hrmm nerf or fix?

[ZaltexR]

Just wonder if any other 22+ Dirges have noticed there Lanets Excuciating Scream doing considerably less dmg after the 7am pst patch?Wondering if its the way it was supposed to be or of the Nerfstick has come!Have asked a few other Dirges on my server and they are getting the same issue.

[gsn]

<DIV>most dmg ive gotten is 66... if this is going to be our new dmg for this skill, im quitting... cause all i am is dmg and debuffs... take away my dmg and im just useless debuffs</DIV>

[ZaltexR]

yup, same here, went from 200+ down to 80 max for me, thats lame, when assassins get a 900+ backstab every like 5 mins, and all that good crap. Hopeing this is a patch issue they didnt forsee and it gets fixed soon.

[gsn]

<DIV>well, thats only against noob monsters... against yellows and oranges they only do 400~, but its still unacceptable</DIV>

[Gr]

<DIV>What's with all the completely unannounced changes? Looks like they're slipping into the SWG pattern of releasing very incomplete patch notes and making the players find everything else that was changed which causes a storm of "nerf or bug" threads which never get any response.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>How much damage did this skill do in beta? Does Misfortune's Kiss still totally suck or was it upgraded to replace the loss of our ONLY HIGH DAMAGE ATTACK?</DIV>

[Leuna]

<DIV><FONT color=#6666ff size=3>A'ight, I got my picket sign...</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#6666ff size=3></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#6666ff size=4>HELL NO WE WONT GO</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#6666ff size=4>HELL NO WE WONT GO</FONT></DIV>

[arieste]

this sucks, in the 2 levels (im 22) of being a dirge I have got 2 useless spells and 1 useful, and now they just nerfed the useful one making it 0/3. I understand that they want to take away kiting, but they could have just taken away the agility debuff and made it direct 400 hit. This is a horrible way to fix something. My soloing ability just went down majorly <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (oh and the change was announced in the patch notes, and it did say that they are "working it". But if this is their idea of "working" something -- reducing damage by 80%.. that is kind of extreme. Make healer;s top healing spell 80% less effective and you'll have a revolt. Just cause dirge is a small class, doesnt mean we can be nerfed into oblivion.a.

[Froren]

i dont know what to make of this, mine did almost 400 damage and now it does about 100i also have no idea how this helped kiting, you can't run away from a mob fast enough to avoid getting hit, so it's effectively taken one of the primary solo abilities away from dirges since you have to fight the mob anyways if you want to just use Lanet's

[Ophi]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> ZaltexRed wrote:<BR>Just wonder if any other 22+ Dirges have noticed there Lanets Excuciating Scream doing considerably less dmg after the 7am pst patch?<BR><BR>Wondering if its the way it was supposed to be or of the Nerfstick has come!<BR><BR>Have asked a few other Dirges on my server and they are getting the same issue.<BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>26 dirge here, and this was far and away my favorite spell.  I was doing 380 max with it app2, and it was a huge chunk of my dps.  Now it's doing 80 dam, roughly a fifth what it was doing before, if this was your answer to people using the "time bomb" effect to kite, devs, it is the wrong answer.  It has a long range, shorten the range.  Add a few seconds to the "explosion" factor.  make it instant with the dd part first and the debuff part after.  Don't cut down the damage, god <cry>  This and the escape changes have me like scared to log on my dirge in the mornings, I dunno how I'm gonna be smacked with the nerf bat next.</DIV>

[Ophi]

<BR> <DIV>Oh, and for the record, I wasn't too disturbed with the escape changes.... but this one just boils my oil something fierce.  I can live with 30 min escape.  The odds of me having to use escape twice in 30 mins were slim to none.  All I'm saying is I get this feeling of impending DOOM everytime I log on my dirge now.  I know the patch notes say you are gonna revisit Lanet's but as it is right now, I wish I would have gone troubador (oh and it's spelled troubadour grr).</DIV>

[VelvetAcid]

I'm a level 20 Dirge at the moment and i was really looking forward to Lanets excuciating scream, finally i can dish out some decent damage in solo but not any more so it seems.The more i level the more i seem to go off Bards/Dirge in general <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Autolog]

