Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Thoughts on the holy quadrinity and class balance

    • 16 posts
    June 12, 2018 2:33 PM PDT

     Thoughts on the holy quadrinity, class identity and class competitiveness with comparisons to EQ (Kunark/Velious) and VG:SoH

    Forgive me if these topics have already been adressed as I joined recently and haven't seen or read all there is but I have some thoughts and questions about how this game will draw from its predecessors.

    I read about the concept of the holy quadrinity in the FAQ. The idea seems that these four basic roles should be filled some extent in a group.

    This is much how it was in EQ and somewhat in VG and it came with some issues.

    In EQ only one of the tanks could main tank raid mobs which was terrible as it restricted the roles of the other tanks too much in raid evironments. In VG this was fixed by adding multiple stances to all tanks and not just warriors. Warriors, Paladins and Shadow Knights/Dread Knights/Dire Lords were kept separate but fairly equal through other abilities. Warriors were the premier fighter retaining a bit more DPS when tanking and having some warcries to buff and protect the group as well as more AoE and targeted forced aggro abilities so that they could cycle those cooldowns better, Pallies had their bubbles and stuns and SK/DK/DLs their debuffs. This seemed pretty good to me, they all brought something unique and distinctive without being clearly superior in most settings. Pallies and warriors in offensive stance may have been a bit too close to much frailer damage dealers in DPS but that wasn't a big deal.

    It seems that what Pantheon is aiming for is something similar. This is good in my opinion.

    However I'm concerned this wasn't quite as good for the other roles of DPS, healer and CC.

    The healers in EQ and VG were very strong on their own, as were the CCs while the DPS couldn't do much at all and this wasn't compensated with some great utility in any other field.

    They've even adjusted the healer classes damage down on some of the EQ private servers that run old versions of the game because they found it so unfair.

    From statements it seems that the idea is to follow the trend in VG as well as newer games and later EQ expansions that all should be viable healers rather than cleric being the best. That part worked well in VG. However the ability to specialise Clerics and Shamans in VG was excessively powerful and a friend of mine got quite disillusioned with the game when we tested that it was possible for a melee damage specialized healer to have top DPS in what was at that point endgame raid content. It gave him a bad feeling having leveled a rouge which was forced to group to be less good at the task that was supposed to define the identity of his class than a class that could solo, was less squishy in raids and could do all the utility of sneaking et cetera while being able to resurrect and many more things.

    This problem of some classes simply being superior existed for casters too in both EQ and VG. The premier CC class of enchanter/psionicist was simply better than the other casters. Mostly through charm and the superior CC but in VG it was early on even a better nuker than a sorcerer/wizard, allthough I hope that was by pure miscalculation as it was fixed.

    I noticed that root was discussed in the crowd control part of the FAQ, in EQ and VG root was not all that effective as a CC tool and the two classes that have charm and mez were basically the only real CC classes. I hope that there will be less reliance on bards and enchanters in Pantheon and that either root will be sufficient in more encounters or that alternative CCs such as a taunting off tank temporary summon for summoners or something akin to WoW Rogue sap will be spread around. I know that this does add to the everyone can do everything thing that Pantheon is trying to avoid but I feel that an overreliance on a few superior classes really held both EQ and VG back a bit. Stacking too many of the esssential abilities on one or two classes meant that many areas in EQ were simply restricted to the groups who could first get that class to join them. One class having haste, slow, mez, charm and clarity is just a bit much. This might seem as if it strengthens the community but it can also do the opposite, I remember a cleric on my server who always insisted on being master looter and eventhough the entire server agreed that he was a theif and habitually kept things from the split he kept getting groups because many areas just could not be healed by a shaman or druid, had he been an enchanter it might have been even worse.

    Finally on to the damage dealer part of the quadrinity. I think this might be the hardest part to find a clear identity. In EQ FD pulling was very dominant making it basically a separate role for monks. FD puts a bit of a dampener on encounter design though, if it's possible people with do it if mobs are hard linked then monks were just worse rogues. Rogues gimick of sneaking suffered a bit as well as it was mostly useful to recover or skip content. Rangers were even worse being simply the least desirable snareing class.

