Do any Devs actually play this game anymore?

Since the other classes are now complete.... 0 hours for the non necro/SK DOTs.

Simple Necro/SK DOT Strategy: Fix one DOT line per month and implement one DOT fix per patch. Condense one DOT at each of level 50, level 70, level 80, level 90, level 100, level 105, level 110, etc. Course correct over or under DPS targets with the next month's update.

Non-Recurring Effort:
- 8 hours to research all DOT lines and list when they start and their function
- 4 hours to determine recommendation for number of current game necro DOTs to have and when to combine them (1 @ level 50, 1 @ level 60, etc.)
--> note: this assumes a 4 person committee at 1 hour time each

Monthly Effort (one DOT per month until the number of DOT lines in current game is reached):
- 2 hours to select 1 DOT to adjust and 1 to fade out discuss course correction to implement
--> note: this assumes a 4 person committee at 30 minutes time each
- 2 hours to draft numbers for the two spell lines (similar method per past DOT combines)
- 4 hours to change numbers for the two spell lines
NOTE: This monthly effort should shrink due to less spells being affected due to the later level start. The level 100 to 115 combine might take 2 hours to draft numbers and update versus the level 50 to 115 combine taking the full 6 hours.


Due to the new expansion coming out, I'd start this process after the new expansion starts and calms down. Maybe... Feb 2020 start?

I purposefully tried to keep it simple, have it self correct any errors, and spread the time out to not steal all a person's time for any extended period. Lots of assumption in all that!

Ok, just as an example, you grab a random LFG group, obviously make sure you have a tank (warrior/paladin/sk) and a healer (cleric/druid/shaman) and tell me how successful you are in killing Platinum Rainbow Spire or An Ancient Air Warden ?

I'm not saying these are impossible but they are no cake walk and a win can easily turn into a complete wipe.

Wow... get back to work Dzarn. That's enough ForumQuest for you!

Hey, beta is fun, and although annoying sometimes, having to adapt your play style keeps the game fresh.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:Items_Special_Procs#Pets

26038 Opalescent Two-Handed Sword procs 3634 Call of the Dark Knight
24589 Spear of Fire procs 3635 Call of Faith
32108 Mace of the Ancients procs 3869 Ancient Call
69467 Fiddletinks' Spinzaflobberator procs 3635 Call of Faith
22877 Earthen Fistprocs 3638 Call of Wu

24796 Savage Platinum Fists procs 3637 Call of the Beast
24594 Coral Hilted Shortsword procs 3639 Call of Rizlona
22980 Whip of the Earthcrafter procs 3633 Call of the Mistwalker
23494 Obsidian Battle Sword procs 3636 Call of Battle
24643 Sharp Gem Formation procs 3640 Call of the Assassin

DoT consolidation is complicated, because as we have seen with past DoT consolidations being able to throw a DoT that is equivalent to 5 or more DoTs onto every mob/add in the vicinity will scale the DoT casters DPS into levels that I believe are unintended.

Spell casting time and global spell refresh time has to be considered when consolidating DoTs or they will just get nerfed like a month later. A limit to how many mobs can be dotted at once per spell to mimic the time it would have taken to get all preconsolidated dots onto those mobs also needs to be considered, if that makes any sense.

Feel like Coas out here asking Dzarn to bring balance to the force. Playing.With.Fire.

I feel like you went from
"a group is using all their abilities, all their disciplines, all their clickies ... a group is throwing everything including the kitchen sink at a single opponent"
to
"grab a random LFG group"

so quickly I don't even know where you moved the goalposts to.

Platinum - if you don't have awesome dps, you might need a second tank or someone who can tank when you get mezzed for a few seconds and can be seen on on agro, or a pet. Sk pet can probably maybe tank it long enough if healer is ready and it's taunting. Or a heavy melee dps with your epic still rolling. Np here.

Air warden - start with deflect and or epic, 2h, and mantle. You won't even need heals if healer gets hit with the silence. At that point, you can have mob facing away from healer or have healer ran far away. Follow up mantle with rb if you need more time.

Its not complicated at all. They made it complicated. Its a lot of work for sure.

No class should have had a dot over 10K base that wasn't named necromancer unless it was a doom dot type deal. And even necromancers should have only had 1 or 2 dots at that level.

Perhaps complicated wasn't the right word, but I do think they should be cautious in how they do a Necro DoT revamp, but I also believe it should not be taking this long to do so. If what Dzarn says is true about there being only 1 spell dev that is also torn between other duties then maybe it is time for them to hire more spell devs or move another dev over to spells.

Even if they did feel a complete overhaul wasn’t feasible, there are still simpler solutions. DoT revamps are so relevant because of the debuff cap. We already know the debuff cap is a hard code issue, so you have to approach it from limiting the number of debuffs being applied. If, they can expand the alliance concept to debuffs and DoTs, that could free up slots and server traffic. For example, someone applies an alliance spell that when has all conditions met applies a master debuff. Those conditions could be when tash, malo, slow, cripple, etc are landed the master debuff applies.

I have to admit, this thread has been pretty entertaining.

For the DoT consolidation, to reduce the total number of dots being cast, why not reduce the duration of the DoT? Then increase the interval in which the dot ticks? 1 second ticks, 18 second duration?

