Save Time and Players: No More Rank Buffs

ranks on fighting spells are important, as the analogue for weapons wielded in combat. The difference between ranks may not feel as big, which is a separate discussion, but that a difference exists is pretty important.

They should ditch all the rank 2 and 3s. Put the must have spells on vendors, rest drops from named in zones can be sold in bazaar, fluff spells ultra rare.

First off, let me state my general opinion for those that care; I mostly wouldn't mind if the devs actually were to remove ranks to buffs. Some good things certainly would come from it. I also can stand by reasoning for them to continue to exist with some exceptions, though.

I am 90% sure a dev was quoted a year or so ago that adding the rank 2 and 3 versions of spells literally takes about 5 minutes of work. I imagine it would take more time to remove or reinvent the current system than to continue using it. Not sure why they'd have to test each rank of the spell.

Huh?

Have the person with rk3 tranq their buff(s) close to engage. If someone asks for a buff after coming back from LD/dying/any other reason, and they ask a person who only has rk2 or 1, ...then they get whatever rank they have coming. Never in the history of EQ has someone received a rank 1 or 2 buff on a raid mid fight, sent a tell to the person who cast it on them complaining and asking who has rank 3, then proceeded to send a tell to the rk3 caster for a minor upgrade in a single buff. Multiply that by all the buffs that apply.

Hell, most of the time I'll ask someone for a buff if I find myself in those scenarios, and I won't even look at my buff window to see if I even received the buff unless it's critically important. I admit some UI's might make it easier to see what rank of buff you have than the default (all I've ever used) but if you're so petty that you are going to go out of your way to make sure you received the highest rank of all buffs and continue asking around until you get them mid fight/directly before engage, than you do not belong in any tier of raiding guild.

This is a non issue.

This is a great point! I think this absolutely needs refined. Although I feel like it might be hard coded and here to stay, unfortunately. The easy fix would indeed be to just make one rank of any rune type buff. This I can stand behind 100%.

This point seems a bit disingenuous, though, as this situation almost never occurs. The difference in ranks of runes (well, all ranks of spells) is so minor that the chance of it "having 5 hp's left" is pretty negligible. Plus, if someone's concerned with recasting runes on people, it's probably going to be the same person that keeps casting it to begin with, and their spell rank will therefore not change (unless they get the higher rank after a win, at which point it's a non issue).

No one dips and gets back into game asking for a new rune while having a previous rank 3 rune with low counters on it. No one.

I've been a cleric since cotf (no record of course, but long enough that I've always played one since spell ranks were out) and every group I've ever been in at expansion launch since then has been the same in one regard: Every single player in the group has been on board with shoveling all spell runes for buffs my way. To the point where it's f****ng annoying. I mean, I've gone 3 months into an expansion and people will have a glowing rune drop and ask me if I need it for a rk2 buff before deciding to roll on it. Maybe the problem is the players you are surrounded by?

Sure, a player and their robot might be higher level than you and therefore get the buffs before you can cast them on the group. They may ask you to drop group for rk2 buffs. At which point, the cleric can do one of two things since they have all the power: Tell them to go to hell and they can keep their robot in the group permanently because they're out -- or drop group a sec for buffs. You can also subtlety cast rk 1 buffs on everyone and no one will care/notice.

It takes little time to reach max level and the spell runes should be easily acquired through play. The time that this would be an annoyance on any level is a blip in the timeline and should not annoy clerics to the point of being infuriated for the rest of the year. If it is, EQ is not the game for them.

There's no perfect way to handle new spells on a level cap increase expansion launch for raids, but maybe your guild could consider making sure one or two of the top RA buffing classes get their buff runes first before anyone else can bid/receive theirs (whether it be for free, or a set price of dkp etc).

I personally don't mind the 3 ranks of spells. I think it gives people something to work towards. I'd like to see the drops to get those spells increased significantly though.

This thread length makes me weep for humanity..

The fix is already IN.. game..

Buff block rks 1 and 2 and BAM. Now you only get rk 3.

that is not a thing

Anytime someone brings up things like Jim Crow laws and apartheid or any other social injustice to a game argument then things are getting silly. Everquest is a game. It's a game folks. It's not some major social injustice and comparing any situations in a game to such diminishes the true hardships RL folks went through. Just say no to using examples of social injustice for inconsequential game arguments.

Problem lies then that if you don't have anyone on to buff with rank 3 you end up with nothing. It is at its worst at the start of any expansion when not every buffer has rank 3.

Then unblock 1 and 2?

You are mistaken. This occurs regularly. A well coordinated enchanter team will MGB legions, Glyph Spray and the likes mid event. When one ENC has the spell, the subsequent ENC will get massive fail spam when MGBing.

ENC get a DoT legion, a DD legion, and auspice (DoT). We also have glpyh spray and MGB'able melee runes.

The shielding from Legion of Skrizik for example is 20% up to 71234, 74796 and 78536 respectively. Considering these narrow margins of benefit, it is very easy to have occurrences in which a MGB of Rk2 mid event overwriting a damaged Rk3 would be both beneficial and frequent.

