SOE made an announcement at the Fan Faire 2009 (FF9) that the Brigand will be losing the magical debuff component of their Rake ability, and that magical debuffs will now become a part of the summoner spells in order to make summoners more useful in end-game content (aka Raiding).

They have also announced that the Brigand will now only have physical mitigation debuffs and various reductions to the targets combat art abilities. They have said that these debuffs will be shared with the Swashbuckler class. They have not announced what the Brigand will be getting in compensation for these losses. The Swashbuckler class is already overpowered when it comes to both single-target and Area of Effect (AoE) Damage Per Second (DPS). There was a time when the Brigand overwhelmed the Swashbuckler in single-target DPS, but SOE (probably quite rightly) changed the Brigand so that they are more of a debuff class, designed to work in conjunction with another melee class to overpower their opponents.

But the take away something that made the Brigand class what it is? Removing their debuffs? I think this is a silly idea.

Personally - keep the Swashbuckler as the overpowered melee spec and keep me with all my debuffs on my Brigand - the Brigand class is absolutely perfect as it is.

Here is the Brigand description from the EverQuest II game manual:



tl;dr: SOE are making Brigands less desirable because Summoners suck balls and can't play properly. They think that this will give Summoners a fighting chance in raids. Summoners just need to stop sucking. Brigands have had so many things taken away from them, and nothing was ever returned. Leave Brigand alone. No changes for Brigand in 2010! Make a stand!

I'm glad you understand

Ok a few points as i am a summoner. I don't feel i play badly and am in fact rather good with my necromancer.

You can keep your debuff as truthfully i have a busy enough time trying to get my pets to play as i do and attack. Myself personally though am ok as my DOT's do alot of damage, and in most parses if im paying attention and playing properly will be in the top 3.

You must look at both pet and necro though for the total damage as otherwise you get the impression the summoner is indeed shite. but in fact the pet is his other half of his damage etc.

I think though a necro specialises as the jack of all trades, master of none. A versitile class that hugely depends on the specs given to him in AA points.

Along side that Necros seemed geared towards solo PvE that is there in-built strength personally. But to take that and apply it to PvP is indeed very hard as a logical player will ignore the Pet to wipe the cloth wearing summoner in 1-2 hits and claim his status and gold reward. you can never fight a necro or summoner fairly in 1v1 because that'd include killign the pet first then the necro himself which would obviously wipe most single players if they fought honourably.

So keep your debuff we do fine on our own and a few exceed the stereotype to make summoners the ledgendary beasts they can be. SOE doesn't need to give us something to make us feel wanted. Thats the reason in the first place we chose our pets over having to group .

I think that's a good point you made there. Summoners already have one of the most difficult play styles as it stands right now.

A suggestion that was made on the official forum was to make the following Brigand buff: Thieves Guild (Level 80) apply only to Summoners so that both are still required in a Raid, but the Summoner then becomes more useful. Maybe it could just add a debuffing component to the Summoners attack or pets in the same way that every attack a Brigand makes is a type of debuff.

Interesting...

Debuff em all!! I need to start parsing better