This isn't about making classes the same, it is about recognizing key issues that come up with classes. Sure, class balance should not be the focus, but class usefulness should. If the content does not establish a need for a given class, then the one with the bigger bag of tricks will always be the best selection.
The classes need to be different. Class need to be better.
No one should care if X class can do Y better then Z...
Those things didn't matter in EQ cause raid size was very large... Now VR hasn't said what the target raid size is.... but with 12+ classes... you are looking at least 24 + .... with 40 + in the real realm of posibility...
At that number, you bring all classes regardless of what they do... cause they will do something...
It is when the numbers get smaller... that it matters...
This isn't about making classes the same, it is about recognizing key issues that come up with classes. Sure, class balance should not be the focus, but class usefulness should. If the content does not establish a need for a given class, then the one with the bigger bag of tricks will always be the best selection.
The classes need to be different. Class need to be better.
No one should care if X class can do Y better then Z...
Those things didn't matter in EQ cause raid size was very large... Now VR hasn't said what the target raid size is.... but with 12+ classes... you are looking at least 24 + .... with 40 + in the real realm of posibility...
At that number, you bring all classes regardless of what they do... cause they will do something...
It is when the numbers get smaller... that it matters...
Again, classes needing to be different doesn't disagree with what I stated. I don't think I even discussed that specific to be honest.
As for classes needing to be better? I assume you mean one class should be specifically better over another? I don't disagree a class should excel in a given focus, but I always look at this from a class vs content evaluation, not a hierarchical one where you are ranking one class vs the other in a focus (ie best healer, second best healer, etc...).
It would be nice if people didn't care, but the reality is the opposite. Also, logically there is no point in picking a class that is inferior in its focus over another. This is why the hybrid vs primary class issue is relevant. Lets say that your hybrid is healing close to that of your primary class, then what purpose is there to the primary class? Like I said, they appear to be going the direction of class vs class balance and so the issue of hybrid vs primary is of key importance otherwise you end up with what happened in EQ with the hybrids being king in most of the content.
Raid size though does not make a difference really and you certainly can not leave it to loose rationalized evaluations that raid size will some how give way to people choosing classes that are not useful. In fact, in EQ, one of the reasons they changed dots stacking was because once you had one necro, there was no real benefit for having another. Raid size didn't all of a sudden change that fact.
Also, one thing I have noticed about raiding over the years is there are a lot of poor players out there and they try to compensate min/maxing their raids with "the best" class (or their perception of) in hopes of making up for their lack of ability. This won't change with Pantheon and if you have classes that lack in use because of redundancy, having more raid slots won't all of a sudden make them more appealing.
Homogenization needs to stop. Class need to be special, and they need to have a best this best that.
Class
Balance needs to be like EQ...Where everyone did not try the same
thing... you did what your group could do..... For example... No Cleric?
Then find an outdoor camp, use a druid. No Tank, well find a more open
area and kite.....
Want to delve deep in the dungeon... well make the balanced group and do that....
Basically class balance needs to be non-existent ... The game world needs to support multiple balancing options...
Honestly what you described was probably the biggest drawback to EQ and what people complained about most.
The idea of making a X class = best at role is just not a good thing.
However, chances are in Pantheon, just because the cleric is the best healer doesn't mean another class like druid or shaman won't have other ways to counter damage through other means. For instance, if a shaman can heal some, slow some, regen some, it would still put him on par with a cleric without having to technically be "as good" at healing as the cleric.
This is probably the one thing that I've worried about since the beginning. Vanguard solved this entire issue by creating other great healing classes without having to be overly reliant on one guy. I hope we aren't regressing in this one area, because the cleric was pretty disastrous to group making in EQ and in 2017, no one will stand for that.
If great care is not given, the result could be walking right into the "only the best class need apply" making hybrids simply the "filler" at the end of the group or the result of hybrids dominating most of the content with primaries being situational (raids or testing group content). Class vs Class comes with a lot of issues to attend to that can produce major issues in both game balance and community health. I am interested to see how VR handles this. Maybe they have an ace up their sleeve on how to deal with these issues.
