Melee DPS is dead:long live casters!

[grodon9999]

This is no different from any other point in the game. Pre spell pass it was just hold everything and beat it down. While much of a melee's offense comes from gear very little of a caster's does. A caaster gains survivability/uber soloability with his gear but his offensive output is very little changed compared with a melees.

This toon is barely out of diapers and has a 43 necro DC. DC comes from gear and that's a huge part of offense.

Actual raw DPS yes, that's true her DOTs get all the boosts from cannith crafted stuff.

[voodoogroves]

This is no different from any other point in the game. Pre spell pass it was just hold everything and beat it down. While much of a melee's offense comes from gear very little of a caster's does. A caaster gains survivability/uber soloability with his gear but his offensive output is very little changed compared with a melees.

This is why I want to drop the efficacy potions/clickies to 60% instead of 75% top and maybe scale back the lore % benefits right now, introducing other named items with higher lore.

Make casters chase some gear.

Maybe even raise mob saves and add more spell focus gear (going to +4 and +5 even); level epic focus to +4 or +5 ... possibly move the Napkin to +2, other greaters to +3, etc.

Make casters hunt gear more for their lore, potency and DCs.

Heck, introduce higher spell pen items and increase some of the epic ones.

[Postumus]

We're in Mindsunder. Don't get past the first room. I'm happily the last man standing, with TEN kills (using my Terror, so not actually doing any DPS) and those 10 kills are double the next highest toon.

We recall. The fighter (we're fighter, monk, paladin, barb, rogue, and a healbot) switches to a NON TR FvS at the same level.

What I inferred from this tale is that your party's cleric was horrible and a complete waste of space.

[LeLoric]

This toon is barely out of diapers and has a 43 necro DC. DC comes from gear and that's a huge part of offense.

Actual raw DPS yes, that's true her DOTs get all the boosts from cannith crafted stuff.

Even dc is not that much from gear other than easy acquire stuff. There is just nowhere near the increase from a naked caster to a geared caster as there is from a naked melee to a geared melee. It has always been this way.

Human palemaster just like yours.

18 base int 5 levels 4 enhancements 2 capstone 2 lich form 2 tome (yes its gear but you should have 1750 favor upon reaching 20 or at least very shortly after.)= 33 int

10 base +9 level + 2 feats +1 lich +11 int = 33 dc

Spend less than 20k plat and get yourself a +6 int ring and a necro focus item join a guild and get your yugo favor and you got a 39 necro dc. This is a bare bones 20 human palemaster.

No melee can spend 20k plat an 1-2 hours of amrath questing and get even to 50% of their potential.

[LeLoric]

This is why I want to drop the efficacy potions/clickies to 60% instead of 75% top and maybe scale back the lore % benefits right now, introducing other named items with higher lore.

Make casters chase some gear.

Maybe even raise mob saves and add more spell focus gear (going to +4 and +5 even); level epic focus to +4 or +5 ... possibly move the Napkin to +2, other greaters to +3, etc.

Make casters hunt gear more for their lore, potency and DCs.

Heck, introduce higher spell pen items and increase some of the epic ones.

Casters still chase gear.

My wizard uses 5 epic demon queen raid items and two epic explorer items. Some of the hardest gear in the game to get. I want 2 tier 3 alchems on all my casters before any melees.

The difference between an uberly geared 20 palemaster and fresh 20 palemaster is still a huge gap. It's just not an offensive gap. The best gear for a palemaster allows them to walk around nigh indestructable and shrug off even the biggest hits like they were nothing. It's a huge defensive gap.

[Arctigis]

No, i certainly agree the average caster is no where near this standard. I actually played nothing but melee at the start and finally decided to role up a warforged sorc to test the class out. To my surprise, i was able to kill things far more quickly than my melee toons could ever think of doing all whilst healing myself and keeping everyone buffed. It made me realise how powerful a first life caster could be, but also how badly many people play casters as well.

For many i think casters and melee are fairly even and i still get turned down for shroud pugs because they 'already have a caster', despite the fact i can do more damage than any melee they have. All these points about how OP casters are really only apply to the well geared and played casters who can make "epic" quests pretty trivial. I still think melee need a buff in general but i think the real problem is how powerful casters can be with the proper gear.

