Test Update 10/10/17 - Patch Notes and Discussions

Discussion in 'Test Update Notes and Bug Roundup' started by EQ Dev, Oct 9, 2017.

  1. EQ Dev Developer

    October 10, 2017
    _____________________


    *** Items ***

    - Added kick skill damage to Darkened Cobalt Breastplate, Darkened Tolan's Darkwood Breastplate, and Darkened Wild Lord's Tunic. Added Tiger Claw skill damage to Darkened Wild Lord's Tunic.
    - Item Effect abilities have been moved from the General to the Special tab.


    *** Tradeskills ***

    - Restored the Brew Barrel, Jewelry Table, Kiln, Oven and Pottery Wheel to the neighborhood.
    - Corrected an issue that restricted the spell research table in the Plane of Knowledge to casters only.
    - Ability: Enchant Planar Alloy and Ability: Mass Enchant Planar Alloy will now activate at level 85 and 86 respectively.


    *** Quests And Events ***

    - Doorstep Of War (Raid & Mission) - Fixed a bug that could cause the You Be The Hero achievement to fail if enemies are killed by some spell effects.
    - In Defense of Health - Fixed a text error that could mislead people into trying to kill things out of order in the Vile Brutes version.
    - Edmuund's Plight - Icecore will now spawn in Frostcrypt.


    *** Spells ***

    - Paladin - Modified the recourse from the Challenge for Honor line so that it will absorb incoming melee damage even if there is a Vie effect on you.
    - Shaman - Extended the range for the healing portion of all ranks of the Healing Counterbias line to 300.
    - Made the following improvements to the amount of aggro generated by spells:
    - - Fixed an issue that prevented abilities like Spell Casting Subtlety and Bold Attacks from improving the aggro of your first spell against a target.
    - - Fixed an issue that prevented abilities like Bold Attacks from improving the aggro generated by hate-over-time spells (Ex: Impose for Honor).
    - - Fixed an issue that prevented abilities like Spell Casting Subtlety from reducing the aggro generated by damage-over-time spells.


