Lol, you guys are a riot...

Doc/crat/enf/sol is probably by far the easiest and safest way to do things. If everyone in the team is just decent players with a decent equip, all the content that AO has to offer is cakewalk for that team. But the doc/crat/enf/sol combo isn't the only way to do every farm instance with just 4 people.

To give a few examples:

An engineer played by a good player offers much more survivability to the team than a soldier. Engies may offer slightly less reflects, but when they spam their blind aura they mitigate more damage than a soldier can. Unlike a soldier an engineer doesn't make a good main tank, engineers also offer less damage than soldiers to the team now. But if you're teamed with a 70k hp enf, that is pretty irrelevant since that enf will tank everything and won't die no matter what. So doc/crat/enf/engi works well too.

There's also no content for which you absolutely need an enf. Because of their huge hp (and other tools) enfs make the easiest tanks to hold agro and are by far the easiest to keep alive for a doctor. But with good players an enf is overkill, you don't really need them. Soldiers and keepers make very good single target tanks as well (and the aeo taunting of enfs isn't an absolute requirement in the farm instances). Other professions like MAs, shades and adventurers played by very good players can tank everything in the farm instances as well when in the right team (read: teamed with pve lovechilds like docs, crats, soldiers or good engineers), but less fail safe than a mediocre enf still.

Combine a keeper (with the warding aura) with a doctor and crat and you turn all pve content in a joke as well. Docs+crats can debuff the attack speed of a mob by so much, that when combined with absorbing normal hits (+ reflects from soldier/engineer) any profession with a good equip can tank pretty much all the content. Doc/crat/sol/keeper makes the game look as easy as the doc/crat/enf/sol combo. Doc/crat/engineer/keeper can also turn the game in a joke, but they can't be complete dofuses unlike in those 2 other teams.

Now the 3 examples above aren't all combination possible in AO. The above examples make the pve content a cakewalk. If you happen to have a supply of good players with superb equip, then you don't need the above to succeed. You can tackle content without a crat and still succeed. You can tackle some of the content without a doctor (but with crat, without both crat and doctor you won't do the instances in question with just 4 players) and you can still succeed. You can exchange others of the lovechild professions by some gimpier professions (but not all) and still complete the content. A good team leader will recognize this and not wait for the ideal fantastic four setup before starting.

For the AO farm instances, I think the following is a decent order in which normal players (without personal connections or an extreme reputation) get invited to PUGs:

• Absolutely always: doctor.
• Pretty much always: bureaucrat and soldier.
• Most of the time: enf.
• Regularly: engineer, keeper, shade and adventurer.
• Rarely: MA.
• Pretty much never: NT (generally speaking), agent and trader.
• Absolutely never: fixer and MP.

So suppose that someone wants to roll a shade now and asks if he will be able to acquire an endgame setup: Then I would advice to do it. You would get far less invites than doc/crat/sol/enf, but with a good reputation and also by making teams yourselves (+making connections), you will still be able to farm the AO content in an effective manner.

If you wanted to roll a fixer or MP however, then I would advice to level up a lovechild sugardaddy first though :)

So while I do agree that there isn't anything remotely resembling balance in AO, it's not as black&white as either be a doc/crat/sol/enf or don't bother. There's a few absolutely useless professions that don't add anything to a team that a lovechild cannot already do far better, but there still exists a grey zone in between the absolute lovechild professions and the absolutely gimp professions.

And in case you're asking: Why this obsession with doing "raids" with 4-man teams (or 5 or 6, not everyone goes with just 4 all the time) instead of the possible 12 or more. It comes down to the loot: only 4 people means less people to share loot with. Considering the amount of times some instances have to be repeated to acquire loot, this can be quite significant. And to boot, the killing is not even that much slower than with just 4 people because of the mob events + looting + timed instances. Once the 4 of you have everything you need, you can still continue farming the instance to sell lootrights to people that can't get it themselves or loot the stuff with non-lovechild alts of yourself.

When a teamleader invites lovechild players to his team, he also has to respect their feelings, you just can't invite more people because you feel sorry for them. Players want to get done with the grinding and go once the team can handle the objective, without adding additional players to share the loot with. If the leader announces beforehand that it is a 12 person raid, they won't object, but if you invite a lovechild (I've never had a single complaint from fixers, MPs, ... about doing a raid with 12 people) from lft without mentioning it; there are many who would fake-ld or not accept future invites. A doctor on a friendlist is likelier to join you repeatedly if he knows your raids will be conducted in an efficient manner (and thus with as few people as possible).

