Changes with the February Update: Alternate Ability Grants for Gold Members and Ability Changes

I made a post earlier yesterday (page 38 I think but feel the need to do so again after reading the new entries.

I won't rehash points of view that have already been stated umpteen million times by others, both for and against Auto AA's, but I do have some questions as to implementation, and will again make a suggestion as to how to possibly please the ones who want aa's and not fully alienate the ones who are against it.

How will the aa's be awarded per level? auto filling each and every category up to level required?
Is it necessary to give ALL the aa's up to Brell's, or is it just faster gaining of AA's to supposedly make playing viable

If this is the case, why not just award a lump sum of aa's per level and let the player decide where to allocate them? This allows for specialization/individuality, and I've read of many concerns about specific lines of AA's harming a players playstyle (ie. Spell Casting Subtlety). This would take care of that issue. If you were to grant a flat rate of 50 aa's per level from 51 - 85, that would give each player 1700 base aa's, with the option to grind out more along the way if they are so inclined; this gives the best of both alleviating the sheer grind for that amount, while still enabling players to stay in current content. This also goes towards alleviating the concerns about losing the pre 4k aa experience bonus. I also think the long time players who have spent the time grinding their 6000+ aa's (and i'm one of them) would find this a bit easier to swallow.

My problem with the auto granting of the AA's is the sheer number of them you are proposing to give new players. While I agree that the number of aa's needed can be daunting, is giving each player 4000+ aa's by level 85 really necessary?

In my opinion, this does not "balance" the "classes". Melee already has the short end of the dps stick vs. casters, and this just makes it worse. I say this purely as a tank, and what I see happening in groups and in raids, so I have no personal dog in this fight.

A SLAP IN THE FACE!

To introduce a little levity into the thread here amongst the negativity and indignation, I've done a brief amount of research. To this point (post #1317, which I'm sure will be behind once I've submitted), the term/phrase/cliche "slap in the face" has been used in 26 individual posts, not including any contained within quotes or posts which claimed receiving multiple slaps in the face (that's going to leave a mark!) or any other variety. While other things have been slapped, I focused only on the facial slaps.

Oh, people have been slapped in the face literally, completely, and essentially. Basically, too. Slaps in the face have come with acceptance, they've come with rage. They've littered the forums, one was even on this page (before too many replies pushed this to the next, maybe another will be there).



TL;DR -> Whenever a major change or nerf is coming, I find it entertaining to watch the spike in usage of "slap in the face". It seems almost as prevalent as the constant usage of completely over-the-top analogies people like to make between EQ and obscure real life situations. One of those quirky EQLive forum nuances. For the lulz.

I'm well aware of this, thank you, you seem to have missed the point. If they begin selling or giving away aa's, what's to stop them from allowing you to purchase your epics, no effort involved, just click a button and have everything handed to you. The whole pay to win thing needs to be curtailed, or maybe we should all just climb into the name calling pit, princess.

I might be incorrect but I believe the AA curve was put into place to help people catch up on AA faster untill the Autogrant was put into place. Therefore it was only ever meant to be a stop gap, and thus should be taken away.

I am all for granting AA that are neccessary to play a class up to Underfoot, and I believe that if the userbase looks at their AA and find ones that can be detrimental to playstyles such as Spell Casting Subtlety and make a good case for it, as in the case with SCS, the devs will see this and make changes as neccessary. They are trying to enhance the game for everyone, without alienating anyone or playstyle (other than swarming). Please help assist them with this.

I would recommend to fellow players to be constructive and provide feedback. "This suxs" is not feedback that is constructive or helpful.

When I was level 85, I had 1000 AA, as a Bard that was more then enough. SOE isn't thinking about the effect this is going to have on our community.

People already complain enough about Plvled toons and people not knowing how to play them. So your idea is to strengthen them, hand out AA's and still not force them to learn their character? Now instead of being trained and killing in HoT up, it's just gonna be the same thing with better characters.

