Just sayin..

[Vahrokh]

Dragons used to be below the equivalent of a single classed biped for some years. With the hoard skills + Ancient they became roughly the equivalent of a 3 schools biped, with the newest stuff I have no idea because I might miss some.

What's easily forgotten is how we are "done" with the game with one class, which in any other MMO would be a boon but in Istaria's "philosophy" and relatively little end game content it's something that leads to boredom. Same for crafting.

It's not *that* fantastic to keep killing stuff but the last level up "ding" is 5 years old, the 8 points per level skills remain forever capped at 8 (no advanced school giving 10 points to join) and so on.

It's just two different games in one, both have good and less good sides.

[Guaran]

There's a balance issue in that pure Melee Dragons can use stuff like Breath of Flame Burst and Drulkar's Wrath just as well as pure Caster Dragons, but pure Caster Dragons can't use stuff like Gold Rage, Silver Strike and Ravage as well as pure Melee Dragons. Not only in damage but likelyhood to hit.

The bold statements are incorrect. Caster centered dragons have much more spell accuracy and spell damage. Caster dragons CAN use Gold Rage, Silver Strike and Ravage.

(Or put another way, pure Melee can be better at casting than pure Casters can be at melee.)...

More accurate.

Most of the time my breath of flame burst misses. I barely bother using it. Caster centered dragons will do alot more damage with breath of flame burst. However Breath attacks should be equal across both sides. As it is the game treats bofb like a spell. It should be getting equally buffed by power and strength, which would result in a general evening of its' power. Breath attacks should be the core of a dragons combat, regardless of melee/caster preference for the remainder of combat the player uses.

I love that we know have Epic spells, and the Primal Cast is a welcome addition. Not enough to make a caster centric player capable or complete though.

The Caster side of the dragon school is in alot of ways unfinished. A typical biped caster school such as Sorcerer, gets other "spell-like" abilities such as Mind Bullets, Concentrated Mind Bolt X, etc. So in addition to the spells it can use, it has additional spell-type abilities. Dragons get some self buff spell-type abilites but thats it: Dragon's Gift, and Determination or Primal Roar (but not both at the same time).

Part of the problem with Dragons was that we were a copy of a biped school template, probably something like battle-mage. That resulted in a largely weak and gimped school for many years until we got powerful attacks such as Gold Rage. Plus many attacks did not even pay attention to the tooth&claw skill or was it the Strength stat (originally they were essentially broken). We get the same hp per level as a biped (how unrealistic is that), only moderately more armor (perhaps the same actually). But there are unfinished abilites on the spell side, and too-weak of skill in dragon breath (it misses way too often against mobs level 100+, their spell evasion deflects it, even though it really is not a spell).

As far as I am concered there's still issues with both sides of the Dragons play, but the caster side has more issues. I've worked around the issues, transitioned from originally a caster centric dragon to melee centric hybrid, and am quite happy with the general survivability.

If I had to make some adjustments, adulthood would come with a passive +1000 health, +200 Dragon breath skill. Ancient would come with an additional +1000 health, and another +400 Dragon breath skill. Gold Burst would be added along side Gold Rage of each tier, and share a linked timer with Gold Rage. A few additional spell-type abilites would also need added to finish out a caster type of gameplay. Cleanse self, Cleanse other, dispel, and perhaps one more heal spell like Primal Group Health. These could be level-gained at increasing levels of effectiveness, or quested. Accuracy/effectiveness of those abilites would be Primal skill based (provide a better benefit to the caster centric player). Lasting Embers would cease being a crystal and instead become a passive ability that scaled in effectiveness based on (50% strength stat, 50% power stat), proc'ing only from the flame breath attacks, but not from ice, lightning, or acid breath. Lightning Breath's dispell strength would need increased, easily accomplished with additional versions (II at level 75, quest (Tempest Golems and Storm Wisps!), III at level 100, another quest (Named Storm Wisp and phylactories!)).

