If this makes it to the live servers, I'm outta here. Heck, maybe even sooner. I'm sorry, but to put it bluntly, EQ's playerbase is too small for SOE to be going around making willy nilly changes for the sole purpose of annoying it's remaining paying players. If this game had a much larger playerbase with which to group and stuff, fine. But it doesn't.
Roughly 6-7 minutes to round up everything in the construct area of Shadow, 45 seconds to beam it down...camp out with lesson til it repops and repeat - there was a video detailing how it's accomplished on here before it was removed. I have seen chars go from 95-100 in a little over an hour. It IS a "WHOAMG !!!!!! MASSIVELY" larger amount of aas than what any other class can do, complete with 20ish minutes of sitting around watching TV. Do tell me where you're seeing these other classes that can accomplish the same thing. You are downplaying the issue, perhaps out of inexperience or in defense of your class but it is certainly not some insignificant amount of XP that is "a bit" better.
I've done the mage beaming in evantil and a few things i take away from all of these changes and beaming in itself. More then likely im just going to move to BD, EW, I've also beam kited in PoShadow (Not the mobs that they are changing to start summoning but a totally different set), and 2 different spots in Xorbb, Now i beam kite alil different then most, i tend to not pull to the point of zone lag and i also partner with a bard for selo's. So other then moving people from 1 zone to another, i don't really see the change as anything dramatic. Now at times the amount of time it took to gather the mobs, beam them down, and kill them all, i would pretty much assume i might as well just grinded with a group/my own box team. Im a well raid geared monk, my bard partner is a well raid geared wizard, so what i gained from beaming is extremely possible to gain from just killing. My hope for the changes is due to "zone disruption" which in any case why not make the changes to the static zone but leave the group mission, the whole reason i chose to do mage beaming was for alts, it takes so much nowadays for a toon to be somewhat decent anywhere from 4-7k AAs depending on class and thats 4-7k well spent AAs, so yes for myself to enjoy a class as optimal as possible im going to look to ways to get them their asap.
It used to take me 7 min total to pull 2/3 of kaesora, before I came to a stop and the mobs stopped pathing funny, when we finally streamlined the whole process we could flip an instance in 6-8 min alternating burns. Not even close to this kind of xp after the 4k mark. Pulling 80 plus mobs depends on mob density for starters beyond that it the rubber banding to get them to the kill spot wherever that may be. While it might take twelve min to pull with lesson on and if done right I'd wager they might get two maybe three rounds under lesson. That would be anywhere between 240-300 mobs at a high to 160-200 at a low. No one will convince me that 1 there is some magic metric of pull time that diminishes this kind if return, 2 any other class can equal this kill rate on current expansion mobs solo. All the other classes capable of pulling off high kill count/xp in a given range are competing numbers wise against each other and to that if agree but Mage beaming is in a class of its own. Now I don't care about the xp I've done my share of mass killing. But having people downplay it or piestro say there are comparable numbers from other classes is what I find interesting. The whole thing would be a non factor if the use of zone limitations was not being used nefariously, to the point of disrupting gameplay and zones in general.
Why not cap mage beam to 8 mob? ( wizard manage to farm greybies for TS stuff with that!) Why go around, add summoning mobs to a large bunch of zone ( but not all of them, so beam will still happen in some zone) and force yourself to add yet another large bunch of summoning mob in any new zone you gonna create in order to stop beaming ( and hit a whole lot of other classes at the same time). Are SoE Dev just too proud to admit they should've nerfed mage beam with wizard beam 2 years ago?
So, wizards beam kite - wizards get nerfed (and wizard beam even has a recourse and long recast). Mages beam kite - all kiters get nerfed (which includes wizards again). Sure. That's completely fair.
