Hi all. Thanks to the debs and testers for all the work put into this. Wondering if bugs like SKs MC giving full manabar on proc and others will be in game? Thats how it was on AK... And how I liked it. =) /Kaz
Hey Kaz, you may need to elaborate on what you mean so we can test it and establish if it was a bug that should not have been that way or if it was indeed accurate?
Yeah. Back on good ol' AK the level 52 Shadowknight spell Mental Corruption would give the SK full mana. It was supposed to give 50-100mana or something like that, but was always full mana on AK. Also the Shadowknights Voice line (voice of shadows, darkness etc) worked differently on AK. It was supposed to INCREASE agro accumulation for whoever you cast it on. But with us SKs on AK it worked the other way around. Cast it on someone at it would lower their agro accumulation. Was two very sweet spells intended or not... I hope they get to be working the same here as the did on AK. /Kaz
The voice line should be fixed to work properly - a well functioning voice is one hell of a boost for any warrior or tank. Secondly, as far as MC goes one proc restoring full mana was a bit broken, I wouldn't mind to see it somewhere in the middle but as it worked on AK it was ridiculous - infinite mana.
Pallys seemed the knight class of choice on AK. Think those two spell bugs sorta almost made SKs on par with them. Ohh btw Zeevfer's bite (level 62 group mana and hp leach) would grant the group mana even when cast at mobs with no mana. Dont know if this is how it was intended or not, but it was how it was on AK. /Kaz
That's because in-era PoP pallys were incredible . MC just removes the necessity to itemize for FT at all and allows some craziness with chain lifetapping. I wouldn't mind if it gave 25% of total mana back or something like that but 100% per proc was insane Kaz.
Also im pretty sure zevfeers bite worked since it gave life/mana based off the damage dealt - like it hits for 200 and gives 200 life/100 mana. Its not a mana steal its more of a conversion after damage is dealt. (Also campaigning for prenerf CoS to drop in kunark era officially has begun)
So far this thread hasn't touched on the most widespread of the wonky AK spells, which was the lull/harmony lines. Kaz mentioned two SK spells. SK is my main. I love the class. However the Voice spells need to work correctly or not at all. The AK version was highly abusable. Not for individuals but for entire raids against bosses dropping god loot. I didn't use it. I was raid leader for Temerity and wouldn't permit the spell to be cast during a raid. Kaz probably didn't know about how abused it could be and I never heard of him using it that way. The Mental Corruption thing was probably too good, but not a gamebreaker. It was mainly of solo and xp group benefit and limited by the fact that we didn't have the means to power-dump the resources back out into play like a wizard or cleric might. I think the answer for this one should be consistent with the larger solution for Al'Kabor quirks. For example if it's decided to put a modified, lesser version of pacify and some of the bard stuff in, this should follow suit. There were suggestions for that earlier in this thread. On the other hand if extended harmony and pet pulling and the like is shut down due to obviously not working as intended, mental corruption could go the same way. Zetro
I think Zetro's answer is spot on. In the final days of AK, we did see fixes for several long-standing bugged abilities: the pacify line was made to work properly, and enchanters' ability to stack up haste and cast beneficial spells instantly was fixed. Bards' Bellow AA was made to respect its range and require line of sight. Hobart also claimed to have fixed the Voice line and other reversed aggro mod effects, although I don't recall hearing that anyone had confirmed this systematically in game. The sky did not fall. My personal opinion is that these fixes (nerfs, if you prefer) were ages overdue, and I'd love to see some of the advantageous bugs that didn't get fixed (pet pulling, tick splitting, Wrath of the Wild and rune depletion order, Mental Corruption, et cetera) go the same way. But my personal opinion aside, I think Zet is right that there are EQMac bugs so crazy that you'd have to be out of your mind to imitate them - "reverse pac" comes to mind - and then there is an entire class of non-game-breaking Al'Kabugs that are going to require the developers to make a decision between historical accuracy and common sense. I also think he's right to suggest that this second group of issues should be taken up as a group, rather than piecemeal. If shadowknights' Mental Corruption is a bug, so is enchanters' WotW-stacking and bards' non-consumption of reagents and so forth; if Mental Corruption is a "feature," ditto. I suppose one could also make a distinction between "bugs" that were an artifact of Al'Kabor's snapshot-in-time, this-was-actually-fixed-in-a-week nature, and "broken mechanics" that were eventually addressed, but did in fact represent how EQ worked for a period of months or years.
