Monk FD mechanics not classic?

[Vasuki]

This may be completely wrong, but I was talking to some people and they recall that when monks FD sneaking did not mem/blur the mobs they had aggroed.

I'm not sure if this is correct, do you guys remember sneaking after FD resetting the aggro?

[jolanar]

It's definitely not classic. On P99 you are all but guaranteed an aggro wipe. On live you'd have to sit and wait for quite a long while for mobs to forget about you, and they wouldn't forget until they were all the way back to their spawn point. I'd guess they know about it but just for whatever reason can't get the coding to work right, maybe a titanium client issue.

[Doctor Jeff]

On P99, mobs memblur if they lose LoS, but will "remember" their hate if they "see" you again before resetting to their spawn location.

IIRC, on live, mobs had % chances to memblur every tick while you were FD until they reset to their spawn at which point you had a (near?) guaranteed memblur.

[Vasuki]

On P99, mobs memblur if they lose LoS, but will "remember" their hate if they "see" you again before resetting to their spawn location.

IIRC, on live, mobs had % chances to memblur every tick while you were FD until they reset to their spawn at which point you had a (near?) guaranteed memblur.

What I was talking about is with lvl 40+ mobs you would have to wait til they got back to their original location regardless of whether you started sneaking in FD

[Nibblewitz]

What I was talking about is with lvl 40+ mobs you would have to wait til they got back to their original location regardless of whether you started sneaking in FD

Yes, at higher levels the memblur chance from FD alone diminishes. Monks can FD then sneak, but if your mobs are still facing your general direction when you stand up (even without LoS) they most likely will return.

I am only speaking of p99 mechanics.

[Vasuki]

Yes, at higher levels the memblur chance from FD alone diminishes. Monks can FD then sneak, but if your mobs are still facing your general direction when you stand up (even without LoS) they most likely will return.

Right now if I FD let the mobs turn around and press sneak they will not engage and I can tag one of them.

What I am trying to say is, I remember that sneak would under NO circumstance memblur. You would have to wait til one of the mobs was FULLY reset in order to split them. Basically you just needed to desync them until one would reset before the other.

[skarlorn]

I'd love to see this get nerfed. I could masturbate for am eternity using Iksar monk tears as lube.

[mattydef]

I was a main puller for a raiding guild on live and I don't remember this ever being a thing.

[SoekiWiz]

The responses so far are aligned with my memory as well. Lead pull (Iksar mnk) for raid content up through Velious on live. I remember a lot of our pulls would be trying to chain tag shit through one another and hoping to get lucky on social/pathing breaks.

[silo32]

6 years too late

you have any idea how many fungi's have been farmed with monk sneak pull on both servers?

fungi's should be 110k on avg if this was live without current mechanics

same with some dragon pulls

this is not a classic server its a private emu with hand picked classic mechanics

[Burrito]

http://i.imgur.com/ps68NIl.gif

[Skydash]

I played a monk main on live during this era, and you are correct OP: sneak had no chance to help mobs forget about you after FD. They would indeed remember you almost always until they touched their spawn points. There was even a chance they would see through your FD if they pathed over you :eek:

Mobs that were linked together were even harder to split.. like the zek guards at statue.

Monks have it easy here!

[Zaela]

I'd guess they know about it but just for whatever reason can't get the coding to work right, maybe a titanium client issue.

No reason why it would be a client issue. The only things about FD and sneak that are client-side are the way they make you immobile and self-snared, respectively. Everything about aggro is purely server-side.

Unless the devs decided to do something radically different, when you successfully FD you are taken off the mobs' hatelists and put into their separate "FD memory" lists. Then there would be certain events where a mob will check its FD memory list and maybe remove players from it (time based, when they reach their spawn point, whatever). And when you stop feigning, FD memory lists would be checked to decide if stuff should aggro you again.

