When I think of perfect class balance in an MMORPG I think about EverQuest II. I have no doubt that balancing 24 classes and their AAs in both PvE and PvP is an easy thing to do! Last time I gave the developers a little hint on how to make healer balance a bit more accurate. This week I didn’t have a suggestion so I thought I’d just throw out a chart of how fighters are currently stacking up! I look forward to your hate mail.
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LOL SK FTW.
I’m curious whether you think the Brawler problem is solvable. It seems like they sit in a tanking niche that no one wants, but can’t be made into pure DPS because of that hypothetical utility.
I’m honestly not sure. When they decided that all fighters had to be tanks I think that was an unwise move. Both of the brawler classes have suffered since then. Avoidance tanking just doesn’t seem to work well in MMOs to date.
I think putting them back as DPS is a better idea.
There is a REALLY high gear threshold, that when/if met, the brawler class actually becomes the best tanking class. The problem is you need one of the primary tanking classes to support the success of your raids to get that gear needed to meet that threshold. At that point do you tell your tanks “Thanks guys, brawlers got it from here!” ? Probably not.
I think one option for the brawler classes is redesign their roles to be a little higher dps with the ability to protect a limited number of people from damage. Allowing for a couple dps or healers to stay near the epicenter of your fight for its entire duration.
That’s a cool idea about protecting others in a limited fashion.
I had some thoughts on the tank roles too myself.
The way I see it is that the original design had guardians as the defensive tank which equalled the tank with the most mitigation. That doomed every other class to be an extra until TSO when they gave the other classes equal survivability, that doomed everyone but crusaders to be extras….
So I’d like to see a class design letter go out that scraps that original idea and instead go for something like this
Equal survivability for tank classes (close-ish at least and different avoidance/mitigation makesups)
Then Crusaders = best for AoE
Guardians = best to protect party physically
Monks = best to protect party via resistances
With Beserkers/Brawlers trading some extra DPS for less mitigation/avoidance or party protection. Then make the content a bit more intelligent to stop AoE being the only route (more ranged mobs, more intelligent mobs).
You’re exactly right. MMORPGs have taken historical balance issues and homogenized them without adding back to the classes they plundered. Survivability used to be a balance factor. Now all tanks should roughly survive the same while all non-tanks don’t. Healing is another casualty here. Instead of having different levels of healing prowess everyone heals roughly the same. The classes that previously healed better were not compensated nor were the tanks. Those factors simply dropped out of the balance equation.
That is why you now have shadow knights tanking as well as guardians while doing substantial damage. You also have wardens who heal as well as every other healer and also do quite well on the damage parse. EQ2 isn’t the only game guilty of this. WoW is a major culprit too. I’m just going off the classes I know and see.
For PVP I’d change those a lot (survivability at least for a guardian I play is pretty low, barely more then any other non warrior class), I’d halve the bar for PVP.
For PVE though after some thoughts I think you have it spot on since I calculated for one wizard I needed 120% more hate gen a few days ago and a SK could keep up with him.
The problem seems to be generating single target hate which is low. Looking back at skills not much has been buffed up since TSO, and in fact the key TSO AA line taunt remains unchanged, which means that when DPS has gone up say 100% in SF the taunt ability has remained the same. Then the taunts themselves have a feeble increase from TSO of around 20%, I’m sure DPS has gone up more then that.
For pure actual damage I’d put them rock bottom on that chart with no hesitation.
The big problem though I see is content, groups of mobs are getting bigger and bigger, and they are dumb too. By that I mean its rare to see a ranged mob, and even if they are ranged they are not bright enough to figure that running back a bit will get them out of melee. Those two combined make trash tailor made for ground based consecration AoE taunt type abilities, while the game design favours that numbers will always go to crusaders I think.
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