Originally posted by Brezjnev
...

Geez, WTF happened to this game.  I remember when NTs got nerfed and almost became pariahs if not for the train grinding but that's bout it.  To see that most of the classes are close to useless is just sad.  I remember when most of them were viable and it was more dependent on the player.

All classes are perfectly viable.  Lots of people are clueless how to play a lot of classes, though.  Anyone who thinks NT's are nerfed should go watch the skilled ones solo places like Albtraum.

Well, you let people AFK while they level from 80-170 and they never learn how to play.

You do that for 5 years or so and the playerbase becomes whiny whenever someone makes a suggestion that "faster levelling" should be less important than "playing the game".

Originally posted by Hydroblunt

Originally posted by Brezjnev
...

 

Geez, WTF happened to this game.  I remember when NTs got nerfed and almost became pariahs if not for the train grinding but that's bout it.  To see that most of the classes are close to useless is just sad.  I remember when most of them were viable and it was more dependent on the player.

Silirrion the last game director is one of the reason for this mess. Another reason is the input of their forum trolls. Only a few power elite players give feedback to fc anymore so anytime fc does try a "legitimate attempt" to gauge player reactions its always biased. You have no idea how much influence credit farming companies have on ao boards anymore. Just bring up topics of loot rights selling and etc and watch them attack you by the dozens and they aren't regular players if you research their post histories and toon names and orgs they are aligned too they are easy to spot.

Originally posted by burmese

All classes are perfectly viable.  Lots of people are clueless how to play a lot of classes, though.  Anyone who thinks NT's are nerfed should go watch the skilled ones solo places like Albtraum.

I'm talking about years ago.  At one point, NTs were monsters and their nukes were nerfed.

So what's your experience at end-game?  Are you saying that if I dust off my fixer & agent, get them to max level, I will be able to get teams with relative ease?

So are they done implementing the new graphics engine?  Fully implemented, partially... ?

Originally posted by Hydroblunt

Originally posted by burmese

All classes are perfectly viable.  Lots of people are clueless how to play a lot of classes, though.  Anyone who thinks NT's are nerfed should go watch the skilled ones solo places like Albtraum.

 

I'm talking about years ago.  At one point, NTs were monsters and their nukes were nerfed.

So what's your experience at end-game?  Are you saying that if I dust off my fixer & agent, get them to max level, I will be able to get teams with relative ease?

I see fixers and agents in teams all the time.

If you are not in an org and sit on lft all day, you likely won't get squat - from lvl 1 to 220.  This is the case for any profession but Sol/Enf/Crat/Doc.  You want teams, you make friends or start building teams on your own.  Has been that way for 8+ years.

Originally posted by hidden1

So are they done implementing the new graphics engine?  Fully implemented, partially... ?

Zippo to date - when it's done, it goes in all at once and you won't have to be looking here to know about it.  it's not something that can go in piecemeal (well, after it is in they can start crafting new content to make use of the new graphics capabilities).

There's another thread here where the Game Directory listed a few weeks ago the engine status in detail. 

Originally posted by burmese

All classes are perfectly viable.

I ran into another person who claimed this today and it got on my nerves. To annoy those back that are still living with their head up in the clouds (or with their head in a hole in the ground, ostrich style), I decided to run some numbers to show how "viable" everyone still is for the endgame. For this purpose I will compare 2 professions that usually do not fill the tanking role, 2 professions who have to earn a spot in a team by how good their support is.

First off the doctor:

Doctors' their key support abilities are healing and initiative (attack&recharge speed) debuffs. They have some other tools, but because of how the game encounters are designed, that other stuff is almost entirely irrelevant. To establish how good a doctor's support toolset is, I'll establish roughly how much damage a single doctor can mitigate.