In this instance ignorance on the matter. When the beam issues arose and people started griefing with it I went and personally tested it in evantil and the mobs were spread out enough that it took some time to round up a respectable train and beam them down. I did this successfully two times with relative ease so that I could have some personal insight on the issue but haven't done it since those initial two runs at it. I have absolutely zero experience on beam kiting in plane of shadows though, but I can see how it would take less time to round up mobs there. Still though I dont think the fix in question was the ideal way to go, nor do i think target capping mage ae's is the way to go (I know your post isn't asking for this) I primarily use my beams for old content and raids (not tradeskill farming but like) I used my beams to work on faction in GoD zones faster, and I most recently used my beams to overpower the tactical prototype raid in meldraths mansion without dealing with the gameboard. I just burned the boss till adds started to overwhelm me, hit discs then beam. THat's generally my typical use with the spell, Oh and I also used it to deal with named mobs that mass spawn weak adds (such as that named mob in xorbbs that chain spawns very weak mobs) When I did my test runs in evantil it felt only a bit faster than ranger headshotting at level 95 in feerrott instances yet required a significant more amount of paying attention. Beaming for exp never really felt worth it to me, I mean my main characters are pretty much maxed out and I'm able to beat all current content as it comes out, so to me it's pretty meh, yet I still value the spell for hero's journey stuff and old raids that I sometimes poke my head in (I haven't played in CoTF/RoF content for like a month)
I'm glad this is being addressed finally. I think the solution is ridiculous, but hopefully they implement a 'better' solution in the future. Limiting the spell range or limiting the lvl of the mobs affected would be a more ideal solution. ie ... The spell does not affect mobs over lvl 70 for instance. .... OR ... just nerf it like the wizzy beam spells and have it only affect 8-10 mobs at a time. Overall though, any solution is better than going to the valley to do a daily and having it take 30 minutes to kill 5 mobs because your mobs are rubber banding. Also, recovering from wipes because of zone lag was a huge reason i stopped going to the valley. I won't miss that one bit. I'm surprised at some of the reactions on here though. Some of you act as if you spend 24/7 in those zones killing mobs for money so you can eat and pay rent. Unless your FtP, a career lvl 89 / 5000 aa power toon or your one of the ones that swarm/beamkite ..... this is really not going to affect you like some of you drama queens are acting like it will. If you spend all your EQ time in those 7 zones and those 7 zones only, you might want to rethink how you play. I'm not sure how bad it is on other servers, but I actually stopped xp'ing in the valley because of the beamkiters - it was impossible to gain any xp. The offenders on Rathe are the same toons day after day after day. They don't care about anyone else in the zone, no matter how nicely you asked them to leave. As long as people are willing to pay 50k per pull, they are going to lag that zone day in and day out for the foreseeable future. I told one of those beamkiters that I was going to petition him(which i did) and that they are going to get beamkiting nerfed by lagging a HZ crowded with people. His response, and i quote: " I hope they do nerf it " .... Seriously, that response made my head hurt. I can't wrap my head around it. That guy is in the valley beamkiting day in and day out and gives a response like that. just wow ... obviously a NASA grad. I don't understand why SOE didn't act on all the petitions sent in. You get 10 petitions that you're disrupting the zone --- you get a 2 week ban.... BAM !!! .. problem solved ... no more beamkiters. I hope you guys(non-beamkiters), can work with the changes and support what soe decides to do eventually. There really is no perfect solution to this issue - well, except banning, but for some reason, they won't ban the offenders.
I personally think they are hitting too many classes with a punishment that was intended for one. I understand the concept but I think the implementation was overly harsh & will wind up causing the playerbase & therefore the devs more grief & more work than was necessary. I am starting to wonder if they really are trying to slowly kill off the playerbase in some misguided attempt to get us to move to EQ Next but they fail to see that if they make people angry enough to quit those same people aren't going to play another SOE game again. On a side note, Piestro any idea when /testcopy is coming back? No word on the forums or twitter or facebook in going on 8 days now whether it was intentional or accidental & when or if a fix is incoming. Any info that you can share pertaining to this would be greatly appreciated by many Test players.
This fixes more than just beam kiting. Anyone who pulls more than 2-3 mobs at a time is a target of this change (which was needed). I gave up camping the ac aug in evantil, and i was never chased out by beam kiters. It was other classes who were pulling everything in site (in 4-5 pulls instead of the zone at once, but same issue). As well, there was the problem waiting in the wings that with another expansion, SKs would make half those zones unusable due to swarming in them. Bards as well.
Like a lot of players, I don't lie fault at the "main mages" but at the alts that have sprung up as a result of the massive XP gains involved. It's not a matter of class envy like some have labeled it (Piestro even, for shame) or a matter of lag-exploits (this is part of it but I can assure you it'd be even easier without the lag). It's a matter of EXP - "Where can I go and what can I do to level or AA 'x' the quickest". It's almost too good to not abuse depending on what your needs are, this unfortunately leads to zones being overwhelmed by huge pulls. XP shouldn't be nerfed, the summon-mechanic deal is kind of overboard, limiting targets isn't the best route either. Banning players is absurd, it does not solve the issue...neither does adding ridiculous "if more than 20 mobs on target, murder that player's family" mechanics. What is there left to suggest? Smaller range on beam (least-intrusive restriction, possibly)? Find the old servers that could handle this kind of play? Find a way to limit this to instances? Give up altogether an bow to our dev overlords?
