I'm back from a hiatus, three months-ish. I understand some things changed regarding dropping aggro. I think I understand most of them Buuuuuut, Death Peace, the SK/Nec AA, doesn't seem to be working at all tonight. I testing it a little bit in ETWK on some light blue (weak con) Wolves, It worked once. I wasn't getting any "Fallen to the Ground" messages or anything. What did I miss? Whats wrong with my AA?
They broke it. They over-farmed out fade to basically all of the classes, so then warriors for example could pull by using an ability that brings a single npc to them out of a group of npc's and then fading. With the game environment in many zones only requiring a puller every few minutes, this sufficed which undervalued pullers. So in response to this, they broke all the fades by making them less reliable. Death Peace must be programmed with the same code that they nerfed. I hate when utilities that you absolutely have to have work for your class to realize the value that it should have end up being this lottery crap. That ruins the game. Pullers are supposed to pull. Imagine if a warrior's final stand or fortitude just "sometimes worked". The whole raid scene would be a crap shoot every time. Ridiculous. If you have to say "well this guy's not important, you know what would be fun, let's make the abilities that class has just not work right .. for fun" then you don't know what fun is and you shouldn't be in this business. I think a better path would be to change the classes that got a fade and really shouldn't have so that their versions just put you at the bottom of the aggro list without fully losing aggro. That seems reasonable for Magicians, Wizards, Shaman, Clerics, Druids, Warriors, Paladins, and any other non pulling class that gets a fade. Honestly if you took it away from Rangers I'd be ok with that. They just get too much stuff, but I think that passes beyond an unbiased territory to me just hating on Rangers. And then there's the stamina/melee issue, but that's not what you asked about.
I'd not be OK with that at all. Rangers have always been a "jack of all trades - master of none but weapons" kind of class. With their innate runspeed, roots, snares, etc - they were always a pulling class particularly outdoors. Granted a "lesser" pulling class. -Rat
Yeah, they overdo things. Bluebies will pop a vein but sanguine mind crystal was a great example of this. Objectively speaking, they changed the mana cost from 3000 to 18400. That alone is too much of a nerf for an ability that takes time to cast and use, and heals for 9k. At worst it should be even with the worst mana/health ratio aa on the planet which also belongs to enchanters, mind over matter. I think anyone that looks at that with a reasonable pair of eyes sees what I'm saying. On top of that though, they added in a 5 minute recast. This also by itself would have been fine as the full nerf to the ability, but adding it on top of the other nerf just cripples the ability to a point where any use of sanguine mind crystals to heal is now stupid to even bother with. So once every 10 minutes you can use one, then during a point where you are not medding, cast another for 18,400 mana (no focuses affect this, it's a flat cost) and use that one too for a total heal of 20k health. On top of that though, they added a cast time to summoning the crystals. At this point what even is the point to the aa? So if you're raiding top end content, and want to blow 40k mana in total for it, you can heal yourself for 20k in the case of a dot that would kill you once every 10 minutes if you have time to cast it as well. That sounds great if this is Secrets of Faydwer. If you're going to post with your righteous fury about how enchanters shouldn't get a heal, then they should just remove the aa completely instead of doing something as convoluted as this. This shows bad development decisions and unclear vision. Instead, they should admit that they don't have the manpower to properly balance mechanics that have been in game for a decade, and just scrap the aa. Or they should start balancing things in a manner that makes sense.
Death Peace still works the same as before. Death's Effigy was completely changed for necros. Necros were treated as a non pulling class by making it no longer work 100% of the time and setting it to work for lower con mobs then the pulling classes.
Getting blusterbolt took rangers out of "lesser pulling class" into the top tier. So did Harmonious arrow if that still works the same way. As a jack of all trades, where are their evacuate abilities and group/self ports outside of the trakanon bp? Where is their cripple? Where is their resurrection spell? Where is their splash heal? Where is their mez? That ability was farmed out to rangers/monks. Being a jack of all trades doesn't mean you get everything that there is nowadays. Frankly I'd rather have seen rangers get a reasonable mez than blusterbolt. I remember in house of thule if there was a good ranger in group, you honestly didn't even need anything else for CC through most if not all of the expansion's group content. I'll admit I haven't seen how well rangers fare with the harder parts of Degmar. I think that would be the real factor that to me determines their status because areas that small really go against what their abilities should be. If harmonious arrow works in there though then it's a lock in my mind, and in that case, I'd say that they have been easily in the top tier of pulling in every area that I can think of since they got blusterbolt type abilities. If you want to name situations where other classes can pull better than rangers, I know that they exist and I acknowledge it. But there are cases where rangers are the best pullers too. Vineleash Cascade is really amazing. There are many situations in which that spell by itself makes rangers able to do things that other pulling classes could never do. Even the ones that could do it would take a lot more time to do so. You've been given unique and very powerful pulling abilities. In the end I was just jabbing rangers a bit because that's just what you do, but I hope you develop a higher appreciation for what you have there, because it's great. I'm not really one for making the game less fun for other classes. If you guys go on being the superjesuses of everquest, then enjoy it. But to me, fade will always be a utility that belongs to top tier pulling classes if the game is designed properly.
damn, sure is a lot of ranger hate going on in this thread. Reval maybe you should roll a ranger and play one for a while ... you'll find out soon enough its not all peaches and cream
If you're going to spew ranger hate about pulling abilities, you must get it right and say it started w/ vinelash in TBS with Rangers being effective pullers in most situations. /nod Just like Moving mountains, Bluster/Fluster Bolt are useless in current content as they work on blues.
