Test Update 09/12/2017 - Patch Notes and Discussion

You think people don't pay money for stuff that gets changed on the live servers? You surely aren't that naive... TLP isn't this mystical place separated from everything else EverQuest. I read what you said, just saying, that you know that mounts are outdoor items. You should know it gets fixed eventually.

I have a few questions/comments on the patch.

As with the majority of people here, there are so many nerfs, I'd urge you to reconsider. I was sort of ready for the weapon stances nerf, but all of these other changes are horrible.

PAL- Harmonious. From what I understood, WAR/SK versions were overpowered to the point some WAR/SK's didn't use them. From what I understand you have nerfed the Pally version across the board, while leaving some parts of the WAR/SK version as is. This seems out of balance.

PAL/SK - Changed Helix from an activated ability to a passive ability that is triggered when casting hate over time spells. Ranks 1-7 of Helix of the Undying have been consolidated into Improved Demand For Honor for paladins and Improved Demand for Power for shadowknights. I don't use Demand for Honor any more, due to the finite number of spell gems available, I use Valiant Defense instead. This change is hardly 'passive' as I now have to mem a spell I don't use to slow an undead mob. Due to the mix of mobs, this means swapping spell sets every other mob, or losing a spell in my current line up.
If you are committed to tying the slow to another spell/ability, why not tie it to bash? Or make it a proc from auto attack? Either that or give us another spell gem.

PAL - Removed ranks 2-20 of Balefire Burst. Is this a nerf or are you making the new rank 1 into the old rank 20? Are we (and it appears all fade's are getting the same treatment) having their usefulness stripped back?

Nope. Never. The necro I know is built to apply a healthy amount of sustained DPS on raid targets. We are not a priest class. We are not a hybrid. We fill a unique role and to require us to lessen the impact of what we are intended to do so that we can stay alive is pure folly.

I also wanted to point out that in no way shape or form should anyone expect a substantial increase in sustained DPS as a result of DoT consolidation. We will likely be more useful in group settings because we will ramp up more quickly but in my humble opinion the Devs will not break the game long term just to give our sustained a huge boost. Why would they?

Now...when the next expansion goes live I expect all classes to receive a DPS boost. This type of boost isnt at all what im referring to above.

I'm not sure if we are talking about RB in the same context. Are you implying the way RB works on live is necessary to stay alive on raids and the way it works on test will lower sustained DPS?

I agree we should not expect a significant increase to sustained but based on what what they have done to other classes it is hard to say where the final result will land and when. As for game breaking sustained damage, I suppose where that line is drawn is subjective. For burst, I cannot see how they could prevent increasing it when reducing the number of DoTs without lowering sustained DPS which is supposed to remain intact or improve. The question is, if they provide a boost do you believe it should be free or is there some acceptable price to pay?

Yes, it would be difficult accept a DPS boost while still dropping lower in the DPS hierarchies.

No because this is not how development has worked in the past.

When Dzarn made battle stomp/leap a permanent buff once activated in a zone he didn't reduce or it he left it exactly as it was and just made it perma once activated. It just like RB already had 100% uptime it just had to constantly be refreshed. He removed the recast it every 60 sec requirement.

When he extended cry carnage and thiefs eyes, which also had 100% uptime but just constant refreshing, he left them alone completely and made them like 15 minutes duration. He simply removed the cast every 60 sec requirement.

Neither of those abilities were improved in one way and then drastically changed or altered in another to offset it. Many of us hope its just a mistake because of the old wording which was never updated once eli changed it to be all offensive spells but since hes ignoring all the feedback it seems not. Regardless we are not getting more dps because he outright removed RB so stop pretending to share some secret dev inside info on the matter.

Seems to be changed to something like "MM works on [Your Level - 1]". I assume this is so you'd never have to touch the AA again for future updates. This would also mean we're never going to be able to use it on most current-expansion mobs. EoK is full of even-, yellow-, and red-con mobs, and not so much on the blue-con mobs making this effectively useless. I would imagine later expansions would hold true to this.

I loved when this worked on [practically] any mob. Monks have been vying for the top spot on pulling for a while, typically fighting bards for the coveted rank. Bards have track, run speed, mob positioning, lull, mez, charm, etc. Monks have a small AE mez, aggro radius reducer, and had MM to yank a mob out. We could MM, ID to drop aggro, stand and finish the pull. With the ID refresh at 90 seconds, we could do this on every other pull. It was probably abused a bit more than was intended, especially on named, but it was an effective pulling tool. Certainly helped break camps. And it allowed grouping without the need for CC classes.

