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IoD BAMs (again - sorry)
There seems to be a lot of discussion/complaint about IoD BAMs and the disparity/unfairness in how long it takes the different classes to complete the IoD quests.
Often these discussions seem to sidetrack because one person's "quick" for a given class is considered "slow" by others. However this is, in my opinion, misleading because it's not about how fast one person does it compared to another that's the issue but how fast the same person does it depending on which class they use, and I've not seen anyone say that all classes are anywhere even close to being equal for what is a fairly significant part of the endgame grind. (As far as I can tell Brawlers are 2 to 3 times quicker than the worst performing classes, which amounts to a lot of time for a daily task over weeks and months.)
Some people have said that IoD BAMs should be buffed and made a party task but, my understanding is, that IoD BAMs are supposed to be a solo task for those times when you're waiting for friends to get online or just need a break from party-play.
BHS's attempted solution to this disparity has been, in part, to buff/balance classes, which is something that should happen for the DPS classes anyway but seems nonsensical to try and elevate Priest DPS rates to that of Brawlers (Mystics are, I think, a special case and were always intended to be part-DPS ever since BHS decided to give them Thralls of Vengeance and Wrath).
What BHS should be doing is showing a little imagination and giving us more varied solo tasks, orientated towards core class differences. The current IoD BAMs are just about perfect for tanks and DPS people who want to go toe-to-toe with a BAM but they're not a proper test of a pure DPS or healer skillset.
Alternate quests should be added, something like a mini-Kezzel (for those who remember him) for DPS classes, a BAM focused on carrying out another task so won't aggro you directly but will secondary aggro you sometimes so you have to be ready to evade/iframe. DPS chars would then get to concentrate on doing what they do best, positioning and skill rotations to maximise their DPS rate. Tanks could still do this quest but their tanking skills would have little or no effect so would find it harder, healers also should be able to complete the task but again, not as quickly as DPS classes.
For healers there should be quest where their core skills determine speed of success, heals, buffs, debuffs, etc. Perhaps an NPC demi-god taking on a huge BAM, tanks and DPS classes could take this quest on but the NPC would die and make the task very hard and slow. However a Priest or Mystic could debuff the BAM and buff & heal the NPC, perhaps the NPC would be using a Slaying setup and deal immense damage when on low HP, so the optimal healer tactic would be to let the NPC 's health drop enough to do more damage but not enough to die.
Summary: 3 different types of quest for the 3 different class roles, each rewarding the same and taking about the same time for their designed role but still doable by classes from other roles (with difficulty).
Often these discussions seem to sidetrack because one person's "quick" for a given class is considered "slow" by others. However this is, in my opinion, misleading because it's not about how fast one person does it compared to another that's the issue but how fast the same person does it depending on which class they use, and I've not seen anyone say that all classes are anywhere even close to being equal for what is a fairly significant part of the endgame grind. (As far as I can tell Brawlers are 2 to 3 times quicker than the worst performing classes, which amounts to a lot of time for a daily task over weeks and months.)
Some people have said that IoD BAMs should be buffed and made a party task but, my understanding is, that IoD BAMs are supposed to be a solo task for those times when you're waiting for friends to get online or just need a break from party-play.
BHS's attempted solution to this disparity has been, in part, to buff/balance classes, which is something that should happen for the DPS classes anyway but seems nonsensical to try and elevate Priest DPS rates to that of Brawlers (Mystics are, I think, a special case and were always intended to be part-DPS ever since BHS decided to give them Thralls of Vengeance and Wrath).
What BHS should be doing is showing a little imagination and giving us more varied solo tasks, orientated towards core class differences. The current IoD BAMs are just about perfect for tanks and DPS people who want to go toe-to-toe with a BAM but they're not a proper test of a pure DPS or healer skillset.
Alternate quests should be added, something like a mini-Kezzel (for those who remember him) for DPS classes, a BAM focused on carrying out another task so won't aggro you directly but will secondary aggro you sometimes so you have to be ready to evade/iframe. DPS chars would then get to concentrate on doing what they do best, positioning and skill rotations to maximise their DPS rate. Tanks could still do this quest but their tanking skills would have little or no effect so would find it harder, healers also should be able to complete the task but again, not as quickly as DPS classes.
