racial traits are being revamped

More like half of it to be in line with the current rok traits, but yes some are shafted too much.

My monk is the char I have fun with and I don't mind too badly that he doesn't get much out of racial traits. My char that I raid with is a High Elf Ranger



High Elf
Innates:
Intricate Creations - tradeskill power reduction (P)
70 Alchemist too so this is good.
Mind over Matter - slow fall toggleable buff (A)
Scout with 350 safe fall... umm no help there

Choices:
Esoteric Study - +5 sage skills (P)
No help
Gilding of Felwith - +5 jewelcraft skills (P)
No help

Harmonious mind - wis + out of combat power regen, 3 min dur, 10 min recast (A)
Wis dosen't help, out of combat regen doesn't help, and as a ranger, let's face it, I rarely run out of power. Unless I die, I'm usually almost full power

Connisseur of fine wines - +25% drink duration (P)
No power issues, this doesn't help. I usually use t6 drink because I rarely have power issues.

Graceful Movements - +5 parry, +5 defense (P)
Rangers aren't suppose to get hit in the first place, doesn't help much

Tenet of Takish`Hiz - magic resist (P)
Resists are always good

Elven Wisdom - 5 wis (P)
5 wis... well it helps with resists... like maybe half a point?

Training of the Koada`Dal - Priest: 2% heal crit + 5 ministration, Mage: 2% spell crit + 5 disruption (P)
No help what so ever, unless the 2% crit will affect poisons then maybe.

Fury of Felwithe - AE Encounter DD, 2 min recast (A)
AE is okay, depends on how much damage it does

Arcane Knowledge - 3% power (P)
I never run out of power, more power won't really matter much.


So let's see, only things that I can actually use as a ranger is the magic resists and the AE. Makes me want to just quit. When I started this game at launch, everyone was saying make what you want, have fun, your racial choice won't matter in the long run. Well, it does matter now, and I'm very disappointed. I don't even know if I'm gonna buy the expansion anymore. Someone in this thread mentioned buyer's remorse and he was spot on.

For those that are happy regarding this, I'm glad for you. For those of us that was told to do what we want to have fun, it feels like someone just punched me in the stomach. Completely disappointed. If I could respec race I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd rather have the +to skills(human) or the increase to poision triggers (wood elf). I don't know why it would be impossible, the character's are just bytes. It's just a matter of the programers to write the correct scripts to toggle flags or even rebuild the character's database; but it could be done.

I'm going to say something crazy here but maybe people should pick a race because... I don't know... they actually might enjoy being that race. Everyone wants choices as long as their choices are the best.

