X than this person, therefore he should NOT be better at Y than us." Little lesson in debate, no charge. It's about building up, you don't start a house with the roof. You have to establish foundation for your argument. As for Darkdourden, why are people even attempting to argue with him? He cannot even fashion a coherent sentence, how can you take anything he says with more than a grain of salt? </blockquote></blockquote> I am not debating you; I am educating you. But a little lesson in debate for you, my sophmoric friend, nevertheless: don't try to twist people's words around or start some other foment because you are wrong or someone disagrees with you. You can not take AoE damage of the berserker, agro control of the guardian, utility of the paladin and avoidance vs mitigation of plate as a whole, and fashion some arguement that we need any attention in heroic, group or solo content. The evidence of all the bruisers out there is overwhelmingly on the side of this being a non-issue. There is need for balance, perhaps, in EoF raiding. But to go on and on about deficits in group or solo content is hysterical in the extreme, and likely to get the true needs of the class ignored right along side them.

Madmoon

08-20-2007, 12:20 PM

Cornbread Muffin wrote: <blockquote>And seriously, if we are such fantastic group tanks why do I always see "group lf plate tank". Good brawlers are skilled players - I've played with some mediocre brawlers recently and it isn't pretty. I've also played with some mediocre plate tanks recently as well and while it is annoying (slow pulls, mediocre agro control) it isn't even in the same class as a mediocre brawler. The people who make brawlers work are skilled players, and could take their skills and do so much better on other classes - that is why many of the good ones have successfully moved on to other classes that actually bring value to their raid. If you succeed as a brawler, don't be fooled into thinking that its the class.</blockquote>I don't know that we're fantastic group fighters. I think, though, that if there are six classes, one of them is going to be, on average, best and one worst. As long as the efficacy is approximately the same, I don't have a problem being sixth - not that I think we are. For a numerical analogy, if guardians are the best fighters for a group and score a perfect hundred, with berserkers at 99 and paladins at 95 and brawlers at 93... that isn't worth making such a fuss, or implying that we are in serious need of help. If all the plates are in the nineties, and we are in the seventies, sure, but that has not been my experience or that of many other brawlers I know. As to why plates are preferred, I believe they do make it easier for reactive healers, but I don't know which of my abilities I would give up over them. I would like uncontested avoidance adjusted, and a bit more firepower, but I don't think we are so far in group content as to neccesitate an argument over it. I think we should ask them to focus on fixing the raid issue, as whatever that fix is will likely trickle down to help us in group work, anyway.

Madmoon

08-20-2007, 12:25 PM

Cornbread Muffin

08-20-2007, 12:32 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>The evidence of all the bruisers out there is overwhelmingly on the side of this being a non-issue. There is need for balance, perhaps, in EoF raiding. But to go on and on about deficits in group or solo content is hysterical in the extreme, and likely to get the true needs of the class ignored right along side them.</blockquote>You aren't even arguing the same thing that he is. The position against improving our raid tanking is that it is "risky" because we are better (or rather, "powerful") group and solo tanks. Antas pointed out that this is bunk, because we are in fact not any better than the other tank classes at heroic content. Sure, we can tank heroic content - but so can summoner pets, scouts, and the other five fighter classes. The case cannot be made that we are so significantly better at heroic content than all others that it warrants not being more useful in a raid.To repeat, you are saying that we can tank heroic content and so all is well, and Antas is saying that we can tank heroic content but not better than many other classes, which is a counter to SOEs original argument against improving our raid capabilities.Your argument is made meaningless by the subject of this discussion, which is SOE's position on brawler improvements. Your argument does not address their position, it simply states something that is known to be true, but does so with no qualifiers nor any connection as to how that should be relevant to SOE's position.EQ2 is a team game. It is a game of options; of give and take. Brawlers are being billed as a "jack of all trades", and that just doesn't work in a team game. This exact same thing happened with the Necromancer in EQ1. When raiding became huge the necros were left out. They were told they couldn't be improved because their solo game was too good. That is horrible design - to build a team game and at the higher levels tell people they don't have a place to play with the team because they can solo effectively. Eventually they got wise to the conundrum and helped the necro out.Fast forward to EQ2 and they are doing the same thing with the brawler right now. Using the same arguments that don't even apply anymore because the brawler is not significantly better at solo than every other class (like the necro was) and the brawler is not significantly better at tanking heroic content than every other class.

Cornbread Muffin

08-20-2007, 12:36 PM

Cornbread Muffin

08-20-2007, 12:50 PM

Couching

08-20-2007, 01:17 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>Cornbread Muffin wrote: <blockquote>And seriously, if we are such fantastic group tanks why do I always see "group lf plate tank". Good brawlers are skilled players - I've played with some mediocre brawlers recently and it isn't pretty. I've also played with some mediocre plate tanks recently as well and while it is annoying (slow pulls, mediocre agro control) it isn't even in the same class as a mediocre brawler. The people who make brawlers work are skilled players, and could take their skills and do so much better on other classes - that is why many of the good ones have successfully moved on to other classes that actually bring value to their raid. If you succeed as a brawler, don't be fooled into thinking that its the class.</blockquote>I don't know that we're fantastic group fighters. I think, though, that if there are six classes, one of them is going to be, on average, best and one worst. As long as the efficacy is approximately the same, I don't have a problem being sixth - not that I think we are. For a numerical analogy, if guardians are the best fighters for a group and score a perfect hundred, with berserkers at 99 and paladins at 95 and brawlers at 93... that isn't worth making such a fuss, or implying that we are in serious need of help. If all the plates are in the nineties, and we are in the seventies, sure, but that has not been my experience or that of many other brawlers I know. As to why plates are preferred, I believe they do make it easier for reactive healers, but I don't know which of my abilities I would give up over them. I would like uncontested avoidance adjusted, and a bit more firepower, but I don't think we are so far in group content as to neccesitate an argument over it. I think we should ask them to focus on fixing the raid issue, as whatever that fix is will likely trickle down to help us in group work, anyway.</blockquote>The reason that brawlers are less welcome than plate tanks is trivial. Most brawlers have less than 50% mitigation even with group buff. There are still a bunch of brawlers believing that they should get more agi/avoidance rather than mitigation. I didn't say that we can't tank with less than 50% (about 3200) mitigation but we will make group healer nervous when we have bad roll on avoidance check. Though, no matter how we gear up ourselves, we still have less mitigation than plate tanks who have same quality gears. Fabled EoF plate suits have about 1700+ more mitigation than fabled EoF leather suits. Even master crafted plate suits have 500+ mitigation than fabled EoF leather suits. It implies that for plate tanks, even for casual players with master crafted plate suits, it's easy for them to hit 50%+ mitigation with group buff. Though, for most casual brawler, it's hard to hit 50% mitigation with group buff. That's why in pick up group, they want plate tank rather than brawler. At least, most plate tank no matter casual or hardcore, can be an adequate group tank. Not to say castle of MM or Nizara, it's better to have 55% (about 4100+) mitigation to be an adequate group tank. Again, I didn't say we can't tank with lower mitigation. But it makes life easier. Since fighting yellow or orange mobs, avoidance didn't work well, especially, if you have only 1 healer in group, more mitigation is better than more avoidance.

PantherXX

08-20-2007, 01:55 PM

Just to add my 2c worth ...<ul><li>As Couching (I beleive) said, it concerns me that the DEVS!! said they don't know how to fix avoidance tanking without breaking solo/group play. Well ... I think the answer is obvious that uncontested avoidance is the problem. When every plate tank can have a guaranteed avoidance in offensive stance which is larger than the guaranteed minimum brawler avoidnace in defensive stance, there is a problem. Upping uncontested avoidnace should have minimal impact on group/solo play, as uncontested avoidance is mainly an issue with Epic mobs. Upping uncontested avoidance might effect high yellow / orange group play, but the effect should not be that large. I can live with the inherently streaky nature of avoidance tanking, it the utter imbalance that ranckles me.</li><li>Almost no one plays a DPS specced Guardian. Almost everyone plays a DPS specced brawler. Of course it looks like brawlers do much better damage. The reality is that if a Guardian chooses the right AA and gear set with optimal groups for both classes, the guardian DPS can come very close to that of a brawler.</li><li>It saddens me that I can't find fabeled jewelry that I actually want to upgrade to. My guild just picked up a nice ring in EH for me (Knotted Ring) with +7 defense and +7 deflection and nice stats. It was even a disco. I will use that ring primarly for solo and group stuff, because I will use my imbued STR rings for DPSing and chitin rings for Epic offtanking because the mit is more important than more uncontested avoidance. The +mit stuff in the Claymore line is more valuable for tanking than virtually anything else I have seen with a fabled tag. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></li></ul>If you are happy with our class, fine, I will respect your opinion, but consider that there are a lot of people with a lot of experince that disagree with you for very good reasons.

