To me there's a difference between getting closer to live, and fixing bugs. Fixing perma pac was a bug fix. Implementing a tradeskill UI or mercenaries would be getting closer to live. I see a big philosophical difference between these two categories.
Personally, I would consider the 1 aggro DA issue to be one of those spiritually inakkurate issues, because people on AK generally didn't use or know about it. Everyone here being aware of it and forming strategies around its use doesn't feeeeeeel very akkurate.
As a whole losing cleric/wiz DA abilities imo isn’t a game changer. So the change isn’t the end of the world. However, like several others have mentioned prior, my concern is where the inAKurate fixes stop. At what point are things that are considered OP nerfed simply because there is an assumption that it’s “probably not how it was intended”. It’s a snowball that I fear could lead to changes that are game changers that aren’t AKurate.
After a night of raiding VT I can’t say this changed much. There were many deaths during the Crawl last night but the only deaths I saw during a boss were from a botched pull that caused rampage to bounce a bit. I didn’t see much if any overaggro. Boxing Druid/Wizard I just ended up Casting very rarely to start and took med breaks until the mob was lower and I camped out a few times to reset aggro... which isn’t too bad until you crash when logging back in and are locked out. Wizards still topped parses as Solusek intended, they just can’t faceroll their way to the top anymore. I will miss being able to BDA the tank on enrage and force a flip on the boss that can only be recovered with DA click off an taunt.
I was fairly certain neither worked on bards. They could only generate hate through their Melee and songs. But who knows bards have been coded so weird throughout EQ.
Pure hate procs work because they just add to hate. Bards generate no hate through stuns, but can get the hate generated by damage. BoC is that rare bard weapon that can be used for aggro and its great when you get 2x-3x proc in a row but mostly its not firing as much as needed. Lack of swings hurts. We have some posts/proof iirc in velious about boc and bards.
Agreed, there didnt seem to be much effective difference either because aggro wasnt a huge deal or people held back more to be careful. It might even be better this way, making wizards be more aware. DA is still there for oh shit moments as it was probably always intended.
DA change seems like a really unusual arbitrary inakurate change for sake of 'balance'. The balance issue it supposedly fixes appears relatively minor, now wizards will have to do slightly less DPS and be slightly more careful. It will however really mess up the group game dynamic - now an overpull of mobs and cleric getting heal agro will probably result in a wipe because cleric can't just DA, click it off, and try healing the tank/enc again. It doesn't really seem to warrant a deviation from AlKabor mechanics... Not that any of us really have a choice on what server we play, I guess we'll suck it up and take whatever is served, but stuff like this makes me feel slightly sad because it appears to undermine credibility of arguments based on balance/AlKabor accuracy. It seems to now just be "whatever the devs feel like changing cause they didn't like how guild X raids".
I suppose there’s also a middle ground between AKuracy where the hate dump was at least 15,000 based on Pithy’s testing (though I think it was basically an entire dump) and having 0 dump. It could just drop your hate by 5,000 for example. For a wizard, that’s only 2.5 Nukes. It doesn’t make hate management completely trivial because you’re limited to 1 bard DA every 3min and only 4 DA Ear charges per night. But it would help the scenario showstring is referring to. Putting the mechanic somewhere between balance and AKuracy.
I’m with Rim... it’s not the change itself that concerns me but the methodology behind the change. Also like Rim, I know we are at your mercy and are just lucky to play here. All I’d request is just that some consideration be taken into making some more clear cut lines on what bugs/fixes/nerfs/exploits/imbalances etc should be allowed to be fixed that are AKurate. Again I’m just worried about the slippery slope.
This is the issue. And when we're told by other players to be thankful for the devs we can do both. We can be thankful and question where the fixes/exploits are going when things like monk ac are inAKurate - but DA's function is "spiritually inAKurate". Its frustrating.
This actually sounds like very reasonable compromise, if you are into that sort of thing. If not, we'll adjust and deal with it.
