Humlaine,
Can you comment on the parse parameters for the Bst versus monk comparisons that Wycca has been working on?
This is in reference to xistence's class balance thread on eq forums.
Thanks
the parses of bsts were actually from me, give a little bit, and I will edit this post with the parse of bst substained dps, but knowing from monk dps ( my old main ), as for the monk parses I can't really comment on what wycca really parses, as I honestly don't know
Did you run the sustained DPS parses with the 2 poison nukes and an ice nuke? There was some question as to whether a bst could sustain those 3 nukes for 15-20 minutes.
15-20 mins? most fights in EQ aren't even 10 anymore, I think like maybe 1-2 fights per expansion are 10 mins + and those most people have issues staying FM on, as for other fights, 7 min duration you can maintain top 3 nukes + Hatm without much concern depending on your mana pool, I Was going off of about a 17-19k mana pool on beta, on live buffed I am sitting at about 20k now, so it's not much of a concern, it becomes more of a aggro issue then anything else.
Thanks humlaine. I think there is some confusion on EQ forums about how long we can sustain our nukes, because our nukes are being used to estabish our infinitly sustainable DPS.
I also question whether someone would indeed use nukes over say Bark/Howl at the Moon on a long duration (ie Raid) fight, due to resists, but that is a separate issue.
It sounds like monks may have indeed had their DPS held back, but I am not exactly agreeing with the method they are using to prove it.
in an exp grind group I can sustain around 1100-1400dps, depending on how lazy I am
/G Combined: A chaotic clay guardian in 3625s, 3753k @1035dps || Fight + pets 3753k @1035dps
that was ashengate for a little while, and mostly on auto pilot cus I was bored so wasnt nuking a whole lot, just batm alot, cus even after all this time i still get giddy when I see multiple pets proc=)
I think our numbers in xp grinds will be a little inflated, because mobs typically last 30-40 seconds. This allow 2 fires of our 30 second melee discs and/or 30 second refresh nukes.
I think it might be too early with alot of the comparisons really, mainly with monks against anyone. The expansion is still early, so the end gear isn't quite there yet. Also monks long list of skills haven't been retuned too full yet. They got kick and flying kick upgraded, but I don't think Flying kick itself was well done and the abilities between haven't been revamped yet.
I will also admit that alot of fights just go one way or another that DPS just isn't steady list of class a beats class b comparisons anymore. Too me this isn't a bad thing.
I found the thread once, but cannot find it now. Can you tell me where it is? Or link it?
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=125982
This is the thread where they indicated bst were at the top of infinately sustainable DPS. The did not actually include the parses, but Wycca gave some idea of his parse parameters.
I've already commented on the thread, basicly they are calling for a nerf to bsts and rangers, while they may not like where we are in terms of dps, is all comes down to who is playing the toon. Most people are not consistent enough for parsing and saying hey somethings wrong here. With that said, I don't see any real issues with dps in terms of bsts / rangers, we are better then ever, and yes they did close the gap to monk dps, it's not to the point we should out dps them every time, alot of fights are situational and we tend to do better in longer post 3 min fights.
Humlaine, after reading that post and as about a high end of a bst as you can get I'm curious where you personally end up on the guild dps list during raids. Wycca is saying bst outparse monks but everyone the posted a dps list for their raids had monks ahead of bst.
I dont mind people discussing balance, but I worry about spreading misinformation.
Here is the paragraph that troubles me most:
Since you asked about how beastlords ranked, I will be blunt. Beastlords were at the top of my 15-20min duration parses. For indefinitely sustained, BEFORE adding in pet dps (which Humlaine parsed to be 338dps) and Feral Swipe dps (which is well over 140dps - and has a 1 mana cost), beastlords were under 13% from a warrior in sustained dps (raw melee + kick). A monk was under 4% above a warrior in the same scenario. Once you add in the pet and Feral Swipe values, a Beastlord shoots past the monk to the #2 indefinitely sustainable dps class. Obviously, that isn't a complete picture, but it should be a very large - holy **Halfling** of a red flag. In case you were curious, the bst spells I used were Jagged Torrent Rk.2, Bite of the Burrower Rk.2, Bite of the Empress Rk.1, Feral Swipe 3, and Harrow Rk.2.
