Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

It wasn't sneaky. They were very vocal about it. But it does suck. Basically killed any chance of me logging in 20 min, kill some, log out, doing things to get my wife off my back, log in, kill rinse and repeat.

It's clear you never played a SK with those comments, otherwise you would know that HT is completly useless even at max, it hits for maybe 0.5-1% HP with CotF Trash ..... as for SK Pets, i can't stop laughing, that thing they call pet isn't a valid DoT even.

They just went and made about 500 AA useless + gimped our tanking ability in group + raid content while trying to fix a problem which isn't at the place they want to make everyone to believe. In warrior terms how would you like to have your defensive stance only work for 80 hits ? that's about what they did to SK's .....

Ok, so do rogues still have the humanoid limitation to the assassination?

I never knew of anyone relying on their BP clicks to swarm - yet SK BP clicks got nerfed as well.

SK swarming has relied on going after relatively low HP mobs and getting a mortal coil proc to enable the leeching effect to keep the SK healed long enough to kill the swarm. Can I swarm all the mobs in 'A Council Divided in Kaesora' and kill all the mobs before Lich Sting wears off? Yup - and using other discs that take ~15 minutes to refresh, I net a total of 4AA doing so. So a level 100 SK main can get the princely amount of ~16 AA/hour swarming . Swarming was already largely OBE for max level SKs due to the mob HP inflation that began in Underfoot, and a hard nerf to mortal coil alone (or eliminating it outright) would have kept swarming from becoming an option in the future.

I don't know any SKs enticed to swarm for 4AA a pull now, and the feasibility of worthwhile swarming without mortal coil in the future just becomes less and less. That's the concern many SKs have. SK swarming was already on the way out and could have been finished off by redesigning Mortal Coil so as to not give an HP leech. Instead a lot of other stuff that was only tangential to swarming was changed as well, and just like anytime there is a major renovation there is concerns about effects other than those intended.

I do give credit to SOE on this for dialoging on changes with the player base (would that they would do this on more major changes). And doing some more parsing over this last week I am a little bit less uncomfortable with the hit limits placed on items/disciplines for grouping. I don't have good raid parses, however, and I still have some trepidation regarding the impact on raids. It's not swarming going away which has SKs concerned, it's about how much SK capability may have been impacted outside of the stated goal of stopping swarming.

Yup - we'll see how it goes. Hopefully the 'fix' doesn't do significant collateral damage to SK capabilities outside of swarming. We'll see.

After logging several hours with my parser on, I can say I've been seeing a HS proc about once every 55 seconds. While the ability to hit higer level targets is nice, this is a bit off the advertised 2/min proc rate. I know it says for "raid geared" people, but at about 80% raid gear from RoF or above, I don't think the rest would make that kind of difference.
Perhaps the proc rate code can be turned up a touch to a 3 or 4 per minute target so that we may actually see an effective 2 per minute rate in game?
I realize that I will not likely be able to farm Mino's in DSH like I used to for tradeskill meat, but as I said in an earlier post, I think the proc rate has been overly reduced based on SOE's stated goals for the adjustments.

That validates what I was seeing on the test server. Can you compare the damage before and after to see if it has been increased?

True they did say alot about it except the Raid gear thing

You're just not going see a large difference between the raid geared toon and group geared ton's ability to proc HS//Decap. I would venture to say you're looking at less than 10% difference.

Don't turn this into something it isn't.

With that said I am interested in seeing what it does on current content.

Well its day one, and im out on my zerker. Its pretty slow and boring. Tried tanking a mob in SL and no go. I could however kite kill one, took almost 10 mins for 20% of an AA. I gained less than 500 AA from the autogrant. while another player went from 4k to past me in AA on his alt. Im at 7250. ive heard good things about heroic adventures, haven't been able to find a group for one after 4 hours. decap nerf isn't working for me. I used to always pick up people and help them do their daily 5 kills in the hotzones. After reading so many people requesting for a decap nerf in this thread i figured id stop doing that. Half the people I helped prob got on this forum and said decap needed to be nerfed. Frustrated, bored and feeling pretty wimpy. gettin out DD'd by hybrid classes, rangers crying but alteast they have endless quiver, I just threw 600+ axes to kill one mob. I wish i could equip copper and throw that cause its cheaper. I don't know now, reroll necro? If I have to depend on kiting to molo might as well be a class that can do 1000% the dps a good zerker does at melee. To add insult to injury our server has been lagging like crazy. Wasn't that the point of this nerf? I get mixed signals. I can get an achievement from killing 1000s of a mob type but I am doing it wrong if I kill to many at once. Having been disabled for some time I have only been able to be gold ViA krono. I didn't charge for PL and now If I want to make plat I guess i will have to pull all of vald and reckless there. I just don't get how swarming is the problem and not the programming and server strength. I gotten 2 almost 3 aa in the last hour of kiting. Seems Id be better off swarming grey mobs to make plat and just pay other people to get me xp.
Not trying to go all super negative, just frustrated. helpful suggestions welcome. also taking xp donations.

