The Spirit Realm

Elidroth made a post with some proposed changes to defensive

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=174222

Hmm who remembers PoP when Paladins tanked Quarm and made fun of warriors being un-needed. Was a bad timefor warriors, now granted warriors do have better aggro then before but getting rid of defensive will make them much less useful.

However this tunign down raid damge should help rangers tank too *chuckle* wonder if we will go to the ideal raid makeup of 48 rangers, 5 clerics and a shaman.

Interesting idea, and I understand where they are coming from.

However, the tank classes superior mitigation comes with a DPS penalty. If mob DPS is decreased, then more classes will be able to effectively tank more content. What will be done to help balance the abilities of the tank classes so they can compete for spots in the group game when other classes that create a lot more DPS can tank more content?

Hope they consider all the angles.

Boleslav

Tanks aren't bad dps. They're more like baseline dps. If warriors work at it, they can even be good dps, but of course generally they don't. People don't expect it so they don't try. That happens with healing classes even more. "Dps classes" are those that deal more than tanks. It's a perspective thing I suppose, based on the characters I usually use. One is dps+takes_damage_well (the warrior), one is dps+heals (the shaman), one is dps+good_tricks (the enc), one is dps+a_little_more_dps (the wizard).

Dps isn't being reduced universally to the same degree, that's in the original statement. The biggest change will come to raid mobs, with only a little change in normal group-play basepop. Using a monk with a shaman before, or a ranger with a cleric, to tank that stuff when a real tank couldn't be found was already more than possible before, only now maybe the equipment threshold won't be so high. That's a fine situation. Every class and even every archetype should be, for general "playing of the EverQuests", wanted but not needed.

In raids, lowering overall mob dps won't change how much better tanks tank overall than nontank classes. Berserkers will still take proportionately much more damage (and commensurately more healing) than warriors, they just won't get pancaked in a blink like before. The appropriate response to ranger-on-HoTT will still be "this isn't good", but the response will be, as I opine it should be, "I should heal him hard and get a tank to rescue his dumb ass sometime soon so we can get back to fighting" rather than "I should ask the rotation who's hitting defensive+taunt next, and rez that guy between the next couple spam Lights". Emergency powers were irrelevant before because any emergency situation was resolved by the one in crisis dying before the powers could be brought to bear.

What's being ignored in that eqlive discussion for the most part is historical precedent. Long ago in an expansion far, far away, guilds had 3ish warriors. Fights could last longer than 9 minutes. That didn't indicate to the highest level of recruiters that they should eschew all plate-wearing ninnies in favor of higher dps. Being able to take 3-6 hits from various dragons/giants/dieties didn't make dps classes 100% ignore agro management. The proposed changes to mob damage & defensive abilities are explicitly intended as a move in the direction of that era's gameplay.

Brohg, do you mind if I repost that post on the EQLive discussion? I think they're very valid points that are being missed entirely.

I still follow EQ discussion from time to time, but since I haven't played in some 3 years I find less and less to chime in on.

However, I actually feel I can provide interesting information here.

This may have changed, but Warriors are considered to be baseline melee DPS. Any 'DPS' class is 100+% of warriors (I forget the exact percentages per class) where as Knights are a percentage less then Warriors (I think I heard 75-80% way back when) because their spells are supposed to make up some of the difference. I believe this was from a conversation with Rasheree, so Brohg is correct.

The Defensive line of abilities affects the incoming damage distribution in a similar manner to attack debuffs (it modifies the formula, rather then adds an adjustment to it.) Historically however guilds would have to recruit several warriors to ensure that The Raid Boss being tanked was always being tanked by someone under Disc, or the chance of death was exceptionally high. This also determined the amount of mana expenditure the healers used to keep said tank alive. You flat out could simply last longer (in absence of anything like being overwhelmed) simply because you had a Warrior under Defensive the entire duration of the battle. There were of course fights were Evasive was better, but those were few and far between.

I stopped playing in SoF. Our raid makeup was a large reason for that. We had no enchanters when I quit and we had been unable to keep a 'smart' geared warrior for any duration of time. We simply (because we were also cleric light) could not deal with the mana expenditure to keep up a Knight tank for a sizable duration.

I play WoW now, and of my highest raid level characters 3 are tanks (Druid, Warrior, Death Knight) and 1 is a healer (shaman, just for you Pretty Kitty Princess). In WoW defensive cooldowns are on a shorter duration cooldown of 3 or less minutes, while at the same time lasting between 10 and 20 seconds. Under this model damage is roughly more consistent, but bosses tend to have special abilities which are only survivable under cooldown. This adds an extra dynamic to the tanking of a boss, but still allows the cooldown to be used often enough to make a difference in absence of such effects.

I am not sure the average encounter duration in EQ any longer. My first Vishimatar kill took 45 minutes, Our kill of the final end boss in last expansion was something like 13 minutes (which for a WoW encounter is on the long side with most ending between 5 and 10). The changes to Defensive type abilities can also impact the amount of time you are intended to fight certain things, it would almost have to to ensure that mana usage remained relevant. Mana will become the limiting factor in such cases instead of the time left on Defensive's active duration. This is a major change. If before your tank would flat out die when not under cooldown, they would now survive as long as the healers have the ability to offset at least the amount of incoming damage making mana the limiting factor. This may have the side effect of reducing the need for tanks somewhat (raids would use less per 54 person in terms of ratio)

On a more class view level, this could possibly make Knights more inter-changeable with Warriors assuming the reduction from the abilities were of similar duration and power. I've heard steps have been taking to equalize that somewhat since I've stopped playing, however this could really close the gap if it still remains.

This will not change the group game, but play style still effects what is the best tank for the group.

With a group geared T4 assuming they primarily pull singles Rangers is best tank in the game now.

With raiders this is not the case because knights and warriors can mass pull. While groupers like one in camp and maybe a second on standby if they have a chanter. Raiders can pull 5 or 6 at a time and tank multiples at once.

So in the group game with raid gear use a knight (preferabbly a SK) for AE aggro, for the grouper use a ranger for single tanking and dps.

As for the warriors baseline DPS... I was perhaps monk centric but the old numbers I heard tossed around comparing warrior, monk, rogue (back before there were these silly zerkers).

DPS Warrior 80%, Monk 100%, rogue 120%.

Tanking Warrior 120%, Monk 100%, Rogue 80%.

That is the balance point I remember for pure melee. For SUSTAINED not burst the DPS is (at least warrior to monk) is about that now... Tanking not so much. I am educated guessing that a warrior can sustain 4k dps and a monk 5k with raid level gear(not endgame but good).

^ irony

So, will I now be able to out tank Thess on Raid mobs? He does love rangers, or so he says.