I totally disagree.
Homogenization needs to stop. Class need to be special, and they need to have a best this best that.
Class Balance needs to be like EQ...Where everyone did not try the same thing... you did what your group could do..... For example... No Cleric? Then find an outdoor camp, use a druid. No Tank, well find a more open area and kite.....
Want to delve deep in the dungeon... well make the balanced group and do that....
Basically class balance needs to be non-existent ... The game world needs to support multiple balancing options...
Spoken like someone who never played EQ during OG-Velious times.
Have fun in that outdoor area. They'll be level 60 when you're level 52. There's a thing called Zone XP Modifier (i.e. dungeons giving way better XP than outdoor zones, coupled with the fact that their group is probably killing twice as fast as your crappy group - why even bother playing at that point?). Additionally, outdoor zones had crap drops. Most of your gearing in EQ was off of camps in dungeons - from named MOBs, not open outdoor zones...
Often, those named MOBs were extremely difficult if at all possible to solo at appropriate level, because not only were they strong, but they were often surrounded by Adds as well.
EQ had huge dungeons so there were some parts you could probably do with a more unorthodox group setup. However, the content was designed to give purpose to three classes that were designed with relatively narrow focus. That's the main flaw of the Trinity System. The Trinity Classes are often designed with fairly narrow focus, and in order to maintain that "balance," group content has to be biased in their favor otherwise they would have little purpose and no one would want to play them.
Class balance is a necessity in an MMORPG. It's important that all classes have decent representation and in the lack of an attempt to maintain balance between the classes, that is bound to not be the case.
EQ's trinity lacked balance, but it was a different kind of balance. It was a balance of influence. Because Warrior/Cleric/Enchanter were designed with such narrow focus, the only way to make sure those classes had a purpose in the game, and were decently represented, was to design tons of content to cater to them.
Without that being the case, most of the player base would have opted for DPS classes that could blow things up, or classes with high solo prowess. The fact that the Trinity Classes were so vital to group and raid progression was a huge incentive for many people to play them at all, when they otherwise would have opted to pewpew, instead.
The downsize was that this gave i.e. the Warrior and Cleric community the power to Boycott SOE on occasion and completely destroy the gaming experience of others to further their own ambitions.
Cross Realm Dungeon Finders should not be in an mmo. It kills the community aspect 100%.
A large contributor is a lack of Tanks and Healers, I'm sure many could agree with that. So why are most mmos lacking Tanks and Healers ?........Two reasons :
- Pressure, many don't like it.
- Low damage.
Lets talk about low damage. I love the fact that Pantheon will be a group mmo, this is what an mmos is. Lets face it, players will be doing solo stuff. There will be many times where you will have to get objectives done that are unique to you.
- Who likes to play a healer or a tank knowing battles will take two minuets, where other classes take only 30 seconds ?
- When You play as a duo in an open world environment, do you feel the need for a low damage tank or healer ?
- When is an instanced group, do you really like standing there unable to fight while your waiting for mana or healing recharge ?
I think it would be a welcome change to assemble a group, then say :
Game out yet ? nah, move on.... Just stack it up with the other 8361287386721836781236781472095490... Game's out there that "will come soon" stopped wasting my time on that 2 years ago..
Its generally better to make it so that healers had variation on how they did healing and particularly be totally different when it comes to group utility. While their healing output might vary the power balance would constantly shift between the different healers due to utility and how said utility changed the group gameplay.
When you spell something out as the best healer it will be extremely hard to fix this power balance, you either give those other healers great utility or you make it so parts of the clerics healing is redundant. First solution is next to impossible to do properly while the latter is just stupid to do (looking at you tera online).
