Test Update 03/08/17 - Patch Notes and Discussion

Discussion in 'Test Update Notes and Bug Roundup' started by EQ Dev, Mar 8, 2017.

  1. EQ Dev Developer

    March 08, 2017
    _____________________


    *** Items ***

    - Corrected the spelling of Hero's Band.
    - Extruded Underfoot Diamond now stacks to 100.
    - Added Brass Resonance to Circlet of Umbra and the Invested Circlet of Umbra.
    - Corrected the description on a number of items that are no longer used in tradeskills but do not have a item conversion option.


    *** Tradeskills ***

    - The tradeskill trainers in Crescent Reach will train you in their recipes if you are above the skill that the training offers.
    - The merchants in Abysmal Sea that offer the free tradeskill quests to help them and eventually give you the secrets to refining items will now train you in their recipes and the recipes of the quests that require item turn ins when you request the quest from them and you have earned the refinement ability.
    - Jewelers can now select their jewelry tool using the convert item button as well as their jewelry bag.


    *** Quests And Events ***

    - Run, You Fools! (Group) - Fixed an issue that could cause the completion of the "By The Power of Dead Skulls" achievement in this mission to be unreliable. It should be more reliable now. If you let Taros to get the final hit on enough targets, you should get the achievement.
    - The heroic adventures On Behest of the Emperor and Others' Things no longer share a replay timer.
    - The Prince (Raid) - Added specific message when the Prince has become fully enraged.
    - Unstable Creation (Raid) - This longer requires 18 players to trigger once House of Thule has been open on that server for 3 months or more.
    - The Blade of Sirrik (Quest) - The Gleaming Serrated Blade can now drop from any black reaver in the City of Mist.
    - Fippy is restless again. Find a sloshed gnoll in plane of knowledge to give Fippy a hand. Squarl, Heartfire, Grogers, Donaskz, Bonefork, Zehn, Folkar, Niteshaid, Oruatyrim, Wilbus, Spiffy, and Grand, members of Silent Redemption and one friend form the Brell server helped design this mission at SOE Live.
    - Lowered the level of the ballista in one of the Plane of Health errands to make it so they can be killed at a reasonable pace by lower level characters.
    - Wanderer Astobin in the Plane of Knowledge now offers Spell: Instinctual Panic as one of the rewards for an Ethereal Parchment.
    - Thin Strands of Golden Silk should drop on non-progression servers.
    - Lost Dungeons of Norrath reward points have been increased for more difficult adventure types.
    - - Kill count type adventures have not changed.
    - - Collect type adventures now reward 20% more points.
    - - Boss type adventures now reward 50% more points.
    - - Hostage rescue type adventures now reward 75% more points.


    *** Spells ***

    - Fixed an issue where pets summoned with certain levels of Enhanced Minion had incorrect Cloaks of Enhancement equipped:
    - - Beastlord, Magician, and Necromancer pets between level 86 and 105 with Enhanced Minion XV and XVI
    - - Beastlord, Magician, and Necromancer pets between level 81 and 85 using Enhanced Minion VII - XII
    - - Magician and Beastlord pets between level 71 and 75 using Enhanced Minion I and II
    - Druid - Reduced the efficiency of some Damage over Time spells that were combined in last month's update.
    - Druid - Lowered the damage dealt by all spells in the Chill of the Natureward line.
    - Shaman - Converted Falhotep's Malosenia and Livio's Malosenia to cast the highest rank you know of their component spells. You will now be charged the correct cost for the DoT they use. Higher ranks of these spells have lower recast times.
    - Shaman - DoT spells that were consolidated in the last update are now less efficient and will do less damage than before. They will still do substantially more damage than before they were consolidated.
    - Shaman - Corrected a problem that made Sephry's Malady (and earlier spells in the line) do less damage per tick than Breath of Hemocoraxius (and earlier spells in that line).


    *** AA ***


    *** NPCs ***

    - It is no longer possible to spawn infinite black reaver NPCs in City of Mist by setting up a situation where the encounter cannot spawn the unique NPC because it's already up.


    *** Mercenaries ***


    *** Collections ***


    *** Progression Servers ***

    - Event NPCs in Veksar, The Halls of Betrayal (ChardokB), The Caverns of Exile (SoldungC), and The Plane of Mischief will be treated as bosses.


