A true story of a fight

[Lune]

I keep having lifetap resisted by low dark blues.

Shit's not classic

As for you, if you want to be a melee and brute force your way through easily soloing level 40+ mobs, I recommend you roll a monk. That way you can join all the other thousands of monks and be OP and do monk things.

Want to be a ranger? Pull down your pants, bend over, take the death touch, and be thankful for the opportunity to service the appetite of raid mobs. At least you're not a rogue. What a boring fucking class.

[Alunova]

Erollisi Bloodthorns span to level 41


This sounds completely legit to me in comparison to classic. I remember decently geared level 50 warriors that could not solo a HG (Maybe 50/50 chance), having bad RNG encounters on my necro killing gnome guards where I couldn't get spells to stick even at 39 (before guard buffs) and had to zone out or FD. I don't remember anything being certain or 100%, even against blues.

I'm not saying there are not bugs, particularly with lifetaps, but I don't ever remember any melee soloing similiar level NPC's unless it took them 2 hours (fungi/bow kite) (Exception: monks and SKs to some degree)

[Glenzig]

Originally Posted by Alunova [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Erollisi Bloodthorns span to level 41


This sounds completely legit to me in comparison to classic. I remember decently geared level 50 warriors that could not solo a HG (Maybe 50/50 chance), having bad RNG encounters on my necro killing gnome guards where I couldn't get spells to stick even at 39 (before guard buffs) and had to zone out or FD. I don't remember anything being certain or 100%, even against blues.

I'm not saying there are not bugs, particularly with lifetaps, but I don't ever remember any melee soloing similiar level NPC's unless it took them 2 hours (fungi/bow kite)

Too hard!!! I'm going to play Rift.

[Clark]

PLEASE fix resists for God sake they're so fucking broken! Never seen us have to wait this long for a hotpatch fix.

[Clark]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I keep having lifetap resisted by low dark blues.

Shit's not classic

I had six fucking calm resists in a row yesterday on a tashed mob. Not classic.

[Cecily]

Originally Posted by Clark [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I had six fucking calm resists in a row yesterday on a tashed mob. Not classic.

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Cecily]

For real though, if you wanna talk about ranger issues... Try flee mechanics being completely broken. If a mob you are fighting is social with a mob in a certain vicinity, the mob will not stop attacking you when it gets low hp. What the mob should do is flee, and if it fear paths into the other mob's argo radius you get an add.

tl;dr: mobs don't run if theres a friendly nearby (nearby meaning ceiling, basement, or half mile away).

Why this is an issue: There's no point in having a dedicated snarer because only the last mob in a given area will bother fleeing.

[Visual]

Originally Posted by Alunova [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm not saying there are not bugs, particularly with lifetaps, but I don't ever remember any melee soloing similiar level NPC's unless it took them 2 hours (fungi/bow kite) (Exception: monks and SKs to some degree)

You went a bit overboard on the AC and Resist adjustments. Root continuously breaking on green mobs is outrageous.

[Estu]

Originally Posted by mwatt [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

In this case, it seems that we are more or less in agreement. I am going a bit further in claiming that this is not "classic" - an accusation that I am sure that if I were a dev, I would NOT want to have leveled at me. I DON'T want to appear or be ungrateful. I'm very grateful for this game. However, I do think that some stuff needs to get adjusted, for the good of the game.

First, whether or not these things are classic is clearly in dispute. But more importantly, I take issue with this kind of reasoning. This game is not meant for people to solo in (maybe for some classes, but not overall and not to the extent that is possible and efficient - even pretty tame stuff like fear kiting and snare kiting were not anticipated by the devs, if I recall correctly). The game is meant for grouping. The game is intended as kind of a D&D simulator, where you have a party and go and take down a bunch of monsters together. As a ranger in particular, you are not supposed to be good at soloing; you are supposed to go and find a group that can take down monsters effectively (of course, in practice on P99 since rangers are a crap class in classic era, this is not so easy to do).