It's unlikely that sneak would interact with the FD memory list at all unless it is deliberate. The only other thing I can think of its the code mistakenly calls a function that should only be used for proximity aggro when trying to add a player that was on the FD memory list back to the hatelist, rather than adding them back to the hatelist more explicitly. Which would make the process look like this:

FD'd player stands up
Player is removed from mob A's FD memory list
Mob A tries to aggro the player, but the player is behind them and sneaking, or they are out of LoS, so it is blocked.
Player gets away scot free.

when it should probably look like this:

FD'd player stands up
Player is removed from mob A's FD memory list
Player is unconditionally added to mob A's hatelist with some amount of aggro (either the initial proxy aggro amount or a remembered value, whatever it's supposed to be).

But that would be both a really obvious mistake and really easy to fix.

[Maciver]

I was also pulling end game in this era.

Sneak pull didn't work either. Sneak had really no bearing on aggro or pulling.

/ex was where your bad pull usually got you. Clearing aggro was difficult a lot of times. Mobs returning to spawn wasn't a 100% aggro clear either. Sometimes you had no choice but to kill your client.

If you had a good group though, you would keep this aggro and just stand up and tell tank when to tag. We called it something i cant remember, like mobs in queue or something similar hehe.

Linked mobs were tough like someone said above. Like statue or Ikkitar(sp?).
Statue was kinda easy though pull from arena with a bio orb is how i did it. Statue was back to raid long before guardians, then I just get coth'ed back.

[surron]

TAKP has lengthy discussions on sneak pulling and sneak triggering 100% blur when FD...

Research, logs/evidence from AK (2002 server era but people providing logs of 10 years of gameplay), and tests from live indicate that other factors played into sneak pulling (such as faction/LoS/assist range.)

Sneak triggering a 100% blur is indeed false and not accurate.

[skarlorn]

Dear Nilbog,

Please fix this. Please destroy the lives of all the shitty monks who think they are something special because they have a broken mechanic working in their favor.

Yours,
Me.

[Maciver]

I cant comment on Macintosh stuff, but sneak pulling did not work regardless of faction/los/ or assist range. Sneak played no factor in pulling on live.

But yes, Sneak never memblured. In no iteration.

[fiveeauxfour]

if you are indifferent to the mob when you stand from fd then you wipe aggro. Necro's can do the same thing with cos no matter which way the mob is facing. However, if the mob can see invis then the trick doesnt work. Sneaking behind a mob causes indifferent con which provides a mem wipe

[Slayde]

6 years too late

you have any idea how many fungi's have been farmed with monk sneak pull on both servers?

fungi's should be 110k on avg if this was live without current mechanics

same with some dragon pulls

this is not a classic server its a private emu with hand picked classic mechanics

Nail on the head, you hit it. Let us not forget all the other previous mechanical exploits that have also contributed to the invalidity of the server, that were eventually fixed, but FAR too late to actually make a difference. Its the single reason as to why a wipe needs to happen. Start over from the begining, with actual classic mechanics and a true to live timeline.

[surron]

if you are indifferent to the mob when you stand from fd then you wipe aggro.

lol that is not true at all.

so i can invis a FD monk and since invis doesnt matter about frontal LoS then he 100% blurs every time? nope. you'll never find any evidence of people invising a monk to clear roamer agro, you will ALWAYS see posts about people having to /q or /ex... Don't you think if it was as simple as invising an fd monk then no monk would ever complain about /q'ing roamer agro in an outdoor zone like OT?


As soon as you break sneak the mob should turn around and agro you because its not indifferent anymore. on p99 the mob doesnt re-agro you even if its not at it's spawn point.

sneak should not trigger an FD blur... In your necro example if the necro dropped invis before the mob was at its spawn point then it would re-agro

[maskedmelon]

You know, as unclassic as it may be, the current implementation makes more sense. If the things are t facing you or near you there is no reason why they should come back when you get up. Unless they liek have super spider sense or something, but high is just dumb lol.

[pasi]

Feign mechanics (on live):

When you stood up (or FD was broken by a spell), what would happen is that mobs that returned to their initial spawn point would forget about the monk.

