9-12-17 test patch notes = more massive nerfs?!

*** Highlights ***

- Added the Find Item Window which allows you to search your inventory. See UI section for detail.


*** Items ***

- Stats granted by food and drink will now obey required and recommended levels.
- Modified the focus effects on all versions of Brell's Shawl items and augments so that their benefits will no longer be activated by triggered spells.
- - Ex: Previously, casting Unity of the Doomscale would attempt to trigger Brell's Sacred Soothing Wave 5 times, now it will only attempt to trigger once.
- The kick skill damage modifier has been added to appropriate bard usable items.
- The Relife Adornment augment usable by Warriors, Rangers, and Beastlords can now be used by Bards. The Relife Adornment augment currently usable by Bards can now be converted to the version with the kick skill damage modifier.
- Bards can now use Struck Quartzite augments.
- Corrected an issue that allowed the teleport spells on Zueria Slide to be cast without standing or while moving.
- Corrected an issue that prevented the recast timer on Gyrospire Relocation Device from being set as expected.
- Nimbuses that had "aura" in the name have had their names changed, since "aura" has another meaning.
- The Bridle of the Ursus Antonicus can no longer be used indoors.
- Reverted the names and icons of the items used to create the Hand of Glory.
- Horse Bridles that can be sold back to Galic Amondson in The Bazaar will now have description text indicating:
- - Creatures that previously dropped Silken Bridles will now instead drop Ornate Silken Bridles.
- - Ornate Silken Bridles are equivalent to Silken Bridles with the exception that they cannot be sold back to Galic Amondson, are lore, and cannot be used in Roboboar, Worg, or Ornate Barding combines.


*** Quests And Events ***

- Hunter of The Plane of Valor - The rare creature previously named 'a Lumbering Beast' is now named 'an Ungainly Beast' to better differentiate it from the non-rare creatures that were also named 'a Lumbering Beast'.
- Queen Velazul Di`zok (Raid) - Modified the Queen event so that the warcasters once again cast Enveloping Smoke all at the same time. They now cast Electric Blast at staggered intervals.
- Kor-Sha Laboratory (Raid) - Fixed an issue that would cause Aura of Kor-Sha to be applied (but resisted) every minute for players who had completed the Essence of the Dragon II achievement.
- Access to Asylum of Anguish - A Shrewd Dragorn no longer has a placeholder and is now guaranteed to spawn (in new locations) in all versions of the Dranik's Hollows instances. He now carries six signets but will not respawn in the same instance.
- The Summoning of Droga (Raid & Mission) - Droga will no longer count down towards consuming one of his priests unless there are priests up. It should make it easier and more reliable to get the No Priests for You achievement.
- A Rotten Heart (Mission) - Speculative fix to prevent a client crash when Adana Baxter is reduced to 25% health.
- Celestial Fists (Quest) - Gwan should more reliably leave a corpse when slain.
- The Rescue (Quest) - Hailing Agilica will now properly cause the two Darkvine guard NPCs to spawn.


*** Spells ***

- Berserker - Corrected an issue that prevented several abilities (the Volley line and Dichotomic Rage) from properly checking for the reagent they were flagged to require.
- Paladin - Increased the cost of Harmonious Blessing and reduced the number of counters to 40. Reduced the hate added by Harmonious Illumination. Reduced the heal granted by Harmonious Light.
- Shadowknight - Increased the cost of Harmonious Disruption and reduced the number of counters to 40. Reduced the damage dealt by Precise Disruption. Reduced the range and healing amount of Disruptive Recourse. Reduced the hate added by Precise Disruption and Expansive Distraction.
- Warrior - Converted Flash of Anger so that it no longer has to buff you with a second 'Flash of Anger Effect' spell. Because two-handed stance negates the parry buff from this ability, you are now prevented from activating Flash of Anger while you are in that stance.
- Warrior - Increased the cost of Harmonious Expanse. Reduced the number of counters on Harmonious Expanse Effect to 40. Greatly reduced the hate added by Expansive Disharmony.
- Illusion Benefit buffs now persist through death.


