Paladin group friendliness stagnated years ago and did a big flip in favor of Shadowknights that continues to this day. The selfless knight became the more selfish one. Since the release of Luclin, SK gained many group taps for ATK, AC, STR, STA, HP, and mana. Meanwhile, paladin abilities have been discontinued (AC) or been made obsolete by healer mercs (HP, AC, healing, curing). Much of the modern paladin spell book is filled with self-only spells that lack group effects, much like the original Shadowknight. The modern template for EQ paladin is a class that cannot improve their group's performance hardly at all. It's a class that can keep it's group alive, powerful in itself, with heals and cures and a minor HP buff (Brell's). Paladin is now almost as one dimensional as non-hybrid classes like cleric and wizard, directly affecting little else beside the hit point pool. The two knight classes are very different now from where they began, both fun to play don't get me wrong. The only thing they have in common is that they are expected to tank mobs.
Most of this patch seems pretty good, although the Dot changes are a little extreme without reducing the mana costs. The one thing that I find alarmingly missing is any mention of curing some of those RoS dots. It was mentioned in other posts that there was a disagreement of sorts with the Devs in relation to the curing of these. An answer one way or the other may be useful (in the affirmative would be nice otherwise one of the Paladin abilities that Wulf mentioned for pallies, curing, is also obsolete in groups)
So, does the game feel better, performance-wise, on newer systems? Anyone on test care to comment, is it noticeable?
For druid dps, after doing some parses on Test, the patch will effectively remove Overwhelming Sunray and Pearlescent Moonbeam from a viable dot lineup. Currently on live, in my dot-nuke rotation about 65-70% of my dps comes from dots. On Test now, the amount of dps from dots is about 55%. Yield on Test is roughly 340k burst dps without external adps. I guess I can live with that, just have to make do. But the one thing I don't understand is the reduction in AC debuffing to -39AC from its current value of -179AC by the OS and PM spells. Doesn't make much sense for that reduction.
A great opportunity to cancel my 4 accounts, saved me hmm about $60 a month. Thanks Daybreak! I checked my 110 shaman on test, and yep his 5 dots are all now the same manna cost and half or less than half the damage. No need to dot with him anymore, back to the bot farm for you.
Paladins just need some real burst dps since they neutered us multiple times, and all but the first was for no reason or just related to archetype nerfing that hit us hard in that one area. I don't think burning for 30-40% of an SK is reasonable on live mobs and still significantly less than them on undead to boot. But we got some reasonable aggro (even if it required changing HOW we aggroed) this expansion, so I'm copacetic.
What I don't understand, is why do they nerf ALL the dots? Why not nerf 1-3 (depending on how the dps distribution was developed) dot lines and reduce overall dps while still allowing good dps? Nerfing it to the point of not bothering to mem them is unreasonable. Leaving the mana costs as it is is absurd, hope that doesn't stand if the mana costs really is unchanged.
When they say 'modern' they probably mean relative to EQ. So, maybe they're caught up to 2007 at best.
- You are now unable to join another instance of a shared task that you leave prior to its completion until that first shared task comes to a close. Surprised this hasn't caused more questions. This needs some real testing. 1) Does this mean when the instance of the first shared tasks truly "ends"? Put a campfire in a shared task instance and drop the instance so no one is in it. See how long the game says your campfire is in a zone. I think it might shock some people. 2) Going to create playability problems with locked tasks when someone goes LD or does /q out or falls asleep or whatever, when you can't have everyone else drop task, booth them and start again. Or unlocked tasks when the leader is the LD person. 3) Not a big deal, but annoying. No more split raiding older things trying for rare desired things (like 3 splitting nagafen when it was new for augs, then opening all the chests and the same time and having people jump between instances). 4) With reference to number 1, if that is a problem, gonna REALLY hurt people working on baking and needing nest dragon meat....
Remove the curing part. The majority of RoS dots are incurable (some even incurable with Purification) which makes that curing definitely meaningless in groups.
