My evaluation of this shard *warning long post*

Pease read the whole post before commenting as many things are connected to oneanother

I’ve played ZH back and forth over the past 20 years or so and I believe Dreams has taken ZH to a whole new level

Thief class, love it. Fun to play, made a useless class unique that’s viable for both hunt and PvP
Boss mobs. Yes it’s the best thing that happened
Tomes and T-scrolls and the fact that you can buy them for gold is just brilliant. Keeps the game interesting past 130 and make gold useful and sought after. Same with Champion spawns
Lowered stats from mods. Makes you think twice before putting on the first clean mod you find, myself I wouldnt put a Thief’s kilt on instead of an adamantium or skill mod when adamantium gives me +6 ar and the Thief’s gives me +4 dex

Class Balance:
This is provided that the chars are spec 5/6 with proper gear on
Out of 10 matches it’s hitorically been War > Ranger, Mage > War, Ranger > Mage then PP stood abit outside this
This is how it shuld be in my opinion, but it should maybe not be that way 10/10 times, a ranger should be able to beat a war, war a a mage and a mage a ranger
Right now a war will beat a a ranger 10/10 times, War will beat a mage 9/10 times, a War will lose to a PP 8/10 times, will kill a thief if the thief messes up other that that they wont kill oneanother provided they both have consumables and are spec 5+
Ranger will beat a PP 7/10 times, Ranger will beat a mage 10/10 times, Ranger will beat a PP 7/10 times
Thief will not kill a PP, nor will it die to a PP, Thief will beat a mage 10/10 times
PP will beat a mage 10/10 times
Bard will lose 10/10 times against any class

“Broken” Items:
Blackrock. way too powerful taking away survivability through boost and mana all in 1 hit. This alone takes PPs, Rangers, Mages out of the game, Thieves, Bards and Warriors arent as affected.
Void. It’s essentially a useless item. It has piercing + drains 1 random stat for a bit. Used to be that it drained all stats for abit, then it was still an OK item to have until you found a bloody wep. Now it’s better to use a might weapon than a Void weapon
Some caster weapons. Mage’s bane for example, casts mana drain with a chance, while vampiric or blackrock drains all mana in 1 hit
Blinding. This is useless since you can remove it simple by checking a box in Razor/UO Steam
Elemental Fury. It’s a powerful spell, but it’s also only doing the spell, no physical dmg mod so unless you get a stygian fast 1 hander or bow with 70% chance or us it’s not worth much and so far we’ve found 1 item above 15% cast out of maybe 15 items
Bloody. It’s the most broken of them all. Once a warrior has a bloody weapon he can solo every boss with ease. They dont need more healing.
Poison Weapons and poison pots nagates oneanother

One of the biggest issues on this shard is how powerful boosts are compared to how high main stats you have. In full mod clothing I get +28 str and +30 dex and it’s all +8 or +10 mods
Boost from a spec 6 mage with sages and nag staff + Taints pot ontop of that will range from +202-239 in all stats. Compare that to what I get from my mods. Now it’s easy to see it’s pointless to wear mods except for when you are dispelled, as while boosted they dont even count for 10% of my stats

Now I’ve presented the issues I’ve come to think of. I’ve probably missed a few

I will now present my suggestions to possible fixes to these issues
Lets start with boosting since that is what really messes things up in my opinion
Greatly lower the amount boosted or remove it completely (if removed completely then maybe add a dispellable curse-immunity instead)
I’d say lower it to 25% of what it is now. And rebalance attackspeed, damage done/taken around the lower stats
That way you arent defined by your boost. You can do things wihtout it, you arent automatically turned into a slime that died from being looked at, but you are of cousre at a disadvantage, but still not useless
Your base stats, armor, mods will become more important. So gearing up with more than just a good weapon will actually help you while hunting. I understand why people going out in goddess armor and a GM wep, since the boost will turn them into gods anyhow

