Test Update 06/13/2023 - Patch Notes and Discussions

Yes, but the 1 should be roughly equal to the output of 3 probably.

[53876/16168] Attack of the Warders XII
Classes: BST/254
Skill: Abjuration
Target: Single
Range: 200'
Resist: Unresistable, No Sanctification
Can Reflect: No
Focusable: Yes
Casting: 0s
1: Summon Pet: bstSwarm12 119 x 3 for 80s
1: Summon Pet: AASwmBst00981L120SpRk12 119 x 1 for 80s

correct its 1 pet now. I did some testing on live and test with it. the data was showing the 1 single pet was doing as much if not a little more on test then all 3 on live atm.

As a recommendation from the TLP forum, reposting here for review. Some comments have indicated the information and potential fix may not be adequate to address the issue until the EoK expansion, however the impact of the change is still relevant based on the post below. This response was made via mobile so not all images may have copied over accurately. Original post is:

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...6-13-23-test-patch-notes.291307/#post-4230060

Scope: Address and quantify the spell damage and usage of the Magician “of the many” line as a result of the June 13th, 2023 Test patch notes. This post will focus on the following spells: Shock of Many, Jolt of Many, and Clash of Many and primarily impacts TLP players (such as those on the Aradune server who are mid Underfoot). Additional impacts to damage done by all pets impacted by the updated pet AAs should be reviewed, but that data was not reviewed and is outside the scope of this review.

Patch Note: - “Updated all spells in the Shock of Many spell line to have only 3 damage tiers and to require significantly fewer in-combat pets per tier.”

Assumption: Given that multiple classes swarm pet AAs are being impacted by other patch notes, I expect updates to this mechanic are going to be changed regardless of feedback. Therefore, proposed resolutions to the damage and usage gaps created by the update will be focused on updating the “of the many” spells and not removing the swarm pet AA updates.

The TLDR:
The change to the “of the Many” spell line has had a drastic impact on Magician damage on TLPs resulting in, conservatively, a 40% reduction in overall damage output in a raid environment. To resolve this, update “of the Many” maximum damage values of Shock, Jolt, and Clash “of the Many” to the following values: (see “Supporting Documentation” below for details)

As noted below in the “Resolution” section, the proposed updates are based on making a consistently playable class throughout the impacted expansions / levels. The proposed updates have a precedent set from the past 4 expansions (starting at live) based on a damage comparison of “Bolt of…” to “...of the many.”

Supporting Documentation:

Support: Damage done by Shock of Many, Jolt of Many, and Clash of Many has been reduced significantly due to the change. As an example, Jolt of Many (level 82), at a maximum of 10 pets, has been reduced from a base damage of 24,025 to 6,162, a ~74% reduction on the spell tooltip. Other “of the many” spells, such as those from the past 4 expansions, have not been impacted by the patch changes as their maximum damage remains unchanged

In a raid environment with relatively few mechanics, the 74% reduction in Jolt of Many is resulting in, conservatively, at least a 40% reduction in overall damagewhen parsing out all damage done by the Magician (swarm pets, raid procs, static pet, etc). An example of this is located below this section.
Unlike “of the many” spells starting at 92, these spells added all ranks together to calculate the damage output resulting in the 24,025 number listed. Starting at 92, damage was increased per rank to compensate for the removal of the additive effect.

Resolution: Update the base damage of the 3 most impacted “of the many” to be comparable to live numbers. For the past 4 expansions (starting at live and going backwards) “of the many” is 2.226 times the amount of the respective “Bolt of…” spell in that xpac. The “Bolt of…” was used as the comparative nuke as Spears and other nukes are not available in the SoF and SoD/UF expansions.This results in the updated damage numbers posted in the “TLDR” portion of this post. Support for the 2.226 multiplier is listed below:

[IMG]

Raid damage output reduction example based on a relatively stable, Underfoot era boss with proposed “of the many” damage decrease.

[IMG]

*The Rumbling Servant damage located here is due to the initial few damage caused when casting the spell. It is likely a proc went off, or other mechanic, to put this number at ~1594, however the 0.03% impact in this example is statistically insignificant.

Broooooo why??????????? It's so much more needed in Abysmal Sea.

Yeah, there was a problem with the query I originally used and 23,24,and 40 didn't show (I was not allowing for blank records in a linked table)And adding 40 shifted the old 40 to 41.

And yes, I can look into other options for some of the slots that are not as effective as intended. Like slot 1.

Also, at this time, a Raid banner is not an option. Not because we don't want to do it, but that we don't have the game code for it. It is something we have considered, but not something that has made the cut.

We used the feedback of which zones as given to us by players. You have a different opinion from the players that made the suggestion we used.

In his defense, I will say that I have seen several threads over the years about how horrible (I avoided saying Abysmal intentionally) of a hub zone Abysmal Sea is because of it's lack of sanctuary (understandable with epic fights) and parcel

I lived there when it came out and the only thing I remember players not liking about AB Sea was the difficulty in finding the NPC you want due to boat levels.

After all GOD (the Ab Sea expansion) came out long long before parcels did in VOA. At least 6 years. And with the magus in Ab Sea its really not that hard to bounce to a zone with parcel merchant.

