Class Balance - Introducing Secrets! (AGAIN!)

[Secrets]

So, I will be taking over Tyler's job as the spells/class balance/other stuff related to mechanics/tradeskill dev, as some of you are already aware. I have read a few of the posts, and from what I gather is this:

• Rangers are not in line with other DPS classes
• INT casters are royally broken as they have nothing to scale damage to. (Especially wizards!)
• Druids have nothing to offer to raids
• Enchanters have little-to-nothing to offer utility wise, other than mez.
• Pet classes need a special something

As my first job here, I will ask you all: What do YOU want to see happen, if anything, to the aforementioned classes above.

Please post your suggestions to these crucial topics in this thread. We will review feedback from players versus parses, and make the appropriate decision based on feedback.

Following this post is a few ideas of my own. Please give feedback and feel free to add your own ideas.

[Secrets]

Enchanter Pets:

• Enchanter summons an animation.
• This animation, instead of pulling the statistics from the database, uses your level, your statistics / 2, your resists / 2, your HP/AC/Mana / 2, and gains up to level 66 enchanter spells.
• The enchanter pet also receives your race, gender, and texture, to simulate a clone feel. T
• his pet scales to level, and all animations summon the same pet.

INT Caster Damage:

• All INT casters get a recourse that stacks on all of their 60+ spells to give you a damage modification per spell casted.
• This damage modification has a different effect depending on spell casted.
• IE,
• Ice adds a snare effect for the group's ranged attacks,
• Fire adds a DD proc on being hit by melee attacks,
• Disease adds a DoT proc that lasts longer, but gives a lesser amount of damage to the group's melee attacks,
• Magic gives a spelldmg % increase to the group,
• Poison gives a lesser duration proc with a strong damage amount to the group's melee attacks.
• These modifications last for 1 tick, so you need to spam cast spells to do damage and to maintain the effects.
• These only affect direct damage spells (IE: Burst of Fire, not Decaying Darkness which is a DoT, nor AE/PBAOE/rain spells) and have a 15% chance (unmodifiable) to proc on the proc-based versions.

Enchanters' Utility:

• Enchanters' Rune spells get a revamp. They now can be casted every 2 seconds, but do 1500 damage absorb @ 70.
• They also become reagentless.

[Arremis]

I'd like to see berzerkers with shorter recast timers on their snares and stuns. Should help with their survivability.

I'd also like to see rangers do their primary damage from ranged attacks, as well as bows for all their epic weapons. Currently, I see them as weak warriors with a few weak druid spells.

[Secrets]

I'd like to see berzerkers with shorter recast timers on their snares and stuns. Should help with their survivability.

I'd also like to see rangers do their primary damage from ranged attacks, as well as bows for all their epic weapons. Currently, I see them as weak warriors with a few weak druid spells.

Berserkers with shorter recast timers on snares and stuns are perfectly fine; I can look into that after I review it with the rest of the team.

Rangers doing primary damage from range attacks... I've done this on an older project of mine and it included throwing your primary weapon. The issue with this is you can't balance this versus the other melee classes, especially since rangers would only need one weapon (instead of two) or a 2hander to do dps from range. If anything, I want to fix archery to be able to be riposted (think arrows flying back at you~!) to give rangers a way to be hit, because in all honesty they deal physical damage and should be considered MDPS and not RDPS. Otherwise, rangers would have a significal up on other classes such as wizards in terms of utility.

A more better solution is to give rangers some ranged procs to compliment their ranged dps. Rogues get that DD proc, and there is code support for ranged DD procs now in EQEmu, so why not? When combined with the riposte mechanic, this would make rangers still be able to use their bows and be considered MDPS, which is what you were looking at in the first place anyway. Also, there is archery damage mods, so this is something we could take a look at as well.

[ChaosSlayer]

RE: druids

-I have already proposed to give druid a whole new line of pets which would high dps Rogues. But this idea did not meet much support... Except from Lillu

Re: pets

-SK just got their pets majorly beefed up, but of course SKs are not a true pet class. But for primary pet classes, I would seriously boost all of the pets (necro, mage, bst) Especially BST!
Then for Mage and necro, you can leave rest of their spells as is (for the tiem beeing).

For mage I would propose making the 4 pet types more different. For example, Make Fire Pet to be Rogue.


Re: Enchanter. people are telling me that due to more powerful charms, chanter is actually VERY powerful cause he can charm some killer mobs for pets Of course if this has usage on raids is questionable. Bumping up chanter pet to give it raid worth probably won't achieve much.