The result would be that dragons would be approximately equal once all quests were done to about a 4.5 schooled biped. Dragons essentially raise 2 schools already (hoard being one, adventure the other), and have a nice set of quests to get many abilities (one of the nice things about playing a dragon vs playing the biped schools which just auto-grant abilities as you level). Which all together is about another schools worth of work.

Chnages would not need to be made all at once, and instead in steps to guage the effect on the school. First steps would be to address Dragon Breath and it's accuracy (either the passive boosts at rop and arop completions, or raise the amount/level, perhaps increasing it for adults and ancients).

Too bad the nice suggestions above are in a thread in rants.

[Akrion]

The bold statements are incorrect. Caster centered dragons have much more spell accuracy and spell damage. Caster dragons CAN use Gold Rage, Silver Strike and Ravage.

Let me re-quote myself.

"There's a balance issue in that pure Melee Dragons can use stuff like Breath of Flame Burst and Drulkar's Wrath just as well as pure Caster Dragons, but pure Caster Dragons can't use stuff like Gold Rage, Silver Strike and Ravage as well as pure Melee Dragons. Not only in damage but likelyhood to hit."

A pure melee Dragon can use abilities that are related to Casting such as Breath of Flame Burst and Drulkars Wrath as well as pure caster Dragons.

A pure caster Dragon can not use abilities that are related to Melee such as Gold Rage, Silver Strike and Ravage as well as pure melee Dragons.

Basically, there's little point in being a pure Caster as far as Dragon's are concerned because Melee focused Dragons can do it well enough and still hit hard with attacks like Gold Rage. The loss in usefulness of Melee abilities if you're a caster Dragon far outweighs the loss in usefulness of spells if you're a melee Dragon.

[Vahrokh]

Plus many attacks did not even pay attention to the tooth&claw skill or was it the Strength stat (originally they were essentially broken).

In the beginning we of what I call the "Tazoon.com volounteer slaves force" (aka players that wanted the game polished and functioning at all costs) found out that both melee and healing spells were not applying any modifier.
I.e. ravage would do like less than half its damage, gold rage (put in later) would be like a better today's ravage and not the current "killer skill", healings would yield like half effect and so on.

As we spent more IRC nights with the devs we found out the game code was not broken, it was "just" the database fields keeping the modifiers coefficients that were empty.

I love that we know have Epic spells, and the Primal Cast is a welcome addition. Not enough to make a caster centric player capable or complete though.

The Caster side of the dragon school is in alot of ways unfinished.

Introducing blurb: some Ancients are storytellers and keeping our past memories helps knowing why today is like this.
Disclaimer: so many years passed I could be inaccurate on some features.

- - - - -

As you well know this is one of those long standing consequences deriving by the late decision of adding the two racial specific classes DRAG and DCRA instead of having dragons be "just" a retextured version of a biped.

Of course the late decision made in a game that was already lagging behind the deadlines was far from painless.

Fitting a square peg in the round hole, we had to "fit" in a mechanic where health pools and armour must be comparable (else you would easily solo everything).
We'd miss several gear slots because they did not have the time to add them before game went "gold".

The Eldest Ancients will recall we actually had an issue for a long time that would show us a biped equipment window if certain circumstances happened.

Some of these late changes did not have time to be tested well enough, leading to embarassing features like self consuming hoard (5% per day, also dropping when disconnected or unsubscribed).
The excuse was to put hardship in a class that for a decade (text MUDs...) was locked and reserved only to the most deserving players (in a MUD, those who would vlounteer writing new dungeons and similar).
In a game where the prominent sale feature were playable dragons, this backfired soon enough and got changed.

- - - - -


But now, onto the meat:

I don't know if the references of what I am going to say were ported over from Tazoon.com (/ancient bow to DangitNotAChance Moderator).
Basically, dragons were slapped together last and with haste (along with a couple of unfinished biped classes that stayed gimped for years) and this is also one of the reasons why we had little gear slots, half filled - half empty skills and spells modificers, placeholder graphics, "snowflake general icons" and so on.

