I understand that decisions are made for overall game balance, rather than specifically targeting a class, but this latest decision feels especially gutting for every bard I have spoken with. I am left to wonder if this is en route to removing AoE damage as a viable strategy for all classes. If everyone had been neutered in one patch, then we might mutter and stumble along, but this seems to be resolving a single class' perceived issue while leaving all other means of AoE to still be viable. If this is an attempt to rectify an issue of lag wrought by so many mobs being pulled, then is the issue not lag rather than the character's actions? As such, wouldn't we work to address lag instead? If it is addressing the issue of hoarding mobs that others would like to kill (ignoring pickzone and other zones being places where people could hunt), then this is still a potential problem as is seen in any zone a bot crew or AoE stunfield strat is being employed. Norrath is strewn with the corpses of bards that took a corner too tightly, or lagged out for a second and got mowed over by their pull. The rewards are high, as are the risks, which is what makes this so fun. Is there a plan to replace these abilities with something that brings us back more in line with our ability to solo effectively like we did with any of the abilities in the title of this thread? p.s. While we are fixing things, would it be possible to address song gems locking up for a time after I use a clicky in mid-twist? Thanks so much.
Because while the devs do work together they don't all share the same view on the game, think the same or work at the same pace. If something is an AA or falls under Dzarn's realm it often will change first and be more harsh. Overly generalized but anything that doesn't feel like it would in 1999-2004 and he will get to it. If something is an item or falls under Ngreth's realm he also is pretty quick to respond but tends to be much more even handed with changes. If something is a spell or falls under Aristo's realm you can expect it to take awhile if it ever happens at all. Tends to be more hands off and let things be unless drastically broken and even then it might stay as it is as long as its not in the players favor. If something is content or raid based it falls under other devs if not the ones above and often takes more time before changes come.
I couldn't agree more with this point. The thrill of being chased by enough mobs that if you lagged, stopped, mispressed a key, or even sneezed, you'd be dead was so exciting. Threading that line between being close enough to cast but far enough not to be insta-corpsed was a blast.
In the past, I have left EQ because it wasn't fun to play anymore. Progression zones, retread zones, and especially big nerfs made Everquest stale and really no fun for casual players. Much of the player base has moved on because of this. This patch nerfed the heck out of melee, hybrid, and bards for what reason? What was broken that the devs needed to fix with these changes? Once again, they nerfed elements of fun from the game and gave the players a rock in their Halloween bags.
As a wizard I used beam kiting to gain many AAs and level several alts to max. When beam was nerfed I was a little disappointed, but not terribly surprised. I knew it was overpowered and that it would be nerfed eventually. Do you think it's acceptable that you could gain xp many times faster than any group? Personally I think they went a little overboard on the size of the nerf (limit of 12 makes more sense). There's really no question that it needed to be nerfed though (just like wizard beam).
I understood the nerf on Swarm Kiting, as it required no resources to sing, and as such songs like Chords of Dissonance/Denon's Disruptive Accord could be undertaken ad nauseam without restriction. That's part of the reason I am so confused by the current change, since Vainglorious Shout is already restricted by one's Endurance pool and regen, and Denon's Desperate Dirge can only go so far as one's mana can take them. At level 65 with a sitting regeneration rate of 23 mana per tic is sort of like trying to fill a rather expansive 9.5k mana swimming pool with a partially-plugged garden hose. Once up and running one scampers into a zone to wad up mobs and needing to be in kissing distance to launch attacks (3 seconds for Amplification, then another 3 seconds to actually drop the song) on something crammed into a phone booth (casters, you need to keep up with your brethren). All of this being done with full and partial resists, since it's a MR detrimental cast without any negative modifier to the check. The bard fully expects to eat deaths from time to time due to some rather fascinating pathing mechanics, operator error, "where did that summoner come from?", or simply the whims of fate conspiring against a successful run (thank you virus scan, that was perfect timing). It is challenging for sure and the chances of ending up as a cloud of pink mist are rather high with any slip up. Well said, and a good point. It is moments like this where I wonder about the big picture view of EverQuest that guides the decisions that affect the player base. Bards tend to be a corner case, a class unto themselves, with a great deal of versatility and an arguably low amount of raw power. Versatility is great, though we have watched other classes gain a lot more versatility with items, AAs, spells, and the like (e.g. ability to invis, lev, run faster, Playing Possum AA, et cetera), which tends to somewhat dull a bard's edge as it dips into our niche of being Norrath's Swiss Army Knife (ignoring that so many of our tools are pretty much collecting dust as nice to consider, but not really all that useful). I am in no way suggesting that anything be changed for these other classes, as I think a certain degree of self-sufficiency is a good thing, but perhaps the bards need a bit of a commensurate boost in raw power as a result though. We amplify other classes and add rather paltry personal DPS, unless we are out pulling, which is a role that occupies most of my time in groups. On raids this bonus to others can be a useful pulling tool, as it can accidentally bring half a zone onto your lap, or get you a rather brutal high 5 from the mobs that are brought into camp. Others would be better to speak to a way to give bards more raw power (DoT revamp to make one mega-DoT? /ducks) in order to fall more in line with the power other classes appear to enjoy, and make the bard class more viable to play.
I appreciate your reply Bjpotratz, Perhaps it is my lack of gear/skill speaking here, but if you factor in the time it takes to collect mobs, wad them up, throw your entire mana pool at them, and then med up to full, I would be surprised if it was a fraction of what a comparably-geared group could accomplish in the same time. Perhaps, what skews the numbers is the sheer quantity of death that has been meted out in a relatively short period of time, ignoring the 40+ minutes of medding that follows (increase this number without having FT 15 or all your AAs). What is instead lost is the ability to solo effectively in a game with a diminishing player base (I play on TLP, so perhaps Live is a different story), forcing players to box to be able to still function.