For healers there should be quest where their core skills determine speed of success, heals, buffs, debuffs, etc. Perhaps an NPC demi-god taking on a huge BAM, tanks and DPS classes could take this quest on but the NPC would die and make the task very hard and slow. However a Priest or Mystic could debuff the BAM and buff & heal the NPC, perhaps the NPC would be using a Slaying setup and deal immense damage when on low HP, so the optimal healer tactic would be to let the NPC 's health drop enough to do more damage but not enough to die.
Summary: 3 different types of quest for the 3 different class roles, each rewarding the same and taking about the same time for their designed role but still doable by classes from other roles (with difficulty).
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Comments
I would suggest more practical things like for example taking the vault buff healers get (although only priest really needs it out of the two healers) and applying it to IoD too. Perhaps tweaking it for some of the under powered classes to benefit from it too.
I'm not sure on how complex an idea that is to implement, so my next suggestion would be to just increase the yellow mote drops substantially.
There's really no way to balance the classes. That's just going to take time and patches with class changes that we're yet to receive.
Yeah but pleading with EME to plead with BHS on our behalf is the best option we have (and EME have done so in the past, although I'm not sure how successfully).
You're not wrong. It just seems like a lot of work to implement when there are easier solutions. I didn't add it but making them count for the entire group is an easy fix too.
Well BHS seems a little obsessed with making everything competitive. I think their rationale is that allowing parties would be unfair on people who want to solo farm. As for variety, the old Reputation system had dozens of different quests and although they were trivial (the only dangerous one was the one that carried the risk of falling from that high platform near the Pathfinder Post) but variety helped with boredom.
As for how much work, BHS already reuse attack mechanics and BAM appearances all over the place. I'm sure they could retask mechanics for some new encounters/quests without too much effort. After all, how much effort did they put into revamping the Isle of Dawn for the IoD BAMs when the could have simply opened up Baldera for minimal redesign effort. If they can be convinced to add some solo DPS/Healer endgame quests they already have an empty but ready-to-go area waiting for them to fill with monsters.
BAMs by design were party mobs and were never intended for soloing (even if by mechanics /some/ classes could do it putting enough time and effort). The whole nerfing/dumbing down "thing" started in 2013 after the game was converted to f2p.
At the same time, BAMs being party mobs have never been an issue in this game. The whole "solo" fixation makes no sense in a game with standard trinity roles. None whatsoever. Even more so - considering that people near solely level up by grouping and running dungeons together in this game.
How about being unfair for people that want to do something interesting in parties, but are forced to solo / duo ?
Both ways the "reasoning" is just stupid. And the game can satisfy both sides, especially considering good 90% of the all OW maps are de-facto a pointless, unused wasteland.
But there's plenty of content for parties. The game has to make commercial decisions and trying to create a range of content from solo-play all the way up to 10 (and 20) player raids is only sensible.
These are the BAM's problems:
1) They turn too fast; I always run out of RE just trying to stay on their back. It's impossible to land a fireblast to the back as sorcerer.
2) The stun duration is too short. Backstab and reaping slash, even with cascade, doesn't keep them stunned long enough. Ninja's chakra thrust isn't long enough either.
3) Their charges take them so far away that it wastes a lot of time just trying to catch up to them; It's even more annoying when they use multiple charges in a row. (Also, Giant's charges are bugged and it would hit you even when you are super far behind them.)
4) They hit too hard. I would lose hp too fast if I try to use staggering counter. Just missing 1 or 2 timing would make me lose a lot of hp too. Most of the time these misses aren't even my fault, but caused by things like lag or terrain bug or glitches.
5) Bleed debuff is too strong. I lose like 50 to 75% hp if I get hit by it. This is really hard to deal with as non-healer. Cleansing brooch has 3 minutes cooldown too. Onyx are the worst at this because warrior DFA doesn't last long enough for the entire duration, and the Onyx skill is too wide to get out of easily. Sometimes terrain blocks the animation too and doesn't let you see how far it hits.
