big_fag

It is my belief that the (supposed) upcoming changes to level locking's viability will further accentuate the need for SoE to take a long, serious look at PvP balance across all tiers, and especially in T8. Anyother, more desperate way of saying this is:

SoE *must* do something about class balance in PvP before every PvP server is comprised entirely of Scouts/Druids.

As I see it, they've got two options:

1.) DAOC's rock-paper-scissors-healer approach, where, gear and player "skill" being equal, Fighter > Scout > Offensive Caster > Fighter in solo encounters, with Support Casters/Healers being able to spec into Offensive Casters and follow the rock-paper-scissors model, or spec into Buffers/Healers, pretty much suck solo, but make groups 10x more powerful.

2.) WoW's "everyone can solo" approach. Harder to balance but not as rigid as DAOC. Most 1v1s come down to "skill," gear, and knowledge of the opposing class -- not macro-scale "Scouts are the best PvPers" or "Scouts will almost always beat casters," but micro-scale "this player knows more about the game" or "this player has spent more time and effort gearing up and coming prepared."

Personally I think EQ2 is currently closer to DAOC with the horrific exception of Druids/Rogues/Predators, who seem to just fucking break the rules and are able to solo far, far too well. The non-Druid/Rogue/Predator classes that are considered "good" (and by good I mean "at least viable") are inevitably classes that can *sometimes* beat one of the godly classes if the player is really skilled (or the godly class player is nub). Any other class is basically advised to stay in an instance, grind to 80, and join whatever raid guild wanted their rare, worthless-in-PvP class in the first place.

Frankly I think the "some classes can solo, if you want to solo, play one of those classes" is outdated and frankly has been made downright embarassing by the riotous success of WoW. It's not a difference in taste at all, it's a "this method is clearly superior" paradigm shift.

For EQ2 to completely change face to provide a massive amount of solo PvE content, and then to implement a PvP system that totally flies in the face of PvE design and harkens back to EQ1, is fucking retarded.

Newbs roll on PvP because they played on a PvP server in WoW, burned out on it, and heard good things about EQ2. They see there is plenty of solo PvE content that whichever class they chose can easily do, and they get the idea that PvP is pretty much the same way, outside of gear differences. It isn't, and this cleft is not only upsetting, it's clearly poor design.

No matter which direction EQ2 prefers to take in its PvP philosophy, I think it's clear at this point that three things need to happen:

-SoE needs to take a serious look at class populations and PvP performance. Every time I've PvPed since I made my newest character, I've encountered either a Rogue, a Predator, or a Druid. Every bleeding time. It doesn't take a fucking Statistics degree to see that something is really off.

-After the data is mined up and poured over, balance changes *must* occur to discourage the use of the overpopulated classes and encourage the use of underpopulated ones. Faggots will bitch, faggots will whine, faggots will pretend to cancel their accounts. But it has to happen. Yes, I'm trying to dance around saying "Scouts and Druids have to be nerfed hard" and "Shitty classes need buffs." That's my personal opinion based on anecdotal evidence, but I acknowledge that, well, Guardians might be totally overpowered, I've just never encountered one.

-PvP combat needs to fucking slow down. No other MMORPG's PvP is this fast, christ, I don't know of many FPSes that are this fast. Sure, it's a burst damage class, blah blah, but frankly I'm of the belief that, gear being equal in a 1v1, a full alpha strike of burst damage should do AT MAX 60-70% of a target's HP depending on class. Don't get me wrong, a guy in more Fableds than Aesop should be able to do 85-90% to a guy in Treasured. But otherwise, one/two/three shotting is just stupid, unfun, and encourages the exclusive use of classes that can either do that themselves or have fast enough heals to survive the alpha strike (guess who that leaves as viable!)

There are several ways to slow PvP down -- spell/CA consolidation is a big one, without as many buttons to press, Auto-attack becomes more important and the experience of taking a dirt nap, or pwning a noob, seems a little smoother (and more tense). But consolidation is probably a ways off, and by "ways off" I mean "probably not going to happen in our natural lifespans." Another fix could be grossly lowering "nuke" type spell/CA damage in PvP. DoTs aren't so bad, what's bad is being in full plate and getting two-shotted by some halfling with a dagger. Another possibility is to make cooldowns much longer in PvP combat. They did it with Cures, it's not outside the range of possibility.

