Stubbswick

I got in a pickup shard group the other day, and was surprised to see that there was a second Inquisitor in the group. "Are you in Heal spec?" he asks. "Yeah...", I reply. "Good, cuz I'm in DPS spec."

For a pickup shard group? Seriously? I decided to check out his gear - T1 shard DPS set, Lava hammer from Deep forge, and mix of Kunark quest/Legendary jewelry.

He proceeded to talk some trash, and ran around the zone only DPSing stuff. (He said he would get "cures", but I think he only cured things once or twice). I pulled up ACT because I was dying to see the parse. It went something like this:

Ranger: 3000
Zerker: 2500
Wizzie: 2500 (wiz didn't have any shard gear)
Coercer: 2000
Other Inquis: 1500
Me: 500

So there you have it. He did a whopping 1k higher in the parse while I was solo healing the zone, using my fabled epic and T2 heal shard gear.


My point is not to flame this guy - there's a whole separate section of eq2flames if I wanted to do that. My point is to remind other young Inquisitors what our roll in groups is (specifically if you go for pickup groups). We are healers, first and foremost. If you can keep your group alive, then you are allowed to DPS. I can guarantee that when you see something like "DD group looking for DPS", they aren't looking for Inquisitors.

Why? That's not what we're meant to do. Yes, we can DPS, which has made solo questing very easy for me, but it takes a lot of work to be masters of it. My swash can parse 2-3k sustained with equivalent T1 shard gear and legendary Kunark junk.

You want to be melee DPS? Roll a scout or brawler.

Heidi

Wow, he sucked anyway.

More details on the talking trash?

__________________

Carthrax

I got laughed at a couple days when I responded to "Shard grp LF DPS".. When they heard I was an inquisitor they just laughed.. The thing is, inquisitors are a jack of many trades. We have DPS procs(FD and to a lesser extent AoW), reuse and attack speed buff(Devotion).. I routinely parse 4-5k.. My DPS set is more of a "hybrid" set, with 4 pieces of T4 for the bonus... I know I'm giving up personal DPS keeping those pieces, but it also allows me to switch to my mythical, jump into heal stance and go full healing in a heartbeat.

the_mo

say what you will but as an inq you will never ever (currently in TSO that is) be able to pull dps the same as a real dps class, not even close. that is if both are equally skilled,geared and buffed. you fucking cant compare to a real dps class.

its about the same as using a paladin as a groups only healer. while he might be able to do the easier heroic zones with that, a real healer class would perform like over 9000 times better at said job.

Stubbswick

Nothing too major... things like "your [sic] a good tank, right?", implying the tank might have trouble keeping aggro with him in the group. He was also begging for power from the coercer when both me and the tank were out of power (and got it).

Turned out to be a shitty group in general, so I left before it finished.

Carthrax, I totally understand - and with T4 gear and switching to mythical, I think you're playing along the lines of what an Inquis should be. You can DPS, but if your group needs heals you can back em up. With T1 DPS set, no myth, and no heal stance, you wouldn't be able to do either very well.

Speaking of buffs - that was the other thing. When I was first looking at the group setup, I was like "ok, one good thing about having two Inquis is that I don't have to worry about running out of concentration slots". He said he would buff the tank and the ranger and I could buff the rest (I guess meaning him and me, when it comes to Tenacity). I decided to look on the tank to see, and he had Adept Tenacity on him. I mean, come on... Expert Tenacity only costs around 1p on the broker, and cheaper if you can find someone to make it for you.

I just hope this isn't happening very often... although if it is, that might explain why I have trouble finding pickup groups sometimes.

Avirodar

A ranger parsing 3000 and topping the parse?

Fuck me, that was a bad group. How many hours into the zone were you, before you bailed?

Shurikan

Ive gotten into many groups and PuG raids as a DPS class. Ive even tanked Pug and guild groups. Just b/c your not supposed to doesnt mean you can try and push the class. Besides, healing is buttfuckingly easy and boring for the most part .

the_mo

i have tanked groups as well because the tank sucked or there was none. still does not mean your supposed to base your char on the possibility to do mediocre dps and keep the aggro due to the fact that the rest of the group sucks

Stubbswick

10 min maybe? After struggling on trash and then failing on the first named, I left.

Pickup groups generally frustrate me. Sometime I find the great ones that can blow through shard zones where I basically just have to use reactives except on named. Then there are the crappy ones where I'm chain healing the entire time and there's really no hope anyways.

Stubbswick

Yeah, I'm not disputing that we can DPS, or that we can tank. In fact, I'm 100% sure that there's people from every class out there who could parse higher than people in this group. I've tanked lowbie guild groups before - never tried a group at level, but I'm sure there's Inquis who can.

My point is that we aren't built for it. For example, with tanking, we have the mitigation and (possibly) the DPS, but we don't have any taunts or rescue, and we don't have the aggression stat, or defensive stances. We don't have all of the tools that normal tanks have. That doesn't mean that we can't tank anything, but I don't think anyone should play an Inquisitor for the purpose of being a tank.

It's the same with DPS. We have auto-attack, and like 7ish combat arts (depending on which AA lines you did). My swashy has 20 something combat arts. Does that mean all swashies are better than inquis and no inquis should ever try to DPS? of course not. But if DPS is your goal, you are going to get so much more out of a swashy than an inquis, with equal effort put into each.

Healing is pretty boring, but if your group can't count on you to help keep them alive, then you either need to spec more towards the healing side, or roll a different class.

If you can keep your group alive, then go ahead and DPS your little pope-hat off.