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

and synergy if you're going to go that far

[50008] Expansive Disharmony III
Hate: 8797 -> 2419

[50130] Expansive Distraction III
Hate Mod: +14641 -> +14641



Is this discrepancy just an oversight, or are SK's really going to escape the well-deserved nerf to tank AE aggro?


The nerf to Roar of the Lion kinda sucks. The ability was already a little over-rated due to stacking issues and just not being that much damage.

What a garbage patch.
First of all, you are still reducing tank mitigation % ?
Once again, warriors are hit the most by this. 6 % mitigation that's a joke. Yes, I know that if you had let DW % untouched, it would be more % than shield and board and it would have been wrong, but still 15 % for warrior and 10 % for DW would have been better. Knight at 12 % for shield was ok. Can I have some knight self healing to compensate for all these losses ?
Secondly, why this massive nerf to warrior AE aggro ?
Harmonious expanse is useless, 2,5 k hate around you is rubbish.
Wade Into Battle nerfed, I don't see how much the hate has been reduced, but if it's to 3 k hate too it's just useless.
So what do we have left ? A 45 sec refresh disc producing 12,5 k hate,
Woot, if you lack SK in your raid (because they are afk or whatever) don't count on warriors to be able able to produce anymore enough AE aggro for DPS to burn on adds around (high end raiding guild happening). Paladins will be as good as warrior on AE aggro, if not better.
Lastly, congrats you just made it way harder for lower-mid tier raiding guild that try to finish EoK. These guilds having less DPS are tanking for a way longer time, and you just reduced their ability to stay alive.

Warriors received 2 harmonious while knights received one alliance and one harmonious. Knight alliance stuff doesn't move, so no reason that warriors get penalized with 1 less ability than knights received in EoK.
And why I'm not surprised to see the tank mentality on these boards looking at what other have and asking to nerf more what others have. This ability doesn't warn you to do your tanking job.

I take it this is aimed at AB

Think so too, loading chars should be near instantaneous but not on AB. Would like a message regarding zoning too, "crash or still loading?", its hard to tell on AB...

I forgot two things.
1) AC impact in today's EQ on mob attack is way less than before. + 1000 AC doesn't change hit mob distribution of a raid boss for example. So tanks are loosing way more seeing a reduction of 8 % mitigation applied to mobs hits than getting 6-26 % increase to softcap AC, which was yet low, and anyway won't change anything against modern mobs with their insane attack values.
2) Are shamans and druids still going to top parses in raids doing as good as pure DPS classes for a long time again ? Or is that intended ?

[QUOTE- The Rescue (Quest) - Hailing Agilica will now properly cause the two Darkvine guard NPCs to spawn.][/QUOTE]
Is this by chance a script fix that might help with other mobs that fail to pop like the one to finish Plane of War progression. For that one (Edmund's Plight) Iceclad should pop in Frostcrypt when you pick up the ground spawn. Since they fixed the missing spawn the mob does not pop and there is no way to finish the progression.

The gap between tanks and other classes survivability had grown way too large. More nerfs to defensive stance was easily forseeable(should have never been in game at all). Tank Harmonius abilities were also poorly implemented and should have never been in game at all. The current nerfs to them seem highly suspect at moment though as SK one still produces ridiculous AE aggro, but going to assume this was an oversight. Not sure though with the War single target still being good too Lol. Not sure how any SK or War could possibly be moaning that they were hit the hardest. If things stay as is SK's made off the best by far regardless. I also find it beyond hilarious that any War would be pointing a finger at Druid or Shaman DPS. SMH, some never learn

Lol....what?

You really like to exaggerate. Feel free to have our 2 crappy AE abilities, maybe you have purposefully ignored how easily they are ran over by Warrior and SK abilities.

Paladin are getting F@#$%^ in the agro department!!!!! period. If your class was getting their agro treated like that you would also. Paladin version lost or will loose over 5K hate per proc and 8 less counters. Taking that from the tank class with the worst agro abilities is just /boggle.

I get that you want to reduce the amount of times clerics use their mana restoration abilities but I think you went too far. Increasing the timer to 20 minutes already ensures that an entire team of raiding clerics (6 at maximum for most raid teams though the average is around 4) will only get to use it once per event (assuming that events are designed to last no more than 30 minutes).