1. Doctor healing:
   
   1. Bodily Invigoration for 13,000 every 4s
   2. Improved Complete Healing takes the place of 1 Bodily Invigoration every 20s, how much healing potential it has depends on the player being healed by it (up to 70,000 for enforcers). I'll take a conservative 26,000 every 20 seconds (easy math).
   3. Doctors also have heal over time tools, heal perks, ... But I'm not going to dig after each and everyone of them. The above 2 heals make up most of doctor healing. 
   4. Total: ~=243,000hpm
2. Doctor initiative debuffs:
   
   1. About initiative debuffs:
      
      1. Every 150 points to Ranged, Melee or Physical Ini. will fasten your weapon Attack speed by 0.25 and Recharge speed 0.5 seconds. Every -150 will have an opposite debuff as a result.
      2. The fastest attacking speed is an attack speed of 1s and a recharge of 1s. There are mobs which have more initiatives that is needed to reach this and that thus have a certain threshold of -inits before initiative debuffing has an effect.
      3. Combine that with most endgame mobs using several different weapons and doing precise calculations would require more time than I'm willing to spend on it. So I'm going to simplify.
   2. Uncontrollable Body Tremors:
      
      1. -1452inits
         
         1. +2.375s attacktime
         2. +4.75s recharge time
      2. Many/most hard encounters since the SL expansion were made 100% immune to this.
   3. Muscular Malaise:
      
      1. -908inits
         
         1. +1.51s attack time
         2. +3.027s recharge time
      2. This is a high probability proc action: not on demand but you can rely on it triggering and sticking on the mob afterwards.
   4. Anatomic Blight:
      
      1. -2569 inits
         
         1. +4.282s attack time
         2. +8.563s recharge time
      2. The same chance to trigger, but also has an 12% chance to break on a successful attack.
   5. Totals:
      
      1. Max possible for short intervals only:
         
         1. +8s attack time
         2. +16s recharge time
      2. Against trash mobs:
         
         1. +3.8s attack time
         2. +7.75s recharge time
      3. Against any mob:
         
         1. +1.5s attack time
         2. +3s recharge time
   6. Hypothetically, if a mobs weapons were so that he was right at 1s attack speed and 1 second recharge speed (and not because of the speed cap), doctors' initiative debuffs would lower the mob's damage by following factors:
      
      1. Max possible for short intervals only: x26
      2. Against trash mobs: x11
      3. Against any mob: x4.5
3. Against a hypothetical boss mob:
   
   1. Damage lowered by a factor 4.5
   2. A hpm of over 243,000
   3. The boss mob could be doing 1,093,500 damage a minute before debuffs.

Second, the doctor's competition, a fixer:

1. Similar to doctor's fixers have a wide toolset that is for the most part entirely useless. Fixers old signature tools were:
   
   1. runspeed buffs (going from 800 to 1500 runspeed to run quests on the planet of Rubi-Ka is huge, going from 2100 to 2500 to cross a tiny room in which an endgame raid takes place isn't);
   2. ncu buffs (there's little point to being able to fit in all buffs if most of them are no longer relevant.
      
      1. As an example, I'll use some buffs of that other contender of biggest loser profession as an example: -nanocost buff => useless because all iconic casters (like doctors) never run out of nano anyhow and usually self cap their -nanocost numbers. +nanoskills buffs =>  useless since every profession equips themselves to be able to selfcast all top nanos.
      2. Another good example is a still good buff: http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=231340 The soldier SL reflect aura which still works like a charm, takes up a total of 1 ncu for each team member.
   3. Evacuation nanos: simply don't work anywhere important. Good for shopping for alts.
   4. Hots still work.
2. Top long hot:
   
   1. 2,904hpm
3. Top short hot:
   
   1. 5,400hpm
4. Against a hypothetical boss mob:
   
   1. Adding the fixer to the team would mitigate an additional 8,304 damage a minute.

If you are doing an encounter and are looking for additional support classes, keep in mind that any doctor can mitigate up to 13,168% (yes, 13k%) more damage than a fixer could. I'd dare say that in pve the support given by an NR8 doctor (no nano healing, just perk healing- which alone is much more hpm than a fixer can provide- and the initiatives procs) is vastly superior to the entire support toolset of a fixer.

I could do easily do the same exercise for bureacrats (lovechild), MPs (useless) and agents (also useless in many encounters).

Only in 1 way every profession can still be considered viable:  there are no profession locks on entering the game, no locks on entering dungeons, no locks for looting items. If you happen to be useless and want to acquire loot, you will just have to make sure to piggy ride along with some lovechild professions.

Originally posted by Brezjnev

Originally posted by burmese

All classes are perfectly viable.

I ran into another person who claimed this today and it got on my nerves. To annoy those back that are still living with their head up in the clouds (or with their head in a hole in the ground, ostrich style), I decided to run some numbers to show how "viable" everyone still is for the endgame. For this purpose I will compare 2 professions that usually do not fill the tanking role, 2 professions who have to earn a spot in a team by how good their support is.

