LU#7 Test Patch notes.

-Aonein- · 04-14-2005, 01:12 PM

Test Update #7: April 13, 2005

*** Combat Changes ***

NOTE: We are now beginning to test significant changes to the combat system. Our primary goal is to eliminate cases where some characters could make themselves virtually immune to attack through buff stacking. We also want to better delineate the tanking ability of the four archetypes: fighters should tank significantly better than scouts, scouts should tank better than priests, and priests should tank better than mages. In addition, we are smoothing out player and NPC progression so there are no longer sudden increases in difficulty around the class and subclass levels. Overall, the con color of your opponent should be a lot more meaningful and will better indicate the level of challenge you're about to undertake.

Our intent is that the game feels and plays basically the way it always has for soloers and small group players. Groups and raid forces taking on powerful targets should find a greater level of challenge.

These changes will be undergoing extensive evaluation and tweaking on Test server. Please understand that we will not release these changes to the live servers until we are confident that they have the desired effect, so they may not go to the live servers with Live Update #7. We appreciate hearing your feedback on the official forums.

Avoidance

- Your likelihood of avoiding an attack is now based on two primary factors:

- The con color of the attacker.

- The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack.

- Increasing your Defense skill gives you a better chance of avoiding attacks, but there is now a cap on how much it can be buffed or debuffed.

- Increasing your Agility improves your base chance of avoiding an attack, but it will not improve your likelihood of parrying, deflecting, or blocking with a shield.

- There is now a cap on the effectiveness of Deflection buffs and debuffs.

- Mages and Priests no longer receive the Parry skill. It temporarily still shows in the Skills window, but these archetypes will no longer have any chance to parry.

- There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed.

- Shields now have the following base chances to Block: Tower (20%), Kite (19%), Round (5%), Buckler (3%). Your chances to Block scale up or down based on the con of your opponent. Shield buffs no longer have any effect.

Mitigation

- The base mitigation values of armor have been adjusted as follows: Heavy (35%), Medium (25%), Light (20%), Very Light (10%).

- Mitigation values scale up or down based on the con color of your attacker.

- There is now a cap on how much mitigation can be buffed or debuffed.

Damage

- Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility.

- The damage output of both players and NPCs should now increase more smoothly rather than receiving a sharp boost at levels 10 and 20.

*** Spells and Combat Arts ***

Berserker changes:

- Darkmoore's Protective Advance now takes only one point of concentration.

- Tides of War's effects will now be placed on more than just the caster.

- Bloodlust will now upgrade more naturally from Apprentice IV to Adept I.

Message Edited by -Aonein- on 04-15-2005 05:09 AM

Davish_Darkwolf · 04-14-2005, 02:04 PM

So many game mechanic changes that i wonder how fights will be in the next week, or month, or were yesterday....... is there

a coerent mechanic in EQ2??

- The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack

Although logical in real terms..... this kinda scares me, hope its not a nerf on our avoidance.

- Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility.

I wonder if it will work the other way around, mob's damage bonus comes from strenght versus our agility. First they

nerf agility, now they seem to be forcing us to raise it again??

- Tides of War's effects will now be placed on more than just the caster.

I wonder if the group will get the haste effect like it was before, if they get it..... its good news SMILEY

(but........ first they take it

from us.... then they give it back???)

Ru · 04-14-2005, 02:24 PM

In addition to nerfing our avoidance... This scares me a little... Or pisses me off, one. - Shields now have the following base chances to Block: Tower (20%), Kite (19%), Round (5%), Buckler (3%). Your chances to Block scale up or down based on the con of your opponent. Shield buffs no longer have any effect. Kite shields... How can something less than half as big block 95% of the attacks that my barrel can. I guess they are trying to make the brawler and crusaders tank as well as warriors... Which, I suppose they did need...

Mor · 04-14-2005, 04:39 PM

I'm beginning to get a little nervous. I hope any of you that play on the test server help test these sweeping changes. - 'The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack.' Logically this sounds ok but in the EQ2 world, every single mob comes with a full set of 'special's waiting to unload on you that stun you, interrupt casting, stifle, etc. I'm worried about these changes making my berserker stunned / interrupted / stifled more than he already is. Larger encounters have me even more worried. - 'Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility.' This may or may not work, the problem is that we will never know. Right now you have goals to set. If you break 100 str, instant x% melee damage bonus. Break 125 str get another bonus .... Now all that is hidden from you, because you cant know your opponents agility. - 'There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed.' This instantly nullifies one of my defense buffs. Will there be compensation? I'm sure glad I didnt bother trying to obtain adept3 / master version of this line. - 'Mitigation values scale up or down based on the con color of your attacker.' Heavy armor will now have a base of 35% mitigation, but what happens when you try to fight yellows/orange/red? It sounds like your base mitigation will scale down, less than 35%. I hope this isnt drastic, and if it is, I hope that it is also drastic in the opposite direction (a pull of blues/greens, I mitigate their hits very well). Overall, they have me spooked. This has the potential for disaster.

