TheSpin wrote:
I have a couple of ideas about how fighters work that would improve balance and overal gameplay of the fighter classes. I don't want to start a flame about anything, but I'm trying to offer some constructive opinions about the archetype, which has recently lost a lot of its appeal and 'fun' in my opinion.
First, I would like to suggest a major change that would add a new dynamic to the archetype. This would be the addition of a third stance which would focus on adding some kind of utility to the group so that groups have the option to use certain fighter classes in place of other 'support' classes. Players have begun to rely too heavily on bards and chanters in my opinion. Especially in raiding. With 6 fighter classes, limiting their purpose to directly tanking is simply not working.
I would suggest monks should be given a stance which provides power regen and crowd control comprable. Brawlers a 'sidekick' type stance that helps the tank with aggro and surviveability. Paladins deserve a stance to protect their group and increase their healing capability. SKs perhaps a spell protection and power regen stance.
Secondly, Aggro generation should be more encounter centric in my opinion. While I don't suggest an entire encounter should be forced to target the same target, fighters should be able to control much of a single encounter's aggro fairly easily without changing targets within that encounter. Some classes will still hold aggro across encounters better than others.
My third suggestion is a multiple facetted adjustment to stances. Similar to the new priest stances, they should focus on base damage, threat, and surviveability increases and decreases rather than skill adjustments. Hit rates especially should not be dependant on stances. I also would like to suggest altering the way stance changes work. Similar to the AoC stances, changing from one stance to another should be instant, and changing into one stance would then lock your character into that stance long enough to make the decision to change stances meaningful.
I don't know the current status of the fighter revamp, but these 3 changes would go a long way in addressing some of the specific problems I see the most. Brawlers would have a better outlined role by using the utility stance, Hit rates would become equal across the board. Offensive and defensive stances would be equally meaningful and useful for all fighter classes. I probably forgot a few things, but I thought my ideas were good enough to at least get the basics out there for review.
While these are some good ideas.......I am not sure the direction we want SOE to take with fighters is one of trying to come up with ways for fighters to fill "ghetto" versions of roles.
Raid encounters need to be designed such that having one of each fighter type in your raid is "important". I would love to see a raid zone where the MT is not the same guy from start to finish.......give us variety of mobs that require us to switch out fighter types.