GU100: The (Good?), the Bad, and the Ugly

meowwww

Love the whiner factor, kudos. So when a hand full of guilds in last expansion gear enter the new expac and 90% is cleared first 2 weeks of the expac you are saying that its not already trivialized??!

Then those are the only people who should be able to use it, & my suggestion would fit that quite nicely. Then there would not be a problem of any sort.

However, since I'm now rollin' the new Warpriest Merc, I can't help thinking that even giving me another 15% potency would be ridiculous. This morning, while I was killin' names in AoM zones for the weekly, I didn't even bring him out; even having Raffik or Bdorn Alehammer makes AoM overland stuff entirely too easy. So, if you can use the Heartbound buff, you can access the new Scourge Wastes, easily get the Warpriest, & bang, there's effectively your 15% potency buff, no Heartbound necessary.

So, quite frankly I can't even figure out who it's supposed to really benefit, without being overpowered. That's how powerful the new Warpriest feels.

NB: I'm not a raider, & couldn't care less what does or doesn't happen in raids. So please don't respond to me like I'm some hardcore raider miffed because I'm not "special" any more, or some other such nonsense.

Heartbound adds Fervor not Potency. Fervor - "Adds additional percent of damage or heal to abilities, combat arts and spells. It applies after all other modifiers have been applied. For example, your if spell does 200 damage after pot, abil mod, crit chance, crit bonus have been applied and you had 10 fervor, you would do 220 damage." This extremely different from potency.

Then re-translate everything I wrote to Fervor.

Regardless, my point stands: if you can use Heartbound, you can get the new Warpriest. If you can get the new Warpriest, the buff is superfluous.

I don't have a problem with resolve in general. Seems like a really efficient way to manage/tweak encounters, and looking forward, a good way to constrain stat inflation. However, using it as a quick fix for under desired classes is a really bad idea - much better (i.e more enjoyable for the players) to actually fix the classes (ex, resolve is not going get more pally's tanking raids).

Along these lines, making leather drop in 50-60% (seems this way, anyway) of the chests is not going to incent a rush of players playing druids. I was sick of seeing all the leather in ToT, and am sick of seeing what appears to be the same drop rates now.

Personally, I loathe the timed key quests. I thoroughly boring lottery-ticket-time-sink. I suppose, since ethereal runes are dropping in these chests, I'll give it a whirl, but I'm not going to enjoy it.

The over-reliance on RNG mechanics that have absurdly low probabilities for nice items showing themselves is getting really, REALLY old. I don't think anyone expects these items to be common, but seriously DBG, lighten up. Rare is fine, stupidly rare is not fun. I have run Uzulu till my eyes bled looking for the cb ear, seen it drop maybe 6 times, and because it's an item most everyone wants, well; 0/6 on rolls, 0/1000 on attempts. Not fun.

The shinie rewards might work ok in a raid setting, but in general, meh. I could really care less about obtaining them.

On the upside, and as usual, the artwork and the story line were really well done. The length of the sig line was reasonable, and i enjoyed having the solo and heroic versions to play with. Scourge Keep is great, and i'm having fun with my daily strolls revisiting the fabled contested (even if the loot mostly stinks).

In a nutshell, I'm seeing a continuation of what I personally like and don't like:

(1) Really good art, lore, story, and interesting encounters.
(2) Loot policies overly reliant on overly conservative RNG probabilities that produce more frustration than enjoyment (temporary frustration is fine, because you know you can eventually overcome it. Persistent frustration manufactured by RNG mechanics is for me, an incentive to simply stop wasting my time even trying).

Just wanted to clarify something for all of you that can't either read or do basic arithmetic.... 5x2=10.
Rainmare seems to think that 5x2=15, and therefore has lost all credibility for whatever he says ever.

I think we can give them benefit of the doubt that it was a typo.

Nah.

The point still stands, Ratitz. you can't balance for 30%, if the buff only gives 10% to a large chunk of your playerbase. you can't balance it to 15%, of a large chunk only has 5. You can't balance it on the assumption that everyone will stop what they are doing every 30 minutes, nor on the assumption that everyone will pay for/run a second account to keep the buff 'rekindled'.

at the most, the 'baseline' jump can only be the minimum anyone can get, which is 5%. which is so small that you prolly wouldn't even notice it.

just because a guild like Revelations or Fatality or Rawr or whatever your highest end min-maxer guild is called wants to be **** about it and make sure everyone they do anything with has a gold account and has thier buff constantly rekindled at all times does not mean that everything needs to be balanced around the 1 or 2 guilds that will be that way over it. you really think they are going to want to alienate 99.9% of the playerbase becuase the .1% of vutting edge hardcore military style players/guilds will be that rententive of this one buff?

How do you people even know dps in this game? Someone linked it last night but I be damned if I know how they managed it, in 6 or seven years I never knew how much damage I was doing, save by killing time. There are no real addons for eq2 except graphical interface and such. No recount.

Google Advanced Combat Tracker, most just call it ACT.

ACT: http://advancedcombattracker.com/

They don't balance the game to what ftp players can get because they can't wear half the loot as is. Before this update top end players with the best gear in the game had maybe 11% maintained fervor, now with this buff you can maintain 30% and you try to argue that is not over the top. It shouldn't give more than 5% fervor if any at all. Next they will put out a buff that makes you immortal and lets you one shot any mob in the game and people will still try to argue that its not too much. Give me a break.

He's the man for sure - funny how he keeps working with QT, must be love/hate..

Let me attempt to summarize your points.

• you can't balance the game around people having 30 fervor, cuz some people only have 15, 10, 5, or none..
• you can't balance the game around people having 15 fervor, cuz some people only have 5, 10 or none.
• you can't balance the game around people having fervor at all.

Basically, you can't balance the game.
Welcome to our side of the debate.

Will you Heartbind me irl? <3 <3

I'm just gonna tell the wife to keep an open mind. It's cool.

We'll have to check and see if my husband gets along with your wife, I guess? Who knows, could work.

But you still can't afford my bolsters!

No one says you HAVE to Heartbind at all. Exercise a little bit of personal responsibility, why not? And choose not to Heartbind in your raids and/or gameplay. In order to maintain that level of play you all claim to desire.

And leave the rest of us casuals alone who like a little bit of extra dps to PLAY a game that so many of us pay for.