Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Except its not because the design team purposely avoids putting humanoid mobs in zones. How many mobs in COTF zones are humanoid ? a fraction of them.

Very excited about these changes I play this game and eq2, going back and forth depending on which one I prefer at any given time. I have a station access account, so I will be saving money every month over my 3 accounts. I think its great that they gave the option for those who have the spare time/urge to grind out thousands of aa's to opt out. Personally, I just don't have 8 hrs a day to play like I used to. I stopped playing this game for a while, because it became such a grindfest-fighting in the same zones, over and over for the best exp to grind aa. Most of my characters are in their 60's-70's because I was told to stop at that range and grind aa's, or my characters would be crap at higher levels. I guess to each their own. It seems kind of elitist though to sit here and say"I play this way, so you should all play this way too"-No one pays for my sub but me. I plan to take advantage of this, and I applaud SOE for recognizing that not everyone has the time to make eq a second or third "job", and for actually trying to take some of the ridiculous time sinks out of the game, and making it fun for a change...

I'm a little surprised there hasn't been a "stance" AA put in for all the wannabe archers that drastically reduces their melee and defensive ability in exchange for the added bow damage that they so crave. I can't speak for the ranger community as a whole but I will always go for whatever is better dps...and for the last IDK how many years, that has been melee by a large margin (a margin that only grows with each expansion).

Ok then, while you got the nerf bat out.

Monks, I've seen monks swarm, yet I don't see them on this list? Are they the next PL class?

Wizards, I've seen wizards (with a healer merc) out right kill named all the way up to this latest release (T1b) out right. I bet if you ask players they would rather have that ability to kill named solo then to be able to swarm. Why arnt wizards being looked at?

Paladins, they swarm undead every bit as good as SKs, but they are not being touched. Please explain?

Don't be blowing smoke up our butts and telling us you are listening. One of the best ideas I've seen was instead of blanket giving people 4000 and 7000AAs for simply buying a gold acct. Instead of that INSANE idea you give people that HAVE gold accts 100AA pots that they get once a week for having a gold acct, up to 5200 AAs on each character under lvl 85. Isn't this better then just GIVING 4000 to 7000AAS? It does 4 things:

1) Makes you money because now said acct is gold for 1yr and not 1 month (which is what is going to happen).
2) Allows said player to PLAY his character so that his is not a complete newb, (hunting and gathering gear and xp'ing and making friends).
3) This allows them to put the AAs where THEY want, so you don't really need to change the AA system or have an "opt out" button, because said player puts the AAs where they want.
4) Settles down us vets. We can certainly understand the need for new blood, but giving away up to 7000 AAs is a little to much to swallow.

Isn't this simple idea much better for both sides of the coin? SOE makes MORE money because the accts a gold longer and players can earn their AAs while playing and learning their class. (THE BIGGEST SINGLE FACTER WHY I STILL PLAY THIS GAME IS BECAUSE OF THE FRIENDS I'VE MADE).

One last thing I would like to mention is I have not even seen an advertisement for Everquest in so long. I can even remember when. How are we going to attract new players if they don't even know the game exists, let alone that the game is 15 yrs old.

Doh Being that the current advice from lots of top guilds is to level your char and then do AA - Of course i would make use of the easier AA curve BEFORE pressing the auto grant button.

The char who has autogranted has used up his curve as has been confirmed several times now - and will have to grind the further AA at full penalty = very slow.

This 100%

Curious how any post that chastize and belittle others that are opposed to these changes get to stay though, isn't it???

Freedom of Speech much?

It'll stop at your current level, or when you have all the Underfoot AA's, whichever is the smaller reward.
Next expansion, it'll be up to the HoT AA's, but of course you'd have to subscribe again to get those.
Even if you only subscribe for 1 month out of 12, that's more money than 0 months out of 12.

Of course there are other reasons to go gold, all of which become more compelling after level 85, where the differences between gold and silver start becoming more pronounced.

You get "full" damage when the mob is rooted, or moving.

What you don't get is a double damage bonus.

What many people forget is that EQ's archery is a really really bad system. Its damage table (as people used to use the term) is literally HALF that of melee. If you have a 120 damage weapon, and a Damage Table of 8, then your max hit (before Heroic Strength, weapon damage Bonus, and any other bonus is applied, including critical hit) is going to be 960, or 8 times 120. The same character would have a Damage Table of 4 for archery.

All of the bonuses a Ranger gets for archery are multiplicative. Double Damage bonus doubles the hit. Archery Mastery 4 increases it by 120%. Combined, they multiply the archery damage by 4.4, and that is before factoring in things like Ranged Finesse (increase the Critical Damage multiplier) and Bow Mastery (gives a Damage Bonus to Archery, something it does not naturally have; Heroic Dexterity also gives a Damage Bonus).

Factor in Bullseye Disc (rank 2 for simplicity) and that 4.4 becomes 12.056, again before those other Ranger-specific factors come into play.