Who are these people that want all these AA's? I have regretted the day I maxed out all exp on TWO characters. I can care less about gear, but what do I have to play for now if I do not have a yellow bar to watch constantly?

EQ WAS DIFFERENT THEN ANY OTHER GAME BECAUSE IT REQUIRED TIME/PEOPLE/DESIRE TO BE GOOD. You are taking out two of those to force more people into the game. I hope this comes back to bite you in the butt and this game dies even sooner. Way to spit in my face.

That, my friend, a myth! Sleep is a crutch! I'm telling your boss you are slackin!

Now imagine knowing how to double-clutch with non-synchronous gears. Unless you're a heavy equipment operator, most people never have to learn that anymore.

I have a question about class changes to fix server stability issues... in the past, in certain problem zones, SoE has made it so that only a set number of mobs could be agro'd = no more trains. Is this not more of a politically correct (for lack of a better term) way to globally fix these issues permanently, than the class changes you are suggesting? Peace.

You can always pay someone to do it for you, isn't that basically the same thing? The powerlevellers usually offer epics and flags as a service too. If there's a pay for win curve like the one that you and half of the other people here posting about are so scared of, I'd rather it be a legitimate avenue.

Not sure if this was suggest before or not, but here is the simplest and most fair solution IMO.

1. Limit beaming and melee riposte heals to 12 mobs max.

2. Up the AA bonus scaling to 6k.

3. Fix universal chat issues.


Should be easily accomplished and much more palatable for everyone.

What's so hard about this?

Are the people who already have aa's up to Underfoot done gaining anything from the auto grant?

Piestro you said

Then why not force swarmer's into instanced zones where they cannot lag people? Put a few (not a lot) of summoning mobs in live zones so kiters can still kite, but swarmer's get ganked. I am curious if this solution has been thought of instead of attempting to devastate the entire game?

Awesome changes coming.
Thank you

Made a few new accounts and converted them to gold account.
Can't wait!

You know; I see why folks are angry about the aa's they've earned being given away, and it kind of ruffles my feathers too because I'm a real casual player, so after returning from PoP I've spent a *loong* time just racking up aa's; now I'm just about maxed for UF aa's and getting into HoT ones.

But it was a PITA to do that, this game is big and long, and there is a proportionately giant disparity between a new character and end game.
So if I look at the aa problem like I look at expansions and say, well yes some of us buy these expansions that they give away for free a year later, and then I ask well who wants to pay $600 for a game (I think that, or maybe a bit more, would be the cost of all combined expansions), then whatever they want to do to truncate the 15 years of progression for new and returning players starts to sound pretty good. I actually think they should go further, as others have suggested, if aa's are going to be harder to get, then they should also reduce the cost of current ones.

If they're taking away the need to farm a good amount of aa's then I'm very happy that they're simultaneously trying to address swarm kiting. Everyone except the people who do it thinks it's a lame thing to do, the people who do it think that the classes that can do it more effectively are pretty lame.
That said I'd like it if they would give a whole lot more consideration to how it's done.

I am an 87 rogue with all VoA armor and weapons with a +6(?) damage aug in primary, a T2 weapon in offhand and an embarrassingly high number of aa's (over 4k, all important ones and a lot of less important ones). I can't speak for all classes, but where rogues are concerned I don't think assassinate itself needs to be changed, but I'll have other suggestions at the end of this post.
A light blue con mob really doesn't grant that much xp into the mid 80's; and if a rogue happens to be grouped up with a tank then they'll want to be killing mobs of a higher lvl that cannot be assassinated, done intelligently this should actually yield better xp than most assassinate farming. This is fine, since I'm a group dependant class I've always felt that grouping should be encouraged and better rewarded than solo/molo'ing.
But the game population is sparse at times and a rogue can log in and LFG for hours.... and hours... and hours...