Madmoon

08-20-2007, 05:04 PM

Cornbread Muffin wrote: <blockquote>Sure, we can tank heroic content - but so can summoner pets, scouts, and the other five fighter classes. The case cannot be made that we are so significantly better at heroic content than all others that it warrants not being more useful in a raid.</blockquote> I know there are often "plate-only" requests out there. But I have never had occassion where a group has preferred a mage pet or scout over a brawler. I have stepped into groups where a swasher was playing mini-tank, and the relief is almost palpable. This is the stuff I am talking about. I absolutely agree that a brigand or swasher, specc-ed properly, or a Master pet with the right AAs backing it up, can perform as a tank. But only if one is not available, not in place of. It just doesn't happen. What actually happens, in game, is a concern, not what numbers can be crunched to support a given position that never actually takes place. Raid help, OK, but this new focus on solo and heroic content is just counterfactual. So why bring it up?And no, I am not saying all is well. I just think that the developers made a valid point. If they upped the uncontested avoidance of brawlers to the point where we could stand side by side with a guardian or other platehead, it would wreak havoc with our soloing and group content, which is the vast majority of the game. I have not experienced EoF raids, but I accept that what we bring to them is very limited. We should be able to work uncontested avoidance to our advantage there. We should be at the top of the DPS chain with fighters, along side only berserkers, maybe us topping in solo encounters and them in groups. But all is well with solo and heroic content. We may have it harder than the other four fighters (though I would and have argued against that,) but not to the extent that is being implied. So let's focus on what is broken, and not bring up what isn't.

Leatherneck

08-20-2007, 05:13 PM

"If they upped the uncontested avoidance of brawlers to the point where we could stand side by side with a guardian or other platehead, it would wreak havoc with our soloing and group content, which is the vast majority of the game. "That's not a given fact. It would require something pretty simple to "fix".If you're in a raid, you get one value. If you're in a group (but not a raid) or solo (but also not in a raid), you get a different value. That's not all that hard.

Madmoon

08-20-2007, 05:25 PM

<cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote>"If they upped the uncontested avoidance of brawlers to the point where we could stand side by side with a guardian or other platehead, it would wreak havoc with our soloing and group content, which is the vast majority of the game. "That's not a given fact. It would require something pretty simple to "fix".If you're in a raid, you get one value. If you're in a group (but not a raid) or solo (but also not in a raid), you get a different value. That's not all that hard.</blockquote> How would they do that? <img src="/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Is there a flag saying you are in a raid vs. "normal" content? Seriously? If there is, and if it's in game, then that would fix so many problems, and not just for brawlers. Be sad if it was, and all this sound and fury was indeed over nothing. Good idea, though, if they haven't got something like that. What're the chances, though? <img src="/smilies/136dd33cba83140c7ce38db096d05aed.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Couching

08-20-2007, 05:44 PM

There won't be any change on heroic encounters even if we have more uncontested avoidance. The uncontested avoidance is mainly for against epic since epic mobs have incredibly high atk bonus and makes contested avoidance less efficient. No matter contested avoidance or uncontested avoidance works on heroic encounter. For avoidance, it's risky. If you are lucky, you may dodge attacks from mobs many times in a row, but you may also get hits without any miss in a row. That's why avoidance is not as effective as mit tanks. It's too risky and harder to heal avoidance tank. In other word, giving brawler more uncontested avoidance is one thing, to make avoidance tank effective is another. The only way to make avoidance tank effective is not giving uncontested avoidance. It should be making avoidance as mitigation. We get partly damage waive on every hit rather than getting full hit or miss entirely. That's my interpretation.

Cornbread Muffin

08-20-2007, 06:03 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>But I have never had occassion where a group has preferred a mage pet or scout over a brawler. I have stepped into groups where a swasher was playing mini-tank, and the relief is almost palpable. This is the stuff I am talking about. I absolutely agree that a brigand or swasher, specc-ed properly, or a Master pet with the right AAs backing it up, can perform as a tank. But only if one is not available, not in place of. It just doesn't happen. What actually happens, in game, is a concern, not what numbers can be crunched to support a given position that never actually takes place. Raid help, OK, but this new focus on solo and heroic content is just counterfactual. So why bring it up?</blockquote> The mage pet comment was only that they can tank heroic content, not that they would be picked to tank for a group. They perform admirably solo, it's just that for a group they have crappy agro control. Scout tanks, on the other hand....I have been in tons of groups with scout tanks with content up to 73 or so (can't recall where oob/cov/mmc sort of stuff caps out at). They perform just fine and I've never had a problem with them tanking. If there is a feeling of relief when you switch from a rogue to a brawler the rogue probably isn't tank specced, nor used to tanking. Simply by virtue of wearing chain they have higher mitigation than you do. The only issue is HP which they will need to hunt down proper gear for.I don't know why you can't understand this...the focus is not on solo and heroic content. The person bringing it up was a dev saying that our heroic and solo game is so great that they can't bump our stuff up to make us competative in raids. All the solo and heroic "focus" is on refuting that claim. We can't get back to talking about our raid help until they understand that they can actually give us help without making us uber group tanks.

Leatherneck

08-20-2007, 06:05 PM

Leatherneck

08-20-2007, 06:07 PM

Couching@Crushbone wrote: <blockquote>In other word, giving brawler more uncontested avoidance is one thing, to make avoidance tank effective is another. The only way to make avoidance tank effective is not giving uncontested avoidance. It should be making avoidance as mitigation. We get partly damage waive on every hit rather than getting full hit or miss entirely. That's my interpretation. </blockquote> That's a valid point. Eventually you will be hit and it will hurt.Perhaps in a raid, the brawller could be given a mitigation boost instead of the avoidance boost, which disappears when there is less than 7 characters total in a fighting unit.

EQ2Luv

08-20-2007, 06:13 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>I just think that the developers made a valid point. If they upped the uncontested avoidance of brawlers to the point where we could stand side by side with a guardian or other platehead, it would wreak havoc with our soloing and group content, which is the vast majority of the game. </blockquote> This assertion has no facts backing it up. If they made all deflection uncontested it would have no impact on our soloing and very little on our group play. It would only affect group play where we are behind as it is - against level 74 mobs in places such as castle mistmoore. As for your assertion that we're better (or not worse) than the other 4 tanks - why do you think this is the case? (You said the difference if it exists is negligible, and that you personally dont think we are behind at all.) Have you spent much time tanking in Castle Mistmoore? To me this is the only zone worth speaking of as all other group content is cake for any good tank or scout-tank. Is this the zone where you receive much praise from your healer, and if you're that good what insight can you give us as to why we are actually better than the plate heads in group content? Do we hold aggro against those high-level mobs better, do we take the hits better? I'll concede that we rate 93-103 in most zones, but in CMM I feel like a 73. You bash number crunching, but what else can we do to back up our opinions? The fact is, we take more damage from hits and get hit more often than plate tanks in raids *and* against high level heroics. The fact is, a good zerker will do everything we do except FD, and they'll do it better. Lastly, read cornbread muffin's posts. We're not saying we're horrible and need help in groups, but simply addressing the faulty hypothesis used by the developer to justify not making us viable raid tanks. This faulty hypothesis was that we are stellar group tanks, superior to the point that we should be worse raid tanks. This, my friend, is true lunacy.

Leatherneck

08-20-2007, 06:19 PM

<cite>EQ2Luv wrote:</cite><blockquote>This faulty hypothesis was that we are stellar group tanks, superior to the point that we should be worse raid tanks. This, my friend, is true lunacy. </blockquote> I have to agree.I don't want to be better at one only to lack on another. I would prefer to have everything about even in effacy. If the case truly, truly is that being superior group tanks means we have to be sub-par raid tanks, no tanks.

Madmoon

08-20-2007, 07:48 PM

Cornbread Muffin wrote: <blockquote>... the focus is not on solo and heroic content. The person bringing it up was a dev saying that our heroic and solo game is so great that they can't bump our stuff up to make us competative in raids. All the solo and heroic "focus" is on refuting that claim. We can't get back to talking about our raid help until they understand that they can actually give us help without making us uber group tanks.</blockquote>Look, at the risk of extending this where we're all already saying essentially the same thing, I get it, I get it. They (the devs) think we're overpowered outside of raids, and don't want to help us with raids because of repercussions that might develop in the non-raid content. You, and others, feel we are not overpowered there, and that they shouldn't refrain from moving forward on raid fixes because of that reason they gave. See? Understood. I just take issue with the notion that we are entirely enfeebled in non-raid content, or more specifically, that that is the tack we should take in combating that image. That that is the counter-argument we should present. I think raid concerns are entirely valid, and we shouldn't muddy the waters by arguing entirely the opposite of the dev's point of view. Or at least not to the extent where we say things like "soloing is mostly luck," or "no one wants us in groups." If they think that we are head and shoulders above plateheads, bringing arguments to counter our superiority is fine, but not to the extent we sound like Br'er Rabbit. <a href="mailto:EQ@Luv" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">EQ2Luv</a> wrote: "This faulty hypothesis was that we are stellar group tanks, superior to the point that we should be worse raid tanks. This, my friend, is true lunacy."Agreed. We are emanately adequate, better in some respects, worse in others, but superior? To the point of not advancing raid needs? Hardly.

