Scouts... balance?

[Yajirushi62]

Meshuggahx said: ↑

“UAS is fine as it is. I had 300k zw on the zone we just did.. the ranger had 311k dagger storm and guess what was his highest dmg after auto? caustic poison at 497% which was 9% of his overall dps.”

Whats your gear like Meshuggah? Because I don't really care about the abilities being balanced against each other until about T1 raid gear, because until that point you can run just about whatever random group you want to and still clear content at around the same pace.

[Yajirushi62]

Also, why are we even bothering to bring up maxHP debuffs as part of the balance equation? Yes, they're an incentive for raids to have one assassin, one ranger, one brigand, one templar, one necro, and I'm sure there are a few I missed. But since maxHP debuffs don't stack from the same class (unless Cruor), there is no reason for them to be brought into whether or not a class is balanced against another or to count them as dps for that class, so stop trying to bring up the inequality of maxHP debuffs between classes, or ask soe to give every class a 24h 1.8% maxHP debuff that doesn't stack between classes so we can finally run one of every class in raids again.

[Mogrim]

For me, I just don't want a few people who have long-since given up using their sandbagged parses to suggest there is anything more than a small/medium small difference in T1 scout dps vs T1 mage dps. My initial quote was something along the lines of being concerned that some players (like the OP) were more concerned about venting their frustrations than they were interested in trying to parse as well as possible in the here-and-now.

More pragmatic players, like Serya and Bloodshot (who were Fatality's assassin/ranger respectively from the start of ToV until after we had killed Vulak) have been able to bring predators w/in striking range of Sorcerers. Were they still generally a little short? Yes. But like I said, the true gap between T1 scout dps and T1 mage dps is a lot smaller than some think. In some conditions, our current predators have also been within striking range, but I do think that a very significant part of their difficulties is related to the fact that they overvalued CB/WDB gear at the detriment of getting potency and using reforging to fill in the gaps. As a result, when statflation came, their over-committing to potency-less options manifested itself with lackluster parses due to poor-hitting abilities.

It has always been the case where extremely fast burn fights start to really favor mages who have a long temp spell that takes of a massive portion of the fight. Often, nearing the end of an expansion starts to grossly exaggerate dps gaps as mage temps often makeup half of a named parse. As gear starts reaching an apex, many predators have found themselves stuck with gear that isn't optimal, while fights are shorter, and mages (with the correct gear chosen) are at their prime in both gear allocation and burn times for trivialized content.

[Bloood]

I am Blooodshot, and I support Mogrim's message. Buffrat can only strive to be as good as I am.

[Hammdaddy]

Pretty sure scouts like buttrat barely outparse furies, and bloodshots are furies x3.

[Darkon]

Mogrim said: ↑

“As gear starts reaching an apex, many predators.”

Apex predator, the mage! Lol, teasing.

Over all contribution to the death of the mob scouts are fine. In fact, they're borderline too strong on certain named fights.

Their # on ACT, combined with the order/timing of CA's being irrelevant, combined with more scout-detrimental mechanics than mage-detrimental mechanics due to range of melee/ca's vs wand/spells, results in scouts not being fun.

Maybe adjustments will happen but I'm not particularly hopeful.

[Yajirushi62]

So Mogrim, have you seen a scout that runs the full pot/cb set manage to get anywhere near the dps that a scout running the WDB set can get? Because we also have issues finding enough to stat points to reforge into the required values on the melee stats if we use the CB/Pot set. And yes, the OP did exaggerate the difference in numbers between a T1 mage and T1 scout in their one image, but it doesn't take away from the point of their post which is all the auto damage. The high auto damage is also a side-effect of all the uplifting procs that soe seems to love so much (+100wdb for group, so +600 or more if your entire group uses it), along with the base damage increases that scouts get via AAs. We don't want more dps, we just want to actually be the ones doing our dps.

[Buffrat]

That post is probably the biggest joke you've posted yet.


1) My beastlord destroyed Serya's beastlord, my assassin parsed comparably with Serya in a 3 group guild, and was comparable with Blood at the same time.

2) Rangers currently require no skill whatsoever.

3) The two scouts you're fanboying over both valued the cb/wdb gear higher, much like your current scouts. (I would know, seeing as I'm a scout and talk with other scouts about backstabbing, hating mages, and auto attacking)

4) I'm not about to be called bad by a warlock who won't wear a magical debuff earring or x2 potency charm after saying "scouts matter for their debuffs!" but only cares about his king dick parse and gives no ***** about blatantly better utility choices.


The difference between then (Serya/Bleud) and now (Buffrat/Kaaria) is that practiced gear exists and it benefits sorcerers more than scouts (and, you have more of it). As you saw in beta, when practiced items were actually balanced between groups, a brigand was actually close to you. We also have only had 0-1 dirges for a long time now, leading to 2 of us not getting a dirge, our coercers gearing for attack damage rather than potency (half the pom dps you get), 1 of our dirges having VCs of about 1/10th of what the mages get, and no brawlers for combat mastery, which is essentially our version of time warp.

