Fair and Balanced PvM templates?

Overall the shard is great. But one thing- and deserved. Tamers are more powerful than bards, both can be done NOW almost totally afk with clever macros.

As far as the boss spawn goes, bards almost always need help, or will have to run around forever using more regs than a mage shop mass BS'ing a boss solo. while a tamer gets to all kill and vet... all pretty safely (the easier bosses).

What if we get one... MAYBE two boss spawns that spawn the bosses in pairs, so that bards have a chance of provoking a boss on an equal adversary. As it stands now it'd be highly ineffective and a waste of time to try and kite 99999 monsters down to fight a boss.

I think it wouldn't rub tamers the wrong way (a la "no way bards we invest way too much time to have you fighting the same level monsters as us!") and it makes it more interesting for bards and tamers alike.

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Your suggestion is predicated on the idea that balance between tamers and bards is a goal, and I'm not sure if that's the case.

I've come to the conclusion that the tamer upgrades were all about attracting new business and had nothing at all to do with game balance. Tamers got maassive upgrades while bards (later on) got nerfed. That's not balance. I don't think that even the most hardcore tamer supporter can fail to see the difference in the class strengths. But Tamers are cool. People love having big, bad pets. And I think it was easy to give them enticing upgrades - cool looking new pets to tame, trainability, bonding.
Meanwhile what could the company have done to make bards cooler? Give them different colored instruments? A song playlist? Not hardly. People play bards for functionality - because they're very good at PvM - not because they're cool, and I don't think there's a way to make them cool.
This is just my opinion, based only on thinking about this too much. Just threw it out there for you to chew on. Even if I'm right, maybe it doesn't matter. Free server players still think that tamers are cool. Even if you don't think they're cool, you can't argue their strength. They're popular, and I guess bards aren't. And this subject has been hit from 10 different angles in 15 different threads and pretty much left to die. So I wouldn't get my hopes up too much about a bard makeover anytime soon.

If you read my proposal you wouldnt really think it was a bard makeover.

It's having boss monsters, or one of the boss spawns, spawn in a pair so bards can have somewhere they can have the excitement that tamers have. Not really a makeover at all, just a simple monster spawn that makes it a little more challenging for everyone, regardless of bards or tamers, but also adds some more content for bards.

A fine distinction, and you're quite right. Let's say 'So I wouldn't get my hopes up too much about bards getting thrown a few scraps anytime soon' instead then.

About your suggestion though - to be honest, I don't care for it. If there were always two bosses to provoke on each other and then you just sat back and watched the show, they've been reduced to a joke. I tend to think that tamers make a joke out of killing even the baddest monsters too, but you can't correct one wrong with another one.

A party of dexxers can take on a boss...maybe, if geared properly, or a party of anything really.

It would at least be nice if I could provoke things onto the boss mobs so it's not like I have to go calling a tamer every time one spawns where I'm at. I would love to be able to provoke half a dozen executioners on the boss mob down there, but I've never had a successful provo even with repond, and they're humanoid.

I haven't been able to generate a boss yet, but I had a really strong suspicion that Provo would be useless against them. I agree that sucks.

i have tried 50 times to provoke a monster onto a boss without one success as well.

i hope the GM's will consider one spawn that spawns a pair, or throws bards a scrap in one way or another.

Making 2 bosses spawn and being provokeable will just make it way to easy for bards (myself included) to get crazy gold and items. Even if it takes me 30 attempts ill eventually provoke the 2 on each other and balance them out with spells and provoking other spawn on them. I agree that tamers are way more powerful than bards when it comes to PvM but I don't think the double boss spawn is the answer. Just have to make taming more difficult to GM.

it's still not feasible for tamers to even attempt the same monsters, i think we should have at least equal footing. you may die 5+ times trying to get a succesful provoke on boss monsters. die fairly often just trying to get 2 balrons into the same room to provoke.

it won't make it crazy easy for bards to get good items. boss spawns are quite infrequent as is. it just gives bards a chance to get a lvl 6 t-map every now and then.

tamers will still make more money faster. don't see what the fuss is about.

I have been able to provo an efreet onto an efreet sultan... didnt last very long hehe. Provo is just crowd control, I dont see it as any other way.

If we do this we should also make some bosses only able to be harmed by melee or direct damage spells from players. . . Or we could have bosses make tames go wild like some of the monsters did later on in UO.

That would be pretty intense to have it turn pets wild. Maybe only temporary pet madness?
Perhaps just dialing up the drops for the slayer instruments and DOWN the silver instrument drops.

