Looks like some love on the way...

[frogspawn]

From yesterday's Moorgard post:Among the balance issues we'll be looking into now and in the near future: * Summoner pets, including the usefulness of various types of pets and the overall DPS and utility of mages. * Priest balancing, including: wards vs. reactives vs. regens, both for effectiveness and aggro generation; warden vs. fury balance, etc. * Evaluating melee damage to ensure that scouts outdamage fighters. * Giving every artisan profession new and useful things to make, as well as ways to make their existing goods more desirable.

[Blitzkrieg]

Hopefully they will just go ahead and give scout classes a boost and not nerf fighters at all.  I really do hate seeing nerfs thrown about.

[Fros]

If they upgrade scout dps without nerfing fighter's that would be great, but I can already see Warlock and Wizard writing up a petition about how we gonna outdmg them again while they dont have to deal with total immune, ripos , some ae and stuff ! ;x or totally removed from some fight like scout do currently...

[Kiliva]

Sounds good, although knowing soe they probably will nerf fighters instead of boosting us.  I hope not though.

[GodH8s]

I realize the fruitlessness of complaining on an online forum, so I usually don't, but the servers are down and it's my day off (bravo, SOE).There comes a point where it doesn't matter what is done, but something needs to be done. Maybe the fighter classes do need to be nerfed a little. They've had it so good for so long, maybe they should feel what it's like to not be the ultimate class.I've got a Paladin friend that can't talk enough about how great it is that he tanks while maintaining damage close to scouts in his group (as he says, 'when he tries'), and how he can heal himself rather well.Last night I met a 26 Ranger, who was a new player (I think he was the only one in the group that was really a newbie). He saw the famous log parser CombatStats for the first time. The poor guy tried like hell to do his job to the best of his ability. Regardless of the tips and such we gave him, the 3 fighters in the group kept him in check. As a higher level scout (and another in the group was too, oddly, who ALSO rolled a Wizard for an alt) I broke the news to him. Because at 48 it's the same way. You can trie all manner of weapons/armor/gear/skills and you're simply going to lose to a fighter who puts half an effort into a round of combat very often if not always no matter how refined your technique is.Simply put, after the Black Thursday patch, I spoke with multiple Fighter archtype friends of mine. All said they noticed no change in their damage. Odd, as all I remember happening to my assassin was losing Sneak Attack (even the 80 damage or so that it did at level 48 was still SOMETHING to help keep up with the Fighters) in that patch (was put on shared timer with our Mask of Night line of skills). So if the damage "was" :FIGHTER > SCOUT > MAGE > PRIESTAnd only the mages were reporting an increase in their skills... doesn't that make the new damage line :MAGE > FIGHTER > SCOUT > PRIESTAs a side note, I don't know what's up with Rangers, but every single Ranger I've met complains about their lack of DPS. I can only speak from an assassin point of view.As the pure damage scout-line class, Rangers and Assassins should be doing damage very close to your average Wizard and Warlock. We can't do a darn other thing (Being the Disarm and Evac b___h aren't amazing superpowers, particularly when you've given Evac to other classes) that's worth anything.I got to thinking how I envisioned my class. How 'I' would have done it. I know SOE (and nobody else for that matter, but as I said, the servers are down) doesn't care to hear my opinion, but wouldn't it be great if Rangers were a 'sustained' DPS class and assassins were an occasion DPS class. You know, like how every thought they'd be?Give the Ranger enough skills that do decent damage (I recall their 'damage cycle' was supposed to be something like 1 minute?) consistently - enough so that when you're looking for group memebers for DPS that you don't pass up Rangers for Mages all the time.And Assassins... I like to think of a 'save your @$$' class. We should have massive damage that we can whip out every so often that COMPLETELY SHUTS DOWN A MOB. As in, if your party gets jumped, the assassin should be able ensure the fight ends quickly - assuming he has all of his/her skills ready - which should be the catch.ASSASSINS OVERTIME AVERAGE DPS SOULD BE CONSIDERABLY LESSER THAN A RANGER. That is, until you factor in an Assassins large damage moves, at which point the damage over time between the classes should be the same.Why is this such a hard concept to understand?Unlike most Assassins I 'save' my Condeming Blade for emergencies. I like to think by not using it every 5 minutes on the mark I am better playing my role as an ASSASSIN (instead of just DPS_CLASS_05).If a bit of role playing and distinguished character classes was not intended by SOE, just up all Scout damage so was can all be happy button mashing drones only interested in the DPS numbers.**edits for spelling**

Message Edited by GodH8sMe on 03-08-2005 12:00 PM

[Syanis]

I've grouped with quite a few rangers and I tend to like using my parser alot to watch damage, however tend to use a private channel I created so I'm not contantly spamming group unless they want to see dps. From what I've seen rangers do a little bit less melee based damage then assassin's and a bit more bow damage. The difference is pretty minimal comparing an assassin and a ranger in same level range and close to same gear and same upgraded skills. One thing I have noticed though is I see alot more rangers when I inspect em not having any poisons in activate slot which leads to to think they don't use poisons if don't see any in eitehr slot.

 

Also from what I've seen a fighter class like a beserker fully upgrading gear / skills to being topline raises their dps a good bit and if an assassin type does the same raises there dps a good bit more putting assassin who knows how / when to use skills doing averagly more dps... however wearing about midline gear and app 4's for skills comparing assassin and beserker theres def some hurting for dps on assassins.... I can't speak from other scout class's but I'd assume its the same for them for predator / rogue types.

