Let's talk CLASS BALANCE

[Harm]

Originally Posted by Zuranthium [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Shaman were the only class that could solo the roaming dragons in Velious.

Not true at all. I personally fear-kited everything that I could land fear on in Western Wastes before Luclin came out. And outside of the SK Epic, I had shit for gear.

I stopped reading this thread in the middle of page two because you went from "discussing class balance" to "lets balance P99". Discuss class balance? Sure. Things were very unbalanced. Luclin AAs made things a lot better. Balance P99? Hell fucking no. You don't want to play a class that ends up on the short side of the stick? Then don't play one. Its your choice, there are no surprises here. The only surprise would be if you were to succeed in your attempts to balance P99. It should remain unbalanced. You're free to create your own Balanced Classic emu if you want. I might even play on it, it would be fun. But that's not why I'm on P99.

[Misto]

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[Kika Maslyaka]

the thing is- the people who run P99 are not interested in making a better game, they want things exactly how they suck... err were back then [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[gnomishfirework]

You are directing this to the wrong people.

EQLive has addressed many of your issues. Problem solved.

[Kika Maslyaka]

all good points. Too bad The Vision is too fucked up to allow deviation

I really liked how they set up healers in EQ2 - everyone had their own style. Cleric had direct heals and reactive heals, druid was heal over time, and shaman prevented damage with runes.

And yeah I totally agree than having just ONE mandatory healer out of 14 freaken classes is dumb beyond believe.

[odizzido]

A shaman and a necro can do some pretty decent healing. Necros can heal for 125 a tick forever, and with a shaman slowing harder mobs and healing when needed you can take some pretty tough camps. Obviously a cleric is better than both classes combined...most of the time....but I don't think a cleric is required for post 50 kunark dungeons with most areas.

Anyways I think it is pretty fair. If you want to do the most DPS you pay the price of being useless outside of a group.

The only two classes I feel got the shaft are rangers and wizards. Wizard nukes are not really that much better than mage nukes, and mages get a badass pet. Ports, while nice, certainly do not make up for this. Rangers are pretty much rogues with no backstab. The spells they get instead are next to useless.

[Aprio]

It's moot, the "class balances" you discuss about the other wisdom classes being able to heal effectively were not implemented on live till PoP. P99 stops at Velious (thank god). If you want to heal effectively play a cleric. Don't moan that your not as good as the cleric because the cleric sure as heck isn't screaming about being able to solo like a beast.

The game has classes that will do what you want, read the class descriptions maybe?

[Fryhole]

I've been itching to comment on this since I saw the thread the other day. I had a 55 druid that I retired around mid-Velious.

You're right, you pretty much can't solo heal a group (or possibly a bad group) - you need to adapt. Throw another priest class in, or grab an enchanter - a decent one which will control your groups pace. (and double your MP regen) This game was designed with trade-offs in mind. If you have any kind of advantage over another class, you usually pay for it. The druid IS the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, and that's just how it is, paid for in full.

It's all about the play style you're looking for - if you want an extremely mobile priest class that can solo incredibly well (esp with ES vambraces & the AoE lightning staff), cast big nukes and evac you don't really have a lot of choices. Things are even better outdoors.

- You can solo extremely well (root rot, quad kite, porcupine)
- Very high mobility
- Decent nukes
- Big game hunter (tracking & killing rares)

Trade offs
-No resurrection
-Not going to be the MH on a raid
-Can do almost anything another class can, except not as good
-Most likely not going to solo something that summons

I think the changes you're looking for are only going to see the light of day if you start your own server.

Originally Posted by Zuranthium [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This server is trying to replicate an original EQ experience in the most fair and effective ways possible.

You might think this, but it's not the case.

[Zuranthium]

Originally Posted by Fryhole [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You're right, you pretty much can't solo heal a group (or possibly a bad group) - you need to adapt. Throw another priest class in, or grab an enchanter - a decent one which will control your groups pace. (and double your MP regen) This game was designed with trade-offs in mind. If you have any kind of advantage over another class, you usually pay for it. The druid IS the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, and that's just how it is, paid for in full.

