Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

How about the task step in the t1a bixie HA espionage that you have to swarm kill 40 mobs? Been running it for stupid shinies and love that element!

I am sure even as I type this no one will read this, But I feel it needs to be said. I am really getting tired of the war on the solo game in EQ. It has been there since I started this game in 2001. The first victim (that I can recall) was the ability to cast and move. (meaning our characters are smart enough to manipulate the forces of creation but don't have the concentration to walk while casting. However they can get hit and continue casting with a skill check, seems to me that taking a sword to the shoulder should be much more distracting than walking just sayin'.) This eliminated a lot of the quad kiting and snare kiting wizards and druids use to do. Another early victim in this war was Fear kiting. (yeah it was a little OP, the response is overkill.) Suddenly no necromancer snares slow for more than 75% no matter how high the spell cast (which still leaves some mobs still able to out run me with innate run V), and the fear stops working at all post level 50, I think. Anyone who played a mage before mercs came along, will remember the levels in the 50's with dread. They refused to give us pets that could handle the damage dealt by the mobs at that level range. Our pets folded like wet newspaper.( I mean they got shredded).
Alright enough with the history lesson. There are three broad aspects of the game and for some reason the devs seem hell bent on only recognizing two of them. While they try their "best" to destroy the last one. (or some it seems to a player who doesn't enjoy the other two aspects all that much.) I am a natural born soloer, while others lament the lack of players to group with (at almost 90% of the game) I love it. The freedom is incredible. The response to soloist being seen as being OP has been to weaken the powers that facilitated the soloing to a point that soloing is impossible or too frustrating to be a viable option. Forcing them to group with abilities far inferior to other more group minded classes (like the Wizard vs a Necro). Dots are amazing but take too long at the speed at which groups kill mobs, as an example. There have been moves to make solo classes more group friendly (which I support) the problem IMO is when the devs move from encouragement to punishment. (which I feel these new changes are). Instead I feel they should work to make every class viable solo. For example every toon should let's say should be able to handle (solo) a Dark blue mob easily or a white with a little risk. (the methods used should be diverse kiting, stand up fight, what have you) Groups should be for killing yellows, reds, and elite names (alright you might save that one for raids). This way no one gets jealous of the necro kiting or the SK swarming. They are too busy playing their own class to worry about what others are doing. (This is what balance means, not that everything's the same but the end result is the same).
The argument the dev use to justify these chances about the servers make no sense to me. My personal computer is about a billion times better than the unit I was using in 2001. If the servers have not been upgraded since then by a similar margin I will...eat my computer from 2001. (okay not seriously I have no idea were it is). I jest but seriously how is it that this suddenly became an issue? I understand that (beamers) using lag to kill is against the rules, but how does a berserker's decap interfere with server function. Seems to me like they are pandering to the whiners. Well if you read this thanks for reading.

From the dev chat. Useful information.

RE: Swarm Pulling
"They are removing it because of "server stability". Plus everyone petitioning that people are pulling the zone and lagging them out."

The AA thing: If you want it, take it. If you don't, don't. If you feel slighted, turn off the "rewards" message. It's a personal choice, if you've played for a while, things change. I have also played for well over a decade. It is what it is.

Back to what I quoted: This won't stop swarm pulling, the nerfs. If folks want to do it, they will. Another trick, group combo, will happen. It's inevitable. If you don't want swarm pulls, don't focus on nerfing classes with AoE ability (or whatever), limit the number of mobs that can be AGGRO'd per group (not individual). Do this and you won't have 2 or 3 boxers running through the mountains of some zone pulling every mob from Sundersprings to Gor'Mesa. There won't be any point.

I'm Ranger Class leader for my guild, and I'd like to say 10K is a bit much, but it is true that Rangers these days typically don't become effective until the 8K level, and that the improvement at 10K is noticeable.

does this mean only rogue & ranger get thier proc rate nerfed an zerker gets a bonus? ~

- Berserker - Decapitation - Changed all levels of this ability to function on enemies at the purchase level minus 1.
- Berserker - Decapitation - Created 3 new ranks of this ability to bring its maximum effective level up to 99.

- Ranger - Headshot - Changed all levels of this ability to function on enemies at the purchase level minus 1. Reduced the proc rate to approximately 2 per minute for a raid geared player.
- Ranger - Headshot - Created 3 new ranks of this ability to bring its maximum effective level up to 99.

- Rogue - Anatomy (Assassinate) - Changed all levels of this ability to function on enemies at the purchase level minus 1. Reduced the proc rate to approximately 2 per minute for a raid geared player.
- Rogue - Anatomy - Created 3 new ranks of this ability to bring its maximum effective level up to 99.

If heroic characters become available to buy in the marketplace you will know the reason behind the reason as to why they nerfed swarming.

i meant the libraian earlier and got tasks messed up. yes the librarian requires some swarming at the end in hot with all those constantly appearing books. plus piestro said earlier that if hitting just 8 mobs with the cone spell slowed down servers a player could be flagged for zone disruption. i think they need to be clear. can anything that slows down eq penalize players? or can they not admit how the game was designed?

