EQII Mechanics Overview and Upcoming Changes

Hello Kander,

Another mob is the placeholder for the named Shadel Bandit in Savage Weald.

(1613715610)[Fri Feb 19 00:20:10 2021] YOUR Dozekar's Resilience absorbs 130037984 points of damage from being done to YOURSELF with 7442946 points of damage bleeding through. (0 points remaining)
(1613715610)[Fri Feb 19 00:20:10 2021] a Shadel plunderer's Black Jack hits YOU for 614256673 crushing damage.
(1613715610)[Fri Feb 19 00:20:10 2021] You stop fighting.
(1613715610)[Fri Feb 19 00:20:10 2021] Your Primal Fury fades.
(1613715610)[Fri Feb 19 00:20:10 2021] The sense of bravado fades from you.
(1613715610)[Fri Feb 19 00:20:10 2021] a Shadel plunderer has killed you.

@ Kander

Could you please check why scouts like Ranger - Briga - Swashy - Assa lose so extreme mana in PQs there is a reason for that. For comparison on tanks healer Mages Bards there are no problems with it.

I feel sometimes i need a battery on me like in form a Coercer/Illu. Makes not sense or is it still a other broken story of all your Mechanics in Game?



Or make a alternative Manastone to Auto Consume

Any chance guardians are going to get fixed in the future?

Dying while stoneskins are still up is one of the major problems. There are several buffs that are still trivial and useless or not worth casting. DPS is lacking compared to other tanks would be fine if they actually had a defensive edge but other tanks can do just fine and bring dps/utility.

Firstly, thank you Caith and Devs for engaging. Thank you Ryver'fish for expressing player concerns so eloquently.

On HOF you will see at least two Bruisers who have never lost the faith, Ichygo and Obano. Always at PQ's to tank at weird times of the day. One suggestion for Bruisers... make the epic 2 ability for Bruiser until cancelled not a recast, like the Monk.

As a stalwart Brigand... I will take any improvement as my role as a de-buffer means little with with current mob stats and mitigation.

Caithe

I will keep this sort and civil since I have already been band for 2 month from Discord.

This fixes nothing at all. Nothing.

More loot in Heroic's are pointless. Most of the heroic loot is removed in week because resolve amounts skyrocket very fast in raid. I get we are not all raider but if your not raiding Celestial drops from PQ are still better items then heroics trash gear. I mean Ornate chest from heroic zones? For 2 weeks i thought it was a mistake that would be fix after New Years.

I was able to get Tier 1 raid resolve without doing a single heroics and only doing Achievements and PQ Celestial rewards + Bazaar lotto box(coins from PQ).
Heroics are overly complicated and take 60+ mins to finish unless you are a stack group of people that already have 4900+ resolve? At that resolve nothing is needed from Heroic zones rewards but a 1 in 1,000,000 chance at a green adornment. Reward is 220 gear with a few 225.

RNG is broken (raise your hand if you have at least 15 pink cotton candy wand(what it looks like)) Same item more then 75% of time from quest rewards.

Itemization is horrid. There isn't a reason for block on mage gear since mages can't block as it requires a shields and mages can only use Symbols in offhand slot. Why would that stat even be put this on cloth? But guess what? block drop more often then casting/reuse gear? Why? Was this suppose to be funny?

Hi Caith and other devs,

I love my brigand, and am looking forward to seeing what you have in store for changes. I do have some preliminary feedback/comments that I'd like to share. I'd be happy to go more in depth in a DM if helpful. The notes below are from my point of view, which is raiding in RoS up to and including T3. Sorry for the long read...

Rogues need recovery speed back - please consider adding recovery speed per rank of Capo Ferro (instead of a very small ADC boost). Even a way to get to 50% from AA would be helpful. It is not possible, even without lag, to get all triggers of Dance of Metal off with no recovery speed*. Brigand is built around casting chains while Double Up is running (11 seconds); again losing recovery speed is a damage nerf.

*I mention Dance of Metal - the damage is still too low to really be worthwhile at 120, but it has an increasing DR buff tied to each trigger so it's helpful on tougher fights. At lower levels it is still decent damage but again, without recovery speed you can't get all triggers off.

A combat art increase is definitely welcome - my debuffs and most of my profession CAs don't even typically make up more than 1% of my parse.