I have no idea how the hate wiping thing worked on AK. Some people say it set you to the bottom of the hate list, some say it didn't, and I would guess that most have never heard of it and hadn't thought to try using DA in that way, which makes this tactic even more questionable to me. If people knew about this back on AK and were using it for the hate wipe, they kept it quiet because they knew it was a glitch and not an intended mechanic. If there was an AA you could buy to add this to DA, it would be a fun upgrade, but does anyone really think this is how it's supposed to work? You guys are really skilled players that know how to min/max everything, and several people here admitted that they also think it's a lame tactic. My personal anecdote about this.. I play a cleric on TAKP and I did on EQMac and live too. I don't think I'm as good a player as some of you guys - I never knew that I could use DA as a reliable way to drop aggro on AK because it didn't work that way on windows EQ so I didn't think to try that. I always relied on the tank and enchanter in a group to save me. If the tank comes into camp already hurt and I have to throw a big heal right away to save them, I would get aggro and I would have to DA and hope they survive long enough without a heal to get aggro back. If it's a warrior and they're taking fast damage, it's probably going to be a wipe anyway - either I let them die, or I click it off and try to heal them and then I probably die. It was a better bet to just root the mob than try to DA, that way I could keep healing. On TAKP until this patch it was very reliable and clerics would always lose aggro after a DA. Also camping during a wipe. DA doesn't last enough for that, so if the cleric is already hated from having healed, it's probably futile to try camping because you will attract the NPC's wrath by sitting. On TAKP this worked pretty reliably since the DA'd cleric would be last to get killed even after it wore off. I agree that changing this makes it harder to be a cleric, but it never should have been easy in the first place. When I was a cleric main, before GoD combat skill rework, I hated having a group with a warrior tank for this reason.. they couldn't generate hate and keep it off me on hard mobs that put out a lot of damage and thus require heavy healing.
From a balance point of view, I am liking the way it is now more and more. Aggro always should be something you have to be aware of and there should be consequences to failing that. It is something that separates the bad from the good and the good from the great. It might hold down wizard dps which, in a reliable hate dropping world, might have threatened to just run away from everyone else. I hope they keep this as is. I dont buy the balance arguments. If your healer died because your puller brought a group destroying pull and the cleri pulled aggro and still had that much aggro after DA wore off, maybe you DESERVED to wipe. Tell the puller to get gud. The argument on how far you want to stray from AKurate vs improving on what AK was is in the end totally up to the devs, but for the MOST part they have made the right calls. Not gonna please everyone so just keep making what you think are the right choices.
I knew DA dropped hate to 1 and thats why i spent 400k on a da ear and then 600k on a recharger. We just didn't sing every single AK mechanic from the rooftops in hopes of being saved on an emu some day. This mechanic was known - I dunno if my ring war made it into my logs but im fairly sure there's a discussion between me and the raid about the ears value.
Dont make Haynar post the quote saying Takp is not intended to be 100% faithful to AK again. I feel like the standard they have actually set and the standard some of you THINK they have set are not one and the same.
100% AKuracy isn't the standard I was referring to. Its the standard thats been set on TAKP from classic to now in the way, and the what has been changed. Post the Haynar quote all you like.
I like DA and I cannot lie. Aggro wipe is how my cleric stays fly, I pull 30 mobs and CH to full, before the mobs run for Savior he's DA sittin' cool. Oh wait that was before the patch, now I'm back to Druid CH, oh well same deal there, no aggro anywhere. Hey aggro on Druid CH is not fair, let's swing the nerf bat around everywhere!
I'm not comfortable calling the AKurate DA behavior a "bug" or "glitch". AFAIK it was that way on both Live and AK from about mid 2001 until mid/late 2003 or maybe even into 2004? From my understanding, it was an intentional game mechanics change to prevent DA-tanking. And then it was another intentional game mechanics change (sometime after LoY released?) that reset hate after DA wore off. If you want to argue that it's a balance issue for TAKP that's fine, but is it really considered "exploiting a glitch" to use an in-era mechanic that was intentionally introduced by the official devs?
This change is entirely consistent with the standard they have set, with nerfs to shakerpage, perma paci and other changes. There may be more changes in this standard coming as well. The one that is currently violating this standard is refusing to change monks, not this. Given the next patch after the AK freeze it is absolutely clear monks were not intended to be in this shape. It is a bug.
I just like being able to help out here and I think you guys have a great community. From what I've seen, the right decisions usually get made. I probably would have given in to the archery stuff where Torven stood his ground, and I think that was handled really well in the end. Not perfect, but we ended up with something close to how AK was. Game mechanic changes are always subjective. It's easier to reason about them individually and dragging other issues into it makes it harder to discuss. I see 'AKurate' as an easy way to settle things when you can't agree - if we can't have it our way, we'll do it how it was on AK and move on. For some things, we can agree to deviate and still stay true to the spirit of classic Everquest. Only the Sith deal in absolutes. This is just my own opinion and I hope nobody is taking this too seriously. I'm happy to have found this place to play classic everquest with other people who are just as passionate about it.
Archery is also violating the standard. It was a bug that was fixed on live. To me it seems like if a bug fix or live change makes things *harder*, it gets fixed here on TAKP. If it would makes things *easier* or toons more powerful, then it doesn't get fixed here on TAKP (monk AC, ranger archery). This is the pattern I am seeing. It's the dev's server to do what they wish, though, I suppose! All we can do is make our cases, and then move on .
