Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

About auto AA grant, I'm afraid its too late to but, could you consider omitting "Fortify Companion" AA from auto grant list?

I use this AA as long (full duration) avoidance buff.
Besides avoidance portion, at rk3, it has mitigation per hit 10%, total mitigation before fade is 100k. If I get auto grant to rk6, mitigation per hit will be 13% but total mitigation remains 100k, making it fade sooner than current rk3 by hitting total limit sooner.
Then I can train this AA to rk12, current final, it will be 19% mitigation per hit, total 160k before fading, still gonna fade sooner than current rk3.
For mitigation portion, surely its better to get rk12, but I like current rk3, weaker mitigation but can last longer as avoidance buff.

As level 100, 3400AA caster, I want to get auto grant, but this AA will block me from getting it forever, or until mitigation cap of AA is scaled based on rk3 (I afraid you gonna make it base on rk 12 somehow, though =p)... and I use this AA frequently so I cant neglect it.
Well, wish if theres button to refund selected AA, even if it works once per 6months or just once after auto grant done, it will save my (probably minor) situation.

im really confused as to how getting rid of power leveling is going to help people get more groups? Now everyone will just get 2-3 accounts, get their level 85s and 4k AAs or whatever, and just play with themselves. How is the solo player, who was probably the majority of people paying for swarm/beam power levels going to benefit? There wont be a reason to play a rogue, warrior, berserker or pretty much anything other than Necro or Mage if you are a one account player. If people think there will magically be groups all over the place you seriously have no clue. This isnt year 2000 everquest where camps had wait lists. On FV I can go to hotzones during prime time and they are still empty. Oh and if you cant play during prime time dont even bother trying to find groups.

Its the idea that since most people burn through first 80+ levels fast with their alts... Most players are level 90+ I would argue alot are 95+. They are doing Tasks and group content and getting geared for raid content. Being able to reach that point and be able to survive will mean that they can get into those guilds and be able to find groups. Most guilds are not going to listen to a level 70 with no AA's when they ask to join... But a level 80-85 with 4000AA's means that they are ready to keep going...

I don't know if it's been answered.. but will the auto granted AA's count towards peoples achievements? Personally, I don't think they should...

What I don't understand with this situation.

Swarming is a problem - Due to hardware issues, fairgame play etc etc.
The easy way to have fixed this was
Mages
1. Add a recourse that Does X per mob. (say 4-10k per mob) And it snares you for 3 - 6 ticks.
Sk's
1. Remove Mortal Coil, Replace with something helpful.
2. Fix the overall problems with the class already its been a few expansions when it was noted as a problem.
Others
- Mob based tweaks

What's to prevent a bunch of wizards / enchanters pulling a zone and then AE stunning + AE Nuking 200+ mobs?
If your fixing a problem adjust the entire problem
I Think there are certain things that could have been tweaked on the mob End that would have caused less reading fatigue (for me) and less outcry on the boards.

I noticed no changes are being made to the proc rate of slay undead or the issues of pali/clr swarm pulls being nerfed. Is this intentional or something people just forgot about because these classes keep quiet about it? If left the same these classes will become the Swarm pulling/SlayUndead (Decap) Power Levelers to spam general chat next. Lots of responses to these changes so I don't know if those issues were adressed too.

@Piestro, @PrathunSOE == When should we expect to see this change deployed. Thanks.

The SK nerfs are overkill and really not necessary to stop swarming.

No SK swarms green mobs, the reason is Mortal Coil won't proc on green mobs, that shows a few things. One is SKs can't kill a swarm of even green mobs before the epic wears off , so any argument that SKs can swarm with just the epic is false. The other is the keystone of swarming is Mortal Coil, without it SKs can't swarm.

SOE could fix this swarming issue by simply making Mortal Coil impossible to chain proc.

There are several things that need to happen to make swarming possible, one is you need at least light blues mobs, because as noted above Mortal Coil won't proc on green mobs.

Next is the mobs can't have to many hit points, if the epic wears off before Mortal Coil procs the SK will have to FD, or kite , or die. Again Mortal Coil proc is critical.

