Warrior Mechanic [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

mercikill

07-09-2010, 11:09 AM

[Preface]The discussion of fighter balance has been has been a very prolific topic, and while there has not been much dev input on the matter, I feel that we must continue the debate so that they can understand the importance that it holds to the fighter community.Also, I would like to keep this thread as friendly as possible so as to invite dev input... To often I think we discourage their interaction by picking apart every word they say.[Scope]The scope of this post is to only include the plate tanks, as I do not have a brawler nor do I understand their mechanics; I cannot speak on their behalf. That said, I welcome members of the brawler community to post input as my suggestions may adversely effect them.[Issue]I feel that the plate tank survivability Vs agro/DPS ratio is out of balance, specifically in the warrior Vs crusader arena. While in an ideal situation, the warrior does maintain a survivability advantage over crusaders; all of this survivability advantage is given up to maintain agro. It is given up in the form of dual wielding. Given that the DEF/PARRY stats are virtually useless (in a raid setting) much of a plate tanks survivability comes in the form of a shield.[Suggestion]Change one of the lack luster Warrior AA lines (I suggest "Unshakeable" from the wisdom tree) to an AA that works in reverse of the knight's advantage AA (the AA that increases weapon damage while wearing a shield). I suggest that the Unshakeable AA line be changed to give a protection value directly proportional to the off hand weapon at the rate of x1 per point spent.Example:A heroic geared tank with this AA maxed out (10 points) and wielding an off hand weapon with a rating of 129.3 would a would have a 10 x 129.3 = 1293 added in as protection value.[Advantages]<ul><li>Closes the survivability gap of warrior dual wielding vs crusader sword and board.</li><li>Does not allow the warrior to maintain MAXIMUM survivability AND dps.</li><li>Does not increase the warriors maximum DPS.</li><li>There will still be a moderate survivability increase when using a shield and this AA.</li><li>Could pave the way for a revamp of 2 handed weapons to become the defacto DPS weapon for all fighters by allowing Sword and board to be the most survivable and dual wield to be the middle ground. (this is probably a pipe dream, but I thought I'd throw it in there)</li></ul><div>[Disadvantages]</div><div><ul><li>May infringe on brawlers unique block mechanic</li><li>Could require excessive Dev time to implement</li></ul></div><div></div><div>Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated, and if this suggestion has been offered before I apologize in advance.</div><div></div><div>-Pinky</div>

Yimway

07-09-2010, 12:56 PM

Heh, apparently your goal is to get the 12 remaining guardians to finish the betrayal to zerker.The answer isn't upping warrior survivability in DW.The answer is changing crusaders to do 30% less damage with a shield and push them to require a 2 hander to put out their current levels of dps.That is what was broken in crusaders, that was Aeralik's biggest mistake with them, and that is the direction that is needed to balance plate tanks.

mercikill

07-09-2010, 01:46 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Heh, apparently your goal is to get the 12 remaining guardians to finish the betrayal to zerker.The answer isn't upping warrior survivability in DW.The answer is changing crusaders to do 30% less damage with a shield and push them to require a 2 hander to put out their current levels of dps.That is what was broken in crusaders, that was Aeralik's biggest mistake with them, and that is the direction that is needed to balance plate tanks.</blockquote>I can't say that I disagree with that but I find it more likely for warriors to get a boost, than for crusaders to get a nerf; therefore that is what I suggest.Outside of that, can you see any unintended consequences of the change I have listed (other than the ones I have listed)?<ul><li>You seem to elude to berserkers becoming the predominant warrior class with this change, how will this specifically boost the berserker more so than a guardian?</li></ul>

