[Release Date:]

Brief T11 Update:


While it hasn't been brought up much lately, T11 progress continues to be made. While I'm sure things like the Rallos Zek event, or the Tunare expedition would seem to have taken away from time with T11, there were mechanics involved in both fights that allowed me to learn about more of what I like and don't like as ideas in a Tier zone.  For those who are not aware, T11 will take place in Dragonscale Hills. After consulting my realtor, this zone seemed to be the perfect blend of open and confined spaces, with some great spaces for boss fights and such.

Tier 11 centers around 2 primary races, one of whom has enslaved the other, you will be fighting to free them.

Following a progression path through the zone, you will first have to earn the enslaved race's trust, then begin a long progression including factioning, quests, and epic boss fights. Quests will include the standard collection and kill count varieties, along with boss kills, compounding daily quests, and some slightly more imaginative ideas to make use of underused classes. This roadmap lays out the general progression of T11 (with some modifications possible).

Tier 11 will be difficult, as all new tiers should be, but not extremely so. What it won't allow for, is large scale camp level pulls, not on day 1, or day 1000. There will be no fast shortcuts through Tier 11. Boss fights will run the range from tank 'n spank, to involved scripted encounters, including 3 difficulty levels of a Coldain Ring War style event, with most falling somewhere in the middle of those two.



Release Date:

I know everyone wants to know when it will launch, I realize that T10 is very long in the tooth, and many people are finishing up ST and even VP now, but I won't give a date at this time. T11 will be done, it will be done this year, but it will also be done right. People have been awfully generous about their enjoyment of VP, which I greatly appreciate, but developing an EZ Server tier is a step above designing VP in terms of importance, and I won't rush through it. More updates to come, as they present themselves.




-Draca

Here's another necro pet "exploit"

You can summon a pet whilst FD...Not sure if intended, I have mentioned it before ...

Tank

This seems to be related to an issue where augments with clickable buffs/pets ignore the 'Cast While Sitting' flag in spells. I will report it to the EQEmu guys, so for now it remains the same. There are some scripting workarounds I could do, but I'll wait and see if a fix can be made on the server code side more easily first.

-Draca

Mitigation issues with pets has been addressed. Weapons with Shielding in excess of 100, were mitigating melee damage completely when used in a Summoner's Pack.  I have lowered the shield very slightly to 90 or 95 depending on the weapon level (most are Ultimate Weapons), so pets can still tank, but will require healing upkeep similar to player tanks.

-Draca

Guild Leader : Ttauntmonster
Guild Name : Dragon Slayers

Done

Following a server reset, changes to the EoMA should be complete. Damage effect is reverted to it's previous figure, and other spell effects have been blocked. Pet mitigation solution will come shortly.

Update on this topic: During tuning tests, it occurred to me that the Defensive spell effect (Stonewall/mitigation) could be blocked when paired with the offending spell effectiveness buff (just overlooked this avenue initially), so the EoMA effects will be reverted to their previous effects, but will exclude several other spell effects to avoid unwanted buffing of these effects. These changes should be pushed Live later tonight, once I can properly verify they work as intended.

-Draca

Uhh... wait.. what?! Pets not being able to use UWs?! Next on the list... what?! Damn.. I got 4 pet classes with UWs being used on pets... and working on getting more but now that is gonna get nerfed? why?

Probably over-reacting but still.... was the nice thing about summoner bags and using UWs for the pets to proc the dd that comes with them, since they can't proc any strike augs in any of the non UWs you can equip them with.

Mix

You're definitely over-reacting. I'm looking into solutions, and I've never said anything about removing UW use from pets.

Tank, it never occurred to me to ban you, and the opinions of others is not mine. Being as Akkadius doesn't necessarily follow the day-to-day goings on here, there was 0% chance you were getting banned.

How is that possible when it only adds 100% base damage and no mitigation?

If people don't click off the old version it'll just stay on them, it persists through death.

The pet invulnerability issue is also easily solved, just block pets from being able to use UW...easy...

Tank

While the spell effect reads as 100% Base Spell Damage, the actual code is 100% Base Spell Effectiveness. I don't believe that it's intended to affect mitigation in this way, so I've made a report to the coders at EQEmu regarding this. Pets are a different issue, and are next on my list.

I have identified the cause of the mitigation issue as the spell effect assigned to the Earring of the Mystic Ages buff. This has been changed to an alternative effect and pushed to the Live server, which may not be as effective, or have stacking issues. These will be looked into as soon as possible, to bring the EoMA back to it's previous effectiveness.

-Draca

Some clarification here.

You can use any class. There are no blacklisted classes right now. However, if you notice that your Beastlord is miraculously face tanking something it shouldn't be able too, and taking very little, or no damage, then don't use this near invulnerability by using your Beastlord as some new god tank. Druids were mentioned specifically because it happened to Sarthin on a druid. During a wipe, his druid face tanked a mob (Tunare I think) and was taking no damage, which he reported to me. This also lined up with some reports Tankus gave of Necro pets being effectively invulnerable, which again, isn't intended (and possibly related to something else).

Currently, this is what's happening during a normal character combat round:



and what's happening during glitched combat rounds (Stonewall reports as 56%):



You'll see that SpellMit is correctly reported as -56 during the correct calculation, but -112 in the glitch round. Currently the difficulty is that replicating this issue is entirely inconsistent. I am turning to wiser people than me, but to this point it remains an issue.

Ultimately, there are no classes that received a super tanking boost in the past 2 weeks, so use discretion if you notice something like this happening.

Additionally, I am not the ban hammer guy. I know most people aren't malicious, they just get carried away with something that it's too good to be true. Suspensions are certainly possible in obvious cases, but are also almost never necessary.

-Draca

    So from what I can gather from some testing, it seems like mitigation buffs are somehow stacking server side for certain classes, resulting in mitigation numbers above 100%, which then display as misses. Stonewall still displays properly to the player, however the server side combat calculations are using a duplicated mitigation number.

     Unfortunately, for no reason I can determine, this is no longer occurring on Test or Live, so I am going to re-open VP, so I can get some additional testing data (aka watch people pull while invis), and hopefully resolve this more permanently.

      Thanks to Sarthin for working with me for a few hours on Test while we tried to determine the cause of this issue.

Veeshan's Peak is being locked temporarily, while I sort out an issue that is causing certain classes and pets to take almost no damage. I don't have an estimate on downtime until I can dig further into this issue.

-Draca

No changes have been made to any NPC's in VP for some time.

Corrected this issue. Casts as described now.

Danke... next question...why does it cast Ancient Deny Death I That's on the LRoA X

Tank

I'm not getting that...anyone else with that issue?