The state of the server - class balancing

[ChaosSlayer]

well I have been in favor of melee/weapon stats scale-down since the day one
After all, if you divide both sides by same number- nothing changes
And smaller numbers make it easier to make balance estimates

[khaliss]

I agree with Chaoslayer! lets put a slight nerf to melees to balance things out

[ChaosSlayer]

I don't like using word nerf, cause its not really a nerf. The plan is to:

1. Scale down weapon ratios

2. Scale down mobs hps (so 1 and 2 balance each other out)

3. Cut down Stats (like str, sta) and Resist by 50-75% on ALL items (this won't be a nerf neither cause currently a level 70- person wears on themselves at least 200+ points of stats he is NOT using anyway cause of the caps. NOTE- hp/mana/ac are not touched)

At the same time I also proposed to do Tier rescaling, to make level up progression smoother, and make 5 tiers (before 70) where we currently have 3. So instead of each tier spanning 30 levels (like Guk/CoM/Karnor) they will span 10-15 levels. This means more tiers of gear, albeit at slower power growth rate, and of course more regular contain variation, as about 4-6 new zones will be added in between those we have now.

This is of course NOT an easy or quick project to undertake, but we at least need to agree on DOING it

[Tyler]

Yup,

as a first approach i will cut down weapon procs. Panther and the Lure line etc that i often used do all too much DPS.

[diodio]

Great post Harney.
I don't want a world without casters...that's my final wish.

Thanks Tyler and all THF staffs quick actions,good start!!!

[Valsavis]

Once big thing that wizzies have that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned is a wiz's ability to quad kite(hell they can kite the whole zone if they brave enough). I remember on live wizards lived and breathed mass killing stuff for AA/xp/farming etc. This give them huge advantages over melee classes already who are forced to kill them one at a time. To say that wizzies should be TOP DPS... then why play a rogue lol. IMO wizzies should be top AE DPS(which I'm pretty sure they already are). I really think it's hard to take one scenerio like dmg vs "x" raid mob and apply it to everything. I know I'm argumentitive on this topic and it's because tinkering with class balancing really is a hard sell for me. Too often when trying to "fix" these issues it creates bigger unbalances elsewhere and too often not enough thought is given to what things a class can bring to the table. (FYI I'm in Int caster main so this isn't just a whine post because my procs just got squashed lol)

In recap I strongly suggest to other players to maybe sit back and try to think outside the box with some of your classes.... in all my years playing this game I've seen some pretty unlikely class combinations to amazing things. Heck some peeps thought I was crazy for goin with a Beasty bot instead of the cookiecutter pally everyone else uses but for the most part it's been a blast!(though I'll admit I did make a pally too for tankin some of the tougher named stuff)

[ChaosSlayer]

the difference between Rogue and Wizard is that Rogues DPS is UNLIMITED - your baststab doesn't cost anything.
So Wizard MUST be TOP DPS because it cost them mana todo it, over short periods of time.

Idealy a wizard should be able to do 10x times the damage over rogue over 1 minute, but burn all his mana as result, where Rogue can backstab all day long.
Or more conservatily, wizard does 5x damage over 3 min, and then goes oom.

Why play a rogue over wizard? To enjoy AC, HP, Dodge, Evade, Sneak, and dps which is not depedant on mana.

As far as Quad Kiting goes - we have a total 1 outdoor zone for that in the high end- Valor, so ouside of XP, there is not much to gain there for being a wizard.

[Tyler]

PoStorms too now But yea, Quadkiting is so 2004.

[moordian]

The reason no one has mentioned quad kiting is that it would be a ridiculous waste of time on this server. FYI you could quad PoFire too, I used to quad at the tables all the time on live. The reason quadding worked so well on live was the Pillar line of spells provided a very good mana/damage ratio that put total DPS at the top of all classes. That line of spells becomes increasingly less useful as mob HP starts getting up over 25k. Focused, AA'd and crits included you can probably get an average of 1800 damage per mob x4. The doomfire soldier/guardian/protectors have 120,000 HP. It would take somewhere in the range of 60 casts to kill 4 of these guys. I can take then 3-4 at a time with my warrior and rog bot with hardly any healing. If I bring my monk and cleric I can do them 10+ at a time and have them all dead MUCH faster than a wizard could burn down a quad. Not including damage shields (which speed up killing mass pulls a bunch) I can easily pull 5000 dps with my war/monk/rog bot. That about 24 seconds per mob, or a bit under 2 minutes for 4 of them (again with no DS).

AE spells are also useless in a group/raid situation. Not only are the spell lines tuned for mobs with much lower HP, but AE damage spells are a surefire way to get dead unless you have an knight tanking and doing a lot of AE agro. If a warrior is tanking you'll be lucky to get 3 casts before some mob that hits for 2500 beating on a wizard with no AC/HP.

For wizards to be of any value on this server they need to do massive amounts of damage in 3 minutes or less. IMO a wiz should be able to go oom in less than 3 minutes - so they can gather once and go oom again in under 3 minutes. 6 minutes of mass damage is bordering on too powerful, but there would at least be agro to contend with. In order to achieve this, wizards need either very high damage single target spells or the cast times on their current raid level spells needs to be tweaked.

I think that INT caster balance is moving in the right directs - at least the pet classes seem to be much closer. Wizards are getting there and certainly put up some impressive crits. I will wait to see some parses, but I don't think they are quite there yet.

[Expletus]

the difference between Rogue and Wizard is that Rogues DPS is UNLIMITED - your baststab doesn't cost anything.
So Wizard MUST be TOP DPS because it cost them mana todo it, over short periods of time.

Idealy a wizard should be able to do 10x times the damage over rogue over 1 minute, but burn all his mana as result, where Rogue can backstab all day long.
Or more conservatily, wizard does 5x damage over 3 min, and then goes oom.

Why play a rogue over wizard? To enjoy AC, HP, Dodge, Evade, Sneak, and dps which is not depedant on mana.

I think a Wizard should be a high DPS class, but lets be realistic here, doing 10x the dmg of a rogue in a minute would mean if I took 6 Wizards I could mana burn any given raid mob in one shot if done at the same time. It happened on Tarew Marr AND Saryrn on live till they nerfed it (i forget how). All you are doing is creating a new problem with by upping their dmg that gets resisted; eventually it won't get resisted and then wizards will be OP. Why not create a spell that they cast lowering resistance by say 400 that lasts for 1 minute with a 10 second cool down so their spells which you gave them will actually work. Like Kron said, no point in casting wizard spell that get resisted no matter how powerful you make them.