Originally Posted by kipoki
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I was going to post this as a reply to the "is enchanter OP?" poll thread, only to realize it's been locked, but I think it's such an important topic necessary for some level of discussion (or proper reasonings to put me in my place about it) that I need to make a thread bout it.
First and foremost, before anything else, I *DON'T* think enchanters or any other class are OP -- I think the 'power-classes' like ENC and MAG, and to some degree every spellcaster, solo or in group, are just toeing the line of "the proper balance" to make it through a game as gruelingly difficult as classic EQ. You still need some level of smarts, some level of knowledge, some level of hard-won experience in the game, guide-studying, figuring out how things work, time commitment, perseverance and stubbornness to get far in this game -- outside of powerleveling, of course, but given not only how unforgiving the game is in a general sense, and aspects like spell resists, the extreme state of small mana pools and slow mana recovery, the competitiveness of every popular exp/money spot and just how fast you die when things inevitably go wrong and how punishing death is, I couldn't call any class in this game 'overpowered' so much as, at best, in case of ENC perhaps most of all, "just right, able to cheese the game back almost as hard as it cheeses its players".
The problem arises when you factor in classes that DON'T have all those tools to compete with the insane "overtuning" of the enemies (though that's how we like it, what makes the game more satisfying than newer MMOs and generally makes grouping at all stages far more popular than it would be in others). Even IN groups, where they're seemingly more "needed" and where they flock since soloing gets exponentially harder to even try to do rapidly the higher level you get... The melees. They were designed to fill the same void they do in every other classical RPG or RPG-inspired game, the big dudes that take hits so the finger-wagglers can safely do their waggling, or to do consistent, constant DPS while the mages are meditating or against mobs that resist magic or what-have-you. This would have been fine if the only spellcasters in the game had been clerics and wizards, maybe, but well...
Let me give you a story of my recent personal experience. I finally came to green late as Kunark launched, I made an IKS WAR (I know they can't wear plate till velious and are thus frowned upon but I also know I was future-proofing a bit and I love the racials and aesthetics). I painstakingly got the guy up into the 30s after weeks of hardcore play and had EXCELLENT equipment every step of the way thanks to kind strangers, friends and guildmates, and my own blood sweat and tears scrabbling every single copper I could every step of the way to fill out every slot with at least decent mid-tier stuff as soon as possible.. People appreciated me in groups and I think I did a decent job with everythign I could. But despite all this hard work and commitment, despite the hundreds, thousands of plat that went into gearing me up to fairly twinkish levels, consistently every single time I partied with any kind of pet class, even several levels below me, the pet was consistently MONUMENTALLY out-DPSing me, even with no weapons, and I'm pretty damn sure they'd out-tank me if people bothered to throw a set of cheap noob gear on them and keep them healed. No matter what I did, what I tried, how I tried to squeeze every iota of stats and ability and goodness out of my character, or how much money I funneled into it, I couldn't even begin to dream to even halfway catch up to this naked pet in sheer raw power for my level, they're scaled just the same as NPCs which is to say 'white mob should be enough of a threat to need multiple players to take it down after like level 5, unless you cheese the game as is often necessary". Though my guy was so kitted out I was able to solo high blues and sometimes even whites all the way up to level 30 mobs -- then the stat skyrocket is so blatant and insane no melee can even dream of it anymore, while of course every single spellcaster can with some tactics and patience. Or just throwing junk at it till it dies if you're a MAG I guess lol. I even tried my best to get into all aspects of crafting and any side-ability I could use to give me any edge, and let me tell you, all crafting is completely useless in this era lmao, best to use that time to farm some cash for a set of banded and some HMBP's and just get fletching to the not-at-all-high level you need to craft the longest range arrows for pulling, which is all that matters, you'll never get any damage out of them and any amount of 'hard work' and 'squeezing every last drop out of the class' is pointless and adds absolutely nothing.