    In EQ early end game you usually had four jobs to fill tank, healer (only cleric), CC and DPS. But there were other things that were useful to have which added to the group. I will break the useful roles down:


    Tank (Wa/P/SK), Cleric, CC (E/B), slower (B/E/S), Snarer (SK/N/Wi/D/Ra), haster (B/E/S), evacuator (D/Wi), mana buffer (B/E/M/N), DPS (E/M/Wi/Ra/Ro/M/D), Back up healer (S/D/P).

    See how E for enchanter shows up all the time but Rogue is only on DPS, but that's sort of ok because at least they we're good at it, unlike ranger which simply became the least desirable snarer.

    This was a huge problem leading enchanters being so needed that they could be jerks if they wanted to and to rangers having no defining role or identity and not even being good at the few things they could do.

    Wizards also suffered simply being there to snare and evacuate. I'd rather not see the role of evacuator come back at all as it's bit of a silly mechanic.

    Another issue was mages and necros basically being reduced to only being second rate mana buffers on raids.

    This was sort of ameliorated a little bit in Vanguard. No damage dealer was that far behind the others in VG although tanks and healers could just go DPS to replace a dedicated one. But monks had less of an identity as FD pulling was not as essential. Rangers still suffered as all that really set them apart was a critical hit buff that stacked with the one from DPS shaman but was worse. Rogue was less special as DPS shaman was better at all the things that defined rogue, (DPS, CRs and content passing).

    So on to my questions from these experiences.

    Which roles do we know will be planned in Pantheon aside from the quadrinity? It seems at least snares and slows will be in from what I've read.

    Which abilities are planned to create an idenity for each class? I'm a bit worried about the rogues ability to help others climb here. It seems a bit forced to need a rogue because of being unable to access a place without them. Kind of like how you'd rather not have a wizard in EQ but you might need the ability to evac, it's just a mobility thing which doesn't really affect the running gameplay.

    It seems to me as if the plan is to spread out tanking ability across the tanks and healing ability across the healers as it was in Vanguard. Are there any plans on having a similar approach to the essential crowd control role or will it be restricted to just Enchanter and Bard as it was in both EQ and VG?

     


    This post was edited by DonRight at June 13, 2018 3:16 PM PDT
    • 1120 posts
    June 12, 2018 3:56 PM PDT

    What era in EQ are you assuming these characteristics from, because I feel you are lumping issues that happened in classic vs issues that happened in GoD.

    • 1785 posts
    June 12, 2018 4:28 PM PDT

    Hey DonRight,

    Welcome to the community!  Good thoughts and there's a lot there that should be talked about.

    I think what VR is striving for (just my interpretation) is to have each role "matter" while having each class really feel individual and unique.  Obviously that's a pretty complicated thing to pull off.

    One thing I'd encourage you to do is keep an eye on the newsletters and the website.  Just last month we got some new information about several classes, so I think they are starting to roll out new info for us as they get further into the design of each class.  For example, we now know a LOT more about rangers than we did just two months ago.

    Finally I wanted to comment on your statement about root not being effective crowd control.  I think Porygon may be hitting on this too but back in "Classic" EQ (really everything up to GoD), we used root all the time for CC, especially outdoors where we had room to split mobs apart.  Obviously, not every situation was equal, but that's as it should be.  So, I think it might help discussion a bit if you could talk more about the when and the how of some of the things you mentioned.  EQ and even Vanguard changed over time from their launch, and depending when some of us played them, we might not have seen the same problems you did.

     

    • 3852 posts
    June 12, 2018 5:58 PM PDT

    Excellent post - welcome to the forums.

     

    >It gave him a bad feeling having leveled a rouge <

     

    Rouge was the best class in the game for learning the lore. No class was more well red than a rouge.

    I was so excited when I saw that they had added make-up classes I logged off immediately and tried to create a lipstick. Alas, those were never added.

    ((sorry I couldn't resist))

    • 16 posts
    June 12, 2018 10:14 PM PDT
    I did write the EQ timeframe at the top RoK and SoV. I guess a bit more Kunark as these issue weren't quite as bad in Velious.

    As for Vanguard I'm talking about the first year when McQuaid was still a part.

    I quit in early PoP so I have no clue what the issues were in GoD.

    The prime example of a place that people would mostly avoid if they didn't have all the roles and especially mezzer filled unless they were overgeared enough to make it trivial is Sebilis.

    Sebilis was a very important grouping dungeon with many important drops and the best exp at its time.

    Despite my class having haste and slow and thus overlapping a lot with enchanter it was almost inconceivable to go there without one.