6) They have too much hp. Every day when I try to do these BAMs, I would go through my rotation like 4 times and these BAMs would still have ~60% hp. Even with keening mote, it takes about 50 seconds to 1 minute to kill one BAM.
7) Keen mote doesn't drop enough. The BAMs are pretty annoying and slow to do even with keening mote. But these motes drop so rarely, so it's very awful to do them most of the time.
8) We can't do them in parties. This is another really frustrating part about IoD content. Just being able to have a tank would solve 1, 2, 3, and 4, and having a healer would solve 4, 5, and help lessen the problem with 7. Having more DPS would solve 6 very well too, (If BAM hp are kept the same). Please make BAM kills shared for everyone in the party.
I think EME just need to make BAM kills shared for everyone in the party while keeping everything else the same (Don't buff BAM hp, don't buff their attacks, don't change kills required, don't change quest reward, don't change anything), and IoD content will be a loooot better than it is right now. It's a really simple solution, and I'm sure this can be done by EME too. We don't need to go to BHS for this simple change.
Up till when changes really DO take place, it's best to just use OP jobs and farm them. U farm them faster with less hassle. Being adamant in using ur main / fav job to farm isnt gonna do anything good for u, other than wasting precious time and endless frustration. As the Chinese has a saying: time lost cant be bought with gold.
TL;DR use brawl / ninja to farm
I do tell new people that I meet that their 2nd char should be a "farming class", if their main isn't one already. I would add Gunner to that list, if they kite 2 BAMs together they can kill at about the same speed as a Brawler.
Even though I tell people this I still think that the setup of IoD content is wrong, TERA is a game not a job, people shouldn't have to play a certain subset of classes simply because it's the only way to realistically complete routine content.
It's a failure of BHS's game designers in that they've created open-world solo content that is so biased towards just 4 out of 12 classes. Unless BHS are trying to tell us that they only want us to play those 4 classes from now on, after all, those 4 classes include 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 DPS, what more do we need? And I guess the male folk in the playerbase should be thanking BHS that there's still one class left where it's possible to be male.
PS: I'm female and happy playing female chars but I have every sympathy for players, of either gender, who desperately want to play male chars of a class that's still relevant.
I think in general they are fine, lvl 69 bams take some time but it's not like you spend actually a lot of time in it. As a warrior just save up backstab when the hydra is going to do that stupid attack hat kd's u and adds a debuff, and you are fine.
My main is a warrior and i also have a reaper and a gunner which i resently started playing. Gunner is the one i like the least, but has [filtered] dmg even on DN+12.
I agree with what you say, i don't think it's fair that healers have to do the same quests DPS do, if it takes some time on a DPS class i can't imagine how much it takes with a priest. I wouldn't like to be forced to create a 2nd char in order to do something as simple as a vg quest.
It's just easy with tank class. Stun duration on the boss is too short as you mentioned. And, they turn around really quick. CC doesn't really works well. Gunner has short stun CD time. Not another class. Keen mode drop rate is really lame. Sometimes, I don't get any from 10x bams.
You say "soloing" makes "no sense" in the trinity...? Then why is BHS buffing priest dps to be able to solo content? Why did they create brawler, a "tank" class that can out-dps actual dps? Why do they continue to buff mystic dps? And they've even buffed lancer dps? They're obviously trying to make it so that more people can solo more content on more classes. Why? Because they want more people to play the game. They don't want to limit their customer base to just "people with lots of friends who play the game". Some of us don't have lots of friends who play the game. Some of us had friends who used to play the game, and those friends quit. Some of us are new and not really sure what we're doing, and are afraid to ask for help because they don't want to get [filtered] on for being noobs. Some of us have really bad computers or bad ping and get horrible lag whenever we try to party up. Some of us just want to play a game without having to deal with all the stresses of trying to make new friends on the toxic interwebs. Some of us would rather take our chances soloing a dungeon than risk getting stuck with a trap group. Some of us might not be fluent in the primary language of the server we play on. Some of us play in different time zones, or have different work/school schedules than our friends / guild mates. There are a million different reasons why people might either choose to, or be forced to play solo. BHS realizes that and that is exactly why they created solo content.
