im liking the changes to Swashys

[Leejoyn]

I am doing more DPS and bigger hits now.

im level 46- killed a level 45 mob in 2 hits tonight )

 

pssst dont tell SOE they may cjange it.

 

[Jony]

Overall I'm liking it too, except for the loss of my bow:smileymad:....the area damage is impressive:smileyhappy:

[Indigo-B]

I had noticed a massive improvement in melee damage output, aswell.

Not really liking the poison fix much tho...Nor do I like giving up my Bow, at least it weren't a good one. :smileysurprised:

Overall I feel I am a lot less effective than I was, solo and with the wider level for exp/aggro mobs I now find TS to be far more dangerous. To the point I went back into Antonica so I could get used to my character again.

[VegasLife]

Poison fix?  What happened and what should I expect?

 

Thanks

 

 

[BenDJ]

Im liking the changes as well.and btw, some of the stances still do stack.but false bravado kinda sucks now since it stacks that hate proc.and with the damage increase, keeping agro off when in groups takes a bit more skill, so false bravado seems useless to me atm.losing the bow sucks, i had a +10str +10agi bow and sad to have to replace it w/ a sheath.but i'll get over it.

[Naggyba]

Actually, spent many hours in a group with a guardian and I only got agro a few times and I spammed skills and everything.I put swarthy diversion on the tank and use avoid blame and it seems to work pretty good. I am even using false bravado and everything else I can put on me, along with torrent of the ages poison.I'm pulling 250-450 DPS and not getting agro.I am really enjoying my class now. Several of us worked hard in beta with the developer to try and get us like this. We argued our case on the hate increasing stuff and they seemed to agree and removed or reduced it. Our DPS and soloability got a huge boost.I do miss my bow still and wish they would have at least unattuned them or offered some sort of trade in.

Message Edited by Naggybait on 09-14-2005 12:37 AM

[DonSavan]

 

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Indigo-Bro wrote:

I had noticed a massive improvement in melee damage output, aswell.

Not really liking the poison fix much tho...Nor do I like giving up my Bow, at least it weren't a good one. :smileysurprised:

Overall I feel I am a lot less effective than I was, solo and with the wider level for exp/aggro mobs I now find TS to be far more dangerous. To the point I went back into Antonica so I could get used to my character again.

---

The poison fixes were an overall improvement.  They would appear to suck if you thought that all those damage poisons you were putting up proc'd together, or added to your chance to proc....they didn't.

• There can no longer be more than one damage poison active. This was done to reduce confusion, since only one of those damage poisons would actually be active.

 

Some poisons do stack though, and always have...

• A player can have one Poison from each category active at the same time. This means a Rogue or Predator can have a damage poison active, a resist debuff poison active, and a miscellaneous debuff poison active (anything other than a resist reduction or damage). Any or all of these three have a chance to proc during an attack.

Here are the rest of the changes..

Poisons will now appear in the Maintained window as well as their Effects window when applied. (Previously, they were only visible in the Effects window.)

When a poison procs on a victim, the poison effect will appear in the attacker's Maintained window. This denotes that the player successfully poisoned a target. There is no concentration cost, however.

Poisons now display a descriptive proc message rather than just saying "poison."

Poison damage effects will stack when applied by different players to the same target.

Poison debuffs will stack only if the debuff effect is different. The same debuff effects (e.g. two strength debuffs) will never stack, even if applied by different players.

Poisons are no longer outright resisted when they proc in melee combat, but their damage can be mitigated.

Poison effects will not interfere with profession damage or debuff spells. All poison effects will be cumulative to profession spells with similar effects (i.e. a player can use a poison that decreases the target's strength along with a combat art that decreases its strength, and both will take effect).

Full list of combat changes

[Dark_Sun]

Ait had time to parse our dps, but from the first looks it was great!

 

One thing i tested is our ability to solo (because a lot of ppl whined that scouts cant solo and it will be even worse)

 

Well, its definatly improved. I can solo non-stop lvl 50-52 solo mobs, with loosing about 5-10% hp on them, wich regenerates while i go to next mobs. I soloed heroic lvl 50-51 in less that 1 minute, without any ranged kiting.

Our Cheap Shot is awesome ability, its stuns for 6 seconds and stun dont breaks when you hit mob. So you launch frontal attacks, then stun and launch all rear attacks. On solo mobs = dead mob. on heroic mobs just mezz, wait for times to reset and melee them until they are dead.

[Indigo-B]

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DonSavantx wrote:

 

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Indigo-Bro wrote:

I had noticed a massive improvement in melee damage output, aswell.