First, he says his parses were run before adding in Feral Swipe, then he lists Feral swipe in the list of abilities he used in parse.
Second, he lists Feral Swipe DPS at 140. Since this is only usable every 30 seconds, it would need to hit for an average of 4200, but I only see it hit for 1.5 - 2K
Third, he lists a spell set up which is not really sustainable, unless you have maybe 5 other bst feeding you mana.
And forth, this nuke selection would result in a resist rate that would make it undesirable in real-game scenarios.
I've already seen someone post in an unrelated thread that BST are outparsing everyone, so I am afraid if we don't address the lingering questions, then the public at large will accept these parses as Gospel.
Bst is not overpowered at the moment. We are doing ok, but not overly so. I do not want to go back into another 3 year downcycle, because of a false perception.
In reality wycca is correct on what he says, but speaking on what he's said, me and him both have the parses, our dps is actually higher when you add in our activated abilities. Monks dps sloap is greatly dependent about group set up, and disc position in a raid setting, while ours is more or less go and do things when you choose. I think the balance is fine as does a couple of other people who rashere had parse for him. It really boils down is where SoE wants our class to be at. I don't think we are in a bad spot nor do I forsee any nerfs happening.
As for for the spell set up, I was the one using that spell set up, and yes it can be done ( and no I don't have the biggest mana pool in bsts either ) granted my gear and armor have alot to do with it, the parses were looking at potential and a few other various factors in there. As for our pet dps, I find my warder actually doing closer to 380-420 dps on raids now fully raid buffed ( this is including BP clicks and various other aa's tossed in there along with discs ).
Our class has really developed into a well rounded machine, granted our tanking ability is horrible this expansion, in terms of how we are , this is the best we've been since luclin in my opinion
The biggest discrepancy seems to be on "infinitely sustainable" comments by Wycca (claiming you said so, so it must be true), versus your response to the query above that fights don't last more than 10 minutes and your mana pool will last that long (which may be true, but that is a VERY different statement than what Wycca is saying). The mana-flow math simply doesn't work on a forever basis.
I love the fact that their whole arguement is based on the fact that we are hybrids and therefore cant do their level of DPS. The classification of hybrid died long ago. We do spell damage and melee damage, why should the combination be lower then a monks? Monks problem is that they have always been in the DPS group and always counted bard/shammy/zerker enhancements as their own DPS, enhancements that arent avaiable in the sustained DPS mode comparisons. Lo and behold when you remove those enhancements, they fall to the "lowly" DPS of a hybrid who was never put in the raid DPS group. Looks like the classes are balanced to me.
Agree we are in great shape with SoF. There are still fights (not necessarily in SoF) where we are hampered by spell resists (something monks dont ever have to deal with). Sothgar comes to mind. Cant land a poison nuke on him to save my life.
Quote from: Nusa on January 08, 2008, 04:25:40 PM
The biggest discrepancy seems to be on "infinitely sustainable" comments by Wycca (claiming you said so, so it must be true), versus your response to the query above that fights don't last more than 10 minutes and your mana pool will last that long (which may be true, but that is a VERY different statement than what Wycca is saying). The mana-flow math simply doesn't work on a forever basis.
Actually I would like to look at the parses but I do believe over a long period of time, when just factoring in melee, we probably fall off less then the other melee classes outside of rangers. The devs have really tied a lot of classes to their endurance bar plus disc for doing dps. With no disc up and out of endurance their dps really falls off. In this case, because our damage is broken into three different types we don't do nearly as much damage using the yellow bar.
I hear monks, zerkers and rogues on a regular basis complaining about running out of endurance and needing to med while I'm standing there waiting for the next pull.
I agree, the mana situation really plays down into how your geared and auged , wycca stating that we can keep that forever is just bogus. The fact is when using a 1k mana nuke, a 780 mana nuke and a almost 400 mana nuke despite how much mana regen you have you wont last 20+ mins with that running and chain casting it, I know because I've tried...lol. Either way , I don't see us really need to involve ourself's or point out things where it's not needed. That thread is something we can all laugh about because we know better and so does the dev.
