EverQuest II March Producer's Letter

A new producer's letter is available on the official EverQuest II website, which outlines the team's plans to rework the way fighter classes keep aggro.
Recently we've been working on some changes to the fighter classes, particularly in the way that they manage hate. Our intent was to adjust these classes so that fighters would rely more on their taunts and abilities to gain and hold aggro and less on high DPS and hate buffs from DPS classes.

Why do we feel this is necessary?

Well, we've been talking since the last Fan Faire about how we've drifted away from the hate management and damage sink that tanks were originally intended to be. With this, there has also been an increase in the DPS that tanks have been doing while in combat. This begins to impinge on the role that we've envisioned for the Scout and Mage classes, and we feel that moving forward we need to make some adjustments, as it is increasingly difficult for us to do proper and cohesive game balancing as the lines get more blurred.

We introduced this to the test server in early January and the response from the community was strong. Recognizing that this is a very sensitive and delicate topic, we postponed the revamp for more testing and evaluation.

In the end, with all of your feedback, we've decided to re-examine the structure of the fighter revamp.