Changes with the February Update: Alternate Ability Grants for Gold Members and Ability Changes

well if they refund us our hard worked AA, I'll have a maxed druid ROFL

And yet another thread in which ridiculous changes are forced down our throats disguised as a poll. Notice how the posts answered by SOE officials are only ones that agree with the changes or wonder about specifics.

"Most" of the nerfs are justified, I guess. Thousands of AAs for free ? I'd have to agree with the majority here, way to give the finger to those who spent hundred of hours getting them. Pride probably has a lot to do with it though.

Want to (maybe) make everyone happy? Give rewards (titles, evolving pieces, whatever) to players based on the number of AAs they have when the free AA thing is released (with, I don't know, major goodies at 5000, 7500, 10000 AAs). Make it good, some have paid monthly subscribtions for years to earn the right to grind those AAs.

Since this change is very likely to take place whatever we say, the least you can do is to make everyone happy. Because you know, unhappy people don't throw money at your games.

against one or two mobs? not so much, no. but against say 4-6? or up to my previously stated reasonable limit of 10? yes, i think that will start to have a fair bit of an impact there.

or even just the stuff that i do solo right now farming things, it's not uncommon for me to grab 10-15 mobs at once. yes, that's a big group of mobs and yes SKs are one of the only classes able to pull something like that off... but i consider that to be within reason, and to be less than 'swarming' and certainly not something that would impact server stability, and this would also take that away.

Also, If I lock at 85 Ill be Max AA, for free? kinda sounds ridiculous. Very ridiculous actually. Ill just de-level my toons and lock at 85, and when a new expac is released level up 5 levels, and get more free aa as I level. R I D I C U L O U S.

This post should be the top item in latest news on the patcher.

my gosh, all I can think of is all the whiney complainers, that aren't getting PLd by the classes that are able to do these things, EVERYONE who does this stuff KNOWS that even ONE mistake and theyre dead...end of story. as for the free AA...wth...we don't need this stuff...

why don't you guys just get better servers...that would help...or atleast fix the universal chat service...I mean really?

out of all the things that need fixed...like people who are still using Macro-Quest your more worried about nerfing the "fun" out of EQ im an end game raider (as a bst) so no im not 100% effected by this but I have my alts, my SK for one I very much enjoy playing, but hes on my main account so he doesn't get a lot of play time.

get rid of mercs, let people actually interact again mercs destroyed EQ IMO...

End rant...

I'm not sure if you're not reading, or if you just don't know enough about the abilities you're talking about to even understand what they said about them.

They are nerfing the crap out of both assassinate and decap. They're lumping all 3 classes in with this swarm garbage. Assassinate does already have the same limitations, and we have to be in actual physical melee combat with the mobs we're killing. Tell ya what, let's take root out of the equation and see if you think headshot is still all that great. A cap of 2 per minute is WORTHLESS. It's not worth the points it takes to take it. If I was depending on backstabs alone for assassinate procs, I don't think I get 1 per minute sometimes.

I'm also dubious to the auto granting of AA's. I just returned to the game after taking years off. I first took a break at lvl 56 when the cap was 60 and returned for a few months around the time Underfoot came out. I then leveled to 66 and had roughly 100 AAs. After returning in December of 2013 and renewing my gold status for the next 3 months, I put leveling on hold to concentrate on AAs, because on Zek, they can be a difference maker in pvp. I now have 1100 AA's and level 69 on the main (Mage). So, in the past month I just "grinded" 1000 AAs while only gaining 3 levels. So, basically, while everyone was PL'ing and "exploiting" the things that are now being nerfed, everything I just went through the last 35 days was pointless.... I should have just focused on leveling and buying beams and swarms like everyone else. To top it off, if I had, I could have used the beam "exploit" before this nerf since the character in question is a mage.
I'm not upset about the "nerfs". I am upset, however, that while I worked my butt off (as a gold subscriber) to grind AAs, anyone who decides to go gold after February will get them for free and all they have to do is go gold for a month...

