I had another thread where I discussed how easy it was to have my enchanter pet tank mobs in NOS T2 zones. Long discussion of "don't you dare make the game harder raider." I later played my druid with a merc tank, and it was pretty difficult keeping a close to max merc tank upright, especially if a second mob joined the fight. I think I figured out the issue. As far as I can tell, NOS mobs don't mitigate slow. For newer players, you won't understand what I am talking about. Classic EQ introduced the slow spell for bst, enc, and shaman classes. The slow spell reduce enemy attack rate by 65, 70, and 75 percent each. I don't quite understand the math there, but the end result was an unslowed mob was a challenge, and a slowed mob was a piece of cake. To increase the challenge, in later expansions like POP, they ramped up mob difficulty assuming mob was slowed. End result was the first 15 seconds of a fight were a nightmare for the tank (and enc if they got aggro due to a mez resist). Once the mob was slowed, the difficulty ramped down to an acceptable level (from a group perspective - I didn't raid back then). Having a slower in a group was a must fill position. The game was broken. They never should have introduced slows with such high percentages. I think it was Gates of Discord they introduced a solution. Slow mitigation. When you cast a slow, it didn't reduce mob attack speed by the full 75%. The amount varied by mob (and you would get a message if the slow was mostly, partially, slightly effective). The result was since slow was not as powerful, they could balance mobs easier. Whether slow or not slowed did not make such a big difference in the early part of a fight. Having a slower became a nice feature in a group, not an absolute necessity. Now, let's forward to today. Tanks have slow belts which I believe mitigate 50%. Not as good as the bst/enc/shaman slows, but a significant benefit if a slower is not in a group. If grouping with a raid tank, slowing can be viewed as a negative as it would reduce the opportunity for riposte dps. As far as I know, mercenary tanks do not have a slow proc. So how does NOS not having slow mitigation affect the game? I think right now the game is balanced assuming a mob is not slowed. You have an acceptable level of challenge if mobs are not slowed. However, once a mob becomes slowed, the expansion becomes pretty easy. On the negative side, the small groups using a merc tank are going to struggle as they probably don't have a slower. It will become more difficult for the mercenary tank to do his job with a slow. For player tanks, damage is going to spike in difficulty. At the start of the encounter, multiple mobs at once are a challenge, and then as the fight goes on and their slow belt procs (or player casts), they become easier. I have noticed even raid tanks go down fast when attacked by multiple mobs at once at the start of a fight. So, is this a good thing - no slow mitigation? I am not so sure. It was introduced for a good reason. I have to assume that newer developers aren't aware of the history of slow mitigation, and it could just be an oversight on their part.
Like you said, there's just no way for a mob to be balanced at both 0% slow and 75% slow. Slow mitigation brings the overall effect down to something more in line with damage mitigation that can be provided by multiple classes. Then again, it's not like EverQuest doesn't have a bunch of abilities that can situationally trivialize content, and slow is one of the more pervasive abilities so even a small group would likely have access to it in some form. Unmitigated slow kind of sounds like a bug though, assuming it's true. It hasn't just been standard for ages now, I can't even think of a single exception to the rule off the top of my head.
I'm curious if the tank merc is swinging a lot more and getting hit with more riposte damage. Also, what rank is your enchanter pet? I recall when ToL first released that tank mercs were broken and taking very little damage (same with pets, but no one is saying anything because they don't want pets to get nerfed)
Honestly, I see no reason for trash (group content) mobs to mitigate slow at all. Group nameds, sure. Raid trash, and especially raid bosses, yes. If this is intentional, I fully approve of it.
I made a pm to a dev about most trash not having slow mitigation, and also surprisingly low attack (lower avg hit than tol mobs) but not sure anything was done about it. Certain zones seem to work like you'd expect, I think darklight is pretty status quo with previous years' norms.
There was an update in the Jan or Feb patch that made "easy" flagged mobs hit for intended damage where they had been less than intended, so your second thing may already be patched if that was it.