They run out of endurance because they are chain casting every endurance using skill they can. Lacking a mana bar, they've never bothered to figure out how to fight efficiently. Those classes have always been focused on burst DPS for OMG leet #s, efficiency is a foreign word to them. Its akin to us blasting away with Howl and 5 nukes in a group setting and then gasping outloud when we have to med every 5th pull.
Quote from: Rabekiz on January 08, 2008, 06:29:43 PM
They run out of endurance because they are chain casting every endurance using skill they can. Lacking a mana bar, they've never bothered to figure out how to fight efficiently. Those classes have always been focused on burst DPS for OMG leet #s, efficiency is a foreign word to them. Its akin to us blasting away with Howl and 5 nukes in a group setting and then gasping outloud when we have to med every 5th pull.
In a raid setting, efficiency is detrimental to their total damage done - they rely upon a nice combo of shaman, berzerker, ranger, rogue(iirc), and bard (4 of those w/ very short term abilities) to put out big numbers. Warcry, shammy epic, ranger auspice, and rogue (iirc) accuracy buff make their speedfocus discipline beyond powerful. If they wait until those are gone, their overall damage done will be drastically downgraded.
As far as group setting, their endurance based short discs (Clawstrikers, etc) have been getting seriously mana hungry over the past few expansions...esp. if they don't have the end. regen AAs, it doesn't take too long for a monk to go ooe nowadays.
They certainly should be more efficient in a group setting - it's not worthwhile for a group to med just for the monk to get more endurance. But, that's a bad strategy for raids.
Thats exactly the problem khauruk, they are simply unwilling to shift play styles betweens raids and group settings, they still click their skills as fast as they cycle. We could do the same with our nukes and we'd be OOM just as fast as they are OOE.
I find Wycca's whole argument of limited value since he claims non-burn DPS for a monk is only 4% more damage then a warrior (note he refuses to post the parses). Higher attack, higher triple attack skill, better damage table and they only get 4% more damage??? Please. Shall we also consider that the monk is also more likely to have a better damage aug combo on his weapons then the warrior who is stuck with aggro augs that are probably chaotic strike. Based on years grouping with the same monk and warrior, I'd say the number is closer to 20-30% more DPS for the monk.
BTW my parse of feral swipe 3 says its closer to 66 DPS. Non crit, non disc, self buffed average hits are less then 2K.
Quote from: Rabekiz on January 09, 2008, 01:55:31 PM
BTW my parse of feral swipe 3 says its closer to 66 DPS. Non crit, non disc, self buffed average hits are less then 2K.
Thank you Rabekiz. 66 DPS makes muck more sense to me. I'm not sure where the 140 DPS number comes from.
Quote from: Bumkus on January 09, 2008, 03:45:01 PM
Quote from: Rabekiz on January 09, 2008, 01:55:31 PM
BTW my parse of feral swipe 3 says its closer to 66 DPS. Non crit, non disc, self buffed average hits are less then 2K.
Thank you Rabekiz. 66 DPS makes muck more sense to me. I'm not sure where the 140 DPS number comes from.
Wouldn't be suprised 140dps figure comes from calculating out theoretical maximum damage.
Got a good chuckle, one of the main monk complainers posted in another thread:
Granted we havn't had any TSS weapons for monks yet Nor obviously any TBS weapons.
So people with better weapons are outdamaging him and the other monks in his guild. Go figure.
I read the thread but.../shrug.
The beastlord setup didn't look realistic to me, but I am not high-end. We just broke into Demi before Christmas. I'd be oom very fast with that, and on raids I tend to run the swarm pet and growl instead of nukes.
Monks getting boosted though is fine with me...I group with friends so it's not like I am competing with them for groups.
Non-disc I've gotten a few around 5K but those are very,very rare. Even 4K every 30 seconds only works out to 133 DPS, damn wish it did that much.
