At this point, best and worst classes in implementation?

[Axterix]

>>Enchanters have monopoly on runes and ornate armor right now, care to take a guess where its coming from?

Morons too stupid to just kill the nameds with their xp group?

[Kalahad]

Wow stfu is sure a great arguement. But really...the whole enchanter thing has been beaten to death already and VI is aware of the issue.

[Hika Mindsong]

Apart from enchanters soloing BoT mini bosses, which is irrelevant to the discussion and doesn't address the question, enchanters are actually a candidate for a badly implemented class.

They started off being very subtle. Difficult to level, groups had to know how to work with them. Once they attained levels and skills, they could make a huge difference. VI tried to mitigate this alot, tried to change the game to get away from mez-lock.

Luclin caused the class to become a buffbot. Even now, there's not many ways for an enchanter to stack on a raid apart from using charm (the power of which is nothing new).

The class suffers from wild swings of power, and it may be because the original premise, although subtle, is too powerful, or at least, not fully understood by the developers.

I say this because it seems like every time enchanters get an in-character ability it rocks the game balance. WTYH, response: nerfed into oblivion with a vengance that looks like pure punishement rather than repair. Mez curtailed by 56+ mobs, requiring the use of high mana mezzes (that were eventually fixed). Then the class became trivial with Rapture.

Charm has always been an issue. Charm has enabled enchanters to outdamage other for a long long time. It's only the dramatic mobs in PoP and the prelevance of parsers that have caused people to realize now how good charm is. Charm, used properly, is the most efficient crowd control you can get.

But still, charm rocks game balance as witnessed by all the vitriol in the threads against "that class that shouldn't do damage". It remains the one useful, stackable ability of the class unless I want to break out my 10pp/shot rune "heals" or my super-mana efficient DDs.

Slow is another powerful ability, and while enchanters aren't the best, look at PoP, the mode of operation is to make many things either unslowable or slow-mitigating.

I don't think the enchanter class sucks by any stretch, but I think its implementation and the way it's grown over the years has been problematic and patchwork. Like each successive live team isn't quite sure how to treat the class. Enchanter roles seem to change with every expansion.

Bards are another candidate, just because the actual implementation of bards is as a series of exceptions instead of straightforward. Every small change to the game seems to potentially affect bards. In terms of pure implementation, that ranks up there as pretty bad. The class doesn't suck but the implementation sure does.

Sort of a different answer because I'm not interpreting "best/worst implemented" as "best/worst class" or "most powerful/least powerful class". I'm speaking in terms of how the class has been created and evolved by the dev teams over the years.

As for the best implemented class, that's a good question. Each class of course has areas where it can be improved. Paladins started off weak but are pretty damn nice nowadays, at least in my experience. However I only play with them, and I've never played one, so your mileage may vary.


-- Hika

[Ozark]

I think one poor implementation of a class would be the Rogue. Verant started off as Thief based class and then turned it into an "Assassin" about the Kunark era. A lot of the old "thief" skills are now a joke.

[Xequecal]

Enchanter. Four of them can replace all the melee classes in a guild. Charm four pets and beat the crap out of any MOB. Any MOB that breaks charm simply turns on one of the other charmed pets if the enchanter is far enough away, making it easy to recharm.

[EllessarBard]

Worst Implemented is Bards.

First off... the interface sucks for a bard. keypounding 11223344223311223344! There is no reason that sequence can't and shouldn't have been 1234231234. (dang, its a lot harder to type if I don't hit the keys twice though!)

That and lag sucks for a bard. A bard in lagging situations is about 50% as effective. Things like autoattack make some classes more lag tolerant, but bards get slammed by it.

Bard songs don't scale well to raids, and don't even get me started on aggro transfer issues!

Bards were supposed to be these group based class, but weak otherwise. and we ended up a second rater in groups (behind enchanters and others) but with tremendous solo abilities.

but none of those are the real problem with bard implentation.

