A question, A problem, A misunderstanding

[therodge]

<p>I am a paladin and only a paladin i have no alts never had and have been playing since realese, its true i k probobly know my class better then the majority of eqers know theirs but still i find this odd.</p><p>I dont raid (well nothing that could be concidered real raiding anyway i occationaly 1 group pr for cash or a woe run or something)</p><p>and have almost no fabled gear im in mostly teir 2 with the boots and gloves of teir 3 my myth and random instance jewlry</p><p>im spoiled i know at this point i run heroic instances and normally have 2 utility with me which makes a diffrence.</p><p>that said i cant figuer this out. im not super well geared yet i am 90% of the time top parser the rare occation is a fully teir 4 geared pred or sorcerer and occationally an illy. u normally get 8k+ on named (hovers around 10k on multi target named) and do between 4.5-6k zonewides depending on setup, this isnt super impressive to me, most of the time im not even timeing auto attacks i open with  either the group taunt or decree swift axe and depending on amount of mobs either shuffle through my aoes or faithful cry if on named and genrally the mobs are dead by then ( groups are between 15k low end 30k high end).</p><p>have paladins over time just become leet dps? does everyone else simply not click buttons? im terribly confused i went on test and hit up the test buffer and rolled a wizard 5k dps on a training dummy just spamming buttons looking for anything that might decrease mit first but not really knowing anything? (my paladin sits at 3.2-3.5k tainging dummy) so shouldent a wizard with a toubie and illy run atleast this high?</p><p>arent dps supposed to out dps us? expecially dps that are better geared than we ourselves. it makes no sence is it seriously posible for people to click buttons slower then others? i mean jebus can someone please expain this to me its simply behond my comprehention</p>

[Prestissimo]

<p>In order to properly explain why the tank does large amounts of dps, it requires knowledge of other classes and the buffs, debuffs, and benefits they provide.  The paladin doesn't really have much when it comes to self buffs, debuffs, and benefits that we ourselves provide and use.  It's because of this unique attribute of the paladin that when they are in a group or raid that provides the proper variety and ratio of buffs/debuffs that the paladin becomes VERY powerful.</p><p>In essence, it can be summed up by saying that because we are given so little in the way of self provided increases that when we do get buffs and debuffs, it makes a huge difference and more so than for other tanks because they are not as tool deprived.</p><p>The other part of it is that those that you're running with probably suck.  A guilded assassin in T2, mostly legendary gear, mythical weapon can easily reach 15k dps in my woe runs.  The chanters are usually 6-10k, and the wizzy is about 13k.  Sometimes we bring a T4 mythed bruiser that does 19-20k.</p><p>Edit: The other thing to keep in mind is that the tank recieves the majority of the bonuses from groups and raids, and the buffs that they recieve will increase their dps dramatically since the past couple years the ones driving the majority of the class balancing and development of abilities understands little other than dpsing.</p>

[Boli32]

<p>There are three reasons why your dps is so "high"</p><p>1.</p><p>What you have to remember especially in group instances is that the mobs are only alive for a few seconds, which means we basciually get one or two autoatatcks and a few spells before they die. Paladins are *not* DoT based (tho two of our best spells are DoTs) so we tend to be based aroudn spiek damage.</p><p>Put simply in a fight that lasts 15s, we can expect to get all our our big hitters off autoatatck 2-3 times and in general unload a lot of dps in a short time; epecially if you spec trample that's even more autoattack hits.</p><p>2.</p><p>We are the tank and as such we will ALWAYS get the first hit in, dps often has to delay their attacks by 0.5-1s even when they have amends so they do not die on the pull so in a short fight that delay is a larger % of time wasted than say in a raid enviroment where the mobs will stay alive for longer, so thr dps will be skewed here as well.</p><p>3.</p><p>Instances in TSO are all group based... especially if you speced trample our dps will look correspondly higher given we have a vast array of AoE spells and abilities.</p><p>All rolled together you can expect to see a larger portion of the dps that you may not otherwise expect; when you raid you can start to see thigns like hit rate, uncurable effects and the all important capping of your abilites (CAs, Autoatatck are easy to cap at higher levels).. this is where the true dps pull away as their dps is not as limited as ours.</p>

[Stonestrong]

<p>The dps classes you are bringing with you suck if you are beating them on zonewides.......</p>