To give an example: I throw a shuriken at a Freeport gate guard. He chases me, and I feign death. He doesn't forget about me until he goes back to his static location. Now, if I were to be invis when I stand up, he will not reaggro (unless someone gave him see invis). Sneak functioned like this provided you remained successfully sneaking behind the mob. Should you break sneak or the mob angles toward you, he should reaggro.
Now say I dropped invis or sneak as he was pathing back, he should reaggro.

Mobs that roam functioned differently as they either would not reset aggro at all or someone would when they finally reached their spawn point. You would really need something like showeq to see this (and there's definitely some individual variation). Invis or sneak would prevent this mob from reaggroing until they will dropped (or the player left the sneak angle). At which point, the mob would reaggro.

[Vasuki]

So it seems a lot of your agree that sneak pulling/sneak memblur was not a thing in classic everquest, then why has the not been addressed?

It seems like a pretty simple thing to change and its such a widely used non classic mechanic.

[Danth]

So it seems a lot of your agree that sneak pulling/sneak memblur was not a thing in classic everquest, then why has the not been addressed

Who can say why? It's been brought up repeatedly throughout the years. Most folks figured it'd get fixed back when invis-pulling was nerfed (2012ish) but for some reason feign mechanics seem to have gone forgotten.

Danth

[Vianna]

Sneak pulling worked on live. Just not as well as it does here. The mobs needed a certain distance between them on live. They needed to be outside the assist call range which was reduced by sneak. Sneak clearing aggro was never a working mechanic on live.

[zati]

op is correct. the mechanic being fixed would also shoot beads up price like 10 folds. heck most lower guilds would probably not advance at all too considering you need "skilled" monks to pull /split. currently WITH the sneak/memblur trick i see tons of bad monks(alts maybe) in groups that just can't pull.

better to just leave it alone

[rollin5k]

Nerf it hard and fast

[Croco]

6 years too late

you have any idea how many fungi's have been farmed with monk sneak pull on both servers?

fungi's should be 110k on avg if this was live without current mechanics

same with some dragon pulls

this is not a classic server its a private emu with hand picked classic mechanics

5/7

[fiveeauxfour]

these mechanics have been in place on this server for a very, very long time. Not about to be nerfed tomorrow. Dev's dont seem to really care. We got collisions and a mild change to sneak tagging about a year or two ago, but the sneak/invis fd trick still is broken

[fiveeauxfour]

so i can invis a FD monk and since invis doesnt matter about frontal LoS then he 100% blurs every time? nope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxef4PWWMpQ

maybe there was some miscommunication, but what I had written was an attempt to describe the mechanics currently in place on this server. I agree that its not classic.

[Loke]

So it seems a lot of your agree that sneak pulling/sneak memblur was not a thing in classic everquest, then why has the not been addressed?


Because the devs have been explicitly clear that changes require evidence. Want it changed? Go find evidence. A bunch of people posting in a thread of what they remember from over a decade ago isn't evidence. Go look at the resolved bug reports and see how people who have gotten changes made have gone about doing so. There is a procedure in place for making changes, but making a post in server chat isn't part of that procedure.

[surron]

^^ butt hurt monk lol

the current implementation has no evidence to back it up so why it was put in to begin with is the question

[fadetree]

it most likely wasn't 'put in', it was that way in the codebase they started with.

[Ikon]

I was also pulling end game in this era.

Sneak pull didn't work either. Sneak had really no bearing on aggro or pulling.

/ex was where your bad pull usually got you. Clearing aggro was difficult a lot of times. Mobs returning to spawn wasn't a 100% aggro clear either. Sometimes you had no choice but to kill your client.

If you had a good group though, you would keep this aggro and just stand up and tell tank when to tag. We called it something i cant remember, like mobs in queue or something similar hehe.