 

First off the doctor:

Doctors' their key support abilities are healing and initiative (attack&recharge speed) debuffs. They have some other tools, but because of how the game encounters are designed, that other stuff is almost entirely irrelevant. To establish how good a doctor's support toolset is, I'll establish roughly how much damage a single doctor can mitigate.

1. Doctor healing:
   
   1. Bodily Invigoration for 13,000 every 4s
   2. Improved Complete Healing takes the place of 1 Bodily Invigoration every 20s, how much healing potential it has depends on the player being healed by it (up to 70,000 for enforcers). I'll take a conservative 26,000 every 20 seconds (easy math).
   3. Doctors also have heal over time tools, heal perks, ... But I'm not going to dig after each and everyone of them. The above 2 heals make up most of doctor healing. 
   4. Total: ~=243,000hpm
2. Doctor initiative debuffs:
   
   1. About initiative debuffs:
      
      1. Every 150 points to Ranged, Melee or Physical Ini. will fasten your weapon Attack speed by 0.25 and Recharge speed 0.5 seconds. Every -150 will have an opposite debuff as a result.
      2. The fastest attacking speed is an attack speed of 1s and a recharge of 1s. There are mobs which have more initiatives that is needed to reach this and that thus have a certain threshold of -inits before initiative debuffing has an effect.
      3. Combine that with most endgame mobs using several different weapons and doing precise calculations would require more time than I'm willing to spend on it. So I'm going to simplify.
   2. Uncontrollable Body Tremors:
      
      1. -1452inits
         
         1. +2.375s attacktime
         2. +4.75s recharge time
      2. Many/most hard encounters since the SL expansion were made 100% immune to this.
   3. Muscular Malaise:
      
      1. -908inits
         
         1. +1.51s attack time
         2. +3.027s recharge time
      2. This is a high probability proc action: not on demand but you can rely on it triggering and sticking on the mob afterwards.
   4. Anatomic Blight:
      
      1. -2569 inits
         
         1. +4.282s attack time
         2. +8.563s recharge time
      2. The same chance to trigger, but also has an 12% chance to break on a successful attack.
   5. Totals:
      
      1. Max possible for short intervals only:
         
         1. +8s attack time
         2. +16s recharge time
      2. Against trash mobs:
         
         1. +3.8s attack time
         2. +7.75s recharge time
      3. Against any mob:
         
         1. +1.5s attack time
         2. +3s recharge time
   6. Hypothetically, if a mobs weapons were so that he was right at 1s attack speed and 1 second recharge speed (and not because of the speed cap), doctors' initiative debuffs would lower the mob's damage by following factors:
      
      1. Max possible for short intervals only: x26
      2. Against trash mobs: x11
      3. Against any mob: x4.5
3. Against a hypothetical boss mob:
   
   1. Damage lowered by a factor 4.5
   2. A hpm of over 243,000
   3. The boss mob could be doing 1,093,500 damage a minute before debuffs.

 

Second, the doctor's competition, a fixer:

1. Similar to doctor's fixers have a wide toolset that is for the most part entirely useless. Fixers old signature tools were:
   
   1. runspeed buffs (going from 800 to 1500 runspeed to run quests on the planet of Rubi-Ka is huge, going from 2100 to 2500 to cross a tiny room in which an endgame raid takes place isn't);
   2. ncu buffs (there's little point to being able to fit in all buffs if most of them are no longer relevant.
      
      1. As an example, I'll use some buffs of that other contender of biggest loser profession as an example: -nanocost buff => useless because all iconic casters (like doctors) never run out of nano anyhow and usually self cap their -nanocost numbers. +nanoskills buffs =>  useless since every profession equips themselves to be able to selfcast all top nanos.
      2. Another good example is a still good buff: http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=231340 The soldier SL reflect aura which still works like a charm, takes up a total of 1 ncu for each team member.
   3. Evacuation nanos: simply don't work anywhere important. Good for shopping for alts.
   4. Hots still work.
2. Top long hot:
   
   1. 2,904hpm
3. Top short hot:
   
   1. 5,400hpm
4. Against a hypothetical boss mob:
   
   1. Adding the fixer to the team would mitigate an additional 8,304 damage a minute.

 

If you are doing an encounter and are looking for additional support classes, keep in mind that any doctor can mitigate up to 13,168% (yes, 13k%) more damage than a fixer could. I'd dare say that in pve the support given by an NR8 doctor (no nano healing, just perk healing- which alone is much more hpm than a fixer can provide- and the initiatives procs) is vastly superior to the entire support toolset of a fixer.

