New refugee from p99 mayhaps

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by NaanBread, Aug 8, 2020.

  1. Cillipis

    Cillipis Well-Known Member

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    I’ll just chime in as a fellow “drop at less than a moment’s notice” player and suggest you add a Paladin as a third to shaman/Necro so you have some sort of rez. When you are on that ‘have to go now’ schedule having a rez In group is big; as is a porter or corpse summoner. You seem to have most of the necessities locked in, so consider giving yourself a rez, a few more buffs and a plate tank.

    If you don’t like it, can the Paladin when you hit level 30 or something, but you will have it if/when you want it. And with your trio, the Paladin will be fine in Velious gear/cultural armor for basic pop camps.
     
  2. Nakunaru

    Nakunaru People Like Me

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    If you haven't done it, jump on the Discord too. Most of us are fairly active on there to answer questions, and there is a nice little pinned FAQ on there to rummage through.
     
  3. Kabouter

    Kabouter Member

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    As a fellow takp newbie, some tips:
    - set up hotkeynet to switch between characters
    - don't pick 2 melee characters, it is very hard to keep them positioned well because of pushback
    - if not all of your characters have gate, I personally would pick a druid or wizard. Pok books are wonderful, but being able to gate back all your characters to the pok from a dungeon is something I wouldn't want to miss.
    - Leveling is very easy because of the group bonus, and nothing is camped. You can go to the usual spots, but I prefer to do some dungeon crawling instead, to see things I haven't seen on live.
    - Money is easy to get, first of all there are newbie armor quests here for which some pieces are actually very good. Secondly newbie mobs sometimes drop items that are worth a lot and I don't recall these dropping on p99. And lastly farm some spiderling silk and you'll soon have enough pp to buy most stuff. My 3 characters are level 20 now and decked out in pretty much top end gear for classic standards without any help.
    - Create 1 bazaar character to sell these silk and just look for cheap items per slot.
    - Boxing is fun, but to be honest 3 boxing might be a bit too much for me, especially when grouping with someone else. So try 2boxing first you can always add a 3rd character later on.
    - It is true you can get OP buffs easily, but I actually try to stay away from them, it makes all content pretty trivial.
     
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  4. necra

    necra People Like Me

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    Esc key closes all bags
     
  5. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Nice tips, Kabouter! Glad you're enjoying the server.
     
  6. gardnerjens

    gardnerjens People Like Me

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    I think a box of Necro - Bard Necro - Druid Necro - Shaman, or Necro - Necro are good compositions for a dual box, since you can rely on the kiting
     
  7. NaanBread

    NaanBread New Member

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    ahh ok
     
  8. NaanBread

    NaanBread New Member

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    I'm still new to boxing so trying to juggle 3 was getting to much so for now i'm gonna work with shm/nec until i get used to it. Though I play on a very shoddy metered connection and i've had several lengthy lag spikes that would probably result in a death at higher levels, perhaps 2 is almost 2 much!

    I was looking at hotkeynet but it doesn't work with the 2.2 staging wine version that is recommended to use with this client, also just a quick alt+tab does the job and setting up macro's is easy enough.

    Also agreed on the melee thing, trying to keep both shm/nec on a fleeing mob has already proven to be not fun. thankfully i was able to afford a pet spell finally.
     
  9. solar

    solar Administrator Staff Member

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    Druid and Shaman CH are a different type of effect from normal damage and these don't generate any hate from the amount healed, like the cleric CH does. This is kind of broken but it can be used as an advantage. They heal significantly less than the cleric spell and you don't get them until level 58 though. Clerics get their heal bomb at level 39 and they also have heal-over-time spells to go with it which makes them much better healers. The difference is that your tank needs to generate some hate or the cleric will end up tanking after the CH, depending on how early you do it.

    About hotkeynet - the default setup that comes with it, if you can get it working, makes it so client 1/2/3 are bound to numpad 1/2/3. This doesn't sound like a big difference from alt-tab but you just have to try it and you'll see. Probably all of us started with alt-tab and thinking it's good enough, until we tried the single key switch. Maybe it's not urgent since you're just starting but I recommend giving this another try, it's a game changer. I don't know about trying to play this in wine - if you get serious about it I think any old laptop from the past decade would work. It's a journey though, welcome to the party :)
     
  10. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Total aside, and just out of curiosity: has anyone verified on Live that the dru/shm mini-CH spells never generate hate?
     
