Test Update 09/12/2017 - Patch Notes and Discussion

They should totally make it a fae drake, just to mess with us...


Or if they are nice, give us polymorph-wands for each familiar type...if they work on wiz familiars...?

Wasn't there a wizard npc in Firiona vie that had a fae drake familiar by the way?

Hoping it works as advertised... I'm excited to see the /finditem functionality in game. Thank you for the non-nerf changes.

All you players posting in this thread - and forums in general - Do you really think demanding to see other classes get nerfed is helping us? Or even helping you? Be constructive, consider the broader community!

Looks like the new wizard familiar will be this one
Its pretty much improved and kerafyrm combined: There is no statistical downside to it, as far as I can see.

Don't know if it stacks with other quested familiars though.

The Reluctant Benevolence change does essentially remove it from the game for most Necromancers.

Soulrend and Hemorrhage Essence aren’t very good spells in the Necro toolkit overall. No space for them on the bar, no time to cast them, bad damage and very irregular healing. Don’t even use them for Gift of Deathly Resolve.

Reluctant Benevolence was originally intended as Lifetaps Only, but when Elidroth fixed it from landing on a Target Group instead of being Self only, he noted that it was proccing on things he didn’t intend, but left it alone.

Even just removing the ability for manaless procs to trigger it is going to cut into it a good bit.

Perhaps more irksome than the balance change, is that on average this won’t be kept up with by the playerbase. The old information will linger, and I’ll be deflecting the idea that Necro’s have some impact on group survival for years. Because we won’t now.

Somewhat related, where’s the DoT revamp sitting? There were essentially two main choices, do Necros first or do it with an accelerating pace toward the end, to cut down the time that you have the most DoTs trying to be consistently tossed from the most classes. That isn’t happening. Necro’s aren’t at, but near their peak of DoTs used, and Sham+Dru+Bst+Enc are at the highest uniformly encouraged level of space they’ve been in years prior to changes. Can’t be left to sit like that, not enough space to play with.

Also my 105 Bard doesn’t have the kick skill, not on the character or at a Bard Trainer. Doesn’t show up as an available argument for /autoskill. Can’t play with the Selo’s Kick changes without it.


Also a Set command for the /autoskill command would be nice, especially for monks. Forcibly turning the 2 you want on is less likely to get lost in the spam than a toggle, and I’m guessing being able to swap around is supposed to be part of whats going on with the monk skill attack procs. This might even decrease some of the concerns about it making it harder to access the utilities at will, when combined with the shortish cooldowns on the skill attacks.

Necros, IF future plans have a DPS increase for group and/or raid scenes while requiring less DoTs overall, would you trade RB as it works on live for RB as described in this patch?

The implication being you must choose to do less DPS to output more healing.

Sure, but to my knowledge they don't really work with us on "trades".

I am just thinking about the nerfs from another perspective. If the DoT revamp is still on the books this could be a trade off. Not saying that we ask for it, just that the devs may mandate something must be given up if more DPS in group (which most seem to agree is needed)/raid is granted, healing vs. damage makes sense.

I think that Everquest and this type of "update/patch" is a lot more complicated than you're making it Gnomeland. It's not "simple", and your reference to "guess that the nerfs, etc., don't affect subscription much at all" is inaccurate. Look at the history of the population of this game, and how subscription purchases and cancellations have changed over the years. Customer satisfaction and feedback has had a significant factor in that process, and directly impacted the EQ revenue stream. Consequently, to write that "Threats to quit, etc. are not constructive, and also, from past experience, not believable," seems like you don't follow many business practices, in today's world. Talk to any company's subscription team "specialist" or "supervisor" and ask what they do when someone threatens to "cancel", the company will make adjustments to attempt to keep the customer subscribed, even changing their subscription cost and providing them with bonuses.

History and many business models have shown that companies who listen to their customer base and keep their customers satisfied, tend to do better and continue to succeed. When companies don't incorporate customer satisfaction or feedback into their decision making, their subscription decline, negative news occurs, and perceived loss of confidence (in the company's product, or management) can and has lead their decline. Now if Daybreak Games and the parent company Columbus Nova are only interested in the bottom line, money, then they should actually incorporate the suggested changes of the larger player base, and adjust the updates/changes accordingly.

Everquest, for many of its subscribers and players, has been much more than a simple business or game. For many, EQ has been a dedicated community to them. It has been an engaging form of entertainment and an investment in both intellectual fulfillment and social enrichment. To ignore these thousands of folks, who have invested so much time and money into EQ, would be unprofessional and detrimental.