    So everyone wanted to go there because it was the best but many were not willing to unless you had a tank, a cleric, an enchanter, a snarer and an evac. Usually FD pulls and back up heals were desired too. This left very little variety and with some classes being virtually excluded if you wanted to go there before it was trivial.
    • 432 posts
    June 13, 2018 2:44 AM PDT

    Actually this kind of classification is much more complicated than that .

    For instance in EQ roles were very different depending whether the class played solo/duo, in a group or in a raid .

    Example : Enchanter

    Quite good solo with charming but dangerous if the charm broke at a bad moment . In duo with a druid , one of the best duos in the game .

    Best in all group settings in dungeons (Guk, Hole, Sebilis) , less so outside where a good rooter could park and keep adds rooted .

    Useless in raids where charm and mez didn't generally work . Only useful role was clarity or MR buffs but for that only 1 enchanter was needed .

     

    So my experience with EQ classes was that almost every class had something which was either a weaker version of an ability that was better in another class or which was unique . Practically all abilities were overlapping among several classes with 1 of the classes being generally a master in that ability .

    For example mages were very appreciated in dungeons and raids not only because of their DPS but because of CoH which made life much easier . For instance if a group very deep in a dungeon needed a replacement, having a mage in the group made the difference between continuing the camp and everybody leaving . For example when I played an enchanter and got a tell to join a group at Juggs in Sebilis, my first and only question has always been "Have you a CoH ?"

    Paladins and necromancers were excellent in groups if the environment was undead . Bards could CC , pull or buff depending on circumstances and/or the group set up . Etc .

    So the quaternity contained a trinity with the strongest classes representing the trinity (Warrior, Cleric, Enchanter) basically only in 1 setting - a group in deep highest level non undead dungeons . In all other grouping circumstances - outdoor, undead or lower end dungeons any class having the necessary ability (tank, healer, dps) would do . For example a ranger could tank in Unrest but certainly not in the Hole . In raids only Warriors and CH chains were necessary, everything else was an adaptable option .

    The DPS were always a special case and this is true for most MMORPGs, in that they are not really necessary for the survival of a group or a raid . Their only function is that the XP flow is faster with them than without them . Also DPS being just DPS they can't be very strongly differentiated because every single class has some kind of DPS so that no class can really be very clearly a DPS master .

    So what one sees is that there is generally 1 best DPS class in most settings (not all !) but the second and third best are not very far behind . These 3 best are generally wizards, rogues and rangers in no particular order . In my opinion Vanguard was not a typical MMORPG (or they hopelessly bungled the DPS design) because almost every class was as good in DPS as any other arbitrary class .

    Finally the class balance and class desirability is no exact science . If a game sets the target that classes will be differentiated instead of being a vague swamp where everybody can do everything then it is quasi sure that players will find that some classes are undesirable, underpowered or overpowered at release . Pantheon will not be an exception - the designers will overestimate and underestimate many factors and be surprised that good intentions went quite wrong . That's why there will be patches adding, strenthening, weakening and removing class abilities during the first months . EQ rogue was an example of a completely missed initial design - unable to solo and useless in groups . This got better later but it took time .


    This post was edited by Deadshade at June 13, 2018 2:52 AM PDT
    • 31 posts
    June 13, 2018 12:46 PM PDT

    True about warriors on raid bosses.  Even then they were not the only real role for tanks on raids.  As it was a warriors only real skill on raid boss was defensive stance.  This lasted so shortly you needed a warrior rotation to take on the much larger bosses.  Palies and Sks did have their role.  I was a sk in a large  raiding guild and had many roles in raids. Mostly it was to take instant agro if a warrior went down unexpectedly, on raids where adds would pop to control the adds effectively to prevent loss of dps.  As far as enchanters they did have roles in raids as well.  The one raid in POP where you had the giant trees.... and had to kill all 12 within a min of each other.. 6 were mezzable and 6 needed to be off tanked.  They did however make them a bit less and more just buffers in raids between haste, slow and tashani.  That however is like getting made that the only role of a cleric is to heal lol.  

      I was able to solo very often as  a shadowknight.  Fear kiting was very effective before they  starting putting lvl caps on monsters that could be feared.  I would cast darkness line, fear... and fight as they ran away... when fear broke... tank till i got fear off again then rinse and repeat.  Was not nearly as effective as pali solo where they could find undead zones and slay undead. 