On my level 100 Iksar monk, I was not Auto-Granted Foraging.

Foraging - Minimum level: 51, Ranks:1, Cost: 3, Category: Racial Innate

I don't mind spending 3 AAs for it, should I want to. I'm just letting SOE know that this was not granted in case this is not working as intended.

I did nothing of the sort.

Well, it was not stated to be based on Raid Gear until the Test Update Notes. His point is valid about it being a little sneaky, but I guess he was not asking but stating anyway.

I have used HS after the patch and I am seeing nothing close to 2 procs on average per minute, closer to 1 maybe. I am not raid geared. I will post the exact average when I have it.

I agree with what you posted, and I am seeing similar results. A little less on the proc rate as I have no raid gear.

I also agree. Been a long few hours for 5 AA. People are passing me in AA as I only gained 300 and they went from 4k to 7250, just barely over me. These are alts even. Will I ever catch up in this game. 7 years of gameplay and now a major hurdle in front of me I am thinking now no. I will never catch up. #neverquest.

no, they didn't. this is categorically false in every possible way.

if anyone can produce parses in the next few days showing that the hit counters are insufficient for standard (or even high density) group or raid play, i will be the first person sending out PMs to the devs that i think will listen, pleading the case for why a change is needed.
but the napkin math doesn't support that conclusion, and this is a situation where the bemoaners are going to have to prove their case, because thus far the facts are against you.

LoL thats insult to injury talking about napkins to nerfed tanks.

First day at this new patch has been super laggy.

I'm extremely disappointed in the elimination of leader abilities and auto-granting of them. These were not difficult to obtain and were something that indicated you were active in grouping. I don't mind the HOT and group find ones being autogranting but the enhancement options should have been expanded on not eliminated!! If in a group you had the ability to mentor someone and they could work on leader abilities also.
As mentioned if these were expanded on it would have been a great incentive to get others in group just to work on them (i.e. mercs shouldn't count towards leader credit maybe even make it so you can't get credit for them until have 4 actual people in the group)

We all have options, some profit real cash, 30 to 40k beam pulls. Thanks guys. Someone stats these instant kills and beams where ment for groups you are surely mistake. A group of 90 will fight Against light blue mobs to hasten killing for what exactly. Bad xp?
Sony new what it did !! Norrath destroyed it. Not the guilds and groups of real life players that helps friends. But the ppl that used it for greed.
My life doesn't let me play eq alot. Beams did let me with little time fly to present lvl and aa and the beams got me bazaar gear.
For the win I only beam evantil. The mass xp is only envy not lag or a problem from my end !! Few times I hit open zone late at night. Yesterday I had a good rof zone to end beaming off a mag rolled in said I'm up and started to pull not just mobs but even my train. Beamer beaming a Beamer. Didn't know what ppl ment till that happened to me finally. I am sorry swarmers do that everyone n Sony did make a right choice. This is a game of grouping n role playing. Not swarm lag n ruin ppls fun !! Top it off I just need to change my name n I'm a new person to the world. Shesh.
Eq has it all !! Content , players that do it all! raid, group , soloing, power lvling and other trade skill stuff whoohaa!
I left the game alot. Life took over. There always was a power lvling route and I'm sure another will come along. But till then good bye eq.
Farm, family business n devorce doesn't let me play the amount I want n to enjoy the game it seems Sony asks for much more. To fall behind n beg for help through Quest to catch up just doesn't seem fair to anyone. I may not have this problem. But who know if 150 lvl is out when I look to come back.
Set beams to work in raids n instances only, change proc rate back , put the money into the pathing mobs need rather banning what u create !!! To take away melee solo tools zerk or the poor rogue !!! I don't get it 10 mins to kill 1 trash SL mob. WowZer!!
4 boxer of bertoxxulous : 100 chanter 6500aa, 100 ranger 12100Aa , 100 warrior 8600aa , 100 magician 13450aa may there account rest in peace enjoy the 10 month I've paid for on my account sony !!
Wish I had the time to play everyday and put complaint on forums all day to top it off.
118 aa in 30 mins with lesson today. To bad :-( bye uber abilities.

Well tried logging in for my normal 20 minute spurts. Was able to kill 8 mobs. Not even worth it anymore. So I guess I'm back to weekends only. Thanks SoE. I enjoyed that small blip of shutting my brain down and making visible progress. I'll try to see if my alts can fill in the gap otherwise its not going to be worth keeping my accounts gold.