 

I don't like thinking nerf but nerfing fighters damage overall may end up being the only real way to solve the issue w/o causing more. Look at it this way.... if they left fighters dps alone and raised scouts would be bringing up scouts solo ability some as well besides their group dps a good amount.... now they'll be back to top damage doers or at minimal on par with warlocks (sorry but wiz's suck for dps still n need some major loving).... then they'll have to up mage dps again making them even more poweful and bringing em more into line of being able to solo blue/green 2^ mobs quickly.... now their would in essense for most fights be to much dps to easily... now they'd have to balance the mobs by making them tougher.

 

Basically comes down to theres a huge gap in the expected line of dps of priest < fighter < scout < mage... the room to balance is between fighter and priest... just raising scouts will mean raising mage and then the encounter they are meant for. Currently stands for most is scout < fighter so simply swapping out dps between those 2 would be easiest and simplest way w/o doing some other major changes.

 

Flitch Flea 40 Assassin

[GodH8s]

It is also entirely possible every Ranger I have come into contact with hasn't perfected their technique yet, because almost everytime I see the parser read something like this : Warlock, Wizard, Assassin, Fighter-type, Ranger, Priest-type. I rarely play with other members of the scout class, so I can hardly say where they stand. But generally I shut Rangers down hard and fast. :I also see a lot of Rangers complain about the cost of their arrows, and they (At 45+) are using 'makeshift carbonite arrows' or something along those lines. And if the Rangers DO happen to have a 'real' arrow (indium arrow/fulginate arrow), they don't use it very often. I often hear "lol wow u use ur bow moar thn me! lolrotflmaobbq" from the Ranger. I don't know if they think assassins get a deal on their arrows from the NPC or what, but I pay my 3s-someodd copper per arrow also, and use a few hundred in a handful of hours.As an Assassin in the Top 10 for highest melee hit, I do take pride in my job. My job is DPS. I watch very carefully playstyles, damage, effectiveness, etc. With every skill at Adept 1 or higher (I have 4 skills that are only App4, Cheap Shot, Ensnare, and 2 other ancient grey skills from way back when that likely don't have Adept 1's), using fairly high end gear (nothing prismatic or from master chests yet, as they're simply not available for purchase), I still see Fighters challenge the assassins for DPS. I've had talks with quite a few and they claim it's always been that way, and it's not unusual. Now I don't know if I'm just running across super Fighters who are decked out in Master chest gear or what, but I find almost any Fighter who applies himself can run with the Scouts.That's the problem - we can't tank with them. It breaks my heart when I see a 43 SK solo Shakey (named scarecrow in RV) while I've seen and been known to die to grey mobs. We should be able to cut down the mob fast enough that it doesn't kill us everytime. And why is that? Because we can't get hit and don't have life taps, etc. All we can do is RUN. And Evac's timer is a cruel mistress.At the very least (this is going to pain me to say this) SOE should take a look at WoW's rogues. At least 'stealth' in that game seems to matter. The radar EQ2 mobs has is ridiculous. It's less adventure, more combat grind oriented than a lot of people care for.

Message Edited by GodH8sMe on 03-08-2005 01:50 PM

[Graton]

---

GodH8sMe wrote:Last night I met a 26 Ranger, who was a new player (I think he was the only one in the group that was really a newbie). He saw the famous log parser CombatStats for the first time. The poor guy tried like hell to do his job to the best of his ability. Regardless of the tips and such we gave him, the 3 fighters in the group kept him in check. As a higher level scout (and another in the group was too, oddly, who ALSO rolled a Wizard for an alt) I broke the news to him. Because at 48 it's the same way. You can trie all manner of weapons/armor/gear/skills and you're simply going to lose to a fighter who puts half an effort into a round of combat very often if not always no matter how refined your technique is.

if what you're saying is that rangers around the mid to high 20's are outdmg'd by fighter classes then i have to admit to i don't know. however, if you are saying that assassin's in this same range also have the same problem, i must have better gear than i thought because when i've been grouped with a dmg parser i've always come away happy.most recently i was in a varssons group that was the following make up:29 assassin (me) , 33 swashbuckler , 30 dirge , 30 mage/summoner/i confuse the names (the guys with the elemental like pets) , 32 paladin , 32 inquisitorafter each fight the dirge who was running the parser sent the stats , the following were always true:the inquisitor did no dmg. - no surprise here, as the single healer in a group fighting group lvl varsoon mobs i didn't imagine he'd have time to do much other than keep people alivefighter was next to lastdirge was fourthsummoner / mage / etc. was third when you factored in his pet, fourth on his own behind the dirgei was usually 2ndswashy was first.there were times when i outdmg'd everyone - fights were assassin's blade was up. not everytime but some of the time. i came away that night thinking that the dmg issues i've heard about for assassin's must happen later on but for the time being i had a big smile on my face. my weapons are nice for my lvl but lots of other folks have them - feysteel ornate spear / silver edged whip so i don't think that's it.maybe the problem you're pointing out is with rangers and if so sorry for posting something irrelevant. since this is the assassin board though , i figured you might be saying that scouts in the twenties can't outdmg fighters and while i'd love to see us get a boost, my experience has been very different.

[frogspawn]

to lvl 37 i've never had a problem outdamaging everyone on the parser (haven't grouped with many mages since they got boost). the problems people say are typically 38+. if you're not doing enough dmg up to 37 you're missing something.