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Old 07-02-2010, 06:22 PM
Halladar Halladar is offline
Aviak


Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 95
Default Paladin aggro and memory lane

You've probably seen the recent xp argument posts. But reading them something bugged me, and I couldn't figure out what it was. One of the defenses of the xp penalty for the hybrid classes is how well they get and hold aggro with spells.

This has always been true of sk's. Mobs have always hated Disease Cloud, and Siphon Strength. There are some other spells an sk can use, but disease cloud was usually the backbone aggro spell in the era we are discussing. (I"m not sure both together amount to one Flame Lick, but in any era of EQ Rangers have been aggro kings if they want to be).

Ok what was bugging me was the Paladin thing. I can remember pre-Kunark when Paladins were considered to be totally inferior to warriors. They really didn't start to use spells for aggro till they got the multiple stuns with kunark and that problem went away. One of the gripes was that Paladins COULDN'T get and hold aggro. This is totally different from the way it works today, and indeed on this server. If you don't believe me, go to the wayback machine and find the old Paladins of Norrath board from the time Romidar Trueblade and Beldukil (think that is right) were around.

There were a couple of reasons for this. The way aggro worked favored a lot of fast swings (for want of a better word). You might have a warrior that did a lot more damage with a Raging Sword of Skarlon, but he dual wielded. (Even if the weapons didn't proc) to get and hold aggro.

Now Paladins of course don't dual wield. And the best one hand weapon they could use was a Ghoulbane (relatively slow at 15/34 or whatever). They had an awful time holding aggro with melee, and their taunt cap was lower than warriors (not to mention bash and some other things).

Ok, now I'll get to the point.

Here is a patch log from Jan 9, 2001:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/hist...es-2001-1.html

More specifically:

'Previously, "Root" spells would overwrite any snare effect upon the
target. When the root would wear off, the target began moving at full
speed. With this change, when root wears off, snare will still be in
effect. This has a few added effects on the other end.'

Ok, so why is this important? Look at the paladin spells pre 50. You get stun at 30. You get root at 22. Another stun, Holy Might, at 49. And a very special spell we will talk about in a minute called Flash of Light.

(obviously Paladins get more spells than this, but we are talking spells that get you a lot of aggro from a mob, and you can spook the dead and undead dd line, but leave that aside for now).

On this server the sum total of spells that get you significant aggro (your heals aren't good enough to get you cleric type aggro) are Flash, Root, Stun, and Holy Might.

I apologize for being long winded, but I want to point out something. Flash of Light was a spell that was almost never used in a dungeon. EVER. It used to be called Flash of Train. You might use it outside but never in a dungeon (unless you were soloing and could live with the possible consequences). You know how it is supposed to work right? Flash something, if it isn't directly on you it acts like a fear spell? Well and good, but it had a nasty habit of acting like a fear spell at times for reasons unknown to me to this day. I used to think it was because if the player at the top of the aggro list wasn't directly next to it, it acted like a fear spell, but I never checked this.

I gave you a snippet of a patch message. Why is that important? Because before this patch, you would almost never use root if you had a snarer.

I'll make it short. Pre Kunark the best aggro spell pre 49 paladins had was stun at level 30. They sucked at getting aggro and holding it.

You did a little better than that with undead, but not much better. The undead dd's are pretty weak when you get them. You aren't going to pull anything off a wizard with expulse undead.

I'm not saying this state of affairs is the way it should be. Just want to point out that this server has a number of ways it differs from live of that era.

And it will get worse in Kunark. Though Paladins won't have any aggro issues after it comes out. The fact they don't seem to now, is because some of these spells aren't coded as they should be for this era.
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