CherobylJ · 04-14-2005, 06:16 PM

- There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed.

*$%#&! does this imply that the Weaponshield Line is being killed??????

oooh this could be bad things man....bad things.

JBo · 04-14-2005, 06:25 PM

This is ridiculous.

The difference of block rate between all shields should be much more smoother.

Suggestions:

Tower Shield (20%)

Kite Shield (15%)

Round Shield (10%)

Buckler (5%)

cr0wangel · 04-14-2005, 06:26 PM

I know these changes are on Test server still... but what a mess.... They want bruiser and monk to tank better, but instead of making them better, they nerf our avoidance. And this parry skill thing..... weapon shield will buff mitigation or defense maybe? -sigh-

it doesn't affect berserkers, but mage and priest will loose the parry skill completely......... do you really think the players will be happy?

fbi · 04-14-2005, 06:55 PM

I'm pretty new to EQ2 and have been having a lot of fun. I've also been impressed both with the quality and pace of the updates. Update 7 combat changes though to me so far sounds pretty freakin scary. I hope the devs reconsider many of the proposed changes. :/

Min · 04-14-2005, 07:12 PM

I don't usually reply to anything but positive threads but its getting pretty frustrating and not just our class but the game in general.

I am sitting at level 50, worked hard to get here through all the nurfs and BS and have never really complained about my class, as a matter of fact I think its the best class. I think that it was the best decision I could have made for a fighter, and I enjoy the role as a tank. But what about the rest of the game? Have any of you that started playing at release logged in and looked around? Its not even the same game.

I played EQL for near 4 years and quit so I could come to EQ2 and lead a successful raiding guild, but they have managed to eather nurf, pad or skyrocket everything in the game. If they continue in the direction they are going there will be only be solo'ers left who enjoy absolutly no challange and want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Currently raiding is almost worthless and instead of creating new challanges for people they simply nurf the classes so an encounter you have done 20 times is only more difficult because you can't do your job like you used to be able to, and IMHO that is just ignorant.

Let me just say this is looking like the worst patch they have put out to date, and its hard to believe that even though there are over 100 posts on Rampage there was no mention of it being fixed in the patch. There is absolutly no redeemable quality in this patch and they are intentionally breaking the whole Weaponguard line and as the past shows us they will most likely not fix it or give us anything to replace it.

Oh well I am done ranting SMILEY

Kurrath

50 Berserker & Leader of Misericordia

Mistmoore

Message Edited by Minoc on 04-14-2005 11:15 AM

Tarindel · 04-14-2005, 07:45 PM

CherobylJoe wrote:
- There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed.

*$%#&! does this imply that the Weaponshield Line is being killed??????

oooh this could be bad things man....bad things.

Yes, that implication is clear. The question is now what are they going to replace it with? Also, will people who chose Darkmoore's as their 40th level training option be allowed to /respec? Other classes are having similar issues -- bards have parry buffs, paladins have shield buffs, etc... so we're not in this boat alone.

SageMarrow · 04-14-2005, 08:17 PM

Brawlers wont be tanking any better.... it will be the same line that we were in before the test patch. they just scalled it down big time...

we went down from 40% mitigation to 20% mitigation at base. Now the only difference at this point will be what changes they make around this change as far as mobs and class specific armors.

Cause the notes say that the lighter the armor the better the avoidance, then okay - does that mean that a guardian can forsake the heavy armor - hop into Light armor and go to town as an avoidance guardian???????????

thats what is left to be announced- the notes are very vague.

Daran · 04-14-2005, 09:43 PM

Actually the idea of an avoidance based berserker sounds kinda neat. Might be interesting to test out once the adjustments settle into place. The kite shield being almost identical to the Tower shield, Actually that makes me kind of happy, I hated the giant barn door and to know I dont lose that much based on my choice of a smaller kite shield. And I'm sure that when they stopped buffs from affecting the Parry and Shield effectiveness directly they realized that there are buffs that affect those stats....otherwise why take away the ability to increase them if nothing could increase them right? Although I really must say that the round shield (which for those of you who don't know belongs to the scout classes as well as being the original base "built in shield" for the monks and bruisers) might want to be at 12-15, 10% seems a little low. And if memory serves from the last time I checked out my Pristine Tier 3 Tower Shield, the amount of avoidance it added was 12% at level 28 or 29. Not the end of the world, but I haven't finished all the patch notes yet.

