Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Just because the mage and wizzie beams are set to 12 targets doesn't mean they should increase the hit counters on sk epic / mortal coil. Mages won't be able to beam just 12 mobs, they needed the lag of 100 mobs to do it, they will die without another classes help trying to beam 12. SK on the other hand didn't rely on lag to swarm, so if they increased the hit counters on epic and mortal coil so SK's could tank 12 mobs at once, they'd still be able to, and if they staggered leech curse, epic, and mortal coil and got lucky with mortal coil procs could probably get it up to much more than 12 mobs with visage going.

You guys are overrating your hits and ripostes to try to get the hit counter increased, that is quite clear. I saw someone talk about how SK's get all these aa's designed to become riposte specialists, what exactly do SK's get to add additional ripostes that no one else gets? Everyone gets double riposte, everyone gets a kick/bash chance added to ripostes, what else do SKs get that makes them so special at riposting?

To get to 800 melee hits in 105 seconds, you are either swarming, or a monk in greater guild hall with sub 20 delay 1handers parsing with speedfocus on you the entire duration.

1. Baleful is a lifetap proc not a melee tap.
2. the BP he is refering to is the anguish bp which has a 10% melee tap for 6-7 tics
3. I think mages were the most notable since they were the only ones able to mass kill current content
4. no, the original nerfs were not spot on. we have been balanced, as a class, around these abilities. So to assume that taking them away would not imbalance the class is absurd.

1 mob double attacking (or single +bash) every second would eat up 210 in 105 seconds. It wouldn't take more than 4-6 mobs to chew through that.

The clickies I spent weeks camping are easily available from other sources now. I really don't care if someone else has their 2.5. Tradeskills are so ridiculously easy to max now that it's a non issue. Heck, I'm a wood elf, I did cultural fletching to 300, a lot of non-Tunare fletchers equate our vendor only skill up path in the same manner that you equate the autogrant.

Again, you're way too concerned about keeping someone else down at no benefit to yourself. What does it matter to you if someone else has an Ancestral Memories 3 clicky? Does it affect your enjoyment of the game that someone has the Invis to Undead earring from Vex Thal and you don't? What skin off your back is it if someone else has the Circle of Power 3 clicky from Solteris? Do you get sore when you see someone with a minotaur mercenary? Do you fly into a rage when someone uses a Timeshear? I have all of those, and I don't care if someone else has them. More power to them, their personal character is better or more unique for it.

Heck, if I could get that Black Matter Shard from Noquifiel for paying in advance for two years, I'd be ponying up the cash right now since it's all I need to finish BiC. (Hint, hint Elidroth and Piestro)

So my zerker will die continuously because she will try to decap a level 99 which has the hit points to live, pull it off the tank, wow what a bad idea.

The whole idea was to stop swarming and beaming. So do that..... leave the others alone please.

“An un-nerfed epic and this MC would make swarming impossible. You'd need an MC proc about every 5 seconds starting from just before epic wears off. Mortal Residue could be a 3-tick buff and swarming would become impossible. 28 ticks is too absurd to even attempt anything close to swarming. But MC isn't an on-demand tanking tool like the epic is, so having a stupidly long mortal residue blocker isn't a problem in normal play.

Having the epic click fade early in completely normal group situations IS a problem, though.

They're telling mages it's ok to kite around 36 mobs, but an SK can't use their epic to tank more than 3 mobs without it wearing off sooner? I haven't been in an exp group in years that didn't have the tank getting hit by at least 5 things at some point.”

Can you provide some parses to show this it fading that quickly at 3? 5 mobs at once is not typical for most players in regular grouping.

Piestroi is this some kind of joke?

