Test Update 01/09/2018 - Patch Notes and Discussions

I suspect that the slime quest drop (bone dust infused goo) is taking the spot of the tradeskill slime. I get tons of those.

Have any Bards tested to see if Alliance now functions with 106+ Insults?

It does

[50195/1669] Alliance of Sticks and Stones

Classes: BRD/102

Skill: Percusion, Max Focus: 320%

Mana: 6254

Target: Single

Range: 200'

Resist: Magic -10

Reflectable: No

Focusable: Yes

Casting: 0s, Recast: 5.75s, Timer: 9

Duration: 18s+ (3 ticks) Song, Dispelable: Yes

Max Hits: 3 Matching Spells

1: Increase Spell Damage Taken by 100% to 125% (After Crit)

2: Limit Spells: Group - Venimor's Insult [Group 1243]

3: Limit Spells: Group - Lyrin's Insult [Group 1343]

4: Limit Spells: Group - Hykast's Insult [Group 1443]

5: Limit Spells: [Group 1462]

6: Limit Spells: Group - Kaficus' Insult [Group 1543]

7: Limit Spells: Group - Garath's Insult [Group 1562]

8: Limit Spells: Group - Fjilnauk's Insult [Group 1643]

9: Limit Spells: Group - Tsaph's Insult [Group 1662]

10: Limit Caster: Exclude Self

11: Cast: Broken Bones [Spell 50198] if Max Hits Used

10: Limit Spells: Group - Travenro's Insult [Group 1743]

11: Limit Spells: Group - Sathir's Insult [Group 1762]

12: Limit Max Level: 110 (lose 100% per level)

13: Limit Caster: Exclude Self

14: Cast: Broken Bones [Spell 50198] if Max Hits Used

Someone actually asked me this. He said since it's going to be fixed, that means it wasn't intended to be done with people not keyed. If it wasn't intended, and we know that now, did we just exploit the mission by doing it with some unkeyed people? Some may laugh, but I think it's understandable that people are concerned.

Crasher is missing 1 of its 2 buffs. It should match Crash from EoK.

Here is Crasher. It should have the same proc types as Crash

By the last round of suspension you can say yes.

Can someone please tell me what level will this ability/spell require? Not all of us play stinking enchanters, so try to add more important info. THANK YOU!!

You've misunderstood the patch notes on this. Admittedly they could have chosen better wording.
This change does not impact which abilities can be modified by mass group buff.
This means if the ability was previously MGBable, it will still be MGBable.

You've interpreted it to say:
This change does not impact abilities which can be modified by mass group buff.
Which is not correct. Swapping those two words is very important to the meaning.

Two pet questions for this patch:

Will the pet improvements kill the pets I have?

Will the pets have to be re-summoned to show the improvements?

I've been watching the two Test threads, hoping someone has actually done a Test HA after the scale up...but so far no one has posted...which should give the Devs great pause before implementing such a sweeping change...I'm hoping my folks will go over on /testcopy today so I can make a run.

Devs - you need to rethink what you are doing with scaling HAs. I understand that you may be upset that the xp gain for higher levels is too high given the difficulty. Then fix the xp gain issue. Don't try to change something that (maybe unintentionally) is actually good for the game. These should get easier over time and player power gain.

HAs are tied to progression achievements. These should get easier to do over time. If I am a 110 well group gear character, I should not be having issues with 100 level CotF progression HAs (like the DH Baxter line...which was very rough when introduced). This content is now 4 expansions old, 10 levels lower. I should be able to confidently go through it...or more importantly, help others through it and not have the fact that I've chosen to level hamper my ability to help a fellow player out. This is the part I personally am most worried about as I often finish older expansions after they fall out of the current slot and like to help others out when they get stuck.

Part of the fun of Everquest is that you can go back and do things you missed or could not complete as current content. But you have now driven enough content through HAs (particularly CotF and a good deal of TBM) that scaling them harder hurts EQ's fun quotient.

Your upcoming scaling changes to HAs have a number of folks in my guild worried. We're a family guild that has a number of folks in the 85-100 range. And they have trouble finding groups even in a guild as large as ours. But one of the great (yes, great) things about the Gribbles line of HAs in DH, is that non-power folks can pull together a quick group to attack one or more of these HAs. And if someone over 100 decides to join in (or the over 100 player starts one and lets lower folks in), the HAs isn't so overpowering so that the highest level cannot finish (which is important because actually killing mobs in the mission is pretty worthless without completion). And everyone gets a reward, some currency, and has fun playing the game (...and progresses toward the end game, which keeps them buying stuff).

If the xp gain for a 106 or a 110 player in Gribbles really bugs you, eviscerate the experience for 106+, 110+, whatever you think the line should be...but don't change the current way these missions are scaling for power (unless you plan to scale down...that would be fine).

A Concerned Player

Couldn't agree more

+1

Kind of gotta agree with this.

HA should kind of remain always in the range they were, when they came into the game.

