Need more h2h-weapons

[Tastian]

Well that gets into one of the other issues of itemization and weapons that beastlords face.  Procs are one of the main ways we can gain dps similiar to other classes, but usually a weapon upgrade that boosts class_X dps by 10% boosts ours by maybe 4%.  It's for that reason that you see beastlords doing less relative damage than other classes as big weapon upgrades, atk cap, etc come into play.  The fact that we only get 1 real upgrade to our pets dps (timeish level focus) makes us fall behind as we go.  

The issue of procs was actually addressed recently too because overall procs in EQ haven't scaled nearly as much as the actual weapons have.  In old world you had 8 on 24 with 75dd.  In luclin you see 17 on 20 with 150dd.  If you don't count the ED/ESB you don't have a lot of big procs.  I personally think the proc off SPF is just amazing for a beastlord.  It's low aggro, is boosted by our pet AAs, and does nice damage.  It has drawbacks, but is very nice.  I think if they did beastlord only weapons right then like the SPF and even ED you'd see an "ok" ratio with big time proc damage.  *shrugs* fixing weapon caps would help with where things are now, but I really hope for OoW they do a much better job itemizing the weapons.

[Bengali]

"Why didn't they make this happen through aa? Why didn't they insist that bards go through some quest to improve their characters?"

I think it's obvious beng that there is no need or reason to use AA to make such a change.  Every since AA went live you see everyone treating it like the be all end all of ways to fix and change things.  You don't need AA for every bug you don't need more AA to offset current AA issues.  Fix what is there.  There is already a standing precedant for fixing just such an issue.  In most cases a beastlords max dps won't even change, but they won't lag behind if they don't get the hth drops and they won't be so boggled when looking at new weapons.  Every other class in the game knows how an 18 on 20 piercer verse a 19 on 20 1hb ranks for them.  Why on earth a beastlord has to post here, use cop's spreadsheet or make me parse for 7 hours just to figure out that 18 + 1 on 20 1hb < 18 on 20 hth is beyond me.

Well, it's obvious to you, me, and many other people, but it wasn't (or isn't) obvious to everyone, unfortunately.

It's like you said, people are still boiling the issue down to, "we are jealous of other classes' skill caps."  /sigh

That's particularly sad for me because my position is that no class should have differing skill caps for the weapons they can use.  Jealousy has nothing to do with it.  If the system allowed anyone to use any weapon, then different skill caps for those weapons might make sense.  Because the system restricts which weapons you can equip, there's no need to add another penalty on top of that.

This applies to all three classes that have this problem -- beastlords, warriors, and rangers.  No one should have to rely on an Excel spreadsheet or hours of parses to tell whether one weapon will do more melee damage than another.   If you think a particular weapon is too powerful for a ranger (or warrior, or beastlord, or anyone, really) then just don't flag it usable by that class.   Relying on different skill caps among your own weapons to "balance" things in this regard is just sloppy.  Note that's not saying that paladins and warriors and clerics should all have the same 1hb cap.  It's saying that paladins should have the same caps for all their weapons and warriors should have the same caps for all their weapons and clerics should have the same caps for all their weapons.

As Tastian mentioned, the only reason people are talking about bards is simply to counter the argument that simply raising the skill caps in a patch would lead to chaos.  We have mentioned it only to show people that the world doesn't end if you take a class whose skill caps don't make sense and actually set them to where they "should" be.

Not only have they done it with bards, but they've done it with US.  Our defense used to cap at 220.  It turns out that was way too low so there was a patch (Oct. 6, 2002) that raised beastlords' and rangers' dodge skill caps to 170 and their defense to 240.  That patch also raised warrior dodge skill caps to 190.   Another patch (don't have date, sorry) adjusted cleric skill caps for bash.   The precedent is clearly there -- if this is something that gets fixed (and it should be) then the way to do it is by raising the cap, not by adding an aa to raise the cap.

[Chubaka]

However this whole argument is rediculous considering that our best dps weapons are actualy Spiked Steel Baton and Ethereal Destroyer which get around the whole skill cap problem entierly since the proc accounts for a large portion of these weapon's dps.

