The Magician's Tower

1. Do Magicians see themselves as a DPS class or a tank class?
2. How well should Magicians be DPS'ing relative to other players?
3. How well should Magician pets be tanking relative to tanks?

Bedavir wrote:Yes, the pet is part of the mage, and that part of the mage should not so easily out-class a dedicated player tank under any circumstances. I don't care if it's a single pull or an ideal group or the perfect situation ..."PART" of a ranged caster dps class should not outperform a dedicated player tank in any spectrum ... under any circumstances. Unfortunately, we are not talking a small part of the game - rather a huge wedge of it. Pet tanks should be capable and viable, but no superior.

I highlighted something that is incorrect. We are not a ranged class. I admit we aren't in-your-face melee either. We have plenty of abilities that, if we were to use them, we have to be near melee range of the mob. The devs have continually denied extending those ranges because they want us closer to the combat. A mage standing back at wizard or necro range is ruining their dps and taking out some aa abilities.

It has been this way for a long time, at least since SoF where Koz and Mendrix/Mindrix pointed out that you need to be almost on top of the mob to reach your max dps. We have at least a fade, heal, and aura that all require 50 units distance (at least one of our abilities is less than that). On some mobs, that can be melee range or just outside it.

Falore wrote: things ARE currently balanced.

One classs - 25% avoidance advantage

Other class 300%-500% mitigation advantage, 500% DPS advantage (maybe more?)

dreneth wrote:

Falore wrote: things ARE currently balanced.

One classs - 25% avoidance advantage

Other class 300%-500% mitigation advantage, 500% DPS advantage (maybe more?)

Classes are never balanced around one aspect; if so, there'd be 3 classes total (sponge, damage, healer). If all you could do was mitigate, as is all the pet can do, then that would be an issue. I can't do anything to make my pet perform better when getting beat on. You can chain how many discs? In fact, you even have an ability to make you basically immune to damage for a short time while still holding aggro.

I see Paladins have had splash in the game since UF yet they still tank. Best cure in game and they aren't a healing class but they sure can tank! This game is so broken. How do the devs sleep at night knowing that they have classes that have abilities better than another resulting in utter lack of balance?

If you think mitigation is all there is to tanking, you are just spamming our boards for the fun of trolling.

Voragath wrote:Classes are never balanced around one aspect

Login session expiration > verbose, but thoughtful post. Arg.

TL;DR - The gravy train is going to end.

There are some well-informed players here, but this thread shows a woeful lack of perspective. If the pet community wishes to be taken seriously, a healthy dose of honesty and common sense needs to be applied.

If you were to equate Rogue DPS to the current state of pet mitigation... your water pets would be backstabbing for somewhere north of 200,000 DPS... and your earth air and fire pets would be backstabbing for 175,000 DPS.

"But backstab is just one part of Rogue DPS!" <- I think you can imagine how well that one would go over with the Rogues... and the other DPS classes.

Warriors have "issues" with pet mitigation and scream about an "unfair imbalance" at the top of their lungs.

However when you ask a warrior about the imbalance within their own class with regards to 1h/shield, dual wield, and 2h DPS output... All of a sudden they lift their nose in the air and wave their hand like Obi Wan saying "These are not the stormtroopers/imbalance you are looking for".

Let's just admit it and stop hiding. There is a high level of jealousy amongst classes in Everquest. Classes are envious of what others can do that they cannot. I have to hope and believe that EQ developers are going to make the right decisions within Everquest not only to further classes, but also to not lose subscriptions. Nerfing any class in the game over a couple charts without going through their own intense internal data compilations and analysis could cause lost future earnings. Which SOE does not want obviously.

I am for classes receiving boosts in the order of trying to bring class balance somewhat back to importance. I am not I'm favor of hurting classes to do so, especially when it has been going on for years w/o issues. I also think that due to prior EQ devs giving classes capabilities from other classes has muddled most of the classes nowadays that perfect class balance may never be reached.

cicely wrote:However when you ask a warrior about the imbalance within their own class with regards to 1h/shield, dual wield, and 2h DPS output... All of a sudden they lift their nose in the air and wave their hand like Obi Wan saying "These are not the stormtroopers/imbalance you are looking for".

I don't want to get too off topic here but I'm curious what you're referring to, specifically. Is Warrior DPS broken? Yes. Do we want to get it resolved? Yes.