*** AA ***

- All - Corrected a bug that caused the achievement Call of the Forsaken Master Scavenger to not grant ranks 3 or 4 of Trophy Collector. Any affected characters should be fixed the next time they log in.
- All - Increased the base mitigation AC soft cap by 6-26% starting at level 85 for all classes.
- All - The following ability lines have been consolidated or modified which may result in the need for some classes to repurchase some abilities. Enabling auto-grant should correct the majority of these issues:
- - Bard - Removed ranks 2-11 of Lure of the Siren's Song and consolidated Hastened Lure of the Siren's Song to be ranks 2-7.
- - Berserker - Removed ranks 2-15 and 17-21 of Self Preservation and consolidated Hastened Self Preservation to be ranks 2-6 and 8-11.
- - Cleric - Removed ranks 2-15 of Divine Peace.
- - Druid - Removed ranks 2-11 of Veil of the Underbrush.
- - Enchanter - Removed ranks 2-31 of Friendly Stasis.
- - Enchanter - Removed ranks 3-33 of Self Stasis and consolidated Hastened Self Stasis to be ranks 3-11.
- - Magician - Removed ranks 2-21 of Drape of Shadows and consolidated Hastened Drape of Shadows to be ranks 2-14.
- - Monk - Removed ranks 2-35 of Imitate Death and consolidated ranks 1-7 of Hastened Imitate Death to be ranks 2-8.
- - Monk - Removed ranks 2-11 of Moving Mountains.
- - Necromancer - Removed ranks 2-21 of Death's Effigy and consolidated Hastened Death's Effigy to be ranks 2-4.
- - Paladin - Removed ranks 2-20 of Balefire Burst.
- - Paladin - Removed ranks 2-10 of Divine Call, consolidated Hastened Divine Call to be ranks 2-4 and 6-9, and consolidated Extended Divine Call to be rank 5.
- - Ranger - Removed ranks 4-23 of Cover Tracks and consolidated Hastened Cover Tracks to be ranks 4-15.
- - Rogue - Removed ranks 4-36 of Escape and consolidated Hastened Escape to be ranks 3-7 and 9-12.
- - Pet Classes - Removed ranks 3, 5, and 7-22 of Summon Companion and extended the range of ranks 2+ of Summon Companion from 350 to 10,000.
- - Shadowknight - Removed ranks 2-21 of Death's Effigy.
- - Shadowknight - Removed ranks 4-8, 10, 12, and 14-23 of Hate's Attraction and consolidated Hastened Hate's Attraction to be ranks 4-6 and 10-13.
- - Shaman - Removed ranks 2-5 and 7-21 of Inconspicuous Totem and consolidated Hastened Inconspicuous Totem to be ranks 2-4 and 6-13. Totemic Form now fades when Inconspicuous Totem fades or is removed.
- - Warrior - Removed ranks 2-15 of Howl of the Warlord and consolidated Quickened Howl of the Warlord to be ranks 2-4.
- - Warrior - Removed ranks 2-5 of Warlord's Grasp.
- - Wizard - Removed ranks 2-11 of A Hole in Space.
- Multiple - Consolidated Group Perfected Levitation to be rank 2 of Perfected Levitation.
- Bard - Bards now gain the kick skill at level 17:
- - Changed Selo's Kick to be a passive ability that will add an additional Kick attack to your Kick skill button presses.
- - Changed Frenzied Kicks to reduce the reuse timer of the Kick skill.
- - Changed the skill of the extra attack granted by Furious Refrain from Frenzy to Kick.
- Bard - Consolidated Sionachie's Crescendo to be rank 7 of Reaching Notes and made all ranks of Reaching Notes into a toggled passive ability.
- Bard - Moved the attack enhancement component of Quick Time to prevent stacking conflicts with several other buffs.
- Bard - Rallying Call now consumes 75% of the mana and endurance restored by this ability, the reuse time for this ability has been increased to 10 minutes, and the target requirements have been adjusted so that melee classes must be below 30% endurance and classes that use mana must be below 30% mana rather than any class being below 30% of either.
- Bard - Fixed an issue that prevented Lure of the Siren's Song from activating based on the status of your current target.
- Beastlord - Corrected an issue that caused Group Bestial Alignment to be blocked if Group Bestial Alignment Form was blocked.
