Test Update 11/12/2014

One more question on this. How does this impact Merc AA? I'm still not convinced it makes a difference, but because it is there, I get a good warm fuzzy from seeing it increase. I'm assuming that it only goes up with kill exp and not task rewards. Will this be compensated in any way? It's already painfully slow to go up.

Ahem....

A lot of players buy Kronos and game cards to /testcopy your accounts (and a few other's) for a full suit of raid gear and bags upon bags of XP potions + RAF bonuses.
The only money that is associated to test revenue would be when the Station Cash transaction is created to the inventory of a test character.

Kronos don't count for much when they are bought, traded, and then consumed on Firiona Vie...


So... what I'm saying is, the numbers on test are weak... but the population is high.
Why would the population on a test server be so high?

Yeah... SoE should have dropped the ban hammer on that operation a long time ago.

Also, clerics got an update to the Prolonged Salve AA (from 3 ranks to 4 ranks) with TDS. The problem is that Prolonged Salve never worked at Rank 1, let alone Rank 3. Adding a 4th rank just added another non-working rank to this broken AA to spend another 15 AA on to gain nothing.

"This passive ability extends the duration of your heal-over-time spells by 1 tick per rank." - Heal-over-time spells are increased by zero seconds per rank.

Is this the place to post about broken things in-game, or is there a more appropriate place to do so? I've already petitioned/bug report about it twice prior to TDS coming out, and nothing has changed except for an added rank of nothingness.

I noted some spells were boosted this patch, mainly damage shields. All of the RKI cure spells have the same curing values of the last expansions RKIII spells. Is this intended?

The numbers on Test are so high, because of my warm and charming presence in the general chat of course.

Disappointed there aren't any bard song changes listed in these notes. War March ranks 1 and 2 are currently downgrades to the last version, and the new Insult is equal to the last insult in dmg but at a HIGHER mana cost.

Also the Dissonant Chord AA mentioned earlier in the thread not getting a level boost is a poor oversight as well.

This was already resolved Moosetoe well in the way that all clerics were given back any AA's spent on this ability. It only works for one of the 3 priests but because it's listed in the archetype tab instead of class tab, it will appear for all 3. Just don't buy it

Resolved? Resolved precisely how?
How exactly will any future clerics or low level clerics know that they should " Just don't buy it" ?

Evidently it's not easy to switch this to a class AA. We asked, we got told that. I answered the question that this isn't a bug.

The best thing ever would be for SOE to officially acknowledge that the /testcopy business is now why they are monetizing the Test server.

I was always negative to your side business and the effects it had on the server.

Yes & I still think you're one of the very few who has it backwards & sees things from the wrong point of view. While you're crying foul over nothing Sseventya & I are contributing back to the game in many ways & helping to keep Test alive & thriving. Oh well, at least we don't have to see you complain about every minor little thing in General chat anymore. I guess we can be thankful for that.

I am very curious about the reasoning for this, when the expansion had the same level cap as CotF. Destroying the reward for older content isn't going to make people like the new content more.

The bard concern I had, the AA Dissonant Chord, was brought up by a couple other people. I was told that wasn't an oversight, but it's worth mentioning since I'd be shocked if introducing a utility ability only to abandon it in literally less than six months is intentional. The logical thing I expected was a new rank to bring it to level 110, a five level increase to the ability for a level expansion with a five level increase, making it equally as powerful as it was when it was introduced. I only bring it up in this thread because I see mention in the notes about another ability having its level cap raised.

I have a lot more to say than that, but I realized it didn't belong in this topic, so I posted it here instead.

Let me just...squeeze in here and break up the tears and crying for an actual bug report!

Statue of Silisia is still not showing up on Halius in Sunrise after Cavern Collectibles has been earned. Although it displays on the flag message in the achievement, i got the achievement before this patch maybe it's an issue with my personal flags now?

Also, maybe related maybe not, but many on Test have reported issues with certain commands since this patch went in. The most common is people saying tells do not work. /tell doesn't appear to function for many, requiring them to use ;tell or any of the other variants that sends tells through the chat channel system rather than the slash command. People aren't receiving each others' tells etc. Some in our guild also appear to have issues getting /raidinvite and similar raid commands to work. Odd thing is, this only seems to be affecting some people, albeit a majority.

Mobs dont seem to be scaling to level in combine dredge HA on Test Server lots of LB and DB mobs as compared to Live server Mostly Yellow White and a few DB

What you are doing isn't a minor little thing. That's pretty obvious at this stage.

Keep telling yourself that if it helps you feel better but I don't even have anything to do with it anymore so you're wasting your time. Enjoying retirement?

HAs are now scaling to the lowest level member of the group rather than the highest. I ran one last night with a level 105 and a level 94 (with mercs). The level 94 zoned in first and the zone was solid red. When the 105 zoned in, everything scaled down to blue or even to the 94 and cyan to the 105. If this is an intended change, I don't actually mind it because I still have a few mobs to kill for CoTF hunter and it just got way easier.

I noticed that "Storm of Sorts" gives very little XP on completion. Two 105s (and mercs) both received 3 AAs at the conclusion of the HA.

Also in "Storm of Sorts", the HA locked after completing the second step. The philosophy in CoTF was to keep the HA open for adds until after the named/collectibles spawned, so you could bring in help for a tough named fight if you needed it. Has this changed?

Finally, there are no merchants selling level 75 or level 80 gear. Presumably they would sell TBS and SoF armor and items.

On the plus side, Degmar XP is now very nice and I think you'll make a lot of folks happy once it goes live.

You are probably correct on that. I forgot they adjusted some of them for difficulty. The two I did that night were the first ones on the new HA daily list, Gribble 2 and Skulk 1

The scaling is a good idea. There were some HAs that I just couldn`t handle without a chanter or a real cleric. It also helps tanks immensely where the HA will always be at or lower than their level.

Gear on vendors should be Paragon and HOT T1 equivalent. TBS and SOF group gear has very little value.

Not making a judgement either way on the scaling; I liked it because I can make use of it to maybe get my hunter achievements done finally, use a level 80 in group to get green-con HAs I can burn through. I'm simply reporting it as it may not have been intended and that's the purpose of test server.

As for gear, I was just going off the pattern established. Current level 85 gear is UF T4 gear, not HoT T3 or VoA T1, current 90 gear is HoT T4 rather than VoA T3, 95 gear is VoA T4 rather than Boreal, so by that pattern the level 75 gear should be Praetorian Energeic from TBS and level 80 should be Prismatic from SoF.

Again, not making a judgement, just extrapolating from the available evidence.