LU 24 Notes for Troubs + related combat and AA changes

[Lachlan]

<DIV> <P><FONT color=#66ff66 size=3>Scout changes:<BR><BR>- Scout: Cheap Shot: Reduced power cost. Duration is 4s instead of 6s on standard or weaker opponents.<BR>- Dirge: Lanet's Excruciating Scream: Changed into a 7 second duration Daze effect that causes disease damage when it expires. The amount of damage was reduced. Reuse time increased to 30s.<BR>- Dirge: Garsin's Funeral March: Recast time increased to 45s from 30s. Overall break chance is 30%.<BR>- Dirge: Sapping Shot: Recast time increased to 25s. Power drain changed to Root. Increased Damage.<BR>- Dirge: Death's Door: Grants a chance at causing reactive Disease damage.<BR>- Troubador: Singing Shot: Increased Damage.<BR>- Troubador: Eli's Thunderous Hymn: Lowered reuse time to 5 seconds and increased damage.<BR>- Troubador: Performer's Talent: Grants a chance at causing reactive Mental damage.<BR>- Troubador: Shrill: Reduced power cost.<BR>- Troubador: Brilliant Blade: Removed power damage. Now reduces all spell resists on target.<BR>- Troubador: Deafening Strike: Increased power damage.<BR>- Troubador: Aria of Excitement: Procs cannot be outright resisted.<BR>- Troubador: Lore's Shuddering: Burns health in addition to power for any ability used by the target.<BR>- Troubador: Requiem of Reflection: Trigger percentages match Dirge Percussion of Stone. Now non-profession spell damage is completely absorbed on a successful proc.<BR>- Troubador: Lullaby: Decreased duration, increased reuse timer to 15s, and reduced power cost.<BR>- Troubador: Bria's Entrancing Sonnet: Now works as a very short term charm. Reduced casting time to 2.5s. Has use of pet commands except to directly call an attack. Duration greatly reduced. Removed concentration costs. Increased reuse time to 45s. Removed damage break chances. Increased resistibility. Reduced power cost.<BR>- Troubador: Singing Shot: Stifle duration set to 6 seconds.<BR>- Troubador: Swindle Essence: Damage increased.<BR>- Swashbuckler: Disarming Grin: Increased recast timer to 60s from 30s. Reduced Power cost.</FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#66ff66 size=3>*** Combat ***<BR><BR>General changes:<BR>- Immunities to certain spell types have been removed from many raid encounters. Instead, these encounters will be highly resistant to the spell types, and these resistances can be debuffed.<BR>- Many named and boss encounters will no longer use their abilities while they are stunned or stifled.<BR>- Most creature-specific abilities (such as attacks unique to a certain type of animal) can now be subdued via stifle effects.<BR>- All hostile spells and arts that stun, mesmerize, root, fear, daze or stifle their targets will become increasingly more resistible when you are 20 levels above the spell level.<BR>-  Epic NPCs affected by control spells will only be affected for 1/3 the normal duration. They then receive immunity to that control state for 3x the original duration of the spell.<BR>- All short knockdowns and many short stuns that were 2s in duration have been changed to a 1.5s duration.<BR>- All knockdowns and many short stuns that were 3-4s in duration have been changed to a 2.5s duration.<BR>- Knockdown effects will no longer work on epics.<BR>- Adjusted all Root, Stifle, Stun, Mesmerize, and Fear durations to have consistent linear progression in durations with level increase.<BR>- All examine information references to Pacify have been changed to Daze.<BR>- Examine information describing control effects should be clearer than before.<BR>- All Mesmerize abilities have their own immunity separate of Stun immunity.</FONT></P><FONT color=#66ff66 size=3></FONT></DIV> <P><FONT color=#66ff66 size=3>*** Achievements ***<BR><BR>- All players are granted a free achievements respecialization if they don't already have an available free one.<BR>- Increased ranks in achievement have a smoother resistibility progression than before. This is noticeable for ranks 4, 6, and 8.<BR>- All Achievements that provided increased casting speed with increased rank received a boost.<BR><BR>- Bard: Poison Concoction: Fixed proc percentages to 3% per rank.<BR>- Bard: Round Bash: Upgrades affect the knockback stun duration. Increased damage.<BR>- Bard: Shield Focus: Properly Roots bard in place, and grants knockdown immunity.<BR></FONT></P> <P><BR></P> <P><FONT color=#66ff66 size=3></FONT></P> <HR> <P>There's the meat of the Troub and CC changes ( I didn't include all the Chanter stuff you can get the whole thing <A href="http://patch.everquest2.com:7010/patch/eq2/motd/en/updates_live.html" target=_blank>here</A>&nbsp<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. </P> <P>Just reading over the whole thing it appears to be as advertised, reduced CC ability with a modest DPS boost.  Not thrilled about it but it will take some quick parsing to see how effective the "boost" is.  With less mez/charm capability do Troub debuffs still provide the intended effect on combat?  It doesn't appear any of those spells were tweaked unless it was done in <EM>stealth</EM> mode.</P>

