Test Update 03/07/2023 - Patch Notes and Discussions

Discussion in 'Test Update Notes and Bug Roundup' started by EQ Dev, Mar 7, 2023.

  1. Pikollo Augur

    So for Mischief/TB instead of getting/having banestrike every expansion we get an upgrade early on, then nothing for 2 years. Which was kind of the point. It makes most of the change kinda moot.
  2. Valcron Elder

    Oh that's sweet - will I get AA' refunds ?!
  3. Emilari UI Designer


    Yes.
    Valcron likes this.
  4. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    Banestrike will still improve as you level up and get better spells, abilities and gear.
    Emilari likes this.
  5. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    That. Is. Not. How. It. Worked.

    [Wed May 07 10:37:08 2014] You begin casting Banestrike.
    [Wed May 07 10:37:08 2014] Beimeith hit Test Ten for 8000 points of non-melee damage.
    [Wed May 07 10:37:08 2014] Test Ten is struck by vengeful spirits.

    [Wed May 07 11:14:15 2014] You begin casting Banestrike.
    [Wed May 07 11:14:15 2014] Beimeith hit Test Ten for 8000 points of non-melee damage.
    [Wed May 07 11:14:15 2014] Test Ten is struck by vengeful spirits.

    [Thu Jun 05 23:17:07 2014] You begin casting Banestrike.
    [Thu Jun 05 23:17:07 2014] Beimeith hit Test Ten for 8000 points of non-melee damage.
    [Thu Jun 05 23:17:07 2014] Test Ten is struck by vengeful spirits.

    There. Is. No. Melee. In. There.
    There. Is. No. Range. In. There.
    There. Is. No. Other. Spellcast. In. There.

    You cast banestrike, it summoned the pet, it ran the script, it did the damage.

    That is how it worked. That is how it works now, except you don't press the button, it procs from melee or spells now. Soon it will be totally different.

    I didn't say it will fix all lag everywhere. I said it will remove one proc that causes lag. Most lag experienced by players (aka raid lag) is not caused by the servers being IO-bound.
    RPoo, Moege, GrandOpener and 5 others like this.
  6. Pikollo Augur

    Lets try again. The point is the change is mostly moot for TLP players as we cannot get to the 10%.

    Saying Banestrike will improve as you level up is obvious. Everything changes when you level up. Whether the 4% boost is an upgrade, nerf (from procs) or balances us out the update is still moot to us because in order for it to be a good upgrade worth the time and effort we'd need to be able to complete it. Which we can't for a long long time.

    What the change is doing is getting us to complete a bunch of achievements to get back to what we already have and not moving past that. (again assuming the 4% is equivalent to the procs).
  7. Captain Video Augur


    And you know this how, exactly? For years there were major lag issues in the Guild Lobby, long before raid lag was a thing. This was from a bunch of toons standing around doing nothing. Even now you can see a lot of lag in PoK when you run a single toon through a pack that's been parked there by a guild, since they're now avoiding doing that in the Lobby. Again, this is a bunch of toons doing nothing; it's all the added IO with the server to keep re-checking everyone's position. The complaints about how long it takes to load up the tradeskill depot window? That's all IO. The motivation behind all the inventory database rework they've done over the last few years is IO. The long-standing issue, referenced elsewhere in this very thread, about what happens when the advanced loot queue is flooded, is all IO. Banned third-party software that modifies the client can wreak havoc on server IO. I don't claim to have the answer, but it's certainly not cut-and-dried that raid lag is all CPU-bound.


    I don't know of any NPC in the game named Test Ten.
  8. Sancus Augur

    Test Ten is a Test server arena dummy.

    And, not that I think it will help: Beimeith is entirely correct as to how Banestrike used to work.
    RPoo, Fenthen, Warpeace and 6 others like this.
  9. MyShadower All-natural Intelligence

    The real story of the banestrike update...you have a little more compute power for all those swarm pets you may be holding back. ;) #Swarmstrike
  10. Svann2 The Magnificent

    I think that assumption is way off.
  11. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    And you don't have to get to 10% to see the change as even 2% should show an improvement is it will be applied to everything instead of the infrequent proc that it currently is.
    Allayna likes this.
  12. Beimeith Lord of the Game


    I'm not going to argue about lag with you. I didn't say this would solve all lag.