Despite this, dragons were designed as powerful hybrid class, something that Blizzard would translate in shapeshifting Druids (loved that concept class before the idio...emh former EQ game designer butchered them into pale ghosts in 2008).
But the "powerful" in dragons was not meant to be locked into compartiment forms, we'd just not follow the same ruleset as closely as the other classes did. I.e. the ability to fly and flee would counter other weaknesses (very impopular "we are only good at fleeing!" design decision back at the time).
The original game did not have training points as well, no "specced" dragons existed.
Therefore a general lore dragon was put in game, with several difficulties and compromises.
Such dragon would be a large, formidable beast of the lore, with massive physical capabilities and few healing abilities.
The physical capabilities were also a result of the game simulation engine being 2D (thus unable of managing flying things) and the "old game concept" mobs simply lacking the AI to competitively fight against airborne dragons.
Of course the eldest will recall how the early dragons would be ALL but formidable beasts (we were more like butter in a sunny day) but that was due to the unfilled fields I talked about earlier.
I had a dev being genuinely surprised of players complaining about dragons suckage until he learned about the unassigned modifiers. We were OK on paper.

So far I had not talked about caster dragons since they were the afterthought of the slapped together race.

(Notice what follows is a partial guesstimate, not a pure collection of "facts")
Caster dragons posed certain design challenges. First of all all dragons would get spells therefore the risk of overpowering the race was high.
Blizzard would deal with this by forcing forms to only have a subset of abilities / spells available in any given form (druids) or simply by gimping the "unspecced for" aspects of the character (i.e. retribution paladins would suck at spells).
Horizons did not have talents or specializations (yet) so the choice - in a class that was already fairly complete as melee - was to add a weaker spellcaster aspect.

Plus there is the ever present "classes competition".
Offensive melee players are *multiple times* the number of those who like to play caster, expecially on old style MMOs, where casters were seen as the "must group, BAD soloing, squishy characters".
Thus adding melee dragons was easily adsorbed by the player numbers but adding a "specced caster" grade caster aspect on top of a still good melee platform would create great imbalance and put fierce stress on the competition of those many Horizons caster-capable classes vs the small player base ready to play them to start with. This is also why our healing is lesser and ressing has long cooldown, potential unfair class competition.

The end result is the current weak-ish caster aspect we got as dragon per se in its very design, specializing our weaker half into casting just sharpens up a weaker aspect.
This aint going to change as well, because we cannot be "non dragons" and become squishy like a cloth wearer does (to justify high damage or healing).


Hope to have made sense.

Dragons essentially raise 2 schools already (hoard being one, adventure the other), and have a nice set of quests to get many abilities (one of the nice things about playing a dragon vs playing the biped schools which just auto-grant abilities as you level). Which all together is about another schools worth of work

This is another very old time debate.
It's since forever that some dragon claims we deserve something because we have to quest for our abilities.
Due to (once again, regardless of who was responsible for that) unfulfilled deadlines at releasing the game, non dragons would reply this claim with the fact that having to quest is a BONUS, is actual content, considering their classes used to be pure "grind, grind and grind more" based, with no lore, no fun, nothing.

Now, this was a game management issue and not a game balance issue, but it ended up crystallizing in the current situation.

Too bad the nice suggestions above are in a thread in rants.

Some of the best posts ever are in the Rants section, Rants is no way a mere "thrash & forget can". Headbutting can create all sorts of good ideas.
I don't even know where I'd post the "game history" blurb above if not here.

Anyway, Amon - the Guy That Matters - reads and replies on this forum so it's all good in my POV.

Basically, there's little point in being a pure Caster as far as Dragon's are concerned because Melee focused Dragons can do it well enough and still hit hard with attacks like Gold Rage. The loss in usefulness of Melee abilities if you're a caster Dragon far outweighs the loss in usefulness of spells if you're a melee Dragon.

Given the stuff I posted above, you will notice how this is by compromises in design and unlikely to change a lot.
We were generated to be Quasi-Specced Melee and Dragons, this is our signature trait.
This is why our healing or blasting etc. etc. won't be increased as it'd make us an all-in-one overpowered specced caster with specced melee and specced support. And all of this by shortcut-levelling just 2 classes.

