AA changes on Elidroth's plate

Sharrien · April 19, 2011, 01:12:46 PM

Posted by Elidroth on the AA status forum:

"Illusions tied to AA for purely lore/flavor reasons are being removed. You'll still get the buff, just not the illusion. This is being done for the following reasons:
They're generally split out to 2 spells, which then takes up 2 buff slots, which are limited for many classes.
A lot of people don't like to be in the specific illusion anyway"

Dare I hope that I will be able to wear my own fur again or sample other illusions?

Of course with that hopeful news, there's also something that concerns me deeply:

"While I'm on the subject of timers.. whenever possible, I'm going to be matching the single-target/self version of an AA buff with the group version on recast timers. While it'd be nice to have them on separate timers, the reality is we have a limited number of reuse timers available to us, and splitting them uses them up at a faster rate. While we could get code to give us more timers, I'd rather we burn their cycles on more important issues."

We need to keep an eye on focused paragon/paragon. It would make me sad if the timers were linked.

kharthai · April 19, 2011, 01:38:02 PM

Wouldn't want GBA and Bestial Alignment linked either.

Karve · April 19, 2011, 01:54:41 PM

We need to keep an eye on focused paragon/paragon. It would make me sad if the timers were linked.

These have no illusions, so I would imagine aren't included. (hope at least).

Sabbu · April 19, 2011, 04:02:30 PM

focused paragon/paragon were both linked when they were introduced.

Khauruk · April 19, 2011, 04:16:34 PM

I'm hoping this is being limited to things like ranger/druid innate camo and shared camo, self perfected invis/lev and group versions, etc,...

It would definitely be a huge nerf to have things like GBA and BA on it.

Dieselkatt · April 19, 2011, 04:47:24 PM

Hello, long time listener first time caller. I have been playing EQ since 2001 and finally deciding to give my .02 cents.
I for one am not up in arms about the werewolf illusion, everyone was crying for it before we got it now were complaining. During raids I really could care less what I look like but I do like the fighting effect I have with the werewolf illusion. Drives me nuts to have my screen bouncing to and fro in normal form. Combined with the fruity crap-tastic weapon models for HoT, it's like I'm flying in a Cessna 172 with a Fabuulousss neon purple propeller.
What I would really like to see, and it isnt going to happen under normal circumstance but maybe we can milk out some aa's to have a critical hit do critical damage. We dont really have any real "burn" discs but if we could click an AA and have our crit hits/spells do at least 1 dmg MORE than the base damage max well I'd be a happy camper. Can't believe after all these years I can get crit blast that's less than I can throw a snowball for.
Also I do agree that taste of blood is the biggest waste of braincells I've seen put forth. Get rid of it, completely. Boosting tripple atk would be great and even some flurry on top of that (and only if triple atk was increased) would be the cats meow.

P.S. Also some AA to reduce the recast of Playing possum, even getting to 6 or 7 seconds would be koser

kharthai · April 19, 2011, 05:05:19 PM

I don't understand why people play in first person, aside from when their backs literally are against the wall. It's better in almost every way. Anyhow, you'll still be able to use some other illusion and stop the bounce. Be glad you (not you personally, those who want illusion to stay) had so many years of it already, really.

Not sure what you mean by no burn discs, we have 2.

Bestial Bloodrage is awesome, if you mean Taste of Blood then yeah, it sucks.

Anyway, from Elidroth regarding the timer linking:

"Just to clear up any confusion.. I'm not going to be linking any timers that aren't linked currently. You can stop the panic now."

AbyssalMage · April 19, 2011, 05:11:05 PM

Quote from: Sharrien on April 19, 2011, 01:12:46 PM
Posted by Elidroth on the AA status forum:

"Illusions tied to AA for purely lore/flavor reasons are being removed. You'll still get the buff, just not the illusion. This is being done for the following reasons:
They're generally split out to 2 spells, which then takes up 2 buff slots, which are limited for many classes.
A lot of people don't like to be in the specific illusion anyway"

Dare I hope that I will be able to wear my own fur again or sample other illusions?

Of course with that hopeful news, there's also something that concerns me deeply:

Would of preferred it split to 2 buffs and I can manually click off the illusion but WOOT, he finally at least listened to us and did 1/2 of what we asked! Although, stripping the illusion only helps us maginally, there are still stacking conflicts with DeBuffs.

Quote"While I'm on the subject of timers.. whenever possible, I'm going to be matching the single-target/self version of an AA buff with the group version on recast timers. While it'd be nice to have them on separate timers, the reality is we have a limited number of reuse timers available to us, and splitting them uses them up at a faster rate. While we could get code to give us more timers, I'd rather we burn their cycles on more important issues."

We need to keep an eye on focused paragon/paragon. It would make me sad if the timers were linked.

Can we have a CL look into this ASAP before this goes live? Unless he plans on dropping re-use timers to the "better" one, this could really bite us in the arse really hard.
List:

Focused Paragon/Paragon
GBA/BA

(Please edit and keep on adding. We need to be PROACTIVE about this change because once it goes live....we are <BLEEP> on getting it changed!)