I think you're pouring oil on the fire with that one. Water Savant with every caster boosting item in the
game kills cold vulnerable sack of HP. Shock.

[Cyr]

This is true... My wizard, before AND after the spell-pass was welcomed into epic groups, and has very little gear.

Yup which is a direct result of the developers being far too timid in putting out good arcane gear for literally years. They punted on it and instead they ended up changing game mechanics to make them better.

My very unpopular suggestion for the day: Casters need to be seriously nerfed with a much larger emphasis put on gear that must be worn to gain it's effects. Clickies should be ways to supliment your gear not outclass it. That way gear slots matter more for casters meaning that you could go tower of power near invinsible mode, but your dps is going to go down for that privileage for example.

[voodoogroves]

Casters still chase gear.

My wizard uses 5 epic demon queen raid items and two epic explorer items. Some of the hardest gear in the game to get. I want 2 tier 3 alchems on all my casters before any melees.

The difference between an uberly geared 20 palemaster and fresh 20 palemaster is still a huge gap. It's just not an offensive gap. The best gear for a palemaster allows them to walk around nigh indestructable and shrug off even the biggest hits like they were nothing. It's a huge defensive gap.

Yeah but we don't chase gear for the core, that's the deal. We can, because we want to improve ... but it's not as necessary.

If mob saves vs. spells moved up (and again, vs. spells - lets not hurt the tactics dudes) and we scaled the focus items (for DCs), spell pen items (for spell pen), lore and the potency clickies back a bit ... I think that'd help.

Me, I want an epic Ring of Elemental Essence on my PM not because it's uber, but because I'm lazy. Epic Corrosion is 60% ... I get more from a clickie ... and for most of the spells I need it on (say a DoT), that can be real lot gen trash. Major Lore is too easy for what it provides.

Really epic geared folks will have this ... and that's good. But a wizard who just hits 20 with their cannith crafted or loot gen stuff won't be just about as good as one who's been there for a while. Then offense and defense can both be considerations for gear sets ... a player choice ... instead of being able to devote a **** ton to defense because offense is relatively cheap and free.

[Alex301]

The biggest difference I saw was that the sorc was able to kite the fire giant around the area of effect of the spell, meaning that less time was needed to stop and heal the damage taken. Is that really being overpowered? How much would have changed if the Barb had a cleric or FvS there to heal them so they could just keep swinging the sword without pausing to drink a pot?

Did you watch the videos? The barbarian had a bard healing him through and didn't once stop to drink a health pot. The sorcerer didn't take any damage from Sobrien either. Obviously this isn't representative of normal gameplay: the caster uses 2/3 of their sp on one fight, uses several short term buffs and Sobrien takes twice the damage from cold damage.

I think you're pouring oil on the fire with that one. Water Savant with every caster boosting item in the
game kills cold vulnerable sack of HP. Shock.

lol, it's not a fair comparison and i never said it was. All i wanted to prove was that casters achieve higher dps than melee and anyone who thinks their melee can do more damage than a decent caster is wrong. I'm not saying that it's sustainable or that casters usually average 2.5k damage per second, just that it is significantly higher than melee dps.

[McFlay]

So what you are saying is that the game has to be balanced around the no life 10 hour a day bums?

So you want to have melees kill a whole group of mobs with one swing of the sword?

What I'm saying is that end game play should be balanced on end game uber geared people. Not all high level content should require you to be totally decked out, but for issues of balance it should be balanced from the view of what is achievable, otherwise you just end up with a broken game. How do you think it should be balanced? Balance all the end game content towards first life toons with mediocre gear? That really gives people a good challenge, and incentive to learn the game, hunt gear, and become better players.

Also, no, I don't want to see melees killing whole groups with one swing, which brings us back to the original topic. Melees can't kill groups in one swing, yet casters can as well as dps/dot/aoe/cc/heal/buff/debuff/tank/everything under the sun. How can anyone even pose the argument classes are balanced when casters literally do everythign as well, if not better then melee?

