EZ Server

Anyone have a class(es) that feels weak or under-used?

If so:

• Why?
• Where are you in the game? (progression; what tier?)
• Charm Level, Epic, and relevant gear related notes (i.e. RoA 300)

Just curious as I don't have enough time to run a variety of combos. I have heard a few complaints about druids and shamans. Anyone have anything else?


-Hate


EDIT: Not trying to massively revamp anything, just trying to find something to do at work for the next day or two until another obscene task/project starts.

just a humble opinion here, but since enchanters don't have charm, what are they useful for? I made one, but really don't feel like they have any sort of advantage.  correct me (gently) if I'm wrong, i'm always looking to improve my game  ;D

I just made a beastlord and I am in T5. I find myself having to recast  the pet multiple times where I don't have to with the necro pet. Also the cast time to summon the 4.0 bst pet seems 2 or 3 sec longer than the necro at the same tier. I feel like the melee on the beastlord seems subpar but maybe I haven't been paying much attention to it.

I will agree that maybe enchanters need something. They have haste click on epics up until 4.0 (in which they start getting controllable pets). They have a resist debuff, decent cooldown (reagent-free) rune, mana regen buff (group), group haste, Ancient: Vampiric Thunder, and group crit chance proc (5.0 and above).

I just don't know what to do for the enchanter though. Some form of debuff possibly, just dunno what. (Slow, Stun, and Charm are out...sorry)



Are you running solo beastlord or using beastlord pet to tank? The Beastlord pet should be doing some nasty damage, but should be less durable. The melee on the beastlord is going to be subpar without augs and charms. If you are in T5 without a Sorc41+ and at least SOME aug(s), that will likely explain it. :-)


-Hate

Any melee class without augs and charm is going to be sub par. A beastlord properly aug'd and charmed can out dps any other equally geared toon so it is only fair that it has to be handled with a lot of finesse.

Not tanking with the beastlord at all. It just seems the pet HP's are a tad low and the cast time is a little high. Might boost one or drop the other.

Sorry if that sounded demeaning, it's just something that happens here. Some people think they can solo through the game with a single DPS.

The HP on pet is actually fairly high and the pet stonewall should be helping. There is also the quick cast beastlord pet heal (and the rest of the group healing hopefully). The cast time is supposed to be decent enough so players AREN'T chain summoning pets. If so, then something is wrong. :-)


-Hate

I gave up on BST pet. Cant use the necklace anymore, and the buff is pretty much meaningless. This is with setting pet on the mobs ass. Pet still dies all too often from area damage. My BST has a BU weapon, so I sometimes use him for melee dps, but I dont even bother with the pet anymore. Worthless.

Other than that....my druid is at best a buffbot. The dps isnt stellar, even with 41 sorc and epic click. Also.....am I the only one who sometimes catches the damage from their own druid epic?

Hmm, is it rampaging bosses? (basically pets killing themselves?)



Druids have not been forgotten. Actually working on something for them and shaman types at the moment. No, the click is a small 1 wave aoe rain (4 target max). If you are within the small aoe, it WILL hit you.


-Hate

My drood breaks herself quite often.    I understand Skin of the Drake is a big dps boost.    Can cause IA3 to crit for 100k

A long kraken!?!  ::)

I agree with Xiggie....maybe put some type of augs for caster types or make the pets as frigging gimp as a mellee class w/o augs...maybe make pets tier up like mellee augs...

Some people stated in OOC that kraken is broken?? that it takes proc slot from augs.

Ah, the old proc slot myth.  Every aug and every buff can proc every swing.  There is a limit to the number of procs that can be added via buff, something like 4, I'm too lazy to look it up again, but it is totally separate from weapon or aug procs.

Gathered from OOC tonight that enchanter could still use a bit of love. After looking into it a bit more, I found a few things that might work out for EZ.

I also found that the druid still feels a bit awkward. They are a jack of all trades, but possibly too much so. Hopefully this will be remedied soon. Looking at a few options to slightly up their offensive capabilities, but not drastically so.

Shaman should be in a good spot once these next few spells go live. Maybe a short duration "battle buff", but not sure what else.

I will double check notes on pets to see if beastlord pets are really exceptionally weak or if there is some other culprit.

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If anyone else has anything, PLEASE throw it out there soon or email me (hateborne@gmail.com) with it. I will be locking this thread in another day or two in order to prevent it from becoming the standard, derailed, pissing match. :-D


-Hate

I run all the pet classes and the BST pet has this nasty positioning issue that you really have to micro manage.  Since the casters remain in the back row during combat their pets run back to them but the BST stays up with the other melee so.... when you pull another group on top of your melee toons there is the BST pet taking it in the teeth.  