I did try suggesting a quick fix years ago. Bipeds are entitled going god mode with zillions of grinding. We could get faction imposed mastery skills to achieve the same superior status (ie NN classes biped equivalent) by having to get the equivalent EXP of a NN classed biped. I am sure most would be ok.

[fermi443]

Hey there folks, Fermi here.

This topic is actually very opportune for me, because this just so happens to be the subject of my current research and studies with the game. I'm a Helian faction Dragon, specced specifically for spellcasting. My stats are set to maximum Primal, and maximum Focus. Like Meepsa mentioned, I've been taking part in a few raids now, and formulating strategy behind quite a few bosses that didn't have them before. I've also been looking into figuring out this conflict of balance between being a Helian (Caster) or a Lunus (Melee) classification.

I have some very conclusive findings, and starting out, agree that something could be done to fix this problem. I have made a diagram image to identify key differences and comparisons between the two common builds for dragons, melee, and caster. As you'll see below in the comparisons, it's quite obvious and clear that there is a severe balance issue. When a Melee specced dragon, can nearly outcast me, as well as outheal me there is something wrong, this is broken content of the game, and lore that is completely betrayed.

Whilst questing as a Helian, I was told time and time again, by NPCs that supposedly I'm supposed to be a scholarly, biped loving softie type dragon, who believes in creation over destruction. As a Helian, I'm supposed to have extraordinary healing abilities, and supposed to be well focused in the primal arts of magic. Through observation of the diagram it's obvious to see that this is a complete joke in terms of the actual way things are, and balanced.

http://img408.imageshack.us/i/broken...adeobviou.png/

As you saw, not only does Meepsa cast the same spells I do, but she also does them on par or better than I on most rolls. This is concerning for me, and raises the question as to why this is. If you have a system to control who can use what item based upon their skill settings, why not fix casters merely via turning up the primal requirements on the spells, and giving them more 'juice'? You could do the very same for the dragon physical attacks, in that casters would not be able to do them, if you had to. However as you've observed from the diagram, that action really need not be taken.

Seeing as a caster will hit for far less with the moves in the first place, summarily it really wouldn't matter with them being able to use them or not, as in a group on a raid, they'd be sitting back and throwing spells. The same idea goes for melee dragons, they don't have time to break from their rotation (Set of moves) to cast spells, and be very effective. This makes sense then for there to be a caster in the group to pull of these moves, so why gimp them in the first place?

The reason is this, it's the common understanding, purely by the observation of melee dragons, that we are too over armored and health buffed, to be good healers, we'd be 'invincible' per se.

The end result is the current weak-ish caster aspect we got as dragon per se in its very design, specializing our weaker half into casting just sharpens up a weaker aspect.
This aint going to change as well, because we cannot be "non dragons" and become squishy like a cloth wearer does (to justify high damage or healing).

One of my observations in this experiment, is that this is completely false. As a Helian caster, with the proper setup, I am extremely vulnerable. My health sits at slightly above 2k, and my armor very low. Most Tier-5 enemies, especially Aegis, nearly one shot me, and chip me on the third move. All Tier-6 either end up chipping me on the next move, or one shotting me. None of my melee moves are powerful anymore, but still sadly beat my spells. I play very carefully as a result, and my ability to stay alive is only due to the help of melee, taking aggro and keeping out of range, throwing spells like a real caster should. Dragons casters thusly are extremely vulnerable if specced for the most damage, thus we should have it. Seriously, epics that do less than half of GR, and are on ten minute recycles linked to other moves? (Drulkar's Wrath is linked to Gold Shield... why?)

Blizzard would deal with this by forcing forms to only have a subset of abilities / spells available in any given form (druids) or simply by gimping the "unspecced for" aspects of the character (i.e. retribution paladins would suck at spells).

I realize that, doing so would be quite the undertaking, in that you'd have to go through approximately 5 versions of the spellset of dragons, figuring out just how much to adjust the requirements, and how much damage or heal points should be adjusted upwards. However it could be done, and it would satisfy many players who set out to be a casting dragon character.

