I saw some recent patch notes about a change to riposte strikethrough, and if I go back a couple of years there's a reduction in double riposte down to 5%/rank. The latter I'd calculate to be a 35%-ish reduction. Instead, I'm experiencing what seems more like a 90% reduction in riposte damage. Basically, I've got a few characters parked in various places where, if I pulled a bunch of easyish mobs and hit Furious/Counterattack/Reckless/Whirlwind/etc they'd all be dead. Yet now, even with bigger damage weapons I'm finding that shortly after disc ends they're basically all standing, some barely scratched, and I'm dead. What'd I miss?
The only recent change is that mobs with strikethrough now negate the your riposte counterattack as well as striking successfully when they strikethrough. It will only change your results (same damage to you, less damage to the mobs) on modern mobs with high strikethrough, older content seems the same to me.
Don't remember when exactly, but maybe last year-ish they changed riposte up a bit. You will now only be able to riposte on what would've been a successful hit landing on you from an npc. So when you pull a swarm of green/grey con mobs that are unable to land a hit on you, you won't riposte them all to death.
Any recent patch note is unrelated to that. They nerfed that last year. I forget the exact details, but they ended the mass reposte swarming.
Based on dev statements, it seemed that the change a year or so ago was to prevent fewer calculations, and they didn't think about it reducing riposte damage. But when the reduced damage was pointed out, they said something like "good."
Not SKs, all classes that can reposite. I have an idea but don't know exactly why, so I wont say, so as to not spread misinformation. However, I think I can agree with Dre, that it had something to do more with server lag than it did nerfing an ability.
So, they cut out server lag by taking out calculations, just to reintroduce server lag by everyone hitting auto-attack on every grey con mob in a swarm. Sounds legit.
I don't know man. I am just doing the best job a can to answer a question. I play a caster. Sorry you have to attack things instead of AFK'ing while they suicide on your Wrumslayer. I'm going to have to afk a minute myself so I can get my violin.
Um, lol? First, I don't use a Wurmslayer. Second, I don't AFK play. While you are grabbing your violin, concentrate on what I was pointing out. They stated that they took out the riposte on misses to cut down on calculations, ergo cut back on lag. However, as I was stating, it probably didn't cut back on lag because now the servers are having to register when someone spams auto-attack as well as calculate calculations for the hit/miss on each mob in a swarm, as well as calculate all the times the mobs, who would be dead before the change happened, are missing you. So, in the end, the lag is still present.
If I had to guess, they ran analysis on when server lag spikes and saw swarming so went after that. In their mind, the same (or more) processing/communication happening over a minute or so is better than it happening over a second and burping the server. If I had to guess, those burps cause some kind of thrashing in their pipeline that cascade. Or something.
If they were doing it to cut down on swarming, I don't think it worked. The places that were getting swarmed beforehand are still getting swarmed now. I am not doubting what you said, because you are probably right. But I don't think it did away with the lag, either, just kept the server burps from happening as much, like you said. I just wish the team would communicate better with us to explain things so that we aren't sitting on ForumQuest guessing (though, I guess it passes the time doing so).
If you are saying that your 2 autoattacks per second produce as much lag as a metric ton of mobs getting riposted every swing....
Swarm pathing is probably 100x the calculations of swarm riposte, and 10,000x the calculations of one player autoattacking.
I didn't say that. What I said was that it didn't cure the lag problem. The calculations of the mobs trying to hit you are still there, it is just the riposte isn't anymore. See Tucoh's post, which I agreed to.
Yeah doesnt really make sense to not get a riposte on a miss though. If someone swings a weapon at you, you dont know if the hit is going to miss, so you would try to dodge, block, parry, and riposte even if they actually did miss. This last riposte nerf, not only dropped my riposte damage by like 60% but it seems when mobs do get strikethrough, they tend to hit you like 6 times. Both of those changes were just terrible and did not seem to help lag at all.
If you are going to look at what makes sense then it doesnt make sense to be able to riposte 20 mobs as easily as you riposte 1.
While I can see spike calculations being reduced, now all the mobs live (and stay engaged) for much longer - which would seem to only prolong the duration of any lag. So maybe less "burps", but overall less performance? But if EQ's server populations aren't increasing (does anybody think they are increasing?), then it seems like they are just cannibalizing existing content to keep the game going. What' s on the chopping block next?
Still think it would have made more sense if rather than what happened and what they've done (which sucks and I play a rogue) that they introduced something like if fighting more than 4 mobs, then massive strikethrough of defenses from any mobs beyond 4. Makes sense to me