Class balance, Potions, and zone progression in campaigns

[Huzzah]

I messed up and posted this feedback in the patch thread, so apologies there. :-)

There are three key points that create big issues for this game.

Class Balance:

The warrior class is very unbalanced, and obviously so. The warrior class has essentially the ability to heal themselves, get the best armor, and solid DPS. Warrior classes should have a high AC and be able to take an immense beating, but they should not be able to heal themselves and should not put out DPS anywhere near what an archer or dps-based mage can. Potions in general make this class too powerful.

Archers are about spot on in my opinion (maybe reduce their AC just a touch, but that's debatable). Mages got some improvement with the last patch. However, the healer + warrior dynamic that forms a fundamental teamwork dynamic for MMOs is completely lacking. I went on farming runs last night and did better by having the entire group run with all warriors + archers than mages (especially healers). For those of us who love playing the healing class, we're getting screwed in this game.

Potions:

The potion use in this game makes it way unbalanced, giving the most benefit to warriors, archers, then mages from the standpoint of being solo-"uber." The potions need to have a use timer so that they cannot just be spammed. The use timer should not be any quicker than the heal spell the healer uses, in my opinion the heal potion timer should equal 1.5 times the healer spell.

Why? Because this creates tactical use of the heal potion for the players and increases the reliance on teamwork through the use of complimentary classes.

The mana potion should also be on a timer, forcing people to manage their mana and be more strategic in how they cast and leverage auto-attack (AA) damage.

Potion use in this game creates a highly independent, unbalanced approach. Just observe any warrior with decent gear or archer with good gear.

Zone Progression in Campaigns:

I'm a big believerin offering people the opportunity to either solo or group up.

In my opinion, the best loot acquired in the game should be collected through balanced grouping where skill and individual proffeciency with their class (and the ability to work with and for others) allows the group to overcome the most difficult obstacles. This loot should be the best in both performance and looks relative to all other loot, and should be the most difficult to earn.

Solid "fundamental" loot should be able to be acquired by soloers who do not want to deal with the headaches of finding and dealing with a group, so that they can still play in group campaigns.

Purchased through the store should be a touch less in performance than solo acquired loot, though an incentive for purchased loot could be slightly "cooler" looks over solo loot.

The loot scenario should match the campaign progression in my opinion. The first one to three zones in a campaign should be soloable or duable, with it getting progressively more difficult. The last few zones should be challenging and require a full, balanced group (tank, healer, dps, dps/utility).

The current flow kind of tries to follow this, but between the issues of class balance and potion mechanics, this ultamitelty isn't the case. I've run the entire "mardi growl" zone with two people, which is supposed to be the most challenging. (??)

Summary:

I'm really interested in hearing other peoples feedback. Based on discussions with other really good players in-game, the same observations seem to be universally noticed. I enjoy the game, and know it's still in its infancy, but do hope to see more game balance brought in sooner than later. This should be done before work is spent on things like housing and pets in my opinion. An auction house is a good priority, but balance needs to be worked into this game asap if you really want it to be the EQ or WoW of mobile devices (which it has the potential to be!)

[WarMage]

I think you're on to something but I do think the final zones should be duoable or trioable should the players be in the best gear from those final zones.

As far as potions and strategy go, the way to do that without slowing down the game drastically is to reduce the overall dmg outpt of mobs and increase the HP pulls of players as they lvl without having to dump points into strength. Adding more strength would be where the warrior takes larger steps away from the rest ofthe classes HP wise.

In order to create more strategy the game would have to move slowly slower so there is time to react. You have to spam potions because of the "oh ****" factor.

[Sayishere]

i agree with everything you say, the ability to spam potions in PVE is mind numbing, why or why would they even contemplate this, a 3 min timer or something along those lines would be good

the warrior issue i also agree with, warriors do near enough the same damage as a archer now....and can take a huge beating..and can potentially kite with the bow, so what cant they do? a bear who wants dps should have the chance to go 2 hander and do damage, but this should cripple their survivability, now its just ridculous. Archers and Enchantress seem balanced i would say to some extent, but archers, actually all professions do to much damage as of now, but survivability wise archers and mages should be weaker, and are compared to a warrior.

[WarMage]

I agree that warriors without shields should take much more damage. I think the key is to include blocking as a skill and change evade to shield wall (or something of the like) that would block like it currently dodges but requires a shield. That single dynamic might have the effect we are looking for. Shields should then include a % to block and armor a % to dodge. They could include their opposite but only after their primary attribute was covered.

For example: purple shield: 14 armor, 5% block
pink shield: 14 armor, 5% block, 2% dodge
purple helmet: 20 armor, 5% dodge
pink helmet: 20 armor, 5% dodge, 2% block

[Huzzah]

@Warmage: Yeah, I think a fully decked out set of individuals should be able to complete the zone down one person. I would pushback that it should ever be duoble though. I think at a bare minimum the most difficult zone with 3 mega geared people (best gear for their roles) should require one healer, one tank, and one dps. Otherwise you get a scenario where there's a small, select group of elite people who are able to keep gear prices high and control the economics of the gear market (when auction comes out). There will always be a group of people who are the best of the best, and that's ok...but I think it's important to make sure it doesn't become a caste type system, if that makes sense.

@Warmage & Sayishere: Really good point about 2h weapons. To clarify, I'm not against seeing DPS Warriors, so I like that approach. The fundamental point behind balance though is that as a correlation, the more dps a class/build provides the less armor they have (and the inverse). The last thing you want in an MMO in my opinion is a bunch of high dps/high armor people who don't ever need anyone's help.