Can you make this work on yellow mobs? "MM works on [Your Level + 2]". Named are typically red con so it wouldn't work on them - or just add in a blocker for it, which a lot of mobs already have (see PoWar). This would make it an effective pulling tool again.

As others have mentioned, the stun on this resists considerably more than the original in Stunning Kick. As mentioned above, MM isn't a viable pulling tool anymore. If a mob resists the monk mez, stunning kick usually works in a pinch. Stun one of 2 mobs, pull the non-stunned mob back far enough, ID to wipe aggro, stand, finish pull. With half the time gone on the stuns, and with stuns being resisted a lot more, another one of our pulling tools has been made ineffective. This is both a second reason to allow MM to work on a higher level mob, and another plea to make the stun itself more effective.

Reviewing EoK out of my necro viewpoint

Gorenaire - health locks at 5% - short fights, cannot go full out (add waves)
Droga - boss is also short < 2mins (very lucky if wounds even procs)
Chardok1 Prince - goes inactive when he ports away
Chardok1 Queen - health lock while sycophants are up
Chardok1 Vault - once skeleton is unlocked this is a tank and spank fight, sustained dps is nice but not needed
Labs1 reaper - finally something to do
Labs2 dragon - cannot go full out (add waves)
Labs3 - cannot go full out (add waves), at least here necro can use root/charm/mez for the bane damage

In all of these encounters trash does not even last the duration a swift dot takes. Tell me again about why sustained dps matters, only place it counts is in Labs1 and nice to have in Prince/Queen/Vault, other encounters mobs do not last long enough for dots to do real damage.

Replace the raid slots necros take up with any other dps (shaman/druid included in dps) and the raid as a whole is a lot better off. No worries about 2 necros then taking up too many buff slots and other classes not being able to land their dots/nukes. ( 2 necros boss is close to being buffblocked, 3 and it is guaranteed. You need at least 2 to trigger their alliance, 1 necro and the lonely soul dps drops even more)

Now RB is nerfed so goodbye group heals, EC is nerfed so goodbye a chunk of dps.

At least at expansion end when attendance drops you feel usefull /hooray I guess.
As to the threat of quitting not being real, lost my partner necro and am now the lonely soul if we do not find someone mad enough to put up with the insanity that is necro raiding.

If you or anyone else paid $$$ specifically to purchase an item that you knew was bugged, then I hope you learn the lesson you're getting right now. Just because "tons of people actually spent money" doesn't mean you get a free pass to a bugged item.

Mounts have never been usable indoors. This mount's description didn't ever say "Can be used indoors." They're fixing a bug (that you knew was a bug, stop pretending to be so ignorant), the money you spent got you a mount, and you even got to exploit it for a couple weeks so imo.

That this line of the patch notes has even sparked an ounce of attention boggles me completely...

They do.

Improved used the same stacking as Marketplace familiars (which was a problem I repeatedly pointed out) while the focus familiars used a different stacking. The new combined Improved familiar uses the focus familiar stacking so it works with Marketplace ones as it should. (It would be really stupid to prevent a whole class from using something people pay money for).

As far as there being no downside to combining them, it does reduce the effectiveness of having Bards and Wizards together since Wizards will now always have the focus from their familiar and that doesn't stack with Bards' songs. I've repeatedly suggested that they change Bards' songs from SPA 124 (normal focus) to a different SPA (302 or the new 461) which would make the Bard songs more powerful and thus more desirable in caster groups (since Mages don't really gain as much either since they have Fire Core or w/e it's called that doesn't stack with Bard songs either).

Neither side can bear it! /chuckle

I think you are over simplifying many raids but your point is still valid and is missed by most people the devs included at times. Tons of necro dps that shows up in the final raid parse is often pure fluff or doesn't matter damage. From times when dots tic but mobs are inactive, locked, whatever or when you have 5 minutes of parse padding after handling all the important stuff early on like vault.

The RB nerf is just nuts. It should remain all offensive spells or he essentially is just removing it from the game. No other convenience change in recast demands for abilities that already had 100% uptime ie Cry Carnage, Thiefs Eyes, Battle Leap carried a penalty like this. The ability was never restricted to lifetap except for like 2 days on beta when it was first created, feedback got it changed to correctly work for dots and nukes being casted by the necromancer (used to be anyone who got the buff in group but that was to much). Eli just failed to update the description after he changed the actual data to "all offensive spells" because as we all know the descriptions for the most part for years sucked.

