That said though I'd much rather just have auto attack. Thinking about it AI would be pointless because we'd still have to babysit it. I don't see the issue with keeping AA. If the more interactive stuff is fun people will do that over AA anyway. There's no real harm to keeping it for those that want it, and I think its a huge factor in keeping some of the more casual players involved who either don't want or don't have the time or effort to put into making the best build possible.

Why flame laser and piercing arrow hits so much and impale is so weak? Anyone cares about warriors or is just all about rangers and wizards?

"The problem with AA as it stood before the balance changes is that it was actually better than most other builds -- specifically it was better than an equivalent number of skill points in the Fireball skill. When players would ask in world chat what the best build was, the response would always be 10 health, 10 str/dex/int, 10 auto. It's still a "viable" build if you don't care about doing the most amount of damage you can, as the scaling was only nerfed by about 10% at 10 skill points. If we put in an AI, then 10 pts in Fireball in "AFK mode" would get you actually a little bit more DPS than 10 pts in auto used to, assuming the AI is configured to always try to use skills."

Right, I'm not saying it's completely ruined at this point. My concern is that AA will continue to be weakened over time as new skills get added. To be it's not a concern of whether it's the best build in the game or not. I can completely agree that someone using a interactive build should be able to do better then someone using an AA build, I think that's fair as they're doing more work during battle. At the same time, let think about this from a different angle. Lets say I've trying to do everything I can in a average day, so for the sake of example lets say.

6 missions ~5 mins a mission = 30mins
5 MP ~10 mins each - 50mins
20 battles + CD ~ 60mins
HoT - 6 bosses run through, lets assume we revive once ~10mins

Just from that we're already at ~2.5 hrs a day, and that's not adding in time for buildings, cooldowns, breaks, crafting, enchanting, mining, selling stuff, just hanging out in chat, etc. So really you're probably closer to ~3 hrs a day, and that's assuming no refreshing, lag, crashing, etc.

For someone playing the game on the side while having a viable AA class is HUGE. You're talking about a game that requires about a 21hr a week commitment to stay on top of things. I can't speak for other players, but as someone whose done all that pretty much every day since alpha there's no way I could have without the strength AA had. Forcing me away from AA doesn't make me want to put more effort into the game, it does the exact opposite because it means I have to put full focus into what I'm doing.

Could we go with an AI solution? Sure, other games have done it. I'm also no longer playing those games because the AI was more frustration then it was worth. I think adding things to make the game more interactive is a great idea, and is needed in the long run. I think trying to get the classes balanced is huge as well.

I however think nerfing AA is the wrong approach for this type of game. Additionally I think an AI is an over-complicated solution to the issue at hand. My suggestion would be to do something different based around having multiple classes, for example.

We have Warrior, Mage, Ranger. Each of those should have a type of build based around a different aspect, so PVE, PVP, HoT, World Boss, AA

PVE - A build focused more on AOE skills and more usefull for campaign missions
PVP - A build focused on skills that are more useful for arena matches
HoT - A build focused on skills that would be low cost for the HoT
WB - For when they're finally added
AA - A general, all-around build while not really weak in anything doesn't really excel in anything much either.

That would give players a decent variety of builds to choose from. I feel it would require us to be able to have additional skill set slots that we can switch between with some limitations. These could be unlocked either via shardium or different milestones based around build types, like the PVE slot could be the starting one, PVP could be win "X" number of matches, HoT could be in the store, WB could be for participating in "X" number of WB matches, AA could be something like hit "X" level or something.

Rather then putting the time in an AI that I think ultimately no one is going to be happy with and a ton of work you can instead focus on making these different aspects of the game more focuses around their types of builds. Meaning, someone could AA for the campaign, but it's going to get a bit boring, they could AA in HoT but won't probably get as far compared to if they switched to an HoT build. They could AA for PVP but are going to have a hard time getting higher then a certain rank once people start using PVP based builds, etc. These would all be situations where someone could complete all their daily tasks using AA, but the tradeoff is that 1) it's going to be more boring then the more specific builds, 2)While it's still possible to finish Arena/Missions/HoT each day because an AA won't excel in those areas it may require the need for more potions from the store, or more upgrades in the university or better equipment, versus someone with the build for that aspect who had the advantage of not having to buy all that stuff.

I guess the tl:dr here, is AA is a huge benefit to those that don't have as much time to focus on the game and potentially taking that away from them isn't going to make them want to play the game more, it's going to do the opposite in my experience. I really think it should be left as a fairly viable build, and the game itself should be designed around encouraging people to try new builds for different parts of the game, rather then try to force them away from a particular skill set. If done correctly they'll feel encouraged to switch from AA to something else anyway.

I'm still not clear on why the wizard's firestorm was nerfed. I've upgraded my firestorm to level 5, and it does less damage than it used to at level 1. Which kind of sucks.

But Def... My argument is sound...

If I use fireball (equivalent to your magic arrow), I do much less damage than an equivalent ranger using magic arrow...

If I use fireball, and a ranger uses AA, I still do considerably less damage than the equivalent ranger.

If we both use AA, the ranger still does considerably more damage...

It's the same for warrior vs ranger... The Rangers are absolutely, without question, the OP class now... Simply because the items that we all find, give you more AP+AD than our AP or AD alone.

It's all stemming from the ranger's AP+AD always being higher than a warrior or wizard's AD or AP due to the item stats/gems.

Justin - Did a lot of discussing with Andaho today on this topic. It is oviously hard for us to compare the way you guys can with ability to just build characters. However, we were able to pick up on a number of areas where I build more AP/AD combo than he does for his AP. The points on gear with AP and AD being of benefit for ranger seemed moot because he actually had much more AP in that area than I did combo.

However, univ and skill tower are areas where rangers can exceed both due to ability to use both. I suppose that piece could be fixed my just combining them or making them count as half for rangers (unless they already do). But that only accounts for 120 difference in damage.

Maybe it is worth just taking a glance at if there are any areas causing an error unless you have run the damage numbers side-by-side and they are acting as you intended.

I did arena using Fireball. Such a breath-taking input from me bashing the '1' key! I had so much fun! *she says sarcastically*

I wouldn't go as far as Andaho indicates. Warriors were broken and you could not possibly keep up with wizzes as was demonstrated by my higher stats than Andaho but being far outdamaged and me having less HP as well.

I think the balancing went a long way for helping a lot of players and all of a sudden, it isn't 9 out of top 10 people in arena being wizards now. The classes of people beating the troll are more equivalent as well.