Test Update 09/17/15

September 17, 2015
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*** Highlights ***

- Modified the way that a weapons damage bonus is calculated. This should result in, on average, a 200% to 400% increase in the damage bonus of weapons depending on if the weapon is one-handed or two-handed.
- Most clickable buff items will now grant you a passive AA ability with a permanent effect! See the Items section for details.


*** Items ***

- Updated the way that the alternate advancement ability Sinister Strikes functions. The ability now grants weapons wielded in your offhand a percentage of your weapons damage bonus. This change allows the ability to grant an effect for weapons with a delay lower than 30 and will better scale to higher damage weapons.
- Fixed an issue that would cause items to be deleted if you tried to send them to a player that doesn't exist.
- The server is no longer alcohol powered and no longer requires a sacrifice of an alcoholic beverage when you drink an alcoholic beverage.
- Changed the following buff lines that result from activating items so that their effects grant the bearer passive AA abilities: Ancestral Memories, Aura of Battle, Breath of Atathus, Expanding Mind, Form of Defense, Form of Endurance, Form of Protection, Form of Rejuvenation, Grim Aura, Knowledge of the Past / Soothing Breath, Might of Stone, Myrmidons Skill, and Prismatic Ward.
- - Activating an item with one of these spells grants you a passive AA ability at a rank that matches the power of the buff. (Activating an item with a weaker buff will not lower your passive AA ability rank.)
- - Activating an item with one of these spells now casts a shadow spell named for the buff line. These shadow spells have no effects but are permanent duration and are intended to allow you to retain the use of these items as a means to reduce the impact of incoming dispel attacks.
- - When you are granted a rank of one of these passive AA abilities you are now also granted an activated ability called Item: Disable Item Abilities. Activating this new ability will remove all ranks of all of the passive Item: * abilities should you decide you do not want these effects active.
- Extended the spell durations to permanent for the following buff lines that result from activating items: Aura of the Void, Essence of Ruaabri, Gnoll Reaver Fortitude, Gunthak Grit / Fortitude, Illusionary Spikes, and Thorny Shield.
- Fixed a problem that could cause some items to be lost when unpacking a suit of Hero's Forge armor.


*** Quests & Events ***

- Look to the marketplace this October for the Cat in a Bag. Each one contains a random adoptable cat familiar. Trade them to your friends or collect them all yourself, and keep an eye out for the easily terrified Scaredy Cat familiar and always agitated Cranky Cat familiar!


*** Spells ***

- Spells can now have more than one focus effect at a time, similar to AAs.
- Melee skills that apply buffs to the caster no longer require a target in order to work.
- Shadowknight - Adjusted the hatred multiplier for the gift recourse from the line of Touch spells to be as good or better than the highest rank of the AA ability Voice of Thule that is available at each level range.
- Spells that allow you to gravitate your target toward your location have been modified so that they only function on targets up to level 100. This applies to Compliant Lurch and Forceful Attraction.

*** NPC ***

- Reviewed the majority of enemies in Call of the Forsaken and The Buried Sea zones with regards to immunity to runspeed changes, mesmerization, stun, lull, charm, and fear, and removed or relaxed restrictions on most NPCs.
- Some enemies have had their immunities to gravitate and fling abilities fixed so that these abilities will no longer attempt to cast rather than the abilities successfully casting and having no effect. This applies primarily to raid encounters and encounters in the Plane of War.