- Berserker - Removed the restrictions that prevented Blood Sustenance and Furious Rampage/Focused Furious Rampage from coexisting.
- Cleric - Consolidated Smite the Wicked to be ranks 30 and 34 of Turn Undead.
- Cleric - Quiet Miracle has been renamed Quiet Prayer and now consumes mana equal to the health/mana restored to the target. The ability now shares a timer with Veturika's Perseverance. The amount of health/mana restored by Veturika's Perseverance has been increased to 30000. The reuse time of these abilities has been increased to 20 minutes.
- Cleric, Necromancer, Paladin - Refunded Sense the Dead.
- Druid - Consolidated Flight of Eagles to be rank 2 of Spirit of Eagle.
- Enchanter - Changed Project Illusion into a toggled passive ability.
- Enchanter - Rune of Banishment can no longer be focused for duration. Banishing Force, the defensive proc from Rune of Banishment, will now only push targets that are lower level than the caster.
- Enchanter - Scintillating Beam has removed and its ranks consolidated into Beam of Slumber. These ranks will now cause Beam of Slumber to trigger increasing ranks of Somnolence and Scintillating Beam Root on each of the targets hit by Beam of Slumber.
- Enchanter - Removed the snare component from all ranks of Waking Nightmare (the recourse component of Noctambulate.)
- Magician - Increased the HP:mana ratio of Giant Modulation Shard from 30000:10000 to 37500:12500.
- Magician - Improved Reclaim Energy will now cause Reclaim Energy to return a percentage of the pet spell's base mana cost rather than a percentage of the amount of mana used to summon the pet (which accounts for mana preservation.)
- Magician - Extended the range of the pet fade component of Drape of Shadows from 350 to 10000.
- Magician - Consolidated Virulent Talon to be ranks 23, 29-32, and 38-41 of Frenzied Burnout. Activating Frenzied Burnout now triggers the additional Virulent Talon buff. Adjusted the number of strikes triggered by Virulent Talon to account for the reduced reuse time.
- Magician, Shaman - Slightly reduced the effectiveness of ranks 19-25 of Malosinete and ranks 4-10 of Wind of Malosinete so that the appropriate level Malo spells will overwrite the AA ability debuff.
- Mana Users - Spell Casting Mastery no longer reduces the mana cost of AA abilities that have a mana cost.
- Monk - Made a number of significant changes to the following AA lines: Crippling Strike, Eye Gouge, Gouging Claws of the Jade Tiger, Master's Hastened Combination, and Stunning Kick:
- - Eye Gouge has been changed into a passive ability named Resonant Strikes that will add an additional Tiger Claw attack to your Tiger Claw, Eagle Strike, or Dragon Punch (or Tail Rake) skill button presses.
- - Stunning Kick has been changed into a passive ability named Resonant Kicks that will add an additional Flying Kick attack to your Kick, Round Kick, or Flying Kick skill button presses.
- - Crippling Strike has been changed into a passive ability named Sweeping Kick that allows your Kick skill button presses to snare your target for 6 seconds.
- - Gouging Claws of the Jade Tiger has had additional ranks added to it and will now allow your Tiger Claw skill button presses to trigger an attack debuff equivalent to Eye Gouge.
- - Master's Hastened Combination has had additional ranks added and has been renamed Stunning Round Kick, it will now allow your Round Kick skill button presses to stun your target for up to 1.5 seconds.
- Necromancer - Consolidated Death's Malaise to be ranks 8-9 and 12-13 of Scent of Terris. Undead targets will now be slowed in addition to having their resistances debuffed.
- Necromancer - Consolidated Perfected Dead Men Floating to be rank 3 of Dead Man Floating.
- Necromancer - Consolidated Lingering Nightmares to be ranks 3-7 of Frenzy of the Dead. Activating Frenzy of the Dead now triggers the additional Lingering Nightmares buff. Increased the duration of Frenzy of the Dead by 6 seconds. Increased the reuse time by 100 seconds. Increased the damage and number of of the lifetaps triggered by Lingering Nightmares.