The workaround is to pull well past the melee toons and let them attack from behind (as per the norm), but especially critical when there is a BST pet present.  Bst pets do die more often than the others, but it's from frontal ramp damage.  Proper positioning works.

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Encs vamp thunder has a proc boost in it that lasts a few seconds then... wears off.   Run that proc up to a few minutes (ala Kraken) and they would be semi useful.  I use mine as a place holder in T5/T6 and never bothered to get him his T6 bits.  Or, maybe have them spawn a vendor pet or have those dopplegangers cast Glacial Gift ;)

More top end DoTs for necros would be nice.  I only have one that seems sort of useful atm... haven't seen one in T7 yet so I don't know if  there is one there yet or not so it could just be RNG in T6/7 that have me asking for more?  The one I did get from T6 was Shackles (snare dot?)... useless on mobs immune to changes in run speed?  Dunno... never tried it.

I like what you did with Shamen.  3 very useful DoTs + Malo makes them worth more than a Kraken bot.

Druids are OK.  2 useful DoTs and a nuke + Regen.  Drake skin is useless for my purposes so if you can remove/seriously lower that recast restriction it would be a boon to that class.  Once you break in a new zone and get your tank out fitted the Druid goes back in the bag as he has nothing to offer that other classes don't exceed.

What about a type of gate spell target enemy to force them to return to their spawn point?

Also would be probably ok to edit current charm/mez spells to allow higher levells, although might not allow on certain bosses via specialattak

IIRC ... Bard song Highsun was the one that returned a mob to bind and while it was a fun spell to play with it really did not meet the raid spec that we live by here.  It was more of a HOLY SHIT ... get out of death card for the solo bard that I seldom ever memmed.  Here (IMHO) we want those mobs on us.  If it was a PBAOE that sent those T7 ambush mobs back to Neverland (and the trader counter still remained) it would be HUGE.

On Charm... If Dire Charm worked (Druid and Enc) that would be awesome.  I played Bard and Enc and on raids would "occasionally" grab one to charm and use when returning to lower level content, but the workload to maintain the pet was counter productive in most all respects.

On Mez... another workload intense spell that is great for a first person Enc.  There are AE Mez spells as well, and while they often result in a dead ENC at some point I can see where they would be very useful in T6.  AE Mez + Tash + Single (Long duration) Mez.

Great ideas.  I never thought we would see Charm/Mez return.  Huzzah!

Proc that lasts a few seconds? Do you mean Gift of Force (+crit% for ~22sec)?

Ancient: Vampiric Thunder lasts several hours currently.



You would be surprised how many mobs AREN'T movement speed immune. That's why I wrote them. :-)

The spells are staggered intentionally so it feels more like the old EQ (in terms of drop rates). The spells + pet should do some heavy damage. I will admit that some of the powerhouse groups instagib mobs, that really isn't something that can be fixed. However, not every class will be 100% utilized during 100% of the play session (looking at my wizard army and manaburning boss... *sadface*).

Lastly, if you only got that one spell...you've got three more to go. From my info: you lack "Avatar of Undeath", "Cloak of the Night III", and "Insinuations of Mori III". I would HIGHLY recommend you find Mori.



Thank you, but shaman aren't done yet. Hopefully lower end melee proc on epic and two small group heals (think lesser Word of Viv without cure).



It does look like the duration may be incorrect actually, but the cooldown is really fine in my humble opinion. Supposed to be ~15-16 second up time with 30 second recast.

Hopefully with the addition of the druid/shaman aoe heal whenever the bossman makes the changes, the druids should be VERY worthy of their spot. Since their HoTs + group heal + situationals + DoTs  should be ok for new or on-par players. I admit that once you are taking ~5sec or less for fight, they possibly seem less useful. I am not in favor of turning every class into a death ray to help instagib everything (but that is another discussion for another thread). As I mentioned above, I will possibly up their offensive end shortly. Not sure how much or how so, which means no definitely answers yet.

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Thank you for the input Kwai. :-D


Anyone have anything else? Likely locking thread tonight (~12h from now), so post or email today pleeeeease.


-Hate

i remember there being a pretty good conversation in ooc a while back about the rogue epics all having the same backstab mod from the 2.5+, was this intended?

The mod from my understanding may be a maximum value if memory serves. Either that or the value broke past it (say max value is +100, but we have +500; anything over 100 is useless).

Either way, the click effect on the backstab does some horrifying bonus on backstab as it is. :-)


-Hate

Completely delayed response, the necklace cannot be traded directly to the pet. It can be traded to the owner (and then to their pet). If the necklace has been made NO DROP, then that will need to be fixed.