  11. Mokli

    Mokli I Feel Loved

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    Hard to verify from PoP era stuff like that, unless its discussed specifically in logs. Current EQ has hate meters now, but I really wouldn't trust that the heals would be the same from 15+ years ago.

    Anecdotally, I rarely recall agro from a Druid CH. I mained one back then.

    Also, stop trying to draw Torven's attention from PoP, omg. ;)
     
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  12. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    they do generate hate here, just not much. for example if you heal someone tanking a mob and that char dies the mobs will still aggro you
     
  13. solar

    solar Administrator Staff Member

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    It makes hate on live, but Torven tells me this was changed after AK era.
     
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  14. Devour_Souls

    Devour_Souls People Like Me

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    Or sitting after casting on a toon that is tanking a pile.
     
  15. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

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    Another thing to note about the Druid/Shaman CHs is the fact that they also cannot critical heal. Healing Adept does focus on them though.

    Kragg's Mending (58 SHM) (400Mana) - 1950 Heal
    Tunare's Renewal (58 DRU) (400Mana) - 2925 Heal
    Karana's Renewal (64 DRU) (600Mana) - 4680 Heal

    Luclin max druid heal: 2925 Heal + 10% (Healing Adept 3) = 3217 Max

    [Sat Aug 08 22:29:30 2020] You have been healed for 3217 points of damage.

    PoP max druid heal: 4680 Heal + 19% (Advanced Healing Adept 3) = 5569 Max

    [Wed Oct 02 17:18:06 2013] You have been healed for 5569 points of damage.

    For reference, my Luclin geared Paladin has around 7000 HP fully buffed. So I can currently land my "CH" for a maximum of 50% his HP. In PoP at level 65 with PoTime gear you can get up to around 10000-11000 HP fully buffed. Druid CH still maintains around the 50% max on a fully buffed raid tank. It also costs 50% more than the cleric CH in PoP so you bleed mana faster.

    All of this isn't to say Druids or Shamans cannot heal in PoP. They can, they just are much more inefficient because of how overpowered complete heal is. The minimal aggro value on these percentage heals is a huge perk however especially if you have a warrior tank or you are dealing with multiple mobs on your tank.
     
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  16. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Yeah, I mained a shaman on Live back in the Luclin-GoD era. No- or low-aggro mini CHs were never on my radar. I was decently tuned in to mechanics, read and posted a lot on the serverwide shaman boards, etc. But maybe I missed it!

    *locks lips, throws away key*
     
  17. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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  18. Mascha

    Mascha People Like Me

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    January 15, 2003

    - NPCs will now notice Druid and Shaman Percentage Heal spells in a manner similar to traditional healing spells.

    Oh nooooo!
     
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  19. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    Thats after AKs timeline, not oh noo, oh yeah[​IMG]
     
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  20. Nakunaru

    Nakunaru People Like Me

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    There's usually a cleric floating around that would be willing to rez. Also look me up if you need a rez, usually if I'm not raiding or exping I don't mind running around doing rezes.
     
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  21. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Per Ravenwing, Hobart synched AK's spell data with Live "sometime after 7/10/03 but before 8/6/03". Not sure what that implies for dru/shm mini-CH hate. Is the hate generation on these spells governed by spell data (July '03, after the 1/15/03 patch) or some other server code (October '02, before patch)?
     
  22. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

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    RW is not technically correct here. I sure wish we had that spell data file from 7/10/03! If we had a spell data file post 7/10/03 that is post Quarm Alpha.

    https://lucy.allakhazam.com/spellhistory.html?id=3768&source=Live - One of Quarm's 9 AEs

    2003-07-10 11:12 Changed 'Cast on you' message from "Time and reality begin to tear around you." to "Pure fire envelopes you."
    2003-07-10 11:12 Changed Name from Corporeal Timeblast II to Infernal Flames

    [Wed Apr 24 00:32:10 2013] Time and reality begin to tear around you.
    [Wed Apr 24 00:33:11 2013] Time and reality begin to tear around you.
    [Wed Apr 24 00:34:10 2013] Time and reality begin to tear around you.
    [Wed Apr 24 00:35:22 2013] Time and reality begin to tear around you.
    [Wed Apr 24 00:57:55 2013] Time and reality begin to tear around you.
    [Wed Apr 24 00:59:08 2013] Time and reality begin to tear around you.
    [Wed Apr 24 01:00:11 2013] Time and reality begin to tear around you.

