Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

It still works on humanoid-only mobs, which describes maybe 10-20% of combat NPCs. Likely no undead things, which leaves most all of Dead Hills out. Are bixies/clicknars humanoid? If not, scratch Bixie Warfront HAs too. Ethernere Tainted West Karana has almost no humanoid mobs. Oh hey, most of Neriak is still open!


...also, how many level 99 and below mobs do we typically fight nowadays? Most things I kill are white-yellow-red.

Like I said and you quoted before, you guys are going about it wrong, fix the aggro chaining issue by reducing the max number of mobs that can be aggro on a single target.

Assassinate level 99 mobs? I'm kind of excited about this, and scared shitless. Time to finally bother maxing Subtle Blows....

Well my biggest issue was now having to watch 3 buffs (DI, AI, Shining) that can wear off short of the timer, when last expansion it was only 1 (DI). I do not want to baby sit buffs like that . And it especially stinks because on Zek we can't see each others buffs outside of our 1 group, not even in raid can we see across groups!

Second, both ward and shining didn't have to be nerfed, it could have been just ward and left shining alone. As you know, people aren't going to just go around swarming zones for no reason without a way to kill things. Nerfing ward takes away our ability to kill things.

If you have a problem with people swarming lowbie zones, which is all shining + ward let you do, then you'd really have to also take away all the counter attack discs and rampage ect. Why not just put halls of honor code in all zones if swarming lowbie zones is such an issue. If you agro more than, what is it, 10 mobs? they start gating.

This was asked in the original thread but not answered. Re: mage beams capped at 12 targets and wiz beams increased from 8 to 12. So both classes will have similar beam spells, but wizards will continue to get blinded and stunned for using them while mages will still have no negative recourse. Why? How about removing those recourses from wiz beams?

Cool thats good to know about the trade skill ones. thanks.

Erollisi day quests, visiting zones for the explorer achievements that turn on next week, the huge number of quests that award useful items, quests that save AA rewards in the rewards window, or gain normal level exp if you just want to grind.

Bard AA: Fleet of Foot. Please exclude that one! Thanks.

If you check the box it'll take effect when you zone or something similar. You'll get the AA granted then.

I think the proposed AA changes are great.

I stopped playing EQ a little after the PoP era, and I just recently returned as a free to play player here a couple months back. As a cleric main, it has been really slow going to get to where I'm at now: level 76 with just over 900 AAs.

I'm about at the point where I need to make the commitment to go gold, but with the overwhelming majority of the player base light years ahead of me (and no viable way for me to bridge the gap on my own) I think to myself: do I really want to pay the price of admission just so I can continue soloing light blue mobs for months and months on end? Probably not. However, if there was a way for me to progress to the point where I could be viable in a reasonable amount of time, that is something I would do.

I understand the frustration from those players who have been active for years and now feel like much of that time has been devalued by auto-granting AAs to lower level characters. Still, in the end, I really think it will be more positive than negative for the game - and that's a good thing.

As for some of the other proposed changes, I have to admit that I don't understand the need for all of them - specifically, I'm referring to the cleric spell changes. For example, I really don't see the purpose in changing the Ward of the Divine line. Soloing in BoT, I can't safely handle much more than one room at a time (e.g., 4 - 6 mobs). I can't see how those pathing calcs are stressing the servers. I haven't done the parsing, but will 80 procs be enough to allow us to continue handling small groups of mobs like this?

Maybe I'm missing something, but the only areas I can think of where a cleric could really mass swarm would be in zones which are deep gray anyway (e.g., trade skill farming). But they will be able stay alive and keep refreshing their buffs in those kinds of zones anyway, so I guess I just don't see the need to make it more irritating for them.

bring these suggestions first to test so we may try it out and help with proper feedback before throwing it out there

I am happier now, but still not happy. The aa changes really addressed all my concerns if I read things right. People can give themselves aa's, or not as they choose, or wait and get the ones they want with the current system and then at a latter date if they want get the others. Not everyone will be happy because people will still get something for free, but honestly this is a decent compromise in my opnion.

However changing headshot/decap/assinate like that isn't good either. Sure it gives me a viable option on my ranger to root kill many more mobs, but with that it still would not change from how myself and most other rangers do things now. In fact I think it will create more problems. Now instead of me pulling small groups of mobs in outdated content and killing them I will be killing small groups of mobs in current content so 1 player is now doing what a group did before. For rogues it will probably be the slightly worse just pull 1-2 mobs at a time with healer merc out and hope for the best but will probably work once again crowding current content. Zerkers honestly will be making out better then rogues I think because they don't have the humanoid restriction, but that just means more areas camped by fewer people. Also as has already been pointed out going up to level 99 is to high it will break raids as the 3 classes go to town on trash and adds.

I still say you should split things up leave the 3 abilities as they are now working on a max level of mobs 11-12 levels lower then you to not overcrowd current areas. I could be wrong but after reading all of the last topic I did saw one person complain one person of the 3 classes. And it wasn't because he was swarm pulling it was because he was in a camp for weeks grinding aa's which the 2nd person needed for a quest. I did not see one person complain about the 3 classes swarm pulling, but I will admit I could have missed something. So please leave the current line as it in and add advance headshot/decap/assinate for people to take if they want, but do not let it go up to level 99.

How much shorter will it be? How many procs on average would it take for it to last 10 minutes in normal circumstances? That's the detail we want.

why cant you just suspend the people that cause the disruption to start with? I still say we should be allowed to hit up to 30 mobs at a time with beams, reason is that the imposed limit in a regular group setting is not always enough. im glad to see you changed you mind on sk's (and I don't even play a sk) I also still think the auto grant aa's are a bad move. ok you can opt in for them but it still makes the years of grinding you did pointless for those low level ones so all the aa's you gained since compleating those are the only ones that were worth while and a complete waste of a couple of years of our time

Why don't we buff mage PBAOEs to match wizards? No excuse now that beam is target limited.

If it was easy, they would have been doing that all along.

As someone who's been using a targeted AE to get exp, your ideal mob pile size will be much lower than the zone disrupting amount. Somewhere around 30-40 mobs should be good for 12 target AEs, 15-25 has been working fine for me with 5 target ones.

Unless your goal is lag the zone out, then nothing changes.

I'll forward it on.

Please be specific with why as well.

OK - fair enough, I can accept that.
You've always been straight with me so far.

Note on AA - innate stats except for runspeed are worthless too.
Would still like to see a way that peeps could SPEND those 4000AA as they see fit.
Also - re easy mode: We need a better way to earn AA at the high end (4k+) other than endless grinding of trash mobs. (EQ should not be a "job")
Some level 95 and 100 Dailies from Franklin Teek would help this along. Why not make that one of the new "weekly" additions?
-Rat
PS: If Horton could hear a "Who" - perhaps only he can hear the Clerics. I've never heard of a Cleric selling PL's on General Chat (when it's up) - never.