    *** Miscellaneous ***

    - Players can now get onto the floating ruins of Atrebe's Lab while in the non-instance version of Korsha (not applicable for raids).
    - Veksar, The Halls of Betrayal (ChardokB), and The Caverns of Exile (SoldungC) now have load balancing enabled.
    - All Legacy of Ykesha zones have load balancing enabled.
    - The number of characters necessary to trigger a new load balanced zone (pickzone) has been adjusted to better reflect the amount of combatable population in each zone. In the vast majority of cases, the threshold has been lowered, meaning it will be easier to trigger the new pickzone, requiring fewer characters in a zone to do so, than before the update.
    - Additionally, when a pickzone's population drops below the threshold, it may lock. Players will be alerted when a pickzone locks and will have 15 minutes to leave the zone before it closes. If players do not leave, they will get ported to the main zone after the time expires.
    - Fixed an issue that could cause Address Book files with invalid names to get generated in the client directory.
    - Fixed an issue where the LF Players information wouldn't properly display for the guild that is looking for players. Search Guilds was unaffected and would still show the guild in the search results.
    - Changed the Chat color description for 'Membership Restriction Messages' to 'System Messages' to properly reflect what they're actually used for. This aligns with the Chat Filter 'System Messages'.


    *** UI ***

    - Added the item overflow window available through /itemoverflow. This window will be utilized in the future.
    - Fixed a bug that could cause an item description to not properly appear for some abilities.
    - Added the ability to enable the display of timestamps in your chat windows.
    - - The display of timestamps defaults to off but can be customized per window.
    - - Available formats are hh:mm:ss, hh:mm, or mm:ss.
    - - The default color of timestamp text matches the color of the chat channel it corresponds to. This setting can be toggled and the timestamps can instead display in a uniform custom color per window.
    - - Tell windows can also have their timestamp settings customized like normal chat windows.
    - Fixed a crash issue when a character had too many zone lockouts.


    *** Previously Updated ***

    - Some spells that should be available when Planes of Power opens are now available when Planes of Power opens on progression servers.
    - Phinigel - Fixed an issue that was causing an inability to access to Plane of Hate instance on Phinigel.


    - Changed -

    EQUI.xml
    EQUI_ItemOverflowWnd.xml


    - The EverQuest Team
    gotwar likes this.
  2. EQ Dev Developer

    This downtime for this update is taking longer than expected. We'll keep you posted.

    Edit: Servers are now up and unlocked. Thank you for your patience!
  3. Fancy Elder

    So..just gonna ignore necros for another year yeah ?
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  4. Nicorus Elder



    I kinda hope so, shaman dots on prog servers now do less damage than they did before the consolidation in addition to being not stackable. It's better to be ignored than nerfed I guess.
    PathToEternity likes this.
  5. Fancy Elder

    They're trying to use one patch for what amounts to two games..its like they just have a slider they're using and adjusting it for lvl 105 and hoping it all works out for anyone below that.
  6. RangerGuy Augur

    You guys started working on dot revamps a year ago and still haven't done the premire dotting class. You have made the debuff cap issue 10 times worse and now have adps or healer classes with one and done dots that will probably end up in a 1 v 1 basis being better then necro dots because of necro long reuse tools. Way to go.
  7. Grig-zek New Member



    Those are all quotes from AFTER the 2/15 patch that 'fixed' this problem, and it doesn't look like it was addressed in this patch. Any idea when/if this issue will be corrected? Thanks.
  8. Thaargor New Member

    what if you are camping a named for several hours and then suddenly you get 15 minutes notice that your pickzone is shutting down. that seems rather unreasonable.
    Hiladdar likes this.
  9. Derd Augur

    The warning comes at 15 minutes but nothing says you can't do a /who every now and then and notice that the population has dropped.
    fransisco likes this.
  10. Sikanle Lorekeeper

    The timer for a pick zone to poof should at least be long enough for your PHs to respawn and, if a named spawns, time to kill the named.

    25 mins??
    Hiladdar likes this.
  11. v01d Journeyman

    Quit screwing with picks.

    What you had in January of 2017 worked just fine. Stop fixing what isn't broken, and rollback all of these pick changes to what you had in January 2017.

    Every change you have made to picks since January 2017 has reduced the effectiveness of the mechanic with respect to the problem it was made to solve.

    Consider that deeply, DBG: You're consciously making the solution worse and working AGAINST the intended problem picks are meant to solve. You're literally working against your own solution. Stop it.