The point I'm trying to make is -- why the hell would you ever roll a melee or bring a melee to any group, ever, when bringing a magic user or ESPECIALLY pet class is just infinitely, gargantuanly, objectively, far far better? You need literally zero gear whatsoever to humongously outperform even geared-to-the-teeth melees. Just summon a pet and send it in. You can give it almost any gear you want and it will immediately auto-equip it. Sure, it makes it a pain to give it expensive stuff that you know will disappear forever as soon as it dies or you log or zone, but... so? What are you gonna do, go all the way to EC and spend a month trying to peddle it off, or worse yet, give it to a melee noob when you'll get infinitely more use out of it letting your pet have it and getting you and/or your group that much more easy and fast exp and money? Why buff any of the melees when you could buff the pets and see so much more effect for it? Why give even good weapons to the melees instead of the pets? Why heal the melees when you could heal the pets? Why in the world would you make any melee class instead of bringing a class that literally can effortlessly summon or charm a mob that IS, immediately, with no money or gear, not only as good as, but BETTER THAN any melee you could possibly add to your group, PLUS all the myriad spells and abilities that you get as a spell-user? And no matter what spellcaster you are you're going to get unfathomably uber-useful core abilities too like bind and gate, at least some menial CC like root, and likely things like food/drink summoning or other means to not bother with some core aspects of the game. Still, I don't think this is 'op' -- I just think melee is severely, severely UP.
I know there are some apparent exceptions but, well -- let's go over a few.
- Warriors get disciplines later that let them tank raid bosses. They're the only class that can tank raid bosses.
-- Great! That's exactly one solitary warrior needed per entire raid, and 99.999% of the playerbase will never touch any raid ever. You all know that this warrior will be some ogre war a guildie with a DRU or NEC main will make as an alt real quick and get powerlevelled and omega-twinked just to fulfill this one purpose, anyway.
- Rogues get backstab, that's pretty strong, right?
-- Yes, but not so much stronger than other pet DPS or spell DPS that it really matters, and in some zones there are rogue NPCs to charm that do this anyway, so what's the point?
- Rogues can also sneak/invis and scout or do sick corpse runs!
-- Yeah, but who needs scouting anymore when we all have fully detailed maps of every zone in the game, and/or use gnome ghetto tracking, and we can just kill all the mobs anyway with CC and pet barrages? And who needs corpse runs when you could just summon them, pull through floor, use a bard or other class that can do it just as well etc?
- Monks do so much great DPS and can pull and FD and it's neat!
-- Yea, but pets are still gonna outdps them before raid-tier endgame and again, who needs a puller when you could just kill/CC everything with enough pets/spellcasters? And necros can FD for when that's needed.
- Hybrids can do some stuff, maybe, sometimes, and hold hate well.
-- No one on the planet's gonna party with a hybrid as long as exp penalty is in place, the most ludicrously pointless aspect of 'keep it classic' that serves literally zero purpose whatsoever except make already-grotesquely-underpowered classes even less viable to play or wanted by anyone. and even after that, literally why bother when you could just send in more pets and root the mob so they tank it? And do many many times over the DPS of these classes that do far less dmg than warriors, and warriors do far less than pets?
So yeah like... I'm not saying anything should be nerfed, just that melees should be buffed to actually compete with pets and even-leveled mobs, or be able to conceivably have any reason to exist alongside spellcasters when there's absolutely no way for them to ever even dream of approaching the DPS of most of them, especially pet ones, tanking is pointless when pets and charmed mobs exist atm, and they have absolutely utterly nothing they can do of any real value at all compared to ANY spellcaster class, and have much much much harder time doing the basic stuff of the game for not only no reward but *less* powerful or needed of a character objectively, *and* they take a million times more money to make even somewhat viable, but SITLL far LESS viable than a naked spellcaster of any type...
I know this won't be changed ever and the purpose of this server is to simulate classic EQ as closely as possible, imbalances and all, but it really gets under my skin and pisses me off so I wanted to make a post about it :P
TL;DR all melees (except bards which don't count) suck and are terrible and worthless, prove me wrong
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03-30-2021, 07:02 PM
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