Threat value on clickies

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Aneuren, Jan 20, 2021.

  1. Zealot1340 Lorekeeper

    While I think your concern here is valid, I don't think anything should be done about it. EQ is not a very hard game, people clear all of the content immediately after release and manage with warrior agro whether they are using tricks or not. Anything you don't need defensive/discs for should be tanked by a knight anyway.
  2. Aneuren Tempered Steel

    It really isn't a difficulty concern. As others have posted, there are several ways to generate substantial amounts of threat when it is mechanically important to do so. This is more of a quality of life request. The major role of a Warrior is to tank, although our contribution to DPS is often undervalued. We are given abilities to avoid or mitigate damage.

    But those abilities would not be useful without the ability to generate sufficient threat, and so we are given some abilities to do so. As others also have posted, those abilities are rendered less useful because of endurance concerns and are not alone sufficient to maintain aggro lock (thus why click threat was used to begin with). If we cannot maintain sufficient threat under ordinary circumstances, we are not fulfilling our major role.

    I actually dislike the weapon augment route, because it does not involve player skill. I would rather have abilities to activate that would be sufficient to maintain threat against equally-geared DPS players, but I thought asking after that kind of solution would be to request too much of our developers.

    It is annoying for a Warrior to see the rapid target switches to players, and for the only real solution to that is to essentially rely on techniques that none of us want to post widely. The response should not be for DPS players to deal less damage than their class is capable of dealing - it is absurd to diminish another class because the first class cannot perform adequately under ordinary circumstances.

    This becomes far less of a problem as a Warrior gets better gear, so the solution should really target that early slice of time where Warriors struggle the most. In my eyes, that is mainly Classic through to Luclin, which nicely coincides with the introduction of Type 8 weapon augment slots (I emphasize this point because it shows that the proposed fix [melee vendor augments] would not have an impact on game play that I am not trying to address with this solution).

    Further concerns or balancing are not what I hope to address in this thread; only early game Warrior threat balancing from a quality of life point of view.
    Lejaun likes this.
  3. Zealot1340 Lorekeeper

    Warriors are the best at tanking damage. They have a discipline that massively decreases incoming damage, higher AC caps and better stamina to hp conversions. The trade-off is that they do not generate threat as well as other tanks. I think that’s intended in the class roles, not a quality of life issue.

    If this is purely about quality of life should knights have their defensive disciplines implemented in era with warriors?
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  4. Aneuren Tempered Steel

    Absolutely, yes. I wasted too much of my early years in this game arguing against Tank parity on TheSteelWarrior. But this is a larger topic than I was hoping to get into. Paladins should get Cease and Desist in Classic as well.

    I am told on Live that Knights have already achieved Tank parity. I have never experienced it, but I was not upset to hear it. All Tank classes should have the tools to perform their job, assuming skill and comparable gear level to the rest of the environment in which they are performing. Warriors should have Call of Challenge innately. There's a lot of ground here, precisely because the lines became fuzzier and fuzzier as time went on.
  5. MasterMagnus The Oracle of AllHigh

    Tank =/= Meat Shield
    Meat Shield == High HP pool (meat) + High Mitigation (shield)
    Tank (in the real world) == High damage + Armor (absorbing damage not mitigating)

    Classic Warrior was designed to be more Meat Shield than Tank. The role evolves over time.
  6. Zealot1340 Lorekeeper

    I appreciate the points you’ve made and if you feel that those things should be implemented across the board for tanks then the points are well made. My personal stance is still to disagree though. I enjoy the uniqueness of the classes in each role and their strengths and weaknesses. Creating threat for tanks and managing it for dps is a fundamental challenge of many mmos, even if there are ample tricks to our advantage in EQ.
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  7. Aneuren Tempered Steel

    I appreciate your responses, thank you Zealot.
  8. Chaosflux Augur

    Yes they should. With a slight modification to their caps because the early defensives are useless the way they are and grt blown off due to the cap being hit before they would from duration.

    Really what they should do is make a Guardian type disc they give knights at 60 (like they did on live to solve the disparity)

    And FFS change deflection back to being in era at kunark. We had it on Fippy its silly not to have it at 59, it was given that low of a level requirement specifically to solve early knight tanking issues.
  9. Triconix Augur

    The fact that you decide to keep your [not so secret guild strategy] secret is living proof that the warrior class is broken at the game's inception. No other class should rely so heavily on others to do their job for them as you see in the warrior class.

