Rangers, Rogues, Berkerers and Shadowknights

1) I don't care about because I don't raid, but I will grant you are correct on that assesment. Obviously I wasn't trying to imply broken/F'd up content was good, However I do think raid content should be more exclusive then it has been in COTF/ROF

2) I don't agree that those missions took 4 hours to complete, however they could take the general format of the harder group missions in ROF and build on that. Something more event based and less go here kill this go there kill that. Like the missions in Underfoot. However that being said I thoroughly enjoyed all the T3/T4 missions in UF. Also like my thought that raid content should be exclusive, I don't think every random 3 man team + 3 mercs should be able to zerg through group missions.

It should require some forethought and proper use of resources to get through them. Not like the COTF missions where you basically Zone, Zerg, Chest, Kickplayer task. The only mission in COTF that was challenging (to some degree) so far was the Neriak one. We had to reset once on the Neriak II mission, but otherwise me and my friends streamrolled/1 shotted all the other events, and finished challenger in about 2 to 3 goes to get all the challenges. That seems very undertuned to me considering we are in group gear.

3) Don't see a problem with this, especially since FD pots and every class having some form of aggro drop/DA/trick to work around this.

4) Also don't see a problem with this < throw in a handful of kiteable mobs or even entire instances of kiteable content. That way those classes don't get left out.

I'm not sure there's enough Clerics left in the group game to make any noise!
Raid Clerics don't see much of a change that I can tell. (I might be wrong here?)
-Rat (Rangers love Clerics!)

No mains in our guild quit over the changes. Quite a few alt accounts of those classes were allowed to expire though.

When rogue assassination first appeared in game it was a fun tool, but generally didn't fire *THAT* often and was only minor XP benefit. However given the huge increases in dex since then and the corresponding effect it's hard on assassination proc rates, it is clear something had to change from the original implementation. That was either going to be artificial stagnation and limiting it to green cons only (the previous method), or a huge nerf to the proc rate (the new method).

Personally I'm happy with the changes and certainly I don't personally know anyone who quit over it. It has left a gap though that needs filling - an easier way to solo/molo while waiting on a proper group.

Visual motor tracking speed in the 5%ile. Now do I have permission to play EQ MY own way?

We certainly have critical mass as evidenced by my 3 week absence now for pneumonia.

My point is that it's not up to you or anyone else here to decide what is too each or too hard for any other player. Keep your nose in your own game.

What are you going on about now, Leerah?

as much as people try to deny it. EQ is still a social game and its about community.

Raid guilds foster their own community and establish their own internal social status as well as internal structure. The autogrant changes along with the hit counters and swarming may very well force players to individually change their playstyle but any guild negatively impacted to the point that they are not functioning should look within. Raiding guilds stand to benefit the most from the autogrant changes as their recruiting pool has increased and apps will have essential basic aa's at the minimum to contribute properly on raids. this by far will have a greater impact long term than curtailing massive solo gains that discourage grouping. personally i give the devs props for changing their initial planned changes to abilities that can be tuned while leaving proposed game mechanic nerfs intact for the most part.

someone that was held back by a bunch AA most likely wasn't a quality raider a guild would be looking for.

Sure, there's a bunch of solo'er-grouper who now have nothingelse to grind on, and are now looking for raiding guild... but having 10k AA don't mean anything.

My favourite EQ character is the cleric, I loved playing it from velious up to tss. When I returned by UF-HoT the cleric was starting to go down on the fun curve unless you were a raiding. Nowadays it's fun factor on the grouping/soling had been absolutely devastated, cleric is no longer a funny soloer or grouper.

Are they powerful for groups? Yes, they, but they are not funny to play.
Are they powerful fo soloing? Ummm, dont know but just by reading the patch notes I think the average soloing cleric has been destroyed with the requirement of chain casting the same spells again and again.

Classes should be fun, not just powerful, this is a GAME, not working responsability.

Current developers are going again and again on the wrong direction. Grouping and Soloing players do not need nerfs, raiders are the one that need either nerfs or raid dificulty enhancements so they don't finish all the raids 48 hours before expansions are released.

Clerics were using those spells for ages and never caused server lag issues, they were caused by beaming and insane swarmers. What happened? Clerics getting the worse part of the hit, while others "nerfed" had found a way to get over it.

Are they going to solve this? No, they had moved on to the "next thing". Once again mediocre implementation that do not solve anything but break something, like necros DB and the stupid hotfix. The chain on mistakes, once again against the wrong group of players, yet nothing will be done.

If we all were rational free customers, without the level of addiction and investment already invested in this game, most of us would had left or the devs would had been fired from their jobs. But we are in this world, built with a Cobol+386 that makes a lame excuse to up things and give freaking slow irational solutions that end up not working as intended.

