i don't think they realize

[hakaaba]

that we were just totally bunnyed

This is where the bug was.  Before the patch, you always succeeded in your channeling check if you didn't have any channeling AAs.  Now its back to working how it used to, which is based on your skill, but caps at 90%.  One thing to note here is that your chance to channel is better if you are casting spells lower level than yourself, which is generally when you'd hit that cap.  This is just going back to the way things were before the bug was introduced, not changing the system to something else.

We need to tell them.  Now.  And alot.

Note that its capped at 90% chance of success for each and every melee hit

If you get hit 4 times during the casting of a spell (which is a pretty small amount actually) thats 1 - (.9)^4 a 35% chance to fail casting that was just added.

If you get hit 8 times its a 60% chance of failure that was added.

Also, our channeling caps at 215 and were usually casting high level spells so odds are we aren't even at the cap and the chances of failure are closer to 50%/80%

Which means 4/5 times that unslowed mob is gonna interrupt your slow when it didnt before on top of all the times it would before.

[Kanan]

=/ guess its time to do the channeling line =/ bloody wonderful

[Grbage]

I think this is worse then that. Rashere was stating that it was a 90% chance to channel per hit with max aa's. Now I don't play a pure caster but don't they get more channeling aa's then hybrids?

[Kenusten]

Yup, for casters there is channeling focus and channelling mastery.

[Rarrum]

Dunno about slow which is a bit faster, but last night I was chain casting heal on self to try and gaither agro on a bunch of things... and once I had 3-4 things on me (most probably unslowed still) it was near-impossible to get another heal off on myself.  ...sure it could have been luck that time... but...

[hakaaba]

fyi the channeling aas do not effect this i believe.  They're only for the concentration check to prevent a stun from a bash/kick.

Seriously.  get posting.  And i'd like every one of you to personally pm rashere regarding this as well.

I'm pretty sure this far surpasses the mitigation nerf as the single biggest nerf to beastlords [although obviously it affected more than bsts]

And we need to get out there and convince them of their mistake while theyre still open to changes (which rashere confirmed they would be open to)

[Mangorn]

Oh yes, this is without a doubt, a huge impact to us as hybrid casters. My chanter getting interrupts has already wiped our groups 2 times in the ~6 hours of play. My Beast getting interrupted (hence far, far less aggro, and/or failed heals) has wiped our group 8 times in the same time frame, against the same mobs we've been fighting for the past 10 months. If this remains, I won't be able to main tank anymore for our groups against low dblues at all, let alone offtank anything, and forget multiple mobs. That was always a huge draw to playing my beast. With this change, I'll go back to my warrior to tank trash mobs, and rarely play my beast at all, because he's no longer worth playing when I can get vastly more DPS from my mage, or my wizzy, who weren't trying to tank before anyway. The beast was only comparable because he could actually, you know...fill that hybrid role? tank/dps? Now he's basically lost half of his hybrid ability, and he's just DPS, and my beast at least is horrible dps when I have other classes that can fill that single role better.

[sunkash]

Was 2 boxing with my druid bot last night, and this could explain a lot what I experienced.  I like to find a spot where no mobs wander by, a bit outta the way, and pull a fair distance; instead of pulling with the 70 slow, which last 1.5 min +ext, I've been pulling with plauge, getting 4-5 ticks of damage plus intial damage, then slowing mob on enaging. Been doing this proably 18 months now, never was really any issue, of course named or very hard mob pulled with slow. Last night almost died several times, as I kept getting interrupted trying to land the slow, so druid was now more occupied with heals, instead of loading mob up on dots, beast wasn't doing much DPS, continually trying to recast slow, pet was main DPS; just another stealth nerfage to hybirds, and at least beasts didn't need yet another nerf.  These are mobs I've been 2 boxing for ages, and never had issues like last night.

Rashere when he makes blanket statements like this, appears to only look at the classes least affected by this type of issue,  and not how it affects all classes, especially hybirds... Been about ready to hang it up for this game anyways, as we can't seem to even get a Dev to respond to long term issues, and our class just continues to spiral downwards each patch/release. Don't want to put another 2 years into rolling a different class. Dont think a dev has ever posted on our SOE class boards, or in dev board about any beast issue, in ages, or done much if anything to fix long standing issues, top 10 list is dead, question of the week, working as intended, i.e. we can't even ask a quesetion, let alone expect any sort of response.... we' are as a class /ignore. It's alwasy lets wait till the next release is out, lets wait for them to fix all the bugs, then its back to hey they're all tied up on real issues, plus working on the next release.