    ROLL BACK PICK CHANGES TO JANUARY 2017.
    Hiladdar likes this.
  12. Kinadorm Augur

    The mana cost of the spell should be reduced to reflect this. The original mana cost included the full cost of the spells it cast plus a premium for being a combo spell.

    Why are the new shaman DoT's so much less efficient than the original DoT's? Every other class that was updated received an increase in the efficiency of their spells. Some of the new mana costs decrease efficiency by as much as 60%. Please reconsider the mana costs and make the DoT's at least as efficient as they were prior to the upgrade.
    Gaol, Sowslow and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  13. Raeff the Druid Lorekeeper

    Ridiculous that you have made the new druid dots less efficient and less powerful. Even after the recent changes, druid's could, at most, take on 2 mobs at once in LC and places like it. And then, ONLY if there is room to snare and root without getting adds, and ONLY if said mobs could be snared/rooted and didn't summon. Try being a druid and killing those Drachnid in LC - geez. And, now you limit our output in two ways, by both limiting DoT dps and mana efficiency? Terrible. Just as the class was getting to be fun - but by no means OP - to play again. Truth is, in order for any kind of balance to be offered to druids, we still need increases in our mana regen, more tools to recover mana quickly, damage shields and mitigation shields that make some kind of difference, and further increased DPS and efficiency of our DD and recursive healing spells. AND we need you to leave our current DoTs as they are now, before this patch on Test. Even with 16.2 K AAs, and decent group gear I can't afford to cast more than one or two DoTs in group - and even then they are of dubious value...........since my mana goes down so quickly.

    Geez - my BST gets far better mana regen than my druid - and druid is a pure caster! And, don't even get me started on mana recovery - our stupid bear spell really sucks. Stop nerfing a class that you made just barely competitive in a recent patch. Ridiculous, especially when I still see mages and SKs taking on multiple mobs in every EoK zone with very little worry and very little down time AND no fear of summoning or non root/snare mobs - just MOLO for the win. Druids simply can't do that, even with recent changes. Why rollback on changes that only make us modestly better?
    Drogane and Tatanka like this.
  14. Ngreth Thergn Developer

    A player noted to me that the "Zueria Slide" convertible item is not in a lore group.

    Zueria Slide: Nektulos
    Zueria Slide: Dreadlands
    Zueria Slide: Skyfire
    Zueria Slide: Stonebrunt
    Zueria Slide: Great Divide
    Zueria Slide: North Ro

    I will be fixing this, but it is important that you only keep one if you get more. If you have more than one when this fix goes live on test, you will be denied at login and will need CS assistance to delete the extra items.
  15. kthehammy Elder


    There is a very large majority of the player base that does not visit these forums and will not see this message. I would suggest at the very least you make this more well known by putting a warning at login before this goes live, or come up with another way to make the change.

    I would guess maybe 1% of the affected will have seen your msg and take action, the rest will be angry and confused at why they are now "banned" which is how they will see it when they are denied at login.
    adetia and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  16. Gyurika Godofwar Augur



    You should make a point of putting this in the patch notes for the Live patch on the patcher when people log in. I would wager less than 10% of the EQ population reads this forum and you're going to have a large hassle for CS if you don't spread the word.
  17. Ngreth Thergn Developer

    Well, this will only effected Test server as these items aren't yet on live servers, so the pool is much smaller.

    And, it seems things changed at some point, either during my absence, or I forgot! If you have duplicate lore items, the game is going to delete one. So the only risk to players now is if they have aguments in more than one, they are probably going to loose some aguments.

    And yes, I do have a patch note prepared.
    Felicite likes this.
  18. Raeff the Druid Lorekeeper

    The proposed Druid DoT changes on Test are ridiculous. Druids have been in such a bad place for so long - it is simply sadistic to cut back on what is only a modest increase in our viability.

    Prior to the recent DoT changes, Horde of the Aculeids RK 2 cost 1293 mana to cast and did 1343.5 base damage per tic (1183 - 1504 range). Since it lasts for 54 seconds (9 tics), before any focus extensions (and excluding AA that help with DoT damage), that equates to 12,091.5 damage. That equates to a damage/mana ratio of 9.35. Piss poor, right?

    The new Horde of Aculeids Rk 2 (before the impending nerf on Test) cost 8925 mana to cast, and will do 12125 damage per tic - making a total of 109,125 damage across 54 seconds. That equates to a dmg/mana ratio of 12.22. This change was welcomed and made druids modestly better. This for a class that is universally scoffed at in regards damage, and value to group. (And keep in mind that this was only one of our DoTs - not all received the equivalent boosts. Moreover, such DoTs still take between 1 second and 3 seconds to cast AND one of them - our best DoT - has an 18 second recast timer).