Yes, it's a computer game, and it is also much more than that. And yes these nerfs and consolidations are only one small part of the larger process, but when small rocks fall, they can create a larger landslide that moves the mountain itself.

Just noticed it includes Improved familiar, have they got rid of the issue with something overwriting it?

How is the stacking these days with bard damage songs and damage familiars? Been a while since I had a bard in a group so I always use damage familiars, I always used to use improved when I had a bard.

No I'm not willing to trade utility for DPS when the DPS will be withdrawn almost immediately after it's given. Using the logic of the DoT changes made so far will result in likely the tripling of necro DPS. That wont last and will result in almost immediate nerfs. Meaning we will trade utility for DPS that only will be actually in game for a very few weeks before it nerfed.

Tripling necromancer DPS would be incredibly overpowered so I would hope it would be changed if it implemented that way, but I would expect they have learned from the other DoT revamps they have already implemented.

So triple DPS then nerfed back to what it is now is obviously not going to make anyone happy. If they settle on a reasonable DPS increase (however they decide to do it) do you feel it is reasonable to sacrifice the current power of RB?

From my perspective, it is unreasonable to expect necromancers to have less spells to cast and increased DPS while nothing else changes.

Haven't had any issues with stuff overwriting familiars, but it was my understanding that until now bard-songs and kerafyrm don't stack and that switching to improved was the smart thing to do if you had a bard.

Guess we now have a single familiar that fits everything.

Previously, the rallosian battle figure would stack with kerafyrm, don't know how it will be now...

It's called Improved Familiar but it's really the same as kera for familiar stats and stacking from what I can tell. And yeah bards have gotten less and less useful for us over the years. It's still worth going improved + aria at the moment but it's not that big of a difference.

It's better this way. There aren't enough bards to go around and when there are they should be in melee groups or necro/mage groups.

Honestly, there’s been so many bard abilities nerfed over the years… I’ve lost count of them all. Most of the abilities nerfed are now “Dead” abilities. “Dead” meaning bards don’t even waste their time using them. And there’s a lot of them.

PLEASE!!!...Don’t even waste your time working on Lure of the Siren’s Song. You guys killed off that ability years ago. Currently, Siren’s Song only works on level 104 mobs and lower. Most game content today have mobs over level 104. Which makes that ability “Dead”. Unless you raise the level cap on it…. Please don’t waste your time working on it. Focus your efforts elsewhere…. A new expansion perhaps.

Pretty good post and thoughtful opinions of the changes.
The one area I do not agree with is on Thought Leech. Its long overdue for these changes. I've had a personal problem with that ability for years. The fact that a SK can run down to 0% mana, hit Thought Leech and have it crit and the SK be full mana is total BS and always has been. Top Sks have well over 150k mana now. There are no other mana return abilities in the game that are even close to that capability. The paladin "variant" is called Marrs gift. It is hard capped at 15k mana return and does not crit. Thats just over 9% of my total mana. Its taken alot of effort to not call for this thing to be nerfed for the last many years, but now that is is finally on the chopping block, good riddance!

My issue isn't that they are posting it here. My issue is that they aren't announcing it or never did, when it involves real money being used. Why is this so hard to understand? You clearly don't play on the TLP server where tons of people actually spent money to buy it.

I'm sorry your class or whatever got nerfed or whatever, but my issue has nothing to do with that. They should have announced it other places. I've said this 5 or 6 times, and every time someone new comes and quotes me as if they never even read what I wrote. It's really common forum etiquette to actually read what people write before quoiting and responding. Just saying.

So far they have learned nothing. I expect the necromancer changes will result in the nerfs to to all dot casting classes. As they bring necromancer back into line with acceptable norms. They have done it this way intentionally. They have allows enchanters, druids, shamans to be overpowered for an expansion and half on purpose once the necromancer changes happen that ends. It's all intentional they allow certain classes to be overpowered DPS wise for a short time and then they return those classes to intended power level.

I am hoping this is the taketh away patch before the new expansion giveth it back ~

They fixed a bug. Normally patch notes are where that is communicated.

This is sop for years with bugs. They may have never know bout it to now or what was causing it. And 90% of the time they never say anything in advance bout a bug fix like this. In fact most post bout bug fixes that dervs post that ya this is a bug and we are fixing it are started by players saying its a bug or such and they come in and post on it.

So bottom line unless a player comes on and post that x thing in game is bugged you will almost never see a post on it till a patch and the patch saids x thing is fixed.