I like changes which beef up mob resists. Spellcasting is incredibly powerful in EverQuest and lets you accomplish huge feats - like pulling five monsters to a camp and calmly taking down one at a time thanks to stuff like roots and mezzes. Or like charming one monster, using it to attack another monster, and ending up killing both for practically no mana investment and two fast kills' worth of EXP. Or like AE groups. All of these things are really cool and make the game interesting in one way, but in another way they run completely counter to the spirit of the game because they trivialize content.

When you can sit around root-dotting a mob by yourself, you are not dependent on a group in order to get EXP; you are getting EXP effectively and with little challenge all by your lonesome. Look at how D&D spells work and you know that you can't just crowd control everything willy-nilly; you actually have battles with multiple enemies that you have to deal with at once, and spellcasting is, while very useful, also very limited compared to EverQuest in this regard.

So I really don't think that pushing resists back down is "for the good of the game" in any way. It trivializes the content and makes soloing easier. You end up saying "aha, I can easily keep this mob rooted and not have to worry about it - easy solo EXPs!" instead of "aha, this mob refuses to stay rooted and is knocking me around a lot - I'd better find some other people who can help me fight it!"

[mwatt]

Originally Posted by Alunova [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Erollisi Bloodthorns span to level 41


This sounds completely legit to me in comparison to classic. I remember decently geared level 50 warriors that could not solo a HG (Maybe 50/50 chance), having bad RNG encounters on my necro killing gnome guards where I couldn't get spells to stick even at 39 (before guard buffs) and had to zone out or FD. I don't remember anything being certain or 100%, even against blues.

I'm not saying there are not bugs, particularly with lifetaps, but I don't ever remember any melee soloing similiar level NPC's unless it took them 2 hours (fungi/bow kite) (Exception: monks and SKs to some degree)

I so appreciate you spending the time to make a response. You are certainly right that on any given encounter, just about any class could fail to solo a particular blue. It is also true that some classes have classically had trouble soloing and Rangers are not exactly a strong class in Kunark. I also recall in classic the occasional uber-resistant mob. All true.

I fear that the venue I chose to try and make an entertaining opening for discussion has only muddied the waters. I am not trying to take one fight and say that it proves there are problems. I am using that fight to introduce discussion regarding some changes that in my opinion, are a bit too harsh. Let me state some more truths (my opinion) in an effort to clarify.

* Run speed is just broken for some mobs. There is no denying this. For example, see if you can outrun the NPC shammy pets in TT even when you have sow on. They should not be catching a higher level sowed player characters, but they do. The shammy mobs themselves, do not however, which I find odd. In general, snare "feels" like it has less effect than it should. Many mobs just come at you too fast when snared or darked.

* Resists are up over where they were before. They are in fact up to a level to where it is not ultra rare to see life taps and things like Druid insect dots get resists. This seems a little over the top. In original EQ, you might fight a white mob and get some resists, but not so many in every case that you cannot win. I don't think that could happen here now. Root breaks a lot more than it used to. This MIGHT be classic. I think root was too strong here originally. However as someone said, I don't think green mobs should be doing it.

* AC feels too affected (to me anyway) by the recent changes - even with my gear on. This one I cannot really say I think is wrong. AC has never been quite right here. But it is for sure different when gear on, and I thought I read the developer say that the intent was to make non-geared AC less powerful.

No one thing is horribly whacked, but taken together, it feels like the game is harder than classic and getting harder every patch (I'm not even going to go into the NPC caster OP-ness here as opposed to Classic). At least it feels this way to me anyway. Mind you, it is not so hard that it cannot be enjoyed, but I would like it to be as close to classic as possible. I think there are others who feel as I do, though probably not all.

I've got to close by saying that Project 1999 was, is and will be a tremendous achievement. All of the players are tremendously deep in debt to the folks that have given their own private free time up to make it possible.