    I said it removes a proc from the game and that is always beneficial to reducing lag as the number of spells being cast on raids is a major source of zones lagging in raids. That is not an opinion, that is a stated fact. This particular proc had other lag-inducing features beyond what a normal proc has. It was a cool idea that required a complicated method to make it work that ultimately had performance implications because this game is super old and wasn't built in a way that easily enabled that functionality.

    As Sancus mentioned, it is a test dummy on the Test server.

    I generally prefer to use Test Ten when testing spells because it has the lowest resists.
    Raccoo and Emilari like this.
  13. Captain Video Augur

    My memory is from a melee perspective (I main a ranger). I don't have logs on my current computer set going that far back, but what I always remember seeing was something like:

    You hit a Something for 15 points of physical damage by Banestrike II.
    A Something is struck by vengeful spirits.

    The log messages >always< stated which level of Banestrike was being applied, and it was always shown as "physical damage", I never once saw it described as "non-melee" damage.
  14. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    I vividly remember calculating proc chances while sitting in my 8th grade classroom.

    Except that would have been 2001, and I didn't start playing EQ until 2004, and I didn't start delving deep into EQ math until around 2008+.

    Human memory is bad.

    Edit: Here is an excerpt from a log of a Monk I was playing (name removed because it was not my character) on a raid.

    [Sun Jan 03 19:44:25 2016] You begin casting Banestrike.
    [Sun Jan 03 19:44:25 2016] [A Monk I was playing] hit Vim for 14500 points of non-melee damage.
    [Sun Jan 03 19:44:25 2016] Vim is struck by vengeful spirits.
    Emilari and Metanis like this.
  15. Pikollo Augur

    I honestly don't know what kind of difference the 2% or 4% will make when compared to how it is now. I do know its a lot of farming to get the 4% though. So to say we have to do a bunch of achievements to get back to where we were is not to far off.
  16. Svann2 The Magnificent

    If you dont yet have the achievements then your current banestrike isnt maxed either. Id expect that every level of banestrike will be just slightly better than it was when it was a proc. So there would be no catching up to where you were. You will already be ahead on day 1.
    Waring_McMarrin likes this.
  17. Pikollo Augur

    Right now we are in TSS. So killing a lot of Drakkin. So Drakkin is maxed. Thats how it works every expac. Not worried about having things like orc maxed. There are none. So come SoF when we are killing orcs again yes it will be behind. But all I gotta do is kill orcs and its maxed again. I don't have to go find 5000 inanimate objects to destroy for it to be better.
  18. Pikollo Augur

    Like I said.I don't know the difference in dps/hps etc. Just saying the change is kinda moot on TLP other then having to do stuff to get back to having a decent banestrike. If we could do it all earlier on i'd consider the change more worth it from a TLP standpoint. Im not against the change.
  19. Allayna Augur

    Well thank god improvements to the game don’t have to meet a qualifier : Must also improve TLP.

    We certainly see massive nerfs on live due to some old mechanic exploit on TLP.
    Tegila, Metanis and Velisaris_MS like this.
  20. Captain Video Augur


    OK, my memory is bad. I'm old (a LOT older than you). I apologize for wasting so much of your time. I do, however, remember how to search. This is what it says in a SOE news article about this (link below):

    EverQuest: Rain of Fear Hunter and Collector Systems | EverQuest

    "The primary rewards for this new system are new special AAs and titles. As you kill more and more of each type of mob, you begin to learn more about the weaknesses of each individual race. Once you've slain enough of a particular group of mobs you'll earn a special AA that deals damage to that particular race."

    That's ALL it says. Nothing about mechanics. The statement now directly contradicts how the new system is designed to work, and that's a fact.