Buffed Luclin NPCs on Progression servers

The following Luclin NPCs will be buffed on Progression. As with other buffed bosses on Progression servers, this means these NPCs will spawn in the base version of a zone only and not in any load balanced "pick zone" versions of the zone, they will have increased stats (HP, damage, combat values), they will disregard pets in combat, have immunity to charm, and mitigate incoming damage via the Mitigation of the Mighty IV buff.
Note that Luclin bosses, unlike Velious / Kunark / Vanilla bosses, do not spawn twice as fast on progression than non-progression servers. Roughly half of the the bosses we've selected spawn in unconventional ways and at a glance these appear to be very unconventional. It's outside the scope of this task to research how each boss was handled and add in a custom method to accelerate how quickly they spawn. This is something we'd like to address later, if time allows.
Luclin NPCs have received no increase to their AC and a smaller increase to mitigation, melee damage, and health than Velious / Kunark / Vanilla NPCs, as we expect them to need less of a buff to be appropriately challenging, but we will err on the side of too hard rather than too easy.
This will all be testable on the Test server after our next full Test update.

So, what qualifies an NPC as a boss? It should meet most or all of the following criteria:

1. Long respawn and no placeholder or spawn is triggered by killing other bosses
2. Higher than normal stats
3. Level close to or higher than PC max level
4. Always drops one or more unique items of value or is clearly associated with a boss

Please let us know if we've missed any important bosses or if you have any feedback!

Acrylia Caverns
Khati Sha the Twisted (and warders and arcanists)
Kama Resan (trigger NPC)
an evolved burrower

Akheva Ruins
Shei Vinitras
Sheleric Vis
The Insanity Crawler
The Itraer Vius
The Va`Dyn

Grieg's End
Grieg Veneficus
Servitor of Luclin

Katta Castellum
Lcea Katta
Nathyn Illuminious

Sanctus Seru
Lord Inquisitor Seru

Ssraeshza Temple
Emperor Ssraeshza
Xerkizh the Creator
Vyzh`dra the Cursed (the whole cycle)
High Priest of Ssraeshza
Arch Lich Rhag`Zadune
Rhag`Zhezum
Rhag`Mozdezh

The Deep
Though Horror Overfiend
The Burrower Beast

Umbral Plains
Doomshade (and associated trigger NPCs)
Rumblecrush
Zelnithak

Vex Thal
Aten Ha Ra
Thall Xundraux Diabo
Thall Va Xakra
Thall Va Kelun
Kaas Thox Xi Aten Ha Ra
Kaas Thox Xi Ans Dyek
Diabo Xi Xin Thall
Diabo Xi Xin
Diabo Xi Va Temariel
Diabo Xi Va
Va Xi Aten Ha Ra

Rhag'Zadune references the whole cycle I presume?

Besides that the leaders of the wings in Sanctus Seru (to make the Arx Key) and the dude in GE that drops the DA hammer might be worth considering...

Also no mention of the Taskmasters that trigger the Cursed cycle being MotM - seems like at least one must be in order to keep him from being triggerable in /pick, no? (IIRC one is on a long spawn compared to the others)

Jesus... PLEASE STOP.. we signed on to play classic EQ, not your warped buffed version of this game. You are ruining the game with your random poorly thought out buffing

Arch Lich Rhag'Zadune and #Rhag`Zhezum and #Rhag`Mozdezh are all being treated as bosses. I'll add the other two to the original post for clarity. Thanks!

Its not that you have no clue about how or why the bosses respawn the way they do, but you flat out don't understand Luclin at all either.

Look at the AC/HP on these mobs already compared ot other level 60 content. Leaving the buff on is stupid. Two of those bosses mitigated 100% melee damage without using banes weapons for gods sake. Welcome to 45 minute boss fights.

No fun.

Stop buffing raid bosses, its not needed after Velious.

If you don't have the time for this, then form a TLP community round table where a group of players can put their heads together and help you guys decide whats reasonable for the TLPs, because its apparent that you guys are just throwing darts blindfolded and we do not appreciate you toying with the game like that just because you lack time/resources to give the TLPs the attention to detail they deserve.

April Fools?

God I hope so, these guys making these decisions have ZERO clue. I've seen servers tuned better than this.. SAD.

Well, in light of some of the complaints that you can see - any word (I can't see it on Lucy so I don't know what the values are) on how much of a bump you're thinking of doing with MotM4? (Or frankly, since I can't see any MotM on Lucy ATM all the tiering would be even better)

I'm certainly dubious of taking it overboard (these were some LOOOONG fights originally) but at the same time effectively curbing some of the recent DPS increases (including the melee DPS one near Phin launch time) does seem to try to edge things back to original difficulty.

