Spells: Enchanter Mesmerize does mem wipe too frequently

[azxten]

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

You have to very careful when reading these old forum pots by people, doesn't matter the class or time period. Back then, the players were actively lobbying verant to nerf other classes and buff their own. That's hidden under the majority yo "this sucks" and "this is overpowered" type posts.


As far as enchanter in particular they are even more problematic. The way the class/abilities worked was complicated and especially complicated back then when the vast majority of players understood little of the mechanics. But more complicated yet in that the class was majorly revamped/changed all thought the first year. Many of the changes never made the patch list.

1. Most class/ability/spell sucks/overpower are essentially people lobbying verant to nerf/buff things, not actually accurate assessment of the class/ability/spell. it was well beyond the scope of typical grass greener behavior as they actually believed, perhaps corrrectly that by crying enough they could accomplish their agenda which was usually getting their own class buffed and other(s) nerfed.

2. Enchanter had a lot of issues when it was first released, as it was the last class added to EQ. It was virtually unplayed in the open beta and didn't exist in the closed beta until they very end.

3. Because of its rough state, it got a bad rep for "being bad" early on. This became a self fulfilling prophecy in some regards, and generally drove people away from playing it even more. "A bad workman always blames his tools".

4. It was considered a purely grouping class, similar to cleric. So many of the people inclined to play them naturally preferred to sit in a group in a supporting role. More importantly, none of them picked enchanter to push the envelope of soloing or duo type situations using the animations or charms. This meant that 99% of enchanter sit in groups with no charm, no animation, they purely buffed/mez'd for CC, and occasionally debuffed and generally had little graps on how anything worked outside of these parameters of play, and even then, as mentioned above because of the quirks of level scaling altering power effectiveness it would give an even more confused picture of what was going on.

A great encapsulation of all of this is seen on the "enchanter nerf list" link that Dolalin gave. He of course wants enchanters buffed, so the strategy is to make them look as weak as possible. He lists, for instance, that DD spells becoming partially resistant was actually a nerf, when in fact that was a huge buff -- particularly to soloing enchanters, and virtually irrelevant to grouping. He's either intentionally lying to hopefully gain a buff for his class, or he was simply completely ignorant of enchanter solo play.

I think that is fair but I also there is a lot of downplaying how broken Enchanter was. Enchanter in my mind was like a framework for a class that was never finished or tested as you said. These classic quotes show that and it's not just one person. Enchanter in live was broken. It wasn't broken as in OP it was just broken. Past evidence of this already exists for charm including warping pets, trains, etc.

If P99 was truly classic Enchanter basically wouldn't exist as a class. It would be so buggy as to be extremely undesirable. Only useful in groups to buff and mez and would almost as frequently wipe groups as save them. The player would die regularly due to a combination of bugs, resists, channeling, etc. This was the classic live Enchanter experience and why most people didn't play it.

Charm and pets are a good example. In actual classic pets alone let alone charmed pets would often result in your death in dungeons due to bad pathing, falling through the world, and so on. P99 by not having these bugs has created an OP unclassic class in Enchanter.

You can read post after post from those links above and see some clearly very knowledgeable people about spell mechanics at the time still talking about how shitty their class was. Literally no one was talking about charming and the "they just didn't know how to use it" argument is getting old. Same with the mez mem blur. From what I've read it seems pretty clear something changed. It worked like it does on P99 and then it was nerfed for exactly the same reason as I'm bug reporting it here. It's OP and never worked this way for most of classic through Velious. It should be about the first 1/2 of classic and then reduce success percentage. There are about a dozen posts spread throughout those links which all allude to this having happened and a major change taking place.

[Dolalin]

DMN has some wise words there. 95% of the work in trying to research stuff like this is separating the truth from the fiction/whining/lobbying-narratives.

As for how I do research, you can go to groups.google.com and search alt.games.everquest yourself. You can also add filters to the search by adding, say, "before:2002-01-01" to the end of your search to only return in-era threads.

I search the eq-archives git repo with a semantic indexer I've got going locally (Open Semantic Search). When it's ready I'll make it publicly available, it speeds up searches a LOT and gives contextual searching. You could also build your own against the eq-archives repo, might take a few months, or you can wait for mine to be done up to you [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] It gets through about 40,000-50,000 docs a day on a good day. 3.2 million left to go, ~6 million total.