-Hate

yeah, rogues are still up there with monks. i was asking more out of curiosity then anything.

black unicorn wep has what, 2500 bs dmg on it? so thats pretty much useless then? god id hate to see that dagger if the mod actually worked!

heres something for you hate. My zerker's T1 boots nexus clicky don't work, its listed as Nexus Gate (unknown activation), when i click it, it will start to cast but nothing will happen afterwards and ill have to relog since it wont let me click anything or move.

Noted, I'll check them when I get home tonight. Can you give me the item id for them? :-D


-Hate

100204

Ok,  clearly SK needs a 100% SW spell plus a proc that gives the uber BU dps. 


In all seriousness,  how about an increase in duration on the One Man Band   Bard  5.0?

Hehe won't happen. It's intended to be a short duration, high damage output group buff.

-Hate

Yeah, I'm not sure what it is, but you cast Ancient Vamp Thunder... switch toons to cast again and you start seeing.... "wears off" the previous targets start popping up. 

If that were a group spell it would not be so bad, but retargeting and casting on 12 melee toons during battle is just more of a hassle than I am willing to deal with.  It might be great for a first person Chanter, but less bang for the slot when boxing.  I'll probably get shot for this, but why not limit the duration on Ancient Vamp to 2 mins (like Kraken) and make it a group spell with the Gift of Force component intact for the entire duration?

It is a group buff. It's set to 3 ticks (18sec) but can be extended to nearly 4 (22sec). It procs on the group of the target if defensive (or seems to anyway) or on the enchanter's group if offensively casting. An actively attacking (spamming Insanity) enchanter can keep 80% uptime.


Heh or we could just put in a group version of it. :-)


-Hate

on the mez thing if bards could mez it would make breaking in to some of the higher content smoother i remember trying to pull a boss in t5 off a single mob when i first got in there it was like wipe rez fest cause you cant hardly split them and t6 was same way with pulling multiple trash mobs when first starting in on it i rezed more from getting multiple trash mobs then anything else.  having bards able to single target mez would be nice.

Random Update!

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Actually got quite a lot done today. If the enchanter can't find a spot after some of this, then there is no hope. A variety of utilities are being written to help the enchanter control the fight directly or indirectly. Won't spoil them all, as Hunter has final say on these...but I'll spoil two.

Timeless: Vampiric Thunder [Group AVT (60min duration)]
Coat of Bright Lights [Target buff, lasts 30 seconds or 5 procs; adds defensive proc 18s Mezz]



-Hate

Random Questions!

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What could be done to make druids more appealing?

My flawed opinions:

• Get them out of melee range
• Up ranged DPS capabilities
• Possibly caster-friendly group buff (short duration)

Looking at also building an EXTREMELY useful boss handling spell, a combo system to better suggest alternating heals and nukes, and something else.



-Hate

I'd say write custom spells in perl if you know what I am talking about.

Have a spell that does nothing... but the perl quest for that spell every time it lands on a player or a NPC it does something.

Helped someone with one that is 10 Buffs... every time you cast the spell you get 1 stack of the buff ... all the way to 10. (just an idea)

Can do other things with it as well.

I am not speaking for anyone else when I say what my opinion is here. I am also not speaking against or nulling anyone else's opinion here, especially yours Hate because you have contributed so much to the community that I really appreciate.

Over the years I have seen a lot of changes come over this class and that. I have seen classes that were so utterly useless they got p99 jokes made when people rolled them. I have seen that same class (pally) become so useful that they were in nearly everyone's group. One thing I have noticed is the more you make a class that has to be handle the less handle it will be. This is a boxing server. Put a class in there that has to be individually played or is high maintenance and the class will be highly under played. Even the shaman with it's super useful Kraken spell was relegated to the outside of my group to keep me fresh on kraken and be there to cast HP buff. The only reason he got there was because I could get more dps out of him than I could if I added another toon, until you get way high in augs. It was nearly free dps and the hp are quite substantial.

Short duration buffs, unless they are crazy good and equal more than what I could get out of another toon are crap to me. Even a 20k regen, I have my heals covered by toons that heal for more and offer more dps. Why would I bother with something that is 20k regen for 30 seconds or 5 minutes when I have a cleric that will heal me for tons more and it does not have to way 6 seconds for a tic, or a pally who is also doing much more than that and does serious dps to boot. And as far as anyone having any notion of an idea to nerf pally or cleric, don't break one class to fix another. (Am not saying anyone has suggested that just wanted to head off any random thoughts anyone might have.)