As a ranger I can sandbag so hard that I'm practically AFK and still hit 3rd on the parse, which is the best part about scouts right now.

Crushbone's server performance is also complete **** for scouts, and no matter how much you want to say it affects Warlocks more, at least you can still keep pressing your abilities after FC falls off.

[Bloood]

Buffrat said: ↑

“1) My beastlord destroyed Serya's beastlord, my assassin parsed comparably with Serya in a 3 group guild, and was comparable with Blood at the same time. l0l no.

2) Rangers currently require no skill whatsoever. bro, timing auto attacks are hard.

3) The two scouts you're fanboying over both valued the cb/wdb gear higher, much like your current scouts. (I would know, seeing as I'm a scout and talk with other scouts about backstabbing, hating mages, and auto attacking) confirmed.

4) I'm not about to be called bad by a warlock who won't wear a magical debuff earring or x2 potency charm after saying "scouts matter for their debuffs!" but only cares about his king dick parse and gives no ***** about blatantly better utility choices. I was a ranger and I'm calling you bad too.


The difference between then (Serya/Bleud) and now (Buffrat/Kaaria) is that serya/bleud were good and buffrat/kaaria are bad.

As a ranger I can sandbag so hard that I'm practically AFK and still hit 3rd on the parse, which is the best part about scouts right now the best part are the salty tears of trying to compare to me.

Crushbone's server performance is also complete **** for scouts never bothered me (except in arena of the gods). ”

[Genghes]

no brawler for mastery!?!?!?!?! omg nooooooo. what a second.... don't you have Viro?

[Nezette]

Mogrim said: ↑

“For me, I just don't want a few people who have long-since given up using their sandbagged parses to suggest there is anything more than a small/medium small difference in T1 scout dps vs T1 mage dps. My initial quote was something along the lines of being concerned that some players (like the OP) were more concerned about venting their frustrations than they were interested in trying to parse as well as possible in the here-and-now.”

And that's where there's a communication gap. I don't think you realize the problem. Mogrim, I've never not tried, unless I have to in order to not wipe the raid (Kreizen). You're the one that seems to think the bulk of a bard's value is simply in being there-- telling me that it's totes fine that just standing there 30m away with no LoS isn't a problem in an encounter's design. I'm sorry that I want to contribute more than a boxed character can contribute. I love playing a scout... it's fun.

When I can only affect 10-15% of my output, *THAT'S* a problem. I wiped us on Gatekeeper on Thursday. Did I try to wipe us? Nope. I didn't blow a miracle, I didn't push more or less buttons than normal... but, a 9mil VC in a group of 3 ae-auto-attackers burned the name down without a single person actually targeting said name. On following pulls, I had to make sure I was positioned to not hit all the adds to prevent a repeat occurrence. And, I'm not even worried about where my purple bar lines up. Most of the time I don't run ACT because it's pretty irrelevant. But lately? Lately I've stopped running it because it ruins the illusion I have that the effort I put in actually makes a difference-- It's pretty frustrating to see 70%+ damage is auto.

Was I frustrated when I posted my OP? Hell yes. You had been down-right insulting to ALL OF US for weeks! I mean, Akaera is a freaking super-nice Canadian and even she told you to shut the eff up in /gu after you made blanket statements that we all just need to get better. (Maybe you were just calling out Buffrat... maybe you were including me in the mix... idk nor do I care... you generalized ALL of us). How do you propose we get better when such an ill-proportioned percentage of our output is uncontrollable (beyond standing out of range) dps? If you want us to push buttons better, then the buttons need to actually do something of relevance. If you don't want to apologize to me, fine, whatevs, I don't expect you to... but you might want to consider apologizing to others. Or don't.

Also, comparing parses from April (pre-practiced procs) to now (ill-proportioned practiced procs) is a waste of breath. As Ishmel has mentioned a few times, fighter groups (where scouts usually live) are going to get the shaft because A) tanks have other gear priorities and B) Healers don't increment the practiced items nearly as effectively. Kaaria doesn't suddenly push buttons better when he's tossed in G4. And there's really not even a question between CB/WDB vs. lower CB/pot/WDB no-sta gear. From a dps standpoint 10WDB >>>>>>> 120ish Pot with these low base values-- not only that, but survivability? Like, it's the same for you-- why don't you wear no sta? Because the extra 10 or so CB/Pot with reforging AM >>>>>> 120ish WDB for you. Or, if you're talking about the straight CB/POT gear-- even when I have Potency and capped AM, CAs hit for jack and auto REALLY effing sucks then. Need an example? Check out Littlethings' parse. So, I really don't know what you expect.

