Class scope and purpose

I'm REALLY bad at writing so this may not make as much sense to many people but try to see what im saying. ((((BTW STAT INFLATION IS BAD))))
Also I want to say that perfect class balance is nearly impossible but anyway I'll try and show my view of things.

So the goal is all about what makes that class as fun as possible for everyone but at the same time maintaining the class purpose. I've been able to play most classes (never played a few) at a high level in this game so I'm going to explain what makes a class fun (at least for me) but first we need to answer the questions of what the foundations of every class and what their purpose should be.

Through-out the game abilities have been added and sort of changed the foundation of some of the class designs (ex. Warlock used to be specialized for AE DPS and Wizard for ST DPS), It works both ways If you make one stronger than the other in certain situations then you need to design content to balance around different classes strengths so everyone can feel like they have places in content where they shine OR you can make all the classes as strong as their counterpart in all situations (ex. Warlocks and Wizards = roughly the same ST DPS and AOE DPS)(personally, I like the diversity and I'd think most people would prefer to have situations where their class shines over the other and is more specialized for certain encounters. BUT there is a problem with this, the classes abilities have strayed too far from their specialized purposes (ex. warlock plaguebringer is a big single target nuke and wizard ice comet is now 5 target aoe and they both get the same increments charge ability, things like this bring some of the specialized classes closer together) so we will kind of have to deal with a very hybrid dynamic from now on unless the a lot of different classes abilities were completely re-worked which is unrealistic. There are some issues with the framework and the scope has kind of been lost along the way making some specialized classes closer together in all situations than other specialized classes.

Beastlord is a P2P class and is designed to be kind of overpowered (ill deal with it, whatever... even though it really shouldn't be a tier 1 dps class.)

So should that probably should be (or stay) AE oriented - Warlock, Swash, Necro (ranger and assassin is weird even though ranger should have been the more AE oriented one for the game)


OK so with the semi-hybrid dynamic that we are now seeing in the game the tiers of DPS should be something that looks like this (would be the easiest to keep balanced this way):
1. Predators/Sorcs/Beastlord /(Summoners also a weird class to fit in they dont really bring any crazy utility to justify putting them at tier 2 at this point) -
Wizards being slightly stronger than warlocks for ST and vice versa for AOE/AE,
Assassins/Rangers is weird but probably easiest to be about the same in both situations OR Assassin being slightly stronger than ranger for ST and vice versa for AOE
Summoners should probably be about the same in all situations OR
Conj being slightly stronger ST and vice versa for AE
3. Rogues - Here's a problem, either brigand should probably get a buff to AOE DPS and swash gets a buff to ST DPS to make it so that brigand is only slightly stronger ST and vice versa for AOE or make more content for swash to shine in. (We'll talk about this more later)
4. Enchanters/Bards - Should probably be about the same in all situations for simplicity
5. Fighters
6. Healers

Ok so on to other things...
Swashbucklers are bad and IDK how you would even fix this class without just turning it into a pure dps class. why? the class is designed to be a utility/dps class that debuffs an enemy's offensive power... The problem is that their offensive debuffs don't do anything significant
ok so here's the problem with this lets say you make swashbuckler offensive debuffs really significant right.
well then how hard are you going to make certain encounters hit in order to make them viable? you could make them impossible unless you have a swashbuckler which is a problem, you shouldn't do that because then you are literally relying on having 1 class to beat an encounter but if you make the encounter beatable without swashbuckler then what's the point of having them? also this ties into problems that are already surrounding how heals are working in this game at the moment (we'll talk about that too actually ill state everything really quick here)

Tanks with 100% reuse for their saves is boring and overpowered, if you're good you can rotate saves so that you barely have any downtime between not having something and having something, I really think that all the tank saves should not be affected by reuse but IDK if that will ever happen. for example please watch this, it was from 4 years ago but the principle is the same https://www.twitch.tv/melioratex/v/48585899

Healers should have to heal (all of them) no one wants to sit there watching their wards or reactives just sitting there expiring, thats boring. I quit playing my defiler when I could see my wards just expire off my spell timers window... either the mobs need to hit faster and do less damage or massively buff HP of players, I havent played in a while but a single target ward should be like 30% of a tanks hp and you should be able to see it get eaten through so everyone has to spam their little hearts out on heals and watch the tanks hp spike a little bit not just go from 100 to dead because they cant rotate their billion saves with 100% reuse...

but anyway I have to cut this short I'll be happy to reply with some ideas or suggestions later on in this thread or point out some other problems

[Diveris]

Not sure I agree with Healer placement, as a few healers sacrifice healing ability for dps by virtue of class design. Fury, inquis, channelers and mystic should parse above tanks imo. And I don't see a t2 in your list. Maybe i'm reading wrong but looks like it skips from 1 to 3.

Not all healers want to actively heal. Part of what I loved about inquis, mystic, warden and fury was that I could do alot of hammer swinging/spell casting and keep my group alive. I only had to actively heal when things got rough. Spam healing is not very fun and can quickly become monotonous.

rogue being tier 2, also yes the whole dps spec healer thing you may be right placing it around the same dps as an offensive tank

[Diveris]

Zelox said: ↑

“rogue being tier 2, also yes the whole dps spec healer thing you may be right placing it around the same dps as an offensive tank”

I don't think it should have much to do with spec for fury, inquis and mystic. Out of the box they are given fewer tools to heal/mitigate damage and more damage dealing tools. I also think healers in "dps spec" should be on par with bards/chanters. Then again I think that any class in its offensive setup should be able to pump out decent numbers; at the cost of a large diminish to their primary role.

[Silzin]

Since i just about only raid a tank, and play my other 3 arch types in groups i will only talk about tanks...Tanking in normally a very high demand job in EQ2 and every time the Devs Moved Tanks to the bottom of the DPS list the number of ppl playing tanks went way down. Also tanks need to be able to hold ago throw DPS and Threat...

I think the Dev's have also moved away from the idea of DPS Tears a long time ago... I do not think it is wise for the health of the game to push classes back into a rigid tear system. especially one that pushes the dps more away from the tanks/healers and utility then we are at atm.

there should be tiers, as I shouldnt be able to play a tank and do as much dps as if I were to play a dps, their means of holding aggro should mostly have to do with threat (there is a point where a tank's dps can get too low and we dont want that either). but anyway I'm just trying to point out that there needs to be a decent foundation or some guidelines when looking at class balance. the fun part about a tank shouldn't be dps because dps is easy, it should be more focused on using their utility properly in order to live and execute the encounter properly which also coincides with how the content should work. everyone wants to feel like they attributed to the success of an encounter and certain classes have tools to do so that sometimes arent completely utilized because of encounter design, we need everyone to feel like they were important in beating the encounter thats what makes the different classes and game fun

[Genghes]

Zelox what class do you play?

all of them, going to be a wizard for next xpac though