What feedback? Abysmal Sea makes all kinds of sense, maybe too much sense. I get that the two new additions are for TLPs, but there's nothing wrong with saying "I'll put it on the list when we get to the next round of parcel vendor updates" rather than what you said.

Honestly, if a zone has a bank, it should have parcel services.

Who are you asking?

I'm sorry...are the Parcel Police going to arrest you if you also add one to AS?

Every "hub" zone or expansion start zone needs bankers and parcel merchants at the VERY least.

Some suggestions:

SPA 124 Focus:
I like the SPA 124 focus if it's supplemented with another focus. Because of the stacking issues discussed elsewhere, it won't provide any DPS increase to caster groups with a Bard, but it will provide a small increase to poorly supported caster groups. The focus is notably more powerful for DoTs than for DD casters, but because it's already a common effect (and a larger permanent modifier is available), I don't think that's an issue.

Supplemental Spell Focus:
Originally when I saw the spell data, I thought the unconstrained 15% spell haste would provide a small benefit to casters. Now that it's limited to 3+ second cast time spells, which for DD casters are already at the 50% haste cap (DoTs are not always at that cap), the new banner will do very little for DoT caster DPS and nothing for DD caster DPS if in fully supported groups.

I'd add an SPA 528 focus, which won't have any spell stacking issues. SPA 528 is the most direct spell analogue to SPA 482, although it would only be additive with focus AAs/banestrike/luminous restless ice. Given that, if your goal was a 5-10% DPS increase overall, I'd shoot for something like a 15% focus (this would be about a 6-7% increase for DoT classes and a bit less for Mages/Wizards given it wouldn't focus pets and procs, respectively). Another option is SPA 461 which is stronger for DDs than for DoTs and similarly doesn't have (many) stacking issues, but it'd need to be a smaller modifier (no more than 10%) and would only be additive with SPA 461 passive DoT AAs. SPA 461 will work better with Wizard SPA 303 modifiers, as they don't scale with base damage but are multiplied by SPA 461. To be clear: I am only suggesting one of these two modifiers be added.

Hundred Hands Effect:
I'd also consider adding a small Hundred Hands Effect (SPA 182) between 5 and 10%. This would do basically nothing for well supported melee groups, but would provide a small HHE supplement for groups lacking Bards and/or Beastlords (though the effect is different, it's conceptually along the same lines as SPA 124 providing a degree of support for suboptimal groups).

Pets:
This aura doesn't land on pets, and that's fine given it would be way too strong if it focused swarm pets. That said, it would be nice if it gave a little boost to pets given they account for a decent portion of some class's DPS. One option is allowing the aura to land on primary pets but not swarm pets (this is possible - Theft of Essence has this logic). Primary pets already have access to buffs, so the same stacking concepts are generally applicable. They'd mainly benefit from the SPA 482 component (and HHE if added).

The other option would be to add one of the pet-boosting SPAs that get applied to pet owners, boosting pets without the aura landing on them. The viable options are really SPA 218 (pet crit chance) or 474 (pet crit damage). Pet damage is pretty easy to calculate and consistent across classes, so at a simplistic level classes with Companion's Fury have a 40% or 50% crit rate (only boosted by Glyph) and a 520% (170% + 350%) crit damage mod (modified by Glyph & player crit dmg SPAs). A 78% crit damage modifier (SPA 474) translates into a 7.5% DPS increase (78% / 520% * 50% = 7.5%). A 6% crit chance modifier (SPA 218) would do about the same (((520% * 56%) + (100% * 44%)) / ((520% * 50%) + (100% * 50%)) = 8.1% DPS increase). Because not all portions of the hit crit, the actual increase would be a bit lower, but still reasonable. To be clear, I am only suggesting one of these; it doesn't really matter which.

Disclaimer:
I just wanted to acknowledge that I know in terms of balance, melee are the ones that are performing the worst. That said, a banner that's only available 6 months of the year isn't a fix for that, and part of achieving its goal (making raids easier 6 months in) is increasing DPS. The suggestions above are intended to help do that in a more uniform/consistent way.

It would be nice to have, as well as having the Guild Lobby Magus have a direct port to Abysmal Sea (and vice versa).

Good to know, thanks for the info.

I understand it is difficult to implement raids being able to plant and teleport to a raid banner, but it should be trivial to let the effects apply to everyone.

Arguably there should not need to be any membership checks at all, as presumably everyone in the instance is part of the raid. Just having the aura apply to all friendly entities in range should be simple to implement with no special code.

As a bonus I figure it may help to reduce raid lag if the server no longer has to constantly do membership checks on 54 people every few seconds.

So on TLPs you can plant the new banner one month after an expansion release? Did I read that right?

Would it be possible to make the superior banner plantable with just 7 people in a guild (that makes it more accessible to those in open raid alliances) and make the banner similar to a COP aura that hits everyone in a certain range (but make the range really large and stay up for an hour)?

I don't know code well, but I would think there is code that can be borrowed from each of these functions that are already in game to make it work. And hopefully it wouldn't be such a departure from what there is now to actually make it possible.

That's how I read it, just not on Vaniki.

Well, Abysmal Sea should have a parcel vendor, and it should be a fast camp/freeze buff timer zone. It's a tradeskill/quest hub, there's no combat there, it should be similar pok

Abysmal Sea should have a parcel vendor. It makes me sad that it does not have one because I'm a TS type of person and still go there a lot .