I will leave the scout impact to the scouts to comment, I dont play one. But I do play as a mage specialist, ratonga lev70 wiz, war, conj, necro, and illy. And I've been in beta testing this since it was first announced and I'll say it IS overpowered. Or better put, its a very nice dps enhancing buff - FoI that DE and slight variant that dark arasai get.
For casters, especially sorcerors, we get our prime raid dps boost from cast speed and crits. The faster you cast, the higher your dps, especially in a well balanced and high dps raid force. As it stands now, I will re-mention in brief summary the power of FoI for any DE caster, especially a sorceror and I'll use my wizzy as an example.
With agil line, recast is not 5min, but 4min 28s even without one piece of cast reduction gear like ring of 4 winds. With the ring adding another 5%, the recast is now 4m 13s or so (I rolled a DE lev 75 toon on beta to test along with my ratonga level 80 main but didnt have the ring on the DE to check if the 5% gets applied before or after the agi line reducer but this number is about right). Now, since the recast timer starts as soon as you trigger it, you'll be able to recast FoI in reality every 3min 49sec.
This is all without the occasional jesters cap and other items reducing spell recast timers. What do you get with this for a sorc? 10% cast speed haste which stacks on top of everything else you might have even if you are stacked to the gills with agi line spell cast haste, troub spell cast buff, illy time compression AND monk in raid for another +13%. Add 5% additional spell dmg crit, plus the nifty +100 spell dmg per nuke and it translates into a huge sorc dps boost, once every 3min49s down to sub 2min if you get a jesters cap.
As a relative comparison, bear in mind that the best cloak item in game short of avatar item I could be not knowing about is cloak of woven silk from TnT: 4% spell crit, and a 10% cast speed proc that has a 10% chance to proc per hostile spell. FoI not only gets better and better as you level and gear up, and as your raid tunes up compared to the waste of time to cast all the other combat racial ability everyone else got, it is equal to or better than this cloak, with the benefit you get to exactly time when you want to trigger it vs random proc.
As far as actual parse effect of this free dps that DE casters will get if this goes live as is, on Beta, I rolled a DE wiz and outfitted him with all adept3 spells plus all mastercraft gear. With that setup, and rolling through an hour or so of those gnashers that are all over the place outside the docks on kylong plains, my ACT parse showed an avg of about 1200-1500 dps for roughly 35-40 of these kills. So it was fairly consistent within this range. This was without FoI.
Every time I had FoI up, I was doing between 3.2k to 3.6k, with one anomaly spike into 5k that i threw out as being an anomaly. So this isnt a true concern because its just solo mobs, it's just a quick less than 20-24sec fight usually. But it does demonstrate that on this short burst end of the skill, FoI does indeed "own".
Now as far as raid, my raid force did raid Chardok once with our beta buffed and all fabled out 80 toons but I didnt get a chance to try with my DE plus FoI. However, casters pipe up here - those of you that raid, especially seriously and at the end game clearing all EoF content, you KNOW what the effect of your having an extra 10% cast haste is.
For example, going into someplace like MMIS or EH a wiz with 22% cast haste might hit 2.4 to 2.6k zonewide, but add a monk for 35% and you're hitting 3k to 3.2k even without a raid force that is contested level and burning 50k+ each pull. FoI wont be up every pull, sure. But at a recast of 3min 49s or so, call it just under 4min with the occasional 2min one with jesters cap, you're going to get off quite a few FoI burns over the progress of a raid zone.
So Aeralik, no - you can NOT get this kind of power easily with just a simple item in game, and even if you were to, it would still be a huge boost that DE casters got that other races who had know idea they were lockinng themselves into inferiority assuming equal player skill and gear if they were a non DE caster vs a DE one with FoI.
Your stubborness to keep doggedly suggesting it is not an imbalance calls into question whether you are biased due to your own toon being a DE scout or not. But giving the benefiti of the doubt, I will completely assume it is NOT and simply suggest that if you think this is so low impact, then why not (as suggested many many times when this was confined only the the 39page beta board thread) give this or similar racial trait to ALL races?
I personally dont want to reroll. And for that matter, it would be possible but much more difficult to reroll my classes that are normally good aligned (e.g. conj, illy). Sure you can roll a DE then betray to qeynos to be a DE conj or illy, but after 3 years of building up my 5 level 70 mages, why should I be put into this position of havinng to reroll to obtain this powerful ability? Overpowered, I dont know - but apples to apples, it WILL make an DE mage of equal skill an obvious and by far higher dps parser in raids than the non DE.
I have zero care or concern about solo or group impact. The full potential and huge dps magnifier of FoI will be seen in raids, period. And the better the raid, the better you gear up and get into end game, the better this FoI buff will grow with you. Please remove, or give all races this trait to pick from. Once it goes live and we can actually run a DE mage through various raid zones tht we have a year or more of stored EoF raid zone parses to compare it to, I guarantee you ppl will be able to show conclusively how much extra dps FoI will give to any caster.

Amphibia wrote:

Sarnak had long jump, it was removed. Kerra had some jump one too, it was removed. Frogloks had super jump, it was removed. I guess the devs didn't feel they needed it or something :/

Mozaic, FoI was nerfed pretty dramatically, if you didn't notice the post above, the +spell damage is removed so now a mage would only get 10% casting speed and 5% crit chance for 24 seconds. Erudite 5% passive casting speed looks much nicer.

TheSpin wrote:

And as time goes on for the next month or so, these kinds of things will happen. I doubt that SOE is trying to make people pick only 2 or 3 different races over all of the classes. Give it time, and I am sure that for the most part these things will be balanced out. Some of these things will happen on SOEs side - others will be revelation from new ideas on our side that prove that something we thought wasn't great actually has merit in the right setup.
I would urge people not to delete a high level toon and reroll it as a different race specifically because of a more powerful combination right off the bat - because I believe that if you do, you will find yourself regretting it....some of this stuff may change before tuesday, and more of it will probably change before 2008. In the end....I do believe that certain combinations WILL be a little bit better then others....but I felt that way before the changes were even announced.

Rifts@Unrest wrote:

Actually, it does make perfect lore sense. the Dark Elves of Neriak have only recently come back into the fold, and in Neriak, you can see that they are still zealots of Innoruuk. the only division in Neriak over Inny is Queen Cristanos and the Church's heads over the direction to take the Empire.

the Rage of Innoruuk, while I agree it is vastly overpowered, is the result of the Neriak Tier'dal coming forth, and teaching this to the others that have come back home. five hundred years these Tier'dal have been hidden in Neriak, facing things that most of norrath has never seen in the Underfoot.


frankly, if this makes people more likely to pick a certain race for a certain class, that's fine with me. I was never a big fan of ARAC in the first place. I find the very idea of a troll or ogre caster stupidly ridiculous. hell, even in lore, trolls never had this, and the Rallosian empire, depending on what lore you read, didn't have ogre mages. goblins were the mages of the rallosian empire, the Anxfen (sp). a high elf necromancer? what are you smoking? the only teachers in lore that a high elf would even consider teaching them this kind of knowledge is a darkie, that would kill them on sight.

I may not play the 'optimal' race/class combo, but I do pick my races and classes based on what they should be. and fi this cut down on the 'humorous' combinations that make me roll my eyes, so be it. no problem for me.