The thing is, you don't even disagree with my OP. I said, lower our auto and increase our CA capability. You yourself have said the same thing! I mean, wouldn't you be pissed if you suddenly started loosing every parse to someone with 70% auto once AoM hits and we're replacing all our uplifting/practiced with heroic crap that has resists? Like Neiloch said, "lol, gg, auto!" As frustrating as it is for someone being beat by it, it's equally frustrating for the person whose output is truly pac-man.
_________________________
Lots of ideas have been presented that would help. If I were to endorse any one post, it'd be Daray's since it was rather all-encompassing and took several issues into consideration. After looking at the new raid gear, it looks to be more of the same... so... that's not super promising.

[Mogrim]

Buffrat said: ↑

“1) My beastlord destroyed Serya's beastlord, my assassin parsed comparably with Serya in a 3 group guild, and was comparable with Blood at the same time. false

2) Rangers currently require no skill whatsoever. perhaps you would be up to the challenge of playing one then, and we can have kaaria assassin.

4) I'm not about to be called bad I already called you bad. Too late. Perhaps RL lags for you too?

The difference between then (Serya/Bleud) and now (Buffrat/Kaaria) is that practiced gear exists and it benefits sorcerers more than scouts (and, you have more of it). As you saw in beta, when practiced items were actually balanced between groups, a brigand was actually close to you. We also have only had 0-1 dirges for a long time now, leading to 2 of us not getting a dirge, our coercers gearing for attack damage rather than potency (half the pom dps you get), 1 of our dirges having VCs of about 1/10th of what the mages get, and no brawlers for combat mastery, which is essentially our version of time warp. Actually this proves my point a little. You guys undervalued potency so much that now you're suffering from a lack of it. Side note: We had a few extras in on that Beta raid, so our assassin's group actually had 2 or 3 people with NO practiced items.

Crushbone's server performance is also complete **** for scouts, and no matter how much you want to say it affects Warlocks more, at least you can still keep pressing your abilities after FC falls off. You say your abilities don't matter, then you say that lag ruining your abilities hurts you more than it hurts warlocks. Got it.”

[Nezette]

And, fwiw, I'm over the personal jabs.

As far as I'm concerned, you started doling out punches weeks before my OP. Maybe I should have told you to shut up one-on-one... though, I'm fairly certain any comment mentioned in /gu was met with "you scouts just need to push more buttons." So, I'm sorry I decided arguing with you was a less valuable use of my time and attempted to get the attention of those who actually *can* help make it better.

[Yajirushi62]

Remember Mogrim, all the scouts here are asking for QoL, not net power increases. So if you have nothing to contribute here besides QQing, please do so in the lock thread where you are asking for net power increases.

[Buffrat]

Lol. We're not underestimating potency. I get that math is hard for you, it's evident in your gear choices and parses (and your thinking that the reason warlocks have 180 increments while wizards have 150 is purely the dark siphoning bug). 9 crit bonus and 3 weapon damage bonus being better than 40 potency is absurd, I agree, but it's currently true, at least before we were actually getting practiced wdb ears. Keep on thinking you're a god though after you got destroyed by easily 30+ other warlocks for multiple years straight, including myself for the short time I played a warlock. I also like that you conveniently cut out the part where I called you out regarding said (g)ear choices.


Now, back to being on topic. Given 3 new abilities that now all properly function (and possibly got unnecessarily buffed), potency will definitely play a bigger role in our parses this expansion and I am a fan of all of them. I think we'll be able to compete with mages again since our potency scaling gap grows closer. I'm not a fan of practiced procs staying in because they break the balance of fights regarding add sets and dps checks (since your stats just get higher and higher the longer you fight, the first add set will always be the hardest); I like Amplifying much more than practiced. I also don't particularly like the standing still gear, but that might just be because I'm a scout and reposition myself fairly often rather than standing in the same spot staring at my hotbars. Luckily I don't have to wear it since it shares the same slot as other desirable items.

tl;dr Shadow is neat, Dagger Storm is basically the Plaguebringer we needed, new poisons are cool too, even if it's the dreaded 'afk dps' I'll take what I can get.

[Nezette]

Show of hands: who clicks on this thread to read up on the ongoing Fatality soap-opera instead clicking to read/contribute to lolsy CAs?

[Hammdaddy]

Fatality, home of officer ragequit, buttrat, and the #1 guild ww.

[Yajirushi62]

Does this mean I get an honorary membership to Fatality?

[Nezette]

Better! Hit me up on beta and you too can be a member of !!! I'll even promote you to a "not a random person that Nezette lolsy invited" rank!

We have bunny mounts!

[Genghes]

Omg! I must become a member, apparently you need a bruiser with mastery

[Yajirushi62]

Lol, thats great Nezette.