[xmaerx]

Mez does blur very often. It's definitely not 100%. Probably closer to 60 or 70%. Actual blur spells, however, blur more often.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Memory_Blur

Whatever that modifier is gets adjusted significantly. If mesmerize is a 1% chance and works 60% of the time, a 10% chance might work.. 66% of the time. Or perhaps it fails a tenth as often. Perhaps there are calculations taking place that are not immediately obvious. Perhaps there's no perhaps involved, and enchanters have known this for some time.

It's definitely *not* a 10% chance. Nor is Blanket of Forgetfulness a 20% chance.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Blanket_of_Forgetfulness

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Blanket might apply its blur chance twice by that descriptor, which is why I've had it fail *MAYBE* once, ever.

All blurs are performing well beyond the listed percentage.

Furthermore the blur on Mesmerize might be powerful, but that is often a DOWNSIDE also. Spamming mez to interrupt or lock things down while soloing, for example, can give mobs health ticks. It also doesn't blur mobs that are immune to mez, as far as I can tell.

Memblurs are also beneficial spells. Not hostile. They do not resist, and are significantly more useful as a result.

No, I don't need proof, because I'm right, and so is the server config for memblurs. Evidence from the past likely doesn't realize that the "blur" effect is significantly more noticeable on pacified or far away mobs. The "Higher level less effective" commentary is likely a symptom of larger aggro ranges, or closer quarters.

EDIT: If you want to know the real reason enchanters are batshit broken, see: the exploit known as GCD resetting.

[Gustoo]

Man it would be funny if enchanters were always hyper OP and people just sucked so bad. Lets hop in a time machine and win everquest. Thats what we would do with a time machine right?

Does using a clicky to reset cooldown only impact your bottom slot spell? or all?

I think thats a classic mechanic though.

[xmaerx]

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

Man it would be funny if enchanters were always hyper OP and people just sucked so bad. Lets hop in a time machine and win everquest. Thats what we would do with a time machine right?

Does using a clicky to reset cooldown only impact your bottom slot spell? or all?

I think thats a classic mechanic though.

It impacts every slot to wipe the 2s Global Cooldown, and *reduces* the recast of the top slot by ~2 seconds, as well as wiping the global cooldown. If it weren't for that, recapturing a hasted charm pet would be 10 times harder. Locking down several mobs would require longer duration mez. Casting several level 4 mez's to blur something would take 10 times as long, especially with resists included. Hell, even buffing the raid would take exponentially longer, and cost you a lot more mana ticks from sitting down.

GCD resets may have been classic, but they were not readily available, and were likely not standard. You basically needed jboots inventory slotted or a spyglass, since they put a "short cast time" on the rod of insidious glamour that is not present on P99.

If this GCD resetting was common practice, there would be commentary on the only reasonable option for doing so, from Zam. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=6166

This gives enchanters cheap, easy access to one of the best gdc resets in the game which can be abused right out of the gate.

[azxten]

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

Mez does blur very often. It's definitely not 100%. Probably closer to 60 or 70%. Actual blur spells, however, blur more often.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Memory_Blur

Whatever that modifier is gets adjusted significantly. If mesmerize is a 1% chance and works 60% of the time, a 10% chance might work.. 66% of the time. Or perhaps it fails a tenth as often. Perhaps there are calculations taking place that are not immediately obvious. Perhaps there's no perhaps involved, and enchanters have known this for some time.

It's definitely *not* a 10% chance. Nor is Blanket of Forgetfulness a 20% chance.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Blanket_of_Forgetfulness

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Blanket might apply its blur chance twice by that descriptor, which is why I've had it fail *MAYBE* once, ever.

All blurs are performing well beyond the listed percentage.

Furthermore the blur on Mesmerize might be powerful, but that is often a DOWNSIDE also. Spamming mez to interrupt or lock things down while soloing, for example, can give mobs health ticks. It also doesn't blur mobs that are immune to mez, as far as I can tell.

Memblurs are also beneficial spells. Not hostile. They do not resist, and are significantly more useful as a result.

No, I don't need proof, because I'm right, and so is the server config for memblurs. Evidence from the past likely doesn't realize that the "blur" effect is significantly more noticeable on pacified or far away mobs. The "Higher level less effective" commentary is likely a symptom of larger aggro ranges, or closer quarters.

EDIT: If you want to know the real reason enchanters are batshit broken, see: the exploit known as GCD resetting.

