Hi! Overall i personally love the captain class, and it's a lot of fun in groups. In terms of issues i see with the class, here they are:
1. Solo play - brutal. feels very slow to quest in general.
2. Blue line - has no place in raids BUT (opinion
) i think making it viable is probably not needed. a captain being a backline healer feels weird, and the balance with current healers in the game is good, I'm afraid of potential upsets with overall game balance. If you still want something to address, then sure.
3. Yellow - Strength in numbers has been left in the dirt. needs to be scaled properly.
4. Overall feel: Class feels clunky because of long animations and delays after skills have fired.
Suggestions:
1. Either an animation touch up, or some kind of speed across the board. If this is technically too difficult to pull off, some kind of increased attack duration buff for self is probably good enough. Speeding up the captain overall should also help bump the dps some.
2. Shadow's lament cooldown - reduce to 15, sync with inspire better, perhaps a damage bump.
3. Solo play - bleed duration bump perhaps, or potency. Could help captains solo content easier without making them compete with champ/hunter. Just need the ability to finish off a mob with a few skills, even if the mob has to then bleed out to get there.
4. Captain pets: The mits pet is probably the go to default for raiding. Melee pets can sometimes be useful, but other times be very annoying. Giving us two mits pet: one melee, one ranged, could provide a good fix to maintain "Elite Companions" debuff without having to deal with the annoyance of a melee pet always. do NOT waste time trying to bring their pet up to snuff, pets usually are just an annoyance. Just give us ranged mits pet that can apply elite companions.
5. Strength in numbers: fix it's heal component, or add some kind of damage reduction aspect to it. do NOT go overboard, captain tank doesn't "need" another last stand, just a minor cooldown (either a heal that can heal them maybe back upto 60% health, or a dmg reduction around the ballpark of 30%). Some good nerfs brought their tank capability in line with other tanks, they're generally in a decent spot right now, and not too godmode. I'd like to preserve this aspect when we bring strength in numbers in line.
6. If you do decide to fix blue line - i'm not sure what a good way to bring this up is, but some kind of 10 second cooldown single target big heal perhaps. Give them the ability to bring a single person like a tank up to full.
7. Minor - Quality of life - movitaving speech is a bit annoying to re-apply, any potential improvements here?
Potential nerf candidates:
1. Perhaps the double rez should only be a feature of a blue line cappy. Captain rez is *really* good, perhaps too good. But since no one likes nerfs, i will not push on this point further.
Overall, captain is one of the most fun classes to play in groups, and I really enjoy it.
tl;dr
For red: some damage bump that helps solo play and potentially let's us carve out a raid spot for a "dps-y" red captain could be really nice.
Yellow is in a desirable place overall, though it's primarily because of the utility they bring.
Blue line is not raid viable primarily because the game's damage profile has changed: general healing is so high that the way raids kill players is by doing large spike damages, and captain cannot respond well to this kind of damage. Blue could be brought in line or entirely abandoned, since the general healer balance with rk mini and beorn is very nice.