04-14-2005, 01:12 PM	#1
-Aonein- Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,673	Test Update #7: April 13, 2005 * Combat Changes * NOTE: We are now beginning to test significant changes to the combat system. Our primary goal is to eliminate cases where some characters could make themselves virtually immune to attack through buff stacking. We also want to better delineate the tanking ability of the four archetypes: fighters should tank significantly better than scouts, scouts should tank better than priests, and priests should tank better than mages. In addition, we are smoothing out player and NPC progression so there are no longer sudden increases in difficulty around the class and subclass levels. Overall, the con color of your opponent should be a lot more meaningful and will better indicate the level of challenge you're about to undertake. Our intent is that the game feels and plays basically the way it always has for soloers and small group players. Groups and raid forces taking on powerful targets should find a greater level of challenge. These changes will be undergoing extensive evaluation and tweaking on Test server. Please understand that we will not release these changes to the live servers until we are confident that they have the desired effect, so they may not go to the live servers with Live Update #7. We appreciate hearing your feedback on the official forums. Avoidance - Your likelihood of avoiding an attack is now based on two primary factors: - The con color of the attacker. - The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack. - Increasing your Defense skill gives you a better chance of avoiding attacks, but there is now a cap on how much it can be buffed or debuffed. - Increasing your Agility improves your base chance of avoiding an attack, but it will not improve your likelihood of parrying, deflecting, or blocking with a shield. - There is now a cap on the effectiveness of Deflection buffs and debuffs. - Mages and Priests no longer receive the Parry skill. It temporarily still shows in the Skills window, but these archetypes will no longer have any chance to parry. - There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed. - Shields now have the following base chances to Block: Tower (20%), Kite (19%), Round (5%), Buckler (3%). Your chances to Block scale up or down based on the con of your opponent. Shield buffs no longer have any effect. Mitigation - The base mitigation values of armor have been adjusted as follows: Heavy (35%), Medium (25%), Light (20%), Very Light (10%). - Mitigation values scale up or down based on the con color of your attacker. - There is now a cap on how much mitigation can be buffed or debuffed. Damage - Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility. - The damage output of both players and NPCs should now increase more smoothly rather than receiving a sharp boost at levels 10 and 20. * Spells and Combat Arts * Berserker changes: - Darkmoore's Protective Advance now takes only one point of concentration. - Tides of War's effects will now be placed on more than just the caster. - Bloodlust will now upgrade more naturally from Apprentice IV to Adept I. Message Edited by -Aonein- on 04-15-2005 05:09 AM __________________

04-14-2005, 02:04 PM	#2
Davish_Darkwolf Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 259	So many game mechanic changes that i wonder how fights will be in the next week, or month, or were yesterday....... is there a coerent mechanic in EQ2?? - The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack Although logical in real terms..... this kinda scares me, hope its not a nerf on our avoidance. - Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility. I wonder if it will work the other way around, mob's damage bonus comes from strenght versus our agility. First they nerf agility, now they seem to be forcing us to raise it again?? - Tides of War's effects will now be placed on more than just the caster. I wonder if the group will get the haste effect like it was before, if they get it..... its good news (but........ first they take it from us.... then they give it back???) __________________

04-14-2005, 06:16 PM	#5
CherobylJ Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 395	- There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed. $%#&! does this imply that the Weaponshield Line is being killed?????? oooh this could be bad things man....bad things. __________________ ---------------------- Flair Fifteenpiece - 54 Berserker of Guk,* - Co-GL Infernal Requiem formerly Flair Shieldrender 70 Overlord of Fennin Ro "And as the Overlord raised his fist to the sky, the crowds cheered below. The soldiers began their familiar chant as the citizens joined in: "Strength in unity; unity in Lucan!"

04-14-2005, 07:12 PM	#9
Min Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 5	I don't usually reply to anything but positive threads but its getting pretty frustrating and not just our class but the game in general. I am sitting at level 50, worked hard to get here through all the nurfs and BS and have never really complained about my class, as a matter of fact I think its the best class. I think that it was the best decision I could have made for a fighter, and I enjoy the role as a tank. But what about the rest of the game? Have any of you that started playing at release logged in and looked around? Its not even the same game. I played EQL for near 4 years and quit so I could come to EQ2 and lead a successful raiding guild, but they have managed to eather nurf, pad or skyrocket everything in the game. If they continue in the direction they are going there will be only be solo'ers left who enjoy absolutly no challange and want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Currently raiding is almost worthless and instead of creating new challanges for people they simply nurf the classes so an encounter you have done 20 times is only more difficult because you can't do your job like you used to be able to, and IMHO that is just ignorant. Let me just say this is looking like the worst patch they have put out to date, and its hard to believe that even though there are over 100 posts on Rampage there was no mention of it being fixed in the patch. There is absolutly no redeemable quality in this patch and they are intentionally breaking the whole Weaponguard line and as the past shows us they will most likely not fix it or give us anything to replace it. Oh well I am done ranting Kurrath 50 Berserker & Leader of Misericordia Mistmoore Message Edited by Minoc on 04-14-2005 11:15 AM