*waves her "give helians gold burst and make it use primal skill instead of T&C, also make it lvl 100 quest-able" flag*

hehe, anyhow, the reason why I said I like hunting with a helian/caster is because they can heal me up nicely when I take too much damage, like in our 6 dragons Reklar run, we had 1 healer, who also was the boon caster... we get reklar on 1/2 I think and then he one-shotted me (last one standing)

Meepsa revealed to me, what could be a sort of quick fix. As she said a rehashed version of Gold Burst set to primal requirement and linked with gold rage recycle, would suffice for the damage balance problem, until a full revamp of the spell power and heal power could be made, and the requirements risen to suit.

The epic spells should be uncastable by anyone except some of the highest specced Primal caster dragons, and should be literal nukes, or have much more effect to them. As it stands, Drulkar's Wrath (Caster Spec) does about half of the damage one hit of Gold Rage does to a target (melee spec). Drulkar's Wrath is on a 10 minute recycle, Gold Rage is 15 seconds. Epic spells should be on par with 'god powers' if they're going to have such rediculous recycles, or at least do more than damage... perhaps critical debuffs, slows, stuns? If they're not going to be epic, why call them epic? Don't give me 5+ hours of content to wade through get a pathetic reward, albeit with a pretty graphical effect.

http://img403.imageshack.us/i/part1h.png/

By this example, in ten minutes, gold rage does 140k damage. By that right, casters either need Drulkar's Wrath to do at least, 100k damage with it, in order to be in the remote ballpark of it's worth over time. That being said 100k damage is rediculous I know, and this is why I suggested making Drulkar's Wrath more powerful via critical stuns, slows, or debuffs, with the addition of the Gold Burst rehash that Meepsa came up with, as a temporary quick fix balance for the Gold Rage damage. Afterward the damage adjustments would be made to the regular spells and the gold burst rehash could be removed or nerfed to suit, as long as damage output matched that of a melee dragon closely.

Though in my opinion more of the focus should be on the healing powers of the Helian. Helians would only have time for one combat position to be taken by their character, Healer, or Caster DPS. Hence why an integral dragon healer caster would balance the difference for now, and make players of Helians, feel more important in a group.

I agree with those who also say that us dragon casters have been neglected, overlooked, and deserve some merit for our efforts, rather than a swift hand being waved at us telling us to be a melee dragon instead. There is potential, it is easier to make it happen then it would seem. I believe if it was given a chance, it would make a lot of us Helian dragons happy, and balanced. It would also match with the game lore, and strengthen the integrity of the gameplay for us.

[LungTien Temeraire]

with the addition of the Gold Burst rehash that Meepsa came up with

I have been told that ability is reserved to some game testers and players like that, on Blight.



Though, with what we see there, the damages from this ability doesn't reach the damages from a melee lunus ancient's GR.

[meepsa]

I have been told that ability is reserved to some game testers and players like that, on Blight.



Though, with what we see there, the damages from this ability doesn't reach the damages from a melee lunus ancient's GR.

yes it's true that the ability was being tested on blight and got scrapped (I think lol) there is a thing I'd like to note about that screenshot:
The player that used GB propably had primal attack on, cause IIRC gold burst is a slash skill ability, thats why I suggested the change to primal skill, this way, lunus wont be overpowered (again) if they get the quest (if it isnt possible to make it helian only)

[Raptress]

..IIRC gold burst is a slash skill ability, thats why I suggested the change to primal skill, this way, lunus wont be overpowered (again) if they get the quest (if it isnt possible to make it helian only)

It doing slash damage doesn't necessarily mean it was not running off caster stats, but I never got to test it, so I don't know. But even if it was, Gold Burst would need to be completely linked to Gold Rage in order to not add even more power to melee-focused characters. If the melee dragons can use GB, they will, and it will add more damage on top of what GR already does and casters will still be left behind. To this day I cannot understand why the devs tried out a GB skill then left it to rot.

