Preview of Upcoming Changes to Combat Escape AA Abilities

Then the question becomes, why?
If you're allowing the warrior in your group to pull, Precision is not what you want, or expect.

I have spent a fair amount of time trying to pull singles out of crowds over the last decade. I haven't quite achieved the ability to pull an entire camp and live yet

Doubling the amount of reuse time plus a huge mana/endurance percentage based cost seems excessive to me. I can say that because of a similar limitation that was put on our PBAOE mez for some unexplained reason. I am a main, high end raiding enchanter. My viewpoint therefore is somewhat limited in terms of the game since there aren't very many of us left.

My primary focus is raiding and grouping, I do charm solo occasionally but it's boring and pretty much useless for high end progression at this point the animation and a merc are more reliable. That said, the enchanter role in a group or raid is providing aggro control, damage mitigation most often through crowd control but occasionally with the use of Friendly Stasis for clerics or other players that under attack. Self-Stasis I use most often there are mobs that I am not going to be able to mez for one reason or another so I can drop aggro and not wipe a group.

Take the example of Perilous Perplexing, the PBAOE I mentioned earlier: Each creature that is mesmerized has a 23% change to increase the mana cost of the spell by 750. You must have at least 10% of your maximum mana available to cast this spell. If there are a significant number of mobs you're not going to have the mana to cast one that lasts longer after this six-second mez wears off. It is basically useless if you're rez'd back into a raid even with Gather Mana, Mod Rods and so on...and one of the most necessary at times. The reason I am bring them both up together is that they are often used together in high end raids that need significant crowd control or as part of the mechanics in raids such as Rustbottom. Keep in mind that with the current high end enchanter population (or lack of) a guild is lucky to have more than one or two that are actual mains.


I don't like the longer refresh time, but I think that where our class is intended to actually do aggro management as part of group and raid content the mana reduction by percentage is very unreasonable.

- - Put level restrictions in place on all escape abilities. Starting at level 75 most classes are only able to immediately escape combat from NPCs that are yellow con (player level +3) or lower. Exceptions to this are Rogues, Bards, Monks, Shadowknights and Rangers who can escape from NPCs that are up to 5 levels higher. AA abilities available prior to level 71 now work on creatures up to level 75.

This was from the 2015 patch notes.

From my understanding is that rangers were given escape because their harmonious arrow was nerfed to oblivion. Now you are moving rangers back out of that category and into another. It just doesn't make since.

However; as a rogue here is what I want. I want an instant 100% escape. the reuse can be every 10 minutes. I DO NOT WANT an endurance cost. I'd rather wait extra time than spend endurance on it. I'm already using endurance for fadelure if I'm pulling. Really you can get rid of both of those and give me more dps. However; the escape needs to be 100% and no endurance cost. If it has a stupid endurance cost then I don't want it.

I also want the stupid mob level restriction gone. It used to not be there. I get rezzed in or called back. I get stupid and have to do something in a raid. Now I can't hit Hiatus. Now I could hit it if I got rezzed in a good spot or something, but let's say I mess up and I hit a button like a horn out of habit. Now I can't fix my mistake because the main boss that I am dpsing is over the level limit.

The level limit is undesirable. The endurance cost is undesirable. I HATE WHAT was done with escape. However; I'd rather have the current escape with no endurance cost, then what your proposing.

Chill with all that nonsense. Tolzol weak need boosts

So I just got my Bard to 110 and have started working on AA's ya'll telling me he's now a useless puller and I need to spin a monk?

oh tell me this is a troll cause if not then.... No nothing really is changing that much bard wise... its every other cept like rogue that are whining

As a pulling ranger, I really don't use Cover Tracks, so not really going to affect me. I think however, it should be 80% and 10 minutes without using any mana. If a ranger is using Cover Tracks all the time, they don't understand how to use the tools they have for pulling. The change to fade doesn't change how I use Cover Tracks and I would say any ranger that is decent rarely uses it. It is one of those "Oh No" buttons. We are mana challenged enough, but those who use it as a crutch will still use it if they are a pew pew type of ranger. They don't use much mana anyways.

Pulling singles is still a thing and I still do it. It depends on the group makeup and the skill of the tank. With a decent tank, it isn't necessary. Sometimes I pull singles just to keep my pulling skills sharp. There may be a time when it is absolutely needed. It is fun to accept the challenge of pulling a single, specially if I am bored. It is fun to get creative with pulls.

I don't think any fade should be 100%. I just don't think this kind of ability should be a sure thing.

I am not understanding the changes. Personally, I think only a few classes should be able to fade anyway. Why make it easier to fade, yet make it more penalizing to some classes? Just reduce the percentage of success when you attempt a fade and increase timers.

To be fair, most haven't been using Cover Track as a pull tool due to the failure chance. When you need it, it fails. EQ101.