Doesn't explain the nerf to mez blur that was mentioned or the past thread finding the same that blur chance is too high. Plenty of people talked about mobs walking away and using the blur on mez. It appears these mechanics were well known during classic era and they were nerfed and complained about as well. This is more evidence to counter the "people didn't know how to play" narrative.

I suggest reading some of these old Enchanter posts to find out what live was really like in classic. Like I already said, multiple people mentioning they didn't even mem Mesmerize because it was so unreliable due to bugs and difficult to survive getting aggro.

All of the evidence points to a vastly different Enchanter game on live vs P99 but the same tired arguments keep being rolled out about people complaining to get their class buffed, they didn't know how to play, no one knew what CHA did, no one knew how their spells worked. No.

It's really interesting to even see mentions that high level Enchanters basically did nothing on raids except cast buffs. It is mentioned they couldn't charm or mez anything in planes. Probably due to the same combination of bugs and aggro.

I still say channeling is one of the biggest reasons aggro is shrugged off by P99 Enchanters. Starting at level 1 you can easily cast in combat even with multiple mobs. Nothing even close to this happened in live. The flip side is the already proven fact that charm was so buggy it was never used. The mentions of LOS bugs with Mez. The widely known problems with pets falling through floors, etc. Channeling and charm are both proven to have been different in live. There are bug report threads already.

Chanters were a group only class. They didn't solo. They were buff bots in raids and didn't have charmed planar mobs fighting for them.

Just the thought that Brad "The Vision" McQuaid would have released classic planes and watched Enchanters charming those mobs burning everything down and easily recharming is ridiculous. This never happened and it was never even close to possibly happening.

[Danth]

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

If this GCD resetting was common practice, there would be commentary on the only reasonable option for doing so, from Zam. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=6166

While they don't mention it on the telescope, people do discuss cooldown resetting in relation to the earring that drops off Grachnist. While not the majority, enough players knew of that trick that I wouldn't classify it as "rare." I saw folks doing it once in awhile. To a degree players were scared of talking about "powerful tricks" as openly as we do here on P1999 out of fear of Verant nerfing them.

If Daldaen is right--I can't say, I did not play an Enchanter, then or now--it might explain the difference we see. Mez might blur quite a bit, but if it only does it on an initial cast, not on refreshes, then more and more aggro would be piling up.

Speaking of nerfs, P1999 does not appear to replicate the "Great Lull Nerf" that lasted from early Classic until mid-Luclin at least, or whenever the lull line was revamped. Those spells were nerfed host-side, not client side, so it doesn't show up in the spelldata files used by P99 as a basis for its spell information. Can't say I mind, my Paladin enjoys having a reliable means of splitting and it could be argued the spells were "broken" since a spell that can't be effectively used for its designed purpose is hardly working correctly.

Danth

[Vivitron]

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

since they put a "short cast time" on the rod of insidious glamour that is not present on P99.

I think it is present on p99. The reason I think so is because if you move while spamming rod clicks some of the clicks get interrupted, but I never noticed interrupts on my jboots.

[Sun Feb 07 12:24:24 2021] You begin casting Alliance.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:24 2021] You feel quite amicable.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:24 2021] You begin casting Alliance.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:24 2021] You feel quite amicable.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:25 2021] You begin casting Alliance.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:25 2021] Your spell is interrupted.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:25 2021] You begin casting Alliance.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:25 2021] Your spell is interrupted.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:26 2021] You begin casting Alliance.
[Sun Feb 07 12:24:26 2021] You feel quite amicable.

[DMN]

There were really three key things that happened in the first year. Clarity was added to the class, tash was made unreistable, and GCD reset gained more wide spread use. Tangentially but also importantly, a lot more gamers started getting cable internet. I remember personally going from 500-600 ping at prime time down to 100-150. Massive difference for enchanter.

[xmaerx]

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

I suggest reading some of these old Enchanter posts to find out what live was really like in classic. Like I already said, multiple people mentioning they didn't even mem Mesmerize because it was so unreliable due to bugs and difficult to survive getting aggro.

Where did you prove this? Because I think you're confused.

Also the "Blur doesn't work on subsequent casts of mez" is likely a critical misunderstanding. They likely don't realize mobs can't change their targets while mez'd. The main method of testing if something is blurred is to /assist it, and that just doesn't cut it.