Confused????????????

[Zygorda]

<DIV>I'm confused becuase first the combat change is set up to down grade our defense to make the raid mobs harder for us to fight etc...  Then the patch today says they are not going to hit as hard. Why do this at all if the reason you did it in the first place is goign to be lessened also. Why make them weaker if your making us weaker.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Am I not following this correct or reading it right/ Clue me in if you can plaese???</DIV>

[Imri]

I think part of it is bringing things back a bit to the way it was at relase. I remember that mob damage was increased because they were to easy. Now they are probably to hard. Gotta remember the end goal the devs said is to keep the game as similar as possible with the removal of the invulnerable buffing levels

[WolfSha]

Sebastien summed it up pretty well on another thread: <P></P> <HR> Don't forget that the main thing being studied with this part of the change is the way that various classes avoid. <P>Mob DPS will be reduced after that.. so it is hard for any of on Test to accurately judge some of these things.</P> <P>This is my newest theory-  Up until this change, we have had a lot of what I call "bandaid" fixes to combat.  The original combat mechanics of EQ2 at release actually worked well, IMO, other than the fact that they were much too easy, and everyone thought of a heroic mob as a standard mob because we could all solo them.  SOE dramatically beefed up heroic mob HP, which makes sense, since you want them to survive a full group's DPS.  But then they spiked mob DPS, not once, but twice.  This seemed to work well for the game up to around level 30, but then SOE saw the same problems.  Content was too easy.  So then they put through a stat boost to mobs, and in particular they said mobs over level 30 would have a significant stat boost.</P> <P>So now we have the present mobs.. they hit insanely hard, but due to the flawed combat mechanics, it is always possible to create a situation where they can't hit you.  So now all strategy revolves around that.  People farm mobs when they are green so they cannot be hit.  And they find ways to stack buffs and build avoidance so they cannot be hit during raids, because it is the only way they see to deal with the excessive DPS mobs do.</P> <P>It also created a problem for avoidance tanking.. how can a class like brawler function correctly where avoidance and damage are all-or-nothing?  Either the brawler fights something that can hardly ever hit him, or he gets hit by one of these mobs once and is down to 1/2 health.  To try to throw another bandaid on that, SOE gave brawlers built in deflection (which made the avoidance issue even worse actually), and when that didn't help, they messed up the balance between light and medium armors to try to favor brawlers.  Still didn't work.</P> <P><BR>What I think we are seeing here is that SOE is realizing that these bandaid fixes are not helping.. so they are going back to the drawing board.  After they fix the avoidance mechanics, which was really the whole problem to begin with, I think you will see them scale back the 30+ mob stats, as well as tone down mob DPS.  Then they will be back on track, and can look into priest issues and mage dps, and then finally scouts.</P> <P></P> <HR>

[Zygorda]

<DIV>OK so why dont they just go back to what it was at release instead of nerfing everyone?? If it worked ok then why will it not work now? Then they can fix the mistakes with the knowledge they have now. </DIV>