The Magician's Tower

Aither wrote:

Danille wrote:For those who have discussed this issue with developers in the past, any tips on avoiding pitfalls or traps in the conversation?

Keep in mind the devs may have different ideas concerning class envisioning as we do. Maybe asking directly to the Devs as a group what their class envisioning is for magicians at this point in the game from a raiding point of view. This would just be for their input, don't fall into the trap of expressing your own ideas about where the class should be.

Yes but --- This will sound biased and it is.
expressing your point of view when starting from a position of strength could be benificial.
Historically other casters have had one or more expansions where they were the uncontested DPS leaders in all of EQ -- Period.
When looking at the Wizard -- Mage -- Necro triangle it is certainly true for Wizards and Necros.
Now SoE has decided to give rangers the top spot, while BER's and Rogues have been there too.
Paladins have even been elevated in the DPS standings to a point while not being overall DPS leaders, are doing respectable DPS for a non-DPS class.

Why not state the opinion that from a standpoint of fairness, Macigians should be givent he top DPS spot in the next expansion and let the DEV's tell you why not.
Start asking to be #1 rather than asking to be #6 or letting them tell you right off the bat that we should ne okay with 2nd teir DPS.

My opinion,

Sued...

Well my personal opinion is that rangers are alot like an on-off road motorcycle. Never better than a road bike when on the road and never better than a motocross bike when on a dirt track. Using that analogy they cant tank better than a warrior, pally or SK and they cant dps better than one of the five DPS classes (rogue, zerker, wizzy necro or mage.)

Likewise a tank (warrior, pally, sk) should DPS about as well as a rogue, zerker, wizzy necro or mage can serve in the role of main tank.

Plain and simple, we SHOULDN'T be the top DPS. If you seriously think we deserve to be the top DPS class then you need to look at other classes. Ber/wiz should be w/o a doubt at the top, I am not saying 10k DPS ahead but they should have a lead over monk/rang/bl/nec/rog/mage, those 2 classes don't bring much to the table in terms of help on raids. Yes Ber do have War Cry, but when they burn they are blind.

Asking to be top DPS will get us laughed at. And we were top DPS during SoF/SoD, only way we got beat sometimes was if bers had their big disc up for the fight. We were at the top and have fallen ever since, asking to be top-teir will not get us taken seriously.

Now asking to be comparable to other mid-teir classes is perfectly acceptable. There isn't a reason why a monk or rogue should realisticly own us on a parse. Nor should a ranger or necro. And with the recently upped ADPS of BLs they shouldn't either. With that said it should be a FAIR foot-race for all these classes, that is to say with the same gear/skill-lvl/ADPS/same role during the raid/glyphs/7th used there shouldn't be a reaon why we are not up there with them. And if we have better skill-lvl we should surpass them, whereas right now most of those classes at lower skill-lvls then mages will out-parse us.

Rangers are going to see diminishing upgrades next expansion more then likely, Eli mentioned this kind of on our boards by calling them broke. Once they get fixed, and we get an increase the way DPS classes should be will be pretty darn fair.

Just an off the wall idea regarding XYZ dps as compared to other classes. Wouldn't it be more beneficial in the long run to keep dps as a percentage of other classes rather than a raw number? I say this because as time goes on dps numbers will continue to increase. With that in mind lets say (making numbers up here) in 5 years wizards are bursting to 250k dps and necro's are sustaining 220k dps. If we were only 20k dps behind wizards that percentage would be negligible whereas today us being 20k dps behind wizards is pretty big.

Sorry if I'm sounding like a pompous know-it-all; not my intent. I'm just trying to keep things in perspective.

Tweelis wrote:Just an off the wall idea regarding XYZ dps as compared to other classes. Wouldn't it be more beneficial in the long run to keep dps as a percentage of other classes rather than a raw number? I say this because as time goes on dps numbers will continue to increase. With that in mind lets say (making numbers up here) in 5 years wizards are bursting to 250k dps and necro's are sustaining 220k dps. If we were only 20k dps behind wizards that percentage would be negligible whereas today us being 20k dps behind wizards is pretty big.

Being percentage based will put the class that is behind even farther behind as time goes by

For example:
Wiz = 100k dps + 20% = 120k + 20% = 144k + 20% = 173k + 20% = 207k
Mage = 80k dps + 20% = 96k + 20% = 115k + 20% = 138k + 20% = 165k

Sued...

Piemastaj wrote:Plain and simple, we SHOULDN'T be the top DPS. If you seriously think we deserve to be the top DPS class then you need to look at other classes.

My post was a simple suggestions to give Dani and other Fan Faire types ideas. I expect that they will be savvy enough to feel the atmosphere and use whichever argument or combination of arguments will do the most good while representing our class.

Piemastaj wrote: Once they get fixed, and we get an increase the way DPS classes should be will be pretty darn fair.

Sounds a little optimistic to me... I will wait for the parses next December before passing judgement.

sued...

You can wait all you want, as it is now things are really fair. We lack and Rangers have too much, when that gets rectified it will be the best balance EQ has had in a long time.

How does fixing ranger DPS help us against Necro burst DPS? It doesn't, and how does it help us against sustained DPS when wizards are not going OOM and can have mana last for the whole fight? It can't and with our new mana cost we will go OOM before a wizard will. So this concept it will be the best balanced is false until these issues (all of them), and not just rangers are addressed.

Calebe

Calebe wrote:How does fixing ranger DPS help us against Necro burst DPS? It doesn't, and how does it help us against sustained DPS when wizards are not going OOM and can have mana last for the whole fight? It can't and with our new mana cost we will go OOM before a wizard will. So this concept it will be the best balanced is false until these issues (all of them), and not just rangers are addressed. Calebe

Yeah I hear you Calebe.

Conversation got off on a tangent and turned philosophical.

Turst me, Calling for nerfs and pointing fingers is not a methodology I intent to follow.

Typically I like to ask alot of questions as to goals for next expansion and also providing developers with accurate information so that they can make informed decisions. I don't intend on the mage class to be a victim due to a lack of input. They may choose not to do something but they will at least be informed.

When we are in those types of conversations, setting the record straight as to mage misperceptions and countering ill convieved suggestions of nerfs coming from other Fan Faire attendees are conversations I will relish.

I can out-burst necros and I out-sustain wizards at the highest-end possible. The threads on EQlive are grosly unfair and are intended to nerf people. Just because 1 necro hit 50k+ every say 3 months doesn't mean they are OP, it means they got insanely lucky on parses. That goes the same for zerks who break 70k and same with rangers. The parses people like to throw around are the best possible those people can do, and it is HIGHLY based on RNG luck. That doesn't mean necs are OP or zerks, rangers are a bit though. The only class right now that is OP is really rangers, they do burst too high for the utility they have and devs know this. Necros really do not burst 50k+ every fight, it is crazy hard to do so for them. Will they get lucky? Of course they will. If your having mana issues, use a glyph of lost secrets. Everyother class needs to use glyphs to do their appropraite DPS so should we, lost secrets is our best glyph because it allows us to use rag more whereas Cata only affects our nukes.

Please show me parses where I am wrong, I have plenty from my guild that prove me right. Until you put up data, please don't spread rumors that are leading to getting classes nerfed.