Let's talk CLASS BALANCE

[Zuranthium]

I have much to say about class balance. While I love classic EQ, there is no doubt that the game was highly imbalanced in many ways, especially from Level 50+ and after the more powerful equipment entered the game. To understand more about my history with EQ, I suggest reading this - http://www.fippydarkpaw.com/forums/v...p=11640#p11640 - before reading the rest of my post here (but it's not required to understand what I'm going to be talking about).

My main points of interest regarding class balance:

1.) Are Clerics absolutely REQUIRED for groups at the later levels? It used to be that you HAD to have a Cleric or else you literally couldn't group. Non-Cleric heals were far too inefficient. In my opinion, Clerics should only be a requirement for bosses and possibly a select amount of other game content. Druids should be able to function perfectly fine as the main healer for a party outside of those limited exceptions. Looking at the p1999 Wiki skill list, it appears that Druids are far behind.

Druids were roundly considered one of the most useless classes once the expansions came along. They were called upon for teleports to certain areas to save time and that's it. They weren't able to do ANYTHING else of value and were completely outclassed by Shaman, who had the same level of healing + excellent self energy regen + the most powerful slow debuff in the game + they could do MORE damage (and for less energy expended) because of having a worthwhile Pet and good haste spells and comparable DoT's/DD's + they got other buffs/debuffs that were a bit better (+Attribute buffs of every kind and the Malaise debuffs) and they even got SoW!!!

Having teleports does not balance out getting a Pet, the best slow debuff in the game, other buffs/debuffs that are superior in general, and excellent self energy regen to power all of those abilities even further and more efficiently! In my mind, these classes would only be balanced if:

*Druids could heal significantly better than Shaman...even with heals that were closer to Clerics, the Druid would still not actually be as efficient of a "defensive" character as the Shaman, considering how the latter class gets the best slow in the game and self energy regen to power their heals/debuffs.

*Shaman did not get pets...this is extra free damage that is a slap in the face to the INT casters, as it makes the Shaman capable of doing more damage over time than those classes. Very imbalanced how a powerful defensive class is additionally capable of producing more damage over time than a class entirely dedicated to offense!

2.) Is spellcaster damage (for the spellcasters who should actually be able to do great damage - Magicians, Wizards, and Necromancer) complete shit at the later levels in comparison to melee damage? After Kunark came out, these spellcasting classes took massive hit. Their spell progression became weak in comparison to earlier levels and melee classes got incredible new skills and equipment. Melee classes were doing something like 3x as much damage in comparison to a Magician (unless they had the epic pet, which is hardly a fair consideration and even then it was significantly lower) - a class that had the LEAST amount of utility out of all the casters and was dedicated to DPS! Being able to summon mod rods or perform the occasional Call of the Hero hardly makes a class equally viable.

Wizards had a more specific purpose of at least being able to provide burst damage against very difficult opponents but such a thing was only needed very occasionally. Their DPS over time was embarrassingly weak in comparison to a melee...about 1/5th of what a melee could do.

***In general I would say that part of the problem was mana regen. It's a problem when it starts taking more than 5 minutes to go from out-of-mana back up to a full bar. As characters went up more in level, the spells kept getting more expensive and more and more casts kept being needed to keep up DPS, but innate mana regen didn't rise to compensate. 5 minutes, without any mana buffs, is the absolute maximum space of time it should take to recover a full bar of mana. Any more than that simply becomes a useless grind and, in the case of the pure INT damage dealers, it drastically lowers their capabilities and makes them useless in comparison to melee characters.

The magical RESIST rates of monsters also became ridiculous and that further made magic-based DPS complete garbage. Both of those things (regen and resist) would need to be changed from what they were in original Kunark and Velious in order for the INT damage dealers to actually worthwhile team members. And for Wizards the efficiency of their nukes should really be improved somewhat across the board because I really do not think that their teleports and very occasional need for burst DPS puts them on equal ground with the sustained damage Magicians and Necromancers can do in comparison.

I would also say that the CASTING TIME of spells should be looked into as well. The HP of monsters in relation to player level becomes a wider and wider gap as the levels go up, and yet some of the spells take longer and longer to cast. This further makes INT casters less effective at doing what they are supposed to be good at and the long casting times are simply annoying in general. The spells start becoming ridiculously laborious; it's as if the caster has to take a cigarette break before they can even complete certain spells. This is completely understandable with spells like Complete Heal or Call of the Hero, but not for most everything else.