I'm sorry that things don't always fit into your perfect MMO vision, but the reality is that all gamers are different. Some of us like PVP, some of us like cooperative PVE. Some like both. Some of us like solo games. Some of us like role playing, some of us like puzzles, or real time strategy, or first person shooters, or mindless mobile games like Candy Crush. Some of us like cutesy, some like sexy, some like gore. Some like sexy cutesy gore. Some of us like challenge, some of us like casual. BHS is a business first, and a creative entity second. All creativity and ideas about what they want the game to be, take a back seat to whatever will make them the most money. And the best way to make the most money is to attract the most customers. I, as a solo and somewhat casual gamer, have spent quite a bit of money on video games over the years, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that aspect. Any smart and savvy business would be happy to take my money, and occasionally they will modify their original business model to attract new customers like myself. I do apologize if that somehow means "ruining" the game for players like you; that was never my intention. I still think you guys have enough group content to keep you occupied..? I mean the IoD BAMs are completely optional, and I can't imagine why anyone would even want to waste their time with them for any other reason than to try to solo grind for gear... they are super annoying and tedious beyond belief, why would you even WANT to fight them when you can just party up with your friends and run dungeons instead? The last thing I want is to have to fight for room on every single channel just to complete my miserable dailies alone, like I did back in the days of TAR and nagas, etc.
Sure, you could argue that I, as a solo gamer, don't have the right to demand anything from BHS. I don't. I'm just one person, why should they care what I say? They can take the solo experiences away from me any time they want. And I can take my money away and spend it elsewhere. You are also one single gamer, you are entitled to your opinion, and they are also entitled to ignore your opinion, and you are entitled to spend your money elsewhere if you don't like it. I won't try to speculate which one of us spends more money on the game, as that's irrelevant; I'm not looking into getting into an e-peen measuring contest, and besides EME has insisted that they do not want the game to be p2w... my point being that ideally they want to be able to get $ from both of us. Which means they have to try to please both of us. Which is largely an exercise in futility if they're trying to please both of us all the time; it will never happen. But it seems as though they have tried to compromise, by giving you dungeons, and giving me IoD. If you don't like solo content, don't do the solo content, it's really that simple. Just as I don't do pvp or group dungeons. I miss out on a lot of awesome loot that way, but at least they gave me Ghillie, IoD and the celestial or whatever it's called arena. That's their way of trying to cater to all gamers, just as EME buffed pvp rewards to cater to pvpers who had previously been neglected. Why do you have a problem with BHS offering alternatives to the traditional MMO raid mentality? It's COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. AFAIK, there is nothing you can get from IoD BAMs that you can't get through grinding other content that might be more preferable to you. If there is something that us solo casual gamers are getting that you and all the other guilds and raid parties aren't getting, please let EME know, and I'm sure they will try to rectify the situation, though I'm fairly certain that is not the case; I mean you guys have how many dungeons now? 8, something like that? Not including hard modes?
Of course you have a legit point, that the TERA world is big enough that they could also offer group BAMs (and they should), but pls pls pls don't force me to share the same area with 5 man groups of +15 brawlers (oftentimes just single players multiboxing on 5 different accounts to earn huge $$$) KSing every BAM I try to kill. I stopped doing naga dailies way back when for exactly that reason, and instead focused on TAR... until they had the brilliant decision to make TAR more profitable than nagas, forcing me to abandon that as well (because 10 channels, and minimum of 2 groups of 5 on every single channel, even at 4 in the morning)... arggghhhh. Finally I have some endgame quests that I can accomplish solo, and that actually provide decent gear.
Though if you'd rather stick to the notion that TERA is strictly for experienced group players who know all mechanics, have perfect gear and millions of gold, petition EME to kick out all of us filthy solo casuals, and have fun playing a ded gaem.