- Necromancer - Consolidated the 3 component buffs of Funeral Pyre (Smoldering Fury, Inner Fire, and Soul Fire) into a single buff named Funeral Pyre.
- Necromancer - Added a 100 hit limit to both ranks of Embalmer's Carapace and increased the damage dealt by rank 2 of Embalmer's Curse from 1500 every 6 seconds to 4500 every 6 seconds.
- Necromancer - Made the following adjustments to Reluctant Benevolence:
- - All ranks of Reluctant Benevolence are now toggled passive.
- - The amount of healing offered by each rank of Reluctant Lifeshare has been adjusted to account for the change to a permanent duration, scaling from 28% at rank 1 to 116% at rank 12.
- - The focus limits on the ability have been adjusted so that only lifetap spells that cost 100 or more mana that are within approximately 10 levels of the AA ability level will trigger Reluctant Lifeshare.
- Paladin, Shadowknight - Changed Helix from an activated ability to a passive ability that is triggered when casting hate over time spells. Ranks 1-7 of Helix of the Undying have been consolidated into Improved Demand For Honor for paladins and Improved Demand for Power for shadowknights.
- Paladin, Shadowknight, Warrior - Made the following adjustments to Weapon Stances:
- - Defensive Proficiency: Reduced the defensive percentage on this stance from 20% to 12% and the shield block percentage from 15% to 10%.
- - Dual-Wielding Proficiency: Reduced the defensive percentage on this stance from 15% to 6%, added the 20% proc chance bonus (equivalent to Defensive Proficiency).
- - Two-Handed Proficiency: This stance now suppresses the effects of Combat Stability, reducing your effective armor class.
- Ranger - Scout's Mastery of the Elements, Scout's Mastery of Fire, and Scout's Mastery of Ice will no longer increase the damage of weapon procs.
- Ranger - Reduced the amount of ATK added by Strength of Tunare to 60 to account for the innate amount of ATK that is granted by AA at level 62.
- Shadowknight - Moved the melee damage enhancement component of Visage of Death to prevent stacking conflicts with Unholy Guardian Discipline. Note: The melee damage reduction of Unholy Guardian Discipline will still preclude the effects of Visage of Death's enhancement.
- Shadowknight - Consolidated Bony Grasp of Death to be ranks 11 and 15 of Encroaching Darkness. These additional ranks are now available to necromancers. Starting at rank 11 Encroaching Darkness will now be nearly unresistable against undead targets.
- Shadowknight - Thought Leech is now exempt from the twincast chance granted by Twintap.
- Shadowknight - Made the following adjustments to Soul Flay:
- - All ranks of Soul Flay are now toggled passive.
- - The amount of mana restored by each rank of Soul Flay has been adjusted to account for the change to a permanent duration, scaling from 51% at rank 1 to 60% at rank 9.
- - The focus limits on the ability have been adjusted so that only lifetap spells that cost 100 or more mana that are within approximately 6 levels of the AA ability level will trigger Soul Flay.
- Shaman - Fleeting Spirit has been changed to now double the effectiveness of 5-10 heal over time and 5-10 damage over time spells rather than 10-20 of either. Reduced the duration of the ability for damage over time spells to 2 minutes and heal over time spells to 4 minutes.
- Shaman - Extended Spirit of the Puma will no longer extend the duration of Roar of the Lion.
- Shaman - Refunded Paralytic Spores and Paralytic Spray. Changed Spiritual Rebuke to be a knock back that triggers a root effect (similar to Paralytic Spray) and added additional ranks.
- Warrior - Refunded War Stomp as it is less effective than Battle Leap.
- Wizard - Consolidated Druzzil's E'ci's, Improved, Kerafyrm's, and Ro's Familiar abilities to be a single line.
- Wizard - Reduced the fire debuff of Pyromantic Ignition for ranks 13-24 of Pyromancy to 50 to match Cryomancy and Arcomancy.