Degree of increase might reduce some of people's aversion to hearing they're MotM'ed.

The ratio of damage per second versus boss effective health back in 2000-2002 wasn't nearly as bad as it is now. People are being mitigated far too much, especially Pets.

Pets were suppose to return to full power in Luclin it was stated when these servers started. Where are the notes about that?

That could be a note in the MotM4 specs if he's willing to share them - I don't remember seeing that precise quote, however.

And I do agree, Velious sounds overboard on Ragefire ATM even once the regen is fixed. KT sounds like at least a 12 min fight or so once the regen is fixed, which is much longer than he was for my guilds in era. Sweet spot would be to massage it to take around old school time with old school numbers, but that's tough to do perfectly obviously.

Is everyone excited for MoTM Underfoot!?!?!

Is this for april fools?

Hopefully they extend the lengths of the expeditions to 12 hours or so, so that players can hope to fully clear Vex Thal before it times out. Remember, no CotH boxes in expeditions.

I'm all seriousness though, this seems really absurd to me. Phinny was advertised as kind of a "play EQ your own way" server, and a lot of people signed up to play without all the open world competition which, while great for popcorn and drama, really took a toll on every past TLP. Many finally felt they were getting the TLP experience they'd been waiting for. (In fact one thing that's really interesting is the number of Phinny players who converted over from p99 but hadn't ever touched a TLP before.)

Then we got hit by the surprise XP. Ok, I get it, $15/mo is apparently not enough to cover the cost of these servers, so you made a quick cash grab on XP pots. For the sake of your books, I hope this worked as planned, that you got the money you needed, because you definitely shunned a section of the playerbase that was just not willing to grind 20+ hours a week to stay viable for end game content. Again, whatever, I can only assume y'all ran the numbers and made a calculated, if punishing, decision.

MotM in Classic was a good idea. The dragons going down to a group of mages or two groups of half decent players was not good, so increasing difficulty was appropriate and well executed (ignoring the first attempt at adjusting Sky). Same deal with Kunark. The fact of the matter is that a 32k hitpoint mob with no damage mitigation and resistable AE's is just not much challenge for current player power. Anyone who has done UDB Trak, Ragefire, or any other unbuffed 32k mob knows how trivial these fights are.

These were carry over problems from early coding restrictions that made sense in the 90's, kind of like the 255 point stat hard cap.

Velious and Luclin weren't written/programmed with these restrictions. Mobs have hitpoints in the hundreds of thousands and even in the millions in these expansions. I can be sold on buffing Velious mobs, just too offset player power creep over the years (though I don't think I can be convinced that any of the real raid mobs are straight up trivialized without MotM), but I sure hope that a Luclin MotM buff really is an April Fool's joke. Some of the lesser raids aren't really hard but Emp and VT are plenty challenging and time consuming in-era without any re-tuning.

Look, MotM is neat. It's been a very clever solution to a legitimate problem that arose on Ragefire and Lockjaw last summer during Classic, and because Kunark had the same code limitations it fit very well with Kunark mobs. But the dev team is starting to go a little crazy with these buffs. You simply do not have a hardcore server full of masochists drooling over mobs being as stupid hard as possible.

Anyway, do whatever you want. Just try to remember that the idiot difficulty levels of Gates of Discord are what drove so much of your playerbase to World of Warcraft back in the day. I don't want easy mode EQ (or hell, maybe I do, maybe that's why I'm playing on Phinny) but I also don't want you to kick the playerbase so hard in the teeth that they quit in Luclin because the dev team is wildly out of touch with what's actually optimal tuning for these raids.

What about the four Praesertums in Sanctus Seru?
Will the instance for Seru still require keying?

How bout you guys focus on Velious/Lockjaw instead of an expansion happening at the earliest, 6 months from now. Jesus H. I hope that this is an April Fools Joke.

Will some of those raid instances feature repops on content that is linked to the event?

Ie, without the repops the Emp fight is pretty easy. VT changes considerably, etc.

Please also double check that clickable zone transport thing work. Ie, I know that the port to inner acrylia didn't work in the instance on test last week. There's alot more ports in these zones than prior zones.

Would be nice to scrap Motm in Velious but since we missed that boat no reason for luclin!

Gotta agree, kick the buff off Luclin and onwards.

Looks like we have this years April Fools champion!

It is much more efficient to repeat the same process twice back to back while the procedure is still fresh in your memory than to set it aside and come back to it in 6 months. In addition, we have already made all the changes that we're hoping to push out in the April update for Velious on progression servers.

Least it was an honest answer - appreciated.