      I feel the most for dps classes though.  I remember most of the clerics, (shaman or enc) best since they were important to any group success.  I had a trio of people I played with and that was enough because dps was always interchangable.  Sadly why i rarely remember those save for two.. an rogue i partied with who raided with me and we often did opposite raid poisons. There was a ranger I grew up with as a enchanter who would snare for my fear kiting on enc.. other then that.. dps was always the red headed step child IMO.

    • 1120 posts
    June 13, 2018 2:08 PM PDT

    DonRight said:

    double post removed.

    The thing is. I saw your timeframe but was confused because almost none of what you said was accurate.

    Warriors were raid main tanks. This is true.  However all 3 tanks. And even rangers were very capable of tanking nearly every zone in the game effectively.

    Necros provided amazing cc by the use of snare, root and mez, which most groups could utilize because of the levels of most mobs in those expansions.  Also. Root worked perfectly fine as a CC if you were plan ing for it and had a conpentant group.

    All 3 healings classes could effectively heal nearly every zone.  Now if you had a ranger tank and a druid healer.   You might struggle.   But if you had a great puller that grabbed singles you were fine.  

    Which adds. That bards and rangers were extremely capable pullers.  Thru the use of snare/rooting of adds.

    You did not need an enchanter to do anything.  Though they were powerful.

    If you were a mediocre player, you might disagree with some of these statements.  But this is how it was.  

    I think pulling needs to be included when people talk about the quaternity or whatever you want to call it.  Because if I bring 1 mob to camp every pull.  Theres no need for any cc class to be present.

    • 1479 posts
    June 13, 2018 2:52 PM PDT

    You'll get used after a few thousands posts (no pretention). As everywhere, there are a few voices that shout much for their own opinion and make it a stainless truth.

    In the end, it doesn't really matter. A community is a community, with good parts, bad parts, and often some disagreement that ends up with denyal of experience, statements or sanity.

    • 1860 posts
    June 15, 2018 7:21 AM PDT

    Porygon said:

    This is how everyone is.  You have an idea how the game will be made, and you want it to be as close to that as it can be.  So you fight for your point.  

    I couldn't disagree more. 

    There are those who cant, or won't, discuss what is best for the game or the playerbase as a whole and can only see what they want personally.  

    Those people can be a detriment when trying to have a unbiased discussion.  If you can only see what is best for you personally, and can't differentiate when that is not best for the greatest number of players, then you are hindering any discussion.  

    It happens to often on these forums.  Many times it is  quite obvious when someone "doesn't get" that what they are presenting is not best for the player base as a whole.  

    • 432 posts
    June 15, 2018 8:58 AM PDT

    philo said:

     

    It happens to often on these forums.  Many times it is  quite obvious when someone "doesn't get" that what they are presenting is not best for the player base as a whole.  

     

    Not wanting to nitpick but this is an obvious fallacy . Nobody knows what is "best" for the majority so nobody can argue for or against it . Even VR doesn't know what is "best" for the majority . If somebody wanted to know what is "best" for the majority he'd have to do a poll and be sure that it is representative . For instance your opinion about what is "best" for the player base as a whole that you use to write that "somebody doesn't get it" may very well be an opinion of a very small negligible minority .

    As nobody did such a poll, it follows that everybody is only expressing his own opinion VR, you and me included . The only difference between VR and an average player as far as opinions go  is that VR has a vision and decides what will be done while the players don't, even if they happened to be a majority .

    • 1479 posts
    June 15, 2018 8:59 AM PDT

    Porygon said:

    MauvaisOeil said:

    You'll get used after a few thousands posts (no pretention). As everywhere, there are a few voices that shout much for their own opinion and make it a stainless truth.

    In the end, it doesn't really matter. A community is a community, with good parts, bad parts, and often some disagreement that ends up with denyal of experience, statements or sanity.

    This is how everyone is.  You have an idea how the game will be made, and you want it to be as close to that as it can be.  So you fight for your point.  You arent exempt from this lol.

    This post is completely different as it displays the interaction of classes in a game completely incorrectly.

    It's like me saying  guys. 2+2 is 5. And that concerns me because pantheon is also using the 2+2 =5 model 

     

    This is only due to you beeing persuaded you are right and you are the 2+2=4. That's where you making this argument binary by giving yourself the true calculation, and showing the other as 2+2=5. However, this is not a binary argument and nothing makes you more right, except at your own eyes, than your own self consideration.