Now don't get me wrong, I totally expect casters to outperform melees in certain styles of play, but not everything. Dots pretty much stripped the last roles that melee had a monopoly on...worst addition to the game ever. And I also don't think the solution is simply let's buff up melees, because whats the point of a class/group based game when everyone can pretty much do anything? If I wanted to run around like a total pimp annihilating everything like I'm in god mode I'd go run some low level quests with a capped toon.

[t0r012]

just an observation on my last couple runs with a reasonably well geared monk running through the vale leveling.

my normal tactics;
run up stunning blow first mob in the group as I jump over the batch standing there to get to the casters to stun the first and quivering palm a second if I have the ki and then trip another to beat him down. using my reasonable AC to keep the damage I take down to keep the healers job easy.


what has been happening;
run up to the first mob getting press stunning blow hotkey and see the big red finger over the mobs head. run continue my jump run back to the casters press stunning fist just in time to see the wail cloud and everything poof.


not a whole lot of fun.
would love it if they ran out of SP at some point but doesn't ever seem to happen.

Oh yeah not talking about uber multi past life epic geared casters , I mean gimpy 200hp first lifers.

[Emili]

But, how are you going to buff someone that swings a sword? I do not want to see a melee doing 2K dmg a swing that is not balanced either.

How many swings can someone get with their sword in say 6 seconds? 4 to 6? If they all land and it is my barb doing the swinging where the dmg is about 80 on average without a crit. That is 320 to 480 dmg from my weapon in the time it takes a sorc or wiz to fire off 1 fireball spell that does about the same damage without a crit. It is about the same damage that a divine will get from a single cast of divine punishment.

Now I do not think that 80 dmg per swing is a lot and it is quite easy to get to be honest, my lowly ranger that goes twf gets on average 30 to 60 dmg per hit (both weapons connecting) and with haste the numbers just fly by. Last night I took my little exploiter into a mid level quest (level 9) with Arcanes that were 2 levels ahead of him (they were 11 and he was 9) and he still beat out all of them in the kill count with 47. The Arti beat me with 63 and he died twice during the quest. We ran the quest at elite for bravery bonus.

Flip side...

Now then. Wait 'til you get that melee all geared up in epic gearing and your average swing is 100 before a crit and frenzied out you're crits breach 800+ crit damages with an eSoS on a 650000hp epic boss like eLoB...sure fun, but guess what? In every other quest can be seen just a drop in the bucket? Why?

Here's the problem... the more you are experienced and geared up the more you run with others who are also experienced and geared up.

i.e. Most the casters I know are multi-TRd high DC toting tons of epic gear, sp, sp regen items and the the skill and knowledge to use it. In grouping we mainly use guild and channels to fill groups ... especially for the important roles (like a caster). Once a while is a rare thing we find some inexperienced under-par arcane in group via an lfm on a slow night and when we do usually the raid leader gives them a bit of advice afters and some pointers and typically is a long time before we ever see them again...

just an observation on my last couple runs with a reasonably well geared monk running through the vale leveling.

my normal tactics;
run up stunning blow first mob in the group as I jump over the batch standing there to get to the casters to stun the first and quivering palm a second if I have the ki and then trip another to beat him down. using my reasonable AC to keep the damage I take down to keep the healers job easy.


what has been happening;
run up to the first mob getting press stunning blow hotkey and see the big red finger over the mobs head. run continue my jump run back to the casters press stunning fist just in time to see the wail cloud and everything poof.


not a whole lot of fun.
would love it if they ran out of SP at some point but doesn't ever seem to happen.

Oh yeah not talking about uber multi past life epic geared casters , I mean gimpy 200hp first lifers.

Ooo... on a monk yes, be a pain as you need to beat on things to regain Ki so you may use your Ki strikes again (the arcane seems almost mean. ). Howeverm If ya, think that's annoying try any other melee where the tacticals are on 15 and 10 second cooldowns. But...

This is the sign of an arcane player (with some decent experience) having fun... When you invite someone else to group... they no clue if you can play decent or not, likewise you them, Well, they only know what "they can do" so they often take things into their own hands. Is not something I agree with but is often a general attitude. It can also be that the arcane player does not understand the workin's of your build so to them are oblivous to how effective you actually may be outside of beating on things.