Triquience: this is really not going to affect you like some of you drama queens are acting like it will. If you spend all your EQ time in those 7 zones and those 7 zones only, you might want to rethink how you play. Well, keep in mind one of these is the hotzone ( were people usually flock to). Also keep in mind that for kiters, not every zone is kite-friendly... indoor place like CC or kael are a no-go, place with mixed summoning mob like chapterhouse or xorbb ( and xorbb pathing issues) make it also very tedious. Druid need a pack of lvl 95-99 charmable, snareable and non-summoning animal to do their charm kiting... that's a pretty harsh limitation... So no, we don't spend our entire EQ time in those 7 zone.. but we do spend alot of it in them, while level'ing up... the other issue is, beamer will just move to other zone ( the one kiter are currently using) and lag out those zones instead.
Is it too soon to try and lighten up the thread with a they nerfed necros again without trying to nerf them directly? PS, I think this change completely sucks. Why can't they they just tune the darn spell directly instead?
This statement is a matter of opinion. The class that gets an ability change wouldn't agree with you. Again my statement wasn't about was is right or wrong. I was just pointing out that things could have been worse.
Stubar: option 1: change mage beam so they cannot do what they can currently do ( in highlvl content) option 2: modify a whole set of zone so mages cannot do what they can currently do ( and hurt a bunch of classes in the process). how is this a matter of opinion? The choice seems pretty clear to me. in both cases, mage get hit. in one case, 5-6 other classes do.
This is why I beam. Even before beaming existed, I had 12 95s with 2k + AA, 2 chars were max AA. The other 4 classes I had sitting at 90 waiting on me to level them to cap. They also had around 2k AA. I play them all. After beams, I had 3 chars at 100... my main box crew. I played through RoF. I grinded. I did partisans. I did merc and raids. Then I saw the hoopla on here about beaming. Within 3 weeks, all 13 other classes were also level 100. Then I leveled a buddies bard, and 2 buddies mages. Why not? I can make them viables for my plans in no time. I maxed my mages AA from 1750 to 10.7 (ROF Cap) in a week. This is my paladin. This is current. I decided that I would beam him some AA before beaming gets wrecked, just because once it's gone, I will have to AA slower again (which I want to happen). He has at least 1200 AA there in 2 days. Maybe 10-15 beam pulls, while playing Dante's Inferno on PS3 waiting for repops. Why is Sony not giving out 100 / 4k chars if this is okay? That Exp is divided, since my paladin is not the mage. A mage can be max (as I did with mine) in 2-3 weeks depending your drive. How is this class envy? This is not even a class in EQ. Mages in their current form don't even belong in the world of EQ. I can load up my rogue who only has 2k AA and show how quickly that can roll. He still has his low AA level exp bonus. I challenge any of those other "viable forms of mass exp" to exp something faster than I can with beaming. (Pro-tip, it's impossible, all of those examples are fluff fighting for beaming to not be nerfed, but can't hold a candle to it----- so don't even try. Or hey, if you're ignorant, go ahead, try).
I play during off times. Groups are very rarely available. Being able to solo effectively is the only thing that got me through it. I was able to solo about 8000 of my aas this way. I lived in the City of Bronze during VoA. There have been pure kite groups I have set up before. These could no longer happen in the zones effected. I have max AAs at the moment, so this obviously doesn't directly effect me. Are we only supposed to speak out on things that *only* help/hurt us? I'll be blunt. Druids are not a strong class right now. There are just a combination of minor things that effect us that all add up to a big thing. Being able to get solid solo xp was important to me, because its one of the few things I feel druids excel in. A few weeks ago, a friend messaged me asking if I could help a guildie of his. His guildie is a druid and was unsure of his future as a druid. He asked me to give him some advice, show him how druids can still be fun at 100. One thing I showed him was Quint-kiting with keeping 10-15 mobs at all times going. Unfortunately, this selling point is now being attacked. This way of solo xp is being completely ignored. I am being told to root rot, or whatever and earn less than 1/2 the xp I was getting if I want to stay in the same zones.
yeah, and when they die , timer start for the repop ( so if the repop is + / - 15 min add some more before they pull all those mobs and kill them ) i went to valley to do that daily several days ago and had to gate and do other thing BECAUSE mobs were just not there being mass pulled .. btw i got 2 mages lv 100 and near max xp,. and i never did any beam pull and refuse to do it if it's to get it via lagging the mob so much that they can't even touch you... i got friends who asked me to pwling them that way but never did and will never do that way.............
Let me spell it out for you. All those mages that don't do it get punished because some people do it? This is where the matter of opinion comes in.You think they should nerf the mages. The mages that don't do it think the zones should be fixed. Hence---a matter of opinion. From what I have been reading is that it's still doable, just more difficult. I honestly couldn't care less about this first world problem. I doesn't affect me either way. People are calling for a class nerf and that's wrong. They simply made it some of the MoBs in the zone summon. Nothing would have been said in the first place if it was like this in the first place. At this point in the thread, all I see here is a puddle of spilled milk that some people are crying over. The valid points have been made and now it's a b**** fest.