*** NPCs ***

- Beast Domain - Slightly raised the default location of Yahnoa due to reports of him being under the ground. NOTE: he is up on a branch, so make sure to look up.


*** Progression Servers ***

- Pick Zone Improvement: The ability to /pick as a group has been added.
- - The Multiple Instance Choice window now has the option to pick as a group that the group leader can toggle.
- - You must be in the same pick instance as the group leader, be out of combat, and have no pick timer to pick as a group.
- Assist Silverwing (Quest) - The Inscribable Words that are ground spawns in Plane of Valor and Karnor's Castle are now restricted to the unlocking of Gates of Discord.
- Rellix in Rivervale is now available when Gates of Discord unlocks.
- Clan RunnyEye drops that were added mid-2001 are now restricted to the unlocking of Velious. NPCs that drop Blackened Alloy items will drop Blackened Iron until Velious has unlocked.


*** Miscellaneous ***

- Fixed a graphics bug that could cause the game to lock up and become non-responsive. This bug was most commonly encountered during the mission 'A Rotten Heart' in the Tower of Rot.
- The client has been updated to display messaging for whether or not characters failed to load or if characters are still loading from the database.
- Players can now correctly invite others to password protected chat channels again.
- A spell research table is available for player use in the Plane of Knowledge near the Rasumus clan.
- Secalna Galnor in the Plane of Knowledge will again send low level adventurers to the Mines of Gloomingdeep.
- Arias in the Mines of Gloomingdeep now has a dialogue that helps explain how to use /pick.


*** UI ***

- Added the Find Item Window which allows you to search your inventory:
- - The window can be toggled with /finditem as well as through buttons found in the inventory window, bank window, and EQ menu
- - You can search for specific item names with /finditem Itemname
- - The window allows you to search for any item or augment in your immediate possession, in your bank, in your shared bank, in a mercenary slot, in a key ring, or in a real estate that you own with the same filtering options as the bazaar search window
- - The window allows you to directly grab items from your inventory (hold left click) or offers the ability to highlight the location/bag where the item is located (right click)
- Fixed the display of drop down lists in multiple UI windows so the text in the list will no longer be cut off.
- Added a new chat filter to show/hide 'begin casting' messages for proc spells. By default these messages will now be hidden.
- The achievement category tiles for recent expansions are a bit brighter.
- The /pickzone window now displays the number of group members in each instance of your current zone.
- Addressed an issue that caused some events to not properly appear in the calendar.
- Added the ability to export data, one month at a time, from the in-game calendar to an iCal format file which can then be imported to most calendars (including Google and Outlook).
- Removed the veteran reward reminder when logging in on servers that do not allow veteran rewards to be claimed.
- Added PrependText and AppendText fields to the label UI type.
- - This will allow for UI modders to define the prepend text and / or the append text to a label with the dynamic text controlled by the game team.
- - This is currently demonstrated with the parcel tab in the merchant window.
- - Leading and trailing whitespace in UI text fields will now be correctly displayed.
- Added a message and chat filter for items that are destroyed intentionally.

- Paladin - Increased the cost of Harmonious Blessing and reduced the number of counters to 40. Reduced the hate added by Harmonious Illumination. Reduced the heal granted by Harmonious Light.

Paladins harmonious was already a stinking joke. What the heck is the point to even cast this after the nerf? Paladin agro is already a laugh, if anything you could have double or tripled the amount of hate generated from Harmonious, especially if the absurdly high mana cost is going to increase.
The stances should have been the first things nerfed - now they have nerfed a ton of other stuff and are finally coming for the stances. Stacking multiple nerfs on top of one another is overkill.
Just like when they nerfed a bunch of things to berserker stacking when the real thing that needed nerfing in the first place was the disconcerting disc. Then they finally nerfed disconcerting but never "un-nerfed" all the other crap, so dozens of strong berserkers quit. Ridiculous!
Un-nerf paladin Valorous rage now since you are neutering the stances.

