Dear Mythic,

Please remove the 5ft deadzone for shooting my arrows. Between that and the underpowered Squigs, it's like painting a big target on my Squig Herder's back "Easy Kill for Melee".

I'm trying not to overreact here or just do a "buff now plz", this is based on serious observations about the class I'd prefer to keep playing and that I've seen others give up on.

Where did all the Squig Herders go?

Squig Herders seemed great in tier 1 and 2, the Scenarios matched our abilities well and some of the other classes hadn't come into their own. But since hitting tier 3, I rarely see any other Squig Herders in Scenarios at all. And I can understand why. Without someone specifically watching my back, it's a frustrating experience.

We're super vulnerable to a basic tactic: anything melee.

As Gobbos, we're hella noticeable. I'm sure many Order players mistake us for Shaman. I get regularly swarmed. No doubt White Lions, Witch Hunters and Swordmasters are chuckling with glee every time they see a Goblin. Either they're hitting a valuable target or it's a squishy Squigy that barely slaps them once they close in.

I didn't roll a ranged class to melee

For melee attacks, I have a dot, then it's mash that small basic attack repeatedly, quickly draining my AP for very little effect. 30 AP for a 70 dmg attack at Rank 22. Add it up with the dot, that's a grand total of 680 dmg using a full bar of AP against opponents with 3500+ health.

I'd use "Git 'Em" more, but it's situational. It requires my pet to be on a target, within range and not busy during another attack. All of my pet-related abilities have this huge lag delay on them, so it's rare for me to get "Git 'Em" off on another player. When it does work, well then there's the cooldown.

The range on pet abilities and the lag on using them are hugely crippling factors. Having my pet on passive to have it close by in case I need its laggy defensive abilities isn't exactly the fun way to play a pet class. My Squig needs to bounce around a bit for me to feel joy, my fun factor is rather intertwined that way.

I can jump into Squig Armor, but that's not something to do on the fly with its 55 AP cost and once again is Squig dependant to be effective, yet astonishingly they take away our abilities to control our pets while in the armor. Squig Armor isn't nearly as cool as in the opening video, which is evident in the fact that I've never seen any other Squig Herder use it in Scenarios either.

Speaking of pets

A White Lion's pet will kill me at T3.

Oh it won't do it quickly, but it will stick to me like glue with no means whatsoever to get it out of my 5ft deadzone and my melee attacks completely ineffectual to kill it. What a slow, painful and embarassing death, to be made completely irrelevant by another's pet. I watch every other class brush these lions aside like they don't matter.

It's sad that I need to be rescued from a pet attack. And who exactly assists a Squig Herder anyway?

And if I do try to fight back at the damn thing? White Lions get to heal their pets. Oh what I wouldn't do for the ability to heal my Squigs. See, our pets are supposed to be throwaways right? We're supposed to explode them, call new ones. Except that stuff isn't working right, it's rare that my Squig will explode when asked to, probably because he's bounded out of range. Worse, half the time the explosion happens at my location and my Squig just dies where he is.

For disposable pets, why does it take 3 seconds uninterrupted to call a Squig? Why does the same Squig get a 30 second cooldown even if he's just mysteriously vanished, or I've mounted?

Which is another point that sticks in my craw: Why does my pet die when I mount? Ugh, everyone else can mount up, then dismount and jump into the fray right away, but I've got to get murdered while I'm calling my damned pet.

And finally, one last sore point: How am I herding when I can only have one pet at a time?

Mythic, please do something

Getting rid of the 5ft deadzone would completely balance our class versus melee. They'd still have the ability to interupt us, just like with any caster.

Don't buff up our melee, just let us use our ranged regardless of situation. I'd even take a slight power loss within that 5ft zone as a compromise.

There, that's my PvP balancing bitching for the day. =)

The ever eloquent Tobold posted something quote worthy yesterday:

"But while we could discuss class balance in PvP endlessly, in the end it all sounds like the rock complaining that he always loses against paper in a game of rock-paper-scissors."

Class-based combat, whether it's WoW, Team Fortress or Tribes, is always best balanced in rock-paper-scissors style. That's the basis of the design. PvE requires more complexity in the design, whereas PvP is lent plenty of diversity by the human vs. human element.

As a PvE player, I'm selfishly irked over Blizzard's constant PvP-related rebalancing of the classes and how it alters the rest of the game. My impression is they appease a population that doesn't get it: some classes should be your bane.

Accept it. Play the class you enjoy most, to the best of your abilities. If you have problems with class balance in PvP, it's probably PEBKAC.