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Proposed changes to new AAs on test (that's right, already)

Started by Hzath, April 02, 2010, 06:38:47 PM

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Umlat

Quote from: Mazame on April 04, 2010, 06:11:43 AM
Quote from: Hzath on April 04, 2010, 03:32:33 AM
Quote from: Sharrien on April 04, 2010, 03:27:19 AM
I think we should wait and see what FD turns out to be before we ask for changes.  Give it a month of use first.

For those who have this opinion, I want to remind you about friendly pet in hopes you reevaluate the merit of the "wait and see" approach.


For those that have this idea that QQing will fix it or that telling the dev's how to fix it I would also like to point out the hundreds of post on "friendly pet" and how QQ / asking for fixes did for that spell


<and added and expanded upon here>

Why shouldn't giving the Devs ideas on how to fix things be done? Their track record on giving beastlords new abilities is mainly a list of different versions of pet healing or adding an additional offensive proc to our warder. Friendly Pet would seem to be a major innovation for them, since it let them give us an "offensive" proc AND a pet heal all in one, saving more development/coding time improving another class that is represented among the Community Leaders. Some of the ideas for fixes/replacements were literally "plug and play" in that they used EXISTING spells and effects that just needed to be plugged in to a new spell entry, with a couple of data fields being changed at most and probably required even LESS development/coding time than the version we got.

A version of Friendly Pet that supercedes Vaxtzn -- Offensively it's the same for proc rate and damage. The only difference is that you copy/paste the recourse from the Holy Hand of Vengeance line of procs over to it and change the amount healed to say 250/300/325 for Ranks 1, 2 & 3. Bump the mana cost of the spell up a few hundred mana from Vaxtzn (they must be letting a cat walk on the keyboard for names again, like GoD) and run it through a few arena parses to double check casting data and to see what the heal rate is in practice instead of theory. Tweak the heal amounts if necessary based on the results and you're done. Minimal work since a lot of it was already done and the spell is superior to what we got. Doesn't require an additional spell gem, doesn't add another spell to the need to rebuff list, doesn't put another proc into the list of possible effects scrambling to go off on the same attack, doesn't interfere with existing pet buffs (It's Vaxtzn+) and it eliminates the need to give it charges. When level 86 to 90 spells are needed, you can go with an upgrade of Friendly Pet as the only basic proc spell. You would be able to either go with another "Spirit of <content NPC>" name or designate the future upgrades as "Amiable Pet", "Kind Pet", "Warm Pet" and "Allied Pet". (The name still makes me think of an ogre skipping through the Feerrott with a Care Bear in tow <shudder>).

The end result is a spell that 1) is an upgrade, 2) should require little time and effort to implement, 3) is a spell that is much closer to the original Friendly Pet concept(in that it heals the warder's allies), 4) shouldn't be overpowering/game breaking, and 5) a spell that most of us would at least accept.

Had the Devs asked for input/ideas BEFORE charging ahead with a fix or if there had been a Beastlord Community Rep. to bounce their idea for a fix off of, there would have been little or no chance of the current situation happening.

As to FD, a wait and see attitude is going to do nothing but leave us worse off in the long term. If it goes live as nothing but a version of the original feign death, without the modifications/extra AAs 11 years of use have shown to be necessary for reasonable functionality being made available to us now when we should get them (I'm not talking about the AAs that improve its pulling ability, but the ones that improve survivability and allow us to save our warders instead of sacrificing them. It's not just a matter of personal preference on the warder saving since, from a role-playing perspective, any beastlord who cravenly abandons his warder to their enemies as a normal circumstance is about as likely to retain his warder and remain a beastlord about as often as pedophilia would allow someone to remain a paladin.). Otherwise, we'll have to try to get them in future expansions, where they will in all likelyhood be pointed to when we ask why clerics, shamans and druids were given flurry and we weren't.