    *** AA ***
    - Stored AA points greater than 3 times your level will now be removed after logging out. This is in addition to the earned-limit (2 times your level.)
    - - You will now be prompted to purchase any available AA abilities prior to camping if you are over the stored-limit.
    - - Refunded abilities that result in your stored AA points being greater than the stored-limit will allow free-to-play members to purchase abilities until your stored AA total is below the stored-limit.
    - All - Fixed a bug that prevented abilities that grant resistance to specific effects, such as Mental Fortitude, from working. Reduced the effective percentage of these lines now that the abilities function.
    - Multiple - Consolidated Shielding Resistance, Sinister Strikes, and Slippery Attacks to be ranks of Ambidexterity.
    - Multiple - Consolidated Quicker Damage to be additional ranks of Quick Damage.
    - Multiple - Consolidated Body and Mind Rejuvenation to be rank 4 of Mental Clarity and an equivalent rank 7 of Innate Regeneration. The ability lines were refunded with this change.
    - Multiple - Consolidated Natural Healing to be ranks 4-6 of Innate Regeneration. The ability lines were refunded with this change.
    - Multiple - The ability line 'Tactical Mastery' has been renamed 'Strikethrough.'
    - Multiple - Consolidated Companion's Agility, Blessing, Durability, Sturdiness, and Fortify Companion into a single ability, Companion's Fortification. The ability retains the passive benefits of all the consolidated lines. Activating the ability triggers Fortify Companion and Companion's Blessing which now serves as a preemptive buff that will trigger its healing and mitigation effects if your pet drops below 40% health.
    - Multiple - Consolidated Companion's Aggression, Alacrity, Fury, and Wrath into a single ability, Companion's Fury.
    - Multiple - Renamed Companion's Divine Aura to Companion's Intervening Divine Aura and changed its functionality. The ability now places a buff on your pet that will trigger invulnerability should its health drop below 20%.
    - Multiple - Consolidated Pet Affinity to be a rank of Suspended Minion and renamed the line Companion's Suspension.
    - Multiple - Consolidated Pet Discipline and Companion's Relocation into a single line, Companion's Discipline.
    - Bard, Rogue - Consolidated Advanced Trap Negotiation to be ranks of Thief's Intuition.
    - Berserker, Warrior - Consolidated Ferocity, Flurry, and Punishing Blade to be ranks of Burst of Power.
    - Cleric, Shaman - Refunded Extended Elixirs and reduced the level required to purchase ranks 1-3 of Prolonged Salve.
    - Druid, Wizard - Refunded Hastened Recall and added 6 additional ranks to Secondary Recall and Tertiary Recall that offer hastening.
    - Necromancer, Shadowknight - Consolidated Feigned Minion to be ranks of Companion's Discipline.
    - Necromancer, Shadowknight - Consolidated Deathly Pact and Intrinsic Efficiency to a single line, Embalmer's Efficiency.
    - Paladin, Shadowknight - Consolidated Flurry, Knight's Advantage, and Speed of the Knight to be ranks of Burst of Power.
    - Paladin, Shadowknight, Warrior - Fixed an issue that caused the buffs triggered by Weapon Stances to not take effect immediately upon changing weapons.
    - Bard - Staunch Recovery will now restore mana for bards.
    - Bard - Consolidated Allegretto of Battle, Flurry, Harmonious Attack, and Vivace of Conflict to be ranks of Burst of Power. The ability lines were refunded with this change.
    - Bard - Consolidated Total Domination to be ranks of Domination Mastery.
    - Beastlord - Consolidated Bestial Frenzy and Primal Fury to be ranks of Burst of Power.
    - Beastlord - Consolidated Bestial Bloodrage to be ranks of Companion's Fury.
    - Cleric - The ability line 'Righteous Zeal' has been renamed 'Burst of Power.'
    - Druid - Consolidated Mastery of Nature to be ranks of Dire Charm.
    - Enchanter - Consolidated Animation Empathy and Companion's Relocation to be ranks of Companion's Discipline.
    - Enchanter - Consolidated Forceful Banishment to be ranks of Beguiler's Banishment and Beguiler's Directed Banishment.
    - Magician - Refunded Hastened Heart of the Elements and added 7 additional ranks to Heart of Flames, Ice, Stone, and Vapor that offer hastening.
    - Magician - Consolidated Frenzied Burnout to be ranks of Companion's Fury. Reduced the number of counters on Virulent Talon and increased the amount of damage done by Virulent Talon Strike.
    - Magician - Consolidated Quick Summoning, Improved Reclaim Energy, and Intrinsic Efficiency to be ranks of Conjurer's Efficiency.
    - Monk - Consolidated Ferocity, Punishing Blade, and Rapid Strikes to be ranks of Burst of Power. The ability lines were refunded with this change.
    - Monk - Consolidated Tactical Mastery to be ranks of 'Strikethrough.'
    - Monk - Consolidated Critical Mend and Hastened Mend into a single line, Improved Mend.
    - Necromancer - Consolidated Frenzy of the Dead to be ranks of Companion's Fury.
    - Ranger - Consolidated Ferocity, Lightning Strikes, and Punishing Blade to be ranks of Burst of Power. The ability lines were refunded with this change.
    - Ranger - The ability line 'Keen Blade' has been renamed 'Strikethrough.'
    - Rogue - Consolidated Flurry to be ranks of Burst of Power.
    - Shaman - Fixed a bug that prevented Focus: Regenerating Counterbias from functioning.
    - Shaman - The ability line 'Double Attack' has been renamed 'Burst of Power.'
    - Shaman - Consolidated Pathosis and Extended Pathosis to be ranks of Malosinete.
    - Shaman - Consolidated Wind of Pathosis to be ranks of Wind of Malosinete.
    - Warrior - Fixed a bug that prevented Hastened Flash of Anger from functioning.
    - Wizard - Consolidated Sustained Devastation and Hastened Devastation to be ranks of Frenzied Devastation.
    - Wizard - Consolidated Fury of Druzzil, E`ci, Kerafyrm, Ro, and Hastened Fury of the Gods into a single line, Fury of the Gods.
    - - All ranks of this ability will now focus all direct-damage spells, abilities, and effects.
    - - The damage focus now scales from 75 at rank 1 to 3600 at rank 53.
    - - All ranks now increase base-damage rather than ranks 1-7 increasing total-damage and 8+ increasing base-damage.
    - - Reduced the hastening ranks from 3 to 2 minutes per rank and reduced the duration to 4 minutes.


    *** Miscellaneous ***

    - Fixed a problem that caused real estate anchors to fail.
    - Added the /run command to make your character run if it isn't. This command is not toggleable (i.e. /run will never make you walk).


    *** UI ***

    - Fixed a number of possible crashes related to the Find Item Window and custom UIs.
    - The Message "An unknown error occurred while trying to join the server" has been updated with the new message "The server is busy processing requests, please try again in a few minutes.".
    - Fixed a possible crash related to the Pick as Group and custom UIs.
    - Updated the spell information window so that it shows more consistent information when you inspect buffs or debuffs.
    - - Added the ability for spell descriptions to display "links" to other spells.
    - - Clicking on a spell icon from the spell description will generate a new link in your chat window. Press enter to share the spell in a clickable link.
    - - You can also right-click on any of your buffs and choose the option "Link spell to chat" to generate a spell link.
    - Corrected an issue where the advanced loot window sometimes wouldn't list group members in the Give to: and Set all to: fields.
    - Corrected an issue where loot filters in the loot filters window could have duplicate item entries.