04-14-2005, 07:45 PM	#10
Tarindel Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Davis, CA Posts: 43	CherobylJoe wrote: - There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed. *$%#&! does this imply that the Weaponshield Line is being killed?????? oooh this could be bad things man....bad things. Yes, that implication is clear. The question is now what are they going to replace it with? Also, will people who chose Darkmoore's as their 40th level training option be allowed to /respec? Other classes are having similar issues -- bards have parry buffs, paladins have shield buffs, etc... so we're not in this boat alone. __________________

04-14-2005, 02:24 PM	#3
Ru Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 42	In addition to nerfing our avoidance... This scares me a little... Or pisses me off, one. - Shields now have the following base chances to Block: Tower (20%), Kite (19%), Round (5%), Buckler (3%). Your chances to Block scale up or down based on the con of your opponent. Shield buffs no longer have any effect. Kite shields... How can something less than half as big block 95% of the attacks that my barrel can. I guess they are trying to make the brawler and crusaders tank as well as warriors... Which, I suppose they did need...

04-14-2005, 04:39 PM	#4
Mor Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 15	I'm beginning to get a little nervous. I hope any of you that play on the test server help test these sweeping changes. - 'The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack.' Logically this sounds ok but in the EQ2 world, every single mob comes with a full set of 'special's waiting to unload on you that stun you, interrupt casting, stifle, etc. I'm worried about these changes making my berserker stunned / interrupted / stifled more than he already is. Larger encounters have me even more worried. - 'Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility.' This may or may not work, the problem is that we will never know. Right now you have goals to set. If you break 100 str, instant x% melee damage bonus. Break 125 str get another bonus .... Now all that is hidden from you, because you cant know your opponents agility. - 'There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed.' This instantly nullifies one of my defense buffs. Will there be compensation? I'm sure glad I didnt bother trying to obtain adept3 / master version of this line. - 'Mitigation values scale up or down based on the con color of your attacker.' Heavy armor will now have a base of 35% mitigation, but what happens when you try to fight yellows/orange/red? It sounds like your base mitigation will scale down, less than 35%. I hope this isnt drastic, and if it is, I hope that it is also drastic in the opposite direction (a pull of blues/greens, I mitigate their hits very well). Overall, they have me spooked. This has the potential for disaster.

04-14-2005, 06:25 PM	#6
JBo Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 135	This is ridiculous. The difference of block rate between all shields should be much more smoother. Suggestions: Tower Shield (20%) Kite Shield (15%) Round Shield (10%) Buckler (5%)

04-14-2005, 06:26 PM	#7
cr0wangel Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 594	I know these changes are on Test server still... but what a mess.... They want bruiser and monk to tank better, but instead of making them better, they nerf our avoidance. And this parry skill thing..... weapon shield will buff mitigation or defense maybe? -sigh- it doesn't affect berserkers, but mage and priest will loose the parry skill completely......... do you really think the players will be happy?

04-14-2005, 06:55 PM	#8
fbi General Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 173	I'm pretty new to EQ2 and have been having a lot of fun. I've also been impressed both with the quality and pace of the updates. Update 7 combat changes though to me so far sounds pretty freakin scary. I hope the devs reconsider many of the proposed changes. :/

04-14-2005, 08:17 PM	#11
SageMarrow Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 958	Brawlers wont be tanking any better.... it will be the same line that we were in before the test patch. they just scalled it down big time... we went down from 40% mitigation to 20% mitigation at base. Now the only difference at this point will be what changes they make around this change as far as mobs and class specific armors. Cause the notes say that the lighter the armor the better the avoidance, then okay - does that mean that a guardian can forsake the heavy armor - hop into Light armor and go to town as an avoidance guardian??????????? thats what is left to be announced- the notes are very vague.

04-14-2005, 09:43 PM	#12
Daran Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 76	Actually the idea of an avoidance based berserker sounds kinda neat. Might be interesting to test out once the adjustments settle into place. The kite shield being almost identical to the Tower shield, Actually that makes me kind of happy, I hated the giant barn door and to know I dont lose that much based on my choice of a smaller kite shield. And I'm sure that when they stopped buffs from affecting the Parry and Shield effectiveness directly they realized that there are buffs that affect those stats....otherwise why take away the ability to increase them if nothing could increase them right? Although I really must say that the round shield (which for those of you who don't know belongs to the scout classes as well as being the original base "built in shield" for the monks and bruisers) might want to be at 12-15, 10% seems a little low. And if memory serves from the last time I checked out my Pristine Tier 3 Tower Shield, the amount of avoidance it added was 12% at level 28 or 29. Not the end of the world, but I haven't finished all the patch notes yet.