<DIV>Ever think that it may have been overpowered and that they fixed it instead of nerfing it. Remember if its too good to be true it probably is.  I know its hard when you get used to something that is so useful but if it seems too good it may be broke to begin with. This is not a flame or a slap in the face becaues Im probably going the route of the Dirge but we are not ment to be close to the DPS of a predator. Just a thought.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[arieste]

Well the patch notes said that the reason it was fixed was because it allowed kiting, not because it was overpowered. I can see how this is a concern for the DEVs if they want to disallow kiting in the game, even one of my first ideas when I saw how the spell worked was "ooh maybe I can kite with this". But as I mentioned, there were many better solutions, such as making the spell non-castable while running, which is part of what made it so great for kiting. a.

[VelvetAcid]

Looks like the same thing happened to the Berserker's Blood rage.I still think the assassins backstab is very overpowered though even if you can only use every so many mins.

[apocdu]

<DIV>It was an overpowered song, period. I am level 29 and i was doing over 2k damage with adept 3 in a single fight. Everyone in the guild knew it would get nerfed, i was expecting it sooner or later. Yes they reduced the damage alot but i was nearly doing 800 damage on blue con ^^ mobs...very fast too...</DIV>

[Ail]

I don't think people should be comparing this skill to an assassin's backstab because assassins can't use that more than once per fight if they are soloing (ever try to flank or get behind a mob you have engaged when you have the aggro?)

[Gr]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Ophiel wrote:<BR><BR> <DIV>Oh, and for the record, I wasn't too disturbed with the escape changes.... but this one just boils my oil something fierce.  I can live with 30 min escape.  The odds of me having to use escape twice in 30 mins were slim to none. <BR> <HR> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>Go to Varsoon's, ten minute refresh on escape wouldn't be enough with the absurd spawn rate in there.</DIV>

[arieste]

overpowered? My level 12 bard spell does 160 damage. and the level 22 does 70? (both are adept1). Maybe it wasn't meant to do 400ish as it was, but certainly not half of what my level 12 one does. And as I have pointed out, the reason for the nerf as stated by the DEV was not that it was overpowered (see DEV explanation for Zerker nerf, they said it was overpowered). It was explained as being done to prevent kiting, due to the "time-bomb" nature of the spell and it being castable while running as all bard songs.a.

[gsn]

<DIV>the berserker skill is the only skill ive seen so far that is overpowered... the assassin's blade that everyone thinks does 1000s of damage per hit... it does 300 against yellow and orange cons... those 1000dmg hits you see are lvl 35s going into the forest ruins and hitting a lvl 3 badger, not going into varsoon and hitting a lvl 34 brute... theres a huge difference there, and that 300 number is with my debuffs (they do little, but they still do something)... the berserker skill, my friend would use it and attack herds of deer in thundering steppes... he would hit each mob for 142dmg like everytime he hit or they hit him... it was amazing because he decimated mobs in varsoon with that skill... a mob that took a 2 wizard party at 30 like 2 minutes to nuke to death, he had dead in literally 3 seconds at lvl 24... THAT is overpowered... 300+dmg after 17s is nowhere near overpowered...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>i think they should recoup the dmg with the next update... despite what the devs are trying to do, they can never truely eliminate kiting... giving us timebomb skills and snares is a formula for kiting, you shouldnt make the rest of the dirge population suffer just because some people put 2 and 2 together</DIV>

[Dirgy]

