is it me, or is it getting crazy out there?

after this patch, it feels like mobs overall got some kind of significant buff, mobs doing way more damage than I remember yesterday.

rare mobs killing us almost instantly in 1 round with maximum quad hits.

mobs HP pool got increased?

paladin slays chance drastically reduced? yesterday the slay was procs were normal (3-4 per fight, 5-6 if lucky), now its like 1-2 a fight.

and for those that like to just mindlessly grind / doing hunters, the xp rates per mob kill, if this was intentional, is horrible (not worth the risk, effort to grind).

I noticed other people are feeling the same way too, will this get fixed?
and don't get me wrong, I love challenging content and accomplishing missions with my friends, but I feel it's way too hard for even the basic stuff.

it sounds DBG did again a "Homer" (Simpson) ...
Buffing mobs up, nerfing player down...oh the "fun"...

Do you run GamParse / viewing your logs or are you just making observations?

If you are not using GamParse, it searches your log file for certain information. You could select the last few days and it will pull up ever fight. Then you can look at the total amount of damage applied to the mobs (total mob HP), the frequency at which you slayed, the tanking summaries and so forth. EQ doesn't even need to be running to run GamParse. Live overlays are optional. You can close EQ and use GamParse to obtain quantitative rather than anecdotal evidence.

I killed a named in RyGorr Mines last night. Went down easy.

haven't noticed a single thing in the OP pre vs post patch

The only thing that feels different after the Friday hotfix is GMM HAs. They're a different kind of broken than they were after Wednesday. Mobs seem to be on random damage tables, some of them are on pre-ToV tables where they're parsing like 3k average hit, others are on the ToV table where they're parsing 12k average hit. It makes the mission a little bit weird because the con doesn't seem to matter. I've parsed 109, 110, 111 all at each different type of damage output.

Since slays were mentioned specifically, I don't believe OP was in GMM.

it's like I said, something feels off and im not the only one that feels that way, for example

when I was helping out my friends level up in Lceanium, I could easily go through those skeletons, drolvargs and cockatrice with out a problem at all, I could round up like 3-4 skeletons with sword and board style, and easily take them down with no problems (110 paladin with good gear), without the hp even reaching in the below 50% mark.

now just tanking 2 mobs in Lceanium and the strike through is insane, the mobs which I mitigated damage from them really well before, now strike through with max damage potential 17-18k followed by their max potential regular hits, I only say this now because I helped out my friend a lot and never had this issue with tanking any of those mobs.

I know the devs mentioned something about moving mobs in past eras to a higher bracket or something? like I said before, I love a good challenge, but everything seems crazy now, GMM is the most noticable

and yes I understand some people won't see a change because I am sure they have much better gear and stuff, but for the casual like me and my friends that try to get the best we can get, we definitely noticed

I did the Lcaenium mission this morning and tanked all 6 adds at each barrier without going below 50% health. In half Conflag half T1 TBL, GMM non-vis, TDS Powersource, as a Shadowknight. I was killing things in Overthere without a slow (not even belt) on Thursday.My stats are nothing special. (Screenshot with Aego + Unity + Selfbuffs)



I spent the beta trying to make content more accessible than TBL but honestly I don't know why people are having the problems they're having. I'm not in immaculate gear, I'm not some kind of top tier player doing everything perfectly right, but I'm not having any issues. You'll need to provide more information than "feels wrong."

Download gamparse, or ask someone in your group to parse it for you. Changes can't be made on gut feelings.

I went to Lceanium to check this theory out. (XP is dreadful) Seems about the same to me. Killed 2 named and they were nothing special. One of the named had 3 adds to help it out. They all died without any trouble.
Looking at my Gamparse nothing unusual stood out. I was using the EM XXVII fully conflagrant equiped pet and was moloing.

Was in Ry Gorr (TOV)last night, the HP were the same as before the patch. I didn't run into any unusual damage spikes.

I am sure there is a bug since the strikethrough change. My 111 beastlord with 250k hp just got one rounded by a 'a swell armor' in Empyr between Alt+Tab. Before the expansion release, I would be taken down to 60% hp at most where I could react with Playing Possum.

- Capped strikethrough values on non-raid NPCs from Underfoot to Torment of Velious. You should see fewer strikethroughs, especially from higher level NPCs.

Mobs should have gotten easier in EoK zones. The mobs in GMM got harder because their base stats are based on RoS mobs now instead of EoK. GMM is pretty tough now compared to what it was before, but it's still doable. It's just a lot slower.

Daybreak might have made a mistake in the adjustment to strike through, but I doubt it. I solo with my necro in scorched woods pretty often. I didn't notice any change. They're so weak that my necro can tank them for a while instead of the pet. She's wearing conflagrant gear, GMM, and TBL. She also doesn't have any aa's spent on combat agility or stability on top of the auto granted ones.

Maybe you were having an off day?

Level 106-110 NPCs in Heroic Adventures now base their stats on tier 1 Ring of Scale instead of tier 1 Empires of Kunark.