    *** Previously Updated ***

    - Corrected an issue that allowed flagged players to exist in Anguish but not enter it.
    - Access to Anguish (Quest) - It is no longer necessary to get a hidden 7th flag in order to loot items within Anguish.
    - Access to Anguish (Quest) - Fixed a problem with 85/15 access not working for Anguish.



    - The EverQuest Team
  2. Ibadan Kun'Tirel Augur

    Okay, I'll bite...

    Some of us are over this limit due to raid achievements, and have nothing to spend the AA on. Could we have the limit increased to 5 times to be safe? Stand to lose a hundred or more when this goes live. (I was hoarding for the expansion, what? Sorry!!!)

    .... what? Can the person who is doing these consolidations please consult with us prior to making such drastic changes? This doesn't show a clear understanding of how or when Fortify Companion is used, much less Companion's Blessing. When using Fortify, you might want the mitigation from 100%, not 40%. And Blessing there may be times when you want it to trigger immediately because it will have to ramp up. We already have Second Wind which is an emergency buff. Fortify/Blessing aren't really in the same category of situations, and have (had???) a much broader spectrum of use. Please don't do this.

    Again... this is not really desirable. Companion's Divine Aura gets its only functionality from being a situational buff that can be cast at will. Reducing it to only emergency mode strips it of entire spectrums of functionality. I understand you are trying to truncate the lists, but these changes aren't just reducing clutter, they are killing the functionality of lines.

    I see a number of merges with passive and active abilities for magi. Can we get an explanation on how functionally that will work? Basically clicking Companion's Fury to cast FBO/VT? Click conjurer's efficiency to cast improved reclaim energy? Click companion's discipline to relocate pet? Click companion's suspension to suspend pet? Or new /pet (x) effects (discipline uses /pet hold, etc... now a /pet relocate? or click button)?

    I don't hate consolidating things, but would like consolidations to make sense, and for a little more text to explain functionally how these consolidations will function. Some of the changes will alter how the abilities function in an undesirable way, and I hope (perhaps in vain) that you all will read comments and at least consider them. Beyond that, looks like some interesting changes (spell linking, descriptions fixed, subtlety for dots, etc.).
    Skewert, Ishtass and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  3. segap Augur

    Can we just stop with the AA consolidations? This is getting ridiculous. What exactly is the goal from this process?
    DebonAir, Yinla, Phalynx and 4 others like this.
  4. mugwump New Member

    Big concern with this (and probably many more AAs in the list for other classes) as far as Agnarr in particular is concerned:

    - Paladin, Shadowknight - Consolidated Flurry, Knight's Advantage, and Speed of the Knight to be ranks of Burst of Power.

    Knight's Advantage and Speed of the Knight are both PoP-era AAs. Burst of Power is an AA from a much later expansion (Secrets of Faydwer). The concern is completely losing these AAs on Agnarr unless these ranks of BoP are changed to enable during PoP.

    Could a dev confirm how these AA changes are going to reflect on Agnarr as far as consolidating earlier expansion AAs into later expansion ones?
  5. Zipe The Healer


    Just tested on my ranger on test center... Rangers also Got the 2 hand AA' merged into Burst of Power. Burst of Power first ranks are flagged as "Planes of Power", so you you'll have that on Agnarr.
    Edit: Well, unless they up with knights. Rangers look good.
  6. fransisco Augur

    For the Pet divine aura - how will this work for tanking pets. Does that mean if they take a bad round and hit 20%, they get DA - and thus cannot hold agro?
    Skewert likes this.
  7. Zunar Augur

    Looks like it.
    But I wouldn't use this on a tanking pet.
    Bet it's nice on raids where a sudden streak of AEs could kill the pet. I've honestly not used this AA at all lately, or ever since it was changed to the way it is now on live.
    I think this looks like a nice change.

    I tried dot agro on the beastlord with and without combat subtlety.
    It definetly seems to be working.

    With combat subtlety I can cast top 2 dots and the warder didn't lose agro. steady 50% agro on me.
    Without combat subtlety and casting top 2 dots, I gank agro back once and then the pet holds it, with me hovering between 80%-95% agro.

    Btw I don't melee or cast anything else. Just the 2 dots. This definetly helps.
  8. kizant Augur

    I'd like to suggest Arcomancy, Pyromancy, and Cryomancy for consolidation. So far, the wiz consolidation has been relatively sane so whatever you guys come up with is probably fine. Although make sure to kill the DoT component entirely. Why would wizards have a dot? It makes no sense.

    Oh and why not make dimensional shield an upgrade to dimensional instability and let everyone have it? It's not all that great in the first place. Reduce the timer or something to compensate for losing one of the two. Instability is kinda dumb, at least with shield you're only getting moved around when you're hit.