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-20-2007, 08:12 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote>"If they upped the uncontested avoidance of brawlers to the point where we could stand side by side with a guardian or other platehead, it would wreak havoc with our soloing and group content, which is the vast majority of the game. "That's not a given fact. It would require something pretty simple to "fix".If you're in a raid, you get one value. If you're in a group (but not a raid) or solo (but also not in a raid), you get a different value. That's not all that hard.</blockquote> How would they do that? <img src="/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Is there a flag saying you are in a raid vs. "normal" content? Seriously? If there is, and if it's in game, then that would fix so many problems, and not just for brawlers. Be sad if it was, and all this sound and fury was indeed over nothing. Good idea, though, if they haven't got something like that. What're the chances, though? <img src="/smilies/136dd33cba83140c7ce38db096d05aed.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote> Just a note... our avoidance against a Solo mob is higher than any Uncontested capped minimum. So having an uncontested avoidance increase will do nothing whatsoever to anything that doesn't lower our Avoidance down to below 25%. For the most part, that is 99% of the mobs in the game outside of raids. The only mobs that MIGHT push that limit, are much higher level named mobs in a special instance... so we'll get SOME heroic encounter benefit against yellow/orange con named mobs in places like Castle Mistmoore and Unrest, etc. Basically.. increasing our Uncontested Avoidance cap will not even touch solo play, and only barely scratch heroic content (possibly making the hardest encounters, the ones we have some trouble against compared to other tanks, a bit more on par with other tanks). However, it shoudl give us a nice boost in Epic encounters... and even if not giving us tanking roles, at least giving us the best offtank buffing role (giving avoidance to the MT while in offensive would be nice). The whole point of Uncontested Avoidance is that it DOES only apply vs Epic content... because Epic content have the bonuses to reduce our avoidance below the Uncontested Avoidance limits. Solo/Group simply don't.

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-20-2007, 08:21 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>It looks to me like you have to use all your AAs to get a brigand to be a mini-fighter. If that's what you want, great, and it looks like a lot of fun to me, since I am a fighter. But wouldn't it be better to be a better brigand? For example, will you get EoF raid invitations, a major issue for brawlers? Or do you get them as a scout, and line up that way? </blockquote>Like it was said, the Brigand, even spec'd to be a fighter, still brings as much as a DPS spec'd Brawler, and then also brings raid utility in the form of Debuffs. Nothing says "raid" like making others land hits better, and for more damage. Just how much DPS is it really, when the raid jumps from 20k to 25 or 30k DPS because there's a Brigand or two? AA choices don't really change this. On top of that, you will soon be capable of having two spec's for AA's. A Brigand could easily have a Raid Spec for higher DPS, and longer lasting Debuffs, etc. And then a non-Raid or Tanking Spec, for when he wants to solo, group, or is needed for offtanking in Raids. The problem is that they have a choice. Brawlers don't. You spec for Defense as a Bruiser and at best you are looking at a little bit more avoidance (contested), or hitpoints in KoS options... and some reduced timers with a stoneskin proc that happens once in a blue moon. At best we have an Attentions line that gives us a smidge more aggro control, however only one with multitarget and that's only for group encounter (not out of encounter). Half of the line is dedicated to REDUCING aggro or Feign Death... something you don't ever use when tanking. I'm fairly sure Monks have the exact same problems, or worse (at least our Attentions final can be used for increasing our own aggro). A Brigand can choose AA's to become a better tank than us, and STILL provide raid utility that any raid that wants high DPS will require. He can also choose even better DPS AA's to go full out... and with RoK, he can flip back and forth between the two without cost. A Brawler can choose Defensive AA's for minimal benefit at all... or chose DPS and hope that he can at least hold aggro long enough for the mobs to die. I honestly don't know what "second spec" I'll bother to choose for my Bruiser when RoK comes out.

Raidi Sovin'faile

08-20-2007, 08:27 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote> I think, though, that if there are six classes, one of them is going to be, on average, best and one worst. As long as the efficacy is approximately the same, I don't have a problem being sixth - not that I think we are. </blockquote>Well, quite frankly, I'm getting tired of being 5th or 6th in every single Fighter quality. There should be SOMETHING that one end of the spectrum is better at. If it's "tank buffer" and "single target aggro control", then I'm fine with that. However, as of right now.. others provide more Uncontested Avoidance while doing full Offense than we can do in Full Defense... and our single target aggro control is at best, equal. Hell, even against single target, the Guardian's special tricks still help him... Reinforcement can still work there too. The simple fact is we need a couple changes to make it so we are not the "worst" in every category, to give us some value in this game whatsoever. This is why we are speaking out so harshly against the Dev comments.

Raznor2

08-22-2007, 05:11 PM

Here's my thoughts after reading this and a few other posts relating to brawlers:-Fix uncontested avoidance for Brawlers.I think most people agree that it's loony for a class that is supposed to tank with avoidance to have less uncontested avoidance than a plate/mitigation tank. On top of that, we lose the bulk of our uncontested avoidance when in offensive stance while plate tanks see no drop off in offensive stance. -Fix our AA's so our damage scales. The bare fisted requirement prevents us from enhancing double attack down the str line once we've gotten weapons that are stronger than bare fists. Our aa for striking multiple mobs (crane twirl) is based on a proc not on a percent of auto attack damage, it doesn't scale as our weapons improve. -Rethink raiding and even group content, 1/3 of all encounters should favor the brawler/avoidance tank. You have three types of tanks: warrior, brawler and crusader, if their function is to tank and you set up most of the content to be tanked most effectively by a mitigation tank (guardian, berserker) where does that leave those two other fighter types? There needs to be more situations where the MT and/or OT is best done by a crusader or brawler. Note, the word I'm using is favor, not an absolute, content should be doable by all the tanking classes but far easier if you use the class that the encounter is geared for. This way you give a reason for raids to take more than just a couple plate tanks and that reason isn't just feign death or pet pulling or buffing the guardian MT or to spam intercede, it's to tank. ~Raithan 70 bruiser Venekor

EQ2Luv

08-22-2007, 05:38 PM

<cite>Raznor269 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here's my thoughts after reading this and a few other posts relating to brawlers:-Fix uncontested avoidance for Brawlers.I think most people agree that it's loony for a class that is supposed to tank with avoidance to have less uncontested avoidance than a plate/mitigation tank. On top of that, we lose the bulk of our uncontested avoidance when in offensive stance while plate tanks see no drop off in offensive stance. -Fix our AA's so our damage scales. The bare fisted requirement prevents us from enhancing double attack down the str line once we've gotten weapons that are stronger than bare fists. Our aa for striking multiple mobs (crane twirl) is based on a proc not on a percent of auto attack damage, it doesn't scale as our weapons improve. -Rethink raiding and even group content, 1/3 of all encounters should favor the brawler/avoidance tank. You have three types of tanks: warrior, brawler and crusader, if their function is to tank and you set up most of the content to be tanked most effectively by a mitigation tank (guardian, berserker) where does that leave those two other fighter types? There needs to be more situations where the MT and/or OT is best done by a crusader or brawler. Note, the word I'm using is favor, not an absolute, content should be doable by all the tanking classes but far easier if you use the class that the encounter is geared for. This way you give a reason for raids to take more than just a couple plate tanks and that reason isn't just feign death or pet pulling or buffing the guardian MT or to spam intercede, it's to tank. ~Raithan 70 bruiser Venekor</blockquote>I completely agree with all of this. Unfortunately the dev quoted by the OP indicates that they are taking the (much easier, much less logical) position that we are too good outside of raids to be made useful tanks in raids.

tt66

08-23-2007, 06:43 AM

<cite>Raznor269 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here's my thoughts after reading this and a few other posts relating to brawlers:-Fix uncontested avoidance for Brawlers.-Fix our AA's so our damage scales. -Rethink raiding and even group content, 1/3 of all encounters should favor the brawler/avoidance tank.</blockquote>I really see where you're coming from with point 3, although I reckon I'd be happy with just the first 2!Ugh. Did MMIS last night. I'd forgotten just what a kick in the teeth it is to see the Brigand tanking the TArmor. They're all excited and happy that they're getting to be MT for a fight, and I'm just standing there thinking "I will never get to do that. And I'm supposed to be a fighter".

Madmoon

08-23-2007, 02:26 PM

<cite>Raznor269 wrote:</cite><blockquote>-Rethink raiding and even group content, 1/3 of all encounters should favor the brawler/avoidance tank. You have three types of tanks: warrior, brawler and crusader, if their function is to tank and you set up most of the content to be tanked most effectively by a mitigation tank (guardian, berserker) where does that leave those two other fighter types? There needs to be more situations where the MT and/or OT is best done by a crusader or brawler. Note, the word I'm using is favor, not an absolute, content should be doable by all the tanking classes but far easier if you use the class that the encounter is geared for. This way you give a reason for raids to take more than just a couple plate tanks and that reason isn't just feign death or pet pulling or buffing the guardian MT or to spam intercede, it's to tank. ~Raithan 70 bruiser Venekor</blockquote>I love the idea, but can you imagine if the other three archtypes demanded the same thing? And THEN you had to grid out all the possible group combinations that would follow? Instead of an orc, you'd have orc-brawler, -crusader, -warrior, orc-cleric, -shaman, -druid.... I mean, nine different orcs, and that's JUST for solo. If they extended it to possible group encounters... well, some statistician can give you the possible permutations. Also, for balance, it follows that each type is also weak against a certain monster. I just imagine coding it would be a nightmare. I like the idea, lots, but it strikes me as fairly difficult to implement, though I'm no programmer.