Not if you kill her fast enough.

I consider all time-spawned adds to be a DPS challenge, and all hp-based adds to be a tanking / CC / mob management challenge. Many raids work in a similar fashion, and swarming is never required - however, it's a shame to lose it as an option. =\

What? HCs are on the slate, and have been, to come out next month.

Test gives too much for free. every forum I go on has people asking about coming back and the answer invariably is 'head to test, it's free, all expansions for free, I can hook you up with all the raid gear you want with a toon transfer from Firiona Vie and an infinite number of XP pots'.

1. It takes away a lot of returning players from the live community.

2. It annoys me that returning players get all expansions for free.

3. Why are people allowed to transfer from Firiona Vie to test with infinite amounts of everything in the game from XP pots to raid loot, while toons on FV aren't allowed to transfer to live servers ?

4. As an aside players transferring from other live servers apart from FV to test are hugely disadvantaged.


I'd respectfully suggest either :

1. Do a wipe of test and stop allowing players to transfer off FV to test, or

2. Allow players on FV to transfer back to live servers (the XP bonus for huge numbers of AAs is why people went there in the first place and that's now defunct with the AA grant).

That's not how test works at all. You don't transfer there, it's a simple /testcopy command that makes a perfect copy of your character on test. You can do that from any server and you can bring infinite amounts of anything with you. The only advantage on FV is you can buy more items there due to the loot rule set, and copy to test.

I understand perfectly well how it works. The difference between FV and other servers is, for example, players can amass huge quantities of the XP potions from the anniversary event and copy bag packs full of them over to test, quite apart from all the temporary borrowing of full sets of raid gear while they copy toons across.

It's up to everyone if they want to play on test or not but it's harming the live player base and therefore harming the game and ongoing health of the game. Go to many forums and you'll see the same responses - play on test. The benefits of playing on test are huge :

All expansions free
Double XP
Transfer any amount of any items from Firiona Vie


The AA auto grant changes everything, including why many folk transferred to test and Firiona Vie - the AA mountain and the XP required for them. If test stays the same long term can I suggest to the devs they consider allowing (paid) transfers from Firiona Vie and test to live servers, maybe even if it's a one time thing ?

My main(s) is closely maxed out. Just a few remaining AA on the first tab, that for me is not important. I am one of those who walked to school in a blizzard (coming home I sure did, and was not fun) and it was uphill both ways. I will be taking the short bus option, clicking yes, and filling in those remaining AA. Maybe someday there will be a short bus for sale in the market place, and I will proudly plant it on my eq property.

You're making it seem like anyone can just amass wealth and copy it to test. New and returning players absolutely cannot do this and most of the player base on FV cannot either. Also they are changing Xp pots to no trade on FV. I don't think the test server is draining the population on live servers.

I also do not think they will ever offer transfers (with gear) off FV.

Ok, at 169 pages I have neither the time or desire to read this entire post. What I've gotten from test server data reports and Dev. chats is rangers headshot is being adjusted. 1) increase in level of mobs it will affect to 99. Great, nice to be able to have it work on something other than Green and LB con mobs. 2) proc rate being reduced to 1-2/min. A bit excessive I think. I understand not wanting rangers to be able to clear zones in a single mass shot, after all SOE already nerfed the headshot proc on the rain of arrows spell line to affect primary target only for that reason, but with rangers firing easily 60-100 rounds/min the suggested rate seems too low. Not to mention, with how fast a good group can kill a higher con mob, many fights are likely to be over before it procs. End result is any benefit, solo or group, is being killed by the proc rate restriction. Also, I'm unsure of what if any restrictions there are on the Rouge or Berserker abilities being adjusted, but with Rangers being limited to humanoid mobs only for headshot, how do these adjustments stack up for us in comparison to the other "kill abilities" being tweaked. It seems to me with the proposed adjustments, we come out of this with comparatively more limitations than benefits.

To be honest I wouldn't care about the restriction of Headshot if they made using bows actually useful. It will be a useless skill for Rangers now that the proc is so low and bow damage is terrible.

Since the Devs refuse to discuss this, can anyone from the Test servers tell me if they have increased the damage of HS? Does it drop the mob or just tick it off?

I wonder if there isn't a way that there could be a claimable item, each account would get enough for one per character based on number of characters at the time of the update or simply 20 each account say. Once claimed a person could use it like any character change item be it class race name. This would give you a one time ability to reset AAs. Veteran players with a bunch of AAs could then reset AA take the auto grant and then apply the AAs they have to whatever AA lines they choose to build above what is granted. This would give us an effect similar to the benefit which exists on the Test server without having to make massive changes to coding.

The devs have said that the damage from the headshot(decap/assassinate) proc doesn't go into aggro calculations, but instead what the damage would have been without the proc. That is how they are dealing with aggro.