TGB

And yet you’re literally proposing a massively more impactful change as an alternative? So you can avoid periodically having to press 1 more button?

I’d be surprised, but a long post history of hyperbole, overreaction, flavor of the month main swaps and general FQ drivel mixed with being pretty darn out of touch with fundamentally how EQ works...checks out.

The removal of the capacity to use hots on other groups is, most definitely a nerf. The ability to turn off TGB is an inconvenience. Which is an acceptable loss of preserving the ability to heal outside of groups and encouraging team work on raids and not giving that up.

This is a cost benefit analysis. The trade off here is we give up TGB as an executive function for:

1. Increased server performance
2. Decreased lag on raids
3. Potentially less stress on servers that can be used to implement new abilities in the future

The loss here is of a keystroke to use group Elixir and some coding lines in your social macros when healing in a raid format. Which for those of us who play with TGB on all the time, is no significant change at all because we already play the game that way.

This isn't the removal of /Melody from bards or getting rid of autoskill abilities, which would increase necessary APM for DPS and keystrokes that create issues for players over time. The major issue here are two fold:

1. Increased server performance for raiding
2. Removal of an ability a sliver of players use for ease of use in groups

The trade off here is that you have to use a few more keystrokes, while the rest of us maintain functionality of our play style while we all gain increased server performance. The adjustment we'd be asking for the capacity to maintain our current abilities that we have had for twenty years relative to your mild discomfort in using an extra keystroke or two in healing is an acceptable loss.

Asking for the removal of an ability and a decrease in power is asking for a nerf. There's no mechanical power loss or nor massive shift in necessary APM to having TBM permanently on. It's change and change sucks as it's a loss in preference, however it is easily adapted to. The loss of the ability to use group HOTS outside of groups though, hurts raids with fewer regular healers on AE raids and such.

It's a trade off, losing power or a slight increase in APM necessary for a small group of people who don't use a functionality. I'm more than comfortable at this point with the amount of classes and people that would be affected by this change to see one as a nerf and the other as the loss of a feature. And I would even go as far as to argue that people not using TGB on at all times with group abilities on raids limit themselves.

From a future growth point of view with increased server performance AND the ability to maintain and expand on out of group healing mechanics. I don't see it as a nerf at all, rather than acceptable loss for a few players to have the mild inconvenience to use the Tab key.

It's also an easy adaptation to make, and to be honest one this isn't a huge learning curve or losing abilities. If anything, this would force an open point of view on using an unused ability for a class that you play on a raid and increase abilities. So not only is it not a nerf, but rather an improvement to increase everyone to baseline to play at the same point.

Numbers weren't an effective tool until mid-Velious when something changed that dramatically reduced raid lag and allowed for much larger forces. You could have certainly found it funny that people were dying to lag because of either an unwillingness to tell someone to leave or because of a lack of understanding of the drawbacks of bringing too many people especially with a large group of vultures standing nearby and contributing to lag but it had little to do with you being a better player than the pile of corpses.

http://legacyofsteel.net/#/home

July 13, 2001 - Hot darn we had a fun time in Kael tonight. Our goal was clear from the get-go, kill the Avatar of War. We know that with our current roster we couldn't stage an effective battle against this cacksugger (we average 35-40 per raid). So we called in some good friends from Paragons of Fury and Shock of Swords to take a whack at the ol' boy.

August 29, 2001 - If you told me you took 70 to beat Vyemm I would still pat you on the back. No zerg accusations here. Like I said, Vyemm is the mackdaddy sum-beeotch. Folks, we had 5 LoS clerics and one guest cleric tonight. I think our numbers were right around 45-50ish. It was a *sweet* kill. Those who have fought Vyemm can appreciate what 6 clerics and less than 50 people means.

Buffs don't do much but other than 1 or 2 guilds per server seeing a current raid boss was so rare that spending an hour to slightly improve success was often considered worth it. From March 1999 to December 2000 many guilds had at most a dozen attempts on any Dragon.

Dragons then become super common and many guilds can now plan ahead when to raid since there is sufficient content that there will definitely be something to kill which will have a small chance to drop raid loot and if you are already mobilized you might even get a shot at a genuine raid mob.