Only have 1 active zerker in our guild and they dont raid much so I've never gotten to test it out but I'd reckon with the right set up we can break 10K with feral swipe - once in a blue moon. Monks are on the record as going over 23K max hit with their clawstriker's fury (of course its DPS is no where near 23K/30 seconds - which would be around 760 DPS).
For Shieara, try loading up 3 nukes for your next ZT and Tris fight and cycling them on top of swarm pet and puma. You shouldnt go OOM on Tris as the fight doesnt last long enough. The goal is to run out of mana right as the boss dies. That's about as much DPS as you can possibley put out. I normally run puma, swarm, 3 ice and 2 poison nukes (about 15500 mana) and Ive only run OOM once. The normal barrier I run into is over-aggro (especially with a couple of 8K nuke crits), roar of thunder doesnt cycle fast enough so I throttle back some after using it the first time.
I'll have to turn on logging tonight/tomorrow and see for myself.
I remember Tastian parsed Feral Swipe rank 2 at 60 dps when the upgrade went live. Looking at Lucy, the damage should be approximately doubling from rank 2 to 3 as well (rk I/II/III are Skill attack (100/200/400) respectively. That would be 120dps. Drop that a bit for lower end Beastlords to account for higher mob AC/player atk ratio, and we're still probably over 100dps.
The overall parse condition may not be realistic - 20 min of those spells sustained would be hard for anybody outside of the Vish encounter.
Quote from: Rabekiz on January 09, 2008, 01:55:31 PM
Thats exactly the problem khauruk, they are simply unwilling to shift play styles betweens raids and group settings, they still click their skills as fast as they cycle. We could do the same with our nukes and we'd be OOM just as fast as they are OOE.
Monk discs have steadily become a greater part of their dps, and absolutely required for pulling most content. Mez is 813 end, eye of zomm disc is 800, lull is 438, and wheel of fists is 316. Those, plus some occasional use of defensive discs when needed, and a group/lower raiding monk will run ooe very fast, even without using any of their melee damage disciplines (whose endurance cost has scaled drastically across all classes for the past few expansions).
I'm not saying Wycca's parses are an accurate representation of the facts - they sound a bit funny. I have faith however that Maddoc will see through any potential BS/poor methodology. And any way you look at it, I don't think anybody can say a properly geared beastlord is poor dps anymore - now we just need to get our non-paragon utility fixed, a tad more mitigation, better deagro, and we're golden.
Oh, and nuke crits are the exact same agro as the base nuke.
Quote from: Khauruk on January 09, 2008, 08:07:10 PM
Drop that a bit for lower end Beastlords to account for higher mob AC/player atk ratio, and we're still probably over 100dps.
Except we all hit the same attack cap with anguish armor. Barring any clickies, which were excluded in this comparison, the attack of a solteris geared beast is the same as a anguish geared beast.
100 DPS requires it to hit for an average of 3K, thats well over half of its max hit and so mathematically its very suspect especially since you can hit for 0 damage. The majority of my hits fall between 800 and 2900.
Pulling, I'll agree, puts a huge strain on their endurance. However, this is a straight up melee comparison, in fact the monks are specifically downplaying their ability to pull throughout the entire post. The failure of their whole argument is that no one has ever constructed a viable comparison for the utility all classes bring to a raid. Straight DPS comparisons are flawed because every single class brings some form of utility to a raid.
I think most of us can just chuckle over the whole thing, we've been slandered for years as a subpar DPS class that was unwanted at raid except for a single buff. Now suddenly people are noticing that this view is flawed (in fact we do excellent DPS if played correctly). Rangers and beastlords are in fact viable DPS classes at a raid.
Quote from: Rabekiz on January 09, 2008, 09:25:16 PM
in fact the monks are specifically downplaying their ability to pull throughout the entire post.
After the first few posts, I only read those from Wycca, and Bumkus(?), and the different CCs. I found the OP and just about everybody else to be worthless wastes of my time, and not worth reading.
Real dps? As I said, I dunno - I have all hits in a narrow window just as numbers only. I need to log to see even it's max hit.
I like the gains we've made, now I just wish I had time to raid again.