Yimway

07-09-2010, 02:14 PM

<cite>mercikill wrote:</cite><blockquote><ul><li>You seem to elude to berserkers becoming the predominant warrior class with this change, how will this specifically boost the berserker more so than a guardian?</li></ul></blockquote>Its the wrong decision cause it allows for the warrior to go full offensive with almost no defensive penalty.It means with DW + block chance + adrenaline, you'd be a fool not to play a zerker. Honestly, they are already the predominant warrior class, further enabling offensive burn with no defensive penalties only seals the deal imo.The answer is not to repeat the mistakes that have already been made and make every tank OP.The answer lies in nerfing classes back into a realistic survivability / dps trade-off while also balancing utility / agro.I honestly think brawlers and guardians are near where they should be in this equation, with brawlers being perhaps the most reasonable today. Zerkers and Crusaders went off the proverbial deep end of rational survivability while pumping out dps.I'm not sure how any player could deny that, or how any SoE class designer could argue for the current mechanics.To be honest, I'm furious that Xelgad does not make a post about fighter design, whether he feels they are reasonable, and if not what his vision is. Why we find the lack of communication from him acceptable and continue to postulate about plausible fixes from our respective player camps is an acceptable status quot amazes me.The lack of culpability from SoE to their customers in this matter is simply sickening to me.

mercikill

07-09-2010, 03:05 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>mercikill wrote:</cite><blockquote><ul><li>You seem to elude to berserkers becoming the predominant warrior class with this change, how will this specifically boost the berserker more so than a guardian?</li></ul></blockquote>Its the wrong decision cause it allows for the warrior to go full offensive with almost no defensive penalty.It means with DW + block chance + adrenaline, you'd be a fool not to play a zerker. Honestly, they are already the predominant warrior class, further enabling offensive burn with no defensive penalties only seals the deal imo.The answer is not to repeat the mistakes that have already been made and make every tank OP.The answer lies in nerfing classes back into a realistic survivability / dps trade-off while also balancing utility / agro.I honestly think brawlers and guardians are near where they should be in this equation, with brawlers being perhaps the most reasonable today. Zerkers and Crusaders went off the proverbial deep end of rational survivability while pumping out dps.I'm not sure how any player could deny that, or how any SoE class designer could argue for the current mechanics.To be honest, I'm furious that Xelgad does not make a post about fighter design, whether he feels they are reasonable, and if not what his vision is. Why we find the lack of communication from him acceptable and continue to postulate about plausible fixes from our respective player camps is an acceptable status quot amazes me.The lack of culpability from SoE to their customers in this matter is simply sickening to me.</blockquote>Like I said, I don't disagree with you; but given the prime chance for the nerfs was in beta rather than allowing OP abilities exist than linger for 2 years... I just don't see what NEEDS to happen, happening.Boosting warrior dual Wield survivability will not make the berserker anymore the predominant warrior class than they are now... Which isn't to say they aren't currently the predominant warrior class --but if that be the case, then it should be dealt with accordingly on the class level.

Yimway

07-09-2010, 03:15 PM

I don't think any change that affects class balance will be done outside of an expansion release anyway, but request away.And when they do make changes, they'll ignore us in beta like they always do.Next month, a set of panels will happen at FF and they'll lay out a very plausible high level design, that 70% will be dropped by expansion due to time constraints.So, I fail to see how any of this dialogue will make any impact =/But I'll but-out for now, so you don't have a negative nancy clogging up your thread, but as I said, making every fighter OP in terms of survivability / dps / agro / utility is not the long term solution to having an engaging archtype to play classes in.This concept of 'iron cannons' that eq2 calls plate tanking, is just ridiculous. Not that they shouldn't be able to dps, but there should be tangible survivability costs as you progress closer and closer to reaching your max dps output.

Rasttan

07-09-2010, 03:41 PM

I have to say this change is not what is needed, this will just put all 4 plate tanks in the same OP dps while tanking ratio we currently have while still leaving the gaurdian as the low man by a long ways, and will push the gap between zerker and guard even further.As a brawler having to swap stances for any chance of survival raid tanking we are the only tanks that I feel are sort of working as the stance mechanic was originally set up for. The best solution is to only have shield block work if the tank is defensive just like a brawlers block and strikethtough immunity is 100% stance dependent. Then add an aa line for boosting dps for plate classes warriors duel weilding knights a 2 hander.Also the entire stance effects should be changed to boost each skill specificaly tied to a stance not to penalize you for swapping. Offensive should boost offensive skills with no defensive penalties, defensive the same so that tanks dont take it in the shorts everytime they swap stances on agro control.