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
This is way off topic and not what Pantheon is planning. But I ultimately think the ideal situation is to get rid of DPS as a role. Make it Tank, Healer, CC, Buffer, Debuffer, (possibly Puller?) for the roles. Let everyone do relatively the same DPS and have that just be what everyone does while they perform their true role. Make it more tactical and less about a dps race. Of course Im pretty sure this will never happen. And Im sure that there are a lot players that love being that top tier DPS that would hate this idea. But I truly think DPS should not have ever been a thing in the first place, but thats just my opinion.
If great care is not given, the result could be walking right into the "only the best class need apply" making hybrids simply the "filler" at the end of the group or the result of hybrids dominating most of the content with primaries being situational (raids or testing group content). Class vs Class comes with a lot of issues to attend to that can produce major issues in both game balance and community health. I am interested to see how VR handles this. Maybe they have an ace up their sleeve on how to deal with these issues.
I totally disagree.
Homogenization needs to stop. Class need to be special, and they need to have a best this best that.
Class Balance needs to be like EQ...Where everyone did not try the same thing... you did what your group could do..... For example... No Cleric? Then find an outdoor camp, use a druid. No Tank, well find a more open area and kite.....
Want to delve deep in the dungeon... well make the balanced group and do that....
Basically class balance needs to be non-existent ... The game world needs to support multiple balancing options...
Spoken like someone who never played EQ during OG-Velious times.
Have fun in that outdoor area. They'll be level 60 when you're level 52. There's a thing called Zone XP Modifier (i.e. dungeons giving way better XP than outdoor zones, coupled with the fact that their group is probably killing twice as fast as your crappy group - why even bother playing at that point?). Additionally, outdoor zones had crap drops. Most of your gearing in EQ was off of camps in dungeons - from named MOBs, not open outdoor zones...
Often, those named MOBs were extremely difficult if at all possible to solo at appropriate level, because not only were they strong, but they were often surrounded by Adds as well.
EQ had huge dungeons so there were some parts you could probably do with a more unorthodox group setup. However, the content was designed to give purpose to three classes that were designed with relatively narrow focus. That's the main flaw of the Trinity System. The Trinity Classes are often designed with fairly narrow focus, and in order to maintain that "balance," group content has to be biased in their favor otherwise they would have little purpose and no one would want to play them.
Class balance is a necessity in an MMORPG. It's important that all classes have decent representation and in the lack of an attempt to maintain balance between the classes, that is bound to not be the case.
EQ's trinity lacked balance, but it was a different kind of balance. It was a balance of influence. Because Warrior/Cleric/Enchanter were designed with such narrow focus, the only way to make sure those classes had a purpose in the game, and were decently represented, was to design tons of content to cater to them.
Without that being the case, most of the player base would have opted for DPS classes that could blow things up, or classes with high solo prowess. The fact that the Trinity Classes were so vital to group and raid progression was a huge incentive for many people to play them at all, when they otherwise would have opted to pewpew, instead.
The downsize was that this gave i.e. the Warrior and Cleric community the power to Boycott SOE on occasion and completely destroy the gaming experience of others to further their own ambitions.
This is where I think the words get in the way of the meaning, generally when people say there should be no class balance, they mean that every class that is labeled "DPS" should not have the same dps, every class that is labeled "Healer" should not be able to heal at the same rates.
Now that's not saying that the healer ROLE should not be balanced, that's a different discussion. In Everquest, if you take away Complete Healing, and compare the classes found in the ROLE Healer, you would be hard pressed to say anything other than its balanced. Complete Healing was a mistake and threw that off. That doesn't mean shamans and druids could heal as good as clerics, even without Complete Healing clerics were significantly better at healing. Shamans and druids brought other things to the table, and it could be argued that the other things they brought could be just as useful if not more than bigger heals (shaman slow mitigated huge amounts of damage).
Now if you look at recent games, they have gone too overboard with balancing and have begun making sure that every single class in the game can heal for the same, dps for the same, cc the same, everything is the same. The only difference between classes these days is whether they are ranged or melee.... that's not something we want in Pantheon.