*** AA ***

- Passive AA abilities that modify the amount of hatred generated by the player's actions can now be toggled on and off. This change means these abilities can now be auto-granted to all classes, and allowed us to refund the activated AA ability Negation of Subtlety.
- The AA abilities Knowledge of Alaran Culture and Advanced Knowledge of Alaran Culture have been removed. All Veil of Alaris AA abilities that required the purchase of Advanced Knowledge of Alaran Culture have had that restriction removed.
- The warrior and berserker AA ability lines Bandage Wound, Mithaniel's Binding, Field Dressing, and Combat Medic have been consolidated into a single general line called Bandage Wounds.
- The AA ability lines Bandage Wounds and Combat Medic shared by every non-warrior and berserker classes have been consolidated into a single general line called Bandage Wounds.
- In order to reduce UI clutter in the AA window, consolidated the general innate statistic lines (Innate Strength, Innate Agility, etc) and the statistic cap lines (Planar Strength, Planar Agility, etc) into single ability lines. For example: Planar Strength is now rank 16 of Innate Strength.
- Glyph of the Indeterminable Reward and Glyph of Unfathomable Reward no longer share a re-use timer with the other Glyph AA abilities.
- Corrected an issue with the Ageless Enmity and Area Taunt AA abilities that prevented them from adding the intended amount of hatred over the previously most hated target.
- The passive AA ability Spell Casting Reinforcement no longer extends the duration of invulnerability spells.
- Unobtainable ranks of Hero's Vitality, Hero's Fortitude, and Hero's Resolution no longer display in the Special tab of the AA window. Newer ranks of the ability are displayed as they become available as rewards for completing content.
- Beastlord - Renamed the AA ability line Extended Feralgia to Extended Moongrowl and corrected it to work on level 105 spells.
- Beastlord - Corrected an issue with the AA Extended Bloodlust that prevented it from extending the duration of the second rank of the Bloodlust ability.
- Beastlord - Renamed the AA ability line Spell Casting Subtlety to Combat Subtlety and updated its description to better reflect the fact that hatred generated by both spells and melee combat is affected by this line.
- Beastlord - Corrected a bug with the passive AA ability Extended Moongrowl that prevented it from extending the duration of the Growl of the Leopard and Feralgia lines of spells as intended.
- Beastlord - Adjusted the required level, expansion and costs for the Shaman and Beastlord versions of the AA abilities Shrink and Group Shrink. This corrects an issue that prevented the beastlord version of the AA ability Shrink from displaying.
- Berserker - Renamed the AA ability line Echoing Cries to Extended War Cry.
- Berserker - Removed the ability for the self-damage component of the AA ability Agony of Absolution to apply critical damage.
- Berserker - Updated the AA ability line Axe of Rallos to function with the level 105 skill Axe of Numicia.
- Berserker - Renamed the AA ability line Extended Havoc to Extended Cry Havoc and it now functions on the ability Cry Carnage.
- Berserker - The AA ability line Decapitate no longer reports "Your target does not meet the spell requirements" when melee attacking targets that are above the level in which the ability can trigger. Instead, the decapitating blow will deal 0 damage to targets that are too high of a level for this ability.
- Berserker - Furious Rampage now places a visible buff on you to indicate its duration and to allow you to remove the effect early if needed.
- Berserker - Created Focused Furious Rampage, a new AA ability that allows you the same number of additional combat rounds on a single target.
- Enchanter - Changed the re-use times of all enchant material AA abilities from 1 to 8 hours to 10 to 60 seconds. These abilities now share two re-use timers (one for mass and one for single use).
- Monk - Destructive Force now places a visible buff on you to indicate its duration and to allow you to remove the effect early if needed.
- Monk - Extra melee rounds granted from Destructive Force now have the ability to trigger additional hits from double attack, etc.
- Monk - Created Focused Destructive Force, a new AA ability that allows you the same number of additional combat rounds on a single target.
- Monk - Updated the AA ability Hastened Destructive Force to function on both Destructive Force and Focused Destructive Force.
- Rogue - Rakes Rampage now places a visible buff on you to indicate its duration and to allow you to remove the effect early if needed.
- Rogue - Created Focused Rakes Rampage, a new AA ability that allows you the same number of additional combat rounds on a single target.
- Paladin - Modified the AA ability Beacon of the Righteous so that it will now impart its instantaneous hatred component even if the stun and hatred over time components of the ability are resisted.
- Paladin - Changed the resist modifier for Divine Call to be more in line with other gravitate and fling abilities.
- Paladin and Shadowknight - Added a new passive ability line, Bold Attacks, that increases the amount of hatred generated by your actions. Reduced the effective hate percentages for the activated AA abilities Voice of Thule and Marrs Salvation so that maximum hate generation is close to the same amount.
- Warrior - Added more ranks to the passive AA ability line Bold Attacks and extended the line to lower levels to match the levels that the Paladin and Shadowknight version of this AA ability line become available.
- Warrior - Renamed the AA ability line Hastened Defiance to Hastened Warlords Tenacity and re-ordered the ranks to reflect their proper power growth.
- Warrior - All ranks of the AA ability Warlords Tenacity now count down in buff-frozen zones.
- Warrior - Modified Warlord's Grasp so that the improved taunt portion of the ability will continue to function even if the target is immune to the gravity portion of the ability.

