[Glasken]

If this is a repeat of a bug report, please discard this post. I tried searching for anything similar and did not see this particular item.

Celebrating the launch of P99Green and attempting to bring as close to classic experience as possible to the masses, I think we should discuss the state of the hybrid classes at launch.


Premise:
Bards, Paladins, Rangers, and Shadowknights all started their lives with far less mana than their full caster counterparts. I distinctly remember members of this class rejoicing when a patch brought up their mana pools to that of their full casting cousins. What I do not remember is what the exact formula was. My fuzzy memory says 50% of the full caster formula, but would love to see any evidence for or against. Most of the sources are from ZAM. I would appreciate any help cross-referencing with additional sources of patch notes.

Patch Notes:
Hybrid Mana Pools
------------------
August 9th, 2000 9:00 am
------------------

 

...
*Patch Day*

Greetings everyone! Today's patch contains some exciting new changes.

*General Enhancements*

- Text messages that wrap will be indented on subsequent lines. This
means that if a person or NPC says something that is more than one line
long, all subsequent lines will be indented a few spaces. This should
make it a lot easier to pick out separate messages.
- The spells "United Resolve" and "Heroic Bond" had their levels
transposed accidentally. Rather than putting them back as intended,
United Resolve has been changed to Heroic Bond, which means you might
have two copies of that spell in your spellbook. Feel free to move one
to the back. Clerics get a new group spell at 58 to compensate.
- The Wurmslayer is now a one-handed slashing weapon.
- The /help command will now list all /-commands available to you.
- Rangers, Paladins, and SKs now have mana equivalent to that of a pure
caster with the same stats. This will give those hybrids a good deal
more mana, regardless of their stats.
- NORENT items, items that disappear when you log out, will now show a
"NORENT" tag when inspecting the item.
- Most summoned items now have the word "summoned" in their name.

Further, hybrid classes also had to deal with their swing timers resetting after completing a spell. From memory, I had a troll SK at the time and was very happy to be able to cast a spell between swings of my Black Reaver after this patch. But that is an anecdote, see patch notes below. By the date on the patch, hyrbids on P99 should always have their weapon timers reset after a spell completes or is interrupted. This is not how Blue99 currently handles hybrid swing timers.

Patch Notes:
Hybrid Swing Timers
------------------------------
January 9, 2001 3:00 am
------------------------------

 

***Patch Day***

We're happy to present today's patch, which focuses primarily on
addressing issues that have been brought forth by EverQuest players. We
appreciate the opportunity to spend some time focusing on specific
issues important to you. Today's patch includes the following:

...

*Spells*

- "Lay on Hands" has been improved starting at 40th level.
- The "Summon Corpse" spell is now available to Shadowknights.
- Corrected a bug that was causing damage while using the "Trueshot"
Discipline to be the same regardless of the quality of your bow.
- The spells "Focus of Spirit" and "Visions of Grandeur" now stack.
- "Harmtouch" is now resisted as if it were a "Lifetap" spell, meaning
that it is all-or-nothing, and nearly unresistable with exception to
encounters that are immune to magic or out of the acceptable level
range. In addition, maximum damage for Harmtouch has been increased
starting at 40th level.
- We fixed a bug that caused "Lure" type spells (Wizards) to be
resisted more than they should have been in certain types of
encounters.
- Melee attack timers will no longer be reset when a SK, Paladin, or
Ranger cast a spell. Previously these classes had to wait a full attack
delay after casting before they would attack via melee again.

There will be more as I find them. Because work is -very- slow this time of year, I plan on going through as many patch notes as possible and comparing the status of the current game to that of the patch histories to compile a list of "regressions" to show features that had changed from game-launch until Blues present timeline.

I am certain the Devs have thought of or made note of most of these things, but it may be nice to have a compilation of changes to easily cross reference.

...or I could go shout at a cloud =)