TheSpin wrote:

Ah sorry, I missed this 3rd tweak then. I left beta in disgust last week frankly after no motion to again change it after the 2nd change was announced as a reduction but aeralik also snuck in the unannounced +spell dmg mod. So ok, round one - it started as a 30sec duration, +15 spell/melee crit, 10% cast haste and 35 melee haste.
Round 2 when it was announced to be watered down became the 24s duration, 5% melee/spell crit, but with +100 spell/CA dmg proc added.
So ok, now round 3 version- for casters 24s duration, 5% spell crit with 10% spell cast haste. Not going to post numbers till we can raid with it but I still believe just the 10% cast haste along is nice enough where if I didnt have 3 years tied into my 5 mages, I'd reroll them all to DE (assuming also that I didnt think soe would further reduce it down the line which is my hope).
Maybe I'm just thinking of my raid group in particular but with very frequent jesters cap, I'd have this up almost every 2 min, not enough to use it on every pull sure, because like most all-eof clearing raid groups we pull so fast. But enough to use it on every important pull and likely every other pull for sure, and avoid wasting it on the cheap trash (e.g. skip the chaperones in MMIS type zone but use it on every blooddrinker, courtesan, etc pull that goes into really making your zone parse, not the cheap quick chaperones),
Between a passive erudite 5% all the time haste vs this FoI, I'd take FoI. I agree not by a huge amount, but if you're in a well balanced raid that always builds a fury/troub/illy mage group around you as a sorceror, I just dont see the erudite 5% passive being better than an every 2 to low 3min recast of FoI with the 10 haste and 5 crit.

Dragowulf2 wrote:

You gotto be kidding!

You sure about this? Do you have the new lists?

And what was it replaced with? It must have been replaced with something, and not just removed because all races get 10 choices.

Amphibia wrote:

When I heard they had the jump abilities I immediately went to look for myself. I was a day too late, they had already changed them. I know they changed them because I logged on myself and created a Kerra, Sarnak, and Froglok.

I realized that the final damage was done


drago.

When was that?

And this change really doesn't make any sense. I heard that we also got something called "water jump", which someone told me was the ability to jump out of water. But without some kind of enhanced jumping ability, it's gonna be fairly useless.

Thanks for replying though, really appreciate it. Seems very few in the beta played Frogloks and something like this just drowns in all the FoI complaints.

FoI was nerfed from a completly overpowered ability to its current form because people complained before its live and that's good, this thread would alredy have at least twice as many pages if no one said a word till nda lift.

whats its current form?

I don't think you frog, kerra, or sarnak have to worry. I think super jump, or something like it, will indeed make it into live. I don't know if these skills are an option for the inherent traits, but rather something you pick up as you level.

TheSpin wrote:

Sure hope so!

Well, according to the list... they are not innate, which means you don't get it right away when you create a character. It's supposed to be one of the choices you get later on. *crosses fingers*

Mozaic wrote:

New correction - I'm logged into and looking at Beta right now, and while I do see that yes indeed FoI no longer has a spell or ca plus xxx dmg proc, the timer has now been increased back to 30s duration, not the 24s duration it was when it was first reduced.
As of this moment on beta, it's 30s duration, +5% spell and melee crit, +10% cast speed, +35 attk speed, decrease parry 33, decrease defense 35. Insta cast, power to cast 41, and recast as stated before sub 4min with sorc agi line and ring of 4 winds.

The DE/Arasai ability is more powerful for a simple reason, it is percentage based.

As a designer myself, I know that percentage are always dangerous, because you might "lose control" of them and there are good chances they will come back to haunt you and bite you in the b... in the near futur, whereas fixed numbers are easy to control.

Of course percentages got a lot of advantages too, but you should always use them wisely, and implementing something like that in a racial ability which should not matter much, and only giving "fixed numbers" ability for the others races is a major design mistake, period.

Amphibia wrote:

Yeah Froglok get an ability to breath in water, walk on the bottom of water, and jump in water. I'm pretty sure it's an all in one ability, i'll check later.

Dragowulf2 wrote:

Oh, would you? Thank you so much, really appreciate it. I would have checked myself if I could, but I'm not in the beta....

According to someone on EQ2 Flames, the following was posted by Aeralik Nov 7th on the beta boards:

Froglok
Innates:
Gills - Water breathing
Hydromotion - water jumping

Choices:
Fervor of Marr - 10% Metal shaping power reduction (P)
Zealotry of Marr - 5% Metal working success chance (P)
Soft Landing - 25% falling damage reduction (P)
Hop - super jump
Astounding Leap - blink + deaggro
Cold Blooded - heat/cold split
Natural Acrobat - 5 agi
Valor in Battle - ? + crush / heal crit + minstration
Marr's Glorious Blade - ae melee attack
Spontaneous Metamorphosis - 3% health (P)


Is this whole list is outdated now? Really doesn't make any sense if they removed Hop.... I mean, that's the very thing that distinguishes frogloks from other races. It's a frog, and hopping is what frogs do. We should definatly also be able to jump farther than a say, a human - but without a super jump ability, we can't do that. I really had my hopes high for this....