- Made a number of changes to AA abilities that allow you to escape from combat:
- - Corrected a bug that ignored any chance to escape from combat that was set below 100% on spells that did not have a duration.
- - Changed the invisibility component of abilities that allow you to escape. Now, upon successfully rolling your escape chance, if you are at least 30 feet away from all targets that have you high (top 10) on their hatelist, you will have a spell cast on you. In most cases this spell is an invisibility buff.
- - Modified the cleric ability Divine Peace, the paladin ability Balefire Burst, the warrior ability Howl of the Warlord, and the berserker ability Self Preservation to apply a sanctuary buff upon a successful escape rather than invisibility.
- - The distance restriction for the added spell component of these abilities does not apply to the hatelist removal functionality. There is no minimum distance for removing yourself from the hatelists of qualifying NPCs.
- - Put level restrictions in place on all escape abilities. Starting at level 75 most classes are only able to immediately escape combat from NPCs that are yellow con (player level +2) or lower. Exceptions to this are Rogues, Bards, Monks, Shadowknights and Rangers who can escape from NPCs that are up to 4 levels higher. AA abilities available prior to level 71 now work on creatures up to level 75.
- - All classes with escape AA abilities now have new 0 cost ranks available at each level increase that they did not previously have purchasable ranks. These 0 cost ranks increase the maximum level that the abilities will function on.
- - Bard - Increased mana cost for higher level ranks of the AA ability Fading Memories by approximately 3% per player level.
- - Ranger - Removed mana cost for the AA ability Cover Tracks and increased its success rate from 50-70-85% to 60-75-90%.
- - Magician - Combined the AA abilities Drape of Shadows and Cloak of Shadows into a single ability line Drape of Shadows which provides a chance for the Magician to escape from combat and a guaranteed chance for their pet to escape from combat. The combined ability does not require the Magicians pet to be up for the Magician to escape from combat. Merged the Magician passive abilities Hastened Drape of Shadows and Hastened Cloak of Shadows into a single line which provides a 4.5 minute reduction to the reuse time of the combined ability at max rank.
- - Shadowknight - The spell Rigor Mortis will be modified in a later patch to correctly cap the level of targets that it functions on and Last Gasp, Last Breath, Final Gasp and Terminal Breath will be updated with similar functionality to Rigor Mortis. For now, Rigor Mortis is capped at level 109.

- AA abilities that allow you to fling or gravitate your target to your location have been modified to function only on NPC targets below your current level. 0 cost ranks have been added at each level increase for classes with these abilities to increase the level range that the abilities will function on. This applies to Lure of the Siren's Song, Divine Call, Moving Mountains, Warlord's Grasp, and Hate's Attraction.

