Synergy AA

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Stephen51, Feb 4, 2018.

  1. Stephen51 Augur

    I'm assuming this is the same for all classes, certainly it has been for all the classes I've seen, but as an example here is the mage line;
    Lvl 10 "This passive ability allows your Remorseless Spirit or Remote Remorseless Spirit (both 105 lvl spells) to trigger a blessing on your party which lasts 12 seconds that increases the base damage of their next fire or chromatic based direct damage spell by 50%"

    So at this point you have spent 1000 AA, but there is 100% chance of this firing.

    Lvl 11 "
    This passive ability allows your Reckless Spirit or Remote Reckless Spirit (both 110 lvl spells) to trigger a blessing on your party which lasts 12 seconds that increases the base damage of their next fire or chromatic based direct damage spell by 60%

    So once you hit level 110, you buy the new upgrade of the swarm pet and cast it, what % bonus do you get from the synergy AA?

    Answer of course is 0%, because unless you had saved 200 AA as you levelled the new spell will not fire until you buy lvl 11 of the Synergy AA. You can of course revert back to the lower level spell/disc until you accrue 200 aa......

    With most AA lines there is a bit more linear progression, could they not be changed to work on x line of spells/disciplines? Or just from the spells in the line from 105 upwards when Synergies came in?
    Fadenye likes this.
  2. Tour Augur

    Changing the AA so that it decays (percent chance, whatever that synergy does, etc) at 106+, and the new rank making it 111+ would be nice way to keep the AA useful and relevant at all ranks / spell used
  3. smash Augur

    Basically you get 0 bonus if you use lvl 110 spell but only got rank 10.

    So gotta save up 200 aa, yes.
  4. Thoxsel Djess' Pet Warrior

    Something like this would be great.
  5. IblisTheMage Augur

    Understanding the design idea behind Synergy 11 not being retroactive would be nice, is seems so flaky, but there must have been an idea behind it... I hooe...
  6. Thraine Augur

    if i had 1cp for everytime i heard someone say this ^^ ...
    IblisTheMage likes this.
  7. Goodn Augur

    ...or just reroll and be a wizard.

    Wizards are (I believe) the only class to have their synergy switched to a completely different spell line AND have the added bonus of being less dps that the old (except in certain situations...see Kizant et al in Caster Class forums).

    Thanks DBG for saving me 200 aas on my wizard! More endurance regen aas here I come!
    Yinla likes this.
  8. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Yep this wizzy is also sticking with Synergy 10. :) With so much fire resists around this expansion I really don't like Braid.
  9. Tevik Augur

    The bard synergy fires off our nukes, so if you buy the new rank, it will fire off the new nukes, but it stops firing off the old nukes. However, the new nukes won't trigger our alliance...

    Total mess.
    Yinla likes this.
  10. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    The thought behind this is not unusual for EQ. For example, Gift of Mana will not work on 106+ spells until you buy the new version.

    It's simple, the Developers want you to have to spend AAs to upgrade. This whole expansion is designed around the idea that if you want to move beyond the previous expansion, you are going to have to grind levels and AAs and work on your gear. In addition, Ring of Scale is hard, so you are going to need to use fewer boxes and mercs and more real players, unless you are "uber".

    Then, they nerfed the old Heroic Adventures. Which is the real spike because now you can't even go back and do some of the older content for those times you can't get a really good group together.

    Ring of Scale has moved EQ more into the "hard core" gaming area. EQ already is harder than most games, in fact, I suggested to SOE years ago that they market EQ as, "You've beaten the other games, are you good enough for a real challenge?".

    Unfortunately, they have failed to understand that EQ must appeal to a broad audience to survive. That includes more "casual" players as well as more "hard core" players when they want to take a break from the tough stuff.

    But, I'm repeating what has been said in many threads since Ring of Scale was introduced. In the attempt to give a challenge for the "uber" players, Daybreak has lost sight of the need to appeal to everyone.
    Gyurika Godofwar and Zhaunil_AB like this.
  11. Sancus Augur

    This is just an educated guess, but:

    When Focus AAs were first introduced, their stated intention was to slow the power gains of casters on a level increase expansion. According to the devs, casters have an advantage early on over melee in that they can go out and buy rank 1 spells vs melee who need new gear/weapons for much of their damage.

    I say "according to the devs" because it initially largely failed. Rank 1 spells in that particular expansion (TDS) were only 5% higher damage than Rank 3 spells from the previous expansion, and, with focus decay, they were worse than previous spells. The AA also weren't very expensive and only added a total of 6% (assuming they actually worked - the Mage ones were broken for nearly 2 years), so their impact was negligible.

    However, with the revamp of focus AAs in EoK and its continuation in RoS, it fits more closely with the design intent IMO. I'm including Synergy with focus AAs because it's in the same tab and, while more specialized, is similar in design in that it makes a specific spell line stronger and requires significant investment to upgrade to the new version of the spell. This corresponded with the effective removal of focus decay, since all gear since TBM works up to 110 and RoS gear already focuses spells up to 115.