It does but only 90% of the time verse the 100% it did for years. Everyone else that intentionally had 100% fade kept it except necros.
I read Jhenna's post, if the blusterbolt type spells only work on blues now that's a significant change. I always liked the brell's temple mission as an enchanter where you had some mobs that could only be mezzed, some could only be rooted, and some could only be stunned. Variation in what you do really gives more of a sense of accomplishment. In this case, I would be glad to see rangers get something that's interesting but not harmonious arrow to replace harmonious arrow for unrootable white cons. Ironically, this goes back to the main point that when something is broken, they go too far when fixing it. The fixes in some cases are sweeping too far, and in other cases nerf abilities to a degree that is just too far. More thought could be put into them, and they could be executed better. I mean think about it, there was an issue where moving mountains type abilities and fade allowed people to pull, so do you think the nerfs across the board to (almost?) all fades, and to all moving mountains type abilities is an appropriate response? What would you have done to stop classes that should not be able to single mobs out of a group from doing that in this case?
Waaait, since when? I was blusterbolting whites and yellows in TDS. Stealth nerf newer than the fade one? Also, Zek player with no knowledge of how the class plays on other servers detected in response #2.
Playing on Zek means you know about pve and pvp. I won't lay into you for your bad attitude, but do you care to elaborate? Currently to me your post says "I want to insult this guy because he has a different background from my own", but then the point you probably want to make is totally lost past that.
Very few warriors wasted the time to pull like this . It is not why fade was nerfed at all . Fade was nerfed in an effort to nerf Rest. Warlord's grasp had a range of 100 . And you was better off pulling with an arrow than that ability. It was completely inefficient to pull using that ability. Good warriors used that ability as a positioning tool which it was designed for. Warriors playing the wrong class and trying to solo may have pulled like this and died many times compared to how many times they were able to "pull " If you call that pulling. And pulling is just as easy as it was before these nerfs and it will never ever be like it was back in the old days. So all these changes were really for nothing but to take power away from every single class in the game and instead of the game being fun people just see things not work like they should and get frustrated. Just because you see one person named Joe do something once does not mean that's what is the normal for any ability. I seen one bard one time run away from a mob and hit a rock with selos on and leap 200 feet and single pull a named from the train they was running from . Omg lets nerf that selos ability !
Maybe it's my AA's, but it works for me 99% of the time as opposed to 100%. I guess that is a little less. I can still very efficiently pull it -- maybe I don't see it as much of a nerf, just a little chance to have to keep myself up for a refresh of Death Peace before I can pop it again.
Makavien: I can't find any literature that really justifies it from a dev either way, but the rest nerf part of fade from my understanding was that it doesn't work vs npc's of too high a level. There was also the "code change" where I guess they were always supposed to fail sometimes, and that was brought back, but let's be realistic on that one.... whether or not the code already was there, it's still a change, which means that for some reason they are behind the whole "hey let's make important abilities just fail for no reason, like for fun" design principle. Unless at least the top end version doesn't fail, I think that's awful heh. If that's the reason for the fade changes, then what was the reason for the warlord's grasp changes? I'm curious, is there a particular place where you find the dev's logic behind their changes? The patch notes are pretty barren in that area, which to me would be most of the meat in the patch notes if it existed.
No they won't answer if that was their logic behind it , it was an over reaction . The only good gravity abilities for pulling were hate's attraction and moving mountains the rest were only good for npc positioning. Like I could literally use throw stone to pull better than I could with warlord's grasp . Heck the old walk in while switching weapon sets worked better lol. But with the persist through death effects on current raids and how easy it is to pull plane of hate and fear even after the nerfs anyone can look at that stuff and tell that it had absolutely nothing to do with pulling why fade was nerfed and everything to do with rest.
Its called the RNG. It's set to 90% not 99% even if you sometimes use it 100 times and its successful 99 times its just luck. It also went from no cap to being capped for 108 and under mobs instead of 110 like all the other pulling classes. We are certainly still capable of pulling as this wasn't our only tool. Its just dumb that necros are the only class who had 100% intended fade taken away and they also are the only pulling class capped at 108 effective instead of 110. If you want to say the glass is half full thats up to you but they took something away from us for no reason as ours worked completely as it was intended.
