EZ Server

Beastlord Pets, T8 Spam/Aggro, Boss Health, and New Spellfile!

First and foremost, new spell file available but some it won't be 100% live until reboot. Nothing extreme that I can remember with the spell file. Mainly preparing for different things/items/spells.

Beastlord Pets: The pet's white damage has gone up considerably. Next, the beastlord pets can AOE RAMPAGE on occasion (~20% chance per hit). Lastly, the pet WILL enrage near death for up to 20 seconds with 90 second cooldown. THE AOE RAMPAGE AND ENRAGE ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE BASED ON POTENTIAL FOR ABUSE! With all the changes over the last few months and this one, if your pet is dying, you're trying to tank with it, expect it to survive without heals, or you downright suck. :-)

T8: The "As you pass the archway, a blah blah something something" spam has been set on a cooldown to essentially trigger once per 10s instead of 1 per character. ALL ToV npcs are on generic aggro list with reboot. I did this both for consistency and because I found a group of scrubs slipping past lots of the zone via faction and group summon.

Boss Health: This change will not happen all at once, but should be LIVE with reboot. I'm increasing some of the boss health significantly due to a longstanding issue I've been having with the time taken to actually down bosses. At the low end (T1/T2), the changes will minimal (if there are changes made). At the higher end, they will be VERY significant changes. I have no hard numbers to post as I'm still working them out now.


-Hate

I'm hoping you consider that it takes a non UW char much longer to kill in t8 than a UW char it takes me about 5 min to kill a boss.

That has absolutely nothing to do with having a UW. The time and mats that go into UW would equal roughly 4 to 4.5 times more damage if you simply made another 6 man team. If you're already running 12, no clue how it would take 5 minutes ever. If you're still running 6, give it some thought. It's far less time and less effort than doing a UW, and more damage. However, if you are already running 12, and having 5 minutes boss kills, you need to heavily re-evaluate your charms and augs  :-\ Even as a 6 man team I don't see a ToV boss taking more than 100 seconds.

Ult weapons aren't some massive "OMG YOU WIN" weapon. They are a huge increase in the hands of a tank, who doesn't have access to ninja strike x2 for damage, and we also gets benefits from ripostes since the mobs are all swinging at us. It still isn't necessary in the least bit. On any of the other melee classes, they're barely an upgrade until rank 9-10-11... And even at that point, it's not even a 50% gain for them in dps.

Ult Weapon is a for-show item, not a game changer

Thats pretty much true, and has been to an extent ever since the clicks and kill heals were removed....and more so when the hps were nerfed.

I'm not talking about a nerf to the uw I'm saying don't base the hp of the mobs on toons that have UW. Progressive games get easier as time passes it is meant to be that way going and boosting lower content only hurts new player base does nothing for people who are already omg pown you in the face

I think you're assuming the UW is the driving force behind the change to the boss HP's. Care to elaborate Hate?

this sounds a lot like we are putting a penalty on our new players to slow down our top end players. I really don't see the reason for more hps on bosses, other than to take clear time from 30 mins to 45 mins for our top end and to take our new base from 1.5 hrs to 2 hrs.

at the end of the day what does it matter if a boss fight takes 2 mins vs 4 mins?

what is the end goal? to slow down top end players? prevent mass pulling? make content harder for new player base?

with a 12 man UC2, strike Augs at 9, no UW a boss fight should take 2-2.5mins. and with resists and leaf aug'ed tank you should be able to handle a boss + 4 trash or 2 bosses or roughly 10 trash per pull.

I'm just baffled by the changing old content to reflect new available gear/Augs theory.

old content is just that, old. all us older players did it. let the new players do it as it was for us and call it a day

LoL.


-Hate

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*seriousreplyface*

I'm amused that you immediate assume this has to do with new players being slowed down and/or higher players power clearing. The reason to revisit things is because somethings new content changes break older things in an unholy fashion. In other cases, some things are just terrible due to everything around being adjusted (look at beastlord pets until this week). I, for reasons I've yet to figure, try vainly to explain similar things every time an unpopular change hits. I am going to, in vain, try again to explain it.

