Has Your Favorite MMO Class Changed For The Better Since You Started Playing It? | MMORPG.com

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Has Your Favorite MMO Class Changed For The Better Since You Started Playing It? | MMORPG.com

MMO class balance is a constant battle with each passing patch, yet sometimes classes change fundamentally, for good or ill, that it leaves a lasting impression. Has your favorite MMO class changed for the better since you started playing it, or were you left picking up the pieces of your former playstyle thanks to a bad patch?

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Angrakhan

I'd have to fire up my old DAoC hunter to tell you, and I'm not super motivated to do that. I haven't played that game in well over a decade, close to two I'd imagine. It probably got nerfed to hell from where it was in vanilla DAoC to be honest.

cameltosis

I'm gonna go with "no" on this one, but to be fair, there have been very few MMORPGs where I've stuck around long enough to notice.


In my experience, all MMOs get worse over time. Launch is usually the most enjoyable time, but the game can get better with new content additions before the first expansion. However, the first xpac usually starts the process of "streamlining", i.e. removing complexity, depth, and challenge. So, I rarely make it past the first xpac.


My favourite class ever remains the Captain from LotRO. I loved playing a support role (it's wasn't just a different flavour of DPS Joseph!), focusing on buffing my team and then filling in the gaps where others were slacking, by either off-tanking, off-healing or adding some damage. That jack-of-all-trades style made me feel really powerful, as when i played well, it just made every dungeon or raid go really smoothly. It was subtle, very deep, and a hell of a lot of fun.



Then Moria came along and introduced trait-line bonuses and legendary items. This removed so much flexibility from our builds and for a long time basically forced all captains to spec into the healing tree, because it was way more powerful than the others. The only upside of Moria is captains got better power regen, which was a big issue with the class during SoA.

lotrlore

cameltosis said:

My favourite class ever remains the Captain from LotRO. I loved playing a support role (it's wasn't just a different flavour of DPS Joseph!), focusing on buffing my team and then filling in the gaps where others were slacking, by either off-tanking, off-healing or adding some damage. That jack-of-all-trades style made me feel really powerful, as when i played well, it just made every dungeon or raid go really smoothly. It was subtle, very deep, and a hell of a lot of fun.







Then Moria came along and introduced trait-line bonuses and legendary items. This removed so much flexibility from our builds and for a long time basically forced all captains to spec into the healing tree, because it was way more powerful than the others. The only upside of Moria is captains got better power regen, which was a big issue with the class during SoA.

Captains were so clutch in those early days. One of our groups would not do instances like CD or BG without a pocket Captain and Minstrel. Luckily, back in the Nimrodel, my Kinship had the best Cappy and Minnie on the server.

Me? Probably bottom 5 Hunter - I was an MMO noob at the time and still pulled too much Aggro.

rhodesza

I can't really speak to LOTRO, as my time with it has been limited and mostly solo. As a WoW Hunter main though, I'll say its grown more wide than deep, if that makes sense.

My main draw with WoW's Hunter class has always been Beast Mastery and getting to tame/use/travel with unique pets. Is the gear optimal and my rotation perfect, no. Will I circle a zone for hours looking for a rare spawn, yes.

Over time though, I feel like with the stable expansions and the homogenization of pet roles, choosing your pet has becoming more of a "Transmog" choice and less of a chance to RP with an animal companion.

But the game has obv gotten more casual friendly and its def leaned into catering more to collectors and transmoggers.

Sovrath

I don’t recall any class I played ever getting worse.

LamiaCritter

Runekeeper was actually ruined and destroyed by the loathsome 'trait line' system, tbh.
That unique attunement bar, the ability to freely switch between //equal proficiency// in both healing and damage at a moment's notice to adapt to the group is gone.

The attunement bar is now a rotting corpse, regrettably, hanging onto a game that now hates the idea of hybrid classes actually being able to /actively hybrid/.

Elidien_ga

The DAOC Thane is still unique. It was one of the few pure caster/melee hybrids. The enhancement shaman in WOW is close but still lacks that which made the Thane unique and fun.

Scot

Always seemed a mixed bag to me, never really getting better or worse; expect in comparison to other classes who were given a sickening amount of loving.

ShinyFlygon

Healing power sets in CoH went from must-have in the early days to rarely seen today. This is due to the power creep that has allowed melee characters to be completely invulnerable to everything.

Some buffs are still appreciated, and debuffing specs are mandatory, so useless healing doesn't invalidate the entire Defender/Corrupter archetype, but anyone who actually likes healing is out of luck.

Mallyx

Always enjoyed playing a hunter/ranger type class. Not so keen on what's happening to them in modern mmorpgs though. What Ashes of Creation has done to that class is awful IMO. They have basically made it just another caster class with all flashy spells and effects. It just looks awful. The thing is what I always enjoyed about the class was its solitude its abilities like tracking animals etc. I even preferred having ammo and it being a craftable resource. Trouble is none of this was particularly useful for grouping. So the hunter/ranger class has been morphed into the modern day version were all classes can pretty much do everything. Whatever happened to class differences. That was a good thing not a bad thing.