[hallucin8]

My stats are set to maximum Primal, and maximum Focus.

Just a thought, try putting all those TP's into Power instead. Last I heard Power increases spell damage, not focus. By no means am I suggesting you will be on par with a pure melee, but it might help a little.

As for myself, having played 1 biped since shortly after launch, I am now leveling up a dragon... and I LOVE IT of course my interests still lie in getting my ped some more epics (see sig) and one day all craft and adventure schools to 100... however, being a long time magic user, I would love to see a magic equivalent of Gold Rage (as mentioned, Gold Burst). I don't think it needs to be Helian only (this seems to loosely suggesting GR should be Lunus only), but having it be primal damage and 100% shared timer with GR seems to make sense.

EDIT: As for the OP's opinion... I could be very wrong, but I have been led to believe that Primal Cast is for Ancients only? From your commment, it sounds wonderful, but if hatchlings and adults cannot get it, then a spellcasting spec'd dragon would still seem underpowered to them. Appologies if I am wrong

I guess the thing I've seen over the years, is that dragons keep getting improved (fixed) as to help keep up with uber-peds while keeping only 1 adventure school (and not being penelised for choosing which faction). By no means am I making this a ped vs dragon thing, everyone has had their love over the years (monks asside ) and now it seems its the spellcasting dragons turn

[fermi443]

Just a thought, try putting all those TP's into Power instead. Last I heard Power increases spell damage, not focus. By no means am I suggesting you will be on par with a pure melee, but it might help a little.

Thank you for the suggestion, but unfortunately, it would be no different, as my power is compensated for by my scales, if you'll see in the image with my stats, in my post earlier. It's as if I have Power maxed out too (From my scales). On top of that, I've also tried a build without Focus, and a huge problem comes up... spells start missing like crazy, and not only that, but the damage difference is unnoticeable.

It should really be that way, you know.. throw everything into the stats for hitting hard, and you should hit hard, but it's broken and doesn't work. ): Definitely needs some balancing, and some attention, theres certainly an issue with my stats as they are, and not being a heavy hitter, both heals and spell-attacks.

I completely agree with you, it doesn't really specifically matter if the moves are faction specific, I just want to see them work, and have one that works. Maybe a AOE heal of the same idea as Refreshing Breeze.. Massive heal bursts. The AOE heals we have now are too ridiculously puny.

Primal Cast, can be gotten as an adult, but the requirement of the quest is so ridiculous. You have to kill an epic boss, that is surrounded by five other epic bosses in the same hut, in the bloodskulk village. I was lucky to have at least 7 ancients online to spam gold rage all at once to kill him, and then dive bomb the corpse for a flash loot. The requirement to do the quest is lvl 100 I believe. So yeah, our power can't be scaled by this spell as we don't get it until after our hardships from lvl 1 - 100 where we really need a balance the most.

Definitely fightin' for some love for us dragon casters. <3

[Guaran]

Digda is nothing so difficult to kill. Surely as a spellcaster you know how to pull surgincally? I've pulled and killed Digda many many times. And now, she spawns all over the swamp. Super easy. Although I killed her using melee. Gold Rage, Staggering Howl, an Snarl all debuff the target, even spellcasters should use them for that reason alone.

I'm in support of adding gold burst in on a shared timer with gold rage.

For single mob combat the melee dragon excells, in group mob combat/farming, the caster (as long as you did not forego your armor, thats a bad idea).

I see alot of casters talking about how weak they are. I put this to you, your scales are wrong if you made them as power base or focus base. You need armor base teched with primal, power, focus. Substitute health in place of power if you want longer survivability. Training points should be maxed Primal, maxed evasion. Don't spend precious TP's on power or focus, the return doesn't balance the cost. Be sure to use primal vengeance on the chest scale (pv, primal, focus), it can land on mobs from barrage and gust.

[Shian]

Be sure to use primal vengeance on the chest scale (pv, primal, focus), it can land on mobs from barrage and gust.

Brilliant! Oh wait. ****.