The mobs also can't hit to hard, if the damage the SK is taking exceeds the heals from the epic or Mortal Coil procs the SK dies.

Finally the mobs can't summon or feign death the SK, if they do the SK will get ping ponged and back hit to death.

So swarming only really applies to older, lower level zones where the mobs are light blue, don't have a lot of hit points, don't hit to hard, and don't summon or feign death the SK. No SK can swarm the last few expansions, the mobs hit to hard and have to many hit points.

The level mobs are matter in how effective the epic and similar disc and clickies work. Higher level mobs have more hit points and take longer to kill, and they hit harder. The harder the mob hits and the more hit points the mob has the less effective the epic and clickies become. Current content mobs are going to take a lot more hits to kill then say HOT era mobs.

This one size fits all number of hits nerf is a blunt and unnecessary fix.

There is no question this SK nerf is going to impair SK tanking, and while some may argue it won't it won't impair tanking that much I can't see why SK tanking should be impaired at all when it's not necessary to apply nerfs other then stopping the chain procing of Mortal Coil to stop swarming.

As a former (and hopefully future if I get my back fixed) boxer, I truly resent the implication that none of us ever group with other people. Even when I was able to box, I was happy to have other folks join me and even replace the extra parts of my box herd. My herd was created so that I could still get stuff done even if I couldn't find a group.

A previously stated suggestion that boxing should be banned was equally ludicrous.

With mercenaries, both of the npc and greedy player variety, groups are few and far between. Some folks either want to be greedy about drops or use mercs so that they don't have to worry about afk's (thier own or others) or both.

I keep my herd active so that I have more play options. Groups can choose between cleric, rogue, shammy or (non-swarming) SK depending on need. It also gives me a choice of what I want to play on any given day.

I adored the social aspect of the older EQ days and still spend time chatting even if I can't find a group. I'm truly hoping that more people will choose to group. I'm just not holding my breath for it.

LOL, hold on, let me check something... Yeah, I thought so, this isn't LotR Online forum, this is the Everquest forum...
But When Gimli says "Keep Breathing, that's the key" that always cracks a smile for me. And I hated when Haldir died at Helm's Deep. You know there is no mention of him dying in the original Tolkien books? It was actually commonly portrayed that he past into the West with his Elven kin after these events. The difference was Jackson wanting to depict loses on both sides. Just so you know.

Not trying to attack you or what you said, or how you said it. My point is this is about Everquest, which is not from the Tolkien books(Though check out "The Silmarillion" by Tolkien, gives a great historical account of Middle earth). The Game developers, designers and authors wanted something different, and created lore to make it different. That's the game we play now. The discussion and changes are for that game.
The fact remains that Ranger archery damage while they have the target in combat with a melee is twice that of when they are using root/snare tactics, and that's reverse logic. This is probably designed to make groups want rangers more, for the dps aspect, however it hinders their solo game if you consider xp gains.
Due to levels and numbers of mobs, grp content should be faster for xp due to higher innate dps standards, however doubling the ranger output for grps and not solo is rather drastic and should be more evenly scaled to allow rangers that want to solo to solo without such a large penalty in doing so.
By changing HS as is being done, it does help with the issues they are having to an extent, but it is also furthering that rift between solo and group for rangers, and that's wrong. If they want to do the change to ranger HS, that's fine, but give them a leg-up on archery damage for when its snare/rot and not in direct melee. That's my original point.

Really? You have some evidence for this?
Every time there has been a major nerf/change of this ilk I, personally, have seen a bunch of people quit.
Yes some of them come back months/years later.
Many don't.
I have got dozens, literally dozens, of people on my friends list who never came back.
I have a handful who did.
That's the issue here - losing/alienating the old-timers who are probably irreplaceable

Don't take my word for it. Look at the big name guilds of, say, 5 years ago. Look at the rosters and how many of those people are still playing. Many/most of those guilds have gone.
They went because EQ got too easy, not because it was too hard.

Look at our top guilds now. On my server there are 3 that should be raiding 5/6 nights a week. They are raiding for 2 because there is nothing for them do do on the others. These changes don't affect that directly, but those people who are already unhappy that there is nothing for them look around and see where all the energy and focus is going - ie not into keeping the people who've kept the game going for all this time and have stuck with it.