If 1hb was higher  then these would be even better, would they not?


Tastian you forgot the Kunark uber proccing Steel Hilted Flint Dagger :)  Even though beast was added later.

[Noxdowne Draggout]

I firmly believe that Beastlords got a 250 h2h skill as a bonus not the 225 skill cap in others as a penalty.

They could just as easily drop the 250 skill down to 225 to rectify the problem and that's one of my points.

I know that the Bard arguement was brought up as an example of how corrections can be made as opposed to a jealousy issue where we believe that the skills should be equalized because they got theirs raised. I was trying to make the point that people all crying that we are so hard done by should realize that it is not that big of a deal.

I like duel weilding because I get much better stats and hp's in my case than weilding a 2hb.

If I get a great 1hb with a similar ratio I don't care that it is not as amazing for me as it would be for a monk. I don't care that my 1hp would better suit a Rogue.

All I am trying to say is be THANKFUL you have the 250 skill in at least one of the weapon lines and if SoE decided to grant higher weapon skills by aa I would not feel penalized for having to purchase it.

Like when I bought double attack.

When I bought the ability to critical.

When I will buy critical affliction to improve our gimp dots.

Like I did when I bought the ability to make my nukes better the odd time and when I bought aa's to be a better tank.

Not one mention of any of these being bad, but people shudder at buying a higher weapon skill when they do it for everything else.

For those reasons I am boggled.

Nox

[Rhaynne]

For those reasons I am boggled.

That's apparent.  And it's good you seem to be the only one across the entire community who is.

[Noxdowne Draggout]

or the only one with the courage to say it

[Bengali]

Even if 250 in hth was originally thought of as a "bonus" it has worked out so that pretty much everyone tries to use hth because that's the "best".   Instead of people using 1hb and being happy when they get a super-special hand to hand, they avoid using every other weapon type as much as possible.  You can't just ignore the way people think when playing EQ.

They could just as easily drop the 250 skill down to 225 to rectify the problem and that's one of my points.

Based on your position, though, if SOE wanted to change the skill caps they'd have to do it through aa, so they'd have to add an aa for people to buy that would lower their hth to 225. :P

If I get a great 1hb with a similar ratio I don't care that it is not as amazing for me as it would be for a monk. I don't care that my 1hp would better suit a Rogue.

You're totally not getting it.  Let's say you have a h2h with a 16/22 ratio and 40 hps.  Then you come across a 17/21 1hb with 50 hps.    We're not talking about which is better in the hands of a beastlord or monk.   We're talking about the fact that a 17/21 weapon should do more damage than a 16/22, but for you it probably doesn't.  So weapons that are supposed to be "upgrades" in terms of how they are itemized don't actually upgrade you.  Instead, you have to try to figure out how much dps you're going to lose by switching to the 1hb and then determine whether it's worth the extra 10 hps.

But SOE has probably itemized the 17/21 as though it's an upgrade, meaning that it probably drops off a harder mob than the 16/22 one did.  So as you progress, because the weapons aren't all the same type, there are various points where all the "upgrades" for beastlords are actually downgrades in what is arguably the most important stat for a weapon.

[Lheo]

we pay the same money to play there is no one reason to be "thankful",
Bst need more weapons and higher skillcaps. We are far from uber so we dont need to have sucky meleedps..lol..

[Choppin]

With the lack of a doubleattack skill beside the 15 pct AA increase, imo Beastlords suffer enough already in terms of getting use out of weapons, further increasing the gap with lower weaponskills is just not needed.

Maybe we should ask the monk community to put beastlords weaponskillcaps into their top10 list, since if we have a larger weapon choice (1hb,2hb,piercing) the heat about rare h2h weapons would be reduced.
As you can see fixing this problem doesnt only help us.

[Aneya]

However this whole argument is rediculous considering that our best dps weapons are actualy Spiked Steel Baton and Ethereal Destroyer which get around the whole skill cap problem entierly since the proc accounts for a large portion of these weapon's dps.

If 1hb was higher then these would be even better, would they not?