Debuffs - raid targets have combat mitigation in the hundreds of thousands. Brigand combat mit debuffs barely make a dent. Effectiveness boosts on the AAs does not seem to change debuff values, which may be a bug (I could have sworn in beta that effectiveness was also supposed to improve debuff values). Every class in the game right now also has access to debuffs that increase incoming damage (used to be brigand niche, but now is on the scepter of shadow/illumination, plus Anguish procs). Every raid force used to have a brigand and timed burns around Dispatch; now procs cover the gap and they take another T1 dps (sorc, sin, summoner). Speaking of, summoner and rogue have been considered to have equal "utility" for years and years, yet rogues cannot hold a candle to summoner dps when equally geared and buffed. I'm not calling for a nerf, but more so what rogues are looking for as far as balance on this upcoming balance pass. I would just like to be able to hold my own - in a fight where I don't have to joust and while in a stacked group I should not be 200+b behind a summoner. I would expect on a fight with a lot of jousting for a summoner to beat me, but if I'm able to get in optimal position and stay in? It should be a close fight.

Strikethrough/hitrates - doing any kind of autoattack boost for a melee class without addressing the removal of strikethrough as a reforge option is not efficient IMO. Please remove 360 avoidance from ALL mobs if there is no other means to raise strikethrough, and in doing so bring some skill in positioning/spatial awareness back. At any rate, I'm also happy to hear that melee/auto is being reviewed. Currently autoattack does less dps than weapon procs...while in a group with an inquisitor no less. Please help bring back the inquisitor buff desirability.

At the end of the day, I just want to be a valuable and helpful member of a raid group, and not a liability that only has a spot due to friends.

I am pretty much reiterating what has been said here already but I am to frustrated not to say anything. I have a very well geared – full celestial spells – all the good stuff Brigand that I have played for 14 years was once damn near top of parse in a reasonably good raid guild. So I wake up to the new xpac and find that it is now less than a second rate toon – the competition with the alter ego swashies is now light years apart – and f’n healers are capable of outparceling me. The “so-called” fix for this sounds like a fractional bump in auto attack and all the time and plat spent getting the best I could is now totally irrelavent – WAY TO GO (away) there is no point in playing this game when the toon you played for so long and concentrated efforts into SUDDENLY become as was said earlier – the little fat kid others feel sorry for, Brig/Swash was never quite T1 dps but with effort could compete – seems like swash was allowed to maintain attacks to make them competitive and Brigs got screwed. When the difference is 2-3x and the fix sounds like BS 10-20% bump in auto attack for scouts – which will benefit all melee classes – it is just another crap fix that will not change much except kick the same ball of crap down the road and accomplish nothing. I hope to be wrong but when it looks like a duck………………..

Hello again i just forgott to add some things to my post.

I already said the changes on the mechanical side around Decimation is unacceptable you made the spell useless, and thier are some more points things which went in the wrong direction about the warlock in the past.
I am realy sure some other locks had said same things in the past.

1) The Double damage Hit of Rift need to be added back on the spell so reroll its spell description and funkton back beyond level 110 CD Expa were the doube impact of it was cut off.

2) one of us already made a post about the effective range reduction in the Spell Cataclysem, originaly this spell has had a effective range 10m around Target which is the Warlock it self , actually and after a not so long ago patch its only 7,5m which is not ok put it back on 10m.

3) on my Lock i skilled all duration reductions for the dots i was able to skill , but if i compare the time and spells i need on necro to the spells i need to take down a solo boss thier si something realy wrong.The Lock has much more Pot // CB // Mod // Fervor ETC but i need 4 or 5 more spells to take down as the necro needs on the same boss, not to say i know my spells and how to use.

How can a Toon with lesser Spell Quality and much more lesser stats could be able to do this ??
And this is a thing i am testing since ToT Expa with the same mirracly out come.

4) Things like the RNG should be taken out of game best example is the PQs atm the dropchance of the Celestial Items is felt nearly 0,0000000001% and in my opinion items like this are Stuff which should be 100% Guaranted Reward out of Heritage Quests // Rar Loot from Heroic in Weekly Reward or at least Raid Boss loot or Raid Weekly loot.

