Test Update 09/14/16 - Patch Notes and Discussions

as others have suggested it probably would've been best to leave the group recourse on Bard dicho and just increase the recast, putting it at 5min recast would've fixed the "infinite-mana" problem but still make it useful for when a mana-user dies and doesn't have their personal recovery tool available.

but if they're determined to go the route of neutering the mana return, the ADPS needs to be massively increased to compensate. after the patch the stupid Horn of Unity click will be a better group mana recovery tool than bard dicho... hooray for dichotomics worse than item clicks?

The bard dicho just needs redesigned at this point. It is not useful in this form. Forget the tiny regen and heal portions. Cut them out. Bards don't need Crescendo 2.0 that costs 8k endurance. Focus on the adps portions and buff them to meaningful levels. The bst dicho can literally add millions of damage per cast to a group under proper circumstances. The bard dicho can't even get remotely close to that. If they don't feel like giving bards more adps, then make their dicho something else entirely.

It is unusable in this state.

This should be included in the patch notes....

- NPCs summoned from click items (Clockwork Automaton, Holgresh Elder Beads, etc) can no longer be Mesmerized.

Well shiattt

ikr?

Nerfs crush YOU for 32,000 damage!

It's still not like the sky is falling... with careful mana management and watching for GoM procs, can still keep DPS up .... for a time. But it'll start to fall off FAST after twincast fades and we pass the 5-7 minute mark.

That's about where our mana is going to start to run out, btw, unless we slow down. And now that we can't be twincasting off eyes ....

RIP chanter dps.

/deletes Xalteny

These two thoughts are not mutually exclusive. You can think it's broken while also being upset that the ability was completely neutered and is now not worthy a slot on the song bar. There's some classes that wouldn't dare think of removing their Dichotomic from their spell bar (Beastlords) because it's so incredibly useful to a have a Ruaabri's Fury to cast every 60-seconds that lasts 67% of the duration of real Ruaabri's Fury, but no way in Hell can we have a resource return ability that was reported in Beta a year ago where some classes can still go out of mana even with its use on refresh anyway.

It's broken, but there's a huge balance issue because of how broken it was and how broken it was allowed to stay all while new **** was introduced where Dichotomic Psalm was the only reason there were enough resources to even use said **** in the first place. All we're (I'm?) asking is to take a look at what you're affecting by completely wiping Dicho Psalm off the map. If they're cool with those DOTs they "wanted made a thing again" no longer being a thing because there's not enough resources to use them in classes like BSTs and RNGs, then okay, cool, I guess we don't have a problem. But not everyone has a Gambit/Harvest, and instead will be completely out of mana in less than 90 seconds and instead have something like a 3-minute-reuse Canni that gives a pathetic 10% mana return that is then gone in 3 casts.

Dichotomic made perfect sense for classes like that, especially when they wanted to keep Bards centric to the melee. It made us really coveted for the first time in a long time, and now that's completely gone yet again. Like I said, was a bit broken, but still wasn't justified to go "scorched Earth" on the ability and now we need something to compensate because of it -- not mutually exclusive feelings.

I think one of the big problems in EQ right now is that mana and endurance are resources that are supposed to be managed and they SHOULD run out if you're using all your biggest abilities. In another thread there's a beastlord upset that he can't spam his new and improved dots when just a few months ago those dots were not even worth memming because the spell cooldown was better used on something else.

I think there's a problem when you just bind all your spells to one or two buttons and just mash the crap out of that button. There's more to the game if you actually have to manage your resources. Heck for meistro in pohate there was a post here "how do you beat this dude without bard dicho and splash?" when you're clearly not supposed to splash to cure his effect but because bard dicho was way to strong that guild just put bards with paladins and bam!

Now for the beastlords with their dots, are they waiting for the dot to wear off or are they just using it in their rotation and mashing their mash button?

A better fix, imo, would have just been to make the endurance drain actually work, which limits the amount of times you can use the effect (especially if the bard dies) and tweak the mana return downward a bit. There was no need to nerf the end return at all, imo, or the heal, and taking away the portion of the ability that made it more desirable with more people in the group took away the one bit of uniqueness this ability had, and something that truly made it feel like a bard skill to me.

It really will be hard to find much cause to use this ability after the changes, but at least I no longer have the dilemma of burning a cast of Rallying Call on myself after death versus saving it for someone else.

You can't multibind our dots. It would just cast the same one over and over since they don't have cooldowns. They are put up initially and refreshed when they are running out. In times of extremely excess mana, which is not that often even with bard dichot, consumption, and focused para, they could be hit when all nukes were on cd for some extra damage since two of them have an initial DD.

You should try a beastlord sometime and see how ridiculously fast we can plow through mana doing a completely normal nuke and dichot rotation. It gets exponentially worse when the meta dictates we have to use DoTs now too. Takes about 1.5mins, if that long, to go unrecoverably oom without bard dichot. Just fact-checked myself on a dummy, lasted 2mins 20s raid buffed. Didn't use use consumption or paras.

I care little to none about the actual dichot nerf. I do expect some form of compensation somewhere, somehow which is not present in these patch notes.

How many beastlords are you guys running? we are running 4 right now, which is quite a bit of extra mana regen coming in from rotating paragon in each fight. I feel like our team is prepared for this nerf.

4, ya goof Hopefully all 5 for expansion after this

Sigh.... Really hoped they would listen to us this time. But of course, its being pushed live tomorrow.

We're being given the opportunity to purchase Big cats in bags in compensation.

Oh, thank God! That makes me so happy!

What I find just hilarious is that a dev (perhaps multiple devs at a meeting!) sat down and thought, "You know what's relevant? Adding 20 points to this 12 hit limit damage bonus. That's a relevant change worth making that people will notice. They'll be like, 'damn, where is this extra 4 dps coming from?! I feel like a beast today, my deeps be on fire!'"

Seriously. Somebody, somewhere, thought that was actually a relevant change worth making.

I really doubt that DBG have kept anyone qualified to make these kind of changes. The dicho nerf affects not just bards but the casters too. Wizards lag behind zerkers and rogues already without losing the ability to go full on. Mana changes have increased constantly to the point that mana regen was losing any relevance especially on raids.

You can't keep adding DPS check raids and at the same time nerfing DPS.

I don't really think they understand what they're doing any more. I mean how can our new flashy ability be worse than the horn clicky? Are you mental?

Stop nerfing and start writing some GAME! You know, expansions, content, do your JOB

This is the new way to make content seem longer.... nerf us so we have to re-learn farm events.

It's annoying that DB have zero communication on why they make changes. There has been a constant assault on many abilities for a while now, 7 8 months into a expansion, changing how the game is played. With no information from DB devs on why they are making such big changes so late into a expansion.

Bard Dicho was too powerful this was obvious, however going from too powerful to useless is just bad game design, you want to avoid massive swings in ability power. This nerf hurts mid tier/family style guilds immensely, guilds that take a long time to kill things suddenly got hit with a huge nerf bat.

Why not reduce things by 50% not 90%? Common sense does not apply here it seems. Such a massive change makes your ability to balance the game look very amateurish and knee jerk if only it hadn't taken you 8 months to do it.....

This ^