    This post was edited by Mauvais_Oeil at June 15, 2018 9:01 AM PDT
    • 3852 posts
    June 15, 2018 11:22 AM PDT

    I may be misreading what this argument is about.

    My reading is this. DonRight said some things about how various classes worked in EQ. Not how they will work in Pantheon. Not how he or she thought they should work in Pantheon. How they worked in EQ. The startements may have been totally accurate or totally inaccurate. That really is irrelevant to my point.

    Porygon questioned the accuracy of these statements. About how things worked in EQ way back when. Again, perhaps correctly and perhaps not. This doesn't matter

    None of this necessarily reflects what they think Pantheon should do. While arguments about what Pantheon *should* do are opinions not facts, arguments about what EQ *did* do are a historical reference and may be verifiably true, verifiably untrue or merely opinions. Whether a class got stances is 2+2 = 4. It either did or did not happen at any point of time. Fact. Whether a class could tank a raid is opinion. When has everyone *ever* agreed about how well a class could do things. Most people maybe but everyone?

     

    • 752 posts
    June 15, 2018 2:11 PM PDT

    My thoughts are simple on this.

    They have Tanking, DPS, Healing, CC. 

    These have always existed. The key to fixing this and spreading it through all classes is to revamp class design. With recent class reveals we are seeing that many of the standard class designs are being revamped to be more inclusive and allow certain classes access to a broader range of this design tenant. 

    The key to removing the single main tank role and main healer class role is to build up other classes and allow diversity without giving that everyone can do everything feel. Certain classes needed boosting, like rogues being given CC abilities. Rangers being given CC and scouting and burst damage. Tanks with buffing abilities and healing abilities. We have yet to see the caster and healer reveals but you can bet they will be along the same vein of class design.

    Also, Encounter design is how to removed that single tank game design. I mean ya.... running up against a single mob you will probably still utilize this, but add in some dynamic encounter design and there will be a need for multiple tanks and multiple CC aspects. 

     

     

     

     


    This post was edited by kreed99 at June 15, 2018 2:24 PM PDT
    • 16 posts
    June 16, 2018 12:53 AM PDT

    kreed99 said:

    My thoughts are simple on this.

    They have Tanking, DPS, Healing, CC. 

    These have always existed. The key to fixing this and spreading it through all classes is to revamp class design. With recent class reveals we are seeing that many of the standard class designs are being revamped to be more inclusive and allow certain classes access to a broader range of this design tenant. 

    The key to removing the single main tank role and main healer class role is to build up other classes and allow diversity without giving that everyone can do everything feel. Certain classes needed boosting, like rogues being given CC abilities. Rangers being given CC and scouting and burst damage. Tanks with buffing abilities and healing abilities. We have yet to see the caster and healer reveals but you can bet they will be along the same vein of class design.

    Also, Encounter design is how to removed that single tank game design. I mean ya.... running up against a single mob you will probably still utilize this, but add in some dynamic encounter design and there will be a need for multiple tanks and multiple CC aspects. 

     

     

     

     

     

    Yeah, these are the more obvious answers.

     

    But it's nice to have multiple angles on it anyway.

     

    For instance I don't see much CC in the ranger reveal, but it is in the paladin reveal. Having the tank be the CC is rather novel, I don't think I've ever seen that.

     

    Clearly we don't want roles spread too thin so that that class make up doesn't matter. Nor do we want them too rare so that the community gets overly dependent on certain players. *cough, cough*

     

    It seems from the tank reveal that they've gone the route of making their strengths very, very disparate and that does require paying attention to encounter design so that these dispatate abilities are made useful in multiple environments.

     

    The Dire Lord for instance clearly has abilities that will be useful when in a duo or small group and when fighting casters. They lifetap, they have extra regen and seemingly a little extra personal damage with the crit bonuses and such.

    However in the tougher fights they have lower armour and comparatively situational damage absorbtion abilities. There seems to be a risk that many boss raids will have them simply absorb part of the damage from the main tank. We can hope that there are enough encounters where this is not the case now that we can see that the tanks will play in very disparate ways.

    I'm not sure that I'm a fan of the suggested idea to alleviate this by increasing the group size to 8. yeah sure, more people can tag along when fewer are doing the pivotal roles but it also makes it a bit zergy and diminishes the tactics of each fight by speeding them up.