... and really be a root reason I solo or only run with a couple friends. I'm currently running up a TR'd monk (can't wait be gettin' her back into her epic gear) switched her helf and dark - currently level 18 and BB is 198 most of which I run being a level under (when quest is level 16 my character is level 15) ... Oh, anyway I been soloing her or duo running with Kaalil (a friend and guildie)... His is a multi-TR'd PM I think is her sixth caster life? Anyways, this highly arcane experinced fella with this behemoth of power understands and we play together, despite the fact his skill and character can steamroll thru leaving me twidlin' thumbs he allows me to have fun too.

Did you watch the videos? The barbarian had a bard healing him through and didn't once stop to drink a health pot. The sorcerer didn't take any damage from Sobrien either. Obviously this isn't representative of normal gameplay: the caster uses 2/3 of their sp on one fight, uses several short term buffs and Sobrien takes twice the damage from cold damage.

Pop your bobble, etc... and invis and continue on. Is far more than DPS a caster can do far better.

Casters still chase gear.

I want 2 tier 3 alchems on all my casters before any melees.

Alchemy magicsticks are extremeley nice ... alchemy melee weapons are not so great.

What I'm saying is that end game play should be balanced on end game uber geared people. Not all high level content should require you to be totally decked out, but for issues of balance it should be balanced from the view of what is achievable, otherwise you just end up with a broken game. How do you think it should be balanced? Balance all the end game content towards first life toons with mediocre gear? That really gives people a good challenge, and incentive to learn the game, hunt gear, and become better players.

...

I agreed with all these same points in the past...

I play my characters side by side with other player my level they're experienced and geared up too, they're not someone just learning the game. Be my wizard or my fighter am surounded by others with multi-tr'd lives toting epic gear who know exactly what they're doing. I'm running with people I've known for years so I'm not running with people on thier first shroud or or thier first eDQ1 not even thier first eLoB. ...

[McFlay]

This is the sign of an arcane player (with some decent experience) having fun... When you invite someone else to group... they no clue if you can play decent or not, likewise you them, Well, they only know what "they can do" so they often take things into their own hands. Is not something I agree with but is often a general attitude. It can also be that the arcane player does not understand the workin's of your build so to them are oblivous to how effective you actually may be outside of beating on things.

I think you totally missed the point of his original post. How are the classes balanced when a moderately geared caster completely dominates to the point where its not even fun for melees? If being able to have fun on a melee involves the casters in your groups leaving a few kills for you, those are some pretty broken game mechanics. Everyone just might as well stop playing melees and play casters or support classes.

It also speaks volumes about caster balance when casters are fodding and wailling every trash mob in a quest. I'm always hearing things about limited resources, but thats such a joke. Without even taking into account able to turtle up and regen sp, and pots, the only time mana ever seems to be an issue is in a select few raids. So yeah, casters should completely dominate everywhere whenever they don't feel like letting those wimpy melees feel useful because the blue bar on a smartly played caster is an issue in 1% of the content.

[Mubjon]

Did you watch the videos? The barbarian had a bard healing him through and didn't once stop to drink a health pot. The sorcerer didn't take any damage from Sobrien either. Obviously this isn't representative of normal gameplay: the caster uses 2/3 of their sp on one fight, uses several short term buffs and Sobrien takes twice the damage from cold damage.

Never once saw someone healing the barb in the video.

IF the barb would have used a weapon with frost burst how much more damage would have been added? He crit often so there would be 1d6 dmg each hit plus depending on the weapon up to 4d6 on the crits.

lol, it's not a fair comparison and i never said it was. All i wanted to prove was that casters achieve higher dps than melee and anyone who thinks their melee can do more damage than a decent caster is wrong. I'm not saying that it's sustainable or that casters usually average 2.5k damage per second, just that it is significantly higher than melee dps.

It can be higher in bursts with a caster that knows how to play their class. If they burn through all those SP's in the first 4 minutes of the quest and the shrine is 10 minutes away, they are now useless or having to spend real money to do more than pick their nose.

