"Connor, many of the things knights are asking for are Warrior specific... ...Defensive abilities are Warrior class defining and will not be shared. We will be solving this problem be adjusting the events." Knights have both forms of Warrior-like defensive abilities an at initial contact ability to give healers a change to react and a very Defensive-like longer duration ability and combat self-healing Anyone who didn't understand the result would be that knights would end up pwning Warriors under NTtB in fast group experience content (the main occupation of not max level/max AA'd toons) self-rescue longer survivability vs. hard mobs really wasn't paying attention. More combat self-healing during GoD would not have done the job for knights. Grats Warrior-like defensive abilities - one can bemoan that sharing all one wants (and I surely did), and claim it created PallyWarriors and ShadowWarriors but the train left the depot. More mitigation does not do the full job for Warriors now. It takes "swarming doesn't count" and a bunch of excusifying to claim it does. We are in the mirror image of the previous knight situation. Mitigation != combat self-healing. We're not going to get back exclusivity in defensive disciplines. Under the circumstances (especially with the results pouring in) I don't at all see why in class character purity should be imposed on Warriors when it was not imposed on knights. Thanks to our unheard of stamina....um nothing happens. No fast HP regen, no quick recovery from wounds... no immortal Warrior shrugging off wounds, Nada. Thanks to their spellbook knights will have access to Warrior Class Defining abilities plus exclusivity in survival capabilities unshared. Oh raid Warriors can probably struggle along with a mitigation ability the does 1 thing halfway decently, but it takes ignoring the situation others face to say it's all good.
Before nttb for years people were asking why anyone would still choose a warrior over a knight, to tank anything. I thought after years of anguish they tried to fix it with nttb, and it was working pretty well, for a short time till they nerfed it into oblivion. But, I don't believe a lot of the people still developing eq, have ever played the game or listen to any input. They fully believe as they stop developing eq that it is going to force everyone into EQ next, fulfilling their master plan. Which for me, I will never play another Sony game, ever, because of stuff exactly like this. There are many, many great alternatives to Sony. I do have one question though, which is probably obvious to most but not me. I can understand as the melee hits from mobs increases, eventualy your better with cleric vie/shining bastion line of buffs, which wont take effect if your using nttb. But as far as spell dmg from mobs, wether it be ae's, direct damage or other, is nttb still of any use vs. that? I.e. in a situation where the mob hits made it a toss up for nttb or cleric mitigation melee buffs, is the tie breaker, reduced spell dmg if nttb is running? or is that no longer how it works.
I would like to point out the one good change that was made to NTtB: the visible hit-counter to see how close you are to making the buff drop is nice! This would have been an improvement before the nerf. However, I have found that constantly pulling mobs in the level 90 hot zones doesn't come close to removing the buff. I am only losing about 150 charges out of the 600 before the timer fades, and that 150 is if I am getting multi-pulls every time. Pre-nerf, the only times I lost the buff due to hit count was when I tried train-pulling Blackwaters in Hills of Shade or Discordians in Old Bloodfields. I had to use Furious/Flash of Anger or Last Stand in those cases, trying to ride out the cooldown until NTtB could be activated again, use my Worker Sledgemallet to escape, or just eat the death because I was stupid. The hit count did require smarter use of the ability before, or else there were consequences. Now there is no reason at all to have a hit count, because the timer will fade before the charges can be chewed through.
The Warrior class has just been a death by a thousand cuts. I find myself playing my warrior less and less. This nerf just about does it for me. Guess I'll roll a pally or go somewhere else. Totally frustrated with the lack of respect for the Warrior class.
I don't usually post on here but this nerf is a slap in the face, I've already cancelled my subscription. If I ever do play eq again I won't be paying for it unless this gets changed.
I don't have a warrior but I group with one every night in my regular xp group. We have been with EQ for years and that's all about to change, we were all going to play eq next together, THAT has changed. I will not continue to support any game/company that refuses to listen to it's player base. If our warrior quits because of this (which is looking distinctly possible at this point) you will lose my sub as well. Fix the mess you've made.
I'm in the same xp group as Ayashi, I am also going to cancel my sub if Darsh does. The way I see it, we have plenty of other games to chose from and we will. Our group has played together on Cazic for years and we have all decided that if changes are not made we will be moving on together. We're really tired of pointless nerfs, you want to impress me start nerfing my mages beam spell ffs THAT is beyond game breaking.
If you know of more people leaving over this decision and their continued decision to keep the group warrior down, for whatever reason, compared to knights have them post. The dev's need to be reminded they are developing a game for the players and their players aren't happy. They managed to accidentally address the group warrior issue and then take it away from us. Do not allow them to carry on ignoring their paying customers and show them we aren't happy the only way they seem to care about. Get more people in here to bolster our cause, it worked for mages. They need to fix group warriors once and for all!
I did some thinking, and Warriors have an AA that is similar in a few ways to pre-nerf NTtB. Brace for Impact uses charges, is on a 15 minute cooldown, but the buff lasts for 18 minutes. It also assists with tanking, though through % mitigation rather than having to break a threshold amount. Was this intended intended to be sustainable, in the way that we Laymen use the term? Actually, Sneering Grin is on a 5 minute duration with a 5 minute cooldown, also sustainable. But this doesn't assist tanking, doesn't cost endurance, and its effect is actually really minor. Why is it a sustainable buff instead of a permanent enhancement to the character? The only downsides to using it are 1) it takes up a button slot, and 2) you have to remember to use it. Not to get off track, but it's a design decision with regards to duration vs cooldown, cost vs benefit, kinda like NTtB. Are all AAs and combat abilities supposed to be exempt from Extended Ingenuity's benefits, or is it on an individual basis for balancing? I know that Commanding Voice is extended as well, and kept up indefinitely (after the stacking issue with Myrmidon's Skill was fixed, thanks for that BTW).
