March 2016 Patch Preview

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Aristo, Mar 10, 2016.

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  1. Aristo Developer

    Our March patch is scheduled for Wednesday, March 16, 2016 (the day of EverQuest’s 17th Anniversary!). Here are some highlights on what players can expect from this patch:

    DoTs Improvements

    Over the past few months, we've been reviewing the way DoTs work and how we would like to improve them going forward. As most of you know, there's a limited number of debuff slots available on any given NPC, which conflicts with DoT classes wanting to layer as many spells as possible on any given NPC in order to maximize damage. This layering has contributed to a lot of problems over the years; most notably, it takes a lot of spell slots away from players who want to maximize DoT damage, and it uses up many of the limited debuff slots available on raid targets.

    In order to improve the way this works, we're starting this process with Beastlords, but we're planning to continue with it through all classes that use DoTs regularly. Here's what we did for Beastlords:
    1. We went back to the first DoT in any given line, and doubled it (or more). This step may not happen for every class, but Beastlords in particular haven't been able to use DoTs for as much reliable damage as we'd like, so they needed the boost.
    2. We looked at updates to those lines and increased their damage in a much more aggressive scale than we used to. This should mean that a new DoT will perform better than itself plus two previous levels of the same spell under the old scale.
    3. We increased damage/mana efficiency over the entire line in a progressive manner. At each level you should be getting more damage per mana than before.
    4. We categorized the new DoTs into lines which will prevent the same player from stacking multiple levels of the same DoT line on the same target. Other players can use DoTs in the same line on the same target, and the same player can use DoTs in the same line on different targets. The increase in damage should mean that a single player is dealing more damage with one DoT than they formerly did with three spells.
    So, let's look at some numbers. The current level 101 Beastlord poison DoT, Glistenwing Blood, currently deals a raw total (with no focus effects or any other enhancement) of 14395 damage over its duration at a cost of 1285 mana. Stacking the previous two levels of that spell will deal a total of 43349 raw damage for a total of 3460 mana. As a superDoT, the current level alone will deal 121154 raw damage for a total of 8532 mana, and will only need one debuff slot to do it. While, yes, that is a very high mana cost, it's also far more damage. It's worth noting that the level 91 spell, Binaesa Blood, will now deal 45210 damage on its own for a cost of 3799 mana.

    We're planning to make this same transition for all classes that use DoTs over the next few months. Other classes probably won't see the same boost in base damage that Beastlords have, since they have fewer innate boosts to DoT damage than other classes, but we expect everyone to be doing more damage, ramping that damage up faster, using more mana (though more efficiently), and using fewer debuff slots on their targets.

    Hate's Fury Sails Again

    For our 17th Anniversary, we've added a hybrid event to Norrath called “Hate’s Fury: Seventeen Pieces of Silver.” Krasnok's ship, Hate's Fury: The Scorned Maiden, has set sail once again, and this time he's got friends. Sixteen of them, in fact. Each of them will give a reward of Commemorative Coins, and if you defeat all of the crew members, you can unlock the door to Krasnok's cabin and face the Captain (#17!) himself for raid-quality rewards.

    We've added a new gnome race that starts in Ak`anon that runs several times a day on EVERY server during the anniversary and a few new items to the jubilant merchant in the Plane of Knowledge as well. Head over to these spots to have a look!

    Zone Experience Modifier Changes

    This part gets a little bit "inside baseball," but bear with me. Way back when we started our first Hot Zone project, we increased experience within the zones by increasing the raw data, and then setting it back down to what it used to be once we rotated to a different set. We did this for the first several years before we realized it was a very error-prone process and developed a better one. A few days ago, some players expressed a concern that Burning Woods had a very high experience modifier, making it outstrip the experience available in any other zone available in that era. We looked into this report and discovered that Burning Woods had its ZEM raised when it was one of the original hot zones, but it wasn't ever reset. A few years later, when it was made a hot zone again, the ZEM was raised again... and again never lowered back to what it was. Under our current hot zone system, on non-progression servers, it was getting yet another boost to the ZEM, in effect making it a triple hot zone there, and a double hot zone on progression servers.

    So, yeah…we had to change that. As we investigated, we realized this had happened to varying degrees to a lot of zones. Though Burning Woods was the only zone to have been boosted twice with no reset, many other zones had either been set to an incorrect value after being used as a hot zone at some point in history. We ended up with about 20 zones that were set too high, and another group of about twenty that were set too low. With the upcoming patch, we're setting those back to where they were supposed to be. Dungeons in the same era now have similarly higher-than-average ZEMs, and outdoor zones in the same era will have similarly lower-than-average ZEMs. While we know it's not very fun to have to leave a zone you were comfortable in, we're excited that zones like Sebilis, the Temple of Cazic Thule, and Velketor's Labyrinth will be returning to give better experience rewards to the players who are brave enough to enter them.