Doesn't say just GMM so EoK Heroics may have been changed too. From the way this reads any mob in any heroic that is level 106 to 110 has been changed.

To me this was the efficient or lazy way to make up for the strike through reductions but I think the end result was harder mobs. Not sure how DBG feels about it but it might mean some sort of tuning is needed. Not something that will affect me at all either way but I try to think about those folks playing catch up who have to molo or box their way to catch up.

Enjoy the continued inflation of HPs in mobs you folks on live who like to whine about those of us on TLPs

I'm 111.. raid geared bard, and I molo'd a yellowcon in CC last night.. it's not that bad out there. If I can molo one, a group of group geared people could take one out. I just had a melee assist twist going, no dots.. I stood toe to toe.

I went to Kael and moled red con mobs. They're close to 40 million hps. So, if I can molo those. There's really no excuse why a group couldn't. The outdoor zones most of the mobs are around 20 million hps, so they're even easier. So get a group and go experience the new expansion.

Let me, as a lv 105-106 leveling via on-level game content says something I observed (instead of people with max AA / raid gear / max everything claiming how easy they go through content). I have box a SK tank currently lv 105, wearing full TDS T3 visible (Highwater) and TDS T2-T3 non-visible gear with the rest of the group in 105-106 with similar gear. I start to break into TBM content after the new expansion patch. And in one of many HA in TBM, there is a boss at the final step and it keeps hitting me for 30k+ damage quick and it's a quick death. This is a significant jump from TDS content even on TDS T3 gear. And my group could barely kill this boss after wiping once.
And then in another HA which requires the player group to defend the central Plane of Health camp. The steps are 1st wave of adds, then 1st boss, and then 2nd wave of adds, and a 2nd boss comes after, and finally 2 lesser boss together. In the first try, the adds aren't too much of a problem until we get to the first boss. It hits so hard it almost KO'd my SK instantly on engage and so we burned it with all we have. As we take note how difficult the first boss is, we prepared for the 2nd boss with everything we have. And then we realized the 2nd boss is hitting even harder with nasty effects too. And we wiped, retry and wiped, repeated the 3rd time until the mission fail due to the boss aura killed all NPCs. At this point all our characters have dropped level from 106 to 105. We took a break and come back to try again anew. This time the HA becomes somewhat easier with the adds, and significantly easier with the bosses. The bosses no longer almost one-shot or pose serious threat to my SK and we could even finish the Time Trial Challenge on this try.
The conclusion we come up with is that at lv 105 the HA scale right on level with our proper progression route going with the successive order of expansions. But if anyone is overleveled from that expansions, the HA would scale horribly and make the reward/effort balance completely broken.
tl;dr Doing HA in a lv 105 expansion with lv 106+ characters with make the HA completely over-tuned in difficulty compared to the reward it gives.

Enjoy content thats been originally defeated decades ago..

There's no fun in copying strats from 20 year's ago to me.

I'm raid geared, but I'm also a warrior. I was able to solo, not molo, but solo some mobs in GD/EW fairly easily. Obviously I had to burn discs, but considering how I have a grand total of 1 innate heal ability (excluding some clickies I have), there should be no reason a group cannot kill at least the 1st tier of ToV without much of an issue, especially with melee mercs now doing 150-200k dps.

I am not as up to date on current play as I once was but from a percentage frame of reference my Slay percentage should be the same as it was before in previous expansions.

This is small sample size but I'm not entirely convinced that a larger sample size would bend the numbers in either direction especially because slay is a fixed percentage chance.

26 MOBS over 24-25 minutes

/tell Shiftee Shiftee -vs- Combined: An Arisen skeleton: -- DMG: 243844717 -- DPS: 165767 -- Scaled: 163544 -- Slash: 207175867 -- DirDmg: 34062481 -- Bash: 1947881 -- Environmental: 658488 -- % dmg as normal: 64.2% -- % dmg as critical: 30% -- Non-crit rate: 77.3% -- crit rate: 20.6% -- crippling rate: 2.1% -- Attempts: 6126 -- Hits: 5379 -- Missed: 747 -- Accuracy: 87.8% -- Avg Hit: 45332 -- Max hit: 1215651 -- DMG to PC: 20792928

Hits of 5379 (-) direct damage = 4158

log parse over that time frame = 85 counted slays

85/4158 = 0.02 aka 2.0%

Not the best geared here is a ss of my stat window (I was boxing a bard with permanent overhaste and other bard melee enhancements qt/fierce/epic juggled as needed.