- Combined the following activated AA abilities into single lines:
- - Acute Focus of Arcanum, Enlightened Focus of Arcanum and Empowered Focus of Arcanum are now ranks 2-5 of Focus of Arcanum.
- - Replenish Companion ranks 1-21 are now ranks 2-22 of Mend Companion.
- - Berserker - Cascading Rage ranks 1-10 are now ranks 4-13 of Untamed Rage. Hastened Cascading Rage has been renamed Hastened Untamed Rage and has been updated to function on all ranks of the combined ability line.
- - Berserker - Stomping Leap is now rank 3 of Battle Leap. Battle Leap rank 3 is now rank 4. Rank 3 of Battle Leap now stuns targets up to level 85 in addition to conferring a melee bonus to the caster, rank 4 now stuns targets up to level 90 as well as conferring an improved melee bonus.
- - Cleric - Improved Sanctuary is now rank 2 of Sanctuary.
- - Druid - Hand of Ro is now rank 1 of Blessing of Ro, ranks 2-5 of Blessing of Ro are equivalent to what were previously ranks 1-4.
- - Enchanter - Improved Reactive Rune ranks 1-3 are now ranks 3-6 of Reactive Rune.
- - Magician - Small Modulation Shard, Medium Modulation Shard, and Large Modulation Shard are now ranks 1-3 of a combined line Summon Modulation Shard.
- - Magician - Fire Core ranks 1-10 are now ranks 2-11 of Heart of Flames. Extended Fire Core has been renamed Extended Heart of Flames and has been updated to work on all ranks of Heart of Flames.
- - Magician - Vapor Core ranks 1-12 are now ranks 2-13 of Heart of Vapor. Extended Vapor Core has been renamed Extended Heart of Vapor and has been updated to work on all ranks of Heart of Vapor.
- - Magician - Ice Core ranks 1-7 are now ranks 2-8 of Heart of Ice. Extended Ice Core has been renamed Extended Heart of Ice and has been updated to work on all ranks of Heart of Ice.
- - Magician - Stone Core ranks 1-10 are now ranks 2-11 of Heart of Stone. Extended Stone Core has been renamed Extended Heart of Stone and has been updated to work on all ranks of Heart of Stone.
- - Necromancer - Army of the Dead ranks 1-27 are now ranks 4-30 of Wake the Dead. Graverobbing has been renamed Hastened Wake the Dead and has been updated to function on all ranks of the combined ability line. Quickened Army of the Dead has been renamed Quickened Wake the Dead and has been updated to function on all ranks of the combined ability line.
- - Necromancer - Improved Death Peace is now rank 3 of Death Peace.
- - Necromancer - Perfected Dead Man Floating is now rank 2 of Dead Man Floating.
- - Paladin - Hand of Disruption is now rank 1 of Force of Disruption, ranks 2-15 of Force of Disruption are equivalent to what were previously ranks 1-14.
- - Shadowknight - Improved Death Peace is now rank 3 of Death Peace.
- - Shadowknight - Improved Explosion of Hatred is now rank 3 of Explosion of Hatred. All ranks have been made no-resist.
- - Shadowknight - Improved Explosion of Spite is now rank 2 of Explosion of Spite. All ranks have been made no-resist.
- - Warrior - Enhanced Area Taunt is now rank 2 of Area Taunt. Hastened Instigation has been renamed Hastened Area Taunt and has been updated to function on all ranks of the combined ability.
- - Warrior - Stomping Leap is now rank 3 of Battle Leap. Battle Leap rank 3 is now rank 4. Rank 3 of Battle Leap now stuns targets up to level 85 in addition to conferring a melee bonus to the caster, rank 4 now stuns targets up to level 90 as well as conferring an improved melee bonus.
- - Wizard - Mana Blast, Mana Blaze and Volatile Mana Blaze are now ranks 2-12 of Mana Burn. Hastened Manaburn has been updated to function on all ranks of the combined ability line.
- - Wizard - Prolonged Destruction ranks 1-15 are now ranks 4-18 of Frenzied Devastation. Sustained Destruction has been renamed Sustained Devastation. Improved Sustained Destruction is now rank 7 of Sustained Devastation. Hastened Prolonged Destruction has been renamed Hastened Devastation and has been updated to function on all ranks of both Frenzied Devastation and Sustained Devastation.
- - Wizard - Atol's Unresistable Shackles is now rank 2 of Atol's Shackles.

- Modified the timer data for the following activated AA abilities so that they should no longer conflict:
- - Berserker - Furious Leap with Battle Leap and Battle Stomp.
- - Berserker - Savage Spirit with Identify.
- - Cleric - Call of the Herald with Harmonic Dissonance.
- - Cleric - Blessed Chains with Drakkin racial breath abilities.
- - Cleric - Innate Invis to Undead with Celestial Regeneration.
- - Enchanter - Beguiler's Banishment and Beguiler's Directed Banishment with Drakkin racial breath abilities.
- - Necromancer - Self-Sacrifice with Banestrike.
- - Necromancer - Encroaching Darkness with Bind Affinity.
- - Necromancer - Cloak of Shadows and Innate Invis to Undead with Death Peace.
- - Necromancer - Scent of Terris with Identify.
- - Paladin - Radiant Cure with Heroic Leap.
- - Shadowknight - Bobbing Corpse with Bony Grasp of Death.
- - Shadowknight - Cloak of Shadows with Death Peace.
- - Warrior - Furious Leap with Battle Leap.
- - Wizard - Translocate with Summon Clockwork Banker.


*** Progression Servers ***

- Removed the maximum player limit for the following Kunark zones: Karnor's Castle, The Dreadlands, Skyfire Mountains, The Ruins of Sebilis, The Emerald Jungle, Timorous Deep, and Howling Stones.
- The Plane of Fear and the Plane of Hate now load balance when populated by enough adventurers. Raid targets will only spawn in the base version of the zone.
- Increased the intensity of the effects of Mark of the Old Ways, which is applied to Magician and Necromancer pets that are engaged in combat with raid bosses, to values that are more in line with intended tuning.

*** Miscellaneous ***

- If you are currently bound in a zone that no longer allows Bind Affinity to function, that bind point will be reset to your starting location the next time you enter your current bind zone.
- Monk - The skills Eagle Strike and Dragon Punch (or Tail Rake) now share the same timer as Tiger Claw so that they will no longer conflict with the reuse timer for Kick, Round Kick and Flying Kick.
- The auto-follow command no longer requires you to be grouped with your targeted player.


