Quote:
Originally Posted by Danth
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None of the game's most serious weaknesses are sufficiently addressed by that list. No defense-oriented discipline for hybrid tanks (IMO give 'em evasive at 60 on a 72 min cooldown), insufficient tuning for Wizards and to a lesser degree Druids, Charm remains grossly overpowered, Warrior snap aggro still sucks (make melee stuns generate high hate IMO), and so forth. What's your own thought on that assessment?
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There is nothing wrong with the current balance between the various melee classes, and I am including the hybrids here, at least once Haynar fixes various mechanics (spell hate, FD linger timers, push to interrupt) and the rest of the melee balance patch. The problem before was that all bosses were zone pulled, which eliminates the Knight's 'trash' tank role. When we crawled TOV during Velious Beta we used Naxi and Feign and co all the time. Sure, you CAN do it with Warriors, but Knights are far superior even with the BoC. People will remember.
The late Luclin AC system is a sorely needed nerf to P99's overpowered melee relative to both casters and NPCs. For example, even if we ignore the Monk overnerf and put them on the Beastlord table (350 cap + 8% overcap if memory serves) from the beginning, a fully NTOV geared monk would be roughly equivalent to a Warrior with 1050 displayed AC. That is a yuge drop. Meanwhie additional FT and focus items substantially buff casters and make their itemization relevant again. I think Wizards and Druids are underrated here: they are bad, but nowhere near their reputations especially if NPCs ran like they should, making snare critical and evac more useful. Wizards will still be raid focused, but <shrug>
NPCs not aggroing eyes is a gigantic monk nerf and makes FD splitting risky and interesting again.
I suspect your guild hated the Ring of Vulak because it was way to long and difficult relative to its loot in Luclin. But for a Velious locked server it's perfect, especially since Vulak would be the only way to get Ancient spells including Blessing of Aegolism, Ferine Avatar, etc. Meanwhile the Blessed Coldain Shawl opens up a lot of content by making tradeskills more useful. Admittedly rather dumb and boring content though!
TLDR: I think Verant actually did a pretty reasonable job of fixing the biggest balance problems of late Velious during Luclin. I'm sure we could do it better 15 years after the fact, but following their 'classic' timeline will maintain the feel of the server more than custom mechanics. I doubt any of this happens, as somehow it doesn't feel very Nilbog, but I do think it would improve experience of the individual players and I enjoy this kind of exercise, even if it's pointless!