GMM

/tell Shiftee Shiftee -vs- Combined: A darkheart ravager: -- DMG: 384742595 -- DPS: 84465 -- Scaled: 84280 -- Slash: 310668701 -- DirDmg: 65076043 -- Bash: 4961048 -- Environmental: 4004184 -- DoT: 32619 -- % dmg as normal: 33.2% -- % dmg as critical: 59% -- Non-crit rate: 77.9% -- crit rate: 20.7% -- crippling rate: 1.5% -- Attempts: 20080 -- Hits: 17855 -- Missed: 2225 -- Accuracy: 88.9% -- Avg Hit: 21548 -- Max hit: 441069 -- DMG to PC: 84526411


Tanking summary for the mobs in sathir

/GU Tanking summary for: Shiftee | Total Melee | Damage: 20709753 | Avg hit: 13353 | Attempts: 2176 | Riposted: 183/2176 [8.41%] | Parried: 49/1993 [2.46%] | Dodged: 65/1944 [3.34%] | Blocked: 17/1879 [0.9%] | Defended: 314/2176 [14.43%] | Missed: 311/1862 [16.7%] | Hits: 1551/1862 [83.3%] | Real Hits: 1551/1551 [100%]

mob dps in sathir 20709753/1440 = 14,381.77

spells
/GU -vs- Combined: An Arisen skeleton - Spells Cast By: Shiftee: 481 | Armor of the Inquisitor XXIV: 4 | Brilliant Exoneration Rk. II: 71 | Burst of Morninglight: 7 | Consecration Rk. II: 44 | Cripple: 0 | Crush of E'Ci: 30 | Devouring Darkness: 0 | Disruptive Persecution VIII: 102 | Divine Stun XV: 2 | Elixir of Clarity XVIII: 1 | Elixir of Spiritualism XVIII: 1 | Expiation Rk. II: 3 | Fjilnauk's Strike: 0 | Flames of the Valiant: 3 | Force of Disruption XVII: 9 | Group Armor of the Inquisitor IV: 2 ...


In comparison to the GMM darkness howls


/GU Tanking summary for: Shiftee | Total Melee | Damage: 82572288 | Avg hit: 13188 | Attempts: 9776 | Riposted: 1058/9776 [10.82%] | Parried: 379/8718 [4.35%] | Dodged: 313/8339 [3.75%] | Blocked: 347/8026 [4.32%] | Defended: 2097/9776 [21.45%] | Missed: 1418/7679 [18.47%] | Hits: 6261/7679 [81.53%] | Real Hits: 6261/6261 [100%]


looks like helix of the undying lowered mob dps by 1.77% vs belt slow/cripple combined with the addition of shield at times.

I was able to tank 2hr against sathir mobs vs 7 deaths in GMM. Prior to the recent patch I could molo gmm without death. I went back to GMM to get an idea on how bad it was.

mob dps in GMM 84526411/4565s = 18516.19 dps

Comparison

Mob dps Sathir vs GMM

18516.19 vs 14381.77

Take aways:
Why are GMM mobs so much more dps in single pull scenarios than the equivalent ROS t2 zone (i know they cast spells but...) a 4k difference is a lot especially considering i spent a good deal of time using S/B while in GMM and Had my 2her our exclusively in Sathir. I blocked 4.32% of incoming attacks while shield was out and still the mobs managed 4k more dps.

Slay % has been a fixed % for a decade
it should be around 5.15% and I only slayed 2.0% (edit from the aa description for aa rank 14 of slay undead it is 5.2% ( i do not have the ranks from TOV yet as I am leveling my bard from 105 - 110 so we can do tov together.)

While the OP didn't provide the data this is an obvious issue.

To rule out riposte changes on higher level mobs I went to LC and killed skeletons

/GU Combined: A plaguebone skeleton in 1135s, 224.6m @197926 | #1 Shiftee 209.3m

184,405.29 dps

69 slays in 1135s and 4029 total hits on the mobs subtracting off DD hits
otherwise

1.71 of total hits were slays granted mobs died quicker and my dps was higher. If slay is truly a fixed percentage why are my parses showing data not representative of the Code? Subtracting off the environmental hits because I'm not 100% what gamparse is adding in that category the slay rate is still a measly 2.8%

on the paladin website samanna.net you can find Elidroths musings that he ran by the coders and he posted

yeah.. so the coder that looked at the Slay code with me came to me this morning with a correction to his numbers..

"The chance is Effect 1 / 10000 to do base damage * Effect 2.

For Slay 9, that works out to a 515/10000 chance to do base*2300/100. FYI.. we have to divide most numbers by 100 because nearly everything in EQ was originally developed using Integer variable definitions.

Or more accurately, 5.15% chance to do Base Damage*23. The scaling is insane. THIS is the real problem we need to fix."

So while he didn't like the results and called the scaling insane - this is how slay has operated since the first change when it was untied from critical hits and given its own code. I cannot remember the dates of that change but I want to say it was when holyforge was introduced.

holyforge is also supposed to increase chance to slay and as I ran that disc multiple times seeing only 1.5 -2.0% instead of 5.15+ is a serious problem.

Holyforge Discipline


Description

1: Increase Chance to Critical Hit by 200% with All Skills

2: Increase Chance to Crippling Blow by 20%

3: Slay Undead (140)

To wit: the OP is not crazy there is something funky going on with slay.