Perhaps the devs should consider granting those AAs on a veteran basis or something, rather than the "here ya go, free AAs to all" approach.
Or perhaps I'll just downgrade to silver after this... Or perhaps I'll spend some in game plat on a krono and get 4000 AA's for less then 500k...

It just doesnt seem fair to those that have EARNED their AAs the hard way.

Alrighty, while i'm all for moving forward and appreciate the constant work you devs put into the game im going to have to disagree a little bit with the AA, I mean when your able to do 2/3 dailys and get almost 20-40 aa per daily (whic is close to 100 a day) that should be more incentive then any to getting AA. I am a 13 year vet, with over 13,000 AA and we didn't have any "dailies" or "free aa" I spent my time, that I will never get back and just to make it all seem worthless, this has crushed motivation on a whole nother level. Do the right thing by the people who helped make this game what it is and atleast curb the #, I mean where the heck did 4000!!! come from, how about a free 500aa? Or 20aa per level???? 4000!!!!! Thats more then some mains in my guild have and we have beaten the entire expansion of CoTF T1A/B

They can't refund AA, because then youll have the 4-5k FREE ones and the refunded ones you can pick and choose - youll be nearly maxed in no time.

I dont know about everyone else, but unless they make it so grey mobs cant kill you in 5 hits, as well have have millions of HP. a grey mob should never be a challange, yet grey mobs for most melee are still near impossible to solo (that means no merc) and thru normal dmg means they take forever to kill. i will prolly be quiting the game after this patch comes out as my primary toons are Ranger/mage/SK. SK's will be broken and suck very badly at tanking adds in groups and raids, and they already arnt the best tanks. I see mo mention of pally swarming undead mobs, simply because most people dont do that. but they will after this patch. and instead of giving away thousands of AA's and being cheap about it they should redesign the AA's to be more compact and not have to have 12k of them. also another under lvl 80 is pointless to play unless your one of those people that like to do the progression stuff... how about giving people XP boosts so they dont HAVE to PL toons to lvl them. i took a lvl 1 into kurns tower the other day, killing the skellies there is to about 10 of them to get 1 lvl. people wouldnt swarm and beam so much, but its simply the only way to lvl a toon a reasonable ammount of time.

My guess, is that the dev team rightly felt if they removed mass killing, people would complain about getting the aa they need being too slow. I guess the auto-grant was a 'quick fix' to defend against that issue.

For me, as I said, the mass killing fix is long overdue. I just hope if Sony pause to reflect on the aa granting, it doesn't stop the fixes (after appropriate consideration on those too).

Personally, I don't think Sony need to give away aa to 'buy' acceptance of the fixes. My peers all think it's long overdue.

Playing on and off since 2000. 4K aa or less on my char. Worked my off to get them... Bad call just to give them out for free now.. Whats the fun of the game anymore ??? If no feeling of progressing your character. The day EQ2 gave free lvl 85 char i stopped playing. Well at least ESO is coming out in a few months..

THAT is a very good idea. Well said, I hope Piestro et al read and take your post seriously. Huzzah!

Apparently there is NO difference between a Zerker/ranger/rogue killing 15- lvl 85 mobs, and a Mage killing 100 level 100 mobs......

I'll forward this one on, not a bad suggestion at all.

Then I suggest the "nerf" be akin to something like:

1) Mortal Coil cannot proc/doesn't stack with Lich Sting.
2) Mortal Coil, when active, cannot re-proc.

Swarming is still "possible". You will die, a lot. You can't reasonably pull 150 anymore (which seems to be the lag issue they're trying to prevent.)

The AA is change is going to be for the better, this game is 15 years old and having to grind out 10k + AA's on multiple characters to do group content is terribly daunting. Thumbs up!

this guy could not be more correct in any way.

so basically the time we've spent grinding out our AAs will be useless and almost a waste of time as we all loved doing it (/cough) ... but it was neccessary to do to continue raiding, get better chances in gameplay to survive.
But I thinkk they should give us back the AAs we've already invested to keep the gap there otherwise as it's been stated in MANY other posts, you'll have high level character who have no skills, and couldn't hit the side of the SOE building while tanking