Why are clerics quite and not complaining? Resilience.

It's funny, but we pay this game, developers work FOR US, and we don't see them as part of our team, we see them as our enemy, as the people who work against us. Why? Because they keep going on the wrong directions, wrong solutions, wrong implementations. I wonder what would happen if they posted some polls to see what we think about several decisions they made...

Not really. If you want a game, your way all the time then you need to start programming and make your own game.

I didn't make the changes nor advocate the changes. My points were that people leaving because they only used HS, Decap, Assass as their leveling tools would need to adapt to today's EQ. You started this thread assuming that there was a very significant amount of players from those classes that were going to let their accounts expire. I have no research to back this up, but I'm going to guess that there was no significant drop out.

This is rather shortsighted. it makes the assumption that former raiders dont return to the game looking to get back to raiding and newer players have no desire to raid. your assumption that a low aa's player is not a quality one is very flawed. As someone who recruited and prepared recruits for raiding for several years its this kind of thinking thats held alot of raiding guilds back...

people new to raiding . get it tough. first they are behind the curve gear wise and aa wise.

outside of the guilds that recruiting spans across multiple servers and can sustain themselves with max aa, raid quality geared recruiting base. the majority of guilds do not have that luxury. outside of poaching for one another their options are the guys returning or learning the game. these players benfiting from the autogrant is the mid tier guilds bread and butter. which in turn becomes the high end raid guilds bread and butter.. long term there isnt really much of a quality rationalization that would lead anyone to believe this is not anything but beneficial to raiding guilds.

I don't see how the changes to the classes listed in the OP would cause people to leave. Heck yesterday I was grouping with a friend of mine in PoFire with his ranger. At only 68 he was able to headshot the mobs at C1. Something that used to take level 79. So if anything, rangers were buffed at least.

Now I know Mages and SK's took the biggest hit on their swarm kiting methods. But I'm ok with that. They can still pull multiple mobs, just not 50-100. That was going to be fixed and everyone knew it. It was too stressful on the servers and disrupted the zone for everyone not in that particular group. It still happens however, but not nearly as bad.

Now.. the one with the physical disability... thats an excuse if I've ever heard one. To one shot mobs as a rogue/ranger you need to be 60. Which meant if you can get to 60 you can play the game somewhat normally. SK's to swarm took MC which is even higher, and Berserkers.. well you get the idea.

But what they don't realize is they aren't the only one who has a disability that prevents them from playing things how they'd like to. I've got one from the military that prevents me from participating in sports for the most part. I'll never play in the NBA, NFL, or professional paintball. But it doesn't stop me from shooting hoops, throwing a ball around, or even paintballing with my friends. I may not be able to move as fast as they can, but I don't tell them to hold back on account of me. My pride is too great for that.

So my advice there is this. If you don't like being judged by others in how you play, stop judging the game based on what you can do. Do what you can and be the best you can be at it. Don't worry if you can keep up or not. Take pride in what you can do. People will respect you for it.

It sounds like there is some magical number of AAs in the middle that makes for the perfect raider. What is that number?

I asked about people leaving as a result of the changes. I only saw a few who said they would. Granted, I've been out of it the last three weeks but it seems that by the end of the brouhahaha, most people have adapted.

Still, you all need to be more tolerant of a person who chooses to use his playtime headshotting, chatting in the lobby, tradeskilling or working on alcohol tolerance. It's a large tent with room for everyone.

Definitely didn't affect my play style - I always thought it was rather rude for 1 or 2 people to completely take over a zone and you had to wait until they were finished to do your questing. As an 81 SK I'm perfectly happy to be able to handle small groups - that's all you really need if you are questing. With so much content to explore it really is a shame to just blow through a couple of chosen zones to get to the top and be bored.

Just my opinion

Tolerance goes both ways. In this case, its up to the players to take the changes and adapt. None of the changes have resulted in any playstyles being obsolete or even impossible. Quite the contrary.

Headshots for example, were buffed. In my group of friends, we've found that we can headshot mobs in PoFire at 67 and 69 Before the change it required 79 and 81.

My 90 ranger is getting 200k headshots. At, lets say, 1.5 ppm (1 per 40s) thats a 5k dps boost on humanoid mobs. Normally I can sustain 3-4k dps.

The HS change is not a buff. It's the replacement of a reliable soloing ability with a randomly triggered grouping ability, both of which were/are very situational thanks to the peculiar humanoid-only restriction. At level 79, your ranger friend won't be able to clear C1 solo, as rangers easily could before the HS change.

What you perceive as a mildly useful buff to rangers' and rogues' group game is a total nerf to their solo game.

Remove the humanoid-only restriction and, though the solo game will remain a fleeting memory, now we're talking more of an even trade in usefulness.