[Nezette]

Ranger friends, off topic question: Are there new arrows that are comparable to the infused spiritshard what-ever-they're-called arrows that you've seen? The handcrafted arrows look pretty terrible... and... I think I might be annoyed if I have to continue to farm TOV for blades and etyma to upgrade. (I figure y'all might know since... rangers...) TYIA!

[Yajirushi62]

I think they're just terribad, no idea if heroic or raid dropped mats yet Nezette, since SoE is keeping the loot hidden.

[Nezette]

Okay, ty for info! I'll make a thread for it just in case. I didn't see anything on the consumables... I'd hate for it to be an oversight!

[Yajirushi62]

I just bumped the WW notes in TS, I doubt that's going to get their attention though.

[Hammdaddy]

They actually care about tradeskills in this game so probably~

[Nezette]

Yajirushi62 said: ↑

“I just bumped the WW notes in TS, I doubt that's going to get their attention though.”

I'll make more paint-renderings later tonight after I'm done tanking this contested zone... Dirge aggro is so strong...

[Buffrat]

Nezette said: ↑

“Ranger friends, off topic question: Are there new arrows that are comparable to the infused spiritshard what-ever-they're-called arrows that you've seen? The handcrafted arrows look pretty terrible... and... I think I might be annoyed if I have to continue to farm TOV for blades and etyma to upgrade. (I figure y'all might know since... rangers...) TYIA!”

Arrows in general are irrelevant. They're like ability mod, except it applies after every modifier, so the damage is literally a difference between 6,000,000 and 6,000,500

[Nezette]

Right, but having classier arrows also makes me feel better about myself.

[Laserbeak]

Mogrim said: ↑

“The reason I don't think dropping max health debuffs for raw damage is wise.

1) It weakens scouts and removes one of their primary values from raid,
2) if compensation for lost utility isn't perfect, either mages or scouts become redundant. You'd have to get it perfect. Think it will?
3) unique contribution is the key. If scouts turn to almost only raw damage, you all better hope it's enough while I pray it isn't too much.

...one option would be to halve hp debuffs currently in play, boost scout ability damage, and add a unique contribution to Mage abilities like amping incoming damage (perhaps buff the AA on the dragon page)”

4) If I don't win every parse and start loosing to scouts again like in antithesis, Darkon and everyone will troll me.

jk friend! .. Just trying to bring light into this situation.. ANYWAYS..

As a long time raiding assassin and a few months on a warlock this current live expansion.. I can tell you scouts have lived a dismal life on the parse... Is what mogrim saying true about maxhp debuffs+parse? yes...But I feel like there are deeper issues, that daray/buff/nezz and ish have pretty hit right on the head.. I mean assassin did great when cap was 92/95 (prior to tov) and I feel like dps was MUCH better balanced then and mages and scouts alike had their fights where they shined...... But what DIDNT we argue about when it came to the parse? maxhealth debuffs.

Why is this such an issue right now and NEVER before? It really feels like its being pulled as a card to keep scouts down..Although mogrims arguement has merit, After being in beta raids and seeing bards auto beat mine(assy).. (6.0 v 6.0 weapons) and me having more HITS on my weapons was pretty disappointing.. especially with full dread lord sans chest/cuffs.. and like 4-5 weapon damage bonus ears in my group...my auto was about 42-50% of my parse..But the button pushing still left alot to be desired... and Im a real try hard when it comes to that...I spoke to gninja during our pulls about how I felt about it.. he asked a few small questions and seemed to absorb what i said. And seemed to see what i was talking about.. but IM sure he was quite busy with a bunch of tells.. and looking at mechanics as we pulled..And I also really felt scout parses were inflated due to all the WDB ears..and will NOT look like this when beta hits live and the parse differences between mages and scouts will have an even wider gap. I have yet to see the dagger/shadow changes in raid yet, But I believe we raid beta tuesday.. and Will be able to get a better look at it...

But I do feel as strongly as does nezz about how the dps has shifted way to in favor of auto attack for MOST scouts (which is funny because assy's look to have some of the weakest auto attack of all the scouts thus far in beta.) the dirges are just silly... 7.2mill parse.. 6.3m auto.. lol. This is crazy because you have practiced potency procs that are literally not helping 50-75% of scouts overall dps... And no one see's this as a distinct advantage to begin with? I mean I can vouch for the fact that WDB ears are amazing for mages too.. bringing my high hits on my wand from 5mill to 7.6m and picking up an over all 500k on my auto from ONE or TWO ears.. on a Maw fight,....Just doesn't seem fair, in that respect. does it?

Anyways I feel like this should not be turned into a pissing match with disgruntled mages (even tho darays post was almost spot on ).. and we should keep our eye on the ball here and keep giving good suggestions and data to the devs to evaluate here, because most the info here is good stuff and was a good read.. We should keep it that way