Post#4 » Thu Sep 22, 2011 3:22 am
Look, I'll be the first to admit that AC is a strong stat, and those with the best ability to stack it will have the best solo capability long-term. My pet basically caps out around 5k AC, and doesn't get the defensive discs and AAs and other forms of mitigation that true tanks get, so that basically limits my soloing to T1, T2, and T4 trash; the weakest of the weak, as far as raid-trash goes.
The thing is, Everquest was never really designed to be a game for soloers. And that's as true here as it is on any server that isn't redesigned from the ground up. There will always, always come a point where post-70 content will no longer be soloable; some classes, particularly clothies, will hit that point earlier. Others, particularly plate classes, will hit that point later due to their smoother gear scaling curves.
This is why box teams remain so prevalent despite the increase in population. A bot can only do so much; there comes a point where you will outright need the help of another player to progress. Clothies in particular were designed to be inherently reliant upon heavier-armored classes for their survival. This is true of wizards more than anyone - their ability to outright one-shot some trash and rip multiple percentage points off a raidboss in a single round of spells is balanced by the fact that anything that survives that onslaught long enough to launch an attack will outright splatter them. It is the only way to balance them. Necros are in the same boat, really, the only difference being that we deal our damage more gradually (it takes about eighteen seconds for a boss to go "hey, where'd my HP go?" instead of instantly like a wizard) and we have a pet to (kinda) hold off things that do get past the tanks.
The single greatest thing the server could do to help clothie survivability is to smooth out the pet system for all pet using classes, and ensure that each one has a pet that remains useful throughout their life, even in post-70 content. Right now, each one has a point where their primary pet "caps out" and stops being useful, and for magicians in particular, they lose a good half to 2/3rds of their functionality as a viable raiding class at that point.
I'll admit you have a point: you can potentially, eventually kill any mob that doesn't heal itself with a heavily armored class, if you can get heavily armored enough that the mob can't hurt you. So the solution isn't to further widen the DPS gap between squishies and tanks. That just worsens the problem, because squishies either totally eliminate the need for tanks on trash (LOL BOOM ONESHOT!), or they generate so much aggro that the tanks can't hold the mobs and the squishies die even harder.
It's to give squishies a means of taking hits or avoiding hits; this generally means pets. Give pets inadequate aggro holding ability, so that the DPSer has to pace himself if working with a pet instead of a real tank, and can't just go balls-out full-nuke on enemies with impunity. This brings squishy DPS down on par with tanker DPS, and if the pet is survivable enough, it brings squishy survivability in solo up to tanker survivability, while still preserving the class's unique traits in a group environment.
CharactersMalarath -
Lv70 Froglok Necromancer, 700+ AAs, progress T7-2
Valtar -
Lv70 Gold Drakkin Wizard, 300+ AAs, progress T7-1
Szakadar -
Lv70 Iksar Monk, 100+ AAs, progress T5