Do you have any proof that it was faster than any group? Or even on par with a group that was making any effort to get decent xp? On Agnarr, in the absolute best case scenario where you are only limited by mana regen (that is, zero pull time), you get better xp/hour in a full group of nearly naked fresh 65s killing slowly in Paw than you can get solo Dirging in the best spot. Requiring a bard have nearly BIS gear for an era to almost be able to solo as much xp as they would get carrying 5 scrubs in a group isn't overpowered. I don't play other servers so maybe it's different there... but I imagine it would only get worse as Dirge damage/cast is static while mob health increases at a rate faster than mana regen and mana pool. People see a bunch of mobs and just assume its some instant xp pinata. It took high end gear, a lot of time, and perfect execution and even then it wasn't out of line with other results. A few deaths and it wasn't any better than single target dot kiting. It was a viable option to solo as a bard that wasn't hilariously underpowered, and actually happened to be fun.
Yeah you're probably right about the xp for kiting at 65 with denon. I was mostly thinking of the people using VG on Phinny (which looked to be very similar to beam kiting).
Wonder if it is working as intended that now bards can kill 5 dark blue mobs every approximate hour, spending nearly that entire time medding.
Wonder if it is working as intended that now bards can double up the performance of 5 other players, spending nearly that entire time dealing wholly legit damage themselves.
Just about every other dps class can do more dps actively played than fumbling a bard into position to add their melee. Bard dps is brutally low and a lot of the time it's a dps loss to try to do anything with them other than melody and follow. If they trash every reason there could be to main a bard the trend will continue to be that people only use them as boxes. Too hard to make bard mercs I guess. Just nerf them to the point that player bards perform like mercs.
"Just about every other dps class" doesn't double the output of their group. If you're fumbling to get into melee - that's not a class balance issue. If you were a rogue then "fumbling into position" would make you do *0* damage. There's no time, let alone a lot of the time, where it's a dps loss to try to do more than /melody, since those aren't mutually exclusive. If bard players are trash then there's no reason to invite mains, but there's near-zero impact on the play of good ones from this patch.
No clue what this has to do with the topic Brohg. Might want to start your own "bards are overpowered" thread, rather than trying to hijack this one.
When delusions of persecution extend to the-sky-is-falling hyperbole of "no reason to play a bard", it's an invitation to be refuted by the observation that the (very) juicy core of bard power is completely untouched by a nerf to TLP zone disruption
Brohg, please learn to read. You're arguing (stupid) points nobody made. If I had to choose between moving a rogue into position or a bard, absolutely the rogue would get the attention because he could do some real dps. The bard's melee is a joke and therefore not worth the time. If I could be doing anything on basically any other class I would because it would be a better use of my time. There is just no way your time is spent best by positioning a bard outside of the most basic static pulling situations on long fights. It's a dps loss playing the box bard because you lose the dps potential of the other class casting/clicking/whatever. If you have tons of time sure, put the bard into melee before you start moving your casters in too. I didn't say "no reason to play a bard." They function so close to their capacity that it's a great idea to box one on melody and follow. That is exactly the problem - it takes away the reasons to play a MAIN bard. Bards are still great, just great boxes in a full group. As it continues to get harder to find groups on all servers, nobody is quitting because they can't find a bard or a bard was disrupting their zone (on Agnarr you're lucky to find other people in the same zone as you period). But they do quit because they can't find a group and can't function remotely efficiently outside of one. It was a running comment on raids any time a bard bought a piece of raid gear that it would get better use on literally any other class that could use it. These were people that had boxed bards at the raid. It wasn't mean spirited, it's just the reality of the situation and it's a real problem.
I certainly hope that isn't true. I think the game got much better and even more fun with the improvements made 2004-2013+. I hate it when fun/useful abilities added later get gutted. I don't want EQ regressing to 1999-2004. I think it's a much better game now than it was. I'm not saying he is doing that, but if he's actually responsible for gutting so many fun/useful abilities that would be a shame. It directly reduced my enjoyment of the game to the point main changing to my cleric for a time eased my annoyance of things like Lure essentially being taken away for years. The harshness of the nerfs is the hard part. The endurance cost increase in addition to the target limit in this case is silly. The gutting of the mana abilities with the huge increase in timers in addition to the other changes was another thing that was overboard. Increasing the Dissonant Chord reuse by the factor of TEN was obnoxious. I don't want old EQ. I think it's a better game now.
Back to the original post - it would be nice to know why they chose to nerf these, even if it's unlikely we'll get an official response. Rebalancing them to work the way Denon's Desperate Dirge was working on Agnarr would seem like a more reasonable compromise. The xp was okay giving bards the ability to solo but it was still better to group. At a medium gear level the targets were light blue and only at very high gear levels would get into dark blues. This prevented it from being overpowered because it limited the target range. It also prevented disrupting others because the zones that it would work in were generally not populated because there was better, more current, content available for others. This is actually an improvement over other forms of AoE that tend to disrupt current content and do so more continuously. By having mana usage this was also a big improvement over the original form of bard AoE where a naked bard could kill any target range without any resource limitations. Rather than just balancing, these changes amount to removal of the abilities and therefore a play style from the game.
i had a idea that might be viable to fix this without the heavy handed approach they took it would add alot of difficulty to the use of the ability but still allow us to have it in some form that could be usefull. What if instead of limiting it to 6 it was still unlimited but if it hit over 6 it would cause any target over 6 to either be snared rooted or a highsun aggro wipe like effect? This would give us a pulling tool to split mobs keep the increased cost and turn a negative into a positive?
