Quote:
Originally Posted by Zuranthium
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You absolutely do need high DPS to clear content "quickly". Do you want to spend 6 hours trying to fight through Plane of Fear, or 3? Is that extra 3 hours of your life not valuable? How about getting to Level 60, want to spend 800 hours or 400? 400 hours of life not worthwhile either?
Everything is measured in time. The faster you can do things in EQ, the more powerful you are. Ultimately the entire game and metric of what is "powerful" simply comes down to how efficiently something can be done. The game can be "beaten" no matter what, if you simply spend enough time and throw enough characters at something. A raid of 500 people doesn't need Clerics to "clear" the content. You can just hack down the Dragon eventually while taking tons of deaths. But obviously it's much more efficient to use Clerics, hence why they are powerful.
Imagine if raids were capped at 30 people. What is most powerful would inherently be whittled down first to what 30-character composition is even capable of killing the boss MOB, and then what group composition can kill it the quickest and/or kill it with less than 30 people. The less people you need to do something, the less the loot needs to be shared. And the faster you can do something, the more time you have to move onto the next thing.
In EQ, those factors of how to do something most efficiently (least amount of characters needed and/or fastest) revolves around whatever allows you to do the most DPS while not dying, or at least not dying too much. Unless you are exploiting the duel or drowning mechanics from certain periods of EQ, wherein you could constantly refill your mana bar by dying. In which case, die frequently, it's quicker than medding. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] |
Thank you for responding in a calm manner. I really appreciate it.
I also apologize for not being 100% clear. When I try to type in shorter sentences (as requested by users on these forums), there ends up being misunderstandings (not your fault). This is one reason why I normally type more, because it reduces this problem. When I say "DPS not that important", I am not saying DPS is never useful, shouldn't be sought after, or cannot improve your gameplay. I will explain more below.
In raiding I have already said (and agree) that DPS is more important. You want to clear Fear as fast as possible because another competing guild could try and take your raid mobs.
In soloing DPS is also a bit more important. You can only improve your kill speeds via more utility (HP/Mana regen, clickies, etc.), or more DPS. I myself am tooling my SK to have higher DPS in soloing, because he is already tanky enough. Adding more HP or defensive stats will not help his chances of survival, so I can focus on improving clear speeds.
Grouping is where DPS tends not to matter as much. The reason for this is because in my experience the biggest DPS boost you get in grouping is simply having other group members. This is assuming a reasonable group composition, the players at least know how to play their class, and they aren't AFKing a lot. I have been in groups where we have had highly geared players (high DPS on paper), and had poor clear speeds. Conversely, I have had groups with average geared players that have had high clear speeds.
The reason for this is simple: Everquest monster stats are generally balanced around low to average geared players. This is because the rate at which expansions were released (and the difficulty in obtaining gear) meant the developers couldn't expect most players to be geared to the teeth. If this wasn't the case, soloing for XP wouldn't really be a thing. Monsters would just take so long to kill that soloing would only really be worth it when you were camping items of value.
The true challenge of Everquest came from people not knowing a lot about the game. On P99, where everybody basically knows everything, a lot of the challenge is removed. It gets stripped down to mostly monster stats, which again are actually not that high for the most part. This is why you can get away with having great clear speeds with groups that don't have high DPS on paper.
I understand you like to play efficiently, so you probably play in groups that are even more optimized, both in composition and DPS. This means your standard for XP gains is simply higher than normal. This is not a problem, but I believe it skews your idea a bit of what an acceptable XP rate is for the game when it comes to the game's balance. I am not saying most players would not enjoy your standard of XP rates. I am saying that most players are not hyper optimizing their XP groups via gear checks, running static groups, being really strict about classes and levels, etc. Not that I have seen anyway. Usually class and general level range are the things that get checked in groups, and even then it is more class type (healer, puller, etc.) rather than the absolute best class for the situation.
The reason why I say a Mage's extra DPS doesn't really save the class on P99 is because of their lack of CC. Not having CC means you are still more limited on what you can solo, even with the increase in DPS. In a group their extra DPS is nice, but as I said before, extra DPS isn't always going to increase your group's kill speed. Typically speaking it's better to get a class that has both good DPS and good utility (like a Necromancer), to get the most bang for your buck. In a raid Mages are obviously amazing, but not for their DPS hehe, it's for their utility.
The thing about Mages is their toolkit REALLY shines when players know little about the game. This is because their ability to summon items is very important when players don't know where all the merchants are to buy food/drink/bandages for their respective faction levels. When everybody was new to the game, summoned weapons were also actually pretty good. Since most people were running around with Fine Steel weapons, Summoned weapons were better than what they had. On P99, this isn't the case. Everybody knows where the merchants are, or can quickly change their factions. They also have better weapons, so summoned weapons aren't very useful, except for a few situations.
This is why I think Mages are the most underpowered when looking at all aspects of the game. Again, this doesn't mean I hate them, they are bad, or you shouldn't play them. In solo situations they are gimped by lack of CC, in group situations they aren't really that special, and in raids they are only used for a few spells. In all situations pet AI can gimp them. Under the assumption an average player will not be heavily raiding, this means their huge advantage in raids isn't worth as much consideration. We mostly need to look at their solo/group capabilities. Again, this isn't to say Mages are bad, they just unfortunately aren't designed for people playing Everquest when they know everything. This is why the class got a bunch of changes in later expansions to try and address these issue.
Now to play devils advocate, you could say Rogues are even worse than Mages, because they have a similar problem. Not great when soloing, but much better in groups and raids. Don't misunderstand the "not great" part for soloing with Mages. I am not saying Mages can't solo quickly. They are simply more limited than a lot of other classes due to lack of CC. What they can solo they solo very well. Also casters usually have a leg up over non-casters. The only reason why I disagree with this is because rogues are designed to work this way. Their kit isn't gimped by P99 knowledge, but improved by it. They also have higher DPS than a Mage, which is the main consideration for Rogue vs. Mage when in a group situation. While Rogues obviously lose out in solo situations, my assumption is most rogue players understand they should be heavily grouping anyway, so for Rogues specifically you shouldn't be weighing solo capabilities as much to begin with.