I could do easily do the same exercise for bureacrats (lovechild), MPs (useless) and agents (also useless in many encounters).

Only in 1 way every profession can still be considered viable:  there are no profession locks on entering the game, no locks on entering dungeons, no locks for looting items. If you happen to be useless and want to acquire loot, you will just have to make sure to piggy ride along with some lovechild professions.

so your just gonna ignore the fixers evade in the pve comparison? ;)

Originally posted by misterdurp

Originally posted by Brezjnev

Originally posted by burmese

All classes are perfectly viable.

so your just gonna ignore the fixers evade in the pve comparison? ;)

Please enlighten me, how is a fixer having good evades going to help the one who is actually tanking, to tank better?

If you mean the 80 something evades that gsf gives, then I can only shrug. There are more endgame encounters with SL rules than RK ones where that doesn't work at all and even on the RK ones that 80 evades will only make a marginal difference.

Originally posted by Brezjnev

Originally posted by misterdurp

Originally posted by Brezjnev

Originally posted by burmese

All classes are perfectly viable.

so your just gonna ignore the fixers evade in the pve comparison? ;)

Please enlighten me, how is a fixer having good evades going to help the one who is actually tanking, to tank better?

If you mean the 80 something evades that gsf gives, then I can only shrug. There are more endgame encounters with SL rules than RK ones where that doesn't work at all and even on the RK ones that 80 evades will only make a marginal difference.

Fixer is not considered a support prof anymore (a shame though), cause the devs listen too much to those elitist assholes on the official forums

but yea.. i kinda missed the main point of the comparison, thought u were talking about the classes overall

when i came with my own 'unorthodox' fixer ideas on the official forums end ending with 'fixer is support, dont forget' i got a load of flames thrown at me for "being stupid/no idea what fixer is/claiming that i dont have a fixer (they looked my forum name up which is the same as my 220 enf)/etc, im not touching AO till they are done with the rebalancing and the graphics engine.

AO was my first MMO

I levelled an MP when MP's werent wanted in teams, and were seen purely as mobile buff dispensers for Engineers

I did a lot of solo'ing

good implants & the best buffs you could afford meant great pets

Every other MMO that has a petclass, the pet is limited by it's controller, AO took that concept and threw it out the window

the only complex areas to AO were Implant layout designing & tradeskilling

PVP was different to most other MMO's too, different classes excelled at different level caps, though a few (like the MP) struggled at all levels caps

For most petclasses in AO, SL and later expansions just lowered the level they reached thier power threshhold, and it felt good to be uber at L80-110

There are some formidable PvP MP's in the 80's.  Very good at taking down lvl 75ish towers and have belamorte's to keep them alive

Originally posted by hobo9766
I hate fixers so much these days. The trolling and whining of your lobbyists on the forums is one of the supreme causes of the improper balance. Fixers ruined s10. you ruined having miy's cloaks in game. You got full auto which makes no sense what so ever... Fixer did not deserve full auto and the only reason you got it was whining and trolling which fc gave in too. Now fc is thinking of hard caping run speed super low over the constant fixer bullcrap. Enough is enough shut up. Fixer trolls are one reason the game is failing. The Fixer class motto should be TAKE TAKE TAKE TAKE TAKE TAKE TAKE!!!!! edit: An interesting post I found earlier its food for thought. http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=569088

It's a giant fixer conspiracy to destroy the game!

The 220 fixer trolls' had nothing to do with the changes to sector 10, logically anyhow, because they can not enter it and thus have no reason to troll to try and get changes introduced to it.

Miy's cloak and fixers, the direct relation is lost to me. Was it an OP item that didn't make it to live and you think the reason that it didn't, was because of some fixers and not because it was actually OP?

As to which profession "deserves" to be able to effectively use which skill and which not, this table shows how proficient each profession was with each skill in the initial design of anarchy online (2001). That table tells me that fixers back then intended to be using full auto, and so were adventurers and engineers. i doubt that the initial designers of AO are part of the universal fixer conspiracy of 2010. What you think professions should and shouldn't be using, has no bearing on the initial design of AO.

The lowering of the maximum possible runspeed probably has less to do with fixers, than with melees being completely unable to hit any good kiting player in pvp. And they too complained about, rightfully if you ask me. The runspeed players can achieve in AO is simply too large for the to be expected synchronization times. If FC wants to tackle this problem and give melees a fighting chance in pvp, than they would need to either lower the maximum possible runspeed or give melee weapons & perks the reach of ranged attacks. Melees still being melees in the future doesn't sound so bad to me.