5) No Casual or evan solo Player realy need this stuff and as long as the PQ loot has more atvantages in Pot // CB // MoD etc. any Raid loot is useless except the only but matter point the Resolve of Raid stuff is better generaly.

not to mention the most mattering point others said here before FUN is LOG in Game with the Toon i d like to play this day or time seek others and Run HEroics or Raid ,AND not what you keep serving uss until now and the last 3 Expas Log in and Go Grind things the whol game at least only the gear to be able to play a toon.
Come up to a point this is an MMORPG with eye on RPG so more than one Toon which increase the options and abilitys to build working groups out of the Classes we have DD // Tank // Support // Heal normaly.
So we should be able to get all our toons on a playable stat level without Grind things 24/7.

As some one said before anything except Class Bound Heritage Stuff which is once looted in Account should be a flag ( Gear // Adronments etc. same on Familliar , Mount and Merc level.

Ah at least before i for get the Raid Faction 50K to start on -10K and only 1000 Faction if killing the 4 Tier Encounter in Vex Thal must be a joke i dont know who diced this out but the one who did should get some new dice or a better calculator.

We are willing to pay for things over the normlay membership as we did for years, but we wont if you keep serving or doing things which are exactly the oposite of what the cusomers and players and in the end rusult the guys who are paying your jobs.
The point of no return in some things especialy the Pay To Win politics was reached in BoL so dont go on this way please.

The deal is Money for Service > Content > player and altfreindly mechanics > keep off fingers from runing things and mechanics > put things back in place you get our info the idea to take them away from us was not ok.


Helfiren

I'm not sure where this might fit into the scheme of things, but here's one change that someone should consider making a priority:
There is no conceivable reason "acrylia" level recipe books or patterns should be dropping as RAID LOOT for crying out loud. Someone really needs to have ownership over looking at loot tables for raid loot. I mean, seriously, how in the world would that have ever gotten by someone who's got that as an area of expertise. Rockets should have been going off, klaxons blaring as soon as the title "acrylia" showed up.

We got adept spells the other week

There are a ton of fundamental issues with this game. I don't know if its even possible to fix them. Which makes me sad.

Levelling from 94 to 95 and handcrafting my gear quadrupled my HP and upped my damage by an order of magnitude.

Level 100 has power creeped so high that even that isnt enough and some random dude in PoM decides to give you an entire set of gear which launches you up another cliff face for no adequately explained reason.

Nobody likes just some crazy guy giving them gear they never asked for or earned.

The level 120 guy I made just so I could get +20% vet reward on my main has basically become an excel spreadsheet with legs. The numbers are so high they have become essentially meaningless. As if someone in the dev team is a Carl Sagan fan and liked saying "Billions and Billions" all the time in business meetings.

Game seriously needs an overarching project to look at items, normalisation, progression, tradeskilling - basically the whole game. Your advert brought me back to the game, get that word out beyond ex subscribers and existing players. Get the game into some sort of sensible state and get people back plus new people.

EQ2 has a TON of things going for it. Shout about it - disco's, incredible lore, easily the best housing system in MMO's, great community, billions and billions of quests, a great tradeskilling system. Shinies , lots of shinies....great soundtrack, amazing scenery....i could go on...

Similarly, having the recipes for Void Etched tack dropping in raid, when every crafter gets the darned unsalable patterns all the time when doing TS missions is a big slap in the face of crafters. And as a raider, I want gear in the loot table, not crafting books, and I *am* a crafter, so I can only imagine how non-crafting raiders feel about it!

How about moving the Void Etched recipe books into TS mission loot tables, and in their place increase the green adorn drop chance in raid loot tables?

I'm pretty sure the idea was to bump the whole end-game player population to be sort of "on par" with raiders, so that EVERYONE starts at the same point for the new expansion.

In reality, people who are raiders generally have a bunch of buffs (Flawless Execution flag, for example, from PoP, or the bird statue from KA), and a lot of blue Resolve adorns, which makes this "gear reset" pretty bogus. If they REALLY wanted to level the playing field, they'd stick those PITA-to-get runes in Tishan's Lockbox. And the green adorns in the Lockbox would be fully leveled.