With my understanding of how Necro's burn( Very little Necro knowledge), the issue with cutting the duration of their DoT's will be how their burn is effected. I believe Necro's want their longer duration DoT's on so they can tick for the longest period of time, while they continue stacking more powerful, shorter duration DoT's?

With a reduction in total duration, you would essentially get through one spell set and have to start recasting. Since the dots are fading sooner, I assume that would come at a reduction in burn potential. That could possibly be offset by the shorter duration DoT's having higher base or initial damage, tests would need to be done.

Now to address something that was stated by the Dev, that I take issue with.

You're literally requesting the math and numbers to support suggestions however, EverQuest does not have an official parser. When you run tests, do you not parse your data with internal tools, that we do not have access too?

Being transparent as a company is important when it comes to your customers, having good follow through and setting the correct expectations is very important. How many times have you released an ability to then change it? I get it, for balance! I totally understand HOWEVER, when you try to do it in a way that isn't transparent and then get caught, you ruin the reputation you've built with adding all those other great additions. We the community call this stealth nerf's.


Personally, I miss Elemental Union, which was ripped away from the game a year ago. How long had that ability been in the game? You had already made the ability effect Fire and Magic spells, yet the replacement was something that JUST effected Magic. Taking away our ability to effect our fire based spells, under the pretense you were giving us power.

No one likes earning something, to have it changed to "benefit" them, to only have that "benefit" be a reduction in power.

My 2cents.

Thats fair but you know how many things have changed in 4 years since this started making it get to the point there is now where there just isnt time or only one guy can work on it and hes split between 3 roles or whatever now?

What they did for everyone else was flat out wrong imo. Necros just need consolidations of what they use and at most it would be a 3 to 1 cast reduction at the extreme. The debuff cap is its own animal at this point with all they keep adding and requires consolidated debuffs, changes to what takes up a debuff slot, etc. But its 2 different fixes at this point.

Sounds just as complicated to me but idk. The debuff cap and necro consolidation have become 2 different issues imo.

The debuff cap needs to be attacked from multiple angles. What does and doesnt need to actually take up a debuff slot(can something be a nuke or handled in another manner), consolidating debuffs (like 1 druid debuff that does what 4 currently do or 1 enc debuff, 1 shaman, etc) .

The necro problem is weaving 18 dots and 4-5 spell sets to keep with peers. At most we should be weaving 1.5 - 2 spell sets to keep the flavor and nature of the class without as much silly.

Yea, I can see your point but the alliance concept is already proven to work. The DoT tangent I mentioned I edited out, it was just a train of thought. I agree though, why does there have to be so many debuffs being applied.

It was broken for around 11 months before it was fixed? Based on these posts from devs it kind of makes sense. They tried something new and didn't work out quite like they intended. Then they didn't get an opportunity to address the problem until the end of the expansion. Seems understandable.

This guy has never failed to amaze since first saw him in 1987 https://www.domomusicgroup.com/kitaro/

The dumbest answer to that question was to answer it at all. Thanks for the laugh.

Signed - every software engineer in the world.

It will resonate for some, but not for others. Thank you, Dzarn, for at least trying to communicate.

I know it is incorrect, but I often get the sense that only one or two people from Sony now DBG are actually allowed to post, for some reason or another. It is always welcome to be shown just how incorrect that is, between you and Ngreth especially (wait a sec - that’s only two people!).

Just know that more communication, not less, is the way to minimize the ‘hostility’ in the audience. You won’t ever find a case where everyone likes what you are saying that the team needs to do for EQ, but the more communication there is back from devs, the more understanding there will be overall.

Even when the clamor from an announcement is mostly/entirely negative (I did not see much positive in the recent fade change thread, to be honest) people do appreciate the fact of the announcement, even as they decry the substance.

Dzarn I will give you credit for being the spearcatcher here but the last 10 years have convinced me you guys don't eat your own dog food (for the unfamiliar, here is what that term means).

You wouldn't have to do massive nerfs like you did to shamans and chanters because you'd see it before it went live.

You would have done something by now so necros don't have to have a 300 mana item in their primary hand while chanters, wizards, and mages all have 5k-6k primaries

You would come up with something else for raids other than DPSing 2-3 mobs down within a percentage point of each other. There have been multiple encounters for at least the last 5 expansions.

Ditto moving raid mobs back and forth.

If you didn't spend so much time on cap increases you could work on real problems and challenges. And you'd understand why some of us resent it so much

You wouldn't nerf old content to force us out of old expansions to try and control our behavior

You'd never have released Skyfire and those stupid divebombing drakes.

Who thought that raid giver in ROS T2 surrounded by skorpkis was a good idea?

If you raided GMM even once you'd fix that mess.

If you tried to move through the guild lobby on any server but Xegony you'd have redesigned it

OOC recovery in the last few expansions has been so ridiculously long that when I get rezzed, I gate to the GL, where I recover at least twice as fast, before bannering back. That's dumb. You'd realize that, too.

And that's for starters. And please, no more 'we're too busy doing our jobs' excuses. ToV has six new zones. Six. That's pathetic. House of Thule had 13, and that was with a cap increase.