    --


    As always, we value your feedback on these upcoming changes, but we hope you’ll check them out for yourself first (on test or on live servers) before passing judgement. We’re grateful for your support!
    Xanadas, Cazmac, beryon and 7 others like this.
  2. DanishNjava_VZ New Member

    The change in dot damage is scary when it comes to PVP. Can you explain that or did you forget all about Zeks existence?
  3. Tharkis Princess

    Will these dot changes lead to the removal of the giant damage penalty to fast dots? Originally it was put in place initially to prevent necros from being able to load up all the fast dots from several expansions as they rotate through their dot lines, but it had a major negative impact on shaman ability to contribute dmg while raiding too, as fast dots are more or less the 'shaman nukes' these days, but they're crippled on anything that gives a 5 minute raid timer.

    If they cant be stacked any-longer, that seems to remove the reason for the penalty in the first place.
    Rhiyannon and Trick like this.
  4. ShadowMan Augur

    Have you guys accounted for how broken dot aggro is? Boosted dots to this level is going to cause major aggro concerns if the aggro that comes with them is not remedied.

    Also it sounds like your going to be playing a shell game with dot classes. Rather than the dot masters which are necromancers having the most powerful of all things dot related like wizards reign supreme in all things nukes being the nuke masters. It sounds like necromancers are going to receive the smallest of boosts provided to their dot lines because they have more tools to amplify them. Which leads to them actually losing ground relative to other dot users except for the times when they stack all their tools on at once. Or to say that another way because necros have lots of AA lines and such to boost their dots they will now have the lowest base dots. So a beastlord might get 300,000 raw damage by casting his 3 new super dots because they have less tools to modify them but a necro would only get 300,000 raw damage by casting 7 dots because they have more tools to modify them. Which anyway you slice is a relative hit to power compared to anyone else getting dot boosts. You don't see wizards with 20,000 base nukes and Mages with 32,000 base nukes just because wizards get more tools to modify them, wizards have the most powerful base nukes and the best and most abilities to modify them. Will wait to see how this plays out but you all but spell out this is whats going to happen.

    Also I fail to see why swift dots were nerfed from being used in raids and have totally been blocked from being modified by many dot amplifiers and yet now you are essentially restoring all that the a much larger degree. And after you hit necro mana regen to be inferior to what wizards are now capable of in regards to self mana regen. You are boosting group necro dps and speeding up ramp time drastically but at the cost of going out of mana first as the class that up until the deathbloom nerf was always the last dps class to run out of steam since 1999.
    Trick likes this.
  5. AnzoRagespirit Augur

    I uhh...I will prolly test thus but...chances are I still won't use dots on raids cause of the necros.
  6. Catmandu New Member

    With Enslaver of Souls, is there going to be a re-assessment of the scale of difficulty of the quest? It is almost impossible to do even with the best of a group, especially taking into account the number of adds, the timer limitation and finally the elimination of all three healing shards. I think I speak for many a player who has attempted (numerous times) to take her out. There is also the issue of dispelling not working and the aura not always visible. A response would be very much appreciated. :)
    Timbu Greyshire
    Vrinda likes this.
  7. mackal Augur

    Well, shortly the necros won't need 30+ slots :p
  8. Stample New Member

    The first thing to concern me, as a BST currently at 65, is resists. Seeing the huge damage increase will be nice, but with the equally massive mana costs, that's going to make every resist much more painful. I already spend a good chunk of my mana in any given fight on DoTs (molo with a healer), and its not infrequent that an even con mob can resist 3-4 DoT spells per fight. We hybrids, I'm including Rangers and SKs here, have always had a rougher time landing spells than our pure caster counter-parts since we get no debuffs. If we double or triple mana costs, that's going to be very painful to fight even, yellow, or naturally resistant mobs.
    PathToEternity, Eanelder and Cazmac like this.
  9. Randragon Augur

    Aristo wrote:


    So, in essence, dungeons will be better to gain experience in than outdoor zones?

    Playing Devil's advocate I think you are going in the wrong direction in this. You should still spread it out across the boards and offer a healthy mix of indoor/outdoor zones. Some classes operate better outdoors than indoors and vice versa. Punishing those who use outdoor zones more effectively than other classes is not really fair.

