Enchanter - All spells in the Color Flux line now share the same timer

Someone mentioned (maybe in this thread, too lazy to go back and look) that the real fix is not to make AE groups unattractive or impossible but to make normal XPing faster/less tedious which I think is right on the money. AE or nothing wouldn't be an attitude if normal grinding wasn't so mind numbing.

I aoe. I almost exclusively AOE. That being said, I suggested a long time ago that they make some of the outdoor zones have a way higher ZEM. Take some underused zones with a huge level range and boost their ZEM to be useful. Some examples are the karanas in classic, maybe emerald jungle and tracks teeth in kunark. Not sure in velious as I hate the outdoor zones in that expac.

Compared to AE pulling laggy, tethering mobs, it's not. Personally, it's the only thing that's ever made me rage quit eq.

Err never made a single Krono, always been guild groups for mutual XP gain. And yes it is much more fun (and faster) than normal XP grinds and allows for decent breaks between pulls. The fun part is that you can still get wiped unlike most GE XP groups which is continuous and dull dull dull.

With them changing some of the fundamental characteristics of classes, like with this change, its making me lose interest in the game, and fast. I didn't really benefit much from AE groups , so it doesn't effect me as much as it will some. I just want something new instead of rehashing the same game over and over while a cruel overlord gets to slowly take away fun things.

I don't care if its Pantheon, or some other game that comes out, but at this point I am just about ready to call it quits on this 22 year long relationship. I'm going to keep playing, I am really looking forward to OoW and DoDH and TSS. But I think when something even MILDLY interesting and new comes along, it will be the final nail in the coffin in my remaining time in EQ. I love this game, but I think I am in the twilight of my time playing it.

People like you don't understand that these types of changes only hurt the regular players. The botters just add enchanters.

I think it is going to hurt their bottom line too. Everyone uses the free potions you get each month, but I would be willing to bet that a lot of the expensive exp potions were bought for aoe groups. I especially think the 75% Bottle of Adventure IV potion was used mainly for people in aoe groups. That potion is 1500 DBC or 1350 once you get the 10% off and only lasts two hours. That is $13.50 USD per potion. That is easily the same as a month's subscription. I could be wrong but I think a lot of people wouldn't buy the two hour potion if they had to use it in a regular exp group.

You have your opinion, and I have mine. But, taking options away to force people to play a certain, limiting way is just a dumb philosophy.

I sure wouldn't, especially with one or more randos in the group.

I've bought many a Shared XP 3 potion for guildies in our PL group. Those are $45 a pop. With this nerf, I won't be spending any more of my cash on those potions.

You guys will not fix anything with this change, if anything you will widen the gap between casuals and better prepared players.

If you want to stop AoE stun / farming then you only need to add a diminishing return value to stun.

If you stun something for 8 seconds then it is immune to stun for 4-16 seconds.

No more aoe for anyone, this way you dont have better prepared players being the only ones sitting inside deep continuing to sell xp

I think this would break a lot of the game. It would also destroy paladins.

It would do little to nothing for paladins as they would still get the hate.

If your objective is to stop ae deep people selling xp then this change will not fix anything.

This change will only result in hurting the less prepared groups with less actual characters, these deep ae guys selling xp often have 10+ characters in and out of the xp group to co-ordinate what they are doing, many of them currently have 4 enchanters already

This change will hurt the people who go to actually try and start a deep ae group with the usual 6 man group.

IF YOU WANT TO STOP the AOE deep XP sellers this is not the change that is needed, you need to add something that either adds a stun immunity or limits the number of targets that can be stunned, I say the former is a better idea so enchanters can still toss their one big stun on a ton of mobs and beeline it when the situation arises and/or AE mez and reassess their situation.

They fixed aeing in FG. That zone no longer sees ae groups ever. They qltered ME to be inconvenient for ae, and likewise nobody went there to ae. This was done way back in era. The same exact style of fix could have been done for any problem zones. Adding occasional mob abilities that prevent being bunched, stun immune mobs to the packs, or just level 56+ somewhere, and enchanter ae is dead.

Yes but other people wanted to go to FG and ME at the time. Nobody goes to The Deep for any reason other than aoe.

Correction. They do their OW raid, they get their shard or tradeskill items, then they never come back.

What did they do to end AE in FG? I've noticed the mob pathing is shockingly bad in there and wondered if that was deliberate to make AE less attractive.

I doubt it. Pathing there has been horrible ever since it was released.

You can still ae FG, we had groups doing it on Luclin launch while they farmed shards. You can still ae ME as well, another thing we did on Luclin launch while farming shards.

I honestly don't think that the nerf to these stuns has anything to do with RMT and plvl'ers etc like most are claiming in here. This was an easy and quick to do change that doesn't really effect anything else. You can still charm pet just as effectively etc and anything else outside of AE'ing that you used more than 1 stun for you'll just find a new way of doing those events.

I believe that a lot of the nerfs to classes/exploits/tricks/bugs that we've seem them do for each new TLP has more to do with those things becoming problematic when too many people learn about it, rather than a desire to screw over any specific group of people. There are dozens upon dozens of bugs/exploits/tricks etc that they have fixed over the last 5-6 years and nerfs to classes that they've done. Most of these things happen after too many people find out about them. This stuff isn't very problematic when a small group of people know about it and take advantage of it, but one of the symptoms of having a new TLP every year is that more and more people learn about these things and people are trying to be as efficient as possible so more and more people utilize them.

Take AE'ing for example. If you go back to phinny, AE'ing wasn't really that popular relatively speaking. You had maybe 2-3 picks of the deep going in era with 1 group in each only doing east side. You also rarely saw people ae'ing outside of the deep. Each new TLP ae'ing has become more and more popular. Fast forward to Aradune, and in the first 2 months of Luclin you had 5-7 picks of the deep with a group in both east and west side in every pick. You had people AE'ing the hole, lguk, seb, velk etc every single day. The amount of people using AE'ing as the preferred method of leveling/aa farming has increased 100x since the first TLP's. It's easy to assume following the trend that each new TLP they release more and more people will be AE'ing until you hit the point where you have basically no group game outside of AE'ing in the early era's. Daybreak may see this as being very problematic. I myself prefer AE'ing to stay in, but I also totally understand the logic behind taking it away. I used to play another game where the same thing happened, the game devolved in to almost strictly AE groups and that company saw it as being problematic as well to the point where they nerfed most of it. Even servers of classic versions that come out come with the nerfed versions of AE'ing because the dev's know how problematic it is for the health of their server.

I bet a developer realized a player could log out between AE kills and massively extend the life of their 75% xp potions, and that was the point they realized something had to be done immediately.

Of course this won't end AE killing and abusive behavior, but it sets them up for several more nerfs that players will accept with less fuss if they're rolled out one at a time. Like more target caps maybe on PBAE nukes/bard songs, and more CC immune mobs in popular zones.