1.) "Throw another priest class in"?? This statement doesn't make sense. A Shaman and a Druid together simply can not heal through most of the higher level content. If you "throw a Cleric in" then that speaks to the exact problem I was talking about - you NEED a Cleric to simply play the game at higher levels (and not just the very top end content). This is wrong. And once you have the Cleric in your party, a Shaman (or any melee class) is going to be at the front of the line for another other spot in the party before Druids are.

2.) Druids are not even a true jack-of-all-trades, Bards are, and there was almost never a case at higher levels where a group would take a Druid over a Bard. Just speaking from personal experience here. Jack-of-all-Trades means you can perform almost any given role in a pinch. Druids can not mesmerize. Druids can not provide huge amounts of party wide regen. Druids can not slow mobs. Druids generate far less damage than a Bard who wants to be offensive. Quite simply, Druids have teleports. And that's it. Not something a party actually needs. Maybe when they are done fighting, as you've sat LFG watching them for hours, they will give you some money to teleport them to the nearest city. Gee, that sure does sound like a fun role to play.

Originally Posted by Fryhole [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's all about the play style you're looking for - if you want an extremely mobile priest class that can solo incredibly well (esp with ES vambraces & the AoE lightning staff), cast big nukes and evac you don't really have a lot of choices. Things are even better outdoors.

Druids don't cast big nukes. The Wizard is the only class capable of nuking at higher levels. Nukes from any other class are simply minor amounts of extra DPS. The amount of HP mobs have and the resist rates they have make nukes continually worse as you go up in level, to the point where non-Wizard nukes are complete trash.

I'm not sure what value the moniker of "priest class" is even supposed to have, given that Druids can NOT act as the defensive glue of the team. Again, Clerics become absolutely necessary. In the times where they aren't absolutely necessary, a Shaman is still the only other viable Priest class if you don't have an Enchanter. As I've said, the Shaman's vastly superior mana regeneration and their best-in-game slow spell allows them to prevent a MASSIVE amount more damage over time than a Druid. A Shaman on their own is literally as effective of a defensive character as 4 Druids put together. That is the power of their slow. If you have an Enchanter around to provide the slow, then MAYBE a Druid can possibly act as Priest for certain areas, but it's still a vastly inferior setup to having a Shaman because the Shaman's slow is better than the Enchanter's and they have more energy to utilize.

So, going back to the "what you're looking for", Druids can quad-kite and they can travel extremely well. And....yeah. That's it. That is not a complete class. What does it matter if you can quickly travel anywhere if nobody wants to group with you? You certainly can not quad-kite in the majority of the areas of the game either. Quad kiting in fact limits you to only fighting in a handful of areas in the game, if that is supposedly what a Druid is "meant to do" (and it's NOT - the game designers specifically said they never intended for Druids and Wizards to be doing that), which pretty much goes against the whole awesome mobility thing Druids had going for them.

[Extunarian]

Maybe I don't play my character right, but at pretty much any given level from 1-54 a mage of equal level could solo more efficiently than my shaman.

At 54 my pet tops out at level 36, hits for 51 and costs 500 mana. Since the mana cost is so high you don't want him dying so you toss on regrowth & talisman, and his DPS is so low you need to give him STR+haste. You also need to slow every mob the dog will tank, and then root because the pet can't out-agro our Slow, so suddenly your 'manaless dot' is kind of expensive to maintain. Did I mention it hits for 51? Sometimes?

A 54 mage gets to choose from a level 46 water pet, air pet or earth pet, but probably will just chain cast his level 42 fire pet of facerape with built-in DS for 200 mana a pop.

Necros too are more efficient than shaman when it comes to bringing down single mob after single mob after single mob.

Of course a druid doesn't need to worry about a pet because they just quad for 3 minutes and then turn into a tree and go do the dishes for 6 minutes. I'm not even sure why you would want a pet for quadding. And though I've never parsed it, I would bet that a druid's DS adds more DPS to a group than a wimpy shaman pet.

Basically, you can always overlook the deficiencies of another class and think 'wow my paladin would be so much better if it just had feign death. SK's are so overpowered!' but you'd be discounting the price they had to pay in another area for that skill.