EZ Server

Class Balance

As a GM, I have been online and available nearly every day. I feel like it's important that everyone knows I'm around, and respond quickly to people's problems. I will never limit access to talking with me, I'm not that self-important, but I do end up with a lot of unsolicited advice. I don't intend for that to sound like a bad thing, it's quite the opposite, and I feel it's important to hear from as many people as possible on important issues.  What it is though, is somewhat time consuming, and most importantly can be difficult to document.

So, in an effort to bring opinions together in an coordinated way, I have created a class-by-class questionnaire, with some questions I have, as well as room for opinions and ideas for each class. You don't have to fill out everything, and I apologize for it's length, but it's important to know what people want, and where to best spend my time.

Class Balance Survey (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdyNPjabq6mQQtsFEp2FbrGD5pWF0GoRENRet4_Le6HfL3l9w/viewform?usp=sf_link)


Upcoming Content:

• Veeshan's Peak release is imminent.
• Quest through Plane of Innovation for True Champion's Symbol is actively being designed (Idea, Outline and Planning by Skankie)
• Quest for All-in-One mount actively being developed (Idea, Item Scripting and Outline by Ogru)
• Quests for increasingly powerful food and drink actively being developed. (Idea, Outline & Planning by Skankie)

(https://i.imgur.com/Yh8xxM2.png)(https://i.imgur.com/VOFIH4al.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/sFX5RP8l.png)



...and a few things on the changelog for VP's release:

[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Draca][T10.5 Plat Bags] Previous change to Sleeper drop - Epic Bag of Platinum Pieces did not work correctly, this should now be correct. Stack size has been reduced to 5.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [T10.5 Plat Bags] Previous change to Sleeper drop - Epic Bag of Platinum Pieces did not work correctly, this has been fixed. Stack size has been reduced to 5.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Mask of Experience Rank 1000] may now be used from inventory.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Ultimate Longbox XII] previously was set to proc Ultimate Longbow IX effect, it now correctly procs it's own.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Cuirass of the Neoshamanist] previously had no appearance, it has been set to mirror UA.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [V1 Charm Upgrades] have had their icons changed to differentiate them from the V2 charm upgrades.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Ultimate Armor] leather and cloth wrist clickable effect had an unassigned clicktype, and attempting to use could require zoning, or hang a client. This has been fixed.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Ultimate Dagger] had a backstab damage bonus that was set beyond it's limit, resulting in massively reduced damage. This has been corrected.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Spells] Incinerating Aura V previously had no effect value assigned, this has been corrected.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Spells] Cleave IX previously did not have 1HB, 1HS or 2HB assigned values for increased chance of critical melee. This has been corrected.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Spells] Several defensive buffs have been reclassified, and will now show up in the normal buff pane, and will persist through zoning.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Quality of Life] Scorpion Spears now stack to 1000.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Bug Fixes] Previous adjustment to corpse decay time did not work correctly, it has been fixed. Again.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Bug Fixes] Previous adjustment to the number of item upgrade announcements did not work correcty, it has been fixed. Again.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Ogru][Bug Fixes] With Ogru's help, the Universal Teleporter should no longer cause client crashes when clicking certain zone group links in chat.
[January 29th 2022] [Draca] [Previous Change] Expensive Blue Diamonds stack size was reduced to 5, due a possible platinum duping exploit.


There's a lot going on behind the scenes, I know VP is delayed, but ultimately the reason it's delayed will allow for super smooth rollouts in the future, along with me being able to provide more help to everyone.

If anyone has any ideas for new content, similar to the stuff mentioned above, please contact me. Realize, not every idea is a polished gem, and might not be feasible, but I'll be happy to walk through what exactly is needed for a proper outline, and send you off to figure it out. You'll also have almost no say on specific mechanics, stats, drop rates etc., as that begins to cross a line into inside knowledge. I'm always around.

-Draca

Just because there wasn't a place to mention this in the survey...I think that lowering weapon attk and hitpoints (weapons and gear) and lowering player/NPC hitpoints and damage would be highly useful on both a developer and player standpoint. We have got to be getting close to hitting a wall if we keep going on the route we are going.

We’ve had discussions around that Raygan, for now, we’ve got a little headroom, and some crafty ways to keep stuff interesting. Eventually it’s a project that will need tackling for sure.

I would like to add my "wasn't on the survey" as well:

I feel that raid content should be scaled based on the number of participants, and corpses be unavailable to loot for those that weren't present.

A player running 6 characters could have a mostly-equal chance at success to someone running 32. There's plenty of possible discussion around this, I'm sure.

Tank, I pulled this out of the deleted posts, not just for your sake, but for anyone else who thinks this is going to be some mandatory complication of gameplay. It's absolutely not. What I am interested in, is finding out if people who are interested in min/maxing their characters would be interested in scenarios where, for example, mez pulling might make pulls more manageable than face pulling. It won't be required, and your progress won't be severely hampered for not doing so, it might be a bit slower going, add a wipe here or there, but not unmanageable in any way. Traditional 6-man EZ groups will almost always be my tuning scenario.

Ultimately, I just want to get underused/underpowered/near useless classes to a place that people who have previously enjoyed playing them, can reasonably add to their groups, have them be as effective as they should be, while attempting to maintain the class 'feel' that they enjoy. I haven't played every class, so I don't know the ins and outs of all of them, so I would rather ask everyone for their thoughts, so I can make better educated decisions.

-Draca

This was a good exercise.

I think a lot of us forget the usefulness of the classes over the years. With the past several years being stale and now being at a point where Your maxed out warrior can Solo ZP the highest tier content, it is too easy to forget what it was like coming up through the tiers.

I recall LP being particularly difficult for me. If i wanted to get any sort of a decent size pull I had to land my mitigation buff and heal on hit spell from my CLR/DRU to survive the pull long enough to get my pally's procing.

Don't forget, a lot of mechanisms can be run through your main tank. For instance Veeshan's Peak. Would be cool with an enchanter mezz spell that had like 30 sec duration and was unbreakable. Pulling two mobs and getting a third add, you could target the add and do a /bct from tank to chanter to assist and cast mez. It doesn't need to be too hard, yet still rewarding if you have a chanter. With the dungeon profile that three is a crowd, mezzing could actually prove very useful.

Kinda wished you hadn't but it is what it is...

If someone wants to lend me some macros to help me out that'd be great  :P

Tank

Sarthin#6666 on Discord, Thankus. I can help you with some setup.