The only thing the changes seem to affect are the abilities that allow you to kill mobs quicker or the abilities SKs have to withstand attacks by riposting and heals. I have often pulled a ton of mobs with my SK with no weapon equipped, gathered aggro, and stood around while friends AEd and then let the DS destroy the mobs. This will not be at all changed.
The game does not require swarming. I've completed every quest in HoT to use your example without swarming. Sometimes some pulls get hairy. You can always find some friendly CC.
If we want a move back to CC, perhaps the Devs could stop destroying all versions of CC in content. When you run into a few mobs that cannot be mezzed, lulled, rooted, snared, etc. and then on top of it make it to where even pulling like FD are very difficult to pull off and SKs ability to call won't work because of low ceilings it removes any interest in CC methods. Not every group has an off tank. Many people are trying to do content at entry level and are doing well to tank one mob, much less 3-4. This needs to stop being abused by the devs if they want us to find ways to CC. And it is abused all the time.
I wholeheartedly agree with Sinestra's comment. Enchanters have become near extinct and impossible to find a group with for the very reason that CC either wasn't needed in the group, or the monsters themselves were impossible to CC. Consequently, you could fix Enchanter's lack of usefulness with a simple spell line that applied Confusion to monsters where a monster has a small-medium chance to attack itself in any given attack round. Enchanters could be useful again past an MGB Mana Regen setting, but I'm getting far off topic here so I'll stop hehe.
I've swarmed a ton. I've never done it for AA. PLing an alt in levels, yes, AA, no. AA are so easy to get to, unless you have some specific reason to try and quickly get someone thousands, there is definitely no strong relationship between swarming and aa totals. People never seem to be buying PLs for AA in general chat either. They are always trying to buy levels.
I think I know a good reason for that. If you are in a group with a high level you get more xp if you set the slider to 100% leveling. Thats because the leveling xp you get is based on what the mobs con to you, while the aa xp you get is based on what the mobs con to the highest level in the group. Turning it to aa while getting powerleveled is kind of a waste.
Never had a swarming experience so I won't comment on that, but couldn't resist commenting on early posts discussing what pulling three mobs is considered. Iirc- Three's company. Wait, or is it a crowd? Sorry, I just couldn't not post, despite being a tad late.
Fear Kiting used to be an option, not any more. Swarming used to be an option, was actually a good tactic if a boss hit too hard and there were plenty of adds nearby that hit considerably weaker. What's next? Going to remove kiting too? How about lifetaps as well, we originally didn't have them anyways. May as well take out FD too. Turn SKs into what the masses really want to see, a mediocre warrior who can cast dots. Being against swarming tactics is being against having choices. They keep taking them away. It is just plain horrible to say oh well, go find some CC class, go keep putting pellets in the machine now thx.
We've been having 1 lately, and not very often is that 1 on lol. kind of a pain to deal with sometimes not having a chanter =/
I think the bottom line here, is that devs have been implementing stuff since the beginning and not carefully thinking about it's long-term/short-term impact on the game, they introduce a mechanic, don't think it through, let the community get used to using it, then either nerf it into the ground, or remove it completely, or make other mechanics to bypass it all together, hence we have the near extinct enchanter class, a shining example. It seems to go "hey let's implement this" then a year later "hey let's implement this to negate/bypass what we implemented before that is being used in ways we couldn't fathom" Can you honestly tell me, nobody thought of the effects of abilities such as decap/hs etc? and how they would effect the game long term/short term? really? .... really? Those are just shining examples, I use them simply because they are current and everyone can get the jest of what I'm talking about, so please don't de-rail the thread into a decap/hs debacle. It's like they give us an ability that becomes the core of a class, they don't like it so they make new content that has ways around the stuff they gave, it's like a grudge is being misdirected onto the people who are playing the game, when in fact it's the devs who are giving us all this stuff, then make the game a pain to play because of it Sadly to say, the mechanics of EQ are a mess, the whole game really needs a mechanic revamp, but this, sadly, would probably spell the end of EQ.