Shamans and druids brought other things to the table, and it could be argued that the other things they brought could be just as useful if not more than bigger heals (shaman slow mitigated huge amounts of damage).
Now if you look at recent games, they have gone too overboard with balancing and have begun making sure that every single class in the game can heal for the same, dps for the same, cc the same, everything is the same. The only difference between classes these days is whether they are ranged or melee.... that's not something we want in Pantheon.
Balance the ROLE, not class vs class.
I used to run a lot of non-traditional groups in EQ with a shaman as the healer. I rarely had issues, given the buffs, debuffs, heals, and CC the shaman brought to the group.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
Shamans and druids brought other things to the table, and it could be argued that the other things they brought could be just as useful if not more than bigger heals (shaman slow mitigated huge amounts of damage).
Now if you look at recent games, they have gone too overboard with balancing and have begun making sure that every single class in the game can heal for the same, dps for the same, cc the same, everything is the same. The only difference between classes these days is whether they are ranged or melee.... that's not something we want in Pantheon.
Balance the ROLE, not class vs class.
I used to run a lot of non-traditional groups in EQ with a shaman as the healer. I rarely had issues, given the buffs, debuffs, heals, and CC the shaman brought to the group.
Yea, when the game was 7 year old or when going to old trivial content. You weren't doing that in GoD or Omens of War unless you were basically grouping Lower Level or Solo Content. Shaman had worse heals than Druids. The thought of bringing a Shaman as main healer was laughable.
Druid? Maybe, if their gear was amazing. Shaman? To slow, right?
Also keep in mind that gear was generally terrible in early EQ, and you didn't get any decent gear drops outside of dungeons, which were custom tailored for the Trinity. The MOBs hit hard enough to require a warrior, they pulled enough Adds to require an Enchanter, and things went wrong often enough to absolutely need a cleric for their higher heal throughput and efficiency, and the best rezzes in the game.
As the game progressed 5+ expansions, other classes were eventually improved, and Druids and Shaman eventually got huge buffs to their healing abilities around the Omens of War timeframe, but this was around the 2005 timeframe.
What about 1999 up until then? That's 5+ years of Cleric domination, to be quite frank.
I think EQ2 did a lot better with the way they varied their classes. There was still a trinity, but it wasn't nearly as monotonous as EQ because instead of just having one Cleric Class, there were multiple viable healer classes just with different flavors on them. Also, that game was part of the WoW era, so leveling up a healer was not nearly as demoralizing as EQ, where you basically needed parties all the time to progress at any decent pace (which was a huge issue if you played during times when the server wasn't as active).
That b being said, I think EQ2 had too many classes.
If great care is not given, the result could be walking right into the "only the best class need apply" making hybrids simply the "filler" at the end of the group or the result of hybrids dominating most of the content with primaries being situational (raids or testing group content). Class vs Class comes with a lot of issues to attend to that can produce major issues in both game balance and community health. I am interested to see how VR handles this. Maybe they have an ace up their sleeve on how to deal with these issues.
I totally disagree.
Homogenization needs to stop. Class need to be special, and they need to have a best this best that.
Class Balance needs to be like EQ...Where everyone did not try the same thing... you did what your group could do..... For example... No Cleric? Then find an outdoor camp, use a druid. No Tank, well find a more open area and kite.....
Want to delve deep in the dungeon... well make the balanced group and do that....
Basically class balance needs to be non-existent ... The game world needs to support multiple balancing options...
Spoken like someone who never played EQ during OG-Velious times.
Have fun in that outdoor area. They'll be level 60 when you're level 52. There's a thing called Zone XP Modifier (i.e. dungeons giving way better XP than outdoor zones, coupled with the fact that their group is probably killing twice as fast as your crappy group - why even bother playing at that point?). Additionally, outdoor zones had crap drops. Most of your gearing in EQ was off of camps in dungeons - from named MOBs, not open outdoor zones...
