Harazzer
10-25-2009, 05:29 PM
I will pre-disclaim that this is a subjective post, I am sure others will find some of the things i say somewhat inaccurate but this is how I feel.
Two boxing: Dverytime this topic comes up, people scream what an awful idea it is. That it discourages grouping and makes people able to level too fast and farm things easily. However what you have instead is a few really excellent solo classes and a lot of people that cannot solo. I don't really see how this is far better. I am not strongly advocating 2 boxing, I personally do not care much either way since I'm a shaman and pretty universally capable. However many classes will be resigned solely to groups for leveling and farming with no viable solo abilities by level 30 or so. Two boxing doesn't perfectly solve this issue, however, you can log in and accomplish things without spending a half hour drumming up a group.
Beneficial spells and Aggro: Groups mean harder spots, harder spots tend to mean multiple mobs. Healing aggro, or failed attempts to root mobs is brutal. I'm sure pallys and SK's have tools to stick 2 mobs on them but warriors do not. Once you heal and draw aggro, if you have to heal yourself you become heavily aggro locked. Seems like heal and root, priest classes main group role and defense are a death sentence when a pull doesn't go perfectly.
Critical resists on the lull line: Since in group fights you tend to fight reds or at least yellow cons, the "critical resist" rate on lull (it is resisted and the monster aggro's) makes its relative danger to use counter productive. If it is resisted you get the entire pull + its on the cleric/enchanter that tried to do it. Crit resist should be lowered significantly.
Chain pulls/mob social range: As corollary to my previous point, mobs tend to chain aggro from greater distance and out of line of sight. Making the pulls harder than on live in most cases. Glitches in pathing add to this in places such as mistmoore where a pulled mob will sometimes run directly away from you and grab 4 friends.
Priests and casters cant tank worth a crap: I often group with a cleric, I'm a shaman. If a mob is on either of us we lose massive chunks of health every combat round. Seems like the physical mitigation based on armor is not consistent with what I remember from live. Granted I didn't tank everything to death on live but I didnt lose 30-40% of my health in a given round very often either.
Most of the above issues feed into one another and will probably make the ascent to 50 very difficult for most of the population as the average player moves past the Oasis level range. I would suggest some proactive fixes if you want to retain an active population.
Two boxing: Dverytime this topic comes up, people scream what an awful idea it is. That it discourages grouping and makes people able to level too fast and farm things easily. However what you have instead is a few really excellent solo classes and a lot of people that cannot solo. I don't really see how this is far better. I am not strongly advocating 2 boxing, I personally do not care much either way since I'm a shaman and pretty universally capable. However many classes will be resigned solely to groups for leveling and farming with no viable solo abilities by level 30 or so. Two boxing doesn't perfectly solve this issue, however, you can log in and accomplish things without spending a half hour drumming up a group.
Beneficial spells and Aggro: Groups mean harder spots, harder spots tend to mean multiple mobs. Healing aggro, or failed attempts to root mobs is brutal. I'm sure pallys and SK's have tools to stick 2 mobs on them but warriors do not. Once you heal and draw aggro, if you have to heal yourself you become heavily aggro locked. Seems like heal and root, priest classes main group role and defense are a death sentence when a pull doesn't go perfectly.
Critical resists on the lull line: Since in group fights you tend to fight reds or at least yellow cons, the "critical resist" rate on lull (it is resisted and the monster aggro's) makes its relative danger to use counter productive. If it is resisted you get the entire pull + its on the cleric/enchanter that tried to do it. Crit resist should be lowered significantly.
Chain pulls/mob social range: As corollary to my previous point, mobs tend to chain aggro from greater distance and out of line of sight. Making the pulls harder than on live in most cases. Glitches in pathing add to this in places such as mistmoore where a pulled mob will sometimes run directly away from you and grab 4 friends.
Priests and casters cant tank worth a crap: I often group with a cleric, I'm a shaman. If a mob is on either of us we lose massive chunks of health every combat round. Seems like the physical mitigation based on armor is not consistent with what I remember from live. Granted I didn't tank everything to death on live but I didnt lose 30-40% of my health in a given round very often either.
Most of the above issues feed into one another and will probably make the ascent to 50 very difficult for most of the population as the average player moves past the Oasis level range. I would suggest some proactive fixes if you want to retain an active population.