    Also, feel free to delete ward of destruction.

    And if you all really want to clean things up. I got a list of spells that should be deleted!
    Reht and Brohg like this.
  9. kthehammy Elder

    I am very worried about these AA consolidations.

    Last patch you made consolidation changes to Summon Companion. The ranks were reduced to 0 and you had to re-purchase them to get back what you once had. Since my mage's account is FTP, I cannot re-purchase the new ranks since I am over the AA cap from being previously subscribed on that account. I am simply without Summon Companion now.

    The change took away something I once had, and I have no way to get it back unless I sub that account for a month so I can re-purchase what I had already earned and purchased.

    You and now making huge consolidations to the pet AA lines. Please do not make the same mistake you made before. Please do not screw over FTP accounts that had already purchased these AAs when they were gold accounts.
    PathToEternity likes this.
  10. kthehammy Elder

    Fortify Companion does not need changed. Please leave it how it is.
    Yinla likes this.
  11. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    In the notes: "Refunded abilities that result in your stored AA points being greater than the stored-limit will allow free-to-play members to purchase abilities until your stored AA total is below the stored-limit."
    I don't think the other option -which is to purchase the AA increase thru the marketplace - is fair since you already had those AA when gold.
  12. Rhaage Augur

    maybe... or maybe not.

    the "stored-limit" is two times level, if I am 105 and f2p with 0 aa saved and they refund 100 aa, I am still below the stored limit of 210 aa so I cannot re-purchase what I lost.
  13. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Before the wizard fury consolidation, I could alternate between fury of ro and fury of kerafyrm, so that at least one of them(sometimes with overlap) was active at all times.
    This meant that if you stacked fire-dd-procs(and alternated between ro and kerafyrm), you would have the fire-dd-procs permanently boosted by something. Now they will only be boosted some of the time, and the boost is not dependent on which type of proc you have.
    The upside to this nerf is that it makes newer dd-procs more relevant since you no longer gain something from sticking to one specific damage-type for procs.

    Consolidating 2 AAs with different timers is a bit harsh though, I was hoping for a solution with more "uptime". ;)
  14. Sancus Augur

    The mitigation from Fortify Companion is always on (given your pet has the buff); it does not wait until after your pet hits 40% to trigger. Companion's Blessing is what triggers after your pet reaches 40%.
    Skewert and fransisco like this.
  15. kizant Augur

    There is a bit of a downside to this one but I can't complain when they focus us more on short term/burn DPS. That's what I want wizards to be and factoring in the recent familiar change and FD I don't think we're worse off. It's actually probably a decent balance for consolidating without really changing much.
  16. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    True, at least the nerf fits the wizard "theme" about burst damage. Time will tell, how it works out...
    kizant likes this.
  17. kizant Augur

    Yeah.. I admit that a 20 minute re-use is a bit crazy. Having anything over 15 in current EQ is a bit much.

    From my testing I think the new version will lose out to the old by the 10mins in and that's being generous and raid focused. I'm counting frostweave strike getting benefits from it, etc. It might be closer to 8 mins for most cases. So, that's 12 minutes of a loss where I think 8 minutes of a loss (15 min re-use) would have been better. Very rough numbers obviously and I'm one of those people that generally used them both at the same time to get as much re-use as possible. Spreading them out stopped making sense to me once they hit 10min duration.
    Jumbur likes this.
  18. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Indeed, 15 mins would be better, and shorten the arcane fury cooldown to 15 mins too, now that we are at it. :p
  19. Hekaton Augur

    Refunded extended elixirs for shaman? Dang now they're swooping as abilities we don't even have
  20. Smellyogres New Member

    I am curious about the reasoning behind all the AA line consolidations. What is the purpose? I see this as a way of following the path of WoW when they stopped allowing characters to custom build their specs. People have spent years developing their playstyle around certain AA's in certain circumstances. The ability to use talents and cooldowns in a way that suits them. The continued consolidation is a dumbing down of a game that is supposed to allow players to "Play Their Way". It seems to me this is a way to make new players on the progression servers not be overwhelmed with the thousands of possibilities of progressing their character. In doing this you are doing a disservice to the thousands of veteran players that have invested years and thousands of hours playing their character and finding out what works and does not work for them. Please stop dumbing down EQ. This game is so much more than an arcade-style game. Stop removing situationally based AA's that require thought and muscle memory to react situationally. It seems that every patch we are beaten over the head with nerf bat after nerf bat without any discussion of why. I have not taken the time to figure out what the latest batch of aa consolidation has actually done to the mechanics of the game yet, I am certain there will be people parsing and figuring out what the actual damage to certain classes will be. Please just stop