[fermi443]

I see alot of casters talking about how weak they are. I put this to you, your scales are wrong if you made them as power base or focus base. You need armor base teched with primal, power, focus.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I just don't see reason to power up my survivability.. technically dieing isn't the issue for me though. I usually go about boss battles with a party, and cast from outside the AOE melee spam the typical epic puts out, so I'm usually safe.

Building a tank/caster hybrid, is cool and all for going solo, but does nothing, to make me worth anything compared to a melee in groups, unfortunately. Yes, I'm weak because I don't have the armor of a tank, but that should mean I should be very powerful. This is the same reason, on WoW, my Warrior wore strength based armor. He wouldn't be doing his best for his part in the group if he was dressed up like a tank. Getting the most DPS is about maxing out the attributes that will make your character most effective, and damaging. If I plan to be most effective for my group, I would assume I should set my attributes to do that.

The point made that specifically casting attributed dragons are weak, is a truth, but it shouldn't be a problem as typically when working in a group you'd be okay, and for the most part up to max level solo. However it should very much well justify we need to be powered up, as we are still outcasted by melee dragons even when maxed out.

I don't want to play a tank hybrid, I want to play a caster DPS, or Healer dragon as the Helians are supposed to be. The strongest melee dragons are specced mostly TnC + Strength + Dexterity from my observations... and make the best tank hybrids.

"Brilliant! Oh wait. ****." - Shian
Hahaha xD

We could really do with some much needed attention as I said before D:

[Guaran]

...I don't want to play a tank hybrid, I want to play a caster DPS, or Healer dragon as the Helians are supposed to be...

Even though the lore states that Helians are more "Scholarly", I do not believe it supports your assumption. Even if part of the lore about biped races learning of magic from dragons in eons past is taken into account, you also forget that much knowledge has been lost.

To properly rectify that would take an event, lore, quests.. I just do not see this happening anytime soon.

You won't like this: I suggest you build a second dragon, and play/spec him melee. For caster fun, build a mage/sorc biped. Dragons are no longer the masters of magic you are wishing for. And even when they were in days gone by, who knows how powerful they actually were? All we have is history and the accuracy may be lacking.

[Vahrokh]

I don't want to play a tank hybrid, I want to play a caster DPS, or Healer dragon as the Helians are supposed to be. The strongest melee dragons are specced mostly TnC + Strength + Dexterity from my observations... and make the best tank hybrids.

"Brilliant! Oh wait. ****." - Shian
Hahaha xD

1) You ARE playing an hybrid, dragons were, are and will be hybrids.

You compare to a warrior but in reality you should compare to a shaman.

2) As I posted before, dragons were born as melee based hybrids, nowhere it's stated that Helians are or can be pure casters exactly like Lunus are not defined by being melee (in fact I Lunus played and still play a "battlemage" build of sorts).

It's possible the devs will put in more pure caster based things, but the basic design comes from melee, a MMO balance, gear etc. can't be steered after 7 years like it's in alpha.
Imagine how many would have issues at being put before a more radical choice between melee and caster as of today.

I don't want to play a tank hybrid, I want to play a caster DPS, or Healer dragon as the Helians are supposed to be. The strongest melee dragons are specced mostly TnC + Strength + Dexterity from my observations... and make the best tank hybrids.

Tank dragons train in HP more than in DPS and their gear reflects that as well. This is indeed something like speccing would be in WoW between prot vs DPS warriors.

[fermi443]

1) You ARE playing an hybrid, dragons were, are and will be hybrids.

I'm well aware I'm playing a hybrid character, I've been using the melee moves to save myself in solo ventures time and time again, because the spells lack. But heres the thing, it's exactly my point as to why we should be able to become more powerful casters/healers. Why and what reason is there, that a hybrid like me can pour their skill into the melee half of the spectrum, and do so much more, and yet I'm not allowed to pour my skill into the caster spectrum and get equal reward/ability?

The game lore does say that the knowledge "was" lost, however the power of dragons is "returning" as many of the NPCs suggest. If you read the armor scales NPCs dialogue for example, he/she states that they believe the return of our natural 'toughness' is the beginnings of the return of our power, and natural ability. If this is so then this more than justifies an upgrade to our spell abilities.

