To whom it may concern, As it stands right now, the Lvl 52 Bard song Nilipus' March of the Wee is mostly useless on Live/TLP. It boosts armor class, boosts agility, and provides a small damage buffer. In of itself the damage buffer is not bad. But, bards can only twist 4 songs at a time. There are much more useful songs to play in their limited 4 song line up. This song almost never gets used at all because it gets outshined by damage shield songs, hp & mana songs, hastes, resists, and snares/slow which take much greater priority in a limited 4 song twist than nilipus. Something needs to be done so that this nilipus song has some reason why it should be played. I would like to ask the Devs if it is possible to change the song to how it functions on Project 1999 where it is very useful and played often as opposed to its scarce usage on Everquest Live. On P99, it has all the same statistic benefits as Live but it also provides a group-wide shrink as is consistent with the lore of the song. If it is constantly played, the nilipus shrink brings most character models/races down two sizes which is the same as the maximum amount a shaman can shrink to. However, this song is best used in a different manner. I would play this song once at the beginning of a raid or group and then use my normal song twist. The main use of the nilipus song is that it allows bards to permanently shrink everyone in their group one size down even when the song wears off. It's not as good as a shaman shrink but it is better than nothing. I always used this song on P99 in every raid because raids often have so many people that shamans don't have the time or priority to spend mana on shrinking everyone (if there even is a shaman present) and as well, the high numbers of characters in a raid take up most of the viewing screen and slow down frame rates significantly. Shrinks help with quality of life on raids. Some last details: Again the reason why the song is useful on P99 is that so long as the song is played once, a one size down shrink effect will be permanent even when the song wears off. The shrink effect does goes away though upon zoning. This permanent bard shrink effect is only half as good as the maximum 2 time-casted shaman shrink. Which it should be considering the bard jack of all trades & master of none motif with the class. Shamans should have the best shrink. But, the whole point of this request is that Nilipus March of the Wee is a song that virtually never gets used on live because it has no real function and often gets outshined by more useful songs. If this shrink effect change were made, it would the song very viable to use on Live/TLP again. Thank you for your time.
Bring up Allakhazam bard song list from 1 to 110. Page search for shrink … no results. Bring up Raidloot bard song list from 1 to 110. Page search for shrink … no results.Bring up Raidloot bard aa list from 1 to 110. Page search for shrink … no results. I think you have your developer answer about bards and the shrink ability at this point. It is not an awful request and trying to go about it through the name of the song was cute. But there are many, many examples in EQ where the name of an ability and what it actually does are not really connected, particularly in flavor text. And EQ is littered with poor/unusable spell lines … have you look at all the spells wizards get lately? The P99 stuff is where your argument breaks down. There are a number of differences between P99 and EQ. And I'm pretty sure devs know the value of shrink on raids. Regardless of what you may think, shrink is still very much an ability that the developers see fit to limit (no shrink spells/aas for everyone). But A for effort!