EQ2Luv

08-23-2007, 03:24 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Raznor269 wrote:</cite><blockquote>-Rethink raiding and even group content, 1/3 of all encounters should favor the brawler/avoidance tank. You have three types of tanks: warrior, brawler and crusader, if their function is to tank and you set up most of the content to be tanked most effectively by a mitigation tank (guardian, berserker) where does that leave those two other fighter types? There needs to be more situations where the MT and/or OT is best done by a crusader or brawler. Note, the word I'm using is favor, not an absolute, content should be doable by all the tanking classes but far easier if you use the class that the encounter is geared for. This way you give a reason for raids to take more than just a couple plate tanks and that reason isn't just feign death or pet pulling or buffing the guardian MT or to spam intercede, it's to tank. ~Raithan 70 bruiser Venekor</blockquote>I love the idea, but can you imagine if the other three archtypes demanded the same thing? And THEN you had to grid out all the possible group combinations that would follow? Instead of an orc, you'd have orc-brawler, -crusader, -warrior, orc-cleric, -shaman, -druid.... I mean, nine different orcs, and that's JUST for solo. If they extended it to possible group encounters... well, some statistician can give you the possible permutations. Also, for balance, it follows that each type is also weak against a certain monster. I just imagine coding it would be a nightmare. I like the idea, lots, but it strikes me as fairly difficult to implement, though I'm no programmer.</blockquote>I believe he's talking specifically about raid mobs. These are fewer (especially just counting the named mobs). As far as other archetypes, there's no other archetype that's so inferior that raids won't consider using them. Every healer has a place in a raid already. Enchanters and bards are overneeded to an extreme. All other classes are capable of strong DPS. More importantly, they are needed on the raid to perform their *primary role* -- healers heal, dpsers dps and utility.. utilitize. A brawler is not needed to do their primary role, which *is* to be a tank. That's why I made my monk, and I'm sure many others too. Unfortunately, before they can design an encounter that requires a brawler, they'll have to give us something that we excell in over the other tanks. Currently our mitigation is worse, our avoidance vs epics is worse, and our aggro is worse because our dps is no better than a zerker. If they fixed our avoidance to be higher than a plate tank, in particular against combat arts, then they could have a mob with some kind of nasty debuff that gets worse each time it hits you. This is one of the few ways i can see avoidance tanking being a preferred form of tanking. It still boggles my mind that they think we would be overpowered against current mobs by simply making us the best at avoiding--its still better to mitigate X% than to avoid X%.

Leatherneck

08-23-2007, 03:37 PM

What would be extra spiffy would be to categorize mobs and to make meleers better (but not overwhelmingly so) against mobs of that type.For example, against living humanoid, human-ish sized mobs, Brawllers should be the best tanks. Maybe you take from the example of St George and make Crusaders the best tanks vs Dragonoid mobs, and you could make Warriors the best tanks against Giant mobs. That sort of thing, so that each group gets their own category and their own chance to really shine.

Raznor2

08-23-2007, 04:25 PM

One way for avoidance to be made more favorable would be to gear a mob to have a very narrow range between it's minimum and maximum hit and have a high rate of attack. For example, say you have a brawler and plate tank and the mob you are fighting hits the brawler for 1000 and the plate tank for 10 percent less, 900. Now let's say the brawler avoids 10 percent more than the plate tank so over ten hits, the brawler avoids 1 hit while the plate tank avoids none. In this situation both tanks take 9000 points of damage. Now let's say over the same period of time the mob hits 20 times and it's range of damage is narrowed to 500 to 475. The plate tank's mitigation would normally reduce the damage to 450 but because the range between the minimum and maximum hit is so small the best he can get is 475. The bruiser still gets hit for the max, 500, but avoids 2 out of 20 of the hits and takes only 9000 damage again while the plate tank takes 9500 in this situation. This is a crude example and I'm not sure if the game mechanics work the way I'm thinking of them but the concept is sound. Faster, smaller hits with narrow ranges of damage would make avoidance tanking less bursty and more appealing. ~Raithan 70 bruiser Venekor

Jobeson

08-23-2007, 06:24 PM

deflection simply needs to be turned into uncontested. It should be like block. If they nerf block and watch all the plate tanks lose 15% avoidance on raids then so be it. Plate tanks should not have higher avoidance and mit than brawlers. We should not have full avoidance working for us but our deflection should be uncontested. I may display 70% avoidance in offensive stance yet when a mob is beating on me I am lucky to dodge 25% of the attacks even when in defensive. Where plate tanks can get over 25% block rate then have parry and dodge on top of that. A plate tank has more avoidance for raid mobs in offensive stance than a monk does in defensive stance. This is the problem. Even if monks were given the 3*% avoidance that is uncontested we would still be destroyed quickly from time to time where plate tanks who are in high mit and having only 5-10% less avoidance are able to survive longer. A mob swinging for less and faster would make it easier for a brawler to tank but you forget that would also increase the ammount of heals reactives are doing on the plate tank. Spamming the reactive for the plate tank would make him even easier to heal. Plate tanks are higher mit and avoidance than brawlers atm. for this reason I say nerf block. Get rid of uncontested avoidance all together. plate tanks would still have their mit and avoidance for them would be just as pointless as it is for but we would still have that 1% higher chance to dodge than they would...If all the plate tanks are complaining about not being able to kill things because of the damage they take then give uncontested avoidance to brawlers as well as people who can use shields.

tt66

08-24-2007, 06:15 AM

<cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote>What would be extra spiffy would be to categorize mobs and to make meleers better (but not overwhelmingly so) against mobs of that type.For example, against living humanoid, human-ish sized mobs, Brawllers should be the best tanks. Maybe you take from the example of St George and make Crusaders the best tanks vs Dragonoid mobs, and you could make Warriors the best tanks against Giant mobs. That sort of thing, so that each group gets their own category and their own chance to really shine.</blockquote>Just wanted to say that I really like this idea. No a clue how (or even if it's possible) it would work in practice, but it's a really neat concept.I suppose if you wanted to be realistic about a fantasy game, you could suggest that a brawler would have a harder time dodging a giant than a normal sized opponent. Heh. Quick and dirty avoidance fix... give brawlers an additional 30% uncontested avoidance against humanoid opponents.

Cornbread Muffin

08-24-2007, 12:50 PM

I don't like the idea because it means if you don't have the right tank you are screwed again. It doesn't change the base problem of 25% of the classes being tanks but only 8% of the raid positions requiring tanking. All that would change is which class fills the 8% of your raid slots when you hit a given target and the rest sit out.They should just make warriors the premier raid tanks (oh look, this step is already complete!) and give brawlers and crusaders some awesome buffs that can take the place of illusionist or dirge slots. That is where the imbalance is right now - 16% of the classes are taking 33% of the raid slots because their buffs rule. I'd probably do like the dirge and bard setup where one of each class is designed primarily for melee buffs and the other for caster buffs.Yeah, I know, everyone thought they were rolling a tank when they made their class (for some of us we actually got to play through the glory days <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />) but they made the mistake of having more tank classes than they need so they could fill out the poorly thought out archetype/class/subclass tree with perfect symmetry. I'd rather be turned into something useful then demand to be part of the ongoing problem of too many tanks.

EQ2Luv

08-24-2007, 01:01 PM

Leatherneck

08-24-2007, 01:47 PM

<cite>Cornbread Muffin wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't like the idea because it means if you don't have the right tank you are screwed again. </blockquote>That's a pretty hefty assumption. The difference doesn't have to be huge, just noticable. From your statement, I surmise you're assuming a situation where you HAVE to have a specific type of tank for a specific type of mob. That's not the case I was thinking of at all. I was talking about a situation where if you have one of the preferred types, then you use him, but anyone could do the job.

Rayche

08-24-2007, 02:32 PM

How does that differ from encounters where you HAVE to have an Enchanter to mez adds or you (90% chance) wipe, or you HAVE to have Bards with Blade dance or you (90% chance) wipe.Yes, you can be creative and work around those encounters, it'll just be much tougher without the right classes. The same could be said for making encounters where Brawlers are the 90% desired class.

Cornbread Muffin

08-24-2007, 02:44 PM

<cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cornbread Muffin wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't like the idea because it means if you don't have the right tank you are screwed again. </blockquote>That's a pretty hefty assumption. The difference doesn't have to be huge, just noticable. From your statement, I surmise you're assuming a situation where you HAVE to have a specific type of tank for a specific type of mob. That's not the case I was thinking of at all. I was talking about a situation where if you have one of the preferred types, then you use him, but anyone could do the job.</blockquote>It would have to be a huge difference. If it isn't, plate tanks are far enough ahead of us at the tanking game that at best it would come out equal or maybe slightly in favor of us. So then to make it be a real difference you would have to fix us anyway - but if you're fixing us anyway, you don't need to install the original idea in the first place because we're fixed.

Leatherneck

08-24-2007, 02:46 PM

Well, I don't like seeing any class or sub- being a 90%'er. But there is a whole range of difficulty between Easy Button <----------------------> OMG we're all gonna die.