As it is 20%, it would take an AE hitting the raid of 392K+ to destroy the entire shield in one hit. Usually substantially more than 3k of the shielding is missing (which is only a 15k DD which by todays standards in raids such a thing would not exist). A good rotation will land before most have failed, thusly, this is definitely an issue. A massive amount of shielding is lost by Rk2 not overwriting Rk3 after the Rk3 has absorbed damage.

MGB of spell guards during the event are likely vastly under utilized but can be of a great advantage to any raid force struggling with an encounter.

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic. I certainly hope so.

Are you guys joking? Please tell me you are joking?

I'm getting concerned you guys might be serious...

I am concerned that after ALL of RoS and ALL of TBL...your enchanters don't have RK 3 buffs.

It was until they changed it so that blocking one rank blocks all of them.

When this was the case, we still wouldn't of had the room in blocked buffs to block them all. As this was never part of the post, just someones misunderstanding of it , it is moot. Even the people attempting to re-angle the fix to mean something pointless have not properly looked at how many times their own buffs or buff like procs are bouncing off other players when the level cap goes up or a new spell "buff-mechanic" is introduced.

The Elitist trolls might have all rank 3 spells for everyone in their guild on the first day(perhaps a dev will have left them available on a secret vendor like they did with poison supplies last expansion.) They may never have to play an alt on raids, who for obvious reasons will not see rank spells for a very long time. Apparently they never use healer mercs, nor have they seen the drastic decline in clerics since those mercs were put into the game(this slap in the face being one of the reasons why.) But for the other 90pct of the player-base its an annoyance on multiple levels.

Thank you, now plz convince other real players to pipe in. So I am not having to reply to three trolls forum-questing on three accounts each, to create the illusion that they have some majority view of the problem.

It might be helpful to provide some history here. Level 65 spells were PoP drops that dropped like candy in PoP raids. They could be sold indirectly, and raiders made a lot of money, but chances are you were able to get all of your spells via baz. OOW introduced level 70 spells via spell runes, but only 66-68 were tradeable, 69-70 only dropped off named mobs. For those not in a strong guild, it took forever to get the 69-70 spells, so you had plenty of level 70 char missing key spells in groups.

So for TSS, they released a tier system. Rank 1 was buyable, Rank 2 was mob drops, and Rank 3 was raid only drops. Rank 1/2 made sense, but Rank 3 caused an extra layer of separation between raiders and groupers. I was not a fan of it, and actually quit the game when it was released. Didn't come back for a few years. For me, the big one was enchanter mez spells. Higher ranks were resisted less, so a group enchanter became a second class citizen compared to a raid enchanter.

These days, I am in lower tier raid forces, so I do get some of my rank 3 spells. I now hate level expansions, because it means there will be quite some time before I can get my key spells at rank 3. Hopefully, they will dial back tier 1 raids on the next expansion some, so the weaker raid forces have a chance at the spells.

P.S. I found the OP's description of how easy raids are laughable. The problem is that modern raids are too difficult at the moment. Enough that it prevents weaker raid forces from beating current expansion raids.

Do not see any reason to change present system. Any well organized has no problems with ranks.

if only you could coordinate your enchanters such that people with RK3 cast their MGBs last in a mid event sequence rather than first..... if only that was possible..... so then it would not only get stronger later in the event, when more damage is being taken due to defensive abilities wearing off, but it would never get bounced.... weird.... someone should try something like that.... like... arrange it ahead of time.... very strange.... #getgooderanditsnotaproblem

Damnit Mehdisin Mahn you beat me to it...

Now you guys are just trolling.

Imagine how ridiculous it would be (if we didn't have tranquil blessings) to MGB Rk2 Haste before the event so you have MGB Rk3 haste available mid event.

Yes, you can coordinate buff ranks backwards but you shouldn't have to. There no reason that you have to recast shields in an ascending order over a descending one other than poor coding/design and complacency with that coding/design.

As for ROS and TBL spells, the next expansion is going to 115 so the Rk 3 dilemma will occur again. Sure every enchanter will eventually have rank 3 of every spell, but for many months such will not be the case. Sure, the raid forces will handle the current issue by starting with Rk2 shielding then MGB Rk3 mid event but you shouldn't have to.

I'm not suggesting that they should get rid of ranked spells. I actually like the current system. I just think it could use a tweak. It's kind of crazy to me that such a reasonable suggestion for improving it is being responded to with such contempt.

I’m curious, does your guild run 9 enchanters....or 3. Mere suggestion for the sake of argument, assign spells at the beginning....1 cleric for group symbol, 1 for single, 1 for group assurance, 1 for single....do the same for all classes and see how much your “problem”....isn’t one anymore.

What you call poor coding, I call poor loot management by 1 guild.

If you cannot find out to assign spells to your buffers so 1 or 2 chanters, clerics and so on, then your guild has bigger issues.

Any efficient guild should be able to find out, assign 1 char to buff C, another to haste, and so on. It IS rather simple, unless your guild is chaotic in giving spells out, without any system in it, maybe letting people buy their spells for dkp or whatever.

The thing I said earlier, has been done since ranks came into play, and so far we have never had any problems with it, in my guild.

A guild is an organism, and for the guild to thrieve, people should do things for the guild and not for themselves. If guild cannot progress, you also cannot progress. This is about being a team player, and not an indivudualist.