SOE delivers ANOTHER low blow to paladins!

[Achillez]

I find out today there is going is a patch going live soon which will enable SoD raids to be request as a *hard* version with a better loot table. I am sure I am not the only one thinking this is just ANOTHER addition which paladins get the blunt end of. As of now almost all SoD events are timed and completely DPS oriented meaning paladins have very little use in a raid. Cutting the raid to 36 means paladins will not be sought out at ALL, and dps classes will only be wanted in raid. Also limiting the raid to is pretty much going to result in no room for paladins. HAVE FUN IN DECK GUYS, THANKS SOE!

[Cactuszach]

Links to the test guild's dkp page that beat queen and BB:
http://eq-tsf.com/TSFDKP/viewraid.php?s ... 15f4&r=672
http://eq-tsf.com/TSFDKP/viewraid.php?s ... 15f4&r=671

Sick loot AND essences.

[Fethiel]

While I can understand your concern. Looking at the DKP tables you can see they have 5 Paladins in each of the raids. Perhaps the hard raids will be better suited to more DPS but it appears a good raid team can beat this with using up to 5 Paladins.

I know I am curious to see how this plays out with guilds and will save my thoughts of doom and gloom for the Paladin class until I see how we are included (Or not included as you seem to be worried about.).

[Wyvernwill]

The first that any guild will cut is the useless chaff... regardless of class. This is the key reason I am not worried in the slightest... as a raider, I carry my weight, and the weight of 2-3 others. Sure, my guild would probably love if I was a wizard, or a warrior or a cleric... but I'm 99.9999% certain I wouldn't be dropped just because I'm a Paladin.

[Normy]

Yea, I'm just getting into some of the SoD raids, so maybe I'm blind, but there are several mechanisms in place on these raids that still make offtanking and kiting a requirement. No ranger will be able to offtank in my spot.

It is probably true that if your guild runs with 7-10 active knights, some will have to sit for other key classes. My guild is heavy on knights and so will have to sit some if we do these "hard" raid modes, but I don't think that it will be picked purely based on excluding the paladin or shadowknight classes.

I mean, if your guild runs with 8 chanters, likely some of those will sit. If you typically run with 8 warriors, expect to sit a few for these events. Its just the way it will be.

I don't view this as targetted at Paladins however. Its just SoE's way of providing a little more content to those that found SoD very easy, and it doesn't require any reworking of major code. Just a slight adjustment to the player cap and a few additional loot pieces added in.

To me, this might be kinda fun. I've already taken on the queen event with 36 people due to a bad showing one night, so I know how possible it is. Not sure how much fun the Rottrued event will be, think the lowest we've pulled it before was with 41.

[Achillez]

I'm not really speaking of under raids but tower raids in general. I believe 5/7 of the tower raids are timed dps based events. Right now guilds that have been raiding tower for a while can fairly comfortably make the time limit for all these events. Cutting the raid down by 1/3 will absolutely REQUIRE the raid to be packed with as many pure dps classes as possible or statistically it will just not be possible. Even for offtanking in some of these timed events, why would a raid ever desire a 2k max dps paladin over a 4k dps warrior or 5k dps SK? Right now we are not the most desired raid class in SoD due to our low dps output in a maze of timed dps events. Making these timed encounters even more dps oriented by cutting the raid size to 36 will only exemplify how undesirable we are in SoD raids.

[shiftie]

I don't wanna be all doom and gloom but we are seriously screwed

Tower level loot dropping from queen/rottrued the incentive isn't to try the hard mode it is to reduce the raid size permenantly.

How important does the lack of dps become then?

[Genadinee]

Thinking only of Tower Events then I would personally think:

Event 1 - No need for Knights, Wars can handle the adds.
Event 2 - Possible use for 1 SK for control purposes before Chanters take over.
Event 3 - 2 Knights either breed for Lanys and FV.
Event 4 - No need for Knights.
Event 5 - Possible use for 1 SK for control purposes before Chanters take over, Wars on adds.
Event 5.5 - No need for Knights.
Event 6 - 1 SK to control the bugs.
Event 7 - No need for Knights.

Knights on the other hand will be warmly welcomed for the Trash clearing allowing Wars to rest up for next event, particularly the Lightning Dudes.

Though if you really are a High DPS Guild then you can substitue a Good Knight for any War in any Event.

Something else to take into consideration is the other Hybrids, Rangers & Beastlords. Would you take one if you had an equally skilled / geared Rogue, Zerker, Wizz, Mage???

[shiftie]

[knytul]

just a lil addon..Event 6. Pally stun on the Crystalline mobs helps charmers out quite a bit. Stun a mob once or twice while they get charm off. esp useful when u dealin w/ bards charm.

[shiftie]

[Brohg]

I think Wyvernwill has the right take on this. If you're on the chopping block it's not because there's [85 Holy Defender (Paladin)] in front of your name. Without naming names, I can think of several druids, necros, clerics, shaman, warriors in my guild that would get the axe before the second paladin was cut.

[knytul]

yes and no...while most guilds are gonna go thru the 36 with their 36 best players...if u have say 37 good players, a paladin would be the first to be sittin out. has been that way since.....at least OoW.

[Sylvia Sunhair]

[Ughbash]

On a side note Rotrud is actually a very knight friendly encounter.

You probably are NOT going to want DPS only at the totems.

And the final fight is tank and spank so no real DPS requirement.

As for tower events, in most cases there is no need for anyone.