[LordCalido]

<DIV>Speaking of parsing, I'm curious to see if the new DPS increase even makes up for the nerf to Aria line last patch. I look at the increases as nothing more than returning the DPS we lost, only in another form.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It seems that with Sony, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I suggest we become more cohesive as a class community and raise enough hell that they address and fix the issues to our playable and overall fun of the class.</DIV>

[Lachlan]

<P>Brilliant Blade line now provides some kind of new debuff component now but stay tuned for effectiveness.</P> <P> </P><p>Message Edited by Lachlan on <span class=date_text>06-14-2006</span> <span class=time_text>02:15 PM</span>

[Jooneau]

You left a Swashbuckler note in there by mistake.When it became clear that SOE was not going to relent and break our charm with this patch, I changed my tactics on Live to not use charm and use mesmerize sparingly.If you have treasured, handcrafted, or outdated legendary equipment, you can forget being able to solo one-ups. Heroic encounters, including some grey con ^^^'s, will no longer be soloable either.We do as much damage as a Summoner's pet now. /golfclap SOE

[kallysti]

<DIV>Hey, might be nice to be the only troub left on your server, eh?  I mean, we weren't a particularly common class to begin with... </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>*sigh* I guess I'll limp along for a little bit... no need to complain too much til I've tried it for a while.  THEN I'll come back and complain <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Fridai</DIV> <DIV>60 Troubador/61 Armorer</DIV> <DIV><EM>Children of Loki</EM>, Guk server</DIV><p>Message Edited by kallysti on <span class=date_text>06-14-2006</span> <span class=time_text>11:29 AM</span>

[Ralyssand]

<DIV>I'm wondering how useful requiem is now. I don't understand what "non profession spell" means.</DIV> <DIV>From what I can tell it's still less effective than the dirge equivalence. If it's absorbing spells, those happen much less often so is much less effective. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Sounds like a nice effort but not thought through there.</DIV> <DIV>Does this mean that if it's up, it could proc and absorb an AE blast?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Goddfath]

<DIV>ok...[expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] they nerfed the hell out of our charm...it now lasts for 14 seconds..thats not even enough time to do much!!! thank you SOE for giving the troub the shaft again...</DIV>

[J]

<DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Goddfather wrote:<BR> <DIV>ok...[expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] they nerfed the hell out of our charm...it now lasts for 14 seconds..thats not even enough time to do much!!! thank you SOE for giving the troub the shaft again...</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Welcome to the discussion from the past 8 weeks Godfather.</DIV>

[Lachlan]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <P></P><FONT color=#ff9900></FONT> <HR> Jooneau wrote:<BR>You left a Swashbuckler note in there by mistake.<BR><BR> <HR> <P><FONT color=#ff9900>Actually done on purpose so folks could note change on Disarming Grin (Swash Mez). </FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#ff9900>I logged in and tried a few fights.  Sorry no parse yet (needs an update apparently) but the dps change isn't noticable imo, not suprising.  /sigh</FONT></P> <UL> <LI><FONT color=#ff9900>Lore was giving a tiny bit of damage:  15....9....15....9....</FONT></LI> <LI><FONT color=#ff9900>I want to be fair to Lockeye about the new timer on charm but 14 seconds is really so fast, it was beyond useless.  How about a 45 second charm with a 10 min reuse timer?  At least that would work occassionally.  Would that make us solo Heroic ^^^ mobs at will?  Doubtful.</FONT></LI> <LI><FONT color=#ff9900>Courtly Blade debuffs all spell resists for 10 seconds.  -378 I think.  Not long enough to have an impact, sorry.</FONT></LI> <LI><FONT color=#ff9900>Eli's is faster now, a bit more damage.  Might be fore useful if you could cast while running.  I expect to be running from things a lot now.</FONT></LI></UL> <P><FONT color=#ff9900>At level 62 the net effect is pretty poor.  Maybe it didn't scale up properly, but against opponents at level 62, 15 hp damage is just crap.  It wasn't worth the time to code it.  </FONT></P></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>

[kerel]

I did a little testing tonight as well, we went to lab for a quick relic run.  First thing i noticed Daelis' proc'd once in 45mins, reflection did seem to work i had it proc on me 3 times in 15mins and Lores was doing extremely low dmg i think instead of 37% it was doing 37dmg (it was always 37 for health and pwr).  Overall it wasn't enough to justify nerfing mez/charm as much as they did.<div></div>

[VericSauvari]