I would agree that this is fair Warrior NTTB was set back to 600 counters and i can use it and have many times on 4 mobs and not exceeded the hit counters on it. I dont ever use any slows or CC in group and i do 6 continuously in new missions and zones. You just have to know your toon and there limits. Basically imo if you cant handle 6 mobs without the restricted counters and such of your disc you should not pull that many. SKs have fd and can split them up. I just dont see how this would break a class that can split. If they need less mobs on pulls use fd. If you can no longer run in a room with 6 or 7 and tank them all then the solution would be pull them out split or use CC. It will come down to a gear issue and skill issue when your talking about normal grouping pullin 5 or more. I veiw this the same way as the NTTB nerf was very hard on group game warriors and I pull now same as I did then i just use all my nessessary abilities to do so. I am a raid geared warrior so I would pull more anyways as they die faster and I can take more hits. All the Sks will have to do when this goes live is adjust how they play to adapt to the changes.

Bashan

First of all, the biggest reason for Swarming is too level up your alts quickly. I used my SK to p level several other classes that I was interested in playing. I really don't have the time or interest to level up a chatacter and get 5k aa again, after dong it several times. Soooo I used my SK to get my alts to a certain level/aa, where I could group with the rest of my alts.

It's crazy, people buying and selling mage/SK/zerker/ranger p level 24/7. It's because not many people want to play the low level game or have time for it.

When I started EQ, there wasn't any AA. When AA was introduced, you would level up and get aa during that expansion and try to keep up. I can't even imagine trying to start this game with the mountain of AA needed to play or catch up to your friends. With the real power leveling disappearing, no way anyone with a Job/life could ever catch up. I like the changes.

Can we just drop all this nerfing, and get back to the real issue?

Mob pathing code serverside.
Here is is my suggestion:

1. The first mob the player aggros, becomes flagged in the db as "SwarmLeader"
If he dies the second aggroed, get the designation and so forth.
All you then have to do is calculate HIS pathing, and apply it to all the rest.
If a mob gets confused or stuck in a tree or something, just let it warp over to the last loc the "SwarmLeader" was at.

One would hope so. Its been the Elephant in the room for a while. Some folks thought you would never address it, while others probably hoped you wouldn't address it.

This is a NIMBY thing. As in lots are aware that you all have been tossing this concept around for a while and most people thought it was a great idea that should never be implemented in their game world but maybe some other. As in, you should do this, but not in my Everquest's backyard. Maybe grant AA to some Third World Country version of EQ but otherwise leave it alone.

Maybe, but it is just too convenient. This is where you obviously have to put on your PR hat. It is laughable when $m$d or some other Red Name goes on record as saying "We are not selling power in the Market Place" but then you recant that statement or just outright ignore it later on. It doesn't make your word worth much and builds cynicism amongst the players. Granted, all you have to do is offer the Heroic Characters outside of the Marketplace screen, perhaps at the character creation screen, and you probably save face on a technicality.....

These changes are as much business decisions as they are changes to a virtual world. Boxed Gold accounts still bring in revenue and allow EQ to continue. Will these changes benefit boxers? Of course they will. The same way Silver accounts do already. They will benefit anyone who plays alts and not just boxes. Best hope that the revenue actually goes to EQ. Stop being so selfish, get off the high horse and mind your own business. If some alt or box gets the benefit of this, than how does that make your play be diminished? Just because you and a few others such as Battleaxe hate boxing doesn't mean that SoE won't recognize it as a legitimate part of their business.

My point is that there are lots of situations in "regular grouping" where a tank has to tank more than 3 mobs at a time. I'm not talking about Mortal Coil. It is not something you can rely on in grouping situations. Forget MC. As has been said countless times before in this thread: you cannot swarm without MC. Lich Sting has now apparently been tuned to 3 mobs. What does anyone's supposed overrating of hits and/or ripostes have to do with that? Again, my point is that the target number of mobs is not reasonable.

Riposte rate is not that high that you are landing 2 riposte hits every second from per mob. Where do you guys even come up with this stuff?

Not sure how one can split waves of autoaggroing mobs in scripted missions. Please enlighten me.

they have already stated in this thread that decap//headshot will not give more agro then a normal hit.