[Boli32]

<p><cite>Stonestrong wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The dps classes you are bringing with you suck if you are beating them on zonewides.......</p></blockquote><p>That too.. but I was being nice <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Zergosch]

<p>Just a blind guess, could it be, that the others suck because the supporter do all the buffs on you?</p><p>I mean, if a melee si present, some single melee buffs dont hit me <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[therodge]

<p><cite>Zergosch wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Just a blind guess, could it be, that the others suck because the supporter do all the buffs on you?</p><p>I mean, if a melee si present, some single melee buffs dont hit me <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>this isnt the case most of the time atleast as far as offensive buffs its true i normally do get the genric +dps +haste and such but genrally speaking i dont get battle cry TC or those sort of things,but after reviewing this thread i suppose a real question is in order.</p><p>What is it that makes someone Suck? what is it that makes them not suck?</p>

[Prestissimo]

<p>If they're dps, they dps HARD but without getting themselves overly in trouble agro wise.  If they're utility, they provide their utility over their own dps parse in parse fights.  If they're a combination of the 2, they balance.</p><p>Basically you suck if you can't perform your job well enough that you are noticed for doing what you do at a respectable proficiency and doing it without causing disruption.</p><p>Slipperyx on my server parses very high, but he doesn't know when to keep his dps in his pants.  Because of that, I personally view that as sucking unless everyone else can make up for his inadequate self control.  A dead dpser does not dps, and would have done better dps overall by keeping their agro in check.</p>

[therodge]

<p><cite>ReverendPaqo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If they're dps, they dps HARD but without getting themselves overly in trouble agro wise.  If they're utility, they provide their utility over their own dps parse in parse fights.  If they're a combination of the 2, they balance.</p><p>Basically you suck if you can't perform your job well enough that you are noticed for doing what you do at a respectable proficiency and doing it without causing disruption.</p><p>Slipperyx on my server parses very high, but he doesn't know when to keep his dps in his pants.  Because of that, I personally view that as sucking unless everyone else can make up for his inadequate self control.  A dead dpser does not dps, and would have done better dps overall by keeping their agro in check.</p></blockquote><p>you misunderstand me,its not what is suck but what is the condition that creates the suck. for instance</p><p>wizard in my group 4.2k dps on first named in DF teir 2 armor  mixed with teir 3 some fabled jewlry and myth. assumed basic know lage of the class</p><p>me training dummy on test teir 2 armor some fabled jewlry and fabled 5k+ no knowlage of the class.</p><p>what exsacally seperates the two what factors come into play, even given the situation were yeah maybe all his spells were not up the myth and suprior knowlage and group buffs should help correct? what exsacally is the hidden mistake that makes someone so called suck (which btw i dont really beileve in as "suck" to me means below average and the average cannot keep up) it isnt player skill (i have no skill or experiance with a wizard) it isnt simply intellegence (i am of probobly average intellegence and no ability to spell or punctuate as im sure you have seen) and it isnt gear (wizard being better geared then my "test" wizard) so what is the underling cause of it not that simple fact that it does exsist.</p>

[Zergosch]

<p>1. Sometimes a lot of knowlege will brake you down, as you think to long of what will doing best. After thinking the fight is over ^^ (Just a gues, taken out of life ^^)</p><p>2. You barely can´t compare a dummy to a mob, as they have diffrent resistances. But i think you know that already.</p><p>3. The last guess, they are afraid of pulling agro <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Prestissimo]