<div><blockquote><hr>kerel wrote:I did a little testing tonight as well, we went to lab for a quick relic run.  First thing i noticed Daelis' proc'd once in 45mins, reflection did seem to work i had it proc on me 3 times in 15mins and Lores was doing extremely low dmg i think instead of 37% it was doing 37dmg (it was always 37 for health and pwr).  Overall it wasn't enough to justify nerfing mez/charm as much as they did.<div></div><hr></blockquote>- I had requiem going off like crazy (master1 level btw) against the new crab X2 and against an X2 in forgotten city today..so far i am content with the improvement-The charm i was still able to use effectively for 2 mobs.. just cannot lock down large groups (btw, notice the mez break message? RAWK!) - Lore's is still a joke,  i have not noticed any decent raid - I noticed 0 difference in our ranged attack dps- forget the damage increase in Eli's..i want a DISTANCE increase on that!- Why do we still have mana-drain with Sandras?- Why is harmonizing shot still a waste of arrows and mana used to cast it?</div>

[xrist]

Words cannot express my dismay to find that the Troubadors Charm and Mez lines has been nerfed into complete uselessness.How on EARTH could you reduce the duration on Charm (Bria's Infatuating Sonnet) from eight minutes (8 min) to FOURTEEN SECONDS!???   The Charm line is now unusable in any real sense to a Troubador.Likewise, the Mez line (Lullaby) has been reduced in duration by almost 50%, from 45 seconds to 28 seconds.   The Troubador is now no longer a viable alternative class for crowd control.I have played a Troubadour in EverQuest II since the beginning, over 750 days played, and crowd control is a HUGE reason that I play this class.   With this boneheaded maneuver, you have completely eliminated the major source of joy that I have in playing this class.   This is the second time in less than a year (LU13 in August 2005) that Troubadors have been majorly nerfed.I feel betrayed and slighted.PLEASE   *   PLEASE   *  PLEASEReconsider the Draconian changes you have made to the Troubador's line of crowd-control spells.  Give us at least two minutes (2 mins) duration on Charm!<div></div>

[Jooneau]

Ninja nerf: charm can no longer be cast on the run.This patch just keeps getting worse and worse...

[J]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> xrist04 wrote:<BR>Words cannot express my dismay to find that the Troubadors Charm and Mez lines has been nerfed into complete uselessness.<BR><BR>How on EARTH could you reduce the duration on Charm (Bria's Infatuating Sonnet) from eight minutes (8 min) to FOURTEEN SECONDS!???   The Charm line is now unusable in any real sense to a Troubador.<BR><BR>Likewise, the Mez line (Lullaby) has been reduced in duration by almost 50%, from 45 seconds to 28 seconds.   The Troubador is now no longer a viable alternative class for crowd control.<BR><BR>I have played a Troubadour in EverQuest II since the beginning, over 750 days played, and crowd control is a HUGE reason that I play this class.   With this boneheaded maneuver, you have completely eliminated the major source of joy that I have in playing this class.   This is the second time in less than a year (LU13 in August 2005) that Troubadors have been majorly nerfed.<BR><BR>I feel betrayed and slighted.<BR><BR><BR>PLEASE   *   PLEASE   *  PLEASE<BR><BR>Reconsider the Draconian changes you have made to the Troubador's line of crowd-control spells.  Give us at least two minutes (2 mins) duration on Charm! <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>They don't care. Give it up.

[Guy De Alsace]

My main is a Ranger and I was dismayed to see we have been nerfed yet again, and to our primary soloing ability. I was getting angry then I noticed what had happened to Troubadours and thought "OMG we got off lightly!". I have a lvl 40 troub alt and she was the weakest soloer of all my 10 toons <i>before</i> this live update. Now I dread to think how ineffective she will be. <div></div>

[Kotick]

<P>I am adding my agreement to the comments above re to troubs' Charm. Charm was once an important tool in my Troub's tactics, both solo and in group.</P> <P>I tried it last night several times in SH.......</P> <P>The duration was so short I felt it was a waste of time casting it on an add (by the time your perceive the add, switch targets, cast Charm then go back to main target you have cost your group critical DPS for the benifit of a VERY brief respite in the add's attack)</P> <P>I was embarrassed to tell he group I was charming the add.</P> <P>I will limp along with my Troub, as a poster above has stated, but I suspect the fun of this Class is gone.</P>

[Jooneau]