This just might be the final nerfage for me (:  so sure go ahead a take another notch or two off my karma for caring about our class.

[hakaaba]

feel free to comment on my thread on the vet forum:  "hybrids: the unintentional side effect of the concentration fix"

Keep it civil.

Edit: dont want to spam rash unnecissarily :p

[Kanan]

I posted this in another thread, but will mention it here as well.

We fixed a problem with channeling that was causing it to basically be backwards.  If you had no AAs, you channeled through damage 100% of the time and as you got AAs, that decreased.  It now scales like it should, and like how it worked in the past, where you start out low, channel more often as you gain channeling skill, and your AAs increase that even further.  You're going to see more interrupts than before simply because you are no longer channeling 100% of the time (or close to that if you had AAs that were decreasing it).  Your chance to channel is still really high at high levels (it caps at 90%), though, assuming you have maxed channeling skill.

One caveat to this...channeling doesn't apply to being bashed, stunned, or moving.  Even with a high channeling skill, if you get bashed, stunned, or moved too far, you're going to lose your spell.  That hasn't changed.

Rashere

Channeling Focus

This is a passive ability; it does not need to be activated.
You may train this ability at Level 55
Requirements: Must spend 6 ability points in General Abilities.

This ability reduces the chance of your spell casts being interrupted. The ability levels reduce your interrupts by 5, 10, and 15 percent.

Is Rashere talking abt the 90% w/o this AA, which my impression has always been was supposed to help in your regular channeling, unlike this one

Persistent Casting

This is a passive ability; it does not need to be activated.
You may train this ability at Level 55
Requirements: Must spend 6 ability points in General Abilities.

Your highly developed concentration creates the possibility of continuing to cast spells while stunned. Increased ranks in this ability increase the chance that your spells will not be interrupted by stuns.

.

One of his posts said that getting the first channeling AA I listed decreased your ability to channel a spell.

Rar's experience tho points that its effectiveness is slim to nil.

Guess I need to head out to c1 to truly test this out =/

[Kenusten]

fyi the channeling aas do not effect this i believe.  They're only for the concentration check to prevent a stun from a bash/kick.

It's the other way around.  Mobs bashes and kicks are immune to channelling checks.  It's only the normal hits that we have a chance of channelling through.

[hakaaba]

ok theres 3 catagories of potential interruption:

1.  normal hits: based on channeling, used to be 100% chance to continue casting now its 75-90% depending on spell level
2. a successful bash/kick which causes a stun -- *this is what the aa helps, it gives a chance to ignore the stun and continue casting anyway*
3. and unsuccessful bash/kick - has a large flat chance of stopping the spell, unaffected by anything.

Increased ranks in this ability increase the chance that your spells will not be interrupted by stuns.

It also helps you continue casting through stun spells such as aes

[hakaaba]

However i've got good news...I just saved a bunch of money on my....wait no

At the moment, we're digging through file histories to try to figure out how long this bug has existed.  If its been more than, say, a year or so...I'm probably just going to revert the change anyway (make it ignore damage for channeling checks) and then overhaul the entire interrupt system in the near future so that it makes more sense.  There are enough other things about it that I dislike and would like to change anyway and overhauling it would allow me to correct those as well.  I'll post again in a bit when I've got that info.

Ok, here's the scoop...

The bug dates back at least a year.  For the time being, we're going to re-break channeling, putting it back to where it was before the patch, so you'll channel through damage 100% of the time if you have any channeling skill at all.  Rather silly, but at this point its expected gameplay.  The only difference from before the patch to after is that channeling AAs won't actively reduce your chance to channel...they just won't do anything at all for the time being.

In the near future, I'm going to take a look at the whole interrupt system and likely make some significant changes to it.  At that point we can make channeling actually mean something again as part of the larger interrupt change.

Rashere

[Grbage]

Looks like the patch to revert this and I assume fix other issues will be 5am pst Friday.

[Taiglin]

Having read a good bit of the posts I should say I remember WAY back when hunting with the mentality of trying to time my casts. I am talking about on an SK in early Kunark though. I wouldn't be surprised if this goes back as far as the PoP AA implementation.