Currently, assuming a cleric tossed a Quiet Miracle out every time it was available over the course of a 30 minute event (though most events don't even last that long and no one needs mana until they die or a long event is starting to drain the casters of mana), each cleric could cast it 2-3 times. If these changes go through, that will go down to 1 (or 0 for reasons I will explain shortly). If we go with the average of 4 clerics, that's going from a potential 8-12 Quiet Miracles per event to 4. 4! And that's just the effect the increased recast timer of 20 minutes will have.

But instead of going with just an increased recast timer, you decided to introduce a penalty in the form of a health/mana loss to the cleric so it's more of a sacrificial ability and linked the timers for Quiet Miracle and Veturika's Perseverance, the latter of which was introduced due to concerns that we would not have a mana restoration ability to use on ourselves (as Quiet Miracle being targetable made it something we used on other people -- as helping others is something the class naturally does). So why might Quiet Miracle use be reduced to 0 as a result of these additional changes? The reason is the linked timers. The health/mana penalty itself might affect when clerics use Quiet Miracle but if we're above say 60-80% mana and someone else died and needs a Quiet Miracle, then that's fine (not ideal, but fine). The linked timers, however, mean that if a cleric provides someone with a Quiet Miracle then drops dead themselves 5 minutes later and needs to use Veturika's Perseverance to restore enough mana to be of use to the raid, it will not be available. So unless the cleric is certain that they won't drop dead on that event, they will likely NOT use Quiet Miracle no matter how badly someone else needs it. That might seem selfish, but more people will end up dying if the cleric doesn't have mana to start buffing and healing after they get rezzed than from no DPS from a caster or no healing from a paladin for a few minutes.

If you keep the timers unlinked, a cleric could use Veturika's Perseverance to negate the health/mana penalty of the Quiet Miracle cast. They could do that, of course, but it is a waste because then they have just used up 2 mana recovery resources to perform what is essentially 1 action (as the cleric is just restoring the mana they lost from using another ability and not netting any mana for themselves) and left themselves without a Veturika's Perseverance to use if they die within 20 minutes, which could potentially be for the rest of the event.

If they don't use Veturika's Perseverance to restore the mana lost from a Quiet Miracle cast and eat the mana loss, saving it for after a death, assuming each of our 4 average clerics actually dies in the event, then each will still only get to use Veturika's Perseverance once per event on average to go along with the 4 times they can collectively use Quiet Miracle, assuming they are high enough on mana to eat the mana loss to provide it to someone else. If a cleric gets run over by adds early in the event and dies, for instance, they may never have enough mana to safely give it away to someone else and there goes a potential Quiet Miracle cast.

What I am getting at is that you're already causing a big enough reduction in collective potential uses of both Quiet Miracle and Veturika's Perseverance by just increasing the recast timers and adding in the health/mana penalty. You don't need to link the timers as well, which may end up reducing Quiet Miracle use to 0 unless the cleric is willing to risk the availability of Veturika's Perseverance upon death. Is a potential 8 uses of Quiet Miracle and Veturika's Perseverance combined per event for 4 clerics really too much that you need to reduce it more? Keep in mind that Quiet Miracle may not even be used that much depending on the clerics' mana pool at the time it is is requested and whether the cleric is saving Veturika's Perseverance for a potential death or not, so they may use both even less than that even if you leave the timers unlinked.

Be careful with this heavy handed patch Devs.

Thousands of players have invested years, if not decades, into improving their character's abilities and skills to make them phenomenal at what they do. We have worked on perfecting and streamlining our character's AAs,Skills/Spells, and Abilities to meet the new challenges that each expansion/event provides. Yet, when you all decide to consolidate/nerf AAs/Skills/Abilities in order to simplify things, it often degrades motivation and morale to even log in. People stop looking forward to loading EQ at all, when they feel deflated by what you all do to their characters.

I highly recommend that you consult more with the Daybreak Managers, Sales, and Marketing staff before making such sweeping "consolidations," especially if this forces players to simply stop logging in. We all know that EQ is at that precarious time again, where many characters are maxxed out, bored (logging less time), and spending less money in the game. I recommend not kicking us while we're down.

Reading through all the different Patch Notes over time (both on the Test Servers and on the Live Servers), and then comparing this proposed consolidation/nerf/patch makes me wonder if you're trying to simplify things or push the game out.