Re: Rangers. While people keep screaming "give us uber bow dps", I must agree that unlike spell casters Ranger have no resists with bow, do not run out of mana, and have crap load of AC and hp (compared to say wizard). So bow ranger dps should not be anywhere near those marks.

[Milein]

First off mage pets are already defines by class

Air=DPS warrior
Earth=Tank warrior
Water=Rogue
Fire=Wizard.

Class changes are not necessary for mage pets. Mage pets are not the mage's issue it's their spells. Lets put it this way (And this applies to all casters to) i have done comparisons, our server's top tier mobs/characters/equipment is very close in resemblance to SoF content. Raid mobs hit ~12k with 5 mil HP. items have 600+ hp/mana/end. All of that is SoF in stats. Here's where the issue comes into play... SoF was level 80, we basically have SoF characters fighting SoF mobs all designed for level 80s... but we're only lvl 70. Our stats and equipment moves with the mobs but our level doesn't. For melee classes (warriors, monks, rogues, berserkers etc) this is fine because their weapon's dps scales with the mobs. However on the other hand with Casters we only upgrade 1 spell per class. So we're fighting lvl 80 content with lvl 70 spells. That makes casters ineffective post SSRA content approx.

Look at it this way. Give 2 level 5 characters (warrior and wizard) items with 2k hp/mana/end and weapons with 70 dmg 15 delay. Now put them against a mob that hits ~900 with 200k HP. Due to his armor and weapons the warrior will do well. The wizard on the other hand will still be using lvl 5 spells so when they aren't being resisted they only hit for about 15 dmg. That's what's happening here. That's what's happening on every Emu server tbh. It's easy to upgrade melee (add good AC and weapon stats) it's hard to upgrade casters (upgrade ALL of their spells according to content)

It's basically a simple fix thats hard to go about doing. What Secrets posted is a VERY good step forward to fixing it =D

Also in regards to rangers...their current dps is honestly about 1k higher than it should be for a utility class (which they are). They get about 5k dps they should be making 4k (as should mages which only get 1.6k lol) at the peak of the current content.

[Rerfu]

"A more better solution is to give rangers some ranged procs to compliment their ranged dps. Rogues get that DD proc, and there is code support for ranged DD procs now in EQEmu, so why not? When combined with the riposte mechanic, this would make rangers still be able to use their bows and be considered MDPS, which is what you were looking at in the first place anyway. Also, there is archery damage mods, so this is something we could take a look at as well."

Yeah, I spoke with Tyler on this and he added Panther Maw to all raid dropped bows. With the exception of the current Bow my guildies got me in Plane of Air:

True Alabaster Hilted Wind Bow

There should probably be a riposte arrow effect as you are proposing, it shouldn't hurt a max AA / geared ranger that badly unless I start criting myself for 7600, then we might have issues.

Ranger shouldn't really be a priority so much anymore though, I'm quite happy with the high end aspect at least, and there are so many other classes with a ton of pressing issues. Our DPS can spike to extremes of 5200-7000 or it can be 1900 on the next mob with the same buffs, I still have yet to get a fleeting quiver to see if the 20% haste works.

Should probably be something like Cloth Casters, Shadowknight, Paladin, Beastlord.

[Secrets]

Also in regards to rangers...their current dps is honestly about 1k higher than it should be for a utility class (which they are). They get about 5k dps they should be making 4k (as should mages which only get 1.6k lol) at the peak of the current content.

I wouldn't exactly consider rangers utility other than their heals and a silly buff; that's not utility, that's a buff you put on the tank or group and forget about.

What I think I may do is increase rangers' ability to heal, and make their bow dps around more of an average than a fluxuation of 1900-to-5000. (in the case of Refru) That would be a fair solution.

[Secrets]

Here's an idea for INT casters, only one idea will be implemented for INT casters, but anyway...

• You get a wand item.
• This item casts melee autoattack when right clicked from range.
• This wand is instant cast.
• It has a recast from anywhere of 1-15 seconds, depending on the wand.
• Depending on the type of wand, additional effects can be included in your wand cast.
• In example, a fire wand may have a direct-damage increasing effect attached to the wand when used, which lasts 1 tick.

[ChaosSlayer]

The wand sounds like WoW wands
I kind of used same idea for my caster weapons in Warrens, but to click it every 15 seconds for reliable dps boost may get annoying fast =)
Kind of along the lines of keep cliking range attack before we had /autofire
In wow, you just click on wand and it starts shooting =)

So rather than just give it a say nuke with 15 second recast, give it either a Self Buff or target Debuff, which last for 18-30 seconds, but with 2 min recast, so you only need to click it once in 2 min when you really need it.