    What a different experience that would've been had we gotten to engage Quarm with the updated AEs!

    We definitely did have a spell data file from 2003 though since it had some LoY spells in it like the Mass enchants and Gulf of Gunthak quest spells. We very well may have had a spell data file from 7/9/03 though, just before that 7/10/03 patch that fixed Quarm.

    My guess is that the hate calculation is handled in the code rather than the spell itself. It wasn't until much later in EQ's life when they started to add hate overrides to spells to guarantee they generated X amount of hate. Prior to this they would likely go through a checklist of how much damage, any resists, any AC debuff, and any raw aggro things (terrors/concussion/jolt) and come with an aggregate value.

    Anecdotally, I don't recall ever pulling hate on a druid CH. Granted the majority of my time was spent with a charmed pet tank. I do recall pulling hate with cleric CH however on a few occasions when I was using a normal tank.
     
  23. solar

    solar Administrator Staff Member

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    There's a lot of stuff that isn't in the spell data. There are also things in the spell data that are just misleading and ignored by the code. Darchon is right there was a hate override added to some spells like tash/stun but it was after AK. There is not a 'fixed duration invis' effect either, all of these are just special cases in the code, but there are only 6 I know of. Other than effect 0 (current HP) most spell effects are unique or close to it, where there are less than 5 things in the game it applies it to. Like if I said all percental heal spells now do more hate, it just means Tunare's Renewal and Kragg's Mending. There is a PoP druid upgrade, and it looks like they were going to make a shaman one but it didn't happen. http://lucy.alkabor.com/spell_3231.html
    I don't think it was intentional that this doesn't make hate - it was probably forgotten because they added a new spell type and they didn't add code for it to the heal aggro function. It seems like one of those obviously broken things to me, but I think it's AKurate. I wonder how many people would still be using druid/shaman healer in their trio if it made aggro just like a cleric.
     
  24. Mokli

    Mokli I Feel Loved

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    I don't really care for the Cleric class, so I would anyway. There's more functionality to Druids than one low hate heal. They can heal in most of the same group situations as Clerics. And if you find a place where you can't, then your tank needs upgrades.
     
  25. Hove!

    Hove! People Like Me

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    3C9F7361-1BC9-4D88-AC3D-0638A6391475.jpeg
     
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  26. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    I knew about druid/shaman CH analog spell hate for a long time. Actually I recall my 2002 guild using a druid to heal first in rots.

    Yes, it's obviously an oversight on Sony's part, and they fixed it a few months after they put the spells in. I think it's far more likely that AK didn't have the spell hate in, so I intentionally did not 'fix' it. I just did a quick grep and found some 'druid CH doesn't aggro' comments.
     
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  27. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Makes sense!
     
  28. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    its crucial to my brick farming strategy
     
  29. NaanBread

    NaanBread New Member

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  30. solar

    solar Administrator Staff Member

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    TL;DR, druid CH is broken in a way that trivializes some difficult parts of the game. You can tank 10 mobs and spam Tunare's Renewal and the healer doesn't get aggro on TAKP. It makes it possible to tank with a monk, rogue, or warrior even on multiple mobs, though this is much harder or impossible to pull off with a cleric. If you try spamming a spell like greater healing or complete healing, the healer will get aggro and probably die. With a single cleric healer, depending on the NPCs, it's not possible to tank them with one of those pure melee non-casters because the damage they deal has to be healed, and the hate generated by a single cleric healing exceeds the hate generated by those pure melees auto attacking so they will not be tanking, the cleric will. Players here know about it and exploit it but try to keep it quiet, I guess.
     
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2020