Quote from: Humlaine on January 08, 2008, 04:14:36 PM
granted our tanking ability is horrible this expansion
So have you mentioned this to the devs? If so, what did you provide for info and what did they have to say about it? Because you are right, our tanking sucks in this expansion.
I think part of the problem with endurance right now is the regen rate of the current monk. Way I understand it alot of the melee based heroic stats are suppose too increase the endurance regen rate. I can only gather once they get up there in a lot of the newer gear, the regen rate of endurance will increase greatly.
http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/game_updates.vm?date=11/13/2007 (http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/game_updates.vm?date=11/13/2007)
Correction, endurance regen and pool size is both increased threw herioc stats.
Quote from: Otuol on January 10, 2008, 02:17:09 AM
Quote from: Humlaine on January 08, 2008, 04:14:36 PM
granted our tanking ability is horrible this expansion
So have you mentioned this to the devs? If so, what did you provide for info and what did they have to say about it? Because you are right, our tanking sucks in this expansion.
I've sent in the logs even since beta, that we've got next to nothing in terms of being able to tank, various parses dealing with AC, and mob DPS vs our own and survivability. Right now they have mentioned nothing to me, but that's not to say they haven't looked at the emails.
During beta the devs went through and checked out where each class stood with soft cap and return over softcap and made some adjustments. Silk classes got the biggest gain and plate the smallest. We of course fell in between there somewhere but they gave no hard numbers.
So, since the devs stated prior to SoF that we were working as intended I don't believe they intend to adjust bst anymore then they have already. Probably could also toss in there that the pets tanking ability got a serious upgrade so we don't need it. Whatever, just take your beating and be happy you get it.
Well, I still think they should take a look at it but that's me. On that note though, is it just me or do some people feel knights are getting the big shaft as far as tanking goes? I have a friend playing a SK with about 3400 AC and he take a major butt kicking from HoS and fortress mobs. Granted he needs to get the new SoF defensives, but he has most of the new ToTC and lifetap altering AA's out there for the new ones. I personally think the devs are letting the gap get way to big between tanking abilities of warriors and everyone else. Knights shouldn't have to have demi+ gear to tank HoS, Fortress or onward.
A lot of mobs in HoS cast Decay Armor (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=12744&source=Live) which drastically increases damage taken. HoS might not be a good place to test tanking abilities. Mobs in Fortress also throw wrenches which is an easy 3k damage with Spellshielding.
Quote from: Otuol on January 11, 2008, 06:36:46 AM
On that note though, is it just me or do some people feel knights are getting the big shaft as far as tanking goes? I have a friend playing a SK with about 3400 AC and he take a major butt kicking from HoS and fortress mobs. Granted he needs to get the new SoF defensives, but he has most of the new ToTC and lifetap altering AA's out there for the new ones. I personally think the devs are letting the gap get way to big between tanking abilities of warriors and everyone else. Knights shouldn't have to have demi+ gear to tank HoS, Fortress or onward.
This happens everytime a new ass kicking expansion comes out. Warriors will initially be preferred because they are the best at taking a beating. Then as the knights gear up they come into their own for that expansion.
FYI, even more casually geared warriors are taking a major beating too. When I took my then 77 warrior into zeka for the first time in a mix of mainly anguish/ally kattat gear, full defensives up to sof plus first rank of sof ca/cs it was all the cleric could do to keep me alive, ran oom in two mobs, named went through me so fast it wasn't even funny.
Went back to zeka after hitting 80, two more levels of CA plus a few upgrades (not major) and the mobs still hit hard but it was much much easier.
I don't have many of the new AAs but I thought we still tanked reasonably well. I can tank/pull HoS, LP, and FM fine.
Lol, I was ignoring Decay Armor unless I needed to med. They chain cast it, much like the Efreeti used to do with Tash.
In any burn situation I can burn through all of my mana far too quickly, and if the fight is long enough, or times such as a good lesson I can easily drain all of my endurance. Seems like some people have forgotten about managing their pools, tunning out of mana used to mean 10-15m downtime, so you conserved it, or held it back for when it really mattered.