    I am not just talking about kiting classes and such but some classes have spells/abilities and what not that can only operate indoors and outdoors. Most of them have gone away at higher levels but the lower levels still have those restrictions.

    Personally I think you are going in the wrong direction on this. Just my opinion.
    Faana, Indrigoth and Cazmac like this.
  10. shadowgod Augur



    Dungeons were more geared toward groups while open zones you could solo on plenty of classes. So the XP in dungeons was always better because it gave you an incentive to group.
  11. Caterwail New Member

    Curious how they will handle Bard DoTs
    /cry to see Burning Woods xp go down, would rather kill Blues in BW than Whites in Skyfire on Ragefire
  12. Gumby Augur

    They already made that thing pretty easy now. The crystal shard things just melt.

    Burn from the start. If you have melee that can Rampage, use it. It only takes 2 players to kill the shards now. Focus on the first, then split one each on them. Then continue burning to 70%. On phase change, clean up the adds if they are still alive.

    After that it's cake if you follow the aura's. That mission will never be done with Merc's if that is what you are trying to do. You need to find real players for it.
  13. FixShamanPlease Elder

    Good DoT improvements; thank you.
  14. Lifetap Augur

    Two questions.

    1. Will the DoT spell changes impact lower level play(IE progression server players) or will these changes happen at higher levels?

    2. With the devs working on hotzone issues, would it mean that we might see new hotzones in the future?
    Gyurika Godofwar and Cazmac like this.
  15. Cazmac Augur

  16. Cazmac Augur

    I don't know how my reply got eaten by the statement from Aristo! :D
    PrathunEQ likes this.
  17. snailish Augur

    The dot changes are interesting.

    I strongly suggest none of them are pushed to live servers until all dot classes have been addressed, and field tested, on the Test server. Once that looks good they should all be out on the same patch.

    While I can see that maybe beastlords need some attention most, it's way less drama to do these things in a comprehensive sweep.

    Clarity on how this impacts the under 65 (aka progression ruleset) game would probably save a lot of forum posts as well. Higher mana cost for spells there is not going to be seen as a plus, even with damage boost (necros are in an overdot situation at low levels much of the time as it is already).
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  18. Semah Augur

    Didn't Dalnir take a nerf to XP, not a boost?
  19. ShadowMan Augur


    Want to add numbers for necros to show what just what they currently use without any adjustment:

    Liquifaction - 17,270 base damage at rk 3, past 3 versions and chaotics.
    Pyre of Jorobb - 13,316 base damage at rk 3, the past 4 versions.
    Ignite Synapsis - 6810 base damage at rk 3, the past 2 versions.
    Annihilation - 5946 base damage at rk 3, the past 2 versions.
    Dichotomic Paroxysm - 17,774 base damage at rk 6, can't be focused.
    Glistenwing Venom - 7,931 base damage at rk 3, the past 3 versions.
    Plexiphara's Pallid Haze - 6,722 base damage at rk 3, the past 3 versions.
    Scourge of Fates - 4062/2587 damage at rk 3 for undead/live, remove timer altogether should never have had one nevermind share one with Dichotomic Paroxysm.
    Pyre of the Lost - 6,461 base damage at rk 3, past 2 versions and chaotic.
    Smouldering Shadow - 4,443 base damage at rk 3, the past 2 versions.
    Livianus' Decay - 3,350 base damage at rk 3, the past 2 versions.
    Grip of Jabaum - no one uses this dot due to conflicts with other classes debuffs. Should triple its debuff and add a reduce chance to hit aspect.
    Mortiferous Wounds - 5,763 base damage at rk 3 normal dot and 33,066 doom dot base damage.

    Never mind swift dots which may or may not be adjusted. Life tap dot line which only would be used if its cast time was adjusted to be just like all other dots.
  20. Treesong Elder

    No love for outdoors zone once again. :( I understand how dungeons are way more dangerous then outdoor zones, so they should have a better modifier. But let's face it, dieing isn't the setback that it used to be.

    I would prefer that most of the benefits of doing a dungeon would be in the loot and not leave outdoors zones in the dust when it comes to XP.

    Everquest has wonderful outdoors zones, it is such a waste that they all suck for XP.

    Also, please bring back quest xp for any quests that involve any no trade items, long timers and rare mobs. I.e., spend a little more time on this then the 1 second it took you guys to flip a number and nerf all quest xp. Beetle eyes ---> nerf. Paw of Opolla ---> don't nerf.
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