- Bard - Rallying Call now consumes 75% of the mana and endurance restored by this ability, the reuse time for this ability has been increased to 10 minutes, and the target requirements have been adjusted so that melee classes must be below 30% endurance and classes that use mana must be below 30% mana rather than any class being below 30% of either.

Another terrible change.
Does this mean youre going to add endurance to Mod rods for the melee?
When a pure melee dies on raids, rally was the only little bone for them in years. Breather line is extremely underpowered and will not work if youre in combat. Rally really was great the way it was.
This definitely needs reconsidered.

They won't even notice this thread considering whats going to happen in the official thread once its unlocked.


But honestly guys wtf are you thinking. Its a 20 year old game that is supposed to be fun. Some of these changes were long overdue and while they won't be well received they at least make sense. But other is completely out of left field and honestly rewriting how a major AA works or functions years after the fact is not ok unless its severely breaking something in game. Plus a lot of these changes come after you already nerfed classes partially like sk leech, paladin melee discs, etc. How in the world you can limit sk melee self healing to targeted npc only while still leaving the counters in place is dumb but to now give zerkers 500% of melee damage done including ae for 500 hits is just laughable.

You guys really need to get your together.

Does this mean that "hole in space" now only works on level 98(and below) mobs? won't be much use in modern expansions then... or is it just consolidated into max rank? the ranks 2-11 were free anyway...

Do wizards only have one familiar now?

I wonder if this patch will help with some of the issues we have on AB?

I wasn't aware that Necro DPS needed a big'ole'nurf

Can I have my AAs back so I can buy my 1000th firework instead?

Can we just go ahead and make it:

Because it seems every other patch they are nerfing defensive stuff. Might as well just go and make it so tanks armor does nothing, while melee dps classes still get all their avoidance stuff just fine.

- Cleric - Quiet Miracle has been renamed Quiet Prayer and now consumes mana equal to the health/mana restored to the target. The ability now shares a timer with Veturika's Perseverance. The amount of health/mana restored by Veturika's Perseverance has been increased to 30000. The reuse time of these abilities has been increased to 20 minutes.


Oh Lawd. Clerics will be upset.

Have no fear, you will get some equally useless upgrade to it next expansion.

Those monk changes are... odd.

I am a bit worried they will introduce a new system (equivalent to EQ2's Ascension) where you need to drop $75 to buy AA upgrades. Say, 7500 Daybreak Cash to regain pre-nerfed Defensive Proficiency effectiveness. I am not joking.

Notwithstanding the across-the-board nerfs,

Zueria Slide and Gyrospire Relocation Device nerfs?

You can no longer sell dropped Silken Bridles? (Likely due to TLP complaints).

It looks like they want people upset. :-/

They usually drop bad news before expansion announcements.

It's like a pattern of nerf and buyback your power.

Unfortunately, this time around they will probably introduce a system where you can only (re)gain power through ridiculously rare drops or Marketplace purchases (i.e. EQ2's Ascension system).

Then they would loose all the players who thinks a subscription should be enough to play the game...thats a lot of players...

That didn't stop them on EQ2. You can play with your sub in major time sinks (EQ2 players calling it a 2nd job) or buy power from Marketplace. :/

Seriously whatever dev came up with this deluge of nerfs- I have no respect for you.

Nobody asked you to go through and find ways to make EQ less fun- nobody asked you to unbalance and weaken classes that didn't need further nerfing. If you move forward with reducing some of these crap classes into the ground I'll definitely not renew my subscription. Instead of searching for ways to make the game less fun why don't you come up with content.

Thanks for nothing.

Will bards now be able to use mod rods, staunch, or any other of those fancy get mana abilities or are they stuck again with 'Lol, what is a mana recovery tool?'

It looks like we have one familiar now:
https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=41734&source=test

Rally can still be used on a melee that died and is out of endurance. I think they are saying that there may have been an exploit that it worked for any warrior even if he wasnt under 30% endurance because he is always out of mana. Just checked it on a monk and yea that does work. On live - it still landed on my monk even at full endurance. Thats not how it is supposed to be.

Big question that I know is on everyone's mind...


AA refund?