People purchased the AA because it debuffed magic and corruption, it no longer does that. No drama, fact..
Not having the magic resist debuff even sucks on the group/solo side...the magic dot lines (not talking about the wounds spells here) are very commonly resisted without a debuff to magic...so it really sucks. Not to mention the decreased reliability of snares and roots. From a raiding perspective, a person would arguably just be better off casting scent of extinction normally.
I feel like this was an oversight by someone. I'll bet it gets changed next month. Of course nobody plays a necro these days so maybe they'll change it when they revamp our dots?
I'm surprised they haven't refunded it, they always used to refund AA's if something had a big change.
I don't think it was an oversight. We discussed the nerf pretty specifically in this thread: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...es-and-discussions.251774/page-7#post-3708375 and the developer responsible has been adjusting resist debuff AA/spells the last few months. The only way to really perceive it is that the developers don't want necros to have a spell this powerful: On Live: Scent of Terris IX - NEC/254 Poison (-128) 1: Increase Poison Counter by 45 2: Decrease Fire Resist by 145 3: Decrease Poison Resist by 145 4: Decrease Disease Resist by 145 5: Decrease Corruption Resist by 108 6: Decrease Magic Resist by 145 Instead you get something that's marginally worth casting: On Test: Scent of Terris - NEC/52 Poison 1: Increase Poison Counter by 9 2: Decrease Fire Resist by 36 3: Decrease Poison Resist by 36 4: Decrease Disease Resist by 36
This is the worst dev team in the history of the game. Now necros are even more worthless in a group setting. Not to mention our solo ability (our one saving grace) is severely hampered. What are you devs thinking?
Replying to Venau above, I am finding it very difficult to believe the Scent of Terris/Scent of Thule change was an oversight, particularly in light of all the advance feedback offered on these boards by the players. I've done my level best to read all the posts I could find that address yesterday's patch, and not once did I come across a positive opinion regarding this aspect of it. Instead, from what I've seen, it was panned from the moment it was announced on October 9th. The fact that no explanation or comment was provided by any dev and how the change was pushed through regardless of all concerns expressed by players would seem, at least to me, indicative of something other than an oversight. My own theory, the expression of which N'greth calls being passive aggressive, is that this was done by someone who doesn't play the game or, at the very least, doesn't play a necromancer, though my money is on the former assertion. Speaking as someone familiar with software development, this has all the signs of someone being motivated by something entirely exterior to the game. If I had to guess I would say it's code refactoring (the Wikipedia article on code refactoring explains the concept quite well.) In other words, it looks for all the world as though the changes we are seeing have nothing to do with how they impact the game and everything to do with whether it makes for prettier code, or code that's easier to maintain. If this isn't throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I don't know what is. I didn't personally like the "<class name>'s Unity" AA line that the Ring of Scale expansion introduced for all classes that are able to cast self buffs (every class except Berserker, Bard, Monk, Rogue, Warrior) as I found it unnecessary. My thought was that since we've had the ability to save spell sets for as long as I can remember, and since we've been given the opportunity at regular intervals to spend AAs to purchase additional spell slots (Mnemonic Retention), an AA to cast our self buffs seemed, to me, redundant. (Perhaps I'm simply a bad player, but I tend to need casting all my self-buffs at the same time mostly after a death, and I always found a kind of synergy between needing to sit down to memorise different spellsets and the out-of-combat regen that sitting triggers) Nevertheless, I think it's great that players have options, and even though I personally would never spend 220 AAs just to be able to cast spells I already have scribed using a single hotbutton rather than simply memorising them, other players may very well enjoy this functionality. Looking at what's been done to turn Scent of Terris into Scent of Thule, however, the same stitch of thread as was used in the Unity line of AAs is clearly evident. As I acknowledge in my previous paragraph, this may have value to some players, but I feel fairly safe asserting it will be worthless to others, and so I'd like to concur with the thread starter in saying an AA refund feels warranted. (Daybreak has done those in the past and it hasn't seemingly caused trauma; at worst, you merely re-purchase the AA that was refunded if you liked it the way it was.) In addition to how badly nerfed the ability now is, as Tucoh summarised above, it now takes up two debuff slots rather than just the one for less than half the effect, but even that is only if you can get both to land; I haven't parsed this out, but from some quick testing in Gorowyn I see both debuffs landing together roughly half the time. And since you're now casting spells, it uses (but doesn't trigger) Gift of Mana, so if you were in the habit of casting Scent inbetween spells to wait out the global spell refresh timer, it will now eat the GoM you might have been eyeing for a cast of your Dichotomic. I don't really feel like playing a game run by people who appear more motivated by creating a product that's trivial to maintain as opposed to one that's fun to play, so this is as good as excuse as any to find something else to do. It's easy at times to forget, but they need us far more than we need them.
Us Necros complaining about anything at this point typically goes on deaf ears. DBG has given us the dead horse award many times over. At this point I am pretty sure they are just trying to have all the necros in the community change to clerics.
Maybe, but if I played a necro I wouldn't take it without putting up a fight. A real necro can correct me if I'm wrong, but this change hurts in a lot of ways, but the most egregious way is how it hurts the ability for a necro to efficiently solo given the increased # of resists they'll have to fight through. Given that the necro is designed as one of the (if not THE) premier soloing class, this is a huge disruption in core game design.
I don't play a necro and I have no idea what these changes mean. However, I feel I should comment that some of the points in Archonia's post are excellent. Too often changes are made without an explanation of the process behind them. I will give the devs the benefit of the doubt and state that they are likely to have good reasons for making a change. However, this needs to be conveyed to the players. If only for the reason that "being ignored" tends to lead to players quitting the game and EQ cannot afford to lose more players. The above is even more necessary when, according to Archonia, a number of players all agreed the change was detrimental to the game and there seems to be no good reason for it. Code refactoring is a great thing. However, as Wikipedia states, " If done poorly it may fail the requirement that external functionality not be changed, introduce new bugs, or both." I don't know how much code refactoring is involved in any decision made by Daybreak, but they need to keep this in mind. ^This As for the title of this thread, I believe that Daybreak has said in the past that they have simplified the process of AA refunds, thus I see no reason this should not be done and plenty of reasons it should be. While I don't subscribe to the "Daybreak should bow before the players and do their bidding" philosophy because we pay them (which I do not believe Archonia is stating), Daybreak needs to keep more in mind that players are customers and they need to keep us, if not happy, then less unhappy. We simply cannot afford to lose more players (customers). That does not mean that Daybreak needs to never "nerf" or change anything. It does mean that if they do, they need to be careful, and most of all, make sure the players know why and prevent any "the sky is falling" feelings before they can happen.
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=85171 http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=111238 http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=1577
I think what they want is a reason for the change. Some feed back as to what this helps or changes for game balance. As it stands it is kind of random and out of the blue.
Actually, the most egregious part is many of us asked from the first day this change was on Test if this was an intentional nerf or an oversight and we got radio silence. All I wanted to know is "yes, we feel the current Scent is too powerful" or "oops, the change was supposed to be neutral and it will be adjusted". Heck I would have waited a few patches for fixes if I knew it was supposed to be a neutral change. No one was willing to communicate that, though, and instead I am reminded why I quit back in 2006 swearing to never give SOE one more dime. Well Daybreak, I'm sad I caved after teen years, and you'll never see my money again. Yes, you can have all my stuff.
Felicite nails it. This is change #5489 where they just won't offer any feedback on WHY the change is being made.