Also as said, our magical ability, we taught to the bipeds, though they were not capable of a tenth of our power, they still did great things.

So wait a minute... if I can't heal one quarter that of what a biped healer can, does that mean, our power is so much so not as it was, that I'm 1/40th as powerful as say, one of my lore ancestors? I doubt lore justifies us being that weak in the slightest, and it's my continued belief we should be on par with biped healing at least, when specced for it. When specced for spell damage we should be on par with Lunus melee damage.

The power of dragons as a whole is not what it was, and that is what the lore states. This means that Lunus too, melee types are many many times less powerful than their ancestors. This logic more than justifies a casting fix, and no I'm not asking for content.. that'd be waaaayyy too long to wait for.. I'd rather just some live changes to spell requirements and their 'juice', and perhaps a heavy hitting addition as Meepsa suggested.

Also, very funny... no I'm not going to play through as a melee instead, and just forget about bothering with the broken setup. This is how I want to play, and I aspire greatly to see it fixed up the way it should be. Lore or not, it's an imbalanced way to play the character type, and I'd like to see it balanced. There are a lot of caster style Helian players, who originally chose this path to be the primal casters/healers they should be allowed to play.

[Dragonboy]

As long as you do not forget that wanting to play in a certain way does not mean that the race was meant to play that way. The race of dragons has been tuned to do melee, any attempt to do pure casting has from the very beginning proved difficult to say the least. As for “gold Burst” not being allowed for Melee type dragons… Consider that once upon a time Breath of Lightning and Breath of Ice used to have been separated due to faction choice. The devs know how it works code wise, however I do not recommend this course of action. Considering not all Lunus are melee and not all Helian are casters. Forcing Lunus to only use Gold Rage is no big deal, nothing changes… However forcing melee orientated Helians to only use a primal skill Gold Burst might ruin their game if they have no gold rage to play with.
All players should have all abilities and be allowed to choose which they want to use.
Devs should make sure all abilities are balanced (maybe even if possible change most abilities so that they use Primal or TnC skill which ever is higher, not counting Gold Rage and or Caster equivalent of course) and functioning properly and maybe add to some of the descriptions which skill they actually use. Last I checked some were lacking that information in the description about the used skill.

[Raptress]

There wasn't really anyone talking about limiting GR to Lunus and GB to Helian, or if there was, I totally missed it. What I saw was talk about a linked timer so that the player chooses which one they're going to be using. They'd both be there for use, it's just you would use one or the other depending on which one gives you more mileage.

[fermi443]

Devs should make sure all abilities are balanced (maybe even if possible change most abilities so that they use Primal or TnC skill which ever is higher, not counting Gold Rage and or Caster equivalent of course) and functioning properly and maybe add to some of the descriptions which skill they actually use. Last I checked some were lacking that information in the description about the used skill.

This exactly, and as Raptress says. The ability to excel in Primal if I choose Primal, vs the ability to excel if I choose TnC. I want to be able to choose Primal and do well with spells, if the ability is so teased to be able to be improved, it should be able to do just as well as TnC. Those stats... Power, Primal, and Focus, should be there because they improve your casting. So much so to be equal to someone who say put their points on, Dexterity, TnC, and Strength. Like a mirror..

Gold Rage on a linked timer with the caster equivalent would be excellent for balancing out the single target output of casters with that of melee, and it wouldn't matter what faction you chose. Like you said, just choose what suits your setup.

But what of improving heals, what do you guys think about something like a "gold rage heal" AoE Maybe on a tri-link with the other two equivalents? Something more impressive than AoEs that spit out about 30 heal points at most. A Helian could decide to be a healing specialist, pouring stats into Focus/Primal so to say, vs DPS Primal/Power?

[LOVWYRM]

I do not support the idea of dragon healers.

- I think its important for the game balance and community that drags need
biped healers -
( and I`m already good enough with my heals to keep group members alive for a while- in combat).