Dots. They don't work. Not for the content that is out there on EZ. Sure when you first break a zone and your fights are longer because you lack the dps you can get from there then the dots have some value. But it is diminishing returns. The more I up my dps the less my dots do because they don't have time to tic. And a dot that doesn't have time to tic is not a dot anymore, it is a DD. Why should I create and outfit a class that will become less and less viable to me as I master new content when I can create loads of other classes that will get better and better as I progress. And the answer is not more dots, or even bigger dots. It's dots don't work for this content.

The best way to get me to put something in my group is to give me something that is not going to take away from what I already have in my group. Give me a druid that can turn into a dog and get rabid on some mobs plus have medium duration buffs (30 mins?) that are more traditional to the class. Make it so he can have firestrike augs and do about 85% of the dps as other melee toons. I know some may thing, 'oh you just made another monk', no, I made a monk that can cast a hefty regen and a nice ds! Give me an enchanter that can turn into a werewolf and go into a berzerker rage and again does 85% of traditional melee damage. Again, it's not a monk but a monk with nice buffs.

As much as some will dislike making them viable dps classes that is what it would take for me to dismiss one of my toons and put it in my group.

That was a nice post Xiggie. From a personal point of view I totally agree with you. For me, this is a boxing server where people rely on classes being "easy to handle". I like the idea and view around druids, shamans and enchanters being able to melee, with a reduced amount of dps. I think people are willing to sacrifice some DPS when they can get useful buffs/debuffs in return.

Druids are fine... Remove the stupid 4 target limit on their epic click and re release them.

+1 to Xiggie, keep druid's melee

+1   To Xiggies comment.     Classes need to be low maintenance and high value. 

I like this idea... alot!  Kicked it around over night and can see where it would be Very useful in T6.  However, for T7 it would be less so.  T6 you know you are going to get adds and when they will come so 30 secs is peachy.  You also know who the target will be so that's who needs this spell.  In T7 you never know, so 30 secs would be fairly impotent and having the spell on your lead toon only might not get the job done. 

Could you consider bumping up the duration to 2 mins/5 procs and making that a group spell?  That would give you time to travel while giving trailing toons a chance to survive.

Talked about this some last night. Add alil dps to the class (perhaps a caster spell thats as useful as kraken, that helps raise caster dps at range) and something to make druids positioning masters: mob CoH, push, something. Would be especially useful in places like T5.

I am not keen on bumping up the duration that high or making it a group spell. I might bump the duration a bit, but there are other tools being made available.  ;)


-Hate

Last chance to post your thoughts. Closing this tonight as I've pretty much concluded my tests and have several new abilities written up (that I have to test :-P).


SUBMIT IT NOW!


-Hate

Would be cool to see a druid group buff utilizing the wolf illusions. Maybe a melee proc effect off an epic that increases group crit chance or defensive mitigation that lasts 15-30 sec in the bard song window. Sort of like fists of wu or something. I like the wolf illusion in that so you could easily see from other windows that it is indeed proc'd. Could even make it proc with a few options like wolf illusion, increase def mitigation by 10%, increase crit chance by 10%, add 10,000 hit point absorption and 10,000 hit point regen for endurance/mana/hp. Going up from there per epic level, obviously group only.

I dunno, just tossing an idea out... lets brainstorm !

Illusions like that would likely cause lag. Especially when you are changing the illusions of 6 12 or 18 toons at one time. We had the same issue with boss 2 in anguish and some of the t4 bosses that would root you and change you into earth elemental illusion. Plus the barking sound that comes along with the illusion is kind of annoying and they get stuck sometimes on stairs.

Well it would have to be group buff only and a 15 sec duration to force you to keep it in the main group. Noise wouldn't bother me that's all off anyway, but I see your point if it was on.  :-\

I think it is already been proved that short duration is not the way to go to keep a toon in your group. Especially when the amount of dps I will get off that toon is not going to equal the amount of dps I can get if I just put another dps toon in my group. Shaman is the only one that has broken that rule in my opinion. I know there are bout to be straglers here and there who do use the short durations from underplayed classes but those are not the norm and are few and far between. The only reason why shaman broke that is because it can buff 2 groups with one cast and therefore equal more dps that one melee AND give you the biggest hp buff in the game to boot.

Sorry, not trying to put anyone's idea down. It would be a nice little bump in damage just without the illusion because of the lag.

Was trying to figure out what could make a druid desired in a main group and that was all i could come up with.  :-\

Thanks for all the input ladies/gents/trolls. Seriously, thanks to all that contributed!

Closing thread to prevent unavoidable derail at one point.


-Hate