[Mubjon]

What I'm saying is that end game play should be balanced on end game uber geared people. Not all high level content should require you to be totally decked out, but for issues of balance it should be balanced from the view of what is achievable, otherwise you just end up with a broken game. How do you think it should be balanced? Balance all the end game content towards first life toons with mediocre gear? That really gives people a good challenge, and incentive to learn the game, hunt gear, and become better players.

A majority is not going to go after all that uber gear to do end game. It is not going to happen, games are balanced or should be balanced on the middle ground where most players are going to be. Not at the top 5% or the bottom 5% but the middle 90%.

Also, no, I don't want to see melees killing whole groups with one swing, which brings us back to the original topic. Melees can't kill groups in one swing, yet casters can as well as dps/dot/aoe/cc/heal/buff/debuff/tank/everything under the sun. How can anyone even pose the argument classes are balanced when casters literally do everythign as well, if not better then melee?

Melees should never be able to kill 5 mobs in one swing it is not feasible. A fireball however can and should kill everything that does not have the HP available to survive it.

Melee can heal, they can do CC, they can get AOE, they can debuff, they can tank. CC is stunning blow, trip, paralyzing weapons, AOE is cleave and two handed weapons with glancing blows, debuff is a weapon with cursespewing, shatter, shattermantle. And they mostly certain can heal with wands as well as tank very easily.

Now don't get me wrong, I totally expect casters to outperform melees in certain styles of play, but not everything. Dots pretty much stripped the last roles that melee had a monopoly on...worst addition to the game ever. And I also don't think the solution is simply let's buff up melees, because whats the point of a class/group based game when everyone can pretty much do anything? If I wanted to run around like a total pimp annihilating everything like I'm in god mode I'd go run some low level quests with a capped toon.

what is the point of having a raid and limiting the group to 1 caster because you need them to just break something quicker than what the Ranger can do? Have there not been all melee shrouds? Just as there have been all bard, all cleric, all FvS, all arcane? Not sure about you, but I do not want to go back to the days where it was 1 maybe 2 arcanes 2 divines and the rest melee in the easiest raid in the game (outside of Tempest spine of course).

The biggest difference between Arcanes/Divines that cast offensively is that they can do the damage at range. It hit normally for the same amount as the melee can do in the same time (DPS). If a spell does 400 to 600 damage every 6 seconds, cannot a Barb get the same damage in that same amount of time? They just have to run up to the mob to do that damage.

What I normally do on my melee is jump the front line and get to the casters and archers as I generally have time to engage them and kill them by the time the casters take care of the mobs that are melee. Not to mention the stupid arcanes grab their aggro from the get go so let them deal with it. I can normally take down the casters and archers in a hit or two pretty easy and I am on the last one usually (if there is more than 5 in the ranged group) by the time the Cleric gets up close enough to toss a cure or the arcane will run up and do a FOD on the last 2% of health. If not I have time to turn around and finish off the melee mobs that the casters are running from.



DDO has great range DPS, it just is not done with a bow and done with magic instead.

[Mubjon]

Flip side...

Now then. Wait 'til you get that melee all geared up in epic gearing and your average swing is 100 before a crit and frenzied out you're crits breach 800+ crit damages with an eSoS on a 650000hp epic boss like eLoB...sure fun, but guess what? In every other quest can be seen just a drop in the bucket? Why?

Here's the problem... the more you are experienced and geared up the more you run with others who are also experienced and geared up.

i.e. Most the casters I know are multi-TRd high DC toting tons of epic gear, sp, sp regen items and the the skill and knowledge to use it. In grouping we mainly use guild and channels to fill groups ... especially for the important roles (like a caster). Once a while is a rare thing we find some inexperienced under-par arcane in group via an lfm on a slow night and when we do usually the raid leader gives them a bit of advice afters and some pointers and typically is a long time before we ever see them again...

Lately I do not have the time to run when my friends are on. So I am solo'ing a lot more because I am not happy with the pug scene. So maybe that is coloring my judgement not sure, as I am happy with the way my barb and fighter perform. Of course I built them to be self-sufficient so I am not relying on others to keep them going when I do quest.