Not really liking the poison fix much tho...Nor do I like giving up my Bow, at least it weren't a good one. :smileysurprised:

Overall I feel I am a lot less effective than I was, solo and with the wider level for exp/aggro mobs I now find TS to be far more dangerous. To the point I went back into Antonica so I could get used to my character again.

---

The poison fixes were an overall improvement.  They would appear to suck if you thought that all those damage poisons you were putting up proc'd together, or added to your chance to proc....they didn't.

• There can no longer be more than one damage poison active. This was done to reduce confusion, since only one of those damage poisons would actually be active.

---

Yeah I read that too, except in my experience some of them did stack, Maybe not all every time but I was certainly getting more than one damage message when kiting before the patch.

[Arciahand]

The poisons that stacked were poisons that had a differant % to hit.  If you had a poison up that was a damage poison that had a 20% chance of hitting, and one of 25%, they could both proc, was extreemly usefull, and I had no intention of reporting it lol.

 

I like a lot of the changes, the stun change will be huge... crazy huge for soloing.

 

Anyone that said we could not solo before either did not play a scout,  played pourly, or chose mobs that had an excesive ammount of DPS or HPs.  I do not want to say someone sucked, but I soloed green heroics and orange mobs normaly without issue, I am not some crazy fabled out guy either, 2 masters, 3 adpet 3s, and a fabled whip.  I can't wait to see what I can solo now, it will be interesting.

 

The buffs (for the most part) have no timer and use some concentration, I like that.

 

Just hit for 1,157 pts of damage, wow, very cool.

 

One complaint, it would be nice if our group stealth was quicker, does anyone know SOEs justification in a 30% slow on ours?

 

 

Jhack Sparrow, Treasure Hunter Extraordinare

(lvl 47 Swashbuckler)

[Triccer]

Well, I only did some testing solo and in duo with a templar. Firstly, beating the pit champion in 15 seconds and with zero health lost in straight melee and without even using Daring Advance is a nice thing. So from that perspective, I'd say our performance has increased somewhat. With the mobs mitigation being nonexistant the dps more than doubled from what I've seen. This affects every class tho, what is nice is that with debuffs you can even score hits that are a good deal higher than the description reads. Debuffing mitigation is still just as important. The second test was Fire Toad in LS. With the new con system it is now green and lvl 42 ^^^, so a regular group mob. Consequently it owned me badly in solo and it was a lengthy fight in duo with that templar. Group mobs really seem to be made for groups now, even the ones 8 levels below you. As for normal soloing in instances like the hideout, the killing speeded up somewhat. The explosive barrles hit for over 4k depending on the placing and the AE damage makes it possible to kill white groups of 4 in about 10 to 15 secs max. A few things that I noted about specific CAs (aka incoherent rambling): Strength is a lot higher standard buffed now; with respecing to all strength and zero agility I ended up with about 60 agi less and about 75 strength more than before. Avoidance has dropped to about 47% in defensive mode and about 30% in offensive mode for me. Disable is still flanking only despite what the description reads. I seriously hope this is a bug, else we'll ave to stick to Undercut yet again. Razor Edge was changed from front only on test to front and side. Nice change, makes it a decent move. The position 'behind' has a way larger angle now. Makes backstabs way easier to score. With the stunning and the knockdown effects it's a lot easier to get all the leet moves off even in solo. For example you can use a Cheap Shot to get a Brazen Thrust off and then use that stun for Cat's Paw + Disheartening Guile. I'm still waiting for the Knockback effect on Flamboyant Strike as it was supposed to be in its final version though. This one will come in really handy, especially in PvP and solo PvE battle. The stances are pretty sweet, they do make a difference in damage dealt and damage taken. The 30% chance to interrupt procs too rarely though. It seems the chance to proc is way higher on CAs than on autoattack. In my short testing you couldn't count on DA to reliably interrupt mobs. No conc. on the stances means you can have all buffs running at the same time (except group sneak). Side noteathfinding and SoW Totems still seem to stack! Flurry of Arms connects far more often, and with the short cast time and the seemingly increased proc rate of interrupts and the optional additional hits from Inspired Daring it didn't get nerfed for me. Plus, the debuff amplifies the damage majorly. The 350ish debuff doesn't seem to be much, but mitigation values got almost halfed from what I see from my char. So we are effectively looking at a debuff of about 700 in the old system, plus the stacked debuff of Disheartening Guile. Dps wise it really felt like dps now. Well more added later maybe...