    • 1120 posts
    June 16, 2018 11:06 AM PDT

    DonRight said:

     We get it man, YOU got your RBG and Fungi in Seb tanking as a level 15 ranger using Bind Wounds for healing and Dance of the Fireflies as crowd control. We're all very impressed,

    If you, as a player. Cannot tank a mob on a ranger.  You're either undergeared or terrible.  Why should a game be designed around how classes perform when they are undergeared.  Why should a game be designed around how a poor player navigates his or her class.

    It actually doesnt make me a good player that I utilized ranger tanks. It makes me open to things that were outside of the norm.  Most people would never even consider letting a ranger tank, or a necro CC.  Because the only thing most players know is what everyone else thinks is best.

    If you design a game around the worst players. You end up with WoW.  Which in your other thread you criticized heavily.  Guess what, wow was an amazing game until blizzard started catering to the worst players because overall money was more important.  I'm by no means saying that a company shouldnt care about money. But WoW is what happens when you build a game for the worst players.

    • 264 posts
    June 16, 2018 7:42 PM PDT

     Some classes are not going to be useful in certain situations, this is normal for MMORPGs. I don't expect every class to perform equal in every situation, like Porygon said you end up with a WoW clone if you go down the road of trying to balance everything. The original EQ class design was good imo except the ranger which was terrible. VG was a compromise between new and old and I liked the class design in that game overall. At the end of the day there will always be a compromise for class uniqueness vs class utility...and I am hoping that Visionary Realms favors the class uniqueness.

    • 16 posts
    June 17, 2018 4:52 AM PDT

    Ziegfried said:

     Some classes are not going to be useful in certain situations, this is normal for MMORPGs. I don't expect every class to perform equal in every situation, like Porygon said you end up with a WoW clone if you go down the road of trying to balance everything. The original EQ class design was good imo except the ranger which was terrible. VG was a compromise between new and old and I liked the class design in that game overall. At the end of the day there will always be a compromise for class uniqueness vs class utility...and I am hoping that Visionary Realms favors the class uniqueness.

     

    But it's not a dichotomy, class uniqueness and class competitiveness doesn't exclude each other.

     

    Clearly the developers are aware of this as there are crowd control abilities for Rogue and Paladin now.

     

    There is a huge difference between all classes being able to do all things and certain classes being able to hold their group hostage with bad behaviour while others are outright undesired. There are many, many level in between these extremes.

    • 9115 posts
    June 17, 2018 6:06 PM PDT

    Thread cleaned up, off-topic and argumentative posts removed, please keep it on topic and keep the personal attacks and opinionated arguments out of it folks or the thread will be closed.

    • 81 posts
    June 18, 2018 5:24 AM PDT

    DonRight said:

    Wizards also suffered simply being there to snare and evacuate. I'd rather not see the role of evacuator come back at all as it's bit of a silly mechanic.

    The conversation you have started here considering the pros and cons of classes and teams is exactly what makes the game fun. Very few group leaders are presented with the perfect team. You have to try new things and be innovotive based on what you have available. This can only happen if the classes are diverse and fun to play. I'd argue the quadrinity is a bit of a myth, there were lots of ways to get xp in EQ, I can't imagine Pantheon being much different. There may be an ideal team but it's teamwork that makes a success.

    I quoted you above because the Wizard escape skill was immensley fun. It had a long 10sec? countdown. It was a great fun knowing that the whole group was a few seconds away from a deadly train or wipe and you had to hope you had timed and judged things perfectly. As a wizard I was there for DPS, the utility made it fun for everyone though.

    Blood

     

     


    This post was edited by Bloodfire at June 18, 2018 5:26 AM PDT
    • 200 posts
    June 18, 2018 6:19 AM PDT
    I’m trying to see your point but I actually felt in EQ classes were quite nicely balanced? They all brought utility one way or another, they had their specific strengths and weaknesses. I played a cleric and pugged a great deal with all kinds of combinations and it was never the question of whether we had the ‘right’ classes but more whether people used their whole toolkit intelligently. Some set ups were a bit faster at the start, esp the stereotypical ‘proper’ group, but I’d usually notice with the so called weird combinations it would generally speed up after a bit when everyone had figured out their role. I loved that, groupdynamics were different each time.
    • 145 posts
    June 18, 2018 9:59 AM PDT

    There is one major flaw when considering how balanced or how many tools a character can have. I played Rift for a short time, it was awful for that very reason. Everyone could do everything. As a matter of fact Rogues made some of the best raid tanks with their evasion skills. As a DPS caster (wizard player) I had to switch stances to heal. Which I hated, nothing more frustrating then having to play your character a certain way just because the group needs it, or else you're on the sidelines waiting.