This reeks of the nerf to Death's Malaise. Orignally this AA was meant to be a version of our level 38? undead slow. For years it mirrored that spell and even got better with progression ranks added for the AA. Out of no where Aristo added a completely worthless new undead slow like 70 levels later that was like 50% as effective, we explained we already had a undead slow that was better in every way so dont bother but he had to meet his quote for spells that expansion and it went live. Then like a yr later after the wasted undead spell slow launched the AA Deaths Malaise was nerfed to the levels of the new spell slow, which didn't even exist when the AA was added, and here it sits nerfed below the original spell version and even inferior the the SK/Pal AA version which was added afterwords.

EC isn't being nerfed really. 100 hit counter (probably should be 200 since it was supposed to be the caster equivalent of a riposte disc ie casting while being attacked for short duration) controls some of insane it could do but the dps benefit remains unless your face tanking 5 mobs with it on for extended time.

Pretty sure dzarn mentioned that some of the sk/war ones were missed in patch and will be nerfed on live

The fades were changed so that they would work forever. mob level <= yourlevel + X value that it works on, so it never has to have new ranks again since it is based on your level rather then a hardcoded one per rank

MyShadower:

You asked if I'd be willing to trade dps for healing utility. I said no.

Now you are asking what I'd be willing to give up so that I can be relevant in the group game and not be required to swap as many spellsets on raids. My answer is nothing and I don't think the Devs want us to sacrifice anything. Now why on earth would I say this?

The last expansion release time frame the Devs added a few levels to our Lingering Death line of AA that caused our DoTs to be more powerful (think decreased ramp up time) while decreasing their duration. This was a great step in alleviating a few key issues:

1) From a Dev point of view a necro now uses less spell slots on a raid boss. We simply cannot maintain as many DoTs in our rotation since they now have a shortened duration.

2) The life of the grouping necro is marginally improved. Again, this is because our DoTs now deliver approximately the same amount of dmg per cast while delivering it more quickly.

3) The life of a raiding necro is now marginally improved. Why? Same reason as the prior two points. We no longer can OR need to stack as many DoTs to do approximately the same amount of sustained dmg.

When these changes went live what did the Devs demand we give up in return? Nothing. The Devs are aware of our limited contributions to the group game and would like to address this a bit more. The Devs have every reason to cause our class to use less buff slots on a raid boss mob. I don't see any reason why they would plan on us having to sacrifice something just so that we can obtain quality of life improvements in both the group and raiding game. You, on the other hand, seem to be lobbying for something that is similar to this: "Hey guys! Let's give something up so that our broken class can be fixed." I reject this type of thinking and have every reason to believe the Devs have no intention of demanding we sacrifice something so that our class can be more easily playable (think almost every other class in EQ).

Just my opinion(s)/thoughts. Posted as an attempt to clarify. Although I'm half expecting a reply that once again derails from my true intentions...at which time i'll simply understand it's pointless to roll with the trolls

Do you even know what an exploit is? Based on everything you've said, you don't. Thanks for the reply though! You clearly fail at actually reading.

How did we know it was bugged? Did daybreak make any effort in the last 2+ weeks to announce that it was? No

What lesson is there to learn? Don't buy anything because they might change it unannounced? They might create an item that is broken, so don't buy it?

Mounts have never been usable indoors, as I stated before, there are tons of people who never played past POP on TLPs, you act like all of them know this.

The mounts description stated blah blah, because they always put proper text on things right?

*Edit* Also, since people keep bringing it up that there has never been an indoor mount, then how did this mistake happen? Clearly there is a flagging for mounts that disables or enables mounts to be used indoors.

Venau:

I know nerfs/changes stir strong emotions in people and balance/difficulty has a lot of different perspectives so I'll stop trolling you now.

And do you know what a bug is?

"A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways."

It was an error and unintended that the mount was usable indoors.

Do you really think whining about spending 200$ to get it will make the devs go oh hey I didn't think of that we should totally revert the change?

Give it up lol you won't get it changed.

Maybe they did not realize it at first, until they saw some use it.

And maybe reward for buying next expansion might be a mounts that work indoors/or is expansion that mounts can work indoors

Bad for those removing the droppings, have to clean indoors as well, if happens

Might be just worth making all mounts usable indoors. I don't see any reason why not to.

How is the 6-20% mitigration effective ? People able to feel it ?

Its not 6-26% mitigation being added, its increase to softcap ac. So it adds some mitigation but not on a 1 to 1 value. Made up numbers but you might only see a 1% reduction in incoming damage from that 26% boost to softcap ac.

Classes have different ac softcaps and different returns on post softcap ac. So lets say previously you had 2500 ac in gear and 1000 ac softcap with a 33% return on post cap ac. An oversimplified explanation means you were only getting 1495 ac in all the incoming damage calculations with that setup. After these changes with everything exactly the same you would have 1669 ac being used to reduce the incoming damage in all those calculations.