Attempting to constructively advocate for our class by providing possible (positive) solutions is not "QQ"ing, Mazame. Neither is getting frustrated with people who are so firmly focused on getting rid of the alligators that they've forgotten that the true goal is draining the swamp. Even cutting out all ranting is not always the best solution. If we sanitize everything passed on to the Devs to the point where it is nothing but vacuous platitudes and neutral temporization, then they will never see the need to do anything different and we'll be left with the status quo. The devs don't stand for election, so short of voting with our wallets and quitting EQ, we can lobby for change and try to contribute or say nothing and continue to pay for a product we are unsatisfied with.

I am trying to put forward ideas that I think might be of benefit to us. I may very well be wrong. But if they aren't presented and discussed, we'll never know. Neither will the devs know, since they probably aren't mindreaders. I happen to think I can contribute to the design process with some ideas. I'm not a complete newbie when it comes to designing material for RPGs in general. I've played quite a few over the years for one. I grew up on RPGs. I've been playing, running, writing rules and campaign material for various RPGs for almost 30 years now. I got my first D&D set for my 8th birthday. Several of my friends over the years have been professionals.

Explaining the reasoning behind why something should be changed is just as important as the what. Gimme a fero aura does little to explain the need. Hence the length of many of my posts. I probably do need to be more concise, but there isn't someone here to yell "Shut up already!" while I'm typing.

Sikkem

Quote from: Camikazi on April 04, 2010, 12:08:45 AM
Resists do generate aggro, but only in the same direction the fully landed spell would have, meaning a negative aggro spell (a Jolt) will still lower your aggro resist or not. Just like a resisted nuke will give full base aggro a resisted jolt will drop your aggro by full amount.

Is this a change in the last few years I missed?

I do remember lull's generating aggro that increased aggro, in fact I remember resists generating more aggro than a fully landed spell would.

Kinda defeats the whole purpose of a resist in a lot of ways doesn't it ? That being said I never thought a resisted dd etc should generate as much or more aggro than a fully landed one.


Sikkem - 90 Beastlord - Bertox

kharthai

Quote from: Mazame on April 03, 2010, 06:20:56 PM

Ok I for one don't have the aggro problem that most of you tend to QQ about, before beta when you all asked for jolt I didn't say much cause figered ether way no big deal.  so the last 6 months every time AA are talked about  a lot of Bst have ASKED for Deaggro.  and so some changes were made to asp/raven/grollia. yet this didn't make any of you happy so you QQ more and now they given us another one chameleon strike.  and I sorry but if your still pulling aggro maybe you need to relook at how you are playing before you ask for more AA that are not needed. and if you feel these are not enuff again I say look at your self 1st because this idea that we have uncontrolable aggro is just wrong.


if you have trouble on a raid  a few steps you can take are 1 stand at max melee. unlike rog and monks our aa / spells  ect all work from max melee so we don't need to be front of the line we can be standing next to our pet and still do full damage.

2nd if you have aggro problems then use HOTT this will show you the MT life if he drops down to 20%  then hit your deaggros / back up

3rd if your dieing because your on ramp / or because the main tank dies and you were next on the hate list then talk to your guild.  for us we have knights  each raid on stand by if main tank drop the knights grab aggro asap and deflect untill next war can pick it up. because the knight used snap aggro he get it fast and when the new war pulls it off has built a lot of aggro that are melee are not getting killed.


ya the list could go on but the point being is that  if your going balls to the wall to be a parse whore rather then doing what you need to help the raid team by staying alive then your adding to the problem not helping it. and asking for a easy button to lose aggro is not the key imo  learn to watch more of whats going on know when to go all out and when to hold back and focus on staying alive.  we don't need a deaggro button. or at least I don't have a problem losing aggro.

