For the sole reason of the realities of latency on the internet, it was a terrible error in judgement to ever allow Casters (or anyone) to break below a 1.5s casting/swing speed. It simply doesn't leave enough reaction time, when internet latency alone can eat up a whole second, not to mention what 200+ players on screen does to most video cards so local lag only exacerbates the issue. These are largely 1-button classes, and thus a ~1 second cast time is insane in combination with the highest DPS in the game.

They should have to do spell combo's to reach the top-end DPS, but if you're spamming 1 button then you should do about half the DPS that nukers are currently doing.


Worst part to me, however, is that Casters in DAoC reign supreme in basically all aspects of NF combat. Out in the open field their range, superior DPS, and superior CC abilities reign supreme. In sieges, it's Casters that make the most RPs on both sides, either the ones defending on the rafters, or the ones attacking below. Melees have at best the task of riding the ram. And then, and this is the real kicker, FINALLY the doors come down and WHAT!? It's CASTERS reigning supreme again with powerful AE/PBAE abilities, CC, shrooms, etc. to defend spaces in close quarters. This makes NO sense to me at all! Once the doors come down, Casters should be cannon fodder, and it should be a huge melee brawl that decides who wins.

In pretty much the same way that melees drop to PBAE now in droves at a time when rushing into a Lord room, Casters should be falling over like bowling pins when the doors come down. They should FEAR the doors coming down, not drool at the inc RPs. Both Casters and support should have significant issues with CQ combat, and should want to avoid that at all cost.

Sadly, it ain't gonna happen. It would take too drastic changes to make it happen, and judging by history there has never been a very strong will do address the glaring discrepancy between Casters & melee in DAoC.


And no, I agree that Archers are not the solution to this problem by any means, they basically are Casters on top of being invisible. Although Archer's ability to perform in Sieges should be boosted (especially Volley & Siege Shot, as well as Crit Shot vs. Casters), the recent rash of stealth zerging Archers (on all sides) will likely prevent any glimmer of hope for any sort of boosts in the near future. If anything, IMHO there will more likely be nerfs (sadly) then boosts to Archery DPS. It won't be the solo or duo snipers to blame for that, but the 8+ man deep Archer stealth zergs. The actual problem there is clearly the combination of stealth and ranged damage, but since that won't be fixed, it's far more likely that crippling DPS nerfs will ensue.

 

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Is this a troll?

Put yourself in PB range of a caster then you deserve to be nuked down in seconds

I had a great little fight yesterday with some coastguarding lock on my ranger

Standard shotting him/Long shotting and rapid firing to keep him from re-chambering and I would constantly dip out of range so he couldn't cast on me...

OP needs to L2P

 

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I'm guessing you're talking about zergs here? Because in smallman or 8v8 or even just two random full grps running into eachother (note the difference), this isn't the case.



While this is true in most cases, Classes with climb wall can wreck havoc if they have decent support. This only aplies to said classes though.



So casters should just hide and do nothing then? No, they will try to hold the chokepoints with PBAE etc. One guy charging in and banelord dumping is often all that's needed to break their momentum if the rest charges in afterwards.



And how does this affect open field combat? Should they fall over as bowling pins whenever a melee charges them there too? Casters are confined to very limited spaces in sieges and are VERY easy to interrupt. One TWF, ST, some banelord dumps or whatever else you can come up with is enough to interrupt almost every enemy player in the lord room.



They do. There are hard interrupts in thsi game if you havn't noticed.



Thankfully people are more reasonable than that.


What they should do to improve melees siege experience is to increase the efficiency of siege weapons. Incease the dmg from catapults and trebs but also increase the walls HP etc and jsut make it overall more interesting. Wouldn't it be nice to see huge siege weapon battles again during sieges anyways?

 

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Nerf caster end dmg by 30%, today casters have so much utility and survivability vs melee classes it is no longer sane to allow them to nuke ppl for anything above 400 dmg.

Archers should be rolled back to the old archery system wich was so much better and easier to balance. Stealthed casters was a bad idea then and still is, and i got 2 scouts and 1 ranger all wich has been melee specced intil mytich ruined the archery line making it a caster with stealth.

Remove MoS and the kiddie feature where you see your own realms stealthers from a mile away, you wanna stealth zerg like a baddie then saftey in nr should be have a downside, namley keeping everyone togheter and in synch.

The game has become so noobified the caster time to kill is lower then it ever has been while they have more surv then they ever had aswell. Simply noobiefied and dumbed down, reminds me of bf3.

 

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As much as I agree that casters need to get nerfed, the idea OP submitted is the most retarded thing I read for a while.


Why the hell yould you want archers to be able to kill grouped people ? They are already annoying as hell adding on every solo fight, we don't need more coons adding on groups.





Adding more HPs would be a huge problem for melee classes, which already struggle dealing proper damage in group situations. Any solution should not involve this imo.





This would be a huge nerf for casters which can't benefit from a 30/50% debuff. Besides, for the casters who benefit from a 50% debuff, the nerf would only be minor (7% primary left on a red rb+36% stuff resist, 12% if the target has racials or myth, 17% with racials + mythirian). I don't think making resist debuffs mandatory but still as effective would be a solution.





Actually, it would be much smarter to remove the spec debuffs and to let spec nukers get these 10/15% debuffs, with utility casters being able to hit on these debuffs. This would let mages set up debuff assists and decent damage, without letting them have the ridiculous dps they have on 50% debuffs. This would also stop the whole "baseline nuke on the right resist >> spec nuke" nonsense.





This again doesn't make a distinction between the regular mages that deal ok damage and the mages dd/debuff assists that are completely cracked.





This is why archers need no love.

(also PCK is right : CCing/rupting someone using long shot is much harder than someone who just uses standard/RF. That's how archers' greed kills them quite often.)

archers need to hit harder?

 

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Dear lord, no.

Already groups of Archers and Stealthers... please don't let him insta gibb my casters any quicker.

Learn to play your class properly, and stop the QQing.

 

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Archer boost? Lol. They've already been boosted by a lot. Just join a group and kill solos. The hunters in lab do it all the time. How about fix target window and have it register that you're being hit on the first attack instead of showing up on the fourth? Regularly get hit by arrows on my hero, but I can't /face until the third or fourth arrow because the game is too slow to register it.

I agree casters across the board need a good hard swing at with the nerf bat, but giving archers a boost is hardly the solution.

 

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The bolded part is your problem, you seem to be stuck with a 4:86 brain while the rest of us uppgrade ours as new models come out.

EDIT: And no archers should not be able to DESTROY grouped casters as that would make casters completly useless everywhere. What they should do is move all stealthers to a Stealth only server, that way you can have your little stealth wars and dont have to gripe about such things as Tanks, light tanks, casters, healers, hybrids, sunflowers and the ocasional random grey mob that kills you. Well maybe you still would have issues with the grey mobs but the rest you would not have to worry about.

Why cant players that play stealthers as mains ever learn how to effing play this game?