Class Balance:
Power Playerss:
– I believe they are pretty much where they should be.
They are weak as hell without the proper gear, but if you strike gold finding the right caster weapons they can be very powerful.
– Few thing make them abit dull. Terrible at solo hunting, Dependant on warriors to tank for them, Mainly a PvP char

Rangers:
– Damage wise they seem alright
– They are dead as soon as they are blackrocked. No HP, no mana to teleport with
– Can’t dispel anymore
– This would all be balanced with the boost squish as they will have more HP in comparison if they are dispelled, they are no longer dependdant on dispelling others

Thieves:
– Too powerful early game, way to weak late game in PvE. Poison damage starts out high and raises very slowly with spec levels and it does not scale with gear so even with a normal bow a spec 1 thief can kill bosses alone (slowly but easily)
– Make the poison damage start out lower so spec 1-3 thieve’s are a bit weaker and make it a tiny bit higher, nothing major at all but so it’s not pointless going from spec 5-6 and losing magery as +6 dmg difference is nothing seeing as poison doesnt tick very often
Another way could be to make something scale with stats or to have poison damage get a scaling multiplier against NPCs (example spec 2 gives psn vs npcs 1.2x dmg, lvl 3 1.4, lvl 4 1.6, lvl 5 1.8, lvl 6 2.0) This way Thieves wont fall that much behind at higher level hunting as they are now
– Talked to Dreams about spec thieves and what it gives combat wise. Supposed to give more hit chance, damage multiplier and about 5+ psn tick per level. I have not seen the damage multiplier part, at least not for archery, does nice dmg with kryss though. PPs seem to do same dmg with archery as spec 6 thief
– Abit too reliant on poison in PvP. Poison is very strong, but it’s the only weapon they have in their arsenal. Their hits wont hurt anything except a mage. Perhaps this is how it should be, but again this takes gear out of the equation which I dislike. You can shoot 1 arrow then hide, pointless to do anything else, as your other hits wont deal any damage

Bards:
– They are essentially mages without utility to speak of since they only really have a use in group hunts and in group hunts bard skills arent needed
– Good for killing champion trash and boosting armor. That’s it
– Mages and even PPs will outheal them in AOE
– Their AOE dispel(unlike mage if it’s cast from range) will dispel themselves
– Have no use of gear since it gives them nothing
– Can kill no one in PvP since they can only use the worst weapon in the game and all their spells can be protected against

– I suggest to open up use of all staves like mages
– Make them benefit from Magic Efficieny and allow them to wear Nag staff and Sages
– This way they can deal some type of increased single target damage and be of some more use than to buff armor and they have some gear to strife for
– Give them a Song that is impossible to protect against (I believe they use to have that before) such as an AOE mind blast type of song(maybe not mind blast, but non protectable dmg)
– Also give them STR/INT buff. They can buff everything else but not that
– Make the stat boosts a tiny bit weaker tha a mages but the armor abit higher so they can be used for both, but it’s advantages to have both a bard and a mage still (with boost squish this will be minor, but always fun for those who wants to optimize)

Mages:
– Lower the physical damage they take. They die from 1 hit by anything pretty much. This will promote them wearing armor as it might actually make a difference
– They cant damage any player but warriors and they need around 8 mind blasts to kill a warrior and the warrior can heal between mind blast 2 and 3 up to full again
– Double the amount of damage Mind Blast does and make it bypass Magic Reflection such as moonstone. This way they can at least stand a chance if they manage to get in a mass dispel on a Thief/PP/Ranger and it will help them on their way to once again becoming warriors counter
– Maybe make reactive armor give you greatly reduced damage against 1 hit, only castable on self and scale with magic efficiency so it wont make as much difference for other classes

Warriors:
– The most broken class atm, some admin must really love them.
– Like stated above they survive 8 mind blasts before dying
– The melee damage reduce they get is just too good. A Ranger cant even kill a cursed warrior.
– Right now warriors have the best of both worlds. They have protections against magic, they have insane melee protection. Almost no mobs and near no bosses can dispel anymore(which is a good thing, but it’s in warrior’s favour)
– They deal alot of damage and they can kill any boss on their own and if they have a bloody weapon when do it with ease.
– They can run and heal for over 200 every 4 seconds ontop of Tamlas and heal fish wich other classes rely on.

