Angturil
04-19-2005, 11:27 PM
Instead of dealing with a relatively simple issue (defense abilities buffable 5-10 levels over the character's own), Sony decides to throw the baby out with the bath water, and break everything (on a live game), effectively breaking all semblance of class balance they had, numerous class buffs, aggro management, caster interruptions, and healer aggro. This comes from a total lack of understanding of existing game dynamics, and the impact will result in a lot of people leaving this game for the competition (for the record - tried wow, it eq2 is a much better game - but patch management and game changes are *$%#&!, making it unplayable at times... ). Remember that last tradeskill patch? guess what... almost all the reasons for it, and many of the balances and rewards were quitely rolled back, and changed/undone to a state somewhat similar to what they started with. I think you'll see much the same thing happen here. Here's what's going to happen. - Changes to reactive heals will result in aggro going to the healer (right now - they are generating extra aggro on the tank - vs. the entire add group). - The tanks (and all casters) will now be hit much more often by mobs (Presumably for much less damage...) , this will result in more procs, stuns and stifles. In many situations resulting in the tank/healer being completely unable to cast. - The entire balance of reactive heals is based on a spread out distribution of damage. They will result in more focused aggro on the healer, and mobs going loose - with no real recourse for the tanks. - The ability of characters to finish long greyed out content will be severely hampered. Classes that cannot heal themselves will not be able to solo - even when the content is far below their level . - Many of the existing top end encounters will not be doable without crafted groups. The raid makeup of winnable scenario's will end up being very specific. - It's probably that many encounters will not be killable at all.. In the end... - Parry will be brought back to casters - because shields , even now, aren't useful for almost anyone, with their poor choice of stats, limited (and inappropriate classes), and reduced dps. - All the buff classes will need a major rebalance as a result - and they'll probably just end up undoing this all after a month of making the game generally unplayable. I personally plan to work on my tradeskills in the meantime <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> eq1 is a lot of fun... DON is a great expansion, and if you're a station member, might be a good time to revisit the old game... maybe in a month or two, things will get better here <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <div></div>