On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Sylly Songsynger wrote:
>
> if you are going to compare bard vs ench to sha vs ench, compare all the
> others too:
>
> bard vs wiz in nuke
Our job isn't to nuke.
> clr vs wiz in nuke
> ranger vs wiz in nuke
> war vs wiz in nuke
Neither is a cleric's, ranger's, or warrior's. Well, maybe a
rangers, but it's only for the taunt value of the nuke.
> If you think that bards should be 67% as effective, should not everyone also
> be 67% effective?
List the classes that come to mind when your group needs a
nuker. List the classes that come to mind when your group
needs a speed debuffer. List the classes that come to mind
when your group needs an attack speed buffer. List the
classes that come to mind when your group needs a crowd
controller. List the classes that come to mind when your
group needs a healer.
In all of those, you will find that a substitute class is
about 67%-80% as effective as the optimal class. Except us.
> "It makes me nauseated because a level 14 cleric can cast invis to undead
> and bards can't" (well we can hope for level 39 song can't we?). That's
> just me showing class envy. For whatever reason (design by Verant,
> oversight by Verant), we cant do it.
Our job never was to invis to undead.
Our job was to crowd control (broken), attack buff (since
shown to be rather anemic), and reduce downtime (still our
primary title, but boy is it boring).
> I guess Verant gave us a taste of speed buff with our songs and that makes
> us lust for more. At some point, we just need to accept what we are and go
> out and kill stuff. It is good to know what is an effective technique but I
> have liitle hope that Verant is gonna make dramatic improvements for us.
I'm just distressed because high-level bard life is turning
out to be a bore. Why do you think I've been pushing the
envelope trying silly things like soloing the froglok noble?
I tried soloing two SKs simultaneously a couple nights ago
(and barely succeeded due to judicious use of Screech).
What I loved about playing a bard in mid-levels was that I
constantly had to be making decisions and adjustments. Which
mobs do I crowd control? Do I heal, fight with weapons, swap
a resist buff for an attack buff? I'd have to constantly
monitor the group's hp bars, the hp/status of varios mobs, ask
for mana status, etc. whem making these decisions. It was
exhilarating because it was so non-deterministic. All you
could do was make decisions that best improved your
probability of success (which is why I've devoted so much time
to exactly quantifying what our songs do).
Now it's play Verses (and maybe a resist buff) while fighting,
Hymn+Niv's+Clarity during downtime. That's so simple and
brainless it took me 10 minutes to program a gamepad to do it
for me. Our crowd control is so broken that when faced with 2
mobs, it was just as effective for me to ignore the extra and
let it beat on me while I fought, as it was for me to control
it. What fun is that? With few exceptions, basically all the
thinking required to play this class well between L5-45 has
disappeared.
I *love* grouping with enchanters, but now their presence
means I don't even have to think about whether I should play
Verses. The wide variety of classes in this game should force
people to make decisions. Do we want a wizard to nuke/evac,
or do we want a mage for the pet? Do we want a cleric for his
awesome heals, or can we make do with a shaman and his speed
debuffs? When you mostly give a class a abilites that are
significantly subpar to other class', then the decision
becomes a no-brainer, and IMHO you defeat the purpose of
having classes.
--
John H. Kim
kim@...