Often, those named MOBs were extremely difficult if at all possible to solo at appropriate level, because not only were they strong, but they were often surrounded by Adds as well.
EQ had huge dungeons so there were some parts you could probably do with a more unorthodox group setup. However, the content was designed to give purpose to three classes that were designed with relatively narrow focus. That's the main flaw of the Trinity System. The Trinity Classes are often designed with fairly narrow focus, and in order to maintain that "balance," group content has to be biased in their favor otherwise they would have little purpose and no one would want to play them.
Class balance is a necessity in an MMORPG. It's important that all classes have decent representation and in the lack of an attempt to maintain balance between the classes, that is bound to not be the case.
EQ's trinity lacked balance, but it was a different kind of balance. It was a balance of influence. Because Warrior/Cleric/Enchanter were designed with such narrow focus, the only way to make sure those classes had a purpose in the game, and were decently represented, was to design tons of content to cater to them.
Without that being the case, most of the player base would have opted for DPS classes that could blow things up, or classes with high solo prowess. The fact that the Trinity Classes were so vital to group and raid progression was a huge incentive for many people to play them at all, when they otherwise would have opted to pewpew, instead.
The downsize was that this gave i.e. the Warrior and Cleric community the power to Boycott SOE on occasion and completely destroy the gaming experience of others to further their own ambitions.
This is where I think the words get in the way of the meaning, generally when people say there should be no class balance, they mean that every class that is labeled "DPS" should not have the same dps, every class that is labeled "Healer" should not be able to heal at the same rates.
Now that's not saying that the healer ROLE should not be balanced, that's a different discussion. In Everquest, if you take away Complete Healing, and compare the classes found in the ROLE Healer, you would be hard pressed to say anything other than its balanced. Complete Healing was a mistake and threw that off. That doesn't mean shamans and druids could heal as good as clerics, even without Complete Healing clerics were significantly better at healing. Shamans and druids brought other things to the table, and it could be argued that the other things they brought could be just as useful if not more than bigger heals (shaman slow mitigated huge amounts of damage).
Now if you look at recent games, they have gone too overboard with balancing and have begun making sure that every single class in the game can heal for the same, dps for the same, cc the same, everything is the same. The only difference between classes these days is whether they are ranged or melee.... that's not something we want in Pantheon.
Balance the ROLE, not class vs class.
This is the price you pay for action combat. You can't depend on class skills or stats, you depend on player hand eye coordination and clicking speed. You can't have complex skill sets and interdependence if combat is all about rabbit clicking the mouse and pressing 1 2 3 for your combos. That's why healing and tanking and crowd control seem to be disappearing from the genre. Homogenization of class roles is taking place because twitch jockeys don't want or can't handle fast combat with complex class interactions at the same time.
Just like it seems no one has the patience to deal with combat kill times any longer than 5 seconds.
Yea, when the game was 7 year old or when going to old trivial content. You weren't doing that in GoD or Omens of War unless you were basically grouping Lower Level or Solo Content. Shaman had worse heals than Druids. The thought of bringing a Shaman as main healer was laughable.
That was with current progression content far past GoD and Omens.
To specifically address Omens of War: I was AA grinding in the Muramite Proving Grounds a week after launch with my wife's shaman as the only healer in the group. Honestly, she spent more time on debuffs and short duration buffs than healing. Four air elementals kept the mobs stunlocked most of the time.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
Comments
No one should care if X class can do Y better then Z...
Those things didn't matter in EQ cause raid size was very large... Now VR hasn't said what the target raid size is.... but with 12+ classes... you are looking at least 24 + .... with 40 + in the real realm of posibility...
At that number, you bring all classes regardless of what they do... cause they will do something...
It is when the numbers get smaller... that it matters...
Again, classes needing to be different doesn't disagree with what I stated. I don't think I even discussed that specific to be honest.