Maybe but that sounded more like the mobs in ffp, the bugs that hit (and still do seemingly) for next to nothing et al.
It seems to be a conscious decision to make some mobs fully slowable nowadays. It does make those mobs output very low damage, but I think the rationale is to make camps where various classes excel. In ToL, most of Ka Vethan is fully slowable, as well as various mobs in T1. In NoS, most of Shadowhaven and Deepshade are fully slowable.
Seems perfectly fine to me and. 'not-a-bug' (tm)... There are plenty of real bugs, no need to make noise and use Dev time with inconsequential crap IMO.
I appreciate the lack of slow mitigation. It allows for non-maxed tanks (new, returning, alts, etc.) to tank imperfect healers (new, returning, alts, etc.) to manage group survival a tank merc to have a chance in T1 let alone T2 In all, it allows more people to experience more of the expansion by lowering the bar, but not giving things away.
Slow mitigation should have been based on the number of grouped players on the hate list instead of an arbitrary low/medium/high based on mob strength. More grouped players = better slows. It fosters cooperation and grouping. Missed opportunity to turn a "net negative" change to a "net positive" change.
Ya crippling snare is 25% slow, which is not good enough to tank anything that isn't yard trash. Unless you are the tankiest tank to ever tank. In any case, I think the idea of balancing the game around melee attack slows is overthinking it to an absurd degree. Moreover, if there's something to complain about with tanking it's the ridiculous gear chase. On FV the 120 group gear is dirt cheap, so the above point about gear chasing might be moot *if* players make it to 120. Plus it's not like 120 group gear suddenly makes you godly. It just means you finally caught up to mob DPS.
Was it the summoned enchanter pet or a charmed one? Merc anything is a pretty garbage version of the worst possible PUG slot filler. Tank being the worst of all at high level. For any pet class that is played with some knowledge base, a pet will out tank a merc vs 1 mob and generally out tank an average or below average group geared player. Something to do with the pet mitigation and all the AAs... I've done the door mission this year using my alt magician pet to tank to get the achievement "No Poke" and it did just fine. As many others have said, crippling slicer has been nerfed into submission, at 25% slow. 2019-04-17 23:02 Changed Slot 7 from "Decrease AC by 15 (L1) to 60 (L101) " to "Decrease AC by 22 " 2019-04-17 23:02 Changed Slot 6 from "Decrease STR by 16 (L1) to 130 (L101) " to "Decrease STR by 40 " 2019-04-17 23:02 Changed Slot 5 from "Decrease AGI by 16 (L1) to 130 (L101) " to "Decrease AGI by 40 " 2019-04-17 23:02 Changed Slot 4 from "Decrease DEX by 6 (L1) to 110 (L101) " to "Decrease DEX by 35 " 2019-04-17 23:02 Changed Slot 2 from "Decrease Attack Speed by 20% (L1) to 70% (L61) " to "Decrease Attack Speed by 25% " If anything, I could see them making a cripple merc belt, a heal focus neck, a fire focus for the wizard merc and a haste or ferocity merc item for the rogue merc. But iirc some of the mercs still don't have weapons and it has been bugged for a long time?
Slow mitigation is needed when ENC slow is 70%. They shouldn't have let slow inflate to that sort of %. When slowed, mobs give a message. Partially, mostly, etc. This indicates the % of mitigation. Different mobs mitigate different amounts and this is indicated by the message. Slow is not trivial even with a lot of mitigation. The ENC pet is no slouch (with pet armor) right now and can hold it's own, it's finally tuned properly, yay. It doesn't surprise me that an ENC pet against a slowed mob can match or out tank a WAR merc on an unslowed mob. WAR mercs underperform all the PC tanks and the mage pet. It's probably slightly above a ENC pet, more on par with a NEC pet, maybe behind a BST pet. And when it comes to healing, DRU is not in a very good place what-so-ever. Warrior mercs definitely need to have a slow belt and it is a major tuning oversight to not have given them one sooner.
