Caster changes..

[Jeido]

I understand that casters are undesireable right now, but it was by no means because of the fact that they were underpowered. You may get people playing casters now, but only because they are going to be completely OP with the damage boosts combined with the FT boost. If anything, I think casters should have all spell costs reduced so that they last longer, rather than giving them a much higher damage output per second.

One of the biggest problems with casters is that no one can parse them except for themselves, since no one else can see their damage. I think you need to run some parses with a well-geared caster on a raid mob and some group mobs to see if they really are doing bad damage compared to melee, before you beef them up such a high amount.

Honestly, I think casters were fine before damage wise. We did a cursed raid with 2 groups, 4 people were dps. We had 2 rangers (both with dark wind, same arrows), a rogue and a wizard. One group was made up of a warrior, shaman, rogue, ranger, cleric. The other group had warrior, shaman, wizard, ranger, cleric. The group with the wizard got the kill shot all 3 times throughout the cursed cycle mobs, and the wizard in that group is barely geared. He was Jinfu's alt wizard who has nearly no aa's and no gear past Sebilis. My point here is, a wizards damage was already high before this change, so why is there a need to boost it? The only thing I see it doing is making casters very OP and this will most likely cause a lot of melee dps to just give up, especially since they have to deal with AE rampage on mobs which casters do not.

Now the heal boost, that was a great idea and I think it's necessary and makes sense, but not as a server-wide change. HP on gear on a custom emu server is much higher than it was on live once you start to get into the really tough tiers (3, 4, 5 will be examples once they are released), but the spells are still the same. For this reason, I think that the heal boost should go into effect, but if anything it should probably be as an item focus in one of the higher end zones. Theirs no reason for a cleric to crit heal a tank for 20k, when the average tank only has 13k HP at 70. Now if a guild has tanks with 25k HP and are in the end tiers of the server, then they actually do have the need for the higher heals. Again, this is because the current heals are what was standard on live during our current game version, but I hope you can see my point of how it could unbalance the lower end.

To add to increased focus on healing gear in higher end zones, the same can apply for damage focuses. I am sure with Striat by your side then you guys can make a focus that increases spell dmg by 75 or 80%, rather than the current 60% cap on items. The same applies for healing, I am sure that you can boost the cap from 60 to about 70 or 75 on higher end gear. I am sure that healers would *love* a healing focus that made HoT's do more per tick, but I don't know if that's even possible on EQ tbh.

Anyway, going back to the increased focuses on gear, you could even extend this and make some custom focuses on the lower tier raid mobs to go along with progression. I know that you can get 60% dmg focus items way before you actually get into raids, so maybe in ssra/kael there can be a 65% focus, ToV 70%, etc, etc.

I just have a bad feeling that if things stay as they are then you will get your wish and have an abundance of casters, but then no melee.

[Maron]

Ive made Test Chars before and after the changes,and the Results show that the difference between a currently best geared wiz and zerker are not that big.

On trash mobs of course the wizard is king cause of blast damage,but on longer fights the zerker catches up big time.

I will later today make a Rogue test char cause i think those are top of the mele dps atm,and im sure he will even beat the wizards parsed dps.

Looks like u think only cause a group gets a killshot they did the most dps,im abosultely sure that Jinfu's wiz alts group never got loot rights:P.

heres some results of my parsed dps.

Wiz:

Chardok:-Overking ~1500dps
-Queen ~1800dps

Zerker: -Magus Rokyl ~1600dps
-Trakanon ~1200dps

The zerker wasnt fully augged while the wizard was.I dont see a big difference in dps there and u gotta keep in mind that melee dps is sustained,while the casters chain nuking will end at some point ,not to mention resists.

Imo it is perfectly balanced atm.

[Jeido]

Looks like u think only cause a group gets a killshot they did the most dps,im abosultely sure that Jinfu's wiz alts group never got loot rights:P.

I am not a newb, i know that just because a group gets a KS that does not mean they did the most damage. Magoo/Kermit linked the loot on every mob in the cursed cycle *except for* the cursed himself. This is most likely due to the wizard running OOM since cursed has much higher HP than the other two mobs, but again if you guys reduced mana costs across the board then this would be solved.

As for the overking/queen parse, that DPS is ridiculous. I've run groups down there so many times with ssra geared rogues/monks in the group, and they were lucky to break 800 DPS on that fight WITH discs. Kitou only parses 1k DPS tops, discing, on ssra raid mobs and he has emp aug + the 2hb from ToV.

[Tyler]

The problem is, we cannot only balance the server around what Evolution is able to do. You might have noticed, that even up to today, that Evolution is still the only guild who beat any raid beyond Trak level (don't count Rhag1).