EQ has always been a complicated player-knowledge game, and the characters require lots of invested time, abilities, and practice to perform at the high end. For all the time we've spent, please give us what is due.

Don't hurt our characters to make your jobs easier.

Any chance that bard armor could get +kick damage added? Not a big deal, but other classes that have kick get +kick damage. Seems like a normal part of the armor.

They really need to adjust the tank nerfs so that the single target abilities also get changed.

But honestly, they need to boost paladin harmonious. Paladin agro is pathetic (it was even before this patch).

The reason why this argument doesn't work is because they've done these many times before, and players complained about them every time, and said they would quit every time, and eventually, after so many years, it becomes a boy and wolf situation.

They've learned not to listen to player complaints, because it doesn't matter. People who are going to quit are going to quit, and people who aren't going to quit, will complain and not play and remove their account for a while, but they'll come back, when the new expansion comes.

I would save the crying and get straight to the test. Developers aren't likely to respond to crying. They might respond to effects on classes they didn't think about.

Veteran AA Staunch Recovery still does NOT give bards any mana.

I agree with you Gnomeland, and also I agree with Elyee too. Money does sometimes make a difference though, or the sudden lack there of. Like you wrote Gnomeland, "People who are going to quit are going to quit, and people who aren't going to quit, will complain and not play and remove their account for a while" if that meant a significant loss in revenue, I bet there might look twice about how the patches are being implemented.

I also agree that Elyee should have made some specific recommendations for improvement to AAs or whatever first. I'll be doing that for my next post.

That would be good to see. And, not exactly the answer you're after, but the Void has kick modifiers that will be available to bards now. It'll just take up a slot 3. I'm a bit too lazy to find the exact quote in the update notes - I don't want to read the novel again.

- Bards can now use Struck Quartzite augments.

More Sad times in EQ..


people ask me what game/games I play ...

Ever Quest I say, they ask is it a fun game... used to be I say...

they say why you reply that way...

I reply it should be called Never Ending Nerfs

so sad......

"- Shaman - Fleeting Spirit has been changed to now double the effectiveness of 5-10 heal over time and 5-10 damage over time spells rather than 10-20 of either. Reduced the duration of the ability for damage over time spells to 2 minutes and heal over time spells to 4 minutes."

>>>> This change to Fleeting Spirit isn't going to be beneficial at all, it's being phased as "now double the effectiveness" but given the other part "Reduced the duration" we shaman won't be able to cast enough spells while the buff is in place to make it effective at all, since it'll fade within seconds. Basically you've made this AA completely ineffective, by reducing the duration. Also, the patches/reductions in the Shaman's ability to apply enough damage over time has continued to the point in which mana consumption and aggro control won't allow for success.

DO NOT APPLY THIS CHANGE TO THE Fleeting Spirit AA, YOU'LL ONLY HAVE TO FIX/RE-PATCH AGAIN AFTERWARDS... unless that is your whole point? Creating future work for you for Job Security?
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"- Shaman - Extended Spirit of the Puma will no longer extend the duration of Roar of the Lion."

>>>> This change to Roar of the Lion is going to negatively effect many DPS classes during raids and grouping, as well as the healing provided by this spell. Unless there is a new line of AAs added that allow for the extension of this Spell, this downgrade should not be applied. After the removal of the Puma Line extension connection, there will need to be a fix to increase the duration of each Rank of Roar of the Lion (I = 18 seconds, II = 36 seconds, III = 54 seconds, IV = 72 seconds, V = 90 seconds, VI = 108 seconds) to mirror the progression. If the intention of the Devs is to remove the group-spell qualities and the extension of Roar of the Lion, then maybe just make Roar of the Lion an AA and give each Rank a longer duration as acquired.
________


"- Shaman - Refunded Paralytic Spores and Paralytic Spray. Changed Spiritual Rebuke to be a knock back that triggers a root effect (similar to Paralytic Spray) and added additional ranks."

>>>> Removing these two very useful and often life-saving AAs is unacceptable. Simply refunding the AAs and removing these utility AAs will negatively impact Raids, Groups, and the Shaman's ability to keep crowd control. Not only does this change reduce class effectiveness, but also removes equitable crowd control and fade options for the class compared to other classes.

KEEP Paralytic Spores, Paralytic Spray, and Spiritual Rebuke AS IS.