Linked mobs were tough like someone said above. Like statue or Ikkitar(sp?).
Statue was kinda easy though pull from arena with a bio orb is how i did it. Statue was back to raid long before guardians, then I just get coth'ed back.
Yo Yo pulling. When you FD there was a chance you would wipe aggro, higher level mob the less likely. So you stand up, mobs rush you, FD, of the 5 you pulled perhaps 1 wipes memory and walks off. Tagger tags that mob otherwise monk stands ups 4 rush in, FD, tries again.

Could sometimes take many FD to split enough to pull a manageable amount.

One thing that the server might be doing is in classic mobs were never supposed to aggro outside line of sight. Some did aggro out of line of sight but that was buggy not intended.

You would probably remember using walls to single pull mobs, you pull a mob and his friends and then FD around a corner hopefully with just one or two mobs on your side of the wall. The tagger tags the mob or mobs, even though the mobs are close to each other some are on either side of the wall and only the mobs in LOS of the unaggroed tagger aggro the tagger.

It appears that when you stand up and hit sneak that's the effect you're getting. Because your already on their aggro lists all the mobs should come running but they don't. So you essentially have an invisible tagger and a portable wall with you for splits with FD -> Sneak.

[zanderklocke]

^^ butt hurt monk lol

the current implementation has no evidence to back it up so why it was put in to begin with is the question

He's a bard.

[paulgiamatti]

the current implementation has no evidence to back it up so why it was put in to begin with is the question

Well, it wasn't "put in" per se - it was just altered from the original EQEmu source which was even further from classic, hence why the mechanics on P99 are so messed up. The current implementation is just the P99 devs doing the best they can with what they've got, which is more classic than doing nothing.

[Vasuki]

Because the devs have been explicitly clear that changes require evidence. Want it changed? Go find evidence. A bunch of people posting in a thread of what they remember from over a decade ago isn't evidence. Go look at the resolved bug reports and see how people who have gotten changes made have gone about doing so. There is a procedure in place for making changes, but making a post in server chat isn't part of that procedure.

I guess it's not hard evidence, but if you look at Alkabor which is using the closest thing to a classic client this is the way monk pulling works on that server. There are also people who played on the original sever since launch who are now playing on TAKproject(they have never stopped playing classic eq) who can confirm this.

[coki]

The responses so far are aligned with my memory as well. Lead pull (Iksar mnk) for raid content up through Velious on live. I remember a lot of our pulls would be trying to chain tag shit through one another and hoping to get lucky on social/pathing breaks.

This .. remember raid pulling in Kael having atleast 2 monks and 2 shadowknights trying to split shit up... one pull the big agro everything then FDs another tags a smaller bunch until the last Fder had only 1 or 2 mobs coming at him , was crazy watching thier coordination efforts, dunno if our guild was just scrub but thats how i remember it happeneing

[jolanar]

Because the devs have been explicitly clear that changes require evidence. Want it changed? Go find evidence. A bunch of people posting in a thread of what they remember from over a decade ago isn't evidence. Go look at the resolved bug reports and see how people who have gotten changes made have gone about doing so. There is a procedure in place for making changes, but making a post in server chat isn't part of that procedure.

So better to just make something up brand new instead of making it how everyone remembers it when there is no 'evidence'?

That makes no sense.

[Ikon]

Theres lots of evidence -

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/FD.php
http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/FDnerf.php
http://youngsdojo.tripod.com/Pulling.html

That was one google search with links from first page

First link mentions repeatedly FD'ing (dozen times) to separate a dragon from its guards
Second one mentions having at /q which was common when aggro refused to drop
Third one explains exactly the tactics required - tactics which would not need to exist if you could simply lose aggro by sneaking after FD

[Red_Messiah]

Theres lots of evidence -

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/FD.php
http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/FDnerf.php
http://youngsdojo.tripod.com/Pulling.html

That was one google search with links from first page

First link mentions repeatedly FD'ing (dozen times) to separate a dragon from its guards
Second one mentions having at /q which was common when aggro refused to drop
Third one explains exactly the tactics required - tactics which would not need to exist if you could simply lose aggro by sneaking after FD

imo if you want a Velious era EQ museum it starts with the Velious discs, the Velious UI and Velious mechanics....anything short of Velious era stuff is close but not perfect. Monk FD mechanics are one of those imperfections, among others.