Leatherneck

08-24-2007, 02:47 PM

<cite>Cornbread Muffin wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cornbread Muffin wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't like the idea because it means if you don't have the right tank you are screwed again. </blockquote>That's a pretty hefty assumption. The difference doesn't have to be huge, just noticable. From your statement, I surmise you're assuming a situation where you HAVE to have a specific type of tank for a specific type of mob. That's not the case I was thinking of at all. I was talking about a situation where if you have one of the preferred types, then you use him, but anyone could do the job.</blockquote>It would have to be a huge difference. If it isn't, plate tanks are far enough ahead of us at the tanking game that at best it would come out equal or maybe slightly in favor of us. So then to make it be a real difference you would have to fix us anyway - but if you're fixing us anyway, you don't need to install the original idea in the first place because we're fixed.</blockquote>The two issues are separate.Even if we're "fixed" it is a valid idea that adds a deeper level to play.

Cornbread Muffin

08-24-2007, 03:01 PM

<cite>Leatherneck wrote:</cite><blockquote>Even if we're "fixed" it is a valid idea that adds a deeper level to play.</blockquote>eh, I guess I'm just not seeing it. Even if the idea behind it weren't to fix us all I see happening is people carting around one more guy (probably switching from a zerk OT to a pally and picking up a brawler if they don't already have one) and grumping every few minutes when they have to rearrange groups and rebuff half the raid.It just doesn't seem like it adds any fun to me, but to each their own.

Leatherneck

08-24-2007, 03:18 PM

I see your concern. And I know there are people out there that if it's not the 100% total awesomest bestest of something, they consider it "worthless".However, I'm talking about a flux of maybe 10% either way.Now, it could be used sparingly, only against, say, epic mobs -possibly heroic nameds- so you're not doing the group shuffle every five minutes. I wouldn't suggest trying to use it as a means of fixing the lack of raid MT desirablity, or the situation you're talking about would probably work out that way. Worse, you would have to nerf other classes against mobs not of their type, IF you were going to try to use this as a fix. That would just be bad for everyone.

Raznor2

08-26-2007, 12:57 PM

<cite>Cornbread Muffin wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't like the idea because it means if you don't have the right tank you are screwed again. It doesn't change the base problem of 25% of the classes being tanks but only 8% of the raid positions requiring tanking. All that would change is which class fills the 8% of your raid slots when you hit a given target and the rest sit out.They should just make warriors the premier raid tanks (oh look, this step is already complete!) and give brawlers and crusaders some awesome buffs that can take the place of illusionist or dirge slots. That is where the imbalance is right now - 16% of the classes are taking 33% of the raid slots because their buffs rule. I'd probably do like the dirge and bard setup where one of each class is designed primarily for melee buffs and the other for caster buffs.Yeah, I know, everyone thought they were rolling a tank when they made their class (for some of us we actually got to play through the glory days <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />) but they made the mistake of having more tank classes than they need so they could fill out the poorly thought out archetype/class/subclass tree with perfect symmetry. I'd rather be turned into something useful then demand to be part of the ongoing problem of too many tanks.</blockquote>Little pessimistic there Skat, first of all not having the right tank shouldn't mean you are screwed, encounters could favor certain tank types that doesn't mean it has to make or break a raid. (And yes when I made this statment earlier it was with the assumption that our unconditional avoidance gets fixed.) Secondly, your assuming encounters will be single mob or group encounters that require one tank, fights can require the combined effort of multiple tanks. For example the Jelvan fight in eq1 require a raid to be divided into three and three tanks had to tank one mob each and you had to drop the mobs hp at the same rate. You could do the same thing in eq2 and have each of the three mobs geared for one of the three tank types. And there's tons of examples from eq1 of needing multiple tanks, the first part of potime raid, xegony fight, emp fight from ssra, bertox, a bunch for GoD if I could remember those mobs weird names, etc. So instead of 25 percent of the classes vying for 8 percent of the raid positions you can use all of them on one encounter. Lastly, about being a substitute for a bard or illusionist, come on now we'd be second rate dps, we wouldn't tank anything epic since our avoidance is borked and we'd have buffs that are second rate compared to bards and illusionists. Even if those buffs were comparable to a bard, having a handy buff IMHO is a crummy reason to be taken on a raid anyways, your not being taken because your skilled as a tank with targeting, positoning and holding a mob on you, nor are you being taken because you can run that ragged edge between high dps and taking agro or because you can skillfully and safely pull epic mobs or because you can crowd control like a champ. Your being picked to click a buff and hang out. ~Raithan 70 bruiser Venekor

Madmoon

08-26-2007, 03:22 PM

An x4 raid is a couple (plate) fighters, three or five healers, three or four utility, and a the rest DPS. We need to be taking a DPS slot, not an enchanter's or bard's. What they OUGHT to do is revisit the whole raid schematic where all that DPS doesn't make the outcome more favorable. In a perfect world, you'd take 6 of each (fighters, scouts, mages and healers.) But there isn't any sensible way to do that, I don't think.

Cornbread Muffin

08-27-2007, 02:16 PM

<cite>Madmoon wrote:</cite><blockquote>An x4 raid is a couple (plate) fighters, three or five healers, three or four utility, and a the rest DPS. We need to be taking a DPS slot, not an enchanter's or bard's. What they OUGHT to do is revisit the whole raid schematic where all that DPS doesn't make the outcome more favorable. In a perfect world, you'd take 6 of each (fighters, scouts, mages and healers.) But there isn't any sensible way to do that, I don't think.</blockquote>If your raid only has three or four utility classes your raid probably has crappy DPS. The reason I suggest taking a buff slot is because 16% of the game's classes are ideally taking 29-33% of the game's raid slots. For tanks 24% of the classes are taking 8% of the raid slots. For healers 24% of the classes are taking 24% of the raid slots (if you run with 3 in the MT group and 1 in all the others, or 2 in the MT group and OT group and one in the other two). For DPS 33% of the classes are taking the remaining 33% of the slots.Obviously this depends on how your setups are - you could run with more DPS classes in the place of buffers and possibly achieve the same thing. Currently there are only two gross imbalances in "job" placement in a raid; there are far fewer tanks than tank classes and far more buffers than buffer classes. DPS and healers are both about right.Raznor Wrote: Lastly, about being a substitute for a bard or illusionist, come on now we'd be second rate dps, we wouldn't tank anything epic since our avoidance is borked and we'd have buffs that are second rate compared to bards and illusionists. Even if those buffs were comparable to a bard, having a handy buff IMHO is a crummy reason to be taken on a raid anyways, your not being taken because your skilled as a tank with targeting, positoning and holding a mob on you, nor are you being taken because you can run that ragged edge between high dps and taking agro or because you can skillfully and safely pull epic mobs or because you can crowd control like a champ. Your being picked to click a buff and hang out. ------------------------------------Who brings an illus to just buff and hang out? If they aren't even trying to parse they suck. Coercers and both bards have it harder but can still post some numbers. If your healers and buffers aren't bothering to throw some DPS the mob's way you are squandering an awful lot of DPS.Rarely is a brawler going to be taken to a raid for being a skilled tank. Even if we were made to be fantastic tanks we would just be further overcrowding an already crowded raid position which doesn't fix anything it just puts other tanks in the back of the bus. We could fill a DPS slot if they boosted our DPS significantly, but it would have to be significant if you're not there to be used as a tank and we don't have any debuffs or really nice buffs to help add to our attractiveness. If your only job is to DPS you are competing with classes like sorcerers, summoners and predators and our DPS isn't even close to theirs. And I do believe if they boosted our DPS that much we would dominate the heroic/solo game. It would be like 2005 all over again. <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />That really only leaves one option and that is adding buffs/debuffs. With the raid-wide debuffs (even though I think these are a bad idea) it appears they are going the way of buffs.edit: Oh, and it is Skot, not Skat. <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/ed515dbff23a0ee3241dcc0a601c9ed6.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

Raznor2

08-27-2007, 06:08 PM

Heh oops, ok Skot, debate about being a debuffing/buffing class aside, I'm of the opinion that it would make more sense to develop more roles, tanking roles in raids, for the tank classes. So instead of it being 24 percent of the tanking classes vying for 8 percent of the raid slots you have encounters and/or zones that need multiple tanks, thus you can make use of the tanking classes the way they were intended to be used. Rather than shoe horning crusaders and brawlers into a buff/debuff role since there is a disparity in the number and need for buffing classes. Also, if soe implements raid buffs this will reduce the need to take more than one dirge or troubadour or illusionist so that 16 percent taking up 29-33 percent of the raid slots disparity can be fixed. (Not to mention I would love to see a raid wide CoB <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />&nbsp<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> A quick example of my idea of how a raid could use multiple tanks: Let's say your raid goes into an instance and the first raid mob is a 4x mob that has a rampage that is best soaked by an avoidance tank. So you have a brawler pull to gain ramp and a guardian mt while the brawler soaks up the rampage damage. After that you clear trash mobs (Any tank should be able to handle trash mobs.) And the next mob, again a 4x but this one is suseptible to SK specific life taps (he give more hp to sk for life tap than normal) and his damage is reduced when fighting through paladin specific wards, so either crusader would work. During the fight the mob calls swarm minions at 75 50 and 25 percent that are best handled by an ae strong tank (like a berzerker) The third fight is a 4x that every 60 seconds mem wipes and switches to a new stance and each stance needs a different tank type to handle it, in this situation you'd put a warrior, brawler and crusader type in the same group with three healers and have them swap the MT position every 60 seconds. For the last fight you could have a emperor ssra situation where there are mobs that need to be off tanked, away from main raid mob, the guardian would MT and the other tank classes would offtank the adds. Raids needing the effort of more than one or two tanks over the course of an entire raid, that's what I feel raids need. In closing I'd like to say that for brawlers, I really think our best opportunity to serve a role on raids is our avoidance, fix that and we will bring something unique that can be used to give us a MT or OT role on raids.~Raithan 70 bruiser Venekor

Cornbread Muffin

08-28-2007, 10:48 AM

It would be nice if raids required something other than just maximizing DPS.edit: You know what I think would help with this....a return to T5-style in and out raid instances with no or little trash. If you went into a large trash-filled raid zone with a setup designed to have tons of tanks you'd be in there forever.