As for classes needing to be better? I assume you mean one class should be specifically better over another? I don't disagree a class should excel in a given focus, but I always look at this from a class vs content evaluation, not a hierarchical one where you are ranking one class vs the other in a focus (ie best healer, second best healer, etc...).
It would be nice if people didn't care, but the reality is the opposite. Also, logically there is no point in picking a class that is inferior in its focus over another. This is why the hybrid vs primary class issue is relevant. Lets say that your hybrid is healing close to that of your primary class, then what purpose is there to the primary class? Like I said, they appear to be going the direction of class vs class balance and so the issue of hybrid vs primary is of key importance otherwise you end up with what happened in EQ with the hybrids being king in most of the content.
Raid size though does not make a difference really and you certainly can not leave it to loose rationalized evaluations that raid size will some how give way to people choosing classes that are not useful. In fact, in EQ, one of the reasons they changed dots stacking was because once you had one necro, there was no real benefit for having another. Raid size didn't all of a sudden change that fact.
Also, one thing I have noticed about raiding over the years is there are a lot of poor players out there and they try to compensate min/maxing their raids with "the best" class (or their perception of) in hopes of making up for their lack of ability. This won't change with Pantheon and if you have classes that lack in use because of redundancy, having more raid slots won't all of a sudden make them more appealing.
PS there's more ways to make a healer attractive to a group than the size of their heals.
The idea of making a X class = best at role is just not a good thing.
However, chances are in Pantheon, just because the cleric is the best healer doesn't mean another class like druid or shaman won't have other ways to counter damage through other means. For instance, if a shaman can heal some, slow some, regen some, it would still put him on par with a cleric without having to technically be "as good" at healing as the cleric.
This is probably the one thing that I've worried about since the beginning. Vanguard solved this entire issue by creating other great healing classes without having to be overly reliant on one guy. I hope we aren't regressing in this one area, because the cleric was pretty disastrous to group making in EQ and in 2017, no one will stand for that.
Have fun in that outdoor area. They'll be level 60 when you're level 52. There's a thing called Zone XP Modifier (i.e. dungeons giving way better XP than outdoor zones, coupled with the fact that their group is probably killing twice as fast as your crappy group - why even bother playing at that point?). Additionally, outdoor zones had crap drops. Most of your gearing in EQ was off of camps in dungeons - from named MOBs, not open outdoor zones...
Often, those named MOBs were extremely difficult if at all possible to solo at appropriate level, because not only were they strong, but they were often surrounded by Adds as well.
EQ had huge dungeons so there were some parts you could probably do with a more unorthodox group setup. However, the content was designed to give purpose to three classes that were designed with relatively narrow focus. That's the main flaw of the Trinity System. The Trinity Classes are often designed with fairly narrow focus, and in order to maintain that "balance," group content has to be biased in their favor otherwise they would have little purpose and no one would want to play them.
Class balance is a necessity in an MMORPG. It's important that all classes have decent representation and in the lack of an attempt to maintain balance between the classes, that is bound to not be the case.
EQ's trinity lacked balance, but it was a different kind of balance. It was a balance of influence. Because Warrior/Cleric/Enchanter were designed with such narrow focus, the only way to make sure those classes had a purpose in the game, and were decently represented, was to design tons of content to cater to them.
Without that being the case, most of the player base would have opted for DPS classes that could blow things up, or classes with high solo prowess. The fact that the Trinity Classes were so vital to group and raid progression was a huge incentive for many people to play them at all, when they otherwise would have opted to pewpew, instead.
The downsize was that this gave i.e. the Warrior and Cleric community the power to Boycott SOE on occasion and completely destroy the gaming experience of others to further their own ambitions.
My opinion :
Cross Realm Dungeon Finders should not be in an mmo. It kills the community aspect 100%.