Then raid size takes the huge leap forward, guilds consolidate as Cestus Dei is the easiest path for Fires of Heaven to field the numbers that the servers now allow. Whether guilds are merged, absorbed or whatever depends on the server and to some extent who is describing the process. The counter-move to these large raid forces is crippling melee DPS and an absurd volume of Vex Thal trash while removing the raid armor drops from trash.

Then the 72 soft cap for PoP, pretty sure there is briefly a 54 hard cap on PoTime but maybe that was only a Phase 1 limit without using levitate exploits, the 72 hard cap for PoTime, the 36 hard cap for LDoN, the compromise of the 54 hard cap for LDoN and GoD, the return of the 72 hard cap and finally open world uncapped raids largely being eliminated after TSS.

It’s still a nerf.

It’s a nerf by definition. Please Google a valid definition of “nerf” and try to explain how it isn’t.

What’s impractical about removing a flag on a group buff? I’m not asking them to write new code to fix the core functionality of something. I would think it would be more painful to adjust functionality for some spells.

I already did in the first two sentences.

verb (used with object) (lowercase) Slang. (in a video game) to reconfigure (an existing character or weapon), making it less powerful: The game development team nerfed several guns in the recent update.

Me:


The removal of the capacity to use hots on other groups is, most definitely a nerf. The ability to turn off TGB is an inconvenience. Which is an acceptable loss of preserving the ability to heal outside of groups and encouraging team work on raids and not giving that up.

You lose nothing but increasing slight APM, while handicapping yourself by not using TGB to not heal other groups on raids (if you do). If you do not raid, then I can see some pain however the most part you would not be targeting another person outside of your group anyway which would have the HoT hit.

Here's some advice:

1. Sell the feature, all the benefits and how it has the BROADEST APPEAL
2. When debating someone supply experiential, data, logs, and so on in the debate
3. When enough evidence comes into play try to come up with alternative suggestions

Thus far we've established your idea on it's merits:

A. Nerfs the ability to heal other groups (decrease in power level per the Google definition)
B. Does not add ANY new functionality, but takes it away.
C. The capacity for short term buffs to only be in groups would hurt several classes, coding problems with MGB
D. People have already adapted to a world with permanent TGB and the "loss" of this ability doesn't do much. The amount of people thus far is large as most use TGB on.
E. Hamstrings future growth of mechanical flexibility and event design by limiting abilities

So for a niche group of players we are asking for a slight change in playstyle by adding a few APM when group healing or whatever. An adaptation that many, if not all, of us made when we were level 60 18 years ago or so?

How about you come back with a better mouse trap that doesn't involve people losing 18 year old functionality that has been built upon and compounded by years of work on game design?

Also, why is your small increase in APM going to affect me when it doesn't affect my playstyle or effectiveness after adapting and made me a more effective healer after adapting that you would see the same potential benefits in changing?

I got nothing more, because as of right now it doesn't affect me much and the upside really of getting rid of server lag is massive. I'm willing to have your sacrifice in play, and increase the greater good.

Creative casting macros solve a lot of problems, too. As I picture the situation.

Impracticality here is removing functionality that has existed since Shadows of Luclin and been a cornerstone in healing strategy and other cooperative capabilities. These special exceptions are what they're trying to remove to increase server performance. The fewer data checks you have to do, the less data through the system, and the better how the servers function.

The lag for some is so bad it's like watching bad stop motion film or fighting in the Matrix. That's the benefit to Everyone. Your proposal fixes nothing, and creates limitations for a mild convenience.

The toggling off/on is powerful tool. Taking away that functionality does indeed make it less powerful.

Next one please...

It was impractical to change the way riposte worked for several of my AAs. That certainly did stop them from doing that.

Riposte=!Targeting Group Buffs

You mean you play a Shadowknight, where they were having issues with people swarming with Shadowknights. Killing multiple mobs at once, which they felt was overpowered so therefore nerfed.

Apples and oranges here for comparison purposes. They're not removing TGB for power level reasons, they're removing it because of server performance. Thu

You've made an assertion without an explanation to the power level concern, I had already stated the ability to heal other groups was a baseline ability that has been standard game design without any increasing or escalating overpowered abilities. That your idea was taking away that functionality for increased HPS.