Leatherneck

08-28-2007, 01:26 PM

One way to do it that wouldn't affect soloing at all would actually be kinda simple, make Avoidance count.Example (Yah, I'm making these up), NastyNasty McNastykins, Servant of Bertox procs a AE/Zonewide disease. This disease drains health and power (at some rate parsed out to be optimal for the goals of the encounter). This proc only goes off if McNastykins hits you. However, his melee is rather pathetic.This is something that not only could a brawller tank, but it would be best to have tank. The damage from the attacks aren't significant enough to cause a problem because of mitigation, but you really don't want to be hit.Another example (yup, another made up one), Princess Popularity. She doesn't do much melee herself, but every time she hits, she spawns mobs. Again, that's perfect for a brawller for much the same reasons.

Aull

08-30-2007, 09:30 PM

I would have to agree with Darkdourden on this one. I must admit that I am the biggest whinner of all, but what he posted makes sense to me. I have found out that in everday Norrath adventure I find that most brawlers do an awesome job at dps and tanking. Now that I am raiding it is a totally different game and adjustments must be made to fit that. It is just like a car or truck everyone wants to be able to go from 0 to 60 in 5.2 secs or less, have all the wonderous power, but once they get that they didn't realize they would loose in the economy. So then people get unhappy again and want the economy back. I do feel that every class needs to have or be better at something than other classes are. I have no problems with my guild wanting the guardian to tank the raid and not my zerker. Guards just seem to do a better job at that (also the person playing is a huge percentage of that btw not just the class). I also understand that to win at one thing means loosing at another. If I was 6' 5" weigh 450 lbs I could possibly be a great at sumo wrestling, but wouldn't be good at soccer. I understand where you are coming from Dark (or at least I hope I do) and I feel you are correct. However, I want my bruiser to be able to run at 46% runspeed, have 105 haste like a monk, have the ae power of a warlock, heal like a priest, have a pet like a summoner, be able to charm mobs, regen health like a fury, ward like a mystic, have amends like a pally, unholy blessing like an sk, be able to hit multiple mobs like a zerker, and sing a song while doing it! That way I will have everything I want, but where would all my friends be? Sorry just had to say that. No offense intended there, but that is what I feel like at times, but if I had it all where would the other classes be? I just want to be respectful of other classes and not take anything away from them.

EQ2Luv

08-31-2007, 03:28 AM

<cite>Aull wrote:</cite><blockquote>I would have to agree with Darkdourden on this one. I must admit that I am the biggest whinner of all, but what he posted makes sense to me. I have found out that in everday Norrath adventure I find that most brawlers do an awesome job at dps and tanking. Now that I am raiding it is a totally different game and adjustments must be made to fit that. It is just like a car or truck everyone wants to be able to go from 0 to 60 in 5.2 secs or less, have all the wonderous power, but once they get that they didn't realize they would loose in the economy. So then people get unhappy again and want the economy back. I do feel that every class needs to have or be better at something than other classes are. I have no problems with my guild wanting the guardian to tank the raid and not my zerker. Guards just seem to do a better job at that (also the person playing is a huge percentage of that btw not just the class). I also understand that to win at one thing means loosing at another. If I was 6' 5" weigh 450 lbs I could possibly be a great at sumo wrestling, but wouldn't be good at soccer. I understand where you are coming from Dark (or at least I hope I do) and I feel you are correct. However, I want my bruiser to be able to run at 46% runspeed, have 105 haste like a monk, have the ae power of a warlock, heal like a priest, have a pet like a summoner, be able to charm mobs, regen health like a fury, ward like a mystic, have amends like a pally, unholy blessing like an sk, be able to hit multiple mobs like a zerker, and sing a song while doing it! That way I will have everything I want, but where would all my friends be? Sorry just had to say that. No offense intended there, but that is what I feel like at times, but if I had it all where would the other classes be? I just want to be respectful of other classes and not take anything away from them.</blockquote>We don't want everything.... we want *something*. We want the same something that we had for the first 70 levels which is the capability to tank reasonably. We don't want to be MT (not all of us anyway.) We just want to be able to step into the shoes of a tank should the tank die, or should the tank be gone for the night, or should we just feel like playing the intended role of our class. We don't want everything, we want something that we can actually do better than another class. Zerker can do everything we can do except FD, and they'll do it better. Oh and if they tinker then they can FD too. Zerkers out dps us.Zerkers out tank us.Zerkers out aggro us.Zerkers out *avoid* us. No one wants all the things you said in your post. We just want to be able to do something as well as warriors. We don't want the ability to call down fire and brimstone and turn water into wine. We just want to t a n k. Not MT. Not be better than a guardian at tanking. We just want something. Is it unreasonable to ask that a leather wearer avoid more attacks than a plate wearer? Is it really? Cause that's what you're agreeing with. If they fix avoidance tanking, we still won't even be as effective as mit tanks because they don't take spike damage. So please, don't say that we're asking for the sun and the moon here. We just want what makes sense. Avoidance tanks avoiding. That's it.

09-02-2007, 03:56 AM

<cite>Antas@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote>Better group tanks? Since when? Are we capable? Certainly. But you'll be hardpressed to find a group out there that would take generic brawler "X" over generic plate tank "Y". The DPS assumption is questionable, at best, but to say that we're actually BETTER group tanks (or better soloers than Shadow Knights) is just plain absurd. Basically, what this is saying is "The class isn't working as we intend, but we're completely oblivious to that fact". </blockquote>You serious? I've had groups stop and ask me to take over as the tank pretty often now. Edit: Also, yes, I think it is very silly to talk all about how great it is for us to avoid, and then turn around and make bosses and mobs that nearly completely ignore that avoidance. That's imba.

Aull

09-02-2007, 03:03 PM

Very good point EQ2. I was kidding around with all that mouich I typed in saying that I wanted all that. I was just tring to be funny. I do feel that my bruiser is lacking in the dps dept compaired to monks and zerks anyway. As for zerkers being all what you said I would agree and feel that as a bruiser we should at least out melee damage a zerker and avoid. Quote: I am not wanting soe to nerf zerks!! A bruiser should be able to auto attack/or just flat out hit harder than other classes IMHO, with our ca's taking so long to refresh I feel that our autoattack damage should be a bit stronger. After all we don't wear heavy armor and I feel that we should be hitting hard and avoiding better than our plate buddies. They "say" a monk doesn't hit that hard and their ca's are significantly weaker, even if that is true with thier haste and faster reuse times on ca's they are totally above bruisers as far as dps is concerned. I have read the forums about how bruisers are better soloer's than monks because we can burst damage better, sorry but I don't see it. When my cousin logs the monk on and we go duoing mobs he just flat out smokes me!!! PERIOD!!! We are set up the same in aa's strgth and Int, and he makes me look like I am not doing nothing but observing the fight. I am not saying that I want my bruiser to be out dpsing a monk, but I feel that my bruiser is so far behind in dps comparied to monks and zerkers that I am doing no better than a mage swinging a staff. He is a nice toon to play solo but when I group is when I see just how lacking I am. I also feel that bruiser's are gimpted in the bruiser tree and feel we need some attention there. Thanks for reading. Btw I never said all bruisers want what "I" want. I simply was joking around and only said "I want". Never mentioned "we" or "we want". At least I hope I didn't....thanks again for everones input. I really appreciate everyones knowledge.

09-02-2007, 09:26 PM

Are you playing in your defensive stance or something? I have yet to be in a group where I feel that inferior, even dps-wise, to the rest of the group. O.o

Aull

09-03-2007, 01:00 AM

I am 90% of the time in offensive stance. I am fighting bare fisted too, so it makes me look like I am starring at the mob waiting for it to hit me. Just very slow to react, I have tried weapons but always go back to the bare fisted fighting, just seems to put out better dps for me. I just got out of a group in the Acadachism, very nice group and zerk was tanking for us. He did an excellent job. It just looked like the zerker would swing three times to my one punch. It is just a minor problem to me that barefists attack slower than weapons, I don't see how soe figures that hands are lighter than weapons but slower to attack is all I guess I am trying to understand. It is just a love hate situation for me lol.