Also, at the same time the low runspeeds feels to slow and it probably is a deterrent to new players. Rethinking the way runspeed works in AO isn't totally superfluous because of that. But it's easy to bork up so I hope the devs proceed with caution.

All in all: with how angry, personal and irrational your posts are, it doesn't surprise me in the least that you were mocked on the official forums.If you want to be taken seriously, take a deep breath, think and only then start typing. Also: no, not everyone is out to get you, there is no big conspiracy going on.

Originally posted by misterdurp

Originally posted by Brezjnev

Originally posted by misterdurp

Originally posted by Brezjnev

Originally posted by burmese

All classes are perfectly viable.

so your just gonna ignore the fixers evade in the pve comparison? ;)

Please enlighten me, how is a fixer having good evades going to help the one who is actually tanking, to tank better?

If you mean the 80 something evades that gsf gives, then I can only shrug. There are more endgame encounters with SL rules than RK ones where that doesn't work at all and even on the RK ones that 80 evades will only make a marginal difference.

Fixer is not considered a support prof anymore (a shame though), cause the devs listen too much to those elitist assholes on the official forums

but yea.. i kinda missed the main point of the comparison, thought u were talking about the classes overall

when i came with my own 'unorthodox' fixer ideas on the official forums end ending with 'fixer is support, dont forget' i got a load of flames thrown at me for "being stupid/no idea what fixer is/claiming that i dont have a fixer (they looked my forum name up which is the same as my 220 enf)/etc, im not touching AO till they are done with the rebalancing and the graphics engine.

Personally I look different on it. In team games like these I think there are 3 major roles that players can fill: help the team kill faster (personal damage or buffs), help the team mitigate more damage (buffs, debuffs, healing) or be the attention whore (agro gobblers or meatshield) that allows others to do their roles (killing or mitigation) without interference.

AO doesn't have clear divisions like these between professions, but the different professions do have roles that they tend to fill. I'm personally not going to pass judgement on which role which profession should fill, but I'll judge by which role they usually take up in a team. In the example of doctor vs fixer support toolsets, I'm assuming that neither will tank because there are several other professions better equiped at filling that role and therefore neither of them tends to fill that role (even though both can actually tank most content in AO).

Even though fixers can get formidable defence, I expect a random fixer to splat when agro'ed by a  boss mob, random soldiers on the other hand won't splat. So when making a pug you probably have another profession already on which you can depend to fill the meatshield role. Once the meatshield is filled, fixers have to earn a spot in the team with their killing and mitigation capabilities. The meaningful support a fixer has to offer is 8000 something hpm, 8000 hpm is a joke in todays game. Fixer damage isn't anything exceptional either (there are fixers who do exceptional damage, for a fixer ... ;)). So in the end they don't get invited.

Agents are similar. They don't add too much to the killing power, they don't make good tanks and their support is pretty obsolete by now as well (in most teams they can't CH because they'd get agro and splat and the boss mobs are 100% resistance to ubt, not much is left after that - and even then the doctor fp is the best active support an agent can give in most instances).

MPs are the same again. The hpm of their pet is joke compaired to doctor's hpm (not as big as fixer's hpm, but a joke none the less). Doing decent damage requires a dedicated pve setup (when looking at that lft screen, you can't rely on that unknown MP actually having it) and their damage mitigation capabilities are subpar nowadays (even more so because half of it gets overwritten by superior debuffs from bureaucrats). As a former CC profession they also offer no CC in boss fights, unlike bureaucrats again.

When a profession makes as little impact on the performance of a team as fxers, agents and MPs: there is a reason these 3 professions see extremely little invites to raid teams for  a reason. Not because of lack of understanding on the part of the team leader of how the game works, but because that team leader most likely has seen and experienced himself what does actually work and what doesn't. For a new player starting AO, I regard these professions are not viable in the endgame because they add so little to a team, that they can be considered useless.

It is for reasons of simplicity that I chose to use fixers in the example above, because it is by far the easiest comparison to make between a lovechild and a useless profession (the fixer hpm calculation wasn't exactly hard :)). When using agents or MPs as the basis of comparison against a lovechild, I would have had to use a lot more "ifs" and "buts" + add up various kinds of little things. And even then the end result would have been less as black and white as a comparison between fixer and doctor support toolsets.