Yes it would have an effect on ED and SSB but not as big of an effect as compared to other weapons that rely on melee damage instead of proc damage. Using Corps dps calculator and my current aa settings I generated the following table of dps comparisons at 225 and 250 skill for pierce and 1hb weapons. Notice that increasing skill would only increase my dps with SSB and ED by 1.3% however other high end weapons with better damage ratios are increased by 2.3 to 2.5%.

[code:1]nam sk225 sk250 %diff
ssb 77.60 78.66 1.36% Spiked Steel Baton
ed 68.15 69.05 1.32% Ethereal Destroyer
dtp 60.70 62.21 2.48% Demerix the Painsipper
jos 56.27 57.72 2.57% Jagged Onyx Staff
hbs 63.25 64.74 2.35% Hardened Bone Spike
uss 52.28 53.61 2.54% Ukun-Spine Spike
[/code:1]

The real kicker here is Weapon affinity. Without weapon affinity, ED SSB and SPF lose a lot of their bite. HoCM will actualy have a higher dps vs SSB if you had all offensive aas except WA.

[Thanatos]

Just to play devil's advocate...

Personally, as a Beastlord, it seems entirely appropriate to be good at 1HB, 1HP, 2HB and to be great (read better) at H2H.  I see the better H2H skill cap as a bonus.  (e.g. if they made a Samurai class, they would probably be better at 1HS than any other weapon skill)

What is the real issue here?  Is it that it makes it more difficult to determine which weapon is better if your weapon choices span different weapon skills?  Or is it that there are not enough H2H weapons in the game?

If the former, then Nox is correct and it could easily be fixed by lowering our H2H skill cap.   :cry:   If the later then it should probably be fixed through itemization and not through changes to the skill cap.

[Lheo]

Rofl...lowering h2h  omfg  BST DO sucky DPS already, there is no reason not to boost our meleeskils (dont forget our "mighty" pets (necro and mage pets are better,,)

[Bengali]

Just to play devil's advocate...

Personally, as a Beastlord, it seems entirely appropriate to be good at 1HB, 1HP, 2HB and to be great (read better) at H2H.  I see the better H2H skill cap as a bonus.  (e.g. if they made a Samurai class, they would probably be better at 1HS than any other weapon skill)

What is the real issue here?  Is it that it makes it more difficult to determine which weapon is better if your weapon choices span different weapon skills?  Or is it that there are not enough H2H weapons in the game?

If the former, then Nox is correct and it could easily be fixed by lowering our H2H skill cap.   :cry:   If the later then it should probably be fixed through itemization and not through changes to the skill cap.

It could be fixed by lowering the cap to 100, or to 50, or to 1, also.  It could be fixed by removing beastlords from all weapons besides h2h, or by removing h2h from our skillset entirely.

All of that begs the question of whether those solutions make sense.  Some classes have high offense and high defense (warriors, monks, rogues, bards, berzerkers).  Others have high defense and low offense (paladins, shadowknights).  Still others have high offense and low defense (rangers, beastlords).

Nox's solution fixes one problem, but then it introduces another in that beastlords then become a class with low offense AND low defense.  You then have to ask whether that actually makes sense.

[Fibbs]

Itemisation blows period, Shinai has eluded me for some time now and its f'ing annoying /sob

I have not seen one H2H drop yet in all of GoD, plenty of other class stuff rots for us now already, forget names, shields, some chain BP, ranger weaps, Jagged Onyx staff etc, etc.

This leaves primarily 1hb's and piercers as drops we can put our hands up on, seeing they drop way more often. your ED's,  etc etc. mainly from Time farming.

Having said this it would only make sense to give us the ability to use these weapons with a max skill cap. Far as i'm concerned seeing its already obvious i'm never likely to see a decent H2H due to the crappy drop rates.

Spiked fists, who wants do Uqua over and over just in the hope that they will drop???? I'll pass thanks.

As always a contradiction though, seeing OOW is a month away I'm happy to wait and see on our new epics for now.

Fibbs

[Bengali]

As always a contradiction though, seeing OOW is a month away I'm happy to wait and see on our new epics for now.

Which may be 1hb, by the way.