The state of the server - class balancing

[Harney]

This was originally in respose to Tyler's post in the parsing request thread, I decided to make its own thread as to not derail that one.

We are interested in seeing - Monk 2.5 and Donator doing 10k dps and Berserker using Donator doing 3k dps. No one gives a flying monkey if said Berserker now does 3.3 or 3.5k dps. The unbalanced DPS regions are obvious enough for me.

One thing you have to keep in mind here Tyler is the amount of people playing a certain class. People gravitate towards classes that they feel are balanced well, or slightly overpowered. Why do you think there are an abundance of melee dps at the high end and hardly int casters at all?

I can count on one hand the number of casters who've made it to the top end tier of their era. Loly, Milein, the ench from progeny, zanfire ( wiz from fusion). If I'm wrong here, correct me, but I don't even think any int caster has hit 20k mana yet on this server, something priests do with ease, because people want to invest time and gear in to them because they know they are useful and serve their purpose.

Here are some raw numbers for you

Evo (this guild is the oldest on the server, and lived in an era where melee dps wasn't obscenely higher than casters).

2 berserkers - one raid geared, one not
3 beastlords - 2 raid geared, one not
5 enchanters - none over 15k mana
7 magicians - none over 15k mana
8 wizards - 1 over 12k mana (loly)
1 lvl 70 necro - 15k mana
14 shaman
12 rogues
10 bards
15 monks
3 druids
3 sks
9 rangers
3 paladins
21 clerics
17 warriors

I stopped inspecting inventories after the underplayed melee and int casters
wanted to show that people didn't invest a major amount of time in to the majority of the
int casters in the guild

dinodeeps ( the guild i came up in )

3 zerks
6 enchies - 1 main
2 mages - 1 main
1 wiz - alt
1 necro - alt
7 shaman
6 rogues
7 bards
9 monks
1 sk
4 rangers
9 clerics
11 warriors

progeny
6 berserkers
3 beastlords
5 enchies
4 mages
3 wizards
2 necros
11 shaman
11 rogues
2 bards
17 monks
1 druid
4 sks
14 rangers
4 paladins
22 clerics
20 warriors

fusion
the current high end guild, this is where i think you will find it most apparent
the current balance of classes, what better information to pull than the people beating all
of the content


1 berserker
1 beastlord
1 enchanter
1 magician
2 wizards
6 shaman
2 rogue
6 bards
3 monks
3 druids
1 sk
5 rangers
2 paladins - the guild mt's
8 clerics
5 warriors

They have one wizard who is raid geared to their tier, their zerker is pretty well geared, their bst and the rest of the in classes are not, look at the gear on the chars, their rogues are 22khp+, their two monks who've been guilded for a while are 18khp+,

i'll throw out the crew i have been killing ct and xeg with, as i'm the other 'high end killing
person'

2 shaman
2 cleric
2 monks
1 rogue
1 bard
2 warriors

all of the melee are 20k+ hp and my two priests are 23k mana + and the other cleric is 18k

I'm not goin to go through and add up those numbers, it's apparent at a glance the current
classes that are the top in their respective categories

Clerics are the top healing ( they should be )
warriors are the top tanks ( they should be, altho fusion proves u can mt with paladins )
melee dps absolutely dominate the guild rosters, they are currently on top

I don't have the time or the drive to go and parse a bunch of classes to give you exact numbers
I know roughly where the melee dps fall and I've seen how poor caster damage is

Currently, Rogues / Monks are nearly equal for dps, being that nearly every mob on this server that's worth
killing in the high end rampages, rogues I think have an edge over us because of the increased AC on their gear
It wasn't like that on live, next are rangers, and then probably warriors

nobody, let me say it again for positive emphasis, nobody uses int casters at all ( not even 1 ) to
kill pofear, poair, fire etc. They aren't used because they aren't worth using, I've seen the staff
post time and time again asking for parses, I don't have that for you, but I do have a lot of eq experience
high end and I've played high end on this server longer than nearly anyone, save maybe kermit
I'm telling you int casters are broken, they're weak, they max at 4k-5k dps going all out and
it's a limited amount of time before they OOM, IMO, they need a 40% boost across the board.