Uumuuanu

09-06-2007, 07:07 PM

Fact - Avoidance across the board is messed up. It has been all along. Prior to LU13 it was HORRIBLY wrong. I know this because I could get my guardian buffed to 98.6% avoidance, aka nearly impossible to hit. It was messed up when they changed it afterwards as well because they lowered the plate tanks mitigation but monkeyed their avoidance. WRONG that sounds like it should have been applied to the leather tanks. It is still messed up as we all know against epics. Don't believe me, take an evenly spec'd brawler of either class, put them against an epic mob and count the hits, not the damage. The number of avoidances (block, parry, defelection, etc) is HIGHER for plate tanks because of shields. It has been outlined by basic math in several forums that plate tanks are near or at our same avoidance because of the way the game does the math.To quote someone who outlined it well - Total Avoidance is made up as follows, I think.....Block = 20%Base Avoid = 40%Parry = 15% Your total avoidance from the above numbers will not be 75%..mob attacks 100 times...20% chance to block so 80 get through.40% chance to avoid so 48 get through.15% chance to parry so 40.8 get through.Total avoid = 59.2%Currently this means a plate tank based on an average attack of 1000 pts, total damage would be 41k pts of damage, mitigated at 60% would be 16,400damage.The same avoidance tank right now would avoid only a few percentage points higher due to caps, say 63%, this means that based on an average attack of 1000 pts, total damage would be 37k pts of damage, mitigated at 40% would be 22,200damage, or roughly 35% more damage in the current tanking scenario. 35% more damage means a plate tank could loose 1/3 of his mitigation and still do as well or better.The fact is that because block is used first, there is no simple DODGE number it is rapped into the based avoidance number which is actually MISS because the mob sucks. This also shows a critical flaw within the current tanking model as base avoidance should come into play FIRST, then DODGE (ie get the hell out of the way), then BLOCK, then DEFLECTION(which would be better then taking the direct force of the hit with a block), then parry.Same exact scenario using CORRECTED avoidance methods for plate tanks - Block = 20%Base Avoid = 25%Parry = 15% Dodge = 10% *because they are wearing so much heavy armor*Deflection = 0%Your total avoidance from the above numbers will not be 70%..mob attacks 100 times...25% chance to avoid so 75 get through20% chance to block so 60 get through.15% chance to parry so 51 get through.Total avoid = 49%Based on an average attack of 1000 pts, total damage would be 49k pts of damage, mitigated at 60% would be 19,600damage.Same scenario for avoidance tank with applied bonus for DODGE (we dont have 100lbs of armor on people, we can move)Block = 0% *brawlers dont use shields, gonna block an axe with your forearm?*Base Avoid = 30% *only 5% higher when naked based on defense*Parry = 15% *same thing*Dodge = 25% Deflection = 25%Your total avoidance from the above numbers will not be 90%..mob attacks 100 times...30% chance to avoid so 70 get through25% chance to DODGE so 52 get through0% chance to block so 52 get through25% chance to deflect so 39 get through15% chance to parry so 33 get throughTotal avoid = 67%Based on an average attack of 1000 pts, total damage would be 33k pts of damage, mitigated at 40% would be 19,800 damage. Based on the diminishing return on mitigation, 40% is NOT unreasonable for leather, no is additional avoidance for a person NOT wearing 100lbs of plate armor. Over all the damage would be only a 1.1% diffence between the two in tanking. Over 1000 hits, the damage difference would be roughly 2000hp which should be made up for in the fact that brawlers are supposed to get more HP per STA then other tanks as outlined by devs in previous GU and posts to these forums.Can someone tell me HOW making these changes to players would be dangerous? Fact is unless a plate tank were to get an unusual item with deflection or exceptional mitigation (aka 1k+ due to diminishing returns) there would be little to no difference in plate tanking vs avoidance tanking. It is a VITAL yet simple mechanical change that would allow all forms of fighters to tank roughly equal. If you remove DODGE from the scenario, you end up where we are now, plate tanks doing better across the board and thus, no one wants and avoidance tank.

Raidi Sovin'faile

09-06-2007, 07:23 PM

You actually Parry the blow first, then Deflect or Block, depending on your class or shield, and then Dodge. It's done in that order because you'll parry FIRST, giving you a chance to riposte, then move on to other things.In essence, you are always trying to do all three things. You are trying to smack the incoming attack away with your weapon (and 25% of the times you successfully do that, you can turn the situation around and get an attack back), while simultaneously angling your shield to block or position your hands to deflect, as well as move your [Removed for Content] out of the way.Since the first two (parry and block/deflect) deal with your character purposely interacting with the incoming blow, they will happen first. Then if those fail you'll see if your movement allowed you to dodge the blow.Base avoidance IS your chance to Dodge. Any bonuses from Agility, capped by the armor you can wear, and the Defense skill are all given in the form of your Dodging avoidance. It would be silly to have a Base Avoidance AND a Dodge Avoidance... that's exactly what Base Avoidance does...The reason we suck at Epic avoidance is because our UNCONTESTED Avoidance is in the crapper at best, and non-existent at worst.We need to be sitting in Defensive stance to get our Paltry 16% of our Deflection (block) uncontested. Meaning... it doesn't matter that the mob is Epic, you'll block the same.See, against an Epic mob, your avoidance looks more like this:Parry = 1%Deflection = 16% or Block = 25%Base Avoidance = 3%If the mob has been debuffed a lot, then it's a little better than that... but the uncontested part remains true... Plate tanks have a higher Uncontested avoidance, which means they are better at avoiding Epic blows.And in an offtank situation, you rarely will be able to get the mob debuffed enough so the above percentages are much more realistic for the job a Brawler would be doing on a raid.If they made it so our Uncontested Avoidance was NOT attached to our Stance, just like plate tanks, AND they made it so our Deflection was totally Uncontested, our avoidance would look more like this:Parry = 1%Deflection = 40%Base Avoidance = 3%This seems quite balanced considering we are ~10-15% lower in mitigation (remember, mitigation has lesser returns against a higher level mob, so the number you see in persona are NOT necessarily always correct).And it's not like we are going to suddenly grow massive amounts of Aggro holding ability with this either. We still won't be the best even with superior avoidance.At best, we'd become VIABLE.Is that so bad?

Uumuuanu

09-06-2007, 08:08 PM

Kaisoku The problem with placing parry first is the fact that in reality this IS weapon dependant. Brawlers have the ability to fight without weapons and many do. Therefore you have little to no chance of parrying the blow away with your fists vs the guardian or zerker with the giant axe swatting it away like a baseball bat or simply placing there sword in the appropiate location as to make the mobs blow slide out of alignment. So in reality a mage carrying a two handed staff could parry as well or better then a brawler with a pair of brass knuckles.Also the problem with block is that if you block, even with a weapon, you still are impacted by 100% of the force involved, thus a tank using his shield to block gets hit but the shield absorbs the impact (it should convert it to crushing damage but we wont get that complex). Trying to block as a bruiser with your arm or hand leaves you without said arm or hand, thus we want to deflect (and thus there should be little to no impact force), thus it becomes weapon dependant again as a bruiser with a staff could block, one with fistwraps could not without taking the blow.No matter how you factor it, a plate tank simply should not be able to avoid as well as a brawler based on movement but they can dodge blows. Is dodge the same as avoid? No. Dodge could mean you weave, duck or jump but remain in the same location(ie changing your Z axis but not X&Y). Avoid means you are relocating to get out of the way (changing X or Y + Z as needed). Simple physics say that a person with 100lbs of added weight as well as HIGHLY restrictive plate armor cannot DODGE as well as a person wearing little to no weight and flexible leather. They also state that a person wearing that leather is more likely to be able to move at a rate of speed that would allow a higher percentage of avoidance then a person restricted by the weight and lack of flexibility of plate armor. Thus you do need 2 seperate counters for these.IF you are going to consider dodging as part of the base avoidance, then things are even FARTHER off now then they need to be and even more complex to factor in based on the way you are calculating it. Simply put a MISS on the part of the mob can be a miss(he just got stabbed or bashed and his targeting is off). The current scenario and the way you are describing it does NOT take that into account (and obviously neither do the devs).Using both an avoid and a dodge removes the need to take a weapon type into account as well as allowing for a more realistic version of avoidance then to have a single base number applied.