    Tanking 101: Tanking = Aggro + Mitigation. Warrior's natural aggro generation is pedestrian (actually, embarrassingly bad). Therefore, they are broken as they cannot sufficiently accomplish 50% of their primary job.

    The use of unorthodox methods to acquire and maintain aggro such as spam clicking items does nothing but prove that the warrior class needs to be completely revised in classic EQ. Accepting these as the norm just diminishes the game's integrity.
    Skuz likes this.
  10. MasterMagnus The Oracle of AllHigh


    In my opinion, worth probably nothing to your discussion.

    They weren't broken in era in classic.

    This runs right up against what I was saying in another thread about the code having gone too far for them to unravel and 'fix' now (besides the enormous cost of 'fixing').

    Subsequent changes over the years have broken classic Warriors.

    Now we run up against a classic coding and design issue, multiple isolated systems (and classes) have become 'out of sync' with each other, due to isolated little changes here and there, that end up impacting the game at a balance and mechanics level.

    Vis a vis: Self buffs draw aggro, instant clicks allow spam aggro, people run with it over time and the game 'meta' (as they say) changes. Now do they nerf clear exploits? Do they give an item or ability that never existed in era?

    What does -insert instant click here- even matter to the game? Just give a recast timer. Or just take it out of game.

    Isn't that all a slippery slope to start? Just gut the classic game so we can play the way it's "supposed to be" because classic is so popular it's driving the game now?

    Wut? sigh...
  11. Boze TLP complaint factory

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  12. Aradune Bardster New Member

    Why are people having a hard time understanding the job of a warrior in this game.

    You're not supposed to have infinite aggro as a warrior in Everquest.

    Think about necros and monks with Feign Death. It's a benefit for them because they can take themself off the aggro list and their damage isn't slowed like the other DPS classes. Threat is definitely not meant to be infinite on a warrior. You always let the warrior build aggro.

    Whoever is trying to say DPS shouldn't have to hold back, is playing the wrong game. Even when guilds give a tank 30 seconds to build aggro, most DPS classes still can't just go absolutely HAM. It's easy for DPS to take aggro off a warrior. That's no different than it's been for a long time. Not sure why people equate 20 years of warriors sucking with aggro, into keeping a clear abuse of instant click items to generate more aggro than a warrior can dream of, with no downside. People abuse it for 6 months and all of a sudden the devs are just not allowed to fix it? .... makes sense....

    This clicky for aggro thing is pretty new in the grand scheme of these TLPs. It might have been used by a very small niche for years, but it's only recently exploded this last year and moreso since Aradune launch. People are acting like everyone has been spamming J boots 50000000 per fight since ragefire. That's never been "the thing" a tank does while tanking until recent.
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  13. Triconix Augur

    Yes, they were. They had very little active control of a major function of their job. That's like a dps having to rely on another class in order to damage the mob. It just doesn't make fundamental sense. In order to tank or be a "meat shield" as you put, you must be able to acquire and maintain aggro sufficiently. There is literally no point of being able to withstand damage if you struggle with keeping the attention of the mob that is causing this damage. It's like having a 800hp car with square wheels. What's the point of that power if it's not doing anything?

    Warriors' only source of true hate/threat/aggro was completely and utterly passive - swing aggro. Taunt was not a real aggro generator on it's own. It's power was based on someone else's aggro and it gave that much aggro to a warrior + 1 (it took +4 to get the mob's attention).

    There's a reason why devs even implemented discs out of era and now include them in previous expansions.
    There, I fixed that for you.

    I have no clue what you're trying to get out here. Classes are more in sync with each other than ever with synergy and abilities that stack with one another.

    They already do: Bellow, Provoke, etc. This trend should continue. Why are rogues a laughing stock in the dps pantheon when they are almost exclusively a dps class in classic? Why are warriors considered the primary tank when they cannot even generate aggro/hate/threat at 50% rate of a knight or ranger (or just about any class in classic)? Literally every single class can spam click AoN or jboots, so why bring it up as some magically exclusive warrior-only trait? It's not. Let's speak of class-only abilities and you will find the numbers skew way out of favor of warriors.