Consider that at higher levels a tank merc will die as well as anyone after a few rounds of attacks from a dark blue or higher con mob. When a rogue can't find a group (and I want to stress that it's difficult at times), we need to use a healer merc, this eliminates *all* chance that we can attack from the rear arc, this reduces our DPS by a flat 40%, there is no ingenuity or playing skill that can do anything to mitigate this.
Consider also, that of all of the melee classes, our ability (along with berserkers possibly) to mitigate damage is far and away the worst. With maxed shield block (using a shield of course), myrmidon's sloth, and lithe disc, a J5 healer merc and no modest amount of aa's, tanking dark blue mobs after SoD is rocky at best, and if in HoT I happen to pick one that's closer to white con, I may die before the merc can get a heal off.
This means that when a rogue can't find a group (which happens often), we can't tank current (read: better xp) content and we can't do significant DPS. Frontal assassinations help make up for this; it's erroneous to suggest that rogues can even swarm in the context that SK's and mages swarm, or that our ability to insta-kill can even be called reliable and safe like a ranger's head shot because:

-We must be in melee range while swarming, and the ability that allows us to swarm does not heal us. As I stated, we have no ability to tank well, which means of all classes in question (except maybe berserkers) we must either have our healer merc out, which significantly cuts into our xp, or use heal pots. In any case we have no ability to gain aggro on multiple mobs at once which means the healer merc will quickly draw aggro, so....

-Our "swarm" cannot safely be larger than 5-ish mobs (I'll address counterattack disc toward the end as I think the most appropriate fix for rogues may be related to it). If said mobs are in a relatively newer zone then it's probable that we might assassinate all of the mobs we pull, but that's because it'll take us longer to kill them with our bad frontal DPS and we'll be pulling fewer mobs. In an older zone we can get away with pulling six mobs maybe, but assassinate and KRS don't currently function at a rate that guaranties to fire on every one of them. In both cases we end up taking a good amount of damage in every one of our pulls, which means...

-Our swarm method is already unreliable and unsustainable. We *frequently* have to escape off and heal up in the middle of our pulls, in a very unlucky pull we may have to do this before we've killed even 1 mob. Heal pots don't really keep us alive when we're tanking multiple light blue mobs (because we don't tank well), they just slow down our health loss and not always by a large amount. This means that while we're xping on assassinatable mobs we have to pause often to wait for pot timers *and* ultimately to unsuspend a merc for a complete heal. It's very easy to get heroic when we've almost killed the last of a pull, or overzealous because lesson is burning, and not take breaks, and die while asssassinate pulling. Between the low number of mobs that we can actually swarm and the downtime involved in staying alive while doing it...

-20 aa's is a very healthy number to obtain during a lesson burn while assassinate pulling. This number assumes a good zone with mostly humanoid mobs, which doesn't happen at every level. A couple of unlucky pulls *or* a zone with lots of mixed mob types can yield a 5 less or fewer, both together will probably yield fewer aa's than if we tank dark blue mobs with our healer merc out. In very ideal levels we can do 30 aa's, but this might actually require a hotzone with mostly humanoid mobs. I've gotten similar number in a well rounded lvl 85-90 group in Grounds *before* it was a hotzone; again, these aa counts are completely ideal.

Understand that aa's during swarming lesson burn equals more than 2x normal xp because we will be doing 1 counterattack disc per lesson, and the reuse time on counterattack is nearly an hour. So it's not far fetched to say that assassinate farming actually yields about 6 - 10 aa's an hour *for the molo'ing rogue*, this is why people do not pay rogues to power lvl them (and this I think should be a major consideration in how and why swarm problems should be addressed).