As a main raid wizard still playing the same wizard since the beginning of EQ, the only issue I have with this change is the mana cost part 20% of my mana means..64k mana lol. That being said, wizards never had fade until hole in space (what was that HoT?) and before that- we just used Evac, abscond, or Exodus. Fade lets us run deep into zones with lots of see invis and drop aggro... like a monk. I mean back in the day if I was trying to break into a zone solo and got aggro I would root it, invis, and camp out quickly. Using fade during fights lets us never use concussion spells (which frankly I haven't used or memmed at all since fade was introduced) I see these changes as moving us back towards the individual class roles vs what we have now as any class can do anything.

Give me the mana cost, but remove the cast time for fade, mana is expendable, but having to stop cast and hope i dont interrupt my fade and then invis again all while the mobs get a chance to beat me again is annoying.

I remember when you made a bad pull, you didn't go back to group, you sucked it up and died like a good ranger.

I would say Cover Tracks is what rangers use when a pull goes bad, not actually for pulling. There are so many ways to pull with a ranger, you seldom have bad pulls anymore.

We've grouped the classes together as follows to determine what the reuse time and resource cost should be.

• Escape abilities for all classes will now have their final rank available by level 85 during the Underfoot expansion. In cases where there are now fewer ranks than there were previously we will be automatically reassigning the proper rank of your abilities so that a refund/repurchase is not necessary after logging in.

• Escape abilities for Bards, Beastlords, Monks, Necromancers, Rogues, and Shadowknights will have a shorter reuse time (1s to 2.5 minutes) and a resource cost of 2% mana or endurance based on class.

• Escape abilities for Berserkers, Enchanters, Rangers, and Shaman will now have a reuse time of 10 minutes and a resource cost of 20% mana or endurance based on class.

• Escape abilities for Clerics, Druids, Magicians, Paladins, Warriors, and Wizards will now have a reuse time of 15 minutes and a resource cost of 20% mana or endurance based on class.

, Make it the same penalty across the board for everyone, 2% or 20%, and make the reuse time the same on everyone else, !!!

A couple of more thoughts:
1. I don't see fade type AA as an ability used to pull. Even a 5 minute timer is too long to consistently use as a puller. If you need to split mobs frequently, you are going to want a true pulling class.
2. We can expect more running to zone line if escape abilities are not available.

I don't understand this at all. If I fade as a bard and get low on mana, I simply take a med break. I don't consider medding to really a great game mechanic that makes me enjoy playing. Medding is just a necessary time sink. So I don't understand how this is an improvement.

I also don't really understand the limited escapes as a caster. I can just bind outside, then when I get into trouble I just simply gate and run back. The escapes just save me that hassle.

If you are trying to make pulling harder, I still don't get it. I don't know how many classes can pull, but as a bard I don't want to be needed even more. I like it when people are independent and can do things on their own.

I didn't understand when fade was changed then. I don't understand now. I support what you all do as developers working on this game, but I feel at times changes are unnecessary and sometimes make things worse. As usual, your changes probably won't effect me very much, but I am always concerned about others.

Thanks Daybreak for another change making the paladin balefire burst even more useless. You say 100% chance up from 90% but I submit to you it's never worked more than maybe 5% of my attempts, even when the mobs are lower than 20 levels than me. Like I am chugging threw a lower zone and don't want to drag a train around with me. It fails, most of the time and more than that, I have to stop and stand still to use it. How about an instant cast time for EVERYBODY?

I mean, just remove the ability for all the classes except for the few that you clearly favor having this ability, I mean what good is an ability I can't even have any confidence in knowing that it would likely work?

Instead of making a poll, asking the player base or some other way soliciting feedback to see how the actual paying customers think it should be before making a decision, like always, you knee-jerk change something (so many examples of this too) and I am not seeing any comments here that are happy. Is there perhaps something from this you can glean before you alienate more of the people that are actually paying the bills?

RoS and TBL totally screwed the group level people like me and now changes like this are making my decision to cancel all my auto-renews for the first time in 19 years for all 5 of my accounts worthwhile. You are making that decision easier and easier for me to justify, so, thanks for that I guess. All good things must come to an end and as it seems you are dedicated to drive EQ into the ground, I can only wish you Godspeed in your endeavor.

Rage rage!! I'm going to quit over a spell change! Haha No.

Well the issue is, how much time was spent implementing these changes that was not spent on our new AAs/abilities for the next expansion (Beta is practically here)? We saw how this went last expansion where Dzarn and Aristo got tied up with other things and we received virtually nothing in terms of spells or AAs.

So, no this change shouldn't make people quit, but it does not bode well that this undertaking/tuning was done to these abilities at this point in time. Literally had from December until September? to put this stuff through and get it tuned correctly. Now, during the start of Beta they are spending time on this stuff instead of the new expansion stuff. Can't wait for more copy/paste increases, woot.

Thank you for adjusting Summon Companion, better late than never I suppose.

For what it is worth, it was announced at 6pm PDT, end of day basically and left to simmer overnight.

Hopefully the silence means they're digging into all the feedback and figuring out what else to do in the end.

we have 4 main raiding encs