    Now the Test nerf makes this modest gain nominal at best - perhaps not even worth it. On Test, the Rk 2 Horde costs 11, 653 mana to cast! Yikes! And the base damage stays the same. Ridiculous! Now the damage to mana ration is 9.37 or so. This is only .02 more efficient than the original spell - which put Druids in the laughable range in regards damage! Truly terrible.

    Please take a careful look at the state of Druids (and Shaman) before making these proposed changes. Sure, we can now kill a few mobs faster than we could before - but only a few, and again, ONLY if they are not snare/root immune. But this eats our mana so quickly that it makes no sense to even use it outside a few rare instances. Our ability to molo, which was made nominally possible by the recent changes is now being nerfed - after just a few weeks. Crazy!

    And, of course, the Test nerfs cut the damage of Chill of the Copsetender by 25%. Geez! This is a spell that is only used in moloing - it takes over a minute to enter into its larger damage phase.....and even that is now 25% less than what was NOMINALLY necessary to make the spell attractive. Frankly, even now, it was often better simply to renew one of the other DoTs - damage was better and faster. Silly to nerf that spell.

    IF you MUST lower the damage on our new DoTs by 25%, lower if by a lesser amount. 10% or 15%. But increase efficiency their by 45%, or more. And consider making at least one of the Druid lines an instant cast. That way we can weave these into group play (likely only a few because they still won't be cheap I'm terms of time and mana cost), and then we can still snare/root molo, even if a little slower.

    Frankly, even these concession are a slap in the face for a class that is under played and under-supported.

    I have to wonder why the DEVS have it in for the druid class. We pay our money like everyone else.

    I'm imploring you. Don't do this.
    Drogane likes this.
  19. Raeff the Druid Lorekeeper

    Really, these changes are infuriating.

    Look, for instance, at the BST DoTs to see just how ridiculous they are. To be clear, I have no wish to see BST DoTs changed or nerfed, but it is crazy that a hybrid caster with a great pet and reasonable melee damage (and with FAR better mana regen and recovery) has better DoTs than Druids. And the BST DoTs are instant. All of them.

    Glistening Blood Rk2 is instant cast, does 14128 (base) damage instantly, and will do 12,135 damage per tic, for 7 tics. Total base damage is 99, 073. The spell costs 8921 mana to cast! The damage to mana ratio is 11.11!

    In comparison to the Druid's Horde of the Aculeid (on Test), the BST DoT makes the druid one look paltry. (The damage to mana ratio of Horde is 9.37!). This is ridiculous! Druids are pure casters - we shouldn't be 25% behind in efficiency to a hybrid class. Nor should we be behind in base damage and casting time! Even without the Test nerf, Horde's damage to mana ratio is only just over 12. Otherwise known as about 11% better dmg/mana ratio to the BST DoT. And given that the BST DoT is instant (and does instant damage) and the Druid DoT takes some 2 - 3 seconds to cast (depending on focus), this is far less than a 10% increase in DPS over the BST DoT. Once the TEST nerfs go into effect, then the Druid DoT becomes FAR less efficient that the BST DoT (BST DOT ratio is 11.11, the TEST Druid DoT ratio is 9.37). Geez!

    I am certain I can find other examples to make the case. Druid damage and utility has been so far behind for so long, that you DEVS have lost all perspective. Frankly, If you read this and think I want other classes nerfed, you have missed the point entirely.

    It harms other classes not a whit to rebuild and renew the Druid (and Shaman) classes. (And yes, give Necros new DoT damage - which I am sure WILL be incredible and SHOULD be incredible).

    Don't nerf our new DoTs. Don't nerf other classes.

    This change on Test is completely misguided.

    Frankly, even if DoTs stay as they are today (per-Test nerf), Druids are still only a modestly able class, and need significant new changes/improves to simply make them viable.

    Please don't make the DoT changes on Test go live. Ever!
    DimaREZBANKED and Drogane like this.
  20. smash Augur

    You quote bst dots.
    Beast dots = instant because melee also, and beast also has a lot less AA to improve dots compared to druids, if you take a look.
    When you look at dots, you should look beyound basic dots, and take AA into account as well. Which i am sure devs do
    Sindaiann likes this.