– Make spec war take more magic damage, it’s just too easy right now, dont really notice any increase in damage taken with levels but the decrease in melee taken is incredible. All their skills help them survive and do more damage and then the class bonuses ontop of that increasing with level just scales too well.
– Allow them to wear lvl 6 elemental/necro etc like it is now, but have them only give max 75% or maybe even less protection 60-65% maybe(right now warriors tank everything including caster bosses, shouldnt always be the case tbh, its not like a mage or even a PP will tank a melee boss, not even one of the weaker ones). All other classes has a weakness, warriors only weakness cant be not being able to wear level 6 moonstone.
– Lower bandage heal and to be frank, make healing interrupt if moving. This will put them at the same disadvantage as all other classes (except mages) having to rely on tamlas and fish to heal in PvP but it still gives them the oportunity to stop and heal if there’s low incoming damage or if they run around out of line of sight. It wont affect them too much in PvE as they can stand still for the most part, at least when they tank and that’s when the damage is incoming. A warrior is hard enough to kill without them having 3 ways to heal
– They deal alot of damage, if they should stay that way, they should be less tanky. No class should have it all
– Make the reduced dmg taken from each level have diminishing returns, as now every spec makes more and more difference. PPs/Thieves wont deal more than 2% dmg in a hit with a dev wep to a warrior with shield(not much more to a war without) while the war will hit them right back with 15%

*Broken items*
Mages Bane caster weapon
– Maybe if it cast mana vampire it would have some sort of use in PvE
Bloody Weapons
– Remove it please or make it a small fixed amount so it’s a minor upgrade, but not as OP as it is right now
– Maybe add something else that can be used by all classes that is rare and can help a weapon bypass a GM weapon so you have something to hunt for other than mods
Void weapons
– Used to be that it drained all stats for abit, then it was still an OK item to have until you found a bloody wep. Now it’s better to use a might weapon than a Void weapon
Blinding
– Just remove it from the game, it’s outdated and has no place in modern UO
Poison Weapons
– Add poison level 7 to weapon, but lower damage of all non-thief poison so it can still be used, but it’s not a game changer. poison weapons cant be used for killing bosses in PvE anyhow since they are all immune, so it’s only use is PvP and prots take away that use
Blackrock
– Change it so it only dispels, or only drains the mana. I’d suggest only dispel so you’ll have to drain the mana in a different way, through vampiric weapons, void etc (provided the boosting gets changed, if not swap it so it drains mana)
Elemental Fury
– Since most of the elemental fury can be protected against(can even heal you) Make the % higher as it’s already a very rare item and it has to be swift/stygian and a very good weapon type and % to surpass Nag staff
– Make Ele fury a common suffix to staves, since then mages/bards will take em out for a spin and not be so weak. No mater how good they are they will NEVER surpass Nag staff, as nag staff gives magic eff and has 80 speed and damage modifier. Even a stygian staff with 100% cast wont stand a chance, so it’s not like it will make much difference anyhow except for ppl who dont ahve or dont dare to use Nag staff

Feel free to leave your comments
And I would love to get some kind of response from staff, at least that you have read it if you have
I understand this is alot of major changes and alot of people won’t agree because they want things to be as it is and half the shard plays a war and they get slammed the most in this post
Also developer do this on their own free time, I just want to give my opinion of where the shard lack in balancing and what items/classes are simply useless or too strong, but also present a suloution, without affecting game play and keeping the ZH feeling intact. I love this game, just a few things that can be better