I think you're making quite a few assumptions on how others play.  By your own admission in another thread you hate "chain casting nukes", which kind of makes me think you're one of those beastlords who sits there in a raid, content to be at 60% mana when it's all over.  (Yeah, bit of assumption on my part)  There's a difference between being a "parse whore" and pushing yourself to be the best you can be.  On raids, DPS is king.  The guilds winning UF raids (well, the ones that haven't been nerfed into the ground yet), guess what, for the most part have a ton of dps.  That means they have everyone contributing, and giving all they've got.  I don't think many are/were asking for an easy button, more like an effective way to drop/lose aggro, like every other melee dps in the game has.  I go "balls to the wall" constantly, but that doesn't mean I don't heal myself or max melee (duh) or whatever else.

The problem with the new AA is just overkill.  That said I personally hope we don't screw ourselves out of FD (or monks etc don't), but I get where others are coming from.  We could easily ditch say the bite/claw/smash timer AA, and get something more desirable, especially if the chameleon thing is any good (no idea heh).

kharthai

Quote from: Umlat on April 04, 2010, 09:37:48 AM

Otherwise, we'll have to try to get them in future expansions, where they will in all likelyhood be pointed to when we ask why clerics, shamans and druids were given flurry and we weren't.

Not really the quote I was trying to find but just re:flurry, I think monks were the only class that really got any dps boosting AA this run.  We might feel more entitled because our burn dps isn't all that great (sustained I find is still quite competitive), but it is what it is, Elidroth made a post somewhere saying he basically wasn't looking to increase dps with these mid season AA.

I'm curious if we'd have better luck trying to get something that'd only help us on burns, as Elidroth mentioned during beta (when the topic of more triple attack, etc, came up) that he was worried about increasing our sustained output too much.

Oh, and lol, if you don't like the name for friendly pet (I don't either), I suppose you won't be gungho if the FD aa really does get called "Playin' Possum".  /snicker ;)

Umlat

Playin' 'possum is less offensive than continually seeing "QQ" is. Then again the main use I've seen it put to is as a /tell from that loathsome subspecies of EQ player that get their kicks KSing, ninja-looting and training people in game.

Grbage

Quote from: Sikkem on April 04, 2010, 10:23:05 AM
Quote from: Camikazi on April 04, 2010, 12:08:45 AM
Resists do generate aggro, but only in the same direction the fully landed spell would have, meaning a negative aggro spell (a Jolt) will still lower your aggro resist or not. Just like a resisted nuke will give full base aggro a resisted jolt will drop your aggro by full amount.

They did go through and rework spell agro from land/resist a few years back but for the life of me I can't recall exactly what they did.

Is this a change in the last few years I missed?

I do remember lull's generating aggro that increased aggro, in fact I remember resists generating more aggro than a fully landed spell would.

Kinda defeats the whole purpose of a resist in a lot of ways doesn't it ? That being said I never thought a resisted dd etc should generate as much or more aggro than a fully landed one.
Grbage Heep
85 Beast of Torv

Camikazi

Quote from: Sikkem on April 04, 2010, 10:23:05 AM
Is this a change in the last few years I missed?

I do remember lull's generating aggro that increased aggro, in fact I remember resists generating more aggro than a fully landed spell would.

Kinda defeats the whole purpose of a resist in a lot of ways doesn't it ? That being said I never thought a resisted dd etc should generate as much or more aggro than a fully landed one.

Lulls are not the same as Jolts, lulls if resisted and CHA check does not help will cause aggro, but that is not how jolts work, jolts are just damage in reverse, and all damage spells negative or positive drop or add full aggro when resisted. Devs confirmed it many times, first time was with Wizards and their jolts, next was Rangers and their jolts, always the same complaint and always same dev response jolts will drop aggro even if resisted.




Tadenea

And if you pull with Jolts it will still give enough argo for mob to come after you
Tested through Ranger Jolt Spell
..............................
SoE Community Leader
Ranger of Test Server

Camikazi

Quote from: Tadenea on April 05, 2010, 04:32:56 PM
And if you pull with Jolts it will still give enough argo for mob to come after you
Tested through Ranger Jolt Spell

Yea that's the whole a bad spell was cast on me aggro mobs have.