[ArivenGemini]

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Jony wrote:

Overall I'm liking it too, except for the loss of my bow:smileymad:....the area damage is impressive:smileyhappy:

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Yeah the bow hurts Overall though I really am liking it... I have been duoing with a monk and we are able to take the same stuff down noticibly faster than before... though my agro generation is also noticibly higher.. guessing due to the hate procs and the DPS I am doing...  I had to turn feigned bravado off when we ended up in a group where a guardian was MT.. as he just wasn't able to keep agro off me, off the fury, off the defiler or off the monk..   but he was 3 levels below me, 2 below the monk and 6 below the defiler, so he really wasn't optimal to keep agro compared to our higher level agro so I dont blame him on that one. But stuff dies faster, I still have a similar feel.. I just cant hit as far away with the knives as I did with my bow

[chessdemon]

Yeah, gotta say...I'm liking it too Do miss my bow (I can imbue it and then sell it off at least, some ranger could likley use a pristine imbued oak longbow), and I do think there need to be more NPC's that sell throwing weapons (can't scream too much there, at least there's one spot right near my workshop that sells iron axes, though being able to reload in EL or Zek would be nice), but soloing, I was a DPS machine, killing off things I'd have run from before, and in less time before. I cracked my guild up, telling them, 'If this is nerfing, nerf me harder, baby, you know you can...'

[Shiverr]

I think we've fared well.  I think we'll all be asking "Mommy, why do I hit soo hard?" -lol- compared to other experiences.

A couple days ago I created a new Scout/Rogue to get a fresh feel of start-up advancing, combat, and xp prior to revamp.  Got him to level 12 day before yesterday,  deleted yesterday and rerolled under revamps to compare.

Right off, the damage is noticeably better.  Combat feels much faster to me.  Both ways tho,and you can find yourself in the orange quick if not minding p's and q's .  Mob hitting harder, but I'm definatley hitting harder and staying on top of a reasonable con, and it goes by faster.  CA's seem to matter even more now.

Losing the bow does suck, but the melee feels great at the moment.  Im enjoying it.  Feels exciting.

I think in the end its going to be a good experience for me to start one fresh in this new system to learn the new icons/CA trees, and when/where abilities come from all from scratch again.  I feel somewhat surprised that I'm not dissapointed so far..but of course its still early on.  Mostly tho, I'm really starting to get excited about learning to play with the changes and what the results may be.

 

[Triccer]

Ahhh *sigh* just so beautiful Last night I fooled around in the Arena a bit and was facing two templars, 50 and 46. Was just so fun to mezz one and kill the other with stun and the flanking attacks, then finishing off the one with Swathe as the mezz wore off and knocking down the second one along with it, then Artful Finesse and Inspired Daring. Took about 5 to 10 seconds to take the second one out, too. A long needed ego boost for this class imo.

[T]

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Jony wrote:
Overall I'm liking it too, except for the loss of my bow:smileymad:....the area damage is impressive:smileyhappy:

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I'm really liking the changes with the exception of losing my bow.  I had a Longbow of the Warmaster and at level 35 I had a few more levels of use on it.  Hey SOE, how about a /unattune to use on 1 item?  Had I known I'd be losing a CA bow attack I would never have equipped this bow. 

 

Everything else seems to be great so far.  I did some soloing in Zek last night and couldn't believe the speed at which I could drop some mobs.  So, for that, yay SOE!

[Insurrection]

if anyone is around lvl 40,would you mind posting what skills you use now? i was so boggled by the CU i started playing on my alt. im hoping that if you posted the ones you use,itd probably help me get adjusted...i dont want to delete my swashy,i love his lil furry butt

[DonSavan]

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Insurrection77 wrote:
if anyone is around lvl 40,would you mind posting what skills you use now? i was so boggled by the CU i started playing on my alt. im hoping that if you posted the ones you use,itd probably help me get adjusted...i dont want to delete my swashy,i love his lil furry butt

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I'm pretty sure all skills in the same line have the same icon + background color, so I just put highest level combat art of a particular line onto my hotbar.(or highest damage/best debuff if you have a lower level adept3-master2 skill that looks better than your newer, not yet upgraded as high skill)  not sure if this is the best thing to do yet as i'm still experimenting

 

damage doesn't break stuns now so if you stun and swing behind, use both your backstab and flank attack.  my three hit attack and my razor's edge have a  -mitigation and -parry so i like to use them before my attacks that don't. 

I've only solo'd so far and didn't use any stances unless i' was getting overwhelmed by mobs or low on health,  then I put on the defensive stance which seems to work good.