    Whether warranted or not, the devs seem intent on preventing casters' spells from being at "full power" immediately on leveling up. Given the choice of how to achieve that, I'd much rather the focus AA system than the focus decay system. The former just requires extra grinding, whereas the latter requires hunting for specific foci which many mid-tier raiding guilds don't even have access to yet (in the case of raiders). The other issue with focus decay is it creates a multitude of weird situations where, depending on modifiers present and kind of arbitrary spell levels, you may be better off with new spells or you may be better off with old spells. Focus AAs correspond much more closely with actual base damage, which makes analyzing the tradeoff between different spells easier for the average player. The benefit of Synergy is a bit more complicated, but still clearer for most classes than focus decay is IMO.

    Obviously I'd prefer the old rank working with new spells automatically, but given my impression of the dev's intent and what they've used in the past (focus decay), I like this system better.
  12. Tevik Augur


    Sure, but your new spells aren't a downgrade if you fail to buy Gift of Mana, they just don't get free casts ever. RoS is the first time I remember ever seeing new abilities be downgrades if you don't spend 200 AA first.
  13. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    These are news to me as i don't really play either class.
    The BRD one i would personally regard as a bug and report as such - from what i have read about BRDs and read in that post, that AA would need to be changed.
    For WIZ i have no idea what's behind it.

    For my CLR i have simply continued to use the old syllable until i have bought the new AA level
    (for 200AAs - quite hefty imo, even totally out of line tbh!)
    Like the above-mentioned GoM, i would expect the lower levels to still work though, even for a WIZ.
    (Meaning that if i bought it to level10 and 100% trigger-rate and spell a triggers it, i expect the AA at level11 with spell b for a trigger-spell to fire based on which spell of the two i am casting, effectively broadening my choice of synergy triggers, instead of shifting it)
    If that's not the case, and ONLY the new spell were to trigger synergy, then i would - again - report that as a bug and expect it to be fixed.
    But that might just be the naive expectation of someone who, yes, has a WIZ - but doesn't play him seriously enough to really speak from first-hand experience.
  14. fransisco Augur

    In RoS, the focus AA function more like a leveling penalty.
  15. Niloiv Elder

    This has been hotfixed. And I can confirm that new RoS insults fulminated my alliance as of Feb 04, 2018.
    Tevik likes this.
  16. Goodn Augur

    Yes, once you buy rank 11 of your synergy, the previous 101-105 version will stop working. You can easily test yourself by memming the last two versions of Cleric Syllable heal when you have rank 11 of the Synergy aa.

    Casting the 103 spell...zip, nada, nothing.

    Casting the 108 spell...synergy fires. (I just tripled checked on my cleric, but please try it yourself.)

    ...maybe a wee bit insulted that you think the entire wizard community would not have checked that first. If shocking vortex fired from rank 11, wizards would have been much quieter...

    The aa descriptions are now very verbose...if you look at gift of mana, it specifically lists all the various levels it fires. The 11th rank of synergy lists nothing but the newest spell. So I think your reasoning behind "it's a bug" is not sound, but hey I'll do it anyway...report it as a bug.
  17. Tucoh Augur

    Speaking of AAs that need consideration before purchasing, the bard AA that increases song speed makes it such that a melody with say:
    /melody Insult -> Aria -> War March -> Insult

    Will frequently break because it's just BARELY faster than the refresh rate on Insult.

    Bards can twist so many songs and the power of songs drops off sharply for most bards after aria/war march that it's advisable not to pick this AA up.

    I did so (blindly) and now my bard is a little gimped because I have to use Insult -> aria -> War March -> Song of Suffering -> Insult.
  18. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    *sigh*
    I have no clue how you can feel "insulted" when i post about my expectation of an AA.
    But you are right - i did not test it prior to posting.
    That's simply because my CLR is the only caster i actually use synergy on, and as i posted i put off switching the spells until i had bought the new focus AA (and once upgraded there is little use to cast the lower level spell =>75k crit compared to 90k crit).
    I did, however, test right now and you are right - the 104 syllable does not trigger the Rk11 AA anymore.
    Reported for a bug too as - like i said - it's against my expectations.
    New levels of AAs should not "change" the existing, only "expand" it - for changes there's new AA-lines...
    Yinla likes this.
  19. Gialana Augur

    All of the synergies I've come across work with abilities that have recast times longer than the global cooldown. This limits how often a character can trigger their synergy. If the synergies triggered off both the 101-105 and 106-110 versions of a spell, it would double how often the synergy could be triggered. A way around this would be to add a timer on the triggering ability, which some classes already have. But that's not something I would want to see because some classes could lose more dps than their group gains from the synergy.

    Back to the OP, how much of an inconvenience earning the 200 AA is definitely depends on what class you have. On my paladin, I continued using the old ability until I had all of my defensives maxed and saved the 200 AA. For the enchanter, I still cast the DD that triggered rank 10 and the DD that triggers rank 11. The order I casted them in changed after I bought rank 11, but there was also not a huge rush to get rank 11. And on the wizard, I won't be buying rank 11.
  20. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    For wizards, a pair of 100AA fireworks-glyphs is actaully a better deal than the rank 11 synergy.

    I doubt that is the intention though...
    I wonder how many wizards have bought the rank 11 synergy, DBG should look that up and take the hint...