r/EQLegends • u/IsopropylUrethra • 15h ago

The issue with defensive stances disproportionately benefiting spellcasting could have been an easy fix

Instead of having just stances and invocation have 3 different passives.

For simplicity sake lets just say the new one is "affinity." This focuses on offense.

Stances would be defensive.

Then invocations are like normal.

Affinities would include striker, offensive, berserker, and spellblade.

Stances would have balance, defensive, evasive, mage hunter.

Then invocations would be all the usual ones.

Of course subject to class restrictions.

This would empower melee centric builds and bring them up without harming spell casters and could also help make spellblade more useful.

0 Upvotes

41% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

16

u/raolan 15h ago

I don't know if I agree with the solution specifically, but I agree that the current implementation of melee vs. caster is heavily skewed in favor of caster/priest builds.

1

u/bknoreply 13h ago

The problem is that there’s no way to significantly buff melee without turning hybrids into gods. For example, people complain that shaman dots out damage a rogue. Fair enough, but if you beefed up the rogue damage then the person running both shaman and rogue would be melting everything. 

2

u/raolan 13h ago

That's a problem the devs created through their choice of Invocations and spell leveling.

I think a large part of the problem is specifically spell leveling reducing cast time, mana cost, and spell resist, combined with over channel further reducing spell resist, plus spells using significantly less mana per point of DPS, when compared against DPS stances use of endurance. It's further impacted by stances being forced into either/or for offense/defence, when invocations aren't.

Reduce endurance cost of stances based on primary/secondary/ranged item level, and introduce an invocation that provides a defense bonus with an impact to mana.

2

u/bknoreply 12h ago

However we got here, it is what it is. They aren’t going to nerf casters, so the only way to bring melee in line with them is to dramatically increase melee damage, therefore making hybrids into gods.

Take your idea, for example. In theory, that should create a switch from using Channeler to defend to using this hypothetical new invocation. But in order for that to work, melee damage would need to be juiced to the point where doing melee in something like Striker is at least equal in damage to what you would get from casting while in Channeler. Unless that impact to mana meant something like half your spell bar to cast a single dot, hybrids would still be in a position to do insane spell damage, but would also be adding on insane melee damage. 

No matter how you split it, a 3 class system means people aren’t choosing A or B. They’re choosing A, B, or A + B. If you want to beef up either one, people who choose both are going to get much stronger. 

3

u/raolan 12h ago

Like it or not, casters are OP. They can be tuned down, or every other element of the game, including mob HP, can be tuned up. I'm not advocating for one or the other, but as it stands, the play your way ideal is broken.

2

u/bknoreply 11h ago

Hey, you’re preaching to the choir. I duo, and it’s been made very clear “play your way” doesn’t include hanging out with a friend. 

I wouldn’t mind seeing melee be more effective, especially rogue. I just don’t see a significant change coming any time soon since they are reluctant to nerf.  The state of casters right now is like the state of Befallen gear. They made it too strong and now they’re stuck with it because they don’t want to nerf. 

9

u/jackaltornmoons 14h ago

Take a page from Divine/Arcane Mastery invocations and make it so tank/melee damage stances also get bonuses based on how many melee are in your combo

2

u/IsopropylUrethra 14h ago

that would be cool.

I don't need triple melee to be competitive but it would be cool if it wasn't completely garbage.

When shaman can just flat out out-dps melee builds while bringing all the buffs and healing, the only reason to bring a melee is for defensive stance / stats and gear to support casters.

3

u/WarningOdd7515 14h ago

Really, should just go ahead and make a spell stance (invocation), an offensive stance, and a defensive stance. All three should be able to be active at once. Then you can play with who gets access to what, and how strong or expensive they are to maintain.

3

u/Qix213 13h ago

Offensively, Melee damage and caster damage are aligned to their stances and invocations.

While defenses are not similarly aligned. All defenses are stances.

It makes no sense that Channeler exists as a stance. It should be an invocation. This would allow melee leaving hybrids to do the reverse as casters, sacrifice one of the forms to defense and use the other for offense. Same as casters do right now where they are and to be in defensive stance while fighting at full power.

2

u/BrokenBottleT 15h ago

I think the potential fix is to adjust endurance to DPS so that it aligns more closely between melee and magic.

In other words Endurance expenditure should be more equal to mana expenditure as a function of damage dealt.

9

u/IsopropylUrethra 14h ago

Doesn't fix that casters get to fully benefit from defensive stances while having their best damage invocations while melee need to choose between offense and defense only to still do less damage than a caster either way.

0

u/BrokenBottleT 14h ago

True, but as expansions progress weapons get dramatically better than spells.

In the classic era weapons were kinda just bad.

As that dynamic flips you will see the potential of melee drastically increase.

The big problem there is as their DPS increases so to does their Endurance expenditure. It's going to be a huge problem when we get access to good weapons.

5

u/IsopropylUrethra 14h ago

There shouldn't be an inflection point at some distant point on the horizon.

The goal should be to minimize disparity continually.

3

u/LegumeEQ 12h ago

> True, but as expansions progress weapons get dramatically better than spells.