I got another take on this today. (My wife was unaware of these AA changes till today.)
She has 4500 AA on her 99 Chanter and indeed feels "robbed" of her time. (and refused to play today)
The AA are still feeling "freshly ground out" and she doesn't feel she got much use out of them, except to grind even more AA. (LOL!)
And I kinda feel like the 1/2 million plat worth of free Repo TA's I gave her, were now better off in my bank. I could have sold that 5th slot 100 times over.
Since the 4000 AA will be pretty much "gifted" - what's the actual harm of putting the old curve on the 4000-8000 AA window now? (It'll still take a few months to do 4000 to 10,000 - even that way)
Getting into RoF or CotF content if your coming back in the 60's or 70's (as we did) is indeed a part time job - not a game or a even a "hobby". And the 4000AA and Heroic characters will just put n00bs - at a "different" mountain to climb. (and a harder one at that - because you gave the easy mountain away)
-Rat

PS: This kinda reinforces my original comments: That this "giveaway" is nothing like adding more slots to the Extended Target Window to the UI for free.
Peeps need you to "throw them a bone" to swallow something this massive in scope.

This is bad change. It is a morally wrong change. Don't devalue our time investment. Make players work for their AAs.

Changes to reduce swarming were needed but these changes are too heavy handed.

This whole thing is heinous.

I see alot of people posting that they feel cheated out of their AA's ( if you got to use them at all then you weren't cheated out of them) or they don't want to play till after patch because why buy AA's given to you (if your 90+ there's lots of AA's that are strictly HoT and higher that you can work on not to mention just lvling to 100). 1And this game is called EverQuest There are so many quests in game that you can do ( they might be easy and fast but their still worth doing just for the fun of it) and progression tasks like DoN for bonuses, MPG Trials for Bonuses. There is also Achievements you can work on and there are alot of those. The possibilities are almost endless what you can do on the game besides just grinding exp for lvls and AA's. I'm not attacking anyone with this post just saying there more to game then lvl and AA. Safe Ventures to all and fun memories to be made!

Why are the players trying to blend all the classes?

People want ranger (headshot) and rogues (assassinate) to have same level of power of berserker decapitation... Alright then, as a zerker player, I want a bow and I want to back stab.
People want the negative effects of wizard beam to be removed, like a mages.. Alright then, as a mage player, I want bigger nukes and ports.

Keep going guys, and there will just be one freakin' class to play. They are meant to be different!!!! Everyone has their strength and weakness, its just about not making a whole class completely Over Powered - which is why we are having the welcomed and overdue adjustments.

This seems like the best idea to me. The old PoP and Luclin era 2/4/6=12 could become 1/2/3=5 reducing by more than half the needed AA to get them. I remember hating to grind the 9s out but those could cost 4 or 5 etc. Everyone is still earning AA and spending them as they wish but they only need ~40% as many to catch up. Current and past 2-3 expansions would stay at current levels and everything else would be dropped substantially.

I think it is probably too late for this but imo it would have been by far the best way to do it.

They're giving them away free.
2/4/6 could be 1/1/1 - (just like Dynn said) - and it'd still be better.
-R

How many of those 10% do you think will pay for renewable 1year subsbcribtions?

so I understand why the older timers are upset they feel like they are being robbed of the time they spent on getting their aas, but from the perspective of an old time casual who has thought about coming back a lot and the one thing that stopped me every time was the thought of having to grind levels stop because you cant progress farther without grinding aas. just to go back to grinding more levels to repeat this until you are maxed level and then grinding more aas at the end. its a vicious loop. what the devs appear to be trying to do is to remove the grind levels/grind aas loop that happens when players come back or start new characters. it does not delude the progress that people have already made or remove any difficulty from the game it eliminates some of the grind feeling that comes during leveling which I would hope that everyone agrees is rather annoying.

I've talked to several people in the last month that share your view. They're more likely to come back now that they don't have to spend months grinding to play in the same playground as me.