However, what the non rogue player base sees and takes issue with is the counterattack pull. It is a fun sight, but it is incorrect to say that it allows us to kill a limitless number of mobs. Experienced rogues get to know how many mobs to pull at a given camp, I've never actually counted, but I estimate that for me it's about 25 mobs.
So you pull your mobs and find a corner (not possible in all zones), hit counterattack and watch 1-2 assassinations every second... for 9 seconds; 9-18 mobs every 50 minutes, I'm trying not to do too much specific class comparison but at the very best that's only a few more mobs than you're suggesting a mage should be able beam kite. At best this leaves me with 1 more mob than my safe pull count, and if I make a mistake in the pull, or if I'm just unlucky then I still have 10 mobs, which is well over my safe pull number. As I said, rogues just can't tank that many light blue mobs, and assassinate/KRS is far less than reliable enough to bet on killing a mob, even if you're riposting all of its attacks.
Well, I can hit a heal pot and still pull off the pull; this is because what's actually allowing me to do this is the combination of counterattack and rogues fury. Using these abilities at the same time actually kills some light blue mobs toward the end of the counterattack disc, and *fairly* reliable leaves all remaining mobs at low enough health to be dispatched, certainly more reliably than assassinate; RF is considered essential for rogue swarming.
In fact, although I haven't tested this, I'd wager that if assassinate were removed all together, I could still go to any camp, humanoid or not, and stack all of my offensive abilities on top of counterattack, along with intensity of the resolute, and successfully swarm more mobs than any rogue has ever thought to do using assassinate.

Of course what I'm suggesting is to remove counterattack, specifically to replace it with a 9 second dodge disc, that upgrades to the 12 second nimble, give us a couple of further upgrades to it, I wouldn't mind a longer window to be healed after hitting my panic button.
I see two glaring problems with this idea, the first is PVP. Is swarming even a problem on zek? It seems like it's kind of high profile, and pisses people off, and takes a lot of attention, all things that ask for trouble on PVP servers. Although I've never actually successfully used counterattack in a duel, they've all been attentive enough to see the emote and stop attacking, could it be flagged to check against players only?
The second thing, is I'd really suggest removing all non current tethers and triggered trash adds on group named mobs. This is because people (like myself) enjoy doing older content that can be very hard to get group help with. Specifically while working on SoD quests I've had to use counterattack to dispatch certain named that not many people are interested in killing, but would be impossible any other way due to those bad tanking and lack of taunt abilities again. I consider myself a very talented puller, but tethers and triggered adds make it impossible to utilize any skill where these mobs are concerned, and they must be burnt down using a combination of counterattack and offensive discs, and it works even though they're not assassinatable.

I'm sure there may be other issues with removing counterattack, it is a very viable DPS boost even against single targets, but for reasons that I've stated, it is the root of a rogues ability to swarm, and it wouldn't be acceptable at all to eliminate offensive abilities stacking with one another; nor would counterattack be of any use without the ability to stack offensive discs on top of it.

I want to reiterate that frontal assassinations themselves do not yield an unfair amount of xp gain. We are a very depreciated class outside of group settings, and frontal assassination helps move xp along in a situation where our DPS and our survival abilities collectively fall short of every other class.
In a group setting assassination is a fun trick that actually shouldn't be firing at all if our group is doing level appropriate content, but maybe there's a pet or something that you can get rid of quickly.
I prefer to group, I think all rogues do, our class was never really touted as one that does well solo; but in this day it's difficult, and assassination gives us a little "umph" over the slow-poking-to-death of mobs that we'd otherwise be doing while molo'ing, you know, kind of like when a wizard nukes.

-Mindra Skylarker
Scout and assassin of the Iksarian Broods, Bertox.

Can someone tell me how nerfing abilities solves the server load problem associated with large numbers of NPCs calculating path? How does this prevent someone just pulling a zone and running it around until the zone stops responding?

Could this just be a set up for Everquest Next?

I'm sure the SK community would graciously accept innate DI -1 and defensive disc as compensation for losing the ability to tank multiples.

Nope, I'd not expect anything.

I never got any benefit from any AA bonus programs, as I was beyond them when they were implemented. Nor do I expect anything from this AA grant, as I maxxed UF AA's a long time ago. Even though I earned every AA I have at the highest possible cost, I don't have a problem with 4-year-old AA's being auto-granted.

Didn't they turn down a defensive disc one Beta as a tradeoff for not nerfing swarming?