You have thus far not given ANY assertion to why toggling TGB is an effective tool, outside of miniscule APM alterations and adaptations that are already STANDARD for most players that raid.

You give me an assertion without a supposition or statistical analysis on anything. Other than asking me to Google something, if you want me to debate you then establish an Axiom (which I have) and definition (I have supplied) and counter those assertions and facts. Thus far you have not given any reason outside of "The toggling off/on is a powerful tool."

In what way?

How ?

Why?

Thus far the only thing we have accomplished is saying that it is a small increase to APM/Keystrokes for targeting purposes and that the trade off versus NOT having that ability is a decrease in HPS and the upside is gaining server performance.

Thus far your statement has been a nerf (decrease in power level) while mine has been maintaining status quo for those of us that have the functionality on at all times and increasing server performance. The cost is that some players will have to toggle targets a bit differently which can be adapted to.

What do I gain out of losing TGB on Group HOTS? What is the power increase? Your assertion that I "should" focus on my own group? When you play a Shadowknight at that. I've raided at all ends of the spectrum and talk to people above and below me for years, what you're asking for is to nerf clerics and other priest classes for a mild inconvenience to APM. This isn't Starcraft where everything is split second activation decision, there are some slower reaction times combined with some limited turn style based effectives such as emotes.

So far I gain nothing on what you're trying to sell me. I turn on TGB and just toggle around targets with one finger and then finger a keybind for my heal. I lose nothing in terms of HPS, there are no high end clerics advocating for the removal of TGB or suggest turning TGB off.

So you play a shaman.

I'm not seeing where Metanis, Crystilla, Clarisa, Waring, and other top end people establishing a firm line in the sand advocacy on turning off TGB. I don't see top end guilds telling their healers to turn off TGB or to create macros that turn it off.

Honestly, I've raided high end before, and have done a lot of old content. Right now I am just-not-seeing-it. Looking over the guides, there's no real aspects to this stuff.

The problem I see is that you have yet to establish a sale for your point of view.

Ultimately, convincing people of anything is your job. Right now most of the posters are apathetic to the change, developers want to maintain TGBIBle healing, and there's no power level creep as what happened with Riposte with healing. So a nerf gains developers nothing, hurts future development of raid strategies, and returns Healing function back to Velious level strategies.

You would have done better to state why, than to attempt to make statements without supporting suppositions and data.

I've won these debates time and again and have changed developer's minds before. Because I explain myself and why I feel a change is necessary, and have won through opposition before by adapting arguments and looking at alternative ideas and changes that could be made minimally. Working and adapting ideas is a part of the process for feedback.

Right now, without better supporting material and more flexible solutions, you have lost your objective. Especially if more people oppose your idea (which they will because it's a nerf).

How can you justify telling me not to do something, but turn around and do the same thing? Seriously, what raids are you going to fail because you can no longer cast a half dozen group spells on another group?

Having spells aligned with tbg options of similar spells will make development of new content easier since they will not have worry about someone playing musical chairs with group buffs.

What raids are you going to fail because you have to change the way you cast group spells on your group when healing someone outside of it?

The lag was one of the funnier parts. That and making casters bind in the hall so they could zerg better. But some guilds would just keep adding people and then start asking others to leave the zone lol.

We're almost seeing lag be a limiting factor today though. Our raids on Xegony go much better with 42 than a full raid.

Notorious complainer about nerfs (srsly, check out the post history, it’s pure gold) complains about tiny nerf with simple workaround and suggests more massive nerf to replace it for their own convience and unwillingness to change in any way “reasons”. No irony or hypocrisy there. Nope nope.

Forum Quest - You Can’t Make This Crap Up!(tm)

I sense another re-roll happening...

Don't forget the contradictions scattered throughout.

Milli's SK period was pure gold if you are looking for entertainment.

TGB is FAKE NEWS. Can't we all just Make Norrath ?

Most of my complaints about changes (and upcoming) came to fruition. Those who told me I was wrong were complaining about the changes they said would never happen.

There no logical reason to neuter an entire archetype's dps based on few AAs that many warriors were abusing.

Most mobs are packed in clusters of two or three and it's not unreasonable for a grouped gear tank to expect to be able to handle these scenarios without having to wait for disc to pop. The whole idea that only raid geared tanks should be able to handle this was absolute nonsense.