A large contributor is a lack of Tanks and Healers, I'm sure many could agree with that. So why are most mmos lacking Tanks and Healers ?........Two reasons :
- Pressure, many don't like it.
- Low damage.
Lets talk about low damage. I love the fact that Pantheon will be a group mmo, this is what an mmos is. Lets face it, players will be doing solo stuff. There will be many times where you will have to get objectives done that are unique to you.
- Who likes to play a healer or a tank knowing battles will take two minuets, where other classes take only 30 seconds ?
- When You play as a duo in an open world environment, do you feel the need for a low damage tank or healer ?
- When is an instanced group, do you really like standing there unable to fight while your waiting for mana or healing recharge ?
I think it would be a welcome change to assemble a group, then say :
" Mary, would you like to heal ? "
" John, would you like to tank ? "
Reference, see Vanguard !
Just stack it up with the other 8361287386721836781236781472095490...
Game's out there that "will come soon" stopped wasting my time on that 2 years ago..
When you spell something out as the best healer it will be extremely hard to fix this power balance, you either give those other healers great utility or you make it so parts of the clerics healing is redundant. First solution is next to impossible to do properly while the latter is just stupid to do (looking at you tera online).
Now that's not saying that the healer ROLE should not be balanced, that's a different discussion. In Everquest, if you take away Complete Healing, and compare the classes found in the ROLE Healer, you would be hard pressed to say anything other than its balanced. Complete Healing was a mistake and threw that off. That doesn't mean shamans and druids could heal as good as clerics, even without Complete Healing clerics were significantly better at healing. Shamans and druids brought other things to the table, and it could be argued that the other things they brought could be just as useful if not more than bigger heals (shaman slow mitigated huge amounts of damage).
Now if you look at recent games, they have gone too overboard with balancing and have begun making sure that every single class in the game can heal for the same, dps for the same, cc the same, everything is the same. The only difference between classes these days is whether they are ranged or melee.... that's not something we want in Pantheon.
Balance the ROLE, not class vs class.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Druid? Maybe, if their gear was amazing. Shaman? To slow, right?
Also keep in mind that gear was generally terrible in early EQ, and you didn't get any decent gear drops outside of dungeons, which were custom tailored for the Trinity. The MOBs hit hard enough to require a warrior, they pulled enough Adds to require an Enchanter, and things went wrong often enough to absolutely need a cleric for their higher heal throughput and efficiency, and the best rezzes in the game.
As the game progressed 5+ expansions, other classes were eventually improved, and Druids and Shaman eventually got huge buffs to their healing abilities around the Omens of War timeframe, but this was around the 2005 timeframe.
What about 1999 up until then? That's 5+ years of Cleric domination, to be quite frank.
I think EQ2 did a lot better with the way they varied their classes. There was still a trinity, but it wasn't nearly as monotonous as EQ because instead of just having one Cleric Class, there were multiple viable healer classes just with different flavors on them. Also, that game was part of the WoW era, so leveling up a healer was not nearly as demoralizing as EQ, where you basically needed parties all the time to progress at any decent pace (which was a huge issue if you played during times when the server wasn't as active).
That b being said, I think EQ2 had too many classes.
This is the price you pay for action combat. You can't depend on class skills or stats, you depend on player hand eye coordination and clicking speed. You can't have complex skill sets and interdependence if combat is all about rabbit clicking the mouse and pressing 1 2 3 for your combos. That's why healing and tanking and crowd control seem to be disappearing from the genre. Homogenization of class roles is taking place because twitch jockeys don't want or can't handle fast combat with complex class interactions at the same time.
Just like it seems no one has the patience to deal with combat kill times any longer than 5 seconds.
That was with current progression content far past GoD and Omens.
To specifically address Omens of War: I was AA grinding in the Muramite Proving Grounds a week after launch with my wife's shaman as the only healer in the group. Honestly, she spent more time on debuffs and short duration buffs than healing. Four air elementals kept the mobs stunlocked most of the time.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin