Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

See again no idea what you are talking about. I do it every single time we do WK1, (I'm sure other SKs do as well) because quit often I'm the only SK currently playing in my guild. I do NOT use deflection (that is 24 secs AND NOT LONG ENOUGH) which brings me to my point, 30 seconds of hit counts is NOT long enough.

Don't go tanking 3 light blue mobs with you 95 SK and come here preaching numbers. Try tanking 6 RAID mobs that con even, yellow and red. After you do that then come here and post your info, until then your current info is garbage.

You are forgetting, MASS AOE back then was like 4-5 MAYBE 6 mobs. Not 100+

So, ASK if you can use them. Give creation credit to those who do the work. They're posted for the masses to use at no charge.They probably wouldn't have a problem sharing them with you. Either way, it doesn't hurt to ask.

I like the AA changes, hmm might just resub for this.

Although I think the numbers posted to date on hit limits are far too low, I would like to point out what I believe is an error. I suspect that the hit limits on the following breastplate effects were intended to be reversed.

Leeching Embrace (a breastplate effect) now fades after its owner deals 180 melee hits.
Leeching Touch (another breastplate effect) now fades after its owner deals 360 melee hits.

The top click was the raid version of the bottom click, which was the group version of these items. I suspect that the intention was to grant the raid version more counters. Perhaps you could verify this and pass it along.

I wasted none of the time I'd spent getting my AA's, because I've had use of those AA's all this time, helping me acquire even more.

The problem with moving the low AA bonus straight line "curve" is it does nothing to diminish the intimidation of "OMG I've got to gain 10,000 AA's?!?!?". Getting AA's one every 10 kills, or 20 AA's per kill, does not diminish the sheer intimidation factor of the number of AA's there are to buy.

Quite frankly, the AA system was never designed to last this long. Many of the things that we get in AA's should realistically have been part of leveling up : more HP, better avoidance, better mitigation, a better understanding of the heal spells (better heals, heal crits), a better understanding of nukes (nuke crits, bigger nuke crits), a better understanding of dots, new ideas (activated stuff) and so on.

The biggest problem, both with the AA system and with EQ in general, is that each expansion is designed as though it is the last one that will be released. This has been the case for all the expansions I was around for, all the way back to Velious (didn't make the Kunark or original, base game). When Luclin introduced AA's, the idea was that these would be a small bonus. You'd spend 12 AA points, each one taking hours to get, for a 10% increase in your mitigation, or healing, or spend a few points on stats, or on class-specific stuff such as Innate Camo and stuff like that.

Flash forward 13 years, and things that were originally optional are now required. How much tuning of Call of the Forsaken was done with a level 100, 0 AA character? None, because such a character is incredibly rare, if one even exists. How much tuning was done around the level 100 character having all of the Rain of Fear AA's, and everything below? ALL of it. And when content is tuned around having something, then that something is not optional, it is mandatory.

That's the problem with the system. AA's, basically, are another form of level grinding. Necessary grinding if you want to be relevant in the current content.

I remember doing ae groups in seb on my chanter during either velious or early luclin, pulls were like 20-30 mobs.

Piestro


You said 1 of the devs play a raiding SK. This makes me very happy. He /she can go out and get some reasonable numbers that will work. As I said before, I could care less about swarming (I never did it), but I really do believe those numbers posted are to low. I don't even care about group, because for the most part we can control the number of adds (for the most part). Plz keep that SK testing different scenarios especially in raids so that my SK can still do his job. More often then not, we can not control the number of adds on us.

I still fail to see this as unbalanced. I have tanked 6 of those same RAID mobs without my Def running as i was first in Tank order to named I used Steadfast and Guardian and stacked other stuff on warrior. Like yall our Nttb made it easyer but without it you can adapt with SK disc running if u cant handle that many without these thing then tank less of them are you to only tank at the raid? Probably not so then the rest can pick up the others. Basically yall should be happy they gave back anything here imo. We basically got our disc trimed to where is good for about 4 mobs. Somehow yall seem to think that yall should get much more but that is not balance at all.

Bashan

Please explain to me how Epic is viable for swarming for exp with a 5 min reuse timer? The way swarming works is you keep MC up the whole time on blue mobs.

If you just relied on the epic it would not finish off a swarm by a long shot. Plus the reuse makes it not practible.

Epic click if for the "OH snap, im getting rocked here" I use the epic maybe 1 or 2 times a day but it is very, very valuble when I need it.

Ill explain swarming because it seems like you and many others really don't get it. I pull 4 light blue mobs, kill LB mobs till a mc procs, pop HS run and gather up as many mobs as I can, find a corner, dot all mobs and start pounding away at the lowest % mobs, kill maybe 5-10 mobs and MC procs again. When there are 5-10 mobs left with low health, ill run and gather more. Find a corner and drop the low hp mobs to repop MC.
Rinse repeat.

How does this involve the epic? No one in the 128 pages has attempted to explain this. Also explain how LC and BP clickies work for swarming, i'd love to know.


Edit:1 Also I`m glad they are nerfing swarming, I hate it but I think the epic thing is just not part of fixing the problem.
Edit:2 If you believe swarming hurts the server in 2014, I don`t know what to tell you.

Freaking warrior paranoia. Knights think that duel weild should be useful, in general except idiot knights, we didnt want nttb nerfed. but wars like you make me not give a crap anymore.

Hell most sk are reasonible about this we just want make sure the hit counter is reasonible on the epic and just to shut people up alot of are willing to get rid of mc.

Swarming 2 years ago was beast mode, now? unless youre raid geared its generally lacking. Most sks know this and thats why they arent putting up the fight.

I can accept this, however there is no reason at all that new content should be released without maps. There is no sense in making everyone rely on third party site (which as stated by others can be at risk for viruses), if you really want to make the game more friendly to new players that would be the best start. I know that my wife came back to the game recently and started a new character. Until I got her the map pack she caught hell finding her way around crescent reach and blightfire moors. She is by far not a true gamer, but enjoys the "quiet" time of being able to get into a world not your own. In addition to the initial difficulties, even though she had the maps now, since the knowledge book had been moved at some point in blightfire and the map was never updated by the third party site, it was confusing for quite a while. While yes, it would take a considerable amount of developer time, in the end it would help a lot of us out. I don't think it would be too difficult to create a program (on your end) that would take the zone files and the static NPC locations (quest givers/merchants and such) and include them in the map. This could likely be done by one person and minimal resources and once written it could be used for all existing AND new content. This should have been done when legacy of Ykesha first came out as that was the expansion that added the maps (yes, I DO remember).

You're right. I can adapt and will adapt to what ever the devs decide with the final nerf. I was just saying the numbers were a little low to what I'm used to doing. I will probably need to tank less after the nerf. I usually hang around commander, ae taunting the adds off him if to many get through.
You are absolutely right, I just didn't appreciate some one coming in here and posting false numbers that affect MY class.

You guys want suggestions for the root problem?
Ok, here is something I typed up from top of my head to deal with mob pathing.
Feel free to share your own snippet (like you ever will) on how you are currently doing this, and ill help you improve it (I really want to)

Code:

void SetMobasSwarmLeader( EQ_Spawn*mob)
{
//todo: add code that set this in db...
//update and calc path info in its own thread
//have all other mobs use this info.
//place it in a std::map for fast access (or maybe boost or whatever you guys use
//ArrayClass2?
}
typedef struct _followswarmer
{
        EQ_Player*player;
        EQ_Spawn*mob;
} followswarmer, *pfollowswarmer;
DWORD __stdcall StartMobFollow(PVOID pData)
{
        pfollowswarmer pfollowsw = new pfollowswarmer;
        memcpy(pfollowsw,pData,sizeof(followswarmer));
        delate pData;
        EQ_Spawn*mob = pfollowsw->mob;
        EQ_Spawn*player = pfollowsw->player;
        EQ_Spawn *SwarmLeader = player->GetSwarmLeader();
        //do stuff like get and set next pathpoint from swarmleader
 
        delete pfollowsw;
}
 
void OnPlayerAggroMobs(EQ_Player*player, EQ_Spawn*mob)
{
      int mobsaggroed = player->GetAggoredMobs();
      if(mobsaggroed==0) {
              SetMobasSwarmLeader(mob);
       } else {
               //ok player already have agro, im just a mob in the swarm
               //so lets follow the leader not the player...
               // do it in its own thread so we don't lag incoming packet processing
               pfollowswarmer padd = new pfollowswarmer;
               padd->player = player;
               padd->mob = mob;
               DWORD nThreadID = 0;
               CreateThread(NULL,0,StartMobFollow,padd,0,&nThreadID);
       }
}

sorry that your website screws up my indents in the code but it really looked nice before I pasted it.

Were desperate from keeping it nerfed because its an awesome effect. Not speaking for group sks, but for raid ones it to help keep them alive while off tanking or help other melee out with some support healing. I haven't swarmed in like a year, right when rof came out. Saw swarming sucked and was less fun compared to doing progression and pretty much said bye to if forever.

As for desperate from it getting nerfed, a lot of us were pretty reasonible, we just want make sure we have a good hit counter where can make it viable to tank like 4-5 mob at a time with out it running it out quick. No need to tank 20 mob, but id would be pretty annoying if it only last 20 sec w 3 mobs.

Is it viable to swarm for xp? sure. is it even to the close the best solo xp? it may have been during sod maybe but it hasnt been the best xp in ages.

Gotta ditto what Manr said.

Doing PBAE groups way back during Velious and Luclin was a lot of fun. We had a regular group of 2 chanters, 1 cleric and 3 mages. A big pull was 10 mobs, more than that and at least one death was inevitable....we really hoped it wasn't the cleric. I still remember Fungus Grove being able to support 3-4 full groups of PBAE groups.

Bard swarming at the Ry'Gor fort was similar. One person killing 6 mobs was considered really good, not enough to peg a cpu and lag the zone.

@Shadva
While the sentiment of what you're talking about is great the legal system in this country is messy. Putting it nicely, even if SOE paid a small amount for some 3rd party information there have been instances where business deals like that come back to bite people in the hiney. From a business point of view it doesn't make sense to go through all that if the info is available to people that want the information. From a player point of view it would be nice to have all the stuff in one place but when lawyers and contracts and whatnot get involved it turns into a nice mess.

If I didn't play for 5 years, I would EXPECT to have a lot of catching up to do, lol. Who in their right mind would be surprised that their 5 year-old character is way behind? Really?

Not sure what others think but I personally thought the reduce all AA's in the tree up to Underfoot to costing 1 AA point was an interesting idea. No coding needed either, just a simple change to the data set, suddenly the mountain is gone with people still needing to select when to buy each AA and at least reading what they do.

It would appear that that is what at least one map site I have found does - they say that the maps will be automatically updated every day to stay current.
They don't charge for the maps but may receive revenue via advertising etc (I have not checked this) but would it not even be possible to give new players clear in game instructions on how to find / install maps - As SOE has said many times now this is about trying to break down the barriers to new players. And finding your way around in a massive online world I imagine must be quite frustrating until you have maps installed.
Even now if I go into a new area I will use the sparkly line feature if just running to another zone or npc - but it is only useful under limited circumstances.

Any pointing out of one site or another by Sony, as a place to go to get maps, would be seen, whether intended to or not, as an endorsement of that site. I don't think that Sony wants to endorse any non-Sony site, for a couple of reasons, one of which being that they have no control over the content of that site, nor how long that site remains up.