 

hope this helps

 

Message Edited by DonSavantx on 09-15-2005 05:35 PM

[Jony]

Wow, the more I play my swashy the more I realize how great this patch was for us.:smileyhappy: Other classes didn't come out so well.   I have a lvl 21 templar that I used to like playing, now I can't stand it...terrible Overall, it seems like a lot of classes got nerfed, where as ours got buffed(don't tell sony:smileywink:).    Hehe, a poor guildie wanted to duel me(paladin), with nothing to lose, because we were under the impression you couldn't die in a duel, I accepted...after I incapped him, my poison kept ticking away....he couldn't stand up and it eventually corpsed him, ouch...was funny though, have to admit:smileyvery-happy:

[Insurrection]

thanks don,also,does anyone know how to switch from a custom UI back to the default one? i want to switch back for just a lil bit so i can use the "sort" feature in the book

[DngrMou]

So far, I'm pretty impressed.  I can chew through green/blue mobs fast enough to keep the beach at Feerott clear of Huuptics entirely.  Safe fall is still great...no nerfing to that at all, that I've been able to detect, (I did a number of practice jumps from the yellow platform in the SQ mage tower), and leapt from the climbing wall in DoF from the dunes, and lived, (though I did take 1600 damage).  I'm now able to stun, jump the mobs, and get in those great back shots which were practically useless in a solo situation before.

 

I'm still angry about losing my bow CA's, and that's not going to change.  The best I can do for a replacement, (dagger sheath widget), does about a third the damage my bow does.  At this point, I see no reason to replace my bow...because there's really nothing out there to replace it with, and I don't think the CA's on daggers alone are enough to warrant a change.  I'd truly love to hear an explanation for this change from SOE.  It still does not make any sense, and if they based this decision on 'roleplaying' factors, then the question remains; "why can't I roleplay with a bow?".

 

DPS is amazing....I hit for 1125 damage last night.  I was very impressed with that, and it bounced me to #255 on my server for highest melee hit....and my Swach is level 42.

 

I'm still trying to work out all the aggro management stuff we have, so I usually end up tanking at some point during group encounters, but I expect to work all that out this weekend.

[DonSavan]

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Insurrection77 wrote:
thanks don,also,does anyone know how to switch from a custom UI back to the default one? i want to switch back for just a lil bit so i can use the "sort" feature in the book

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I'm pretty sure if you go to your eq2folder/UI/custom(or whatever your custom folder is named) and move the file named  eq2ui_mainhud_knowledge.xml somewhere else(like to your desktop ) you'll be back to your old knowlegde book.  then when/if you want it back you just move the file back in.  Another way to do it is just to rename the file to something like eq2ui_mainhud_knowledge.xml.temp and when you want it back take the .temp off the end

 

[Dresden00]

I am loving the changes.  I feel extremely useful in a group now with our amazing debuffs, and I do crazy damage still.  Also, I can tell that we are going to be very useful on raids finally with our debuffs.

I personally have no aggro problems.  Using Evasion/Avoid Blame/Shadow Slip I can almost instantly get mobs off me, and of course putting our aggro transfer buff on the tank helps tons too.  I have no problems with False Bravado, I love it now.  Before you had to time your casting of it so you didnt get aggro, and if you took ANY damage or power drains you lost it.  Now, you dont ahve to worry about when to cast it, the haste is great, and the hate increase is negligible.  If you are using all of our deaggro abilities you shouldnt be having aggro problems IMO.

I also love our stances and concentration buffs, I dont miss recasting our 15 min and 30sec buffs over and over. 

Lastly, they took our worst spell and made it our best.  Inspired Daring is hands down the sickest spell I have ever seen.  When I throw it on the mob dies within a few seconds no matter their health level, I have seen some parses up to 800dps when I have that thing on.  It used to be worthless, now it is an incentive to get 50.

All in all I love the changes.  Other swashies and I begged the devs to give us something IN COMBAT that was useful to make up for our lower damage than predators.  I think they did that with our debuffs, which are simply amazing.  I mean, who needs a defiler when you have a swashy!! We are like half debuffers half dps now, but we still can throw out some wicked punishment when we want to.

[._Jammer]

why miss the bow?

 

I ONLY used it to pull with my bow style, and had the lowest lvl arrows to make it cheap, I mean, one or 2 shots off at max per fight. Now, with the throw weapon style, I have the same damage and can move while fireing, its a buff in my opinon and look way cooler. Dont base the change good or bad depending on what weapons available, content change more often than abilities.

[liveja]

Before the combat change, I had fun in groups, but hated soloing because it was so slow & tedious.

Now, while I still prefer grouping, soloing has become enjoyable, & the game is a lot more fun now.

[angrytroll1]

Have to agree on the bow. I started saving as soon as the change was announced and bought a T5 crafted imbued sheath. Its every bit as good as a bow IMO and I dont look like a ranger using it.

[foad]

Still have yet to see a throwing weapon with anywhere near the stats on the bows. seeing how i only use them to pull with i've yet to see a reason to switch. Outside of that though the changes are great having a blast playing it.