I have been reluctant to post in these forums as I felt I wanted to get a sense of the direction the Devs were willing to take this balance process. Being that most of the feedback from the Devs has been in the form of perk documentation that slightly reflects the suggestions of the player base, I have decided to pool together my feelings on the Keeper Profession to give the devs a solid foundation on which to build.
First my background: After being shown the game by my friend and college roomate, Traderific, shortly after the release of Shadowlands, I was hooked by the game's complexity and size. It wasn't a moment after he showed me a Keeper in full Tier Armor that I knew what profession I was going to roll. I have not had any other main than a Keeper since joining the Anarchy Online community. I never will have any other main. I have had 3 Keepers past 200 and 2 of them into TL7. I am also in the process of leveling more to be TL5 and lower.
What first needs to be identified in the Keeper Development is exactly what role the Keeper Profession plays in the grand scheme of thing in Anarchy Online. I have dubbed this "The Keeper Essence" and I have started a thread discussing that here.
Basically, the Keeper Essence defines what purpose a Keeper should fulfill and how it rounds out Role Playing Games in general. This will determine what boundaries development of the profession to stay within to keep essentially what the profession was created for in the first place, in line. Giving Keepers things like direct casting spells, or morphs are some examples of things that fall outside of these boundaries and encroach on other profession's development. If I could have insight from the developers on this area, it would lead to very productive discussions.
My opinion of the Keeper Essence is this: a holy warrior who excels in all areas of combat and support. One who is defensively superior than it's warrior counterpart, but not necessarily as offensively proficient. One who has great defensive capabilities that promote his survival and emergency tanking roles, but doesn't out-evade the "nimble classes" such as Shades and Fixers. And also, one who has healing capabilities in times of need, but could never replace the healing capacity of a Doctor. A Keeper is a great addition to the team as it rounds out the void between tank and healer. While in this role as a team addition can be viewed as a support position, the Keeper excels at solo combat as he brings with him abilities from all areas of combat/support/defense. This should be unparalleled to any profession. Because of this well rounded TOOLSET, the Keeper is a very versatile fighter. The degree of versatility I have defined in a post titled "The Keeper Proficiencies" which can be found here.
The current problem with Keepers is that we have been neglected for many patches now that have introduced nanos, items, perks, for other professions. Every time something new was added for the other professions the Keepers have sat back and asked "well what about us?" Our voice was not that loud as we knew we were doing pretty well and at one point were "the top of the food chain." Unfortunately, our passiveness led to neglect and our toolset became very limited. Our attacks were good, but not quite good enough, our defenses were good, but not quite good enough. All of these situations led to Keeper's opponents being JUST out of reach in every encounter, no matter the setup, no matter how hard we hotswapped. We are stuck in the mediocre middle, with no hope of being very proficient in any area.
So what I call for is this: that keeper's tool set (or proficiency) is extended in extremes further out. That is, Keepers will need to have all areas of their proficiencies bolstered to meet the current demand. Offense will need to increase, Defense will need to increase, and our Support capabilities will also need to be bolstered. All of the things that define the Keeper Essence will need to be heightened in order to carve out our niche amongst the professions. What we do have is not much different from just rolling something else. We are too often seen as a "poor-mans" enforcer, or "mini-advys" and not the shining righteous warrior that we are meant to be that supports the team and himself in times of need.
Now for some hardcore suggestions to carve out our niche, which of course are subject to change in order to meet the direction of Anarchy Online and it's balancing efforts:
-Dimach - Emergency button, currently 1 hour recharge. This needs to change. If a 3 minute recharge Mongo Rage is seen as an emergency button, then dimach certainly needs to be lowered significantly. Our Dimach is a heal for roughly 70% of our health when maxed out. It needs to scale and it needs to be more of a "thank god I have Dimach left" button
-AR - Our AR now is crap, we have to hotswap to a full AR setup before we can even dream about perking someone. It used to be that if you timed DoF, Limber, and Coon, you'd have a window to perk advy's. It used to be that if you widdled an enforcer down and timed your perk actions and damage, you could kill one. These days are no longer and instead of skill and tactics playing a role in pvp, we simply know we will lose unless our opponent is severly gimp or severely green. Our perks are limited, and if we miss, it's a good minute to 2 minutes of recharge waiting defenseless and offenseless.
-Defense - still okay, but still requires a dedicated evade setup to get any chance of surviving
-Heals - decent, but with the heightened HP and damage of other professions, they are inadequate.
-Auras - Are we a Keeper or aren't we? We end up only have about 3-4 auras which don't really add much and don't really benefit our teammates. Hardly well rounded, and hardly missed by anyone.
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Originally Posted by Noky69
like 30% of their overall HP the more hp setup they go the more it debuffs them think of it like a balance, also it would be rather nice instead of having AS/SA or anyother 30% cap special it's new and unique and would be fun in duels or mass PVP/BS just think about it 