Actually had a quest the other night, one of the rare occasions that I grouped up to do an elite quest that I was not having luck with solo. And had the Cleric pike at the entrance, as soon as we finished he logged off. Never in the 2 years I have been playing have I seen that happen with a Cleric. Bard, sure, Rogue yep and even a few fighters and other melee toons. Never a Cleric though and we did have two deaths, both by the arti that ran through a trap that he forgot was there.

It was all in all a nice experience for a pug I have had in months.

[Rhysem]

I wouldn't suggest all mobs get deathward - blanket immunities are a cheap fix that dot really fix anything imo - but perhaps include more orange named opponents for the melee to work on. A percentage based chance to resist insta-kill would achieve a similar thing though.

Please no deathward. Some of us melees like to quivering palm.

[Alex301]

Never once saw someone healing the barb in the video.

IF the barb would have used a weapon with frost burst how much more damage would have been added? He crit often so there would be 1d6 dmg each hit plus depending on the weapon up to 4d6 on the crits.

It can be higher in bursts with a caster that knows how to play their class. If they burn through all those SP's in the first 4 minutes of the quest and the shrine is 10 minutes away, they are now useless or having to spend real money to do more than pick their nose.

Well the barb was being healed. You'll see big green numbers hover over his head periodically. He was also using an eSOS. I'm not sure if a +5 holy burst, icy burst falchion of greater giant bane would beat it. Suffices to say that he's doing close to the max dps a melee can achieve anyway.

If a caster burns through all their sp at the start of a quest then they're not a decent caster. SP management is an important skill. Although the caster in the vid used up 2/3 of his sp, a lot of that was wasted on mana inefficient spells just to boost his dps slightly.

[Emili]

I think you totally missed the point of his original post. How are the classes balanced when a moderately geared caster completely dominates to the point where its not even fun for melees? If being able to have fun on a melee involves the casters in your groups leaving a few kills for you, those are some pretty broken game mechanics. Everyone just might as well stop playing melees and play casters or support classes.

It also speaks volumes about caster balance when casters are fodding and wailling every trash mob in a quest. I'm always hearing things about limited resources, but thats such a joke. Without even taking into account able to turtle up and regen sp, and pots, the only time mana ever seems to be an issue is in a select few raids. So yeah, casters should completely dominate everywhere whenever they don't feel like letting those wimpy melees feel useful because the blue bar on a smartly played caster is an issue in 1% of the content.

No I have not missed the point... I am just stating exactly what the situation is atm and supports your statements... the only WAY melee play is when the caster include them in playing.

In fact I poked ya .... telling ya to go finish claw on your caster which btw is far easier on it than any other class.

When I farm for epic gear for my characters ... it's my bleedin' casters I use to do so. Because they can do everything well and they've very few limits. Even the blue-bar is limitless.

In another thread about sla's and dots I stated the main concern is mana ... it's plentiful, most blue-bars are sufficient enough plus when things go awry be easily replenished afters to adjust and move on. I stated that melee are actually a hard play character to attain "like results" and I get people replying they're relaxed on melee and they're conributing by assasinating high sr drow caster/acrher mob in eTides ... which I rebuttled I can take any class in there and get the quest done and when I have MORE blue bar class in eTides it's is actually quicker and easier, to which they reply well that's due to overlap. Why sure it is which just shows how powerful the blue bars are.

Outside the raid... in the epic quests the party leader is not the barb or rogue with the Star (they may think they're leading)... but it's the bleedin Arcane and FvS, They're actually the ones in control and calling the shots - thru casting - of when and how the tasks are done.

Where this balance went astray be a combination of places... i.e. the translations of DnD feating, the class enhancement options and the scope of TR past lives, plus in-game items. When you examine these in combinations you'd see they attain very skewed results.

Lately I do not have the time to run when my friends are on. So I am solo'ing a lot more because I am not happy with the pug scene. So maybe that is coloring my judgement not sure, as I am happy with the way my barb and fighter perform. Of course I built them to be self-sufficient so I am not relying on others to keep them going when I do quest.