Must be a billion silver instruments out there and we're still sifting to find decent slayer weapons.

I like the concept of melee only mobs or magic only mobs too. Would be interesting to play it out.

i'm glad some people seem to be behind this. it's not altering templates, merely letting everyone get to enjoy the boss spawn part of the game more.

I thought about the same idea - monsters that were susceptible to barding but somehow stumped tamers. Didn't mention it because I didn't care to cause any more waves over this subject than I already have but since it has already been brought up, I think it would be very nice AND pretty fair.

I have to say that it is a lot of fun to kill some of the elite monsters, they present a real challenge that you don't often see in PvM. I also think it is somewhat unfair that only large groups of players/tamers can enjoy this aspect of the shard.
That being said, I would consider that adding "only bardable" elite monsters is somewhat counterintuitive, my general view of this thread has been that there is an imbalance due to the fact bards cannot kill something that tamers can. I would assume that adding something that only bards can kill wouldn't really balance things out, rather, it would just provide another niche catered to a specific play style.

My idea is possibly the inclusion of additional "slayer" type weapons that work only on elite monsters, and to a greater effect, of course I'd hope these items would need to be difficult to obtain as it takes a significant amount of effort to tame dragons/mares/wyrms, but I digress. Whatever the end result, it has been evident that the staff here strives to create a fair and balanced environment for all players and I'm sure whatever the end result it would be for the benefit of all playstyles.

This goes beyond boss monsters. There are already other monsters that are/were immune to provocation - Zealots of Khaldun, Xsi the Necromancer - not sure if there are more. Also isolated monsters with nothing else in the area to provoke onto them - ancient liches, for example. Tamers have no limitations like that.

I don't see how you can really argue that bard-friendly/tamer unfriendly elite monsters wouldn't balance the existence of the tamer-only/bard-useless boss monsters. It's the exact oppostie equivalent. And it would still leave dexxers and mages somewhere in the middle, theoretically being able to take them down in large enough groups.

I'm sure you're trying to be constructive, but that idea has nothing to do with helping out bards. And to be honest, making some bard-friendly elite monsters would still give bards a royally hard time of it as compared to the effort tamers put in. Unless bards happened to have trained dragons and white wyrms in the area to provoke onto a boss monster, chances are whatever they'd provoke wouldn't even last long let alone take the thing down. And a bard's best weapons besides provo are EV and BS which can be dispelled, unlike dragons and WW. Think about it; this idea isn't really asking for a whole lot.

I'm glad you mentioned Xsi the Necromancer, tamers were essentially useless at that event compared to bards - which I thought was a nice change from the usual PvM advantage they had. As for the Zealots, I had no idea they weren't provokable I don't think it would be too much if they were provokable, they only drop slightly more than executioners and have significantly larger amounts of HP. Regarding the solo mob limitation, I always thought that it made sense that bards could potentially have much more monsters distracted/fighting compared to tamers, which is why they were a little weaker when it came to solo mobs. I've seen bards have about 6-8 avengers provoked at the same time whereas my tamer will struggle with 2.

I'm not particularly against it, it's just that rather than bard friendly/tamer unfriendly mobs and bard unfriendly/tamer friendly mobs, wouldn't it make more sense to have all mobs able to be killed by both types of characters?

The idea was that the elite slayer instruments would allow regular mobs to deal significantly more damage and for the elite monsters to hit for less, combined with discordance it be possible for the boss monsters to be brought down with the same amount of effort as a tamer, but once again I'm drifting off point.
Let me just state once more I'm not against the idea, it would just be nice to have all options open to all players.

You're right that the event was not tamer-friendly, which is why I'm certain no one brought a tamer to it.
I guess you brought up Avengers because Deadly/Lvl 5 Poisoning creatures are the only things that can really give a tamer more grief than a bard. Not having to deal with that is nice for bards, I grant you. But any non-poisoning mob is at least as easy for tamers as bards and most of the time they're MUCH easier. If a bard provokes two efreet, they watch 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 minutes for them to battle it out. Dragon + WW vs. efreet = ~15 seconds. So I wouldn't say that solo mobs were needed to create any more 'balance' there.

Yes, I think that would make more sense.

About the other thing, you had said slayer 'weapon' and I misunderstood. That idea as you explained it doesn't sound bad at all to me. I should say that I wouldn't be interested in seeing the boss monsters made 'easy' for anyone, just possible sans tamers.