So SK swarming is a mouse problem, next to the herd of rabid dire-wildebeest problem that is mage beaming. Sony decides to solve all the problems with a tactical nuclear airstrike. SKs go "omg, wtf!?" And in reaponse Sony scales down the response for the mouse threat... An now they're using a sledgehammer to kill the mouse, when all it takes is a carefully applied 6 oz. clawhammer. People are forgetting that the only thing distinguiguishingSKs from other tanks is how well we can tank numerous mobs at once.

True, riposte rates are around 10-25%. I was thinking of incoming hits, like mortal coil, rather than melee hits like epic. The main point I was trying to make is that mobs hit a lot more in 100 seconds than I believe people, especially non-tanks, give them credit for.

In one way shape or form, all of this AND MORE has already been done. The only real difference is a matter of degree.

Tradeskills? Thanks to a potion for sale in the Marketplace, what took me a year and a half to accomplish before can now be done on a lazy Sunday afternoon. There are also people who would say that I did my tradeskills the easy way since most of it (not all, though) was done with the current interface and not the original.

Clickies? Do you have any idea where they were originally found? Originally, most of them were found on raid mobs. Those that weren't were the result of some old world quest that was long, hard and frustrating.

AA's? People have already been granted AA's that I spent points on. People are gaining AA XP on a per kill basis at two, three and four times the rate that I can or ever will be able to.

I think people in this thread should be made aware of one fact. When SOE first announce giving AA XP bonus multipliers to people with low AA counts, most of what has been said in this thread was said in that thread. If SOE had knuckled to the loudmouths in that thread, many of the people against this autogranting would be sitting at 1000 to 3000 AA's now, hoping that SOE doesn't knuckle this time.

Kolani,
re:Heck, if I could get that Black Matter Shard from Noquifiel for paying in advance for two years, I'd be ponying up the cash right now since it's all I need to finish BiC.
The Black Matter Shard comes available in the market place. You never think it will be freely granted so you buy it for $100. A month later, three months later, it is granted to everyone. It may not matter to you (or others with your point of view).
I spend $100 on experience potions (I think some one posted here that they actually spend much more than that, never thinking free AAs would replace the AAs he/she just earned from those purchases.)
and those AAs I earned from that bonus experience is now free from that auto grant. I (and speaking for myself only) would not be happy. I would be very selective on my SC purchases again and may never again fund my SC. That is lost revenue SOE is willing to risk/accept.
Let me add this, I am not saying you are wrong in your viewpoint. Thank you for not saying I am wrong. I am glad we agree to disagree.

A person is smart...
And, no. No they can't. 100's of people on the forums have not a clue what tools or solutions may or may not be available to the developers and management. Forum crawlers are not privy to such...

"Spend your AA wisely for they are precious !" Spoken to me by Disguise of Innoruuk oh so long ago.

At this point its probably too late to make a difference in what is happening with AA.
I do know its a result of the rush to the top effect not a improvement of game play.
If they truly wanted to help people, they would have limited the AA granting to the core passive abilities for the class being played, not all the AA for those expansions. This would let them be effective yet still
would require them to choose what active abilities they wanted to learn. Would save the AA experience rate under 4k as they wouldn't be wasted on the fluff AA's.

They have always tried to prevent swarm pulls. For those how were around when there used to be caster AoE groups might remember. I believe they did several things. 1) put spells on similar timers so you couldn't chain them anymore. 2) Along with more summoning mobs and stun resistant mobs. Didn't bother them then to do so. All of that and they changed the spells capped what lv they could effect ect. So all of the changes they are doing is nothing new. Neither is the dislike of it happening. I LIKE big pull groups it pushed the groups abilities. It pushed your ability to handle such a pull. For it made your heart race and blood rush, the intensity of focus on what you had to do to contain, control and kill the mobs.
It is why we played, along with the discovery and questing, but it was the ability to survive a bad pull or an intentional large pull that gave the game its mental edge. It was that jab of adrenaline that has kept so many of us here in EQ. You don't find that in other games as much. It is why they fail and EQ is still around.

I hope the development team takes into account the fact the fact large pulls have always been a part of the game.