*** UI ***

- In a future release, marketplace purchases will be able to complete directly without having to open the Marketplace window. Created a new window that contains only information about the specific marketplace item to support this.
- Corrected a bug where NPC wild rampage messages were being filtered as pet wild rampage messages and vice versa.


- Changed -

EQUI.xml
EQUI_PurchaseWnd.xml


- The EverQuest Team

*** Previously Updated ***

- Trakanon in Sebilis will drop additional Veeshan's Peak key pieces (Trakanon's Tooth) on progression servers.
- a dracoliche in pre-revamp Plane of Fear is no longer teeny tiny. He is three times his previous size, and the same size as his post-revamp version. a dracoliche in pre-revamp Plane of Fear now has a 100% chance to drop an item, up from 30%.
- The experience rewards for all "bone chip" quests have been retuned. Half of the bone chip quests had their reward increased dramatically. However, with the current ease of collecting bone chips in the modern game, the reward was very high in some cases, and so those quests have had the reward reduced.
- The Keg of Vox Tail Ale is now available for purchase from various merchants across Norrath.
- An Undead Bard will only spawn in the base version of Old Sebilis.

About time.

Please make sure Veeshan's Peak does not have a player cap.

- - Put level restrictions in place on all escape abilities. Starting at level 75 most classes are only able to immediately escape combat from NPCs that are yellow con (player level +2) or lower. Exceptions to this are Rogues, Bards, Monks, Shadowknights and Rangers who can escape from NPCs that are up to 4 levels higher. AA abilities available prior to level 71 now work on creatures up to level 75.

Should be

- - Put level restrictions in place on all escape abilities. Starting at level 75 most classes are only able to immediately escape combat from NPCs that are yellow con (player level +3) or lower. Exceptions to this are Rogues, Bards, Monks, Shadowknights and Rangers who can escape from NPCs that are up to 5 levels higher. AA abilities available prior to level 71 now work on creatures up to level 75.

Why are necromancers excluded from teh +5 level restriction?

How does this impact the Breather line? Do melee now have a permanent death penalty on raids (inability to regen endurance to use our combat abilities)? Or am I misunderstanding the scope of "immediate"?

Renamed Extended Feralgia = Extended Moongrowl , is already live
Renamed the AA ability line Spell Casting Subtlety to Combat Subtlety and updated its description to better reflect the fact that hatred generated by both spells and melee combat is affected by this line. Is already live.

If SK hates attraction no longer will activate against white and higher con mobs, what is going to be done for the agro amount on the ability?

Cool

While I like this in general, this will be very, very painful. I have eight classes I play regularly and other I've been tinkering with. I'm going to have to go through all my button bars and macros to re-align which AA is where.

Then also think about all the forum posts (and other 3rd party guides) that give advice on how to play classes. This wealth of historical user content will be recommending the use of AAs that no longer exist (or more precisely reverted to the previous named AA line).

I think these changes should have been done originally. It's much more clear, consolidated and less cluttered. I just worry that making the change now will be more disruptive and be more confusing due to the entrenched status of the tangled mess.

The same reason chanters are. They are not pullers under a regime that has decided that we will have more fun being dependant on pullers.

Chanters need to be tested because of the way it works as a self mez, it may not be effected as much. Maybe, I honestly don't know though and don't have a chanter high enough to test with.

ENC's have many other tools for pulling, which is what they should be using primarily. This update also looks to adjust NPCs so these other tools are useful again.

Yeah I have seen some amazing enchanters and their pulling most of the time has nothing to do with their fade, I was meaning more for rune agro etc than pulling, and the fact that theirs might function differently.

Before the freak out ensues, don't forget:

I wonder if Argin-hiz is now playable

Lotta cool stuff in this patch, will be curious how it plays out.

Test is still locked so I can't check. Based on the ability I doubt it would be affected but who knows... would have been nice if they clarified "fade" abilities like they did for the flings.

Some super great stuff in this patch, even if I am concerned about Fade.

ETA: I hold especial hope for the potential future of the passive AA toggle, applying that capability to all passive AAs in general could fix so, so many annoying, weird little problems.

Happy to see the cleaning up, consolidation, etc continue. Lots of nice fixes lately.

Fade abilities use the spell effect 194, which they call fade. It is quite clear what abilities they mean as long as you don't confuse yourself with terminology from other MMOs.

So yes, Friendly Stasis will be effected. I assume they use mez to stun you since stun resists are so high. (And yes, all mez do on a PC is stun)