Event 1 and 6 are the only two with a real time limit (though DPS obviously helps on the rest).

Just a note and I will not say all were in as I do not know how many were sitting out of ANY class but last night we had 6 paladins and 4 Sk's at raid (out of 60 people) only class with more was clerics at 10. We tend to have a lot of knights. I doubt we had more than 1 paladin sitting out if we had any sitting out.

[Normy]

I'm not in tower yet, so maybe my perspective will change by then, but I'm still hella useful as a group-keeper-aliver type, also known as a healer. True it takes alot out of me, but no ranger I know of can match me for that. If we have enough healers throughout the raid I guess I wouldn't be needed, but not all guilds are group-healer-happy enough for this either.

[shiftie]

[knytul]

[knytul]

[Ughbash]

[Normy]

Well of course it could be a shaman, or a druid, or a cleric for that matter. I'm pointing out that not all guilds are going to field group healers for every group all the time. A monk being with a shaman makes perfect sense, we always put the melee DPS with a shammy if we have the choice, but if you have 1 shaman on the raid, that is where our ability to heal can be handy, and far outclasses rangers and beasts heal spells.

[Sylvia Sunhair]

[knytul]

That kind of variety im gonna guess u guested with CD a few times?

[Valandil]

[Ughbash]

Well yesterday we did a few hard mode tasks for the first time.

Queen, Venom Lord, and Mindshear.

There did not seem to be a shortage of knights in the raid (people in and out of raid got DKP, and for Korafax raids people outside could bid and be subbed in to loot). For the Queen we had 3 warriors, 2 paladins and 2 SK's in for the fight. 0 monks.

For venom lord there was 1 monk in (Myself) and again 3 or 4 knights.

For Mindshear similar setup.

So your fears that paladins would go to the wayside as soon as hard tasks came out seem to have been misplaced (at least with the group of people I raid with).


Also suprisingly several poeple commented it was almost as if they made event easier (less adds etc).

[Genadinee]

We completed the Tower yesterday to see if we could get a serverwide first, the joys of being Euro for a change.

We had a blast apart from the Trash, that was long and boring, but in the end we finished Brekt with 15 mins left on the Expedition. We had 3 Paladins all night 1 SK who logged early(ish) and from 5 to 4 Wars. I was actually having a blast, first time in a long time I've healed, rezzed, cured, OT'd so much burn more mana last night than I would in a normal week of raids.

Getting Temporal Lord for our troubles was a nice gimme.

[knytul]

As far as a blow to paladins, its gonna be a guild by guild situation. Our guild had 37 show up to raids last nite for hard mode tower. was 1 monk who sat out. Later on a pally app got removed in place of a shaman. Then 1 dps swapped for another. So the 2 FM pallies were in the whole nite. Now some guilds ive been in field like 8-10 pallies alone...so yeah i can see a GOOD chance half or more would sit there...

[shiftie]

just because you only had 37 show up doesn't mean that is the norm... you lucked out really.

we had about 56-58 show up and of course all but 1 paladin was benched, sk got screwed too.

it is moronic that SoE considers this healthy for the game.

[knytul]

even tonite we had i think 47, first we did Rallos Returns Split in 2 so nobody sat, then rest of the nite did stuff like Tyranot and Korafax all 3 on hard 36.. The app paladin of course sat thru some, i only sat thru Tyranont because i ld'd zoning and RL made the 36 while i was LD. After that neither main pally sat the entire nite. Instead it was rangers, monks, and warriors who were rotating out. It really comes down to Mains > Apps, and Raid Leader Preference. Some RL's like to load up on 10 war's, 10 clerics, 1 chanter, and the rest Shaman and Rogues...Some like to keep it somewhat balanced. If you come in fielding 10 paladins, Yeah expect ALOT of them to sit...i wouldnt expect ANY raid leader to put in more than 3 paladins.. 1 would be kinda pushin it.. but still raid leader preference

[riou]

did pallorax and cryst tyra 36 man hard last night, 4 paladins in raid for both.

we have a 7 paladin main roster, only 1 sat out(1 wasn't online, the other wouldn't of been picked to sit out, but wanted to log).

there's nothing wrong with many paladins in 36 hard mode, the only issue that will come up would be on something like event 6 in tower, where there's a time limit.

[thurvok]

I have not quite made up my mind on this.. thought I had.. but the other night we did Queen Bug as hard with 36.. I was on the bench.. and VERY pissed and steamed off.. Our guild has yet to beat ANY FoS raids, Bloody Kith or Warrens.. we HAVE beaten Pallrox and Venom lord a few times but have yet to work on the 3rd dude in Korfax.. We are in Crystallos, but have yet to clear to even Brood mother ... So I thought why we bothering with this.. BUT I also thought that these raids on a hard setting would hit harder.. have more HP's .. etc .. etc.. but NO the raids appear to be exactly the same ( well queen sure was from reports I got).. the only diff is ya have to do the job with 36.. which we did.. then when loot dropped.. ALL in the raid.. even those on the bench ( like me) were allowed to bid on the loot using DKP.. I won the nice shiled that dropped .. Fell dragon shield .. ( Check magelo ) and was able to be task added and get it.. For some reason it seems raids in Bloody Kith, FoS and Warrens are harder than Korfax.. at least for our guild.. some of this loot might make it easier for us to win those.. I STILL want to be in the fight and HATE the idea of bench sitting.. but now plan to hold my tounge and wait 2-3 months more to speak up on this again and see how we handle these...

[Wyvernwill]

[shiftie]