There are currently two wizards at 19k mana, the rest of the enchies mages and necs i could find pretty much topped at 15k mana, with the exception of milein who was 17k. I'm not even going to go through and add up the amount of priests topping 20k, but it's clear in this respect that people aren't gearing int casters, at all... there are two exceptions and they still fall well below of where they top end priests are.

A high end wizard should be able to do 7k consistently, 10k burst. Mages should be right behind them, consistently around 6k bursting to maybe 8k.

I would say they should be able to burn, with a 20k+ mana pool for a minute and a half before refreshing with a mana click they shouldn't consistently stay where they are at, 3 miutes is a good amount of time for a wiz to be chain nuking

Druids imo are under played because people don't know their strength, they provide excellent utility with their epic 2. for those of you who dont know, it increases all spell damage on the mob by 50% ( i believe,dont quote ) they heal in between clerics and shamans, their downfall is that they dont get a group heal, which is something i'd like to see them get it shouldn't compare to the cleric group ch (10k base for 6 secs after spell focus for 1100 mana) but something along the lines of 5k base with a 6 sec cast after spell focus for 1300 ) the rest of the classes are roughly where they need to be, i see more knights coming up now than i ever have, they are a good tank class, between the defensive disc and tov leg click, they hold their own, and serve the purpose of providing ae aggro, something warriors don't have

The other class I didn't mention is berserkers. The reason, imo, that berserkers aren't close to rangers rogues and monks is because they can't duel wield, so much of the melee dps on this server is proc based, that even with the boosts they've received in white damage, they always get owned by dual wielding classes in the long run. Go check magelo's and see how many ranger's, knight's, warrior's are using 2hers. I'll save you time, zero, I haven't seen a single person outside of zerkers using 2h damage for any consistent use ( tanking, dps, etc ). Nobody uses it because of all of the proc damage you get from dual wielding. You have the bard proc song, shm epic 2 click, panther maw, rogue and monk 2.0s and most use the call of lightning click from ssra. Berserkers basically miss half of all of that damage because they're only swinging with one weapon, and it's delay is a lot higher than the 1hers everyone else is using. I'd suggest giving them a ber only aug that they can place in their gear that gives him roughly 140% spell damage, all the other melee are capping at 80%, so it doesn't make sense to keep them on everyone else's level.

These aren't perfect scenarios, these are one way, one idea to try and help fix the classes that are broken and undeprlayed, i urge the rest of the raiding community to post you're opinions and idea's along with mine, hopefully the staff decides to make some serious changes.

This became a long post, I apologize, but I finally had some time to put my thoughts on to the forums

-Harney

[Harney]

It probably doesn't read real smoothly it's late and I've had a terrible head cold all day, but, I wanted to address this topic nontheless, my apologies in advance if parts of it don't read correctly, I believe you will be able to understand what I'm trying to say

[Kron]

just going to build on what is mentioned specifcically about casters.

They are really terrible at the high end content. So much so that my wizard Xenobius who loots trash only (at 16k mana fully buffed) is almost useless at raids. Have a wizard cast Chaotic Detonation at Cazic Thule and watch the "Your target resisted so and so". Hence its pointless brigning him anymore.

As Harney mentioned there is no point in parsing wizard fights, the inherent problems are obvious in comparison to other classes.

[Kuldiin]

As Harney mentioned there is no point in parsing wizard fights, the inherent problems are obvious in comparison to other classes.

As a warrior I could plow through a collection LDON with a Pally bot in 4 minutes. As a wizard it would take me 15-30 mins solo.

I wouldnt even bother trying to take a caster again through a LDON solo, something which a melee can do with ease (not just warrior).

Another big problem (using LDON as an example) in a full group by the time the melees have taken down a mob, its not worth a wizard even trying to get off a chaotic detonation as the mob would be long dead.

