instead of giving shaman a terrible DD, they should get a good DD on a cool down. This worked quite well in EQ as shamans leveled up, 75+.. they basically got a shadow knight "Spear". Fast casting, mid mana efficiency (not terrible), high damage, but you can put it on a 45 second or even 1 minute cool down. It allows shaman to participate and get in some DPS while also hard capping their sustained/burst (mid term dps) EQ really started to shine in that era with "New" class abilities and "New" paradigms, proc buffs, reverse damage shields, instant cast/fast cast DD"s on cool downs, hybrids started pulling away from their base classes (all EQ 75+). I know MNM is trying to capture "Classic" not 75+, but some of the ideas in EQ's later years where actually good ideas, they can be borrowed from, learned from, and scaled back to be appropriate during "Classic" times. DOT Culling is also an easy way to "help" fix all DOT classes (mob health hits 10%, all dot damage applied immediately). I'd probably make it universal and automatic across the board, but if that sounds to powerful or not controllable enough, you can tag certain spell lines "This dot culls"... give it to necros and shaman as an innate ability and/or just tag specific spells. As is now, TTK is so high, and mobs have so much HP, that even a full cull at 10% might not outright kill stuff. Culling is borrowed from ARPG's as it's quite a common feature there, ie Path of Exile. This is obviously NOT an APRG, however, it does address "issues" inherent to dots from the ground up. Dots where kind of a flawed concept from the start in MMO's. Super difficult to balance as group make up and TTK changes from moment to moment, a proper "Re-Think" should be done to get this right from the foundation level. Instead of just relying on old broken systems we've dealt with for 30 + years. Dot lines are too generic, and too general purpose, there needs to be speicfic, special dot lines for certain outcomes. Less effcient, fast dots, that are front loaded, and super efficient slow dots.. i mean this is the whole idea of Poison vs Disease, but the differences between the two are not potent enough. Double down on the Speed/DPS/Lower Efficiency of Poison, and the Slow acting, mana efficiency of Disease. Obviously this means Poison/Fast acting for Groups, and Slow acting mana efficient dots for solo/duo. And it is "Admitting" that DOTS are broken from the ground up, and thinking outside the box. I don't know if the above ideas are enough alone, more may need to be done, but Culling and further specialization of dot spell lines with clear intention is a good start. Would not even be opposed to "Group Only" spell lines.. that looks like "You gain power from the spirit of your party members" to "You don't have enough spirit to cast this" where "Spirit" is a "hidden" group only resource. Obviously with the end goal being a way to allow balancing in group vs solo and keeping it's lore in tact. Keeping dots "Static" is a sure way to failure. Way to many variables, impossible to balance. TTK is going to change from day to day, moment to moment, as twinks come online, as people are better geared, as group makeup changes (rog, mnk, wiz, wiz, ftr, shaman) vs (ftr, ftr, enchanter, shaman, ele, rog).. static.. generic... xx per tick dots just can't keep up with this, no way no how, never have been able to, and never will be able to, as designed and implemented. "Damage Over Time" when the Time variable is uncontrollable wild card.... doomed from the start. You want to balance this correct, compress/mitigate the uncontrollable variable.