The sig line for a new expansion should be a challenge for everybody, and raiders shouldn't be able to overpower any scripts involved. I provided feedback during Beta that my raiding warlock was blowing through encounters that I knew had to have scripts, but I was just blowing them away. I do dislike having scripts in solo content, honestly, and couldn't they just use a zone detriment to set everybody's stats to some uniform level in the solo instances for everybody? I mean, Chaotic Leech messes up healing for everybody, which is a sucky mechanism that doesn't really level the playing field at all.

Similarly, the step from the sig line to heroics should not require raid gear. The step up in BoL was eased a lot by being able to get some helpful stuff via achievements. RoS should never have had all that Celestial stuff so easily obtainable. Raiders mobbed the PQs until they were geared to start raids and bypassed Heroics. Everyone else was getting Celestials but probably weren't getting the most out of them (I wonder about how many people actually aren't infusing Celestial gear?) because there's no way to make up for the lack of blue Resolve adorns without going back to older content. The BoL approach was a happy medium, RoS was a "must be good, let's go to WAY TOO MUCH!" I'd make a sex-related comparison here, but I bet people can get that on their own.

We have to have them so we can transmute them to get fragments!

Another dumb idea imho and yes, I can tell the sarcasm meter was working, haha. Fragments should be obtainable from, dare I actually say it, transmuting gear. You know, what the spell was originally designed for. Now it's a perversion. Honestly, I have no idea what someone thought they would gain from this idea--let's eliminate players ability to get fragments except for running instances and getting the same item to transmute--and it's the only way to get fragments. Never mind what players were able to do in previous xpacs for years.

I tend to look at decisions like this on a "global gaming level," with the premise that no one could be this stupid to think this is a good idea. So the only alternative reason would be is, "let's just piss them all off since we're all so miserable. Then they'll be tired of being screwed over eight ways to Sunday and leave. That'll show 'em." Two outcomes are possible. Keep doing it and you're right-- we'll leave. And currently, it's not just your TSers, borderline players (and don't infer they're not important); you're losing well known active raiders and long time players as well. And secondly, after that happens, and you're out looking for work, think about the implications of having been in charge of these often publicized gaffes. You know, like taking your skill set as a ship builder to shipyards and advertising you were the designer and builder for the 'unsinkable Titantic?"

It's one thing to devote yourself to PTW mechanic. It's quite another when people think they're buying a Corvette, but they wind up driving an old Ford that's broken down more often than it's actually drivable. As I mentioned, even your bread and butter catered group of raiders are becoming disenchanted with some of the latest machinations that have been foisted onto the players. We all love this game, but we're only human and there's a declining tolerance to continuing to endure decisions.

Hello, any chance we can get the guard ToS AA fixed? Rank 5 use to allow us to cast ToS while out of mana. Why exactly was that feature removed?

Also, what was the rationale behind changing the shoulder burden hate transfer from 17 % to 15% ? Was the extra 2% really that game breaking?

It would be nice to get some backstory to why those changes were made.

Most importantly, please take a look at guard flurry, DPS and WBD AA. We have so many AA that appear to be useless.

4 minor tweaks to sk to make them probly perfect

1. up the dispel level from zelous smite from 127 to idk 155? something usable long term
2. up the dispel level from chaotic blade aa from 127 to w/e
3. remove health requirement from reaver so it persists thru death Please i beg you i hate recasting this on deaths
4. lower trigger rate on reaver from 1-3 secs to 0.5-1 sec

those 4 would be a major help for us

I want them to publish the metric that shows them people enjoy their content outside of raiding and a lot of people is doing it. This is the first expansion in over 12 years where I am lucky to see even 2 guildies on on non raid evenings and multiple veterans on my friendslist finally jumped ship.

The entire game feels dead and no one is doing anything but solo weeklies for prestige points and raiding two or three times a week. There are just way too few players per server, but then again, their servers cant handle 34 people in a zone so server merges would just make the game even more laggy. I guess. If this is the way forward from this point, they should just come out and be honest about it and tell us eq2 is now an instanced raiding game.

I dont believe for a second their metrics show people are enjoying this expansion.

Just peeking in after a month away to see how things are going in the game now.

It sounds like there's still no reason to return and resub, so sad.
I feel very fortunate to have rediscovered an old Trion game (rift) that is beautiful and still a ton of fun to play even with their tenth anniversary coming up.

I'll check in again in another month!