<p><cite>therodge wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>you misunderstand me,its not what is suck but what is the condition that creates the suck. for instance</p><p>wizard in my group 4.2k dps on first named in DF teir 2 armor  mixed with teir 3 some fabled jewlry and myth. assumed basic know lage of the class</p><p>me training dummy on test teir 2 armor some fabled jewlry and fabled 5k+ no knowlage of the class.</p><p>what exsacally seperates the two what factors come into play, even given the situation were yeah maybe all his spells were not up the myth and suprior knowlage and group buffs should help correct? what exsacally is the hidden mistake that makes someone so called suck (which btw i dont really beileve in as "suck" to me means below average and the average cannot keep up) it isnt player skill (i have no skill or experiance with a wizard) it isnt simply intellegence (i am of probobly average intellegence and no ability to spell or punctuate as im sure you have seen) and it isnt gear (wizard being better geared then my "test" wizard) so what is the underling cause of it not that simple fact that it does exsist.</p></blockquote><p>The specific determining factors of what separates those that suck from those that don't would take far too long to describe so I listed general rules that will separate those that know their role from those that don't, and knowing your role is half the battle to successfully not suck.  There is no specific "what" that applies to all classes since each class functions differently whether it be minutely or majorly.  If someone were to list out all the factors for each class, it would take about a page each class of solid text to cover everything.</p><p>Parses mean absolutely nothing unless you are comparing the same encounters with the same setups.  In a DF run with my wizzy (in T2 with 3 pieces of T3, half instance fabled jewelry, the other half decent legendary, myth), even with a dirge and coercer and zerker tank, I can still parse average of 5k-9k reliably.  In RR with a mage setup my wizzy was doing anywhere from 8.3k to 14k consistently (depending on if the mob died too fast) and those mobs are much more wicked than DF, and my wizzy stopped being my main before TSO came out and has collected dust through 97% of tso so far.  I'm not claiming to be a wizzy god, simply pointing out what someone that has similar gear and knows the class moderately well can do. (This of course is assuming I'm not trying to inflate the parse numbers with the countless ways that you can adjust your playstyle to fudge the parse's results.  If I were trying to inflate the numbers there have been about a dozen parses where I had 35k+ dps encounter parses in DF.)  This is important to note because I've run with T4 wizzies and predators that know their class and they can do anywhere from 11k to 25k EASILY in zones like woe with even half decent buffs.</p><p>Basically saying that I play a Paladin, Warden, Wizzy, and Troub as my main characters.  My warden is significantly better than the others, and the troub is getting there.  The paladin has a couple parses on record doing 24k dps, and some doing 600 dps.  The warden has a few doing 7k dps, and others doing 0 dps.  The troub has one or two at level 50 doing 3k dps.  These aren't real reflections of what they can do because thats not what the parse is for; it's just been adopted into a dps parse fighting tool despite the ease of manipulating it and the rest of it's purposes are largely ignored.  This is important to note as using the parse to compare raw dps output in different situations is a grave mistake when comparing player skill such as for example a wizzy in crucible compared to a wizzy in befallen CoA or a swashy in aob versus a swashy in Guk OSH which is like comparing the training dummy against anything else other than the dummy.</p><p>As previously said, paladins front load most of their damage, so short fights inflate their parses dramatically, short aoe fights (about 10 seconds if a good caster buff setup, 15-25 seconds otherwise) are WAY inflated.  Paladins also benefit the most from buffs and debuffs on mobs because they're almost completely base amounts on everything versus other tanks being specialized and with moderate increases that decrease the % return and efficiency gained which makes it seem even more like the paladin is OPed in comparison.</p><p>What you are seeing and getting confused by is quite simply nothing more than the cumulative end result of the design of the paladin working as it was origionally intended, the nature of the parse and it's incredibly easily manipulated and unconsistant value, and the resulting consequence of the era of "MOAR 0rang3 numb3rs fastorz!!!1" that we are currently in thanks to the unbalanced and over abundant increase of dps over the last couple years.  The more you know about how classes work, the more you will understand exactly why you are seeing that trend, but it would require you experimenting with multiple classes and researching into the multitude of mechanics that synergetically are creating that atmosphere that you are experiencing and can't be explained in a simple manner.</p><p>At the same time playing off what zergosch said, sometimes it's better if you don't think about it and just... well, go in and do it.  Theres a fine boarder between overly thinking and analyzing, and understanding how to play your class at higher efficiency and the key distinguishing factor will be how ingrained your knowledge of the classes stregnths and weaknesses are and how quickly you can get around those limitations to perform optimally.  Sometimes pulling agro is nessecary, sometimes it's ok, sometimes it's a critical mistake, and just like having a burnt in understanding of what to do, these both boil down to experience and knowledge of how to perform at your role.</p><p>So I guess in a nut shell it can be summed up by saying in order to not suck, you need to know how to play your class and not suck at doing so.  Simply saying just that wouldn't have really helped seeing as you said you don't understand a lot about all the classes.  Thus why I figured it would be nessecary to explain in this moderate wall of text why you need to know your class.</p>