Always a fun topic right?
I know, so try not to turn this into a "nerf this" or "soandso is overpowered!!" rant and flame fest...
Anyway, been hearing some talk about changes that might happen so wanted to get some hints from thems that know (Hunter?) and provide some of my feedback..
First off, my group is currently paladin ranger druid. All are 3.0 with level 20-30 charms, T1/T2 gear and MossyVs on weapons (none of those Million-pp augs *cough*). Seems to me the paladin's damage output is far ahead of the ranger which seems completely backwards to me, especially given the uber-healing of the paladin. The druid... well she's just there to soak up leather drops, though the regen is decent I guess. Her Dots and nukes are a complete joke at this level (I calculate about 1k dps... paladin does closer to 20k... ranger probably 3/4 to 1/2 that..)
I've never seen T3+ so can't comment on that.
T1 bosses are pretty trivial for me, but take a while to kill.. basically the paladin on /autoattack and /afk and wait for the win.
T2 bosses take FORFREAKINEVER to kill, especially when the adds spawn minis and let's not even talk about the Kronos fight... (truly sleep-inducing). It's not the tanking or the healing, again paladin on /afk auto attack will almost never die... just not enough firepower from the ranger/druid - and yes believe it or not I do tab over to the druid and drop dots/rains .. why I don't know.. probably just bored!
Thoughts:
Everyone thinks the Pal is overpowered, and I think I agree at least from the damage standpoint. IMO if you cut the Pal epic's damage proc in half but kept the healing the same I think you'd be on the right track. People would still want a paladin in group (or 2) but would consider using real "DPS" classes for DPS instead of just the current no-brainer "welp, throw in another Pal"...
In fact I seem to remember it wasn't that long ago around here people DID use rangers, monks, even rogues for DPS.... and then everything changed when we started relying on procs to do most of our damage..
Of course you'd need to seriously beef up the melee DPS classes. Please, withOUT relying on mega-expensive augs. Honestly I feel relying so heavily on proc damage for DPS is going down the wrong road. I know that's an easy route since making changes to melee damage, or mob AC, is a very complicated process... but at least for the love of gosh if that's the solution, put them on the ranger/monk/etc epics directly... or at least give us dropped/inexensive augs (like Angers) for ALL classes.
So the druid then... how about some Dots and nukes for caster classes that drop in T1 and below? Because right now all these classes are basically buffbots - at best. The pet classes have seen pets beefed up a little, but pets are hard to use. Wizards got a T3 spell, but how about some sub-T3 love, and some love (DPS love) for other casters? Ideas - Dots for druid, necro, etc that do decent DPS, start dropping in QVIC and get more powerful from there on. Shamans - how about a slow or mob weaken that actually works? Enchanters got a nice magic buff, and I know charm and mez is probably not making a comeback, but how about a nice line of Runes, starting in Qvic that absorb say 2-3k damage, ramping up to T3+ at 50k-100k (or more)?
Anyway this is getting long... these are just ideas, I know Hunter/etc is real busy and all this stuff takes time, not looking for overnight massive sweeping changes that fix everything... just some IMO thoughts and ideas... what do you think?