Bladewind

09-06-2007, 09:15 PM

He's not telling you how he thinks it should work, he is telling you how it currently works. Base avoidance is dodge. The order of avoidance rolls is parry, block/deflect, then dodge (base avodiance). Brawlers who take the strength line still receive a parry roll.The problem is contested vs uncontested avodiance. This has been explained ad nauseam in this and other discussion threads. The skinny of it is that plate tanks have more effective avoidance vs epic mobs because they have anywhere from 19% to 25%+ uncontested avoidance (in any stance they choose to use) from their shields while brawlers have only 16% from defensive stance. This means plate tanks have the highest avoidance and mitigation against epic mobs, putting brawlers into a no-win situation. If player A takes fewer hits and less damage when hit, they will always have an insurmountable advantage over player b who is hit harder and more often. The simple solution to restore balance is to give brawlers more uncontested avoidance so they avoid more than a plate tank but also take more damage when hit.Plate tanks are well into diminishing returns on mitigation and this should balance with brawlers being into diminishing returns on avoidance. In a heroic setting, where uncontested avoidance plays little to no role, plate tanks and brawlers have a similar level of tanking ability. Unfortunately, the uncontested/contested mechanic upsets this balance because it allows raid mobs to ignore most avoidance while mitigation is unaffected. In addition, the plate tanks receive more of the avoidance that is not ignored (uncontested). Therefore, the base survivability of a brawler plummets in a raid setting relative to a plate tank because they have the lowest effective avodiance and the lowest mitigation.

x0rtrun

09-06-2007, 09:27 PM

<cite>Bladewind wrote:</cite><blockquote>He's not telling you how he thinks it should work, he is telling you how it currently works. Base avoidance is dodge. The order of avoidance rolls is parry, block/deflect, then dodge (base avodiance). Brawlers who take the strength line still receive a parry roll.The problem is contested vs uncontested avodiance. This has been explained ad nauseam in this and other discussion threads. The skinny of it is that plate tanks have more effective avoidance vs epic mobs because they have anywhere from 19% to 25%+ uncontested avoidance (in any stance they choose to use) from their shields while brawlers have only 16% from defensive stance. This means plate tanks have the highest avoidance and mitigation against epic mobs, putting brawlers into a no-win situation. If player A takes fewer hits and less damage when hit, they will always have an insurmountable advantage over player b who is hit harder and more often. The simple solution to restore balance is to give brawlers more uncontested avoidance so they avoid more than a plate tank but also take more damage when hit.Plate tanks are well into diminishing returns on mitigation and this should balance with brawlers being into diminishing returns on avoidance. In a heroic setting, where uncontested avoidance plays little to no role, plate tanks and brawlers have a similar level of tanking ability. Unfortunately, the uncontested/contested mechanic upsets this balance because it allows raid mobs to ignore most avoidance while mitigation is unaffected. In addition, the plate tanks receive more of the avoidance that is not ignored (uncontested). Therefore, the base survivability of a brawler plummets in a raid setting relative to a plate tank because they have the lowest effective avodiance and the lowest mitigation.</blockquote>This is the best worded explanation of the situation I've seen to date. It's all in the numbers. It isn't some perceived notion of inferiority on the part of brawlers, it's the simple fact of the way the game mechanics work. Why the devs refuse to remedy the situation is beyond me. And I don't buy "really risky" for a second.

Uumuuanu

09-07-2007, 01:42 PM

<cite>x0rtrunks wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is the best worded explanation of the situation I've seen to date. It's all in the numbers. It isn't some perceived notion of inferiority on the part of brawlers, it's the simple fact of the way the game mechanics work. Why the devs refuse to remedy the situation is beyond me. And I don't buy "really risky" for a second.</blockquote>Thats why I explain it as I did. Simple basic math says there is NO risk to changing it as mentioned and putting in the 2nd factor. There would be no contested or uncontested avoidance with it, it would be a simple math formula. We all know its broken right now because it obviously doesn't work. The game does NOT calculate things in the appropriate order nor does it calculate ALL factors appropriately.I can give you proof of that. Last night in Barren Sky I saw a bot LAG kiting. He NEVER took damage as a 70 wizard because he was never in the same place as the mobs. This is the ultimate in avoidance due to the way the game currently calculates it. His avoidance (moving from X, Y, Z to new X, Y, Z) made it impossible for him to be hit by the mobs while he was able to AE them to death. On the screen he randomly appeared popping around the screen (I'm sure he was using some software to do this unless he had the worst 28.8 connection EVER) and would appear 10-15 feet away from the mobs, cast and then pop off to another location. Obviously his inate avoidance(dodge) could not keep him from getting hit without the lag, but his avoidance via movement could because of it. This is EXACTLY what I am talking about with needing two stats. One DODGE (aka how hard you are to hit because of your agility) and avoidance (how hard you are to hit because you can move).The only possible flaw which would make sense ANYWAY would be roots or stuns from the mob, which would make your avoidance (movement) go down. This makes sense anyway, if you can't move, you can only DODGE the hit, not avoid it all together.But then again it seems most people are NOT getting what I am saying so I doubt the devs will either. The formula, order and math is sound and the change is simple and VERY low risk.

Bladewind

09-07-2007, 03:44 PM

The current system works fine. I don't see anything wrong with the order that avoidance attempts are calculated in nor any error in the calculations themselves. The big problem is with what values have been given to the uncontested avoidance variable for brawlers relative to plate tanks. There's no need at all to scrap the system. If brawlers are given higher uncontested avoidance, it will balance out fine. How much more? That is up for debate. I personally think a total of ~30% uncontested would be good while others are arguing that it should be as high as 40%. A balance in survivability between brawlers and plate tanks lies within this range of numbers.The Barren Sky example you cite sounds like the wizard was rooting and nuking his/her enemies. When a root broke, an enemy would charge the caster and they would cast a new root and then move out of melee range. It may have appeared as if they were porting about on your screen, but that is a symptom of lag and relative connection speeds, not what the server is calculating in game. I play right next to a person with the same speed computer on the same network. We will often see players and mobs in different positions on our two monitors because there is a bit of lag between the time the server calculates and sends data to our computers, but the to the server, players and mobs are always in the proper position.I understand what you are proposing, but I do not see any advantage over the current system. I don't see a real difference between mobility and agility as it relates to avoidance rolls. If you root/snare a mob and run away, you get an avoidance advantage by getting out of melee range. Of course, you can no longer use melee attacks either, but this is expected. Under your proposed system, it would seem that a player would get some sort of avoidance advantage for being able to run out of the mob's range but still be bale to attack the mob themselves. That seems silly to me. If you are talking about a saving throw/roll with punch mechanic, that is built into mitigation and mitigation buffs already.Also, you keep arguing the need for two avoidance stats, but the current system already has four. Base avoidance (dodge), deflection (brawlers only), block (gained from having a shield equipped), and parry are the four 'avoidance stats' in the current system. Every attack has to defeat your success chance in all of these avoidance types before it hits you. The order that you defend is parry, deflection/block (no one has both), then finally base defense/dodge.

EQ2Luv

09-07-2007, 03:53 PM

<cite>Bladewind wrote:</cite><blockquote>The current system works fine. I don't see anything wrong with the order that avoidance attempts are calculated in nor any error in the calculations themselves. The big problem is with what values have been given to the uncontested avoidance variable for brawlers relative to plate tanks. There's no need at all to scrap the system. If brawlers are given higher uncontested avoidance, it will balance out fine. How much more? That is up for debate. I personally think a total of ~30% uncontested would be good while others are arguing that it should be as high as 40%. A balance in survivability between brawlers and plate tanks lies within this range of numbers.</blockquote>Plate tanks can get their block % above 30% with hate bp and soulfire sword. If ours caps at 30% we will still be behind on uncontested avoidance, not to mention mitigation. I think it would be reasonable to make all deflection uncontested. We have to give up a lot more to get our deflection high - you rarely see deflection come on an item without losing something else (mitigation, parry, defense, or a proc). If a plate (non-avoidance based) tank can put on three pieces of equipment (shield, hate bp, and soulfire) and get over 30% block, then we should be able to get 40% by wearing 8+ pieces of gear with + deflection.In my opinion making deflection uncontested would remove any reason for brawlers to complain about raid mechanics. I also don't see any reason for it to be unbalancing. Our survivability would still be no higher than a plate tank, plus we'd still have the spike damage disadvantage.

Bladewind

09-07-2007, 04:18 PM

We can use the uncontested parry adornments and, in cases where a weapon that inflicts slashing damage is used (like the kama), the uncontested riposte adornment. Of course, a plate tank can do the same. I can see accounting for the gladius since the legendary version is so easy to get, but that chest piece is pretty rare. I think the real number can only properly be arrived at through testing. I prefer aiming for the low end and then gently increasing to avoid the "godlike performance----> overnerf" cycle that we have had in the past. I would say 30% is a minimum and all deflection is a maximum, which caps out around 40% with AAs and gear. I see the sweet spot as someplace in there, maybe in the range of 33-35%.An alternative would be to introduce contested and uncontested mitigation where brawlers would receive more uncontested mitigation - I kid, I kid. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

EQ2Luv

09-07-2007, 04:49 PM

<cite>Bladewind wrote:</cite><blockquote>We can use the uncontested parry adornments and, in cases where a weapon that inflicts slashing damage is used (like the kama), the uncontested riposte adornment. Of course, a plate tank can do the same. I can see accounting for the gladius since the legendary version is so easy to get, but that chest piece is pretty rare. I think the real number can only properly be arrived at through testing. I prefer aiming for the low end and then gently increasing to avoid the "godlike performance----> overnerf" cycle that we have had in the past. I would say 30% is a minimum and all deflection is a maximum, which caps out around 40% with AAs and gear. I see the sweet spot as someplace in there, maybe in the range of 33-35%.An alternative would be to introduce contested and uncontested mitigation where brawlers would receive more uncontested mitigation - I kid, I kid. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" /></blockquote>I don't think it would be godlike to have all deflection uncontested. Coupled with our lower mitigation, it would give us about the same survivability as a plate tank with their higher mitigation. It would also shift to be lower in offensive stance. Also, it has to somehow be a function of deflection if they continue to implement it as uncontested deflection, otherwise there will be no reason to wear deflection gear while raiding. Adornments for parry can pretty much be ignored since they're common to both classes. Also they don't increase base parry, unlike the soulfire and BP which 'increase chance to block by 5'. Increasing block by 5% is quite different from an independent 5% check.