Loendar

07-09-2010, 05:13 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>To be honest, I'm furious that Xelgad does not make a post about fighter design, whether he feels they are reasonable, and if not what his vision is. Why we find the lack of communication from him acceptable and continue to postulate about plausible fixes from our respective player camps is an acceptable status quot amazes me.The lack of culpability from SoE to their customers in this matter is simply sickening to me.</blockquote>This statement I fully agree with and I've sent my share of PM's on the subject to Smokejumper and few others with no response (one per dev and only once, so you don't think I'm spamming them.)I too am getting past frustrated with the lack of comment and direction but I don't know that we are sitting back and taking it. What else can we really do to force the issue? We post until our little posting fingers bleed and they blissfully ignore the comments until someone flames a little too hard and it gets locked.Rinse, repeat.What will eventually happen is we will get a post from Xelgad or someone else on one of the topic threads saying that they 'are reading and making notes', people will cheer them for commenting and that will be the end of it for another 6+ months.We need some substantive at this point, imho, and not more 'we're listening' rhetoric.

Bruener

07-09-2010, 05:56 PM

<cite>mercikill wrote:</cite><blockquote>[Suggestion]Change one of the lack luster Warrior AA lines (I suggest "Unshakeable" from the wisdom tree) to an AA that works in reverse of the knight's advantage AA (the AA that increases weapon damage while wearing a shield). I suggest that the Unshakeable AA line be changed to give a protection value directly proportional to the off hand weapon at the rate of x1 per point spent.Example:A heroic geared tank with this AA maxed out (10 points) and wielding an off hand weapon with a rating of 129.3 would a would have a 10 x 129.3 = 1293 added in as protection value.</blockquote>Unlike the others in this thread I really like the direction. A few loud people think that for some reason playing a tank means mediocre DPS or tanking with crap DPS. I really believe that SOE recognizes that what people really want to play in a tank are tanks with that mediocre DPS while tanking...and the numbers don't lie when it comes to Crusaders and Bezerkers.In a well built raid right now good fighter DPS is rivaled by the DPS of bards. Somehow this is translated as too much DPS while tanking? If there is going to be a forced mechanic choice for tanking or DPS than fighter DPS in the DPS role would need to be just under T1 DPS something that is clearly not even close to happening even with fighters going fully offensive.Remove stances imo and allow all fighters to do T2 DPS. This brings in a much more flavor into raids with taking 4 fighters even (/gasp) and will allow for more scripting on mobs to have multiple fighters without the raid feeling like they are gimping their DPS, or having a 2-3 fighter roster and just bringing in alts for the forces scripting. Either fighters compete for DPS spots with the ability to bring their tanking as utility or SOE completely changes the way the classes work now and allow the inclusion of fighters to replace healers somehow (not sure if this could ever work because mobs would just become more difficult and the over-heal method will always be useful).Not sure if this is the right answer but I think it is definitely the right direction. Being a tank should NOT mean having to choose between bard type DPS or tanking...it should be about contributing by being able to do BOTH at the same time.

mercikill

07-09-2010, 08:14 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>This concept of 'iron cannons' that eq2 calls plate tanking, is just ridiculous. Not that they shouldn't be able to dps, but there should be tangible survivability costs as you progress closer and closer to reaching your max dps output.</blockquote>I whole heartedly agree... Unfortunately I don't see us ever discussing TPS as a metric to measure a tanks agro -- Great strides were made in SF to make it a viable metric, but it is still under utilized in my opinion.<cite>Rasttan wrote:</cite><blockquote>Also the entire stance effects should be changed to boost each skill specificaly tied to a stance not to penalize you for swapping. Offensive should boost offensive skills with no defensive penalties, defensive the same so that tanks dont take it in the shorts everytime they swap stances on agro control.</blockquote>Trade offs should be made, and the plate tanks should have more distinctions and penalties in what stance they may choose, however I do not feel that crippled agro generation should be one of them.To steal from another game I've played, mobs would loose agro the more damage they did to a person, so the more defensive a tank could be come, the better long term agro they could maintain. This made for a very natural feel that forced the tank into damage Vs survivability trade off, not a do I loose agro or do I risk dieing decision.

yzyh

07-17-2010, 08:45 PM

circusgirl

07-18-2010, 12:05 AM

I think a better solution is for block to be contested except when tanks are in defensive stance (as is the case for brawlers). Stances should be meaningful, as should shields. Repeating the mistake they made with crusaders is a terrible idea.