Test Update 5/10/2022 - Patch Notes and Discussions

How is this not going to result in worse lag?

I wish the Apprentice mercs were tied to PoP and the Journeyman were tied to SoD. Not only would it give you "better than nothing" option when you can't find a group but would also make the Merc task in the tutorial completable so it doesn't need to be optional.

So now shades in both Vex Thal and Shadow Valley see invis.

That is insane that it took this long to fix. I wonder what the cause of the change was. I remember the issue back on Ragefire even.

Maybe the new implementation is more efficient?

"Refactor" sometimes means redesign from scratch, it allows them to have a more well-thought out implementation. I don't think this is "just" allocating more space for buffs...

I suspect the 64bit update included some large-scale cleaning-up, that will allow them to refactor many things in the future...

That wasn't a bug. That was a feature. The developers have already commented as such. Don't expect it to change anytime soon, especially given the fact that is it such an isolated issue, one specific zone., and does not seem to have caused issues in other places in the expansion. Check back when a new progression server reaches the expansion. ( My condolences Mangler).

Probably better to just have them banner back. You can res later.

Help them to farm a few DA clickies outside of raids.

For clarification in regards to the Merc changes...

Is SoD progression no longer required for accessing J-man Mercs? Pre-patch you needed Oceangreen, Kithicor, Kunark, and Rathe for Tier 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. With the collapse, does everybody have J-man so long as they have an active sub?

They just posted 3 weeks ago explaining how the main zone loop can't complete quick enough because there's too much combat going on. Nothing in the patch notes suggests that issue has been addressed and allowing more debuffs obviously makes that issue worse.

Presumably because instead of every NPC in the zone having a fixed 97 slots, and the game looping though every single slot looking for buffs, it is a resizable array.

Buffs are probably some of the oldest code in the game. One would hope a refactor would improve more than just memory usage.

I remember hearing that all mobs also had a buff and song window, similar to players. Maybe if they're scrapping how buffs currently work on NPCs, they're making it 1 big buff pool as well, rather than 2 separate pools?

How is more than doubling the debuff slots on NPC's improving lag?

I like the idea of more dps to finish faster, but seems some details are lacking.

Because they reworked how NPC buff slots work to be more performant?

It came up as part of the mercenary simplification.

correct. SoD progression, or the other later shortcuts, are no longer required. You simply must have an all access account.

will ogre heritage crates be introduced in this patch?

For the love and respect of Elegist can we please spell an exdevs name correctly!

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=41122

I'm sure you have all enjoyed many a quest he created.

*edit* to make the quoted text readable.

I don't believe that's the case. This week I got hit with shackle and rooted in a building during moonfall and at every server tick I would lose 99-100% of my HP. H-sta aug'd tank fully raid buffed.

Bigger problem is clickies still have timers, so you're gonna have to rely on someone to DA you some %age of the time as you're always gonna have raids where one person gets called 2, 3, 4 or more times back to back. If they're leaving the rest of the mechanics for that fight as is I don't love the idea that "DA person who gets emoted" is the intended way of dealing with it.

Yes and the consequence is that 50 more DoTs will be active at once on our raids because we already severely limit what people are allowed to cast. Are they saying that the slow part of calculating damage for spells was looking up which buffs are active? Even in the case where all 97 slots are already full and you have to process them all anyway?

And if that's the case can they undo the wizard proc nerf?