In any case, with the removal or defanging of combat XP locking (hopefully with fixes to faction gain to compensate), I think class balance issues are going to be the next thing SoE focuses on. The excuse has always been "such and such doesn't really come into their own til 79," and I think it's been said so much that SoE thinks it's true. With population by Tier about to become much more spread out, I'm confident SoE (and its customers) are going to start seeing the warts in balance, and start realizing that classes which *start out* viable in solo PvP never really lose that advantage.

big_fag

first

tl;dr

Locus

I like the cool down idea... Lets see how mages (the new rock) enjoy being able to cast one nuke per pvp battle.

big_fag

Consolidation is the answer of course. If you have 8-10 offensive moves to spam instead of 20-25, classes that can alpha strike are far less devastating chaining 5-6 moves as opposed to twice that.

Assuming we ran with the cooldown idea though, I'm not sure if INT casters should have as much of a cooldown penalty because it's not like they have a useful autoattack (unlike... well, every other type of caster).

Locus

so you want the game even dumber than it is today?

Illuminator

My warden has 13+ buffs up at any one time. That isn't intelligent gameplay, that's unbridled insanity.

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80/140 Wizard, 80/140 Illusionist, 80/140 Warden, 80/128 Troubador, etc.



HA HA fuck you, Roger. And don't vote for Obama.

Paikis

Not sure I like the cooldown idea. Consider your OP'd rogues and predators. With the exception of assasins, most of their damage comes from auto-attack (atleast in PvE, only played an assasin and a swash in PvP) so you would basically be screwing everyone else with this idea.

Suddenly the ability to cast CAs/Spells quickly and kill people is replaced by a few classes who have massive auto-attack damage already being able to kill absolutely anyone, especially if you're putting heals on a cool-down.

Combat needs to be slowed down somewhat, but cooldowns are not the way to go. Cut the effects of all heals/regen and damage in half in PvP combat. There you go, you've effectively just doubled people's hitpoints, and more than doubled the time it takes to kill them. The only problem I can see with this idea is that the low-DPS classes will never be able to kill anyone if they solo... ever. Perhaps impliment this with your run-speed changing to in-combat values for 30 seconds when you get hit. That way you can still run away, or use clouds/zone/whatever, but you can't just keep going at out-of-combat speeds and get away by default.

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Paikis, Troubador of Venekor
'The bait isn't supposed to eat the fish!'

Jhoram

I definetly agree with cooldown increases being a bad idea. All that does is make the first-strike ever more powerful.

I agree with Paikis about literally cutting dps and heals in half. The thing about this is that the effect isn't as clear cut as a 50% increase in the length of a fight. Making a fight longer would allow debuffers to actually debuff someone fully before going on the offensive. Take an inquis for example. When I play mine, i VERY rarely get a chance to fully debuff. Usually it's a case of casting my 10 sec mez, then managing to put on one or two reactives depending on resists. That leaves a skills debuff, a stats debuff, a mit debuff and an on-beneficial-cast reactive left untouched.

Fibs

PvP combat has already been slowed down. I think that happened in a big patch a while ago... was it LU 36? The problem with slowing it down even further, is that you also increase the risk of more people jumping into ongoing fights etc. That is frustrating too.

I think the OP brings up some other good points, though.

Paikis

The adjustments done in GU36 really weren't that noticeable. We still have (non-bard) scouts killing people in less than 2 seconds, how is that too slow? Admittedly it isn't ALL of those scouts doing it, and other classes can do the same given the right conditions, but a longer fight allows more time for skill to come into play. As things are skill really is a minor contributer, with gear and who gets the drop being about the only deciding factors.

People whine and moan about manashield being overpowered as well, well if the wizards could only nuke you for 2k at a time, instead of 4k, then that manashield suddenly isn't nearly as powerful as it was, because it takes twice as long for said sorcerer to kill anyone.

Casters complaining about being killed because of interupts? Well when you take twice as long to kill, that's twice as many spell attempts that have to be interupted! Alot of classes only get a few interupts/stuns, what happens when they run out and you're still at 40% health, instead of being at -20%? Now you can cast those spells alot easier!

Conjurors and Necros complaining that their spells take time to do any damage? Problem solved! It now takes people twice as long to kill you, so your spells have the time to start ticking! Those proccing-taunts that your tank pet gets may now make some small difference (these would still need tweaking IMO).

As for people interupting your fights... well that already happens now, and I really have no problem with that, this is a MULTIPLAYER game after all.

I honestly think this game is pretty much balanced, in damage over-time and healing capabilities and such. The problem arrises when you have classes which can kill you before your own skills can come into play. What good is having really nice debuffs when you're dead before you can cast them? Why bother giving classes heal spells when they are killed before they can cast more than one or two?

__________________
Paikis, Troubador of Venekor
'The bait isn't supposed to eat the fish!'