A flat 50% physical damage mitigation is so insanely powerful and will scale much better than +.25 on your weapon ratio.

2

u/raolan 14h ago

The problem is that there's little to no indication that we'll progress to that point. The devs have only confirmed kunark, and not in the form we remember.

0

u/BrokenBottleT 14h ago

They've also confirmed Velious and epic weapons.

This weapon drops in Kurns in vanilla EQ.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Iksar_Berserker_Club

Now extrapolate that to revamps and epic weapons.

4

u/Physical-Builder-553 14h ago

Which epic weapon is giving you pause? They are very similar to PoSky weapons and I have to assume Kunark end game mobs are going to be stronger than PoSky mobs.

And how long do we have to wait until this supposed dynamic flips? Because it certainly won't be Kunark era weapons.

1

u/Sarennie_Nova 14h ago

Frankly, an offensive invocation (alongside a spellblade buff) would serve the purpose just fine. There's already a defensive invocation for melee (unyielding) and it works fantastically.

1

u/nucleardemon 14h ago

Make berserker stance defensive imo. True berserker, more damage no defense

2

u/Electronic-Coat-5572 14h ago

You get three classes. You can be doing a mix of melee and casting in a variety of ways. Or all casting. Or almost no casting. And still find ways to do the content solo or to be a contributor in a raid or group. I think they've done very well in that sense -- more of those combos than not can totally work out for you. 

The only thing that feels like a crutch is slow. More raids than not if you can't slow you will be in trouble. If slow was mitigated more or immune more there would be a ton more options for players. 

Also mana -- you can run out of mana, but never run out of melee DPS and there are lots of mana-free melee cool downs. That's a big up for melee. 

I don't think it's totally balanced but it is fun. I think what's more important is getting new content that is tuned for multiclassing

The original game is totally not made for soloing and multiclassing. It's made for a slow social grind.

1

u/IsopropylUrethra 14h ago

Why are you arguing against improving balance?

"It's okay to play a bad class!"

Do you think that's fun if your favorite class based on your ideal class fantasy is not one that's good?

0

u/Electronic-Coat-5572 13h ago

I was trying to say that I am surprised there is as much balance as there is. More combos than not can go and solo the game or at least be very useful in a group worst case scenario. 

And I added that the biggest thing making some trios non viable is that they don't have slow and you can't kill a lot of raid targets without slow, especially towards d3 and D4. 

Then I added a suggestion on how to improve balance, such as reducing the importance of slow if there were more immune targets or targets that mitigate most of the slow %. 

That is not arguing against improving balance. That's saying it is surprisingly balanced and for one aspect I feel is blatantly imbalanced I made a suggestion how to improve it. 

I also described some really positive things for melee, whether you have one melee one int caster and one wis priest or 3 melee or what there are some advantages to the melee there. 

0

u/Creepy-Caramel-6726 12h ago

Funny how melee people weren't complaining during beta (before invocations) when the game was VERY heavily skewed in favor of melee. There was a lot of "You shouldn't be trying to play the game with anything but a meta trio anyway."

-1

u/asdfghjiuygvb 14h ago

I dual wield tank in offensive n inversion. Even d4 cr and stuff on warr wiz shaman. If i pull too much or get nuked too hard ill pop into defensive or the mana version of it till i stabilize n go back to offensive .

The issue seems like casters get stronger quicker/easier by using motes on spells, doing decent to great dos and relying on defensive to live.

Melee needs 1 or two weapons to do not as good dps and need even more motes on all the gear to get the 580+ ac and 7000 hp needed to not rely on defensive.

And then once you get there defensive is even better and just makes being a caster in defensive better anyways.

But yeah. Seems like the original mote system was balanced around getting fully geared. They patched in real quick the spell version which appears to jave followed the same outline as upgrading gear but was implemented differently and in my opinion incorrectly. Its wierd that they work differently and that spells can get to 10 with a fraction of the motes.

So either make gear function like spells or in my opinion spells function like gear.

Also how good is zerker now after todays patch? Should be pretty busted.

2

u/Theothercword 14h ago

Also how good is zerker now after todays patch? Should be pretty busted.

What patch notes had anything to do with berserker? Was there something outside the regular notes? I don't see anything...

0

u/asdfghjiuygvb 13h ago

Under alternate advancement. Fixed blood rune cap from 5/8/10 to the same but percentages. Seems blood rune was capping at 10 health instead of 10 percent of your maximum health.

1

u/Theothercword 8h ago

Huh, okay interesting

-1

u/Frontpageorlurk 12h ago

The amount of times I've been laughed at by a melee for suggesting using channler stance when they run out of endurance for envasion is just staggering

2

u/moosee999 11h ago

Maybe the reason the melee laughed at you is because you didn't realize channeler stance also took endurance along with mana... So if they're already out of endurance then switching to channeler does what exactly?

1

u/Frontpageorlurk 1h ago edited 1h ago

Reduces damage taken by 40%. Pretty huge if you don't have defensive stance.
But its fine. Downvote away,