Kyleran

Sovrath said:

I don’t recall any class I played ever getting worse.

I don't recall any class I ever played getting better.  

Over time they almost always undergo balance changes (aka nerfs)...and I loath change once I've learned to play my class a certain way.

Going back to my first MMORPG, and my first "toon" or "avatar", a Bugbear spec'd Wizard in Lineage 1, the Blood pledge.

After slavishing working to level my character to a very particular farming style build NCSoft decided it was too powerful so made a major nerf with no possibility for me to respec into a different build. So I quit, never to return.

This scenario would play out several times more during the many MMORPGs I played.  I thought I had the problem licked in EVE Online.

I had 6 accounts with a total of 14 characters across 10 years of continuous subs. I could effectively fly or fight almost every ship hull to do every major activity possible in EVE.

No matter which builds they nerfed or buffed I was able to compensate and fly the new FOTM in one or more of my pilots very quickly.

But driving this all was a fleet of miners who enabled me to earn several billion ISK on a regular basis (every few weeks) with fairly casual play.

Then back in Nov 2016 CCP released a major nerf to how ship boosting was done, so that such ships had to be engaged in the field in close proximity to the action.

Great idea for frustrated gankers, terrible idea for boosting fleet pilots as said ships were brutally expensive especially for capital class miners.

Instead of risking 1.5 B ISK worth of mining ships I was expected to bring along a capital booster now worth 12B ISK in order to get the same yield efficiencies. 

Rorquels started getting killed everywhere, and not willing to mine much less efficiently I gave CCP an ultimatum.

Refund the skill points I invested into training my two mining capitol pilots as it represented at least 2 years worth of sub time to train them to max level.  

CCP declined, saying they couldn't (a lie) or wouldn't. I responded by cancelling my 6 annual subs and never went back, almost 8 years now since I last played.

Guess my $750 /year annual subs weren't really valued.

But sure saved me a bunch of money since then right?  About $6000 I reckon if we factor in the 25% price increase for subs that happened a year or so back.

I'm thinking of returning finally, but I think I'll rub this fact into their faces one more time just for the spite of it.

Sovrath

Kyleran said:

Sovrath said:

I don’t recall any class I played ever getting worse.

I don't recall any class I ever played getting better.  

Over time they almost always undergo balance changes (aka nerds)...and I loath change once I've learned to play my class a certain way.

I would say that all the classes I’ve played changed but my take on it was “different “ not better or worse.

So, yeah, no class I’ve played ever got better either.

I’m just not wedded to how things are in games. For the most part.

 way I look at it is that the game could have launched with the changed class and I wouldn’t have known otherwise and would have just played it as is.

HNBas

rhodesza said:

I can't really speak to LOTRO, as my time with it has been limited and mostly solo. As a WoW Hunter main though, I'll say its grown more wide than deep, if that makes sense.

My main draw with WoW's Hunter class has always been Beast Mastery and getting to tame/use/travel with unique pets. Is the gear optimal and my rotation perfect, no. Will I circle a zone for hours looking for a rare spawn, yes.

Over time though, I feel like with the stable expansions and the homogenization of pet roles, choosing your pet has becoming more of a "Transmog" choice and less of a chance to RP with an animal companion.

But the game has obv gotten more casual friendly and its def leaned into catering more to collectors and transmoggers.

For me, it’s a bit of both. I’ve always loved Beast Mastery as a Hunter in WoW, especially the thrill of tracking down rare pets. But over time, pets have started to feel more like cosmetics since their roles got homogenized. I get that it’s more casual-friendly now, which has its perks, but I miss the deeper connection and meaning behind your pet choices. What about you? Do you think your favorite class has gotten better or lost some of what made it special?

Tamanous

Some of the best class changes I am experiencing atm is coming from custom content private servers. They appear to be able to understand the true meta of the game they host, and make appropriate changes, unlike many current live developers. I hope this influences companies moving forward. One can hope.

Kyleran

Sovrath said:

Kyleran said:

Sovrath said:

I don’t recall any class I played ever getting worse.

I don't recall any class I ever played getting better.  

Over time they almost always undergo balance changes (aka nerds)...and I loath change once I've learned to play my class a certain way.

I would say that all the classes I’ve played changed but my take on it was “different “ not better or worse.

So, yeah, no class I’ve played ever got better either.

I’m just not wedded to how things are in games. For the most part.

 way I look at it is that the game could have launched with the changed class and I wouldn’t have known otherwise and would have just played it as is.

Agreed, it's the change I dislike, not necessarily the details of the change itself.