Dont forget there's nerds using GINA and other dubious programs on the side, as well as a wiki and 3rd party auction sites.

[paulgiamatti]

So better to just make something up brand new instead of making it how everyone remembers it when there is no 'evidence'?

That makes no sense.

I mean, again, there's this misconception that when P99 developers change and implement something they just wipe the slate clean and design something new from scratch - that's not how it works. They're working with the EQEmu source for server-side mechanics, and they're restricted by what the EverQuest Titanium client will allow for the end user. Both of these things are a far cry from classic without altering code. The current implementation of P99 FD mechanics is not the product of P99 devs going, "I believe FD should work specifically like this!" and then implementing it. It's a result of altering the EQEmu source in order to make those mechanics behave in a way that is, for better or for worse, more classic than they originally were.

So if it's currently obscenely unclassic and not at all representative of what people remember, that's because of how even more obscenely unclassic it was originally, not because the P99 devs concocted some obscenely unclassic idea for FD mechanics and then ran with it.

[fastboy21]

I've never really weighed in on this (it isn't a new topic, its been brought up many times before) because I didn't play a monk on live so I have very very few first hand anecdotes on how stuff worked, much less how they worked from era to era.

The mechanics do seem less than classic on p99 for FD splitting. Its not really about the devs getting it wrong, I think they just never got around to fixing it significantly from the way it was on EMU.

The problem isn't so much that its broken. It works reliably and lets folks play EQ without disrupting the classic feel totally. The real issue I have with it is that it makes pulling way too easy.

Monks don't really do very much in EQ. They are DPS machines and Pullers. On P99, due to the sneak pulling etc., even a stupid bad monk makes the best monks from live look like an amateur.

It actually only bothers me when I play my p99 monk because I dislike seeing so many people playing monks that know nothing about real tricks to splitting mobs up. Most players who mained monks on live (who were good) made an art out of pulling. It took time to learn the intricacies of each camp. The type of mobs, the respawn times, the map, the various geometries you could use to snag mobs on, the pathing, the bugs to the pathing. It created enough problems that there was a BIG difference between a truly game knowledgeable monk and someone helplessly spamming their FD key. Here if you can hit FD and sneak you can pull just about anything like a pro.

[Baler]

Shit's not Classic.

Players and guilds have been abusing this fact on p99 and making huge pixel gains (plat and items) for years because of it.

http://i.imgur.com/I5fBAa9.gif

[Llodd]

Lazy agro( monk talks about it in the 3rd link from ikon's post)

Would be awesome if they implemented this. I remember it from live but I don't remember what sort of range it had but that one thing alone could really change the dynamics in the raid scene in particular here on p99.

[EQBallzz]

I've never really weighed in on this (it isn't a new topic, its been brought up many times before) because I didn't play a monk on live so I have very very few first hand anecdotes on how stuff worked, much less how they worked from era to era.

The mechanics do seem less than classic on p99 for FD splitting. Its not really about the devs getting it wrong, I think they just never got around to fixing it significantly from the way it was on EMU.

The problem isn't so much that its broken. It works reliably and lets folks play EQ without disrupting the classic feel totally. The real issue I have with it is that it makes pulling way too easy.

Monks don't really do very much in EQ. They are DPS machines and Pullers. On P99, due to the sneak pulling etc., even a stupid bad monk makes the best monks from live look like an amateur.

It actually only bothers me when I play my p99 monk because I dislike seeing so many people playing monks that know nothing about real tricks to splitting mobs up. Most players who mained monks on live (who were good) made an art out of pulling. It took time to learn the intricacies of each camp. The type of mobs, the respawn times, the map, the various geometries you could use to snag mobs on, the pathing, the bugs to the pathing. It created enough problems that there was a BIG difference between a truly game knowledgeable monk and someone helplessly spamming their FD key. Here if you can hit FD and sneak you can pull just about anything like a pro.