If you have any lag, like when guilds are raiding contested nameds in a zone you are hunting, causing a lag on every spell you cast, Cheap Shot is worthless.The combined increased amount of damage on Singing Shot is still less than the actual damage done by a single regular bow shot, plus the stifle is shorter now.The increased damage on Eli's is negligible. The spell still does about as much damage as a level 30ish Mage nuke.Power damage is useless, Sony! So what if you increased it on Deafening Strike?The damage done by Lore's Shuddering is laughably low: T7 does 30ish? damage every time the NPC uses a special ability. B.F.D.Requiem is still a waste of a concentration slot, which is saying a lot, considering how much of a waste most of our other concentration slot buffs are.I have nothing to add about Lullaby. The change sucks, as do all the control changes.Not only does charm last only a mere 14 seconds but it can actually break sooner than that; there seems to be a periodic resist check done as well when it does the recurring power cost. The spell is just ridiculously awful.Re: Swindle Essence, see comment about Eli's. A T7 spell that lets me nuke as well as a level 30ish Mage.Brilliant Blade was a step in the right direction. Unfortunately a 10s 300ish debuff on resist mitigation is low compared to the debuffs available to other Scout classes, who do better damage than us.Lachlan, if you're going to include the note about Swashbucklers, you should have included the note about Bruiser mez and fear -- yes, Bards, Bruisers can mez and fear, and they actually get their mez before we do. They reduced the duration to a laughable 6 seconds with a 1 minute recast. I would feel bad for the Bruisers, except they're frickin' Bruisers who can still FD-train to nameds to solo them for farming masters and gear to sell. They're DPS who can take a few hits (unlike us), plus they can even tank for groups if they absolutely had to and do a quite decent job of it.My Troubador's a Weaponsmith now.

[J]

<P>Your troub is a weaponsmith now?</P> <P>How amusing....</P>

[Jooneau]

As in, no longer actively adventuring. And yes, I've read your posts about how awful Weaponsmiths are.

[J]

<P>Just saying, you got the double shaft is all.</P> <P>/end threadjack</P>

[ForgottenFoundling]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Jooneau wrote:<BR><BR>Lachlan, if you're going to include the note about Swashbucklers, you should have included the note about Bruiser mez and fear -- yes, Bards, Bruisers can mez and fear, and they actually get their mez before we do. They reduced the duration to a laughable 6 seconds with a 1 minute recast. I would feel bad for the Bruisers, except they're frickin' Bruisers who can still FD-train to nameds to solo them for farming masters and gear to sell. They're DPS who can take a few hits (unlike us), plus they can even tank for groups if they absolutely had to and do a quite decent job of it.<BR><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>What's even more disturbing/annoying is that they reverted ALL the dps nerfs they were putting through on bruisers (who were and are ridiculously overpowered).  My pvp bruiser (with mostly app2-4s) just owns the hell out of my troubador at equal levels and better spell qualities on my troub...</P> <P>Yeah, wtg sony, nice BALANCE job...<BR></P>

[LokiAngelOfDeath666]

mine's doing about 500-600 dps on t7 raids.

[Jooneau]

<blockquote><hr>JBW wrote:<p>Just saying, you got the double shaft is all.</p><p>/end threadjack</p><hr></blockquote>Umm, how exactly did I get the double shaft, whatever that means? Because you think Weaponsmiths suck?Being able to put decent procs on mastercrafted weapons you can make with easily acquired harvests doesn't suck. I never expected SOE to let me make weapons comparable to Legendary or Fabled gear, which actually I can if I do the Wurmslayer heritage quest. I never expected SOE to let me sell raid gear to any newbie who can buy gold from goldfarmers.com.You had unrealistic expectations about tradeskills in this game. It's no wonder you quit.<p>Message Edited by Jooneau on <span class=date_text>06-20-2006</span> <span class=time_text>01:29 PM</span>

[Jeger_Wulf]

<P>> I never expected SOE to let me make weapons comparable to Legendary or Fabled gear<BR>> You had unrealistic expectations about tradeskills in this game. It's no wonder you quit.</P> <P>Sounds like your vision for tradeskills is right in line with SoE's. Grats - you get things your way. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P>That doesn't make his expectations unrealistic, though. I liked making legendary crafted items. I came to EQ2 in part because I could. (I desired to escape the WoW raid-only mentality.) I expected that to continue, and am sad it was nerfed. :/</P> <P>It won't make me quit EQ2 atm, because there is too much still to enjoy. It certainly makes me more open to considering Vanguard or AoC, though.</P>

[Melmoth1820]

<P><FONT color=#66ff66 size=3>- Troubador: Brilliant Blade: Removed power damage. Now reduces all spell resists on target.</FONT></P> <P>Thank you!!! More anti-resist stuff that aren't resistable spells is very helpful to us on the pvp server as resist rates vs. high level players are a tad out of control.  Some of the other changes sound really nice for pvp, need to see the actual #s things put out tho to see if it's a big difference, but sounds like a lot of potential good.  Glad we have one of the only troubs guilded.  ^ ^ <P><SPAN class=time_text></SPAN> </P><p>Message Edited by Melmoth1820 on <span class=date_text>06-21-2006</span> <span class=time_text>08:50 AM</span>