I play a 25 Dirge on Neriak, and have done some experimenting with Lanet's, prenerf and nerf.The deal with Lanet's that SoE has problems with was not the damage directly but the fact that by running around in circles with Lanet's you could wear down a high con mob. (I was training white ++s and orange ++s)The deal was that Lanet's delt enough damage that with Bria's Ballad up, and just running around, the damage from Lanet's was high enough to kill the monster before you ran out of power.However, now while the aim of the devs was to make it so that a Dirge could not take overpowered mobs for its level and kite them, or anything else. They did this by lowering the damage on Lanet's so that the dirge would run out of power before the mob died while kiting.The devs were not interested in how much damage Lanet's does, it was simply the fact that you could kite high level mobs with it. So they did a quick fix on Lanet's and lowered the damage, so that temporarily it fixed the kiting problem.How they should have went about fixing Lanet's was too:Make the Dirge have to stand and Cast the spell, moving would cause interuption.Shortening the range of Lanet's so that the Dirge would have to cast the song close to the monster.Lengthen the time it takes to cast Lanet's so if a Dirge tries to outrun, the monster would catch the dirge and deal damage before they had time to get away from the monster.The Damage Tweak on Lanet's was probly the most reliable and quickest way the Devs could fix the problem temporarily, without having to make any huge code changes.I do see the devs revisiting Lanet's shortly hopefully, and fixing the kiting problem with the song properly instead of nerfing the damage. The damage is not overwhelming, its only 400 damage, in which a round of hitting, (sparkling, Walts, Taffo's, and Piercing) does far more damage than 400 per every 15-20 seconds on Lanet's. Plus the refresh rate on the other abilities are faster, and I find I can crank those out a lot faster than spamming lanet's.Lanet's even prenerf, while ment to do good damage, was just a bit of extra gravy for dirges. The ability in general combat was ment do debuff and deal damage, but other than that it was not an ultra special ability that dirges get that was overpowered compared to other classes.However, when you take Lanet's and kited with it, dirges could take down monsters that would kill the Dirge if they were just plain meleeing and using lanet't to add to their damage.So now we all have to wait for the Devs to hopefully fix Lanet's properly, and pray they don't leave it this way.

[Dirgy]

Double Post Lameness.<p>Message Edited by Dirgy on <span class=date_text>11-28-2004</span> <span class=time_text>02:57 AM</span>

[Ail]

Thank you for your post. What you said makes perfect sense, from a programming point of view. I am sure they are working on it currently and we will see the fix soon.

[Gr]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Dirgy wrote:<BR><BR>However, now while the aim of the devs was to make it so that a Dirge could not take overpowered mobs for its level and kite them, or anything else. They did this by lowering the damage on Lanet's so that the dirge would run out of power before the mob died while kiting.<BR><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>Why would they "fix" this but leave bow-kiting unchanged? Both bow-kiting and Lanet's are both tremendous wastes of time that technically allow you to kill things above your level, but no one actually does them because you could melee 3-4 white cons in the time it takes you to kite one orange/red.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I wouldn't bet on a real fix to Lanet's any time soon.</DIV>

[Ail]

<blockquote><hr>Griz wrote:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Dirgy wrote:<BR><BR>However, now while the aim of the devs was to make it so that a Dirge could not take overpowered mobs for its level and kite them, or anything else. They did this by lowering the damage on Lanet's so that the dirge would run out of power before the mob died while kiting.<BR><BR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><DIV>Why would they "fix" this but leave bow-kiting unchanged? Both bow-kiting and Lanet's are both tremendous wastes of time that technically allow you to kill things above your level, but no one actually does them because you could melee 3-4 white cons in the time it takes you to kite one orange/red.</DIV><DIV> </DIV><DIV>I wouldn't bet on a real fix to Lanet's any time soon.</DIV><hr></blockquote>Didn't you read his entire post? The quickest way for them to TEMPORARILY fix it was to reduce the damage. It takes a lot more coding and a lot more hours of programming work to correct the other stuff that makes it useful in kiting. I am sure once they are done with that, they will increase the damage again.

[gsn]

<DIV>Temporary is a permanent state, as history tells...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>this is why i often get mad at SOE... they make "temporary fixes" which make me want to quit... by the time im irritated enough to quit, they change the skill again... but, in every case of this happening, they didnt change it back to the original or even close to it, but to something far different and equally useless... </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>keeping out kiting is a pipe dream unless you sacrifice general gameplay... and im not prepared to sacrifice my gameplay just cause people want to kite</DIV>

[Tekkor]

Well I just made 22 last night so I never got to see it how it was. Probably a good thing as I would be mad with this change. Right now however this power is really COMPLETELY USELESS. Piercing Shriek does more damage then it so there is almost no reason to really use it. The "weaken" part of it I really dont see doing much of anything. To say I was disappointed with this song when I got it is an understatement.They need to do as a couple others suggested... put the damage back to how it was or maybe say 15% lower then it was and make it so you cant move while using it or it disrupts. Then go ahead and put like a 10-20 second timer on it or something. That should completely get get rid of the kiting problem and make us have a song that is useful instead of a totally useless ability.I really hope they patch in the fix to this very quickly.<p>Message Edited by Tekkor on <span class=date_text>11-28-2004</span> <span class=time_text>04:29 PM</span>

