[Tarindel]

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Hamervelder wrote:

I want to know why a scout is supposed to do more damage than a fighter?  Scouts aren't supposed to be in the fray, beating everything down.  They provide reconnaisance and long-range capabilities.  That's it.  In melee attacks, fighters with weapons (not bare-handed monks) should be the hardest-hitters.  So what if a berzerker (for example) can take heavy damage and also deal it out.  They're limited to basically hacking the enemy to pieces, unlike scouts, mages, and priests.  A heavy nerf-stick across fighters is asanine.

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I think the original idea was as you state -- scouts were originally not supposed to do more damage than fighters.  Instead, they'd provide debuffs, movement buffs, and long-range capabilities.  Unfortunately, SOE failed to make viable classes in those roles -- especially in the soloing dept.  As a result, they're falling back to the idea that scouts should do more damage than fighters make up for it. Same goes for mages.  Originally they were conceived of providing more utility and burst damage than long range damage, but when SOE failed to provide them with enough utility, they fell back on giving them more DPS. As a result, fighters have fallen from the top of the heap to third in DPS.  That's why I'm expecting to see an upcoming nerf with little to no benefits for us.  My big fear is that we are going to go back to the case where your typical group has 1 fighter, 1-2 priests, and the rest of the group is filled in with mages/scouts -- leaving 1/4th of the classes (and by far the most popular 1/4th) with only 1/6th of the typical group spots.  This is, of course, supposition, but SOE does have a track record... Note to SOE: All classes need to have roles that stack in a group/raid with others in that group/raid.  Tanking is not an ability that stacks.  DPS is.  Therefore, if most classes out-DPS us, and our "counterbalance" is that we can tank and they can't, we're going to be pretty unhappy.