Damage is not halved for fighting a rooted/moving target. Damage is doubled when fighting a stationary, non-rooted target. It might seem a minor quibble, but that perceptual difference is actually very significant. Archery damage SUCKS without all those bonuses. All those bonuses do is just put a band aid over how pathetic the Archery system in EQ is in the first place, and people accept them in lieu of actually getting Archery fixed.

It exists, it is not hard, people do it. Other players also use SB to further improve their own swarming.

Great point there Axxius. I'd also like to see what devs say about this.

However, just my opinion, I think limiting it to 12 targets will already make beam swarming so long and hard that mages will probably stop doing it. My point:

• You have to pull 70+ mobs in order to beam-swarm. When you get an amount like these mobs start to slow each other due to a lot of processing on calculing paths and they act like a snared pack.
• Once mobs are "snared" this way you start nuking. 70+ mobs is actually 6+ times 12, so mages will need to deal more than 6 times the area damage they did before the nerf to kill the swarm.
• Mages are able to kill this pack of mobs right now because they use all the cooldowns they have (every AA or spell that raises damage via more crits, more spell damage, more crit damage, twincasts... etc).
• The duration of this "burn" is limited (in time and number of casts). It is enough to kill that swarm right now but once mages need to do more than 6x times that damage because of the nerf... they will probably exhaust all these cooldowns much before they can do so much damage. And doing the damage required to kill the remaining hit points of the swarm without using any of these burn abilities should take very long.
• Supossing you go ahead and keep nuking until you start killing mobs, once the swarm has half the enemies it had initially (around 30) they will start running fast again and kite will be even more dangerous and long.

See what I mean? just theorycrafting but maybe the change is blunt enough to stop mages from doing it.

Not unless Decap is getting further nerfed by getting the humanoid restriction.

only thing the change will do is shift the class, you can already do the same if not bigger pulls using 4 monks riposte disc, or...really any high dps class riposte disc that can drop agro...ie pull monk ripostes, imitates death after next monk does destructive force and attacks once..he ripostes..repeat until done.

even if they nerfed that they would still have to nerf every ae skill in game, stuff in evantil for example is snareable and rootable..pull everything ball it up, pull into the crack at the base of the tree, block with a tank or pets, ae till done.

they need to fix the lag not nerf skills.

also NO aa auto grant!!!!

it wont stop them at all...

they sell the beaming for real life $$..... think a little extra work is going to to stop them making real life cash?

So if you don't refund them you are stealing the AAs we made? We don't get to have assassinate... then what do we have to spend them on? What exactly is replacing assassinate for rogues?

Sorry sir, I am also confused by the wording of this post.

Unfortunately we are unaware of how many in game players are aware of these changes. Piestro did reply to one of my earlier posts stating that there is some information in the patcher (I must admit I didn't check because i box) - He has also said that he will consider getting it put into the server MOTD at login to check the forums regarding this. Reason less than 5% post ? - I mean I found this by accident !

A lot of EQ customers box (and that brings in a lot of revenue). However the patcher does not allow for boxing - i.e. only one instance of the patcher will run on a machine - Therefore most players who box only run the patcher if needed for an update. Outside of updates other software launches the game without the patcher = they do not see the information!!

fyi you can have more than one instance of patcher now...

Like much posted here recently this is completely wrong.

You will still have Assassinate, the ability isn't going away. It's just changing.

Refer to the first 6 posts here:
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...-for-gold-members-and-ability-changes.207363/

And the first post here:
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...the-february-update-developer-updates.207587/

I don't go out seeking spots where I can use Headshot or Decapitate as it is (I play Ranger and box a Berserker). A change from "max level 88, 180ishk damage, relatively frequent proc rate" to "max level -1, 180ishk damage, low proc rate" would actually be a boost for me.

HOWEVER - I agree with Hadce. There are not enough Humanoid mobs. As I see it, the damage would need to either be significantly increased (if it is supposed to be a dps bump when they fire on exp mobs) to match the rarity of the mob type, OR they would have to be changed to affect more mob types, similar to the way that Decapitate affects all mob types. Assassinate should work on *any* mob that is actually alive - whether it be a Dragon, Humanoid, Animal, or Monster. Headshot should work on *any* mob that has a head to shoot. Zombies, Dragons, Animals, Monsters, you name it - but not things like Blobs that don't have a head to shoot. Decapitate, by definition, should work on the same mobs; you cannot decapitate something that has no head to hew off, after all! I know, however, that that is not likely, both due to the limitations of the system (mobs don't have a set of "Does Headshot/Assassinate/Decapitation/Destroy Summoned/etc. flags) and the sheer amount of work necessary to actually implement such a thing.

The main worry I had, which you said in a previous post you already addressed, was the aggro generated by a Decapitate proc. 180ishk hate generated per proc was a bit excessive.

I'd say, if you were going to remake them so they can be maintained rather than stagnated into oblivion, then do so, but expand the types of mobs they work on. There is no point in having an ability if there is never, or almost never, any chance to actually use it in current content. When's the last time Rogues and Bards got a new lock to pick?