Melampus wrote:
Kwoung
What great knowledge of balance do you have?
What lvl are you?
what encounters have you faced that give credibility to you knowing what other classes can/cannot do.
Have you grpped with every other class to see weaknesses and strengths to check for balance?
Do you know the function of the other classes to determine if they can perform their roles better or at all with or without a range item/item slot?
That is all immaterial.. the game to date has been balanced without those classes having access to a range slot item.. to change it at this point would throw everything off. If you have some particular beef about your particular class not performing up to snuff, then make a post about it in the correct forum, but to come and say that everyone should be able to use a range item when half the classes have been balanced to date without one, is ridiculous.
As for what is my experience with "balance", I play on the Test server in this and in pretty much every other game, and have seen first hand time after time the devistating effects even the slighest of little changes away from the core premises the game was designed around can make.. how about you?
Lets see what I know about balance:
The classes have all been designed to work with each other, the mobs have all been balanced against the characters. The exact maximum amount of damage, healing, resists, etc.. is all taken into account when SOE designed all their encounters and balanced the players and mobs against each other.
NOW.. you want to add stats above and beyond what every single encounter in the game was designed around. How does that effect game balance when all of the sudden, the players going up against supposedly uber mob X can put out more damage, live longer and have a better chance of resisting spells cast upon them than the encounter was designed for? Oh yeah, thats right, none of that matters because your idea of balance is that everyone uses the same number of slots.