Bards once upon a time had this interesting choice: instruments or weapons.... and which instrument to play! Which was cool... except not all the instruments were useful. What you were doing was always kind of based around that decision.

especially when songs took forever to mem... you had to make decisions ahead of time and hope that you had everything covered.

along comes the bard epic, and bang... entire class design out the door. No more decision making, just stuff it in the offhand and leave it there forever.

*sigh*

They took what was fundamentally an interesting class, with a lot of decision making, and reduced it to key pounding tedium that hordes ex-druids twinks somehow mistake for skill.

This isn't to say that bard's are a bad class, a weak class, or even an unbalanced class. They aren't. But they could have been some much more interesting a class than they ended up.

[feressa]

The problem is that 'Best/worst implemented' is a fairly nebulous question. What does best implemented really mean? Most powerful class? The class that's easiest to play, with straightforward roles? The class that sticks closest to the 'vision'? (Of course, now that most of the original creators of EQ have left, the 'vision' has long since been discarded.)

I'd have to say the best implemented classes have got to be the 'simplest' ones, purely because SOE understands their role the best. Wizards, for example, nuke. SOE understands nuking and therefore has been able to balance out their playability fairly well. I'm not trying to imply that wizards are an easy class to play, causing maximum damage without being squashed requires skill, timing and judgement. But their role is straightforward and hasn't changed through the expansions apart from changes in the amount of damage they're able to cause.

The problem classes are the multi-function ones: enchanters, bards, druids, perhaps shamen to a lesser extent. Because these classes can adopt multiple roles, it's harder for SOE to understand the effects of balancing changes without lengthy in-game testing that they can rarely afford. Enchanters have certainly moved closer to their 'original' roles with PoP (by 'original' I mean just before Kunark, after the obvious problems in the first release were fixed). Bards are still a complex class with issues that SOE will probably never be able to fix without a grand overhaul of the entire engine. Throw in the playability problems and they're certainly a good candidate for the worst implemented class, even though they can be tremendously powerful when played well.

In the middle are the melee classes, whose power waxes and wanes with different types of mobs. While there are still problems in balancing out the dps of the various classes with their ability to tank, SOE has worked hard over the past year to bring their implementation back into line.

And yes Kalahad, STFU is the only argument that makes sense when someone tries to derail yet another thread with BoT whines.

[elty]

I think 1 dimension class (Wizard, cleric) is the best implemented, since it is simple.

Bard is the worst I think. Bard is reeally the most unique class in EQ, ufortunately not many play them so SOE dont really bother about them.

[Your Hero]

Warriors and Clerics are the best implemented.

There rolls are so straight forward, and you have to have them.

[dak]

Worst -

Rogue - Yay, We are the masters of melee damage meaning, I can do less damage then a wizard and hafta stand within AE rampage to do it. This classes only real function is being showed up hardcore by classes which arnt supposta get near the damage output a rogue.

Warrior - They are getting better, for many events now they are the only way to go tank-wise but its sorta lame that big bad Mr. Warrior hasta depend on crap like DI.

[Abatoir]

Whats fascinating is the number of classes that have gone from poorly done, to overpowered- and in some cases back again.

Rogue? Suck in the original game. Add double BS, evade and freebringer and they're cuisinarts in Kunark then they start to average out and for PoP I'd say they're actually hurting like all melee due to widespread AE Ramp.

Paladin? Pretty damn good in the original game since there was no defensive to distinguish them from warriors- Horrid in Kunark with low hp and ghoulbanes into the mid 50s + the exp penalty and slowly inching toward overpowered in PoP with 1 second heals, 2 handed aa's for damage, some of the best group heals and HP toping 9000.

you get the point. Rangers, Enchanters, Bards, Monks, Necros etc have all been through the same cycle.

The astounding thing is that some classes have totaly had their roles redefined. Mana feeding necros? Rod summoning mages? WTF ?!?

The best implemented classes are the ones with a clear role in any situation. Group, solo or raid. The worst are the ones that have no clear role in some or all of those same situations.

Abs