I started a discussion in the GM section for us to talk it through. I don't want to give any more personal opinion on the manner than I have in previous posts regarding similar things until the team has weighed in. Most specifically the Dev team as far as what is already fixed and what is reasonable to fix.
I'll go ahead and caution that this is a real slippery slope. Intent is one thing, reality is another. It's much easier to remake an Al`Kabor that actually existed rather than one everyone thinks they would have liked to have because you will never get consensus. The fact a number of widely used practices like Shakerpaging, Pitwars, or mega-boxing is already "against the rules" probably makes this point invalid. That said, one of the beautiful things about Al`Kabor over the years in my experience was the fact it self-regulated 99% of the time without much GM intervention.
I know for a fact you had them - just because you got it via GM instead of in-era time frame is certainly one point. Of course this time around we'll have kunark in - era so It wouldn't be awful if pre-nerf CoS fell during that era and got changed in velious.
@ Faults See my above post. "I had one..." If they will be in again I'll (hopefully) camp one but if not I don't really care. I'm glad the devs are discussing the bugged spells. I personally vote to keep them as they were on AK when it got shut. From my experience voice line was not fixed - I could be wrong though...
it shouldn't be too hard to find the update notes Hobart made or had intended to be fixed at the server's closure -these included voice; harmony/pac; mental corruption; the addition of the MGB AA for beastlords etc. Not all of these worked perfectly but you can see the intention and is probably easier to benchmark.
FYI, my view is that AK was as it was. What happened there worked as intended, else logically it would have been fixed. If it was not worth some kind of fix, it must have been ok. Hobart is do, we all know this. If he wanted a change, that is his call. God can pass down any new laws or changes god wants. We can't play god if we want this to be a valid replica. Even Hobart would tell you some of the changes/fixes were not done though. Pacify was reversed for example as an arguably necessary first step. But no one had really gotten down to how long the new pacces lasted/worked. For ages, I thought it was 4 mins unless you had the SCR AA and then it got lowered. So I never got that one so i could be team paccer while someone else on raids was usually first to cast 9s. Hobart did put out a survey on this one and, while no consensus was reached, the basic idea was it should not be wearing off so fast. You just wanted to avoid something being pacced even after people left the camp.
Hobart had fixed perma pac - pac lasted as it was intended to last in that era and SCRM worked again as intended. The only thing he left semi broken was specifically bard pac which lasted like 4-6 minutes (it varied). Also some of these things, like MC or voice he attempted to fix (in that he wanted to but our code was such a clusterfuck that he often broke stuff when he fixed things so he had to revert changes made, it wasn't a lack of intent, the intent was there but since our code was what it was he had to tread extremely carefully)
The reality is that Hobart didn't get paid to work on our server and prioritized fixes based around the small amount of free time he had. We should not allow broken things to remain broken, that's not what AK was meant to be. It was just an unfortunate reality of AK being left behind and forgotten.
So one patch note I could find easily: Server will be rebooting 12/21/2012 @ 12:00 AM PST to address the following issues: - The perma pacification bug has been fixed. - The bug where NPC’s that are pacified multiple times would result in them having a huge assist radius has been fixed. - Rogues once again can double backstab. - Charm war exploit has been fixed. - Fixed bug with Spell Casting Subtlety (Wizard) where Concussion and Boggle would be reduced in effectiveness. - Voice of Thule (Shadowknight) should no longer reduce hate by 88%. It will now add 12% hate. - Boastful Bellow (Bard) now has the appropriate range check and requires line of sight. - Bard run speed cap issue as been fixed. This will actually be a general nerf as every bard was getting the max cap as if they had the Flee of Foot Level 3 AA. - Fleet of Foot (Bard) now properly adjusts the runspeed cap at each level. - Burning Affliction will modify each dot tick up to 20%. - Bug with spell haste stacking where if you went over 100% haste, it would cause the spell to be instant cast. It will now properly cap at 50%. - Bug where charmed NPC’s that have Frenzied Burnout cast on them would still contiue to rampage and flurry. - Shroud of Chaos will now receive the benefits from the increase lifetap return AA(SK). More in the now archived eqmac.com I expect.
Al'Kabor was Al'Kabor. While I appreciate the sentiment, it is not a true statement to equate a more perfect Al'Kabor with what actually existed.
