Rather than everyone speculating beyond what was noted officially it would probably be best to wait for Fusoya to deliver his post detailing what will change and why.

I'm personally leaning towards Draxs's opinion on this.  When all is said and done monks and rogues will still be quite viable as dps choices and monk will still be tops for pulling.  I can't see why this would be so problematic.  Its not like sorcerers bring a ton of utilty or rangers so justifying that monks and rogues should be leages ahead of them in damage is just silly.  I would be realistically looking for a small bump to monk utility to round out the package over wanting to be excessively ahead of others in dps regardless.  But that's my personal preferences.

As for bards, they have great and flexible buffing through their songs which means they have to be in play for it to take effect unlike the 1hr buffs of others.  I know thier ability haste will be set to no longer stack with psi ability haste.  Perhaps they need to be reduced further etc. but considering how they work its a very fine line to walk between bards being overpowered and or suddenly underpowered, aka if their song components are made too weak in a given aspect then it will suddenly become an all or nothing deal instead of adding diversity to the class...which would in a sense destroy a lot of the fun of playing a bard to begin with.  Its not a quick easy thing to balance out while still maintianing the functional diversity of the class especially if you take how it functions in groups and solo into account..

Just curious, but what is your reasoning to put harmonious monks below rangers?

I would suspect its more likely to have drunk and harmonious be very close to each other when all is said and done with dragon a bit higher and rogue a bit higher than than.  Ranger should be just barely below drunk/harmo.  People can claim rangers have utility and flexability to flip between ranged and melee...and that's true.  But its typically not taken into account when picking them for a group/raid so much as "we need more dps".

To be fair the ranger heal is trivial enough that it really doesn't provide a significant edge in the vast majority of group and raid content, its nice solo and that's about it.

Additionally, only one of the ranger buff (the 5% crit bonus) buff is truelly valuable.  And they have a little in the way of debuff. 

Their ranged attacks if built correctly for it are simply excellent though I would agree.  And so yes that flexability should cost something, but they shouldn't be "that far" behind monks.  People want rangers in groups typically for the same reason they want monks and rogues, DPS.  I have yet to hear someone say "OH thank god!  Ranger buffs and heals!"

So it would make sense to keep all three relatively close in the grand scheme of things  (granted with rogue on top, followed by monk followed by ranger followed by bard).

My opinion of course.

I've felt for a while now that having two class leads is a very good thing.

Will be interesting to see what you come up with and hello. 

A CL can only do so much.  If the devs have rocks in their heads (as they many times seem to) the CL can only relay to you what they said and the responces they were given.  Additionally any changes suggested that require coding etc. can take a loooong time to get processed along the que of many many other things.

I wanted to scream at the devs when they completely jacked up shaman patron balance by removing the regen capabilities from just one patron (wolf) completely.  And then watched them utterly fail to try to rebalance around it.  The wolf shaman ended up being royally gimped in solo and group content compared to the other patrons and then suddenly became godlike in terms of dps for a healer on raids where they actually had endurance regen from other classes buffs.

If they hadn't made the bonehead move of stipping the wolf shammy regen in the first place it never would have become such an increadibly unbalanced situation.  But no one could convince the devs of their own stupidity.   Even though the problem was dead obvious to most people playing a rakurr shammy....go figure.

Sometimes the devs really are just clueless and stubborn.  /shrug

Rangers simply lack the kind of deaggro tools to do things right.  They either get the flat 20% reduced aggro doing ranged attacks or they use their relatively weak melee deaggro ability doing melee attacks.  Either way our rangers have to limit their damage or they pull aggro and die.  Same with our sorcerers.

In a nutshell yeah.

Without question harmonious is the most capable in terms of soloing.

In terms of who brings what to groups, it depends on the group but typically the harmonious debuffs are pretty useful.  For solo you want (imo) the best windblade you can lay your hands on.  Ramped up parry = quivering palm on 24/7 which mean you take half damage.  Its a must.

All three do pretty good damage.  Dragon is abysmal in terms of soloability.  Drunk is a step between.

To be frank if you wanted to play a class that solo's well you'd do better sticking with your necro.  You can build them to be reasonably durable and solo some amazing things if played well and you can still kill pretty fast.

Shaman, disciple, cleric, bloodmage can also solo some pretty impressive stuff.

People typically roll a monk to pummel the crap out of things, be viable off tanks, and the safest pullers a group/raid could ask for.

I guess I was understanding that most guilds were in fact raid buffing the groups that did this.  As for landing debuffs a disc's are instant cast and don't effect global cooldown. 

But yeah if you were purely relying on what the individuals on a group bring to the table I would have to agree that cleric buffs are mindblowingly handy. 

A properly geared/specced disc can heal very well longer than any other healer except perhaps bloodmages, arguable with a 20%aggro redux stance and FD the disc can do it safer as well.

Its just extremely rare for a disc to persue all the right tools to max out their healing and do things like fight with a flawless hexing handwrap in mainhand + flawless healing focus in off hand etc. and build good macros to max out their effectiveness.

There does seem to be a pretty huge abundance of daggers doesn't there?

On the flip side some of their skills do require one, which limits their choice of weaponry a bit.  Still the requirements for the crafted item are a little on the steep side of things. 

Friggin yeay...

all those dreams...those pretty dreams I had...


I suppose realistically speaking that by the time our guild is honestly "farming" Kot regularly there will be a level cap increase with new gear that is better or comperable but more easily accessable.

Such is life. 

so...does the point that it requires 15 dragon scales imply that you have to kill kot at least 3 times in order to make one of those?

Np man.    Sometimes its fun to dream up stuff and toss it around and its nice to get feedback. 


See to me that is the point...to make both viable.  When the cap gets expanded out, you add on another tier to unarmed training to balance with the influx of new gear. 

Realistically there SHOULD be weapons to choose between in addition to unarmed training.  If one was superior for everythign all the the time that would be pretty boring to me.

What fuj said.  Litterally the only 2h weapon dropping in apw for monks is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than the greystone bladed staff.

I suppose also if you really focus on int then you simply want to hit more often, period.  So 2x jagged striking handwraps may pull ahead of GS Bstaff depending on build anyway.  Hard to say.  Either way though is a pretty solid setup.