Many spells, aa's and discs across a wide range (those that go to buff box) are prolonged by extended duration as lines. Discs that stay in disc window and occupy current running discs are not lengthened by general extended duration effects (unless the aa specifically prolongs its duration like speed focus for monks). I see no need why NTTB should be exempt from this trend ... Unless they're going to go back and nerf every other class's discs/abilities from being extended.
What if NTtB were to be converted into a passive AA line? Where each rank absorbed 500, 750, or 1K points of damage (numbers are for balance guys to tune), and an initial five ranks available to purchase when released. It still absorbs damage from all sources, spell or physical, the same way that it does now. This AA line could get updated whenever a new expansion comes out, with new ranks being worth more or less damage absorption as appropriate. It would give Warriors something more to spend AA points on. Sony may have had plans to update NTtB as the combat ability it is with later expansions anyway, and the AA idea (as I presented it) doesn't have a way to prevent swarming abuse. But hey, you wouldn't have to activate it and worry about duration vs cooldown anymore, which is what everybody in this thread seems to be upset over.
I think this misses the point. Was NTtB over powered with the extended duration? Was it breaking the game? The solutions in this thread to the 'problem' which change how it works or change it to an AA miss, in my view, the fundamental point. Was it broken? We can argue about whether it was intentional that it got extended, but ultimately it's not relevant. What is relevant is that the expansion was beta tested and tuned with players using it extended, and it's been extended for a while, and was it being exploited? Was it making relevant content trivial? I don't think so. So let's not worry about fundamentally changing it, let's just allow it to be extended. You could argue the duration is irrelevant anyway. It has a 600 hit, hit counter. So if you pull too many mobs, you're not going to get it to last the full duration. No warrior that I know of is trivialising relevant content by pulling loads of mobs using NTtB. The 600 hit counter ensures that is the case. On group content (level 97), my group geared warrior, shaman and mercs were using NTtB to smooth DPS. It wasn't keeping my warrior alive, but it was smoothing the damage, taking the spikes off the 12k hits on single mobs and giving me time to react with an add. Now, I can still survive, but the mob DPS is all over the place when NTtB is down. But the thing is, the 600 hit counter never expires on a single mob, even 2 mobs, it's only when I pull a whole bunch of mobs that I get close to exceed the 600 hit counter. Why not forget about the duration, stop worrying about it, and just rely on the hit counter. Anyone 'abusing' the skill by pulling a whole bunch of trash is going to exceed the hit count and have to wait for their 5 minute re-use, and anyone fighting one or two mobs can maintain NTtB during the fight and smooth the DPS. The stacking issue people report isn't as visible to me (primarily group content, usually merc healer only even in a full group with friends) so I won't comment on that. Will I leave EQ over NTtB? No, I've only been back a few months after a 7 year break, and this kind of thing isn't going to make me give up being a Warrior, but has it made the game less enjoyable for me since the patch? Yes. Did NTtB being extended break anything?
It's not like the response we got was actually helpful. It really seemed to me to sum up to, "Oh well, sorry you don't like it. Too bad for you. We're not changing it back. Maybe we'll look at the stacking, someday, if we have time." I mean, warriors have been complaining about the grouping problems for a long time. Now it appears that not only was NTtB not intended to fix them, there's some question as to whether there's actual acknowledgement that what we're experiencing is a problem in the first place.
They do have regular working hours, I wouldn't expect a response over the weekend. There were several responses on Friday. I don't think NTtB was broken, I agree with you. I would actually be happy if the nerf of the duration were reverted. But Sony seems to think the ability was broken anyway, so I was making a suggestion that seemed reasonable to me, though I didn't expect anybody to buy into it. Where you mention that "the duration is irrelevant anyway," the AA version that I suggested addresses that, because it's a constant passive, not yet another activate-able situational button to add to my already full hotbar of those. I mentioned earlier in this thread that in regular group situations, even with multi-pulls of 3 incoming, we never get close to wearing down the 600 hit counter. You'll lose 200 at most before the new 3 minute duration expires. I only ever lost the NTtB buff, with the smaller pre-nerf hit counter of 500, when I was mass pulling light blue, green, or even grey cons, and was subsequently punished for doing so by having to gate out or die. I don't think any of us but Sony has missed the point. I think we have all agreed that this was a good ability, it helped Warriors in a big way (moreso for group content than raid content) with competing against knights. Everybody here even agreed with Sony that NTtB shouldn't have been completely blocking detrimental effects, like snares and roots. It was unnecessary to hit NTtB with 3 different nerfs at once instead of testing them out one at a time, waiting to see results. Speaking of testing, the changes to NTtB had almost 100% negative feedback visible on forums (PVP-ers rejoiced that they could grief Warriors once again, but we aren't here to talk about PVP). It's looking like feedback from both the test community and now players on live servers are getting ignored, considering the nerfs went out anyway and Piestro made the very steadfast statement:
Just wanted to thank those warriors who sent me specific stacking issues privately. I'm still looking for more specifics on potential stacking issues, especially with cleric abilities. Thanks,