The first rule of Game Design is: "You never know what the players will do with your game once you give it to them." The second rule is: "The rats will do anything they can possibly do, to get to your cheese." With the above in mind: No. ie The dev's can't possibly anticipate everything the rats will do once they get their hands on the game. (Dev's really can only see their design intentions - the rats take it from there.) -Rat (no pun intended)
Honestly I would be, If there was anyone in the zone. I just prefer poShadows cos I can leviate there, which helps in the pulling. I do a /w , no one in the zone as usual and do a few swarms. Who cares? - I'll tell you who - jealous people , thats who People see others are selling these swarms at 35k a pull and a jealous, it's that simple. Ohh..that gets up my goat. I've played this game for a long time now. I have NEVER been affected by some other person "swarming" in a zone. EVER. That's not to say someone possibly hasn't been, but simply that the nerfs to Beam/ Headshot/Assassinate/Decap are not because of "zone disruption"
All I know is on Vox, people were selling PL through beam swarms, and this person was stating he could clear out an entire floor or zone and get you 3-4 level doing so .. at 20k a level. So one would assume, swarming is doing something that literally pulls mobs from an entire floor. And if so that is some crazy crap right there.
My Personal Pull Rate Chart 1 Mob..............................Target 2 - 6 Mobs.............................Group 7 - 15 Mobs.............................Crowd 16 - 24 Mobs.............................Herd 25 - 50 Mobs.............................Swarm 51 - 100 Mobs.............................Batallion 101-174 Mobs.............................Army 175+ Mobs.............................MASS ZONE What Rating Did You Have? (and be sure to answer honestly)
It's because when you do a swarm you lag out every other zone on the server. This post in the original thread explains it
I think anyone could have foreseen the impacts of stuff like swarming happening, a spell with unlimited targets, an ability to basically instantly kill a light blue target that can fire indefinitely. I realize not everything can be anticipated, but something as glaring as swarming? That's like when someone pulls out in front of a semi, and someone else says "how did you not see that coming?" Hence me saying, the stuff isn't being though about very carefully, maybe they should have a checklist to go over: how does this effect solo play, raid play, group play, possibly swarming play, does it couple with any other ability to make it to powerful. I realize that could turn into a pretty extensive checklist, but it's called quality control. If you don't know fully what something it going to do, then take more time, and refine it, don't implement it just to say you added something new, because most often times the stuff is left in game for extended periods of time and it becomes part of the norm until someone complains, but by then, it's usually snowballed out of control, and to reverse it requires re-doing multiple things, since we know they've implemented things to bypass something put in previously they didn't like. I have to disagree with the bolded/underlined statement, you do know what people will do with your game if it's carefully thought out, as the games creator, you have the power to limit what's done within your game. If we are going on that premise then we could compare that statement to a gun manufacturer saying "we didn't know what people would do with it once we gave it to them"
You've obviously never been to the other side of that table. The "creative vision" can get quite myopic when designing a function. And a 1/4 million rats can usually come up with something that the cheese-tenders don't anticipate. Take Mage beaming. The Mage can't even do it alone. He needs a pulling class to deliberately overpull to the point of lagging out the zone for this mass beam tactic to be viable. (deliberately lagging a zone is a defined exploit by the way) I don't think they saw that one coming at all. As for your comparison to guns? - apples and hammers. The basic function of a gun is to put holes in the (hopefully) desired place on the desired target. From it's inception it was "weaponized" in the intent of what the target would be. -Rat
Plane of earth. ie the earthen badlands requires you to kill swarms for raids. in fact one of the things gets so bad it can never finish. other swarm instance reqs in game too. cc has nothing to do with having to kill a bunch of mobs for a goal. the game was designed this way in many places and the devs can't just turn around and nerf the defenses for it. they need to redesign all these game spawns and perhaps fix cc properly before they can even claim players all fall into an extreme camp with x number of mobs. nerfs and double talks aren't going to fix fundamental server gameplay weaknesses brought on by bad game design ignoring what servers can really do. and no it is not the players fault all the time. there are definately these game mechanic requirements all over eq that you'd have to play the game to see.