Catnip_Inny

#39
Seriously I never understand WHY people bitch and moan that our community is trying to better our class... the wait and see or the be grateful for what you get thing is BS...  Mages bitch and chewed about thier class and look where they are now..

I say go ahead and brainstorm if u feel like trying to make things better, my hat goes off to you for your effort!  those that dont like it and want to flame a thread disigned to help our class should just stay away...

I really hope you guys can get some changes put in, but as seen with friendly pet and other useless "fixes/AA" SoE will ignore us :)

Thanks again to Tadenea for your help, as we dont have our own Correspondent for our class your input and effort is very appreciated :)

I still say we all buy cat like reflexes and then mass suicide off the GFAY spires in protest of this AA package :)

my 2cents would be (although unrealistic im sure) Adding Chameleon strike effect to our new FD AA with a SMALL chance to fade would be more beneficial then having 4-5 different deaggro tools... im using 3 hotbars as it is and still trying to figure out in my head where all these are going to fit in...

Blarp

Quote from: Catnip_Inny on April 05, 2010, 05:13:25 PM
I still say we all buy cat like reflexes and then mass suicide off the GFAY spires in protest of this AA package :)

WIN

Tadenea

..............................
SoE Community Leader
Ranger of Test Server

Sharrien

I think this whole fiasco (still can't quite believe that safe fall is real and not a April Fool prank) goes to prove that our community needs to present a more concise and thought out feedback in the future.  We blasted Elidroth with dozens of AA suggestions, some of which were only asked for by a single person or weren't even intended to be stand-alone AA.  

We need to give a shorter list and expand on those suggestions.  For example, instead of "Give us FD", we could have said specifically what need it is intended to address and how to go about doing it.  Want it for a pulling tool?  We need to it to also FD our pets and we need to have at least some of the other AAs other classes have to reduce failures and a short re-use timer.  Aggro reducer instead?  Sucessfull FD counts down to a doom-like de-aggro effect if you stay down until it expires and a long re-use since we only need it if the tank slacks on aggro or dies.  Since we didn't settle on specifics and made him guess at what we wanted, he implemented an ability that matched something from our list that didn't take him long to work out and we ended up in this case with an option that doesn't seem to be able to do either job well and he can say that we got what we asked for.

I just think that we would do better with fewer, more focussed suggestions than a huge list from a brainstorming session.

Just my opinion, based purely on speculation and zero inside info, other than me trying to put myself in his place if I received the input that we gave him.
Savage Spirit Sharrien Dreamstalker
Primal Elementalist Ravingronn Blazewarden
Maelin Starpyre

Hzath

Quote from: Sharrien on April 05, 2010, 08:49:36 PM
I just think that we would do better with fewer, more focussed suggestions than a huge list from a brainstorming session.

I think you're right on this point.  Not having our own CL hurt us, Tadenea passed along our info for us which I do thank him for.  However I feel one of our own could have moderated the suggestions better, filtered out bad/ridiculous ideas, set up polls or specific in game chat channels/times to get active discussion going.

The point I'm trying to make is I agree that a list of 10-15 highly desired, thoroughly explained desired AAs would have netted us better results than a list of 40 out of context "I can has....?" quotes. 

I guess I'm just complaining again though, it's not like we haven't done our best to get a beastlord on the list.
Beastlord Community Round Table representative.  Feel free to PM me or contact me in game (Drinal.Hzathz) about anything you think needs attention.

Razimir

Quote from: Sharrien on April 05, 2010, 08:49:36 PM
We need to give a shorter list and expand on those suggestions.  For example, instead of "Give us FD", we could have said specifically what need it is intended to address and how to go about doing it.  Want it for a pulling tool?  We need to it to also FD our pets and we need to have at least some of the other AAs other classes

Are devs really this stubid or are they just acting like devil reading a bible?

-Raz