The possibiliy is to either lower the stats of ALL mobs in ALL zones so more people get access to them or to just enhance player power, which they will most likely enjoy more.

Melees outgrow caster dps already imo. Back then, no melee had all those mod2 effects of the Level a Guk+Sebilis geared lev70 already has. Let alone 35/20 weapons or weapons that proc 800+ DD. Melee is not only about DPS but also survivability. Especially tank types.

Just wait till you see more parses with Emp weaopns (got any yet?) or ToV weapons when suddenly Melee will do 1.5 x of the best geared Wizard. Also Haste cap was upped by 33% so there are future upgrade paths for all melee available now. Some of you probably already got 10% extra dps just through this since there are 46% haste items in game.

Weapons will always increase while we cannot easily make better spells. Casters basically got all their spells that they will ever use - unless we change the level limit to SoF level at one point.

Fact is - if i browse your DKP settings (and Progeny too - yay for ninja admin rights ) i see 40 players and 3 casters. That tells me something and we need to address that.

We will continue to monitor how things work out and so far i haven't seen any other guild suddenly in ToV, so the changes aren't that overpowered

[Tyler]

Anyway, going back to the increased focuses on gear, you could even extend this and make some custom focuses on the lower tier raid mobs to go along with progression. I know that you can get 60% dmg focus items way before you actually get into raids, so maybe in ssra/kael there can be a 65% focus, ToV 70%, etc, etc.

Forgot this - i will (again) redo all gear with regards to Spell Focus. I took the time yesterday to look up all available spell focii and create an update path, so stuff in guk will start out with 30%, Seb 40%, SSra 50% ToV 60%.

All due in time once im done with ToV (yes north tov is still only 75% done).

[Tyler]

Wiz:

Chardok:-Overking ~1500dps
-Queen ~1800dps

Zerker: -Magus Rokyl ~1600dps
-Trakanon ~1200dps

Parses on 2 fights with complete different mobs (resists/AC/level) show nothing really.

I want Zerkers/Rogues/Wizards to be TOP DPS in short duration fights (less than 5 mins).

Casters are always balanced with regards to their mana pool. They can go full power but only for so long. On THF, we eleminated that Balance with Orb of Spirits and high base mana regen at all levels. Means, usually on EQLive it was generally accepted that a Wizard blows everyone out of the water for 3-4 minutes. But once OOM, he is just wasted space for 10 minutes. This doesn't happen here. This also means, Burst DPS = sustained DPS and we need to check at what level this is taking place.

I need parses with non-disc usage of Rog/Zerker/Wiz against the same mob and if possible more than 1 parse (not 100 but maybe 2 or 3). Then we can go and say - look Rogues still do more DPS than Zerker and both get owned by Wizards.

It's a long road to finish and polish all classes against each other and someone will always feel left alone and not treated correctly.

Believe me though i am thinking alot about this issues and want the game experience for everyone fun and enjoyable and i have no problem with lowering the 25% to 10% if it turns out to be the right modifier. Same for the healing although upping that to 15% means more people will be able to succesfully complete raids which i would like to see.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

[Jeido]

Ok Tyler, if these changes are going to remain in-game then I think you need to make the changes include DoT's as well as HoT's so that necros/shamans aren't left out.

[Tyler]

Yes, DoT will get in too and i totally forgot HoT.

Striat!!!!

[Jeido]

Btw, going back to the "balancing the game on what Evolution is able to do", unfortunately Lillu has balanced mobs to their current difficulty because he was afraid we would 1 group them. During testing I told you guys that the mobs would rape, that you'd need a very well coordinated raid with a 3 tank rot and at least 2-3 clerics to take the mobs down. At the time, this is what you guys wanted, so that's how the mobs were tuned. I don't see much changing in regards to raid targets dieing to anything less than what I just stated unless you remove the need for a full tank rot on every raid mob. With full SSRA gear and partial ToV gear, we still need a full tank rot on Ssra/Kael named.

The reason that people are unable to kill raid targets is not only because they lack the DPS to do so, but also because they lack the correct class make-up. Lillu has been asking me for a month why I keep recruiting, he says we have too many members as it is. The thing is, we don't. In order to kill the raid mobs that you guys created, we need at least 4-5 well geared dps, 2-3 clerics, an offhealer, and 2-3 warriors. I have been needing to fill in these slots since the beginning, and since it's an emu server it can be difficult to get enough of those classes that are reliable.

Unless theirs a full re-scaling of raid targets damage output, then I don't know how successful lesser guilds will be.

[Tyler]

The tank rotating is OK. That way we make sure that mobs aren't 1 grouped with 5 cle bots and also that there is some sort of skill involved.

All the 15% heal bonus does really is to create some larger room for errors during for the healers.