    A majority of the popular classes in classic are just stupidly OP. The "classic" you see in TLPs is so far off the real classic EQ, there's no point of even comparing it. You have pretty much 2-3 classes locking down most valuable camps. Krono farmers 24/7 camping stuff like ancient cyclops, quillmane, etc. The ability of certain classes to just ae stun half a zone down while others can barely solo an individual mob. Class balance is so out of whack that I'm honestly unsure how some enjoy it so much. I guess because they play those wildly OP classes. Modern EQ mechanics and balance is lightyears better. Maybe TLP is so monetized now that people love it? Not really sure, but the introduction of some semblance of balance is when EQ really comes into its own. The classic casterquest is broken, unbalanced, and dumb.
    Skuz and Chaosflux like this.
  14. MasterMagnus The Oracle of AllHigh


    This is exactly my point.

    They have already gone too far to go back.

    Sad to think P99 and the wealth of others out there will forever do classic better than the company that, ostensibly, built it.

    <shrug> It is a completely different game, and no point in saying it was broken in classic. You're just chasing an ideal for TLP.

    It was never broken. What players now demand changed.
  15. Chaosflux Augur

    The backfilled spell lines that were introduced later (war: bellow, Sk: terror, paladin: cease/desist both knights: deflection) were put in to right what was wrong with classic gameplay.

    Honestly those major primary job function abilities (and afew more to smooth out the curve), should be added to increase the enjoyment level and so people dont have to rely on ridiculous exploits to emulate a skillset that should be native to the archetype.
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  16. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    At this point in the timeline the threat value of clickies had a marginal impact which I imagine is why they waited to nerf them. A majority of Velious targets aren't very reactive to aggro spam, and a BoC + red epic + crit taunt + Bellow is plenty to keep threat off of relatively attentive DPS.

    The next round of TLPs in Classic is going to be awfully sad times, though.
  17. Triconix Augur

    This exactly. Spells implemented out of era and then filled in were intended to be a fix for terribly implemented classic classes IE the warrior. Devs realized how crappy of a job they did with certain classes and tried to fix it. It just needs to be extended further now.

    Classic EQ had so many things out of whack that it's honestly amazing it was never looked at and revised. I guess they never had reason to until TLP. Look at how pitiful half the itemization is on classic and kunark gear. It's so f---ing bad that you can't do anything but laugh. One of my favorites if the pofear druid hands. 13 dex 5 int.
    [IMG]
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  18. KrakenReality Augur

    Nah dude, that’s a trash take. Classic and Kunark accomplished what they set out to do with phenomenal success. Classic was about setting up world for players to explore and build community, and Kunark was much the same. It was quality world building and DND brought to life. It left a profound impact that still ripples through the gaming industry today.

    The deficiencies should be fixed like Wars being trash at aggro, Rogues sucking, etc but to say Classic and Kunark are overrated is a very terrible take.
    MasterMagnus likes this.
  19. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    A lot was learned by players & developers between 1999 & 2021, one of those things was how much better classic would be with a fully outfitted toolset for each class, EQ in classic was great but that's not to say it cannot be improved upon, trying to keep classic as cranky & crappy as it was back in its inception is like saying a Model T ford is fit for today's roads & today's car buyers.

    Its called progress.
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  20. Chaosflux Augur

    EQ in classic was great in the sense it created a 3d online version of D and D, it was also terrible in the sense that things that work in pen and paper and the accompanying playstyle do not translate directly to online gaming.

    Example: Complete heal was never meant to be used in combat, they just didnt have a way to code it as such and assumed the 10s cast time would limit to out of combat use.

    Monk feign was never intended for splitting

    However emergent gameplay happened and they tried to retain some of that as new expansions came out and fix glaring issues by backfilling spells. This caused massive balancing issues during that time and some fairly heated forum warrioring.

    Remember when the best heal Druids/Shaman got was Superior healing? That was fixed at a later date (late kunark/velious) then that still wasnt enough and the 75% Cheals came in right before Luclin release or right at release of Luclin little foggy on whens

    Warriors didnt have provoke/bellow et al in original eq taunt also didnt work, like at all, both of those issues were fixed

    Knights (and rangers) used to chain debuffs for aggro, but that wasnt intended, debuff aggro was nerfed and tools to replace the lost functionality were added.

    Now they have gone and lowered spell level requirements for priests (and added some spells) to allow Druids and Shaman to better fill the role of healer. OP is essentially asking for the same treatment for warriors, id argue knights should be included as well, because they also rely on unintended game mechanics as Meta, just not as much and their curve on waiting for decent toolkits is far lower then warriors.

    If they added some aggro tools to smooth out the curve, or tools that are locked behind later expacs alittle earlier its not going to OMGbreak the game. This has already been done, and i believe the changes they have already made have helped longevity of these servers.
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