Decline in quality of PvP
I know I'm not alone when I say this, but PvP has become a wasteland. I'm not sure if I posting this thread simply to rant or not, but I'm tired of not saying anything, even if the devs refuse to listen. They've said before that AL is their largest game, thus it deserves the most attention, but neglecting your other customers, especially your oldest customers, isn't the way to do that.
Skills and sets need rebalance. Simple as that. This actually happened in the past at level 45 cap. Bird's skills became so overpowered that they would one shot most things, bears dodge would be boarder line 100%, mages would only need one skill to nuke when buffed. However, it's worse this time around with the larger population of players. PvP has become something anyone with a set can dominate at. Bear vs bear is 100% luck, bird vs bird is whoever hits blast, it gets to the point where someone that's been a great PvPer for years can lose to a random new gen with a Phoenix bow and max blast. Thus, the ego develops in random players, whom at 56 cap wouldn't be able to kill a thing. Overall, the PvP community has gone to the dogs.
Which leads to the answer: rebalance. I've said this numerous times, but the devs need to tone down on luck based stats. Bears right now can get 94 dodge buffed, which is ludicrous. What it comes down to for each class should be armor, damage, M/s, and H/s. Bears, rather than relying on 94 dodge, should have substantially lower damage, very little dodge, high armor, health pool, and high H/s. Mages should be less damage and crit based, and potentially stronger buffs and heals to increase survivability without making them tanking machines, and lastly, birds should be the balance between health and mana, and focus primarily on DPS (as opposed to 500 blast skill damage). People say fox and rhino are underpowered, but I see it as the other classes being overpowered. They did pretty well with them, giving them advantages and disadvantages to balance out, meanwhile all the other classes need to do is land a skill on their opponent. Fights should last longer than firing off 1-2 skills, which I'm not exaggerating with.
So, to rebalance, tone down not only the gear, but the buffs and skills especially. Bring str gear back to fort days, high H/s and armor, and let the set bonus deliver some oh-so important health pool. Then take the skills into consideration. Do bears really need 2 dodge buffs, one of which that stacks? Do bears really need crit and damage that's so substantially high, that 2 skills can take out an entire team? Every class is so ridiculously overpowered that balance is absolutely out the window. People often complain about Mage being underpowered, but in my opinion, Mage is potentially the worst. Every skill, when it breaks past the 90 some dodge and lands, one shots everything around with 700 crit. What happened to actually needing skills other than drain and fire? Instead, take it back to enchanted. The skill damage was still considerably fair, but not as outrageous as it is now. Possibly lower drain's damage and range, and have Mage focus more on AoE damage like it was intended to. No more 100%+ crit. Allow the set bonus to increase mana pool, and possibly heal strength.
And lastly, getting it's own paragraph, is bird. No doubt birds are insane. In 5v5 CTF, what it comes down to is what team has more birds. Simple answer is DPS, with it's original roots. Bows should give considerably more DPS, and not nearly as much skill damage. Lower all the damage done with arrows, by a lot. If your concerned with it getting underpowered, it still has it's -hit% debuff from blind, giving it enough time to stay alive and have it's DPS take effect without needing +45 dodge. Have auto attack play a larger role, have roots be more vital so they have to hold their target down to chip away at their health. Evade should also play a more interesting role, allow it to give an armor boost, possibly even +H/s and/or health pool, something to make it different. As for the gear, quit adding so much dang hit% to it. You don't need 200 some hit%, Focus and the hit delivering from the dex attributes alone are more than enough. Rather, why not have a stat on it that contributes strictly to DPS? It doesn't effect skill damage by making blast deal 500 damage, it simply issues a higher DPS.
I realize these may not be too realistic, but the classes haven't changed much in the 3+ years this game has been around. There's been rebalances before, and now is time for another. Here's the thing, do it right this time and you won't need to come back in a few months/years to do it again. People can wait for a new campaign, I personally will be more than patient if it means the mechanics of the game are going to improve. Again, I get that AL is STS' largest title and that's where the most attention should be directed, but investing so much attention into that game to simply have your other's get fed to the dogs (in which you've invested a lot of time and money into, and in this case, is the reason for where you are now) is the worst plan possible.
Tl;dr: STS, please wake up and acknowledge your original title. Take the classes back to where they were meant to be, bird for DPS, Mage for support/AoE damage, and bear for tanking.
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