I don't disagree with your thoughts about live monks probably being better and requiring more skill to perfect the art of pulling. There were truly some badass monks on live.

Sadly, even if it is easier on P99 that hasn't stopped many monks from being pretty bad here. Let me preface this by saying I don't consider myself an expert puller on my monk but I have been grouped with more than a couple truly terrible monks here. Monks that loot everything in sight and are encumbered while pulling/tanking. Monks that have no inkling of how to split or use FD. Monks that FD once on a group of mobs and when it fails they train the group anyway because they don't want to die. Monks that don't understand how spells interrupt FD if not timed properly. I have even seen a couple monks that think splitting means pulling a group of mobs to the feet of the group and hitting FD..then jumping up and somehow expecting that is going to split the mobs instead of training the group. It's painful to watch.

[Lemonhead]

Also, as far as finding direct evidence for this mechanic, it is difficult to impossible to directly prove something does not exist. That is why it is always on the side to prove something does exist, in a logical world at least (ie science, law).

[Ikon]

Also, as far as finding direct evidence for this mechanic, it is difficult to impossible to directly prove something does not exist. That is why it is always on the side to prove something does exist, in a logical world at least (ie science, law).
The quote below is pretty much direct evidence that sneak didn't blur mobs:

35th+ level mobs don't always clear your name on the taunt list when you FD. One way to double check if they are headed back after you (and you can not actually see them behind a wall or such) you can press the sneak button before you get up, when you get up, do a "c"on to see if they are indifferent. If they have their back toward you and had a sucessful FD blur, and they con indifferent, you know that guy fell for it!
Basically what he's saying is if the FD memblur worked they'll be indifferent but if it didn't work they won't even with your sneak on while FD.

Its an interesting thread to read regarding the topic and this thread is from Jan 2001, a little over a month after Velious released.

http://www.monkly-business.net/forums/showthread.php?8889-Skill-tips-Sneak


Autumn, what he said was sneak, then stand up from the feign and con the mob going back. If it's indiff, it memblurred. If it glares/scowls (assuming it's not an always scowls mob), it's time to hit the dirt.



I use this all the time. The sneak isn't memblurring you, the sneak is checking if you memblurred.



On lvl31- mobs (It's 32+ that don't always memblur, not 35), you can sneak and stand up as soon as they turn around to go back, saving you a little time.
So apparently, the current FD / Sneak ONLY ever worked on lower then 32 level mobs.

Think about it this way. Say you are pulling something through all the twists and turns of Guk and have to feign it. Well once it starts going back to its spawn point/wandering path it will get out of visual range. To test to see if it is memblurred if you stand and sneak, chances are you are behind the mob still, So if its memblurred, and you stand up sneaking it should con indifferent.



IF you stand up sneaking, and it scowls:



1) Its still aggro'd on you, and its coming back to beat the living snot out of you.



OR



2) Its facing you and has been blurred.



At least that is my take on the tactic.

[Ikon]

One More:

What this means for you is that when a mob has you on the hate list, they'll be scowls at your or threateningly, even while sneaking.



So when you FD and the mobs wander off, hit your sneak button. Then when you stand up con the mob, if it's indiff faction then you're not on his hate list. If it's scowls/threateningly then FD immediately, he'll still be running back.



In my experiences I've found that it works best after you FD, to FD 3 or 4 more times, whether or not you feel like hitting sneak during these is up to you, but re-sneak right before standing up. It seems to work best that way.
Think that pretty much nails its as regards evidence.

Conclusion:

Likely people got confused and remembered that you could FD -> Sneak - 100% clear aggro on level 32 and below mobs, mistakenly thinking that sneak was 100% clearing aggro when in fact FD on mobs 32 and below was 100% clearing aggro and sneak was doing nothing.

Any mob over 32 doesn't have 100% mem-blur after FD and so shite should be aggroing back on a sneaking monk if FD memblur didn't work. If that wasn't the case the above quotes would clearly not exist.