Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Preach it brother! That's my quote of the day. Every single time I see a Cleric complain about how mercs took their job, this comes to mind. Mercs are a terrible substitute for a real Cleric, unless that cleric is pretty clueless - which sadly, many are. The Cleric class is an immensely potent one, thanks to the developers doing so much to address the concerns of many players, who frankly, would be less concerned if they mastered all the tricks available already.

Don't get me wrong, things like potentially having to recast Shining a ton more often are obnoxiously tedious, and no one should be in favor of that. >_<

If you ever get the chance to group with someone - Cleric or otherwise - give them a chance. Skilled players can surprise you, and maybe you'll find someone more deserving than your merc. Not always, but hey, it's a good thing to experiment with.

When you're feeling... adventurous.

These numbers strike me as frighteningly low... my parses indicate an extremely rapid fade on these against just a handful of stuff even in the T1 HoT category...

How does the level of mobs impact this exactly? I'm somewhat confused.

I must have missed that. My apologies for getting impatient. I do realize you cannot reply to all. I was actually meaning as in a mass response; as in taking notes from many and maybe responding to an overall view on the propositions, as many I have seen here overlap in this way or that. I know some of mine do.
It was more about receiving responses so we could maybe get an idea what would work and what couldn't, and perhaps the extend that some would be able to be worked in, as a rough idea of where we could proceed on the ideas, so they could mature and grow. The post you replied to didn't have as much refinement in terms of stating things as clearly, as the original posting. My fault entirely for that, again I was impatient.

... Yeah, for ripostes it doesn't matter. Ignore that part.

Again please.... Don't just hand out 4k in one blast. Give 80 aa per level 51+. It would be so much easier. Is there some kind of coding issue with this?

This would be the most logical way to do this as it doesn't goof up the aa exp curve since you could stop at any level and get aa or just level up to 100 and when you get there have 4k aa that have been spent on where you want them to be spent.

I am hoping the proc rate/chance for Assassinate is much higher than that of Decapitate, since Rogues trigger from a backstab, Berzerkers trigger from a normal swing. There are quite a few more melee swings than there are backstabs in a typical fight. Rangers as well, assuming they are bowing, will have more chances to trigger since archery is faster than backstabs. Even if I /disc Frenzied Stabbing I'd be nowhere near 50% of the trigger chance for either of the other two chain classes.

Given the lack of content in the latest COTF release . . . do you really think that they have the development staff to (quickly) create quests arcs for each expansion? Other than, say, 'kill 80 of x and 40 of y'?

I mean it is a great idea and I would love to see it done - I just don't think that they have the resources to do that.

This doesn't really help his argument, but I don't believe mobs were getting a whole lot of Strikethrough in HoT, = more ripostes to creatures from HoT than you'll riposte to creatures in CotF. I haven't been on the tanking end of things (yet) to make a certain statement on that though.

What about Magician?
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?goto/post&id=3048578#post-3048578
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?goto/post&id=3048632#post-3048632

The granting of alt abilities is annoying but working through the process, it can be understood. New players and returning players wont play the old content by themselves, and I don't think they should. So make a new zone for them, a special zone, increased exp is awarded there, they can all hunt together and learn (re-learn) the game. Which is huge, dynamic, and difficult (not as difficult as naked corpse runs from Qeynos to high hold but times move on). Hopefully, the giving of AAs will curtail the massive power-leveling and inflation of Kronos.

I dislike the most is the amount of nerfs; that are all done in the name of balance and game play. The best example I can think of is the cleric. Clerics were replaced by mercs and given a small measure of combat ability, to which you though was over powered and was nerfed, so the cleric had to make a choice between healing power or combat power, sacrificing one for the other. Then mercs were given aas and gear, and the cleric gets that said combat power nerfed again. Just stop it. Paladins got stuns that made them the top tank class, then you went and made everything stun resistant. You want to take all the proposed warrior attacking abilities and make a Berserker out of them then fine. But once the abilities are in the game, unless it is flat out broke, let the game be a bit out of balance. Wouldn't we all benefit from Warriors being the preferred class, give them a class exp bonus, and let the SKs cry. Give back to the classes what the classes were about, uniqueness. Rangers headshot is as annoying as heck if your in that zone, but leave it alone. Leave the level cap to light blues so they can hunt zones very few people are in anyways. Reduce the ac on casters gear and give it to tanks, throw the classes out of balance so when you pick a class you realize the class has limits and if you exceed those limits you will die.
Your attempts to balance this game has made for less differences between the classes. We don't need new abilities, we need new content to test our abilities against.

If things get so out of balance that any class can kill multiple level 96+ mobs at a time then nerf the mobs. You know what stops beaming? Mobs resistant to; root, stun, mez, snare, and that summon and have high run speed. Be creative on mobs and increase their magic resistance to lines of spells or whatever the problem is. Add a new mob that buffs the mobs being targeted, scale the exp so it decreases with the amount of time in a zone, add a zone wide debuff that is triggered 45 mins after entering the zone that increases cast times to 20 secs.

Just stop the nerfs, 15 years of constant tinkering with it is enough.

I'd vote for refunds. Some may have created said chain classes in hopes to farm light blue exp in this way. I can see some Rangers/Berzerkers never being used again because they were meant as a slay-bot only.

If it's all the same, refund the AA and let us repurchase for the characters that we believe we'd want to continue this ability once it's been greatly modified.

Few things

-Back at the time of the great beam nerf we got hit the worst as we AE'd harder than anyone else. No this is not a joke we were ridiculous at the time.

-Since then we fell down some but did alright till RoF beta when you bumped nuke damage by 50-200% based on 30s parses given to you by a wizard.

-In order to get damage out of this line now that touches the AE's of the others we require a full group and then some, and the only target that will take respectable damage is the one with the Called Shots debuff.

-Due to your changes to Bosquestalker's Discipline (Thanks for that really, I do appreciate it and meant to say as much after testing it further but believe I forgot) we shouldn't hit Bullseye much at all anymore, which cuts down the AE damage a large amount.

-Efficient means nothing, we can't get back mana other than with our new bp clicks and even that is only a small amount. Compared to the wizards and mages that can practically get back their entire mana pool with a few clicks? There is no real way to compare them fairly.

Anyhow I asked mostly in jest because I didn't expect anything. However bumping ours to 12 does almost nothing detrimental simply because we also do half damage on moving or rooted mobs which means we can't really swarm without doing pitiful damage anyway.

Could you remove the innate stats? Those are generally known to be completely useless since you cap stats very easily with defiant.

23% of the time I love them as well!

Stats don't cap in the end-game, fyi.

You're my new hero. Sorry, Piestro.

At level 85 they will, at level 100 they wont. No don't argue this, I swear most people haven't looked at their stats recently.

This made me "el oh el" =)

In general terms the plan for raiding rangers in my guild is:

If the fight lasts a minute or so, BullsEye + Empowered Blades. Monks beware!
If the fight lasts around two minutes and more than one, BullsEye
If the fight lasts more than 3 minutes, Bosquestalkers or Bosque preceded by or followed by Empowered
Between two and three minutes? Round.

I believe that constitutes backup 6.