    What it boils down to is people will migrate to classes of need. I don't know how many EQ clerics were made simply to serve a group need. Enchanters as well. People will balance out the scales if they want to play and be received in groups on a regular basis.

    The holy quadrinity is a very strong structure. And making all of them work together is a thing of beauty and helps serve a lot of needs. If clerics do anywhere near the damage of a mediocre dps type whats the purpose in playing any other class than a cleric? They can heal, and tank because they have to be somewhat sturdy to take the damage from aggro. If they can dps well too you might as well roll with a group full of clerics.

    To me it's of utmost important to keep the holy quadrinity much like it was in EQ. Every class had it's specific reason for being in the group. Other than DPS of course, but the DPS classes had their pros/cons as well.

    Having the classes switch to majorly different roles in game like Rift had was what drove me away from the game. I'm a wizard player, I like to do massive amounts of damage and sometimes die because of it. I don't want to heal, or play CC (anything more than rooting/snaring). And if you are good at your class and play them well people will group with you. I got a lot of groups with my Wizard because of my reputation. They got a lot of flack for being AFK all the time. Yet when they were played right were very very nice DPS and well worth having in a group.


    This post was edited by Moloka at June 18, 2018 10:02 AM PDT
    • 409 posts
    June 18, 2018 1:08 PM PDT

    The first thing most people need to get out of their head is that "raiding" is defined solely as tank and spank fights that require the highest possible passive damage mitigation from armor to be on the main tank. The entre toolkit of every class is not going to be exactly like Kunark/Velious era EQ1. And even in that era of EQ1, minus specific max level content, bleeding edge raid bosses, all three plate classes could tank. 

    As far as the rest of the "quadernity" thing, that is a player education thing, period. For all but the max level, bleeding edge raid game, druids and shaman were perfectly viable healers, and if given a choice, I'd pick a shaman or druid over a cleric for single group heals every single time because of all the extra utility they came with. DPS was then as it is now - if you care to play well as a DPS, you will, regardless of class. If you play poorly, you will, regardless of class. 

    On the very specific topic of "nobody loves my ranger" it's because RoK introduced the outdoor path of least resistance, and every ranger in the game figured that as their only calling, so everyone else got that idea as well. They did fine DPS, had most of the druid spells like damage shields/DoTs/snares, and they had dual wield/double attack like rogues. But since evryone only knew them from being outdoor SoW pulers on the LOIO->OT->DL treadmill (even thmselves) nobody saw the "mostly rogue with cool utility and DPS spells, plus archery!" class they were. That was a culture thing, not a class imbalance thing.

    We've come a long way since then. Old school gaming doesn't mean dumping all the knowledge learned, it just means less hand holding, slower leveling and more group dependency. We can have proper rangers with serious melee DPS and utility, and people will be happy to have them in their group, I am almost sure of it. Picture the dual wielding ranger who has two proc'ing 1HS weapons and is hasted. let's say one proc is a DD and the other is a stun. I'll call it right now - if you're that ranger, come join my enchanter if you see me in game. We'll wreck face and it will be fun. 


    This post was edited by Venjenz at June 18, 2018 1:09 PM PDT
    • 1281 posts
    June 18, 2018 1:17 PM PDT

    I really don't care about class balancing that much. Each class should be different and if we get into wanting to perfectly balance classes then I think the outcome will mean we just have a bunch of muted and boring classes.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at June 18, 2018 1:18 PM PDT
    • 409 posts
    June 18, 2018 1:22 PM PDT

    bigdogchris said:

    I really don't care about class balancing that much. Each class should be different and if we get into wanting to perfectly balance classes then I think the outcome will mean we just have a bunch of muted and boring classes.

    Absolutely agree. One of the coolest parts of classes being different and distinct is emergent gameplay and evolving culture. If everything gets watered down to placate people who think nobody loves their class because they'll never MT on the King_Boss_01 raid, well then the game will likely be bland and meh. Class differences make for really cool single group combos, synergies, etc. 

    #classdifferencematters