Dieselkatt · April 19, 2011, 05:12:35 PM

I was referring to taste of blood, thank you. To each his own on playing in first person I guess, and yes we do have 2 disc's but they are no where near "burn" disc's, we call them that because thats all we have. Look at any other melee's burn disc's, its not just a minor difference.

AbyssalMage · April 19, 2011, 05:20:39 PM

Quote from: kharthai on April 19, 2011, 05:05:19 PM
I don't understand why people play in first person, aside from when their backs literally are against the wall. It's better in almost every way. Anyhow, you'll still be able to use some other illusion and stop the bounce. Be glad you (not you personally, those who want illusion to stay) had so many years of it already, really.

Lol, I can't stand playing in 3rd person view, mabye thats why I keep playing EQ and haven't moved on to one of the "better graphic games." First person view and surround sound speakers, it just makes it "feel" like you are "there!" Its fun to get scared/adrenaline rush when you hear foot steps coming up behind you and you don't know if its foe or friend! You lose that in 3rd person view.

Quote
Anyway, from Elidroth regarding the timer linking:

"Just to clear up any confusion.. I'm not going to be linking any timers that aren't linked currently. You can stop the panic now."

I wonder what AA's he is going to link if they're not already linked on the same timer currently? This sounds like a bit of contridiction. Mabye their is an example?

Hzath · April 19, 2011, 05:27:21 PM

First person 4 life.

Good heads up thoughts on the possible paragon/gba links. Those hadn't crossed my mind at all when I read this.

As for burn discs - Bestial Alignment is the second highest % player damage mod (If you count sureshot, but that's only bow damage) and Nature's Fury is the second highest hundredhands effect and largest flurry chance increase and that's a group buff.

kharthai · April 19, 2011, 05:28:58 PM

You cut me deep just now Hzath.

And Abyssal, he didn't give an example but I suspect Khauruk is right about levitation, camo, etc.

Edit: spelled name wrong

Khauruk · April 19, 2011, 06:06:22 PM

Bestial Alignment and Empathic Fury stack up very nicely as burn discs to what other classes receive. Add in Bestial Bloodrage for the pet, and that's most of our dps nicely scaled up for a self-contained burn. Stack Nature's Fury for us and group, and more goodness. This still leaves our spells unmodded, but that's the case for most hybrids - only SKs can do a proper spell burn afaik w/ their 1st spire for dots and UF bp + a disc for lifetaps. We don't have the 8 things to stack together like many classes, but that's not a bad thing either - controlling pet and utility functions give beastlords enough to do on a fight, and more things to stack mean more things to buy.

To highlight....

Quote from: kharthai on April 19, 2011, 05:05:19 PM
Anyway, from Elidroth regarding the timer linking:

"Just to clear up any confusion.. I'm not going to be linking any timers that aren't linked currently. You can stop the panic now."

And 1st person 4 lyfe.

Dieselkatt · April 19, 2011, 06:17:12 PM

Heh, I didnt come to argue or be schooled on %'s, I'm just laying down my opinion. I know what the score is and the % damage mod being second highest is just great...except its based on our ability, and if the baseline ability isnt that great then well...second highest dmg mod doesnt mean a lot. Don't get me wrong, i like Bestial Alignment and Empathic Fury, but true burn discs they are not.
Nature's Fury is great, makes everyone with great disc's even greater. Anyway if you guys think we have "burn disc's" than more power to you, opinions were asked for and these were mine.
Pact of the Wirune..it's been around long enough that it would be nice to see an upgrade to it also, with or without the illusion. Stats have jumped massively and buying a rank or 2 increase would be nice, bigger mana pool, more mana regen (inline with the size of mana pool's these days and spell mana costs) and some attack, strikethrough has already reached its cap long ago for most.
I must have walked into an alternate universe, I could swear some of you are the same ones talking about us not haveing burst dps and now I'm an evil villan :evil: :? :-D anyway, jmo...keep rockin the way you roll

EDIT: maybe its not the disc's per say that we are disagreeing on..but the result

Khauruk · April 19, 2011, 06:27:44 PM

Pact of the Wurine - I hope there's another rank or two this expansion, for sure. It's something I tried repeatedly to get boosted in the last beta, and definitely should grow some more.

Beastlord burn - I've switched to my ranger now, but when I was playing beastlord up until a month ago, I couldn't complain at how I parsed at all. Seeing parses from other beastlords here, like Hzath, makes me think bst parses are pretty solid for our personal dps and the boost we give via fero and NF now is pretty ridiculous attributed dps. Put together, a solid package, and solid enough to get high dps guilds like RoI recruiting beastlords when they were pretty much "banned" for a few years there. For the lower dps guilds, we're a great package from our dps alone....the longer the fight, the better we do relative to most classes...our sustained is great.

I'll agree we don't have the extremely high 30 second burst like some classes do. Our high 1 minute and 2 minute burst though makes up for it imo. Opinions may vary.

Nice to see a new face here, btw....I loved your cessna comment, and /agree about the stupid purple weapon shit. Mine get turned into tonfas right away.