At 09:17 AM 2/27/01 -0600, you wrote:
>Okay - I've been following this thread for a couple days and I'm pretty
>confused as to what Whee is really arguing about. It mostly seems to be
>rhetorical debate; or perhaps the comment that people are exaggerating too
>much. Keep in mind that - like analogies exaggerating the opposite of what
>you are arguing is also a rhetorical device.
well it started out by someone saying dirge was useless due to recast time and
resists. i said what resist problem, i never have any, and it is useful in some
situations including pvp. then someone said pvp people don't matter because
they are an insignificant minority, to which i pointed out that of all the people who
play everquest, there are MORE pvp players than there are bards, and that it was
very easy to dismiss a minority as insignificant when you were not in that minority.
then it kind of morphed into whether bards were overpowered or not and whether or
not you can factor in difficulty of play into balancing class power or not.
>I don't mean this as a flame to Whee, (by singling him out); but the
>argument (if I'm not following it correctly I apologize in advance) seems to
>be that the thread is Whee one side and everyone else (who participating in
>the thread) on the other.
actually blitz i believe agrees with me on the difficulty of play thing, and that bards
are not underpowered, altho i think he thinks they are balanced, while i think we are
overpowered.
>1) DDD - are you saying that this IS a useful song? That 99 pct of the
>Bards are wrong - that it is VERY useful; or simply that it is very slightly
>useful and we are "ridiculously exaggerating" by saying something is
>"completely" useless instead of "very marginally" useless. Not MUCH of an
>exaggeration there if you ask me.
out of that 99 percent, how many have actually thought about good ways to use
the song and how many are simply agreeing with someone who told them at one
time ''this song is useless''. i pointed out 2 good ways to get quite a bit of damage
out of this song (one of which was in an enchanter group, where many people think
they are useless). the song has been compared to harm touch, and i think it compares
favorably to harmtouch with respect to damage/refresh time. i don't see anyone saying
harmtouch is useless.
>2) The PvP thing was argued a bit - but someone pointed out how Verant has
>made it very clear they claim they are specifically tuning this song to
>balance bards across the board. There has been no indication that this is a
>PVP. While it could be a "stealth component" of the tuning a) I doubt it
>and b) it's not taking the issue at face value especially considering the
>whole "Class Balance" threads
most of the argument about pvp centered around whether or not a minority
of customers could be arbitrarily considered insignificant.
>3) Bards are over powered. You haven't really spent much time arguing
>that - and I'm not quite clear on your argument for that. Perhaps it is
>due to soloing ability. I despise soloing and never do it. Personally - if
>you were to judge EQ as a solo game; it is VERY poor. Any single-player RPG
>game rings around EQ as a single-player game. If I felt like single-player
>gaming I'd play BG2.
i almost never solo. i mean we are over powered with respect to other classes in a group
setting, more so in broken groups than cle/enc/war groups, but the fact that we can
make a group without a cleric, enchanter, OR warrior able to go deep into sebilis or
howling stones or karnors seems pretty powerful to me.