[Valsavis]

As a necro with a beasty bot I plow thru ldons in like 10 mins.... would be faster if I didn't have to loot. Granted most of this is pet dps, I just tap occasionally to stay alive. Another approach aside from just upping the numbers is toying with resists on the higher end monsters/adding encounters that are weak to spell dmg. I think too often people might be thinking up the dmg to compensate on these things but it really seems that upping the dmg is what caused more of these unbalances(refering to ratios in melee gear). Balancing also always seems to come back to the DW vs 2H topic an honestly it's to be expected. 2handers are nice and flashy and they look really impressive at a glance with their high dmg ratings, but where it really falls into place imo is the fact that when you use a 2hander you aren't getting in as many attacks per second so when you miss you really notice it. Instead of trying to make a wep that exceeds the dmg caps why not just increase the overall hit % on a 2handed wep? On live zerkers do a decent job keeping up with rogues dps wise but it was accomplished mainly by limiting the ratios on rogue piercers and setting caps on rogues lower on skills like triple attack. ( I used to always agrue to zerkers on my rogue back in live that they'd be smoked if rogues got 2 1 handers that were half what their 2 handers were.... this server kinda helps support my theory )

[Tyler]

I agree on alot of your points Harney - although im not sure if its the right direction to up Caster dps even more. If anything, personally, i feel that stats are already way too high.

When we started THF, it was for fun. We never thought that 1 year later we have a stable community of around 150ppl online each and every night. The success is overwhelming and our progression doesn't quite add up to what we originally thought out (tier 4 lol as if anyone would ever play here).

Now we work on Tier7. Stats are too high, dps is way too high etc. I keep telling that but no one is really willing to do the necessary actions - read massive nerf of melee dps and stats in general.

I keep increasing caster gear, Heck Wizards now get a 11.5k base nuke, critting for about 50k. That is totally obscene amount of Damage done and yet thats not enough to match melee DPS. The solution can not be to upgrade caster dps.

Damage done by procs is also too much. I tried to cut it down some with the "nerf" of the Panther line. Then again, this game is about fun, and having huge procs definately is fun, i know that.

Anwyays im rambling. Bottom line is, Wizards should be TOP DPS as long as they have mana. Thats currently not the case and without serious nerf of current available gear there will never be some sort of sane balance.

[Taladome]

Wizards being worked on as far as I can tell they are listening and hopefully will get things improved as I love wizards was my main for many years and on live wizards owned when it came to dps not many could touch a well equiped wizard. Back in the days before raid management windows etc everyone wanted to be in the wiz group to get the kill which was almost always a guaranteed thing. I send rogues in at 90% but I can start my wiz nuking full bore from the start of the fight and never have to worry about taking agro. Thats a good and very bad thing. Makes all those memory flux, ancient concussion clickies kinda worthless. I think the only way that wizards are going to be truely fixed is to reduce the cast times and mana cost of those big nukes.

As for zerkers I agree and they keep going on about scaling back other melee damage because the cap on weapons is 255 but your right, its not the weapons problem its the procs. Even with the current augs that cast lures etc that nuke is just not big enough to help people weilding 2handers out. Give them a zerker only high damage proc maybe 3-5k base then youll level out the playing field. Or, if that seems overpowered give them a low resist dot proc that puts the dps in a fixed state and would overwrite itself every proc.

Taladome

[Tyler]

Created 2 effects that will go on the Epic Berserker 2h weapons - Fury I does 125 % Spell Damage Increase, Fury 2 does 150% spell damange increase.

Anyone sees an obvious technical exploit im missing? Also - what to do with Knights since they have spells?

[Harney]

Knights imo are in a pretty good situation atm, I've been playing a lot with Andy as of late and he does a pretty good job at the same thing harney does ( tanking ). I'd be more than willing to hear Therion / Julius post but paladins seem to be just fine, can't really coment on sk's.

[Relnon]

SK's tank about as well as pallies, but I feel that their damage could use a little love. I posted my SK main's dps in the parse thread, and granted hes pretty low by gear standards its still pretty laughable compared to my equally geared/AA'd monk.

Heck, his pet makes up a third of his dps.

Make SK DoTs/Lifetaps .5 second cast like their nuke line. When the spell cast causes an SK to miss an autoattack swing it often results in a drop in dps. So casting DoTs actually hurts you.

A double attack from the donator equals about 1.4k damage if it hits for max. Our best DoT does 227 damage over 6 ticks (1362 damage). Our lvl69 nuke does 1250 and its a .5 second cast, and you don't have to wait 36 seconds for it to do its damage.

TLDR: Our DoTs currently serve no purpose.