So CoTF = up to lvl 100, instended.
TDS/TBM/EoK = up to lvl 105 in the hps range they were, when they got into game.

I remember what was said when CoTF got out, with their HA, that they were so medium levels could Group with their friends.
All good intentions, however now the difference between levels are now so massive, that mobs in EoK type, rip off the heads

If going to implement these suggested changes, you wll remove the possibily of higher levels grouping with lower levels, while the
lower levels still been they give something to the Group. If the increase of mobs are high, then the lower levels have to stand
in a corner, doing nothing, because they will die, if they do some slight mistake.

IMO, HA, should be like normal Places in an expansion, if the expansion is from lvl 95-100, then mobs should remain there, not suddenly increase in powers, just because there a new expansion out.

If you dont like people go xp in old HA, then decrease the xp gained from them, just like you would do in the normal part of an expansion.

A thing that is very worrying is the change to TBM HP/missions. They have achievements. Would say that 2 or 3 expansions later after they got out, the mission achiements should become easier when people gain more power, now with change, they will not become easier compared to players, they will increase keep the difficulty on how they were when they got out, compared to players.

Just a thought, but the Daybreak team really needs to look at the conflagrant ore drop rate, as others have already stated.

For one, these can only drop off of Golems/Constructs in Ring of Scale. Further frustrating the drop rate, is the fact that most of the golem types in RoS are flagged to drop items for the TS earring quest, and if they drop an item for that, then they do NOT drop the ores.

Please take a look at this, all Golems/Constructs should be dropping the ore even if they drop the quest tradeskill item, and in general there is a signficant lack of them in the expansion in general, and when they do exist they are very much mixed in with other mob types. This is problematic for drops like this, in addition to trying to use spells made for these types of mobs.

Please look into this, and at the very least enable the conflagrant ore to drop from ALL golem and construct types in RoS.

Nope.
Most of the issue is too few oozes as compared to the amount of targets available for the other.
I will add drops to this for February.

See above. This will also increase.

WRONG.
An NPC can drop 22 items. The drop tables for those items are 2 different rolls (heck, 2 different TYPES of rolls... the quest is direct, on the npc, treasure tables (original EQ method), the TS part is Global Loot. So even MORE unrelated.

It does. It's simply to rare with the number of mobs. I'll fix it for February.

Bug: superfluous bard song logging. Glad we have names finally attached to bard songs, but just a heads up (because this is not suitable/ideal for parse data), there are duplicate logs appearing for bard songs:

[Tue Jan 16 23:17:30 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Aria of Begalru Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:33 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Qunard's Aria Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:33 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Qunard's Aria Rk. II> -- duplicate
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:36 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Arcane Ballad Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:39 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Travenro's Song of Suffering Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:42 2018] Bentbard's weapons are tinged with the sound of suffering.
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:42 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Aria of Begalru Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:42 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Aria of Begalru Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:45 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <War March of Dekloaz Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:45 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <War March of Dekloaz Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:48 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Qunard's Aria Rk. II>
[Tue Jan 16 23:17:51 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Arcane Ballad Rk. II>

[Tue Jan 16 23:17:54 2018] Bentbard begins to sing a song. <Aria of Begalru Rk. II>

Thanks for the reply Ngreth, and for looking into it.

While I may be "WRONG" about it, the reality of the situation is that "Simply to rare" translates into... not dropping at all on those type.

This is after killing hundreds of these mobs (Golems that drop TS earring drops) and getting a big goose egg (read none, zero, zilch,etc.) for the ores. This is not just 1 type, or 1 zone, this is across multiple zones and tiers in RoS.

Like I said I'm not disputing your logic, you know the back-end for how this works, but the effective result for me and many others I've talked with is that no one has seen ores off of golems that drop TS earring drops. For golems that do NOT drop a TS earring drop, they are rare, but they do drop. Other way around, its just not happening.

edit: nm read it wrong

I logged into test and it would not load my custom ui and instead went to default ui. However, I created a new /myui by copying the /default ui and then loading in all my mod pieces and that worked fine. So its not all required but something in there is. I predict salt tomorrow.

4% is rare :/ (too rare for the amount of NPC's)
the chance of 0 hits with "hundreds" of kills at 4% is NOT at all insignificant. (at say 500 kills there is 82.5% chance you saw nothing...)

race 608 is the "blob" golem (Cliff Golem) we call it "mudite" but it is what was used for cliff golems since forever. The same looking NPC's in skyfire with the magma texture count.
Race 744 is gargoyle

GEN-LevelRequirement-Min (Level: 100)
GEN-IS-NOT-Rare-NPC
GEN-RaceRequirement-Race477-Elemental (Fire, Ver. 2)
GEN-RaceRequirement-Race744
GEN-RaceRequirement-Race160-Golem (Iksar)
GEN-RaceRequirement-Race164-Golem (Sarnak)
GEN-RaceRequirement-Race608

608 is the race with the TS drop.

(I did not include rare NPC's as there is another table for them with a higher drop rate)