The end goal of most of the changes I make are to make the game more engaging and ....FUN. I do not try to intentionally screw, throttle, or cockblock players from progressing. If anything, I've made things VERY VERY easy. Look at some of the huge innate resist values found on gear (and yes, I #$@%^#ing know the resist model changed with source update. shut the hell up about that). The UW was adjusted to make content less stupid in terms of scaling. As a result, mob no longer go "loloneshot" at T8+ for non-UW players. The damage on it ended up staying mostly the same, which is totally fine. The change brought a VERY commonly owned and extremely overpowering weapon into a manageable state that it still a WICKED "weapon" and less of "godmode in item form".

Mini-tangent aside, the bosses in a lot of cases are not quite as durable as I had expected with a lot of the improved scaling on numerous things. The boss damage is not going up, just making them less of a speed bump and more of "yield before turning" type of thing (and just like my analogy, some people will speed right past without yielding). Not all of them are getting adjusted either. Floating Skull and some of the T8 bosses are staying 100% the same as I feel they are in a "good" way.

For what it's worth, look at your group and lots of the content you do. I've had my hands in a great deal over the last two years. Not all of it good, but a fair portion well received (despite being initially rejected/ignored/mocked). All I can say is take a leap of faith and see what happens. Changes here are seldom set in stone. If I make a change that is highly unpopular for the right reasons (not just, "HATE THIS IS STUPID"), I'll gladly revert it. :-)


-Hate

who cares about uws when u can mass zerkers. the only thing the boss hp change will really effect is the amount of people dealing with Agro wipe

Yeah upping the boss hitpoints would make for a SUCK on the agro rollover table......just go ahead and put the nails in the servers coffin.

If you disapprove, you're welcome to move on to another game/server. You could also try offering less "quip" like comments and suggest changes that could improve the experience.


-Hate

For the most part I have.  This server has lost a lot of its appeal lately.  I still come back and play off and on, but not with the vigor I once did...I get that from a lot of the higher tier players as well.  that being said I will move on, have a nice day sir.

Just my 2 cents.. I do see roll over happening if more HPs added.. but I already experience it and actually have to watch for it. I use the bard's fading memories and got Ninja clickies from Svert kills should it get ugly. Not going to change the game for me that much. But I am not top tiered and UW rank (God knows what). Only thing I can see is that I was killing bosses within a certain amount of time, non UW and now that I am gearing up my UW... it might take about the same time as it is now with more HPs added or be a little faster than what speed I kill at now with non UW. Either way... I personally don't think it will be that big of an issue. Sides... with folks getting the Earring of Ages going (which I am hearing that the crit damage on UWs with them is insane...) it sounds like Hate had already come up with a way to compensate for the added HPs on bosses for those that have UWs.

Now...for those that don't have UWs, I agree with Kruciel and others when it comes to just checking your gear and augs on 6 or create another group and run 12. I left the game for 8 months and came back and got steam rolled everywhere I went because of the new changes. Had many folks, (Fugitive, Kruciel, Rent, Dimur, etc) suggest increasing strike augs and resists and getting UCv2s and it helps considerably - allowing me to run a group of 6 and do as much damage as when I ran a group of 12. Just my advice and input.

Thanks for listening!

Mix

So beastlord pets went from 23k max hit to 92ish (t7) plus flurries and rampage - SWEET.

Beastlord went from 32k x3 to 27k with low digit thing... ie:

Dingdong hits for 27,023
Dingdong hits for 12
Dingdong hits for 18

Slooooooooooooow pause..... repeat. All white dmg. Was it touched to compensate for increase in pets or just normal?

LoL no. How would I even begin to nerf their damage? They use the same weapons as the other classes, they have no hidden rule sets (i.e. Warrior Soft AC Cap Vs Knight Soft AC Cap), and they have not been adjusted buff-wise. :-)


-Hate

All melee classes get these little damage numbers, often from secondary abilities. The issue is beastlords are on EZ the second worst melee class, slightly better than bard. Some of the normalizations beasts got live to get their abilities on par with other classes either dont translate here or are missing entirely, because on this server class abilities stop at 70, by and large.

This is one of the reasons BST pets were pumped.....to help compensate for the lacks.

Ya Im used to some of these smaller numbers but with like rogues it's like XXk XXk XXXXkBS 12. Odd to just see XXk 12 12.

Boss health changes were behind and actually dropped due to a few valid counterpoints.


-Hate