Actually had a quest the other night, one of the rare occasions that I grouped up to do an elite quest that I was not having luck with solo. And had the Cleric pike at the entrance, as soon as we finished he logged off. Never in the 2 years I have been playing have I seen that happen with a Cleric. Bard, sure, Rogue yep and even a few fighters and other melee toons. Never a Cleric though and we did have two deaths, both by the arti that ran through a trap that he forgot was there.

It was all in all a nice experience for a pug I have had in months.

See... in essence you're levelling your melee in scope the same exact way I do... it's not to say I don't pug but I avoid them because I like to have fun and hold the right to say - in my mind "I played and levelled my toon and was not carried along by others." Currently my favourite grouping quests in the game are epic raids ... particularly eLoB, and the reason why is that in such no matter what class you're on the scope for actually playing and contributing be there.

[McFlay]

A majority is not going to go after all that uber gear to do end game. It is not going to happen, games are balanced or should be balanced on the middle ground where most players are going to be. Not at the top 5% or the bottom 5% but the middle 90%.

This is just a terribad idea on every level. Take ac for example. Let's balance the game out for the average tank that has 50 ac. That way for those people that get 60+ ac they can just run around only getting hit 5% of the time when htey have a bad roll.

Let's look at it for spell dc. Lets balance it out for the average toon with 30 dc. That way anyone who gets to 35+ can just run around and never have a spell resisted unless they roll a 1.

Lets look at it for hp. Let's balance the game out for the average player with 400 hp. That way if your killing a raid boss and everyone has 600+ hp theres almost no chance of getting killed short of a massive lag spike.

There's plenty of content moderately well geared players can run and get better gear and have fun. Why on earth would you want to neuter the handful of end game quests down so your moderately geared "average" player can handle them? I think its great there are a few quests that require a team of players with well planned out gear sets of epics, high level quest items, and possible even some crafted stuff like dt/gs. And honestly without those high level, difficult quests to play whats the point of the game? Just to go dominate every quest you go into so you feel like a god or something?

Melees should never be able to kill 5 mobs in one swing it is not feasible. A fireball however can and should kill everything that does not have the HP available to survive it.

Melee can heal, they can do CC, they can get AOE, they can debuff, they can tank. CC is stunning blow, trip, paralyzing weapons, AOE is cleave and two handed weapons with glancing blows, debuff is a weapon with cursespewing, shatter, shattermantle. And they mostly certain can heal with wands as well as tank very easily.

I'm not making an argument mages shouldn't get any aoe, and fb isn't really an issue. I don't see many mages running around 1 shotting groups of 5 with a single fb in high level content.

As far as melees being able to cc with sb/trip/para/etc, who cares, casters do it better. SB is cc? what do you get a 3 second stun on a 15 second cool down...yeah thats effective. Throw on some paralyzers and become completely worthless for dps...Meanwhile you can just toss up a disco or mass hold on a mage, then throw out some dps. I think you'd just get laughed at if you joined any epic group with a melee claiming you were CC. Same for healing and debuffing. Sure theres ways to heal and debuff but its so much easier on a caster in most situations its generally a waste of time to bother on a melee. Tanking? Yeah, they can tank, but since you can do everything else better on a caster, there really isn't a whole lot of a reason not to just make a dot tank.

What I normally do on my melee is jump the front line and get to the casters and archers as I generally have time to engage them and kill them by the time the casters take care of the mobs that are melee. Not to mention the stupid arcanes grab their aggro from the get go so let them deal with it. I can normally take down the casters and archers in a hit or two pretty easy and I am on the last one usually (if there is more than 5 in the ranged group) by the time the Cleric gets up close enough to toss a cure or the arcane will run up and do a FOD on the last 2% of health. If not I have time to turn around and finish off the melee mobs that the casters are running from.

I think I see why you don't see any balance issues after reading this. I'm talking about high level balance. If you are killing high level mobs "in a hit or two pretty easy" you must be hacking. Have you even run any epics? Some of them have trash mobs that take 30+ hits to drop a single mob, meanwhile casters can insta kill groups of them. Maybe you'll see things different when you aren't running level 6 quests on casual you can one shot mobs with a melee in.