Game Mechanics: Nerfing Insta-Click Hate Items (Classic Evidence)

[Rygar]

As I was reading the patch notes I came across this little gem, patched February 21, 2001:

http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20010221a.html

We reduced the amount of hate that can be caused by a proc. Due to the high proc rates at upper levels, the amount of hate generated from procs, and the spells that were selected for those procs, made keeping the attention of the creature much too easy a task for the tank. Simply, it nearly eliminated the challenge of keeping a foes attention at levels above 50.

To me, it is crystal clear that they wanted to make agro management a challenge on the raid scene for tanks. The intention is clear in the above note.

If it was widespread knowledge during Velious that raids were loaded up with Mallets to dump into a raid mob and have everyone engage / heal immediately then it would have been hit with a nerf in my opinion.

I humbly ask that you consider nerfing all agro management clickies for tanks to help bring more balance to the raid scene.

Off the top of my head I can think of Midnight Mallet, Root Nets, Puppet Strings for instant clicks (not sure if Ivandyr's Hoops still generate agro). To a lesser degree there are other items such as the Ball of Yarn thing from Stonebrunt mountains (snare) and Bio Orb (Blinding Luminance), these both have casting times but can be used to generate initial agro. I think there is even an item out there that has charges of Engulfing Darkness but I can't think of the name.

Regardless, the point is if an item is being used as a work around to manage agro, I think a serious look should be given to nerf it.

How can this be done? I'm not exactly sure on how the agro system is coded. If a mob is listed as immune to that particular spell, does it still generate hate? If not (or very minimum hate like 1pt), just make raid mobs unresistable to those types of spells. This would still let the items be used in group situations and even during lesser raids like HoT / Sky / Hate / Fear / Growth.

Possibly could make it so any melee class does not generate more than 1pt of hate for using these items on raid mobs. I say melee and not tanks, because it could still be exploited to hold agro during a riposte discipline or something like that.

A simple solution is to make those items unusable in any boss mob zone (such as Ivandyr Hoop not being usable in VP). Even just preventing them from being used in VP / Western Wastes / ToV / Dragon Necropolis / Plane of Growth / Kael / Skyshrine / Icewell Keep brings back a lot of balance.

Implementing this nerf would most definitely restore a better classic feel to the game, and to some degree would make raiding slightly more challenging. I can imagine more wipes as a result since tank swapping would be more difficult for warriors, some clerics may get wrecked on engage during CHeal chains, and a shaman getting a slow resist will be plastered (even successful slow would cause them to be sacrificed most likely, very classic!).

A lot of naysayers will say, "LOL, not classic" but I think they know this goes against the feel of EQ and takes away from the intended game mechanics. You've already set precedence with the Ivandyr's Hoop nerf as it trivialized raid mobs, and even limited the PBAoE number of targets to bring in line with what systems of the day could handle.

I humbly ask you consider this change.