This is actually a somewhat similar situation since an outright nerfing Shield Specialist would have impacts on other areas of the game, not just Warriors. Knight weapons, damage augs and Warrior weapons are all itemized to be equal ratio when SS is factored.

Fortunately in this case, DPS for all of the tanks is low enough relative to actual DPS classes that boosts can be applied on a stance-specific basis without infringing on DPS territory.

cicely wrote:I am for classes receiving boosts in the order of trying to bring class balance somewhat back to importance. I am not I'm favor of hurting classes to do so, especially when it has been going on for years w/o issues. I also think that due to prior EQ devs giving classes capabilities from other classes has muddled most of the classes nowadays that perfect class balance may never be reached.

I would agree with all of these points in principle. The tank vs pet situation has a couple of facts that need to be considered:

1. Order of survivability of player classes is delicately maintained.
2. Content is tuned around the current capabilities of #1
3. Pet mitigation (and HP) is light-years beyond the scale of #1 and #2.

So let's say that in order to balance the situation with pets, we improve tanks. Here are the first orders of business:
* Tanks receive a 200-300% boost to HP
* Tanks receive a 300-500% boost to AC
* Tank disciplines are extended to 10 minutes
* Tank disciplines mitigate spell damage
* Tanks become immune to various NPC specials
* Tanks get fast re-use tools to tactically block spells/hits

Next you would see NPC damage cranked up to reach Proxima Centauri, heals would follow to accommodate this (VERY dangerous) as would itemization for non-tank classes need multiplicative increases just to survive even a single round of attacks.

In short, press FastForward on EQ mudflation and skip ahead 5-10 expansions.

I am sorry but I have a hard time taking any of this seriously. You want to use AFK tanking as your baseline? HUH?

Try posting on any tanking board and go I am having trouble tanking X. And they go what disc you using and you say you do not use disc and you will be laughed off the board.

Stats can be manipulated to say what you want them to and in this case that is what you are showing.

To claim pet out tank PC by 2x to 3x is laughable. So many things you can not do without a PC tank and they will do it tons times better than a pet.

Could tanks use some upgrades, sure, I am not against it. But nothing in the game is tuned anything like it used to be, so not sure what big scary mob is out there that a war can not tank.

If you want to AFK tank, pick another game (or pop fort and hope it dead before you get back). Getting pets knocked down a notch (which no clue how you going to do it without nerfing every NPC in the game based off what you think is happening) will not make your class any better. Why not focus on making your class better instead of posting partial data so it will only support you point. Bring some real data and maybe we can talk.

Fleiss wrote:I am sorry but I have a hard time taking any of this seriously. You want to use AFK tanking as your baseline? HUH?

This is precisely what baseline mitigation is. Once you have the baseline it is a matter of applying a few calculations to determine how disciplines affect damage intake.

The disciplines you suggest we apply are not sustainable and would "dirty" the data. This is why parses are conducted in this manner.

Of course, this has been brought up before. So Makavien (one of the best raid geared Warriors) ran a similar parse using all available abilities and still took a higher average hit than an EM15 pet.
http://www.evilgamer.net/forums/showpos ... stcount=16

Relevant bit:
Vs Raid WAR: Avg hit = 8672
Vs Earth 15: Avg hit = 6401 (no fortify)

Fleiss wrote:To claim pet out tank PC by 2x to 3x is laughable.

These numbers are not pulled out of the air. Pets have around 2x the HP of group tanks. Tank classes are subject to a 0.33-0.35 AC multiplier while pets use a 1.0 AC multiplier.

The result?

http://www.evilgamer.net/forums/showpos ... stcount=41

Rounds > 30k
Tank - Time - #rounds - # high rounds/min
EM15 Pet: 5.5 hours, 8 rounds, ~.024
Raid War: 30mins, 6 rounds, ~0.2
Group SK: 30mins, 50 rounds, ~1.7

What is truly "laughable" are the conditions required for player tanks to mitigate like pets. To take a similar DI spread that a pet takes against an 80+ mob in House of Thule, Bedavir needed to fight a level 35 mob.

Dreneth

Are you willing to give up your tanking goodies that mage pets don't get in order to get mitigation that our pets get?

fyi, I play a sk casually. I would not give up any of my tanking goodies (like leechcurse, snare, terror/dread gaze, etc.) just to be able to mitigate like a mage pet. Will you?