[jrse]

<blockquote><hr>Ailsa wrote:I(ever try to flank or get behind a mob you have engaged when you have the aggro?)<hr></blockquote>Yes, it's very easy. Cheap shot (stun), Attack off/run behind mob, Backstab. I did this with sneak attack on my scout all the time..but supposidly the "overpowered" backstab can only be used once every 5 min..I don't know what fight last more then a minute or two.

[Yol]

<DIV>Am I missing something?  I think some of you think this is the upgrade for Piercing Shriek.  The piercing Shriek upgrade comes at level 26 and is called Luda's Wicked Warble.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, back to Lanet's.  Its going to be hard to fix this one.  Maybe have it  cost more power and put the damage back in.  I still use it when pulling, but the main reason I use it is for Trickster's Grasp.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Use Lanet's as the final move for Trickster's Grasp and you'll love it again.</DIV>

[Ail]

<blockquote><hr>jrsein wrote:<blockquote><hr>Ailsa wrote:I(ever try to flank or get behind a mob you have engaged when you have the aggro?)<hr></blockquote>Yes, it's very easy. Cheap shot (stun), Attack off/run behind mob, Backstab. I did this with sneak attack on my scout all the time..but supposidly the "overpowered" backstab can only be used once every 5 min..I don't know what fight last more then a minute or two.<hr></blockquote>Hmmm... never thought to try that since it doesn't seem like the stun lasts that long. But I will give it a shot.However, I still don't think people should be comparing a Dirge ability to an Assassin ability.

[Ophi]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Griz wrote:<BR><BR> <DIV>Go to Varsoon's, ten minute refresh on escape wouldn't be enough with the absurd spawn rate in there.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>I'd been hunting in RoV several days before and after they nerfed escape.  We were fine in both cases, but I dont solo. </DIV>

[Yol]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Dirgy wrote:<BR>...<BR>How they should have went about fixing Lanet's was too:<BR>Make the Dirge have to stand and Cast the spell, moving would cause interuption.<BR>Shortening the range of Lanet's so that the Dirge would have to cast the song close to the monster.<BR>Lengthen the time it takes to cast Lanet's so if a Dirge tries to outrun, the monster would catch the dirge and deal damage before they had time to get away from the monster.<BR><BR>... <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>I think shortening the range is enough.  Put back the damage, keep the length of time to cast, and keep the ability to move while casting.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Most of the problem stems from being able to outrun the mob while Lanet's does its thing.  Make the range shorter and the kiting goes away.</DIV>

[VelvetAcid]

Lanets Excuciating Scream, Am i doing something wrong, i'm lvl 22 at the moment and this spell just doesn't seem to do anything, it doesn't show up as doing any damage to the target ?

[Tekkor]

Lanet's is a "Time Bomb" sort of song. You play it on the creature and then it "detonates" the damage a good bit later in the fight. You can see what i mean if you go use it on a grey con creature. Just play lanet's on it and then stand there letting creature swing at you a bit. After a short period you should see a blueish explosion of notes go off and it will take mental damage.Basically the idea behind the song is it was a great song to pull with or use right as a fight started if in a group. Then a few moments into battle "Bam!". But they severely nerfed the damage on it. Im lvl 23 and still only have it at App 1 and it only does it seems like 30-70 max or so. Looking to upgrade it to see if the effectivness increases. Hopefully Sony will come back and fix it soon.

[VelvetAcid]

I'll have a closer look at it tonight then in solo, i've only used it in a group a few times so far which is why i probaly didn't notice it then <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Tekkor]

With any luck the 2 hour patch they are doing today will fix it to be a bit better then the current nerfed version.

[arieste]

I have the adept for lanet's. It was doing 350-450 prenerf, is doin 70ish now. Only using it for tricksters now as someone mentioned. Havent tried it since patch today (forgot) but it wasn't in the notes, and I figure it would have been if they'd fixed it.a.