EZ Server

Ladies/gents/trolls,

I'm just trying to gather a quick, informal poll on thoughts on how to handle Skin of the Drake cleanly. I really DO want it to stay in play, be useful, and give the druids that unique edge. I do NOT want the invulnerability nonsense to stay. Please vote as you can. If you chose "Other", please post and explain. :-)


-Hate

longer cooldown without any nerf makes drake what it was intended to be (at least in my mind) 18 second invulnerability to allow Tank to establish aggro on a pull - and make the fight stable.

Instead of indefinite invulnerability for a single toon with a drake chain

IMO

Hate my response depends on if run speed on mobs is going to change.

If it is not required for pulling then I'd vote for debuff.

If nothing is going to be done about run speed on mobs, then I would vote for 60sec duration 90s cooldown 30 sec debuff.  This would allow for running around time.

If we did # of hits , could we then see then the removal of magical arrows and the reduction in mob speed?

youll need to add some kind of debuff that well not allow you to cast drake again on target for "X" time otherwise way around this is boxing a few druids

Dimur, awesome.

Woogie and Quaglin, if the mobs get slowed down and some of the ranged bits are removed, Skin of the Drake would be a mix of the options. Number of hits makes it useful for facetanking half the zone as it would only last for a few seconds, but it make it useless as a buff that keeps one relatively safe while pulling. If I chose the cooldown route, with the mob changes, it is essentially the same as it is now. You are in NO danger with it up. That's exactly what I'm trying to get away from, invulnerability.

hardcoretank, there is some point when I do need to accept some things be possible for abuse. If some one is running 2-3 druids for permanent uptime on Drake, the only thing I can do is work in much meaner dispels to INT caster NPCs and slightly less mean dispels on those with access to Cancel Magic.

Was that at least somewhat clear? :-)


-Hate

~18 durration,  60 second cool down.

the choices do not have enough information to make an informed vote. If i vote for number of hits... 15 well then no not that one 45 sure. this makes a huge diffrence. As does 15 sec duration 90 sec recast... is it based on a reduced ammount or the old amount. Again reduced healing and only up for 15 sec nope not going to use. old ammount and new duration sure. There just isn't enough info and anyone who voted are just shooting darts in the dark.  sorry for formatting on a phone.

You can ignore my # of hits remark, because regardless the removal of magical arrows and a look at run speeds (especially t7) need to be looked at if you're going to change the way druid works. Since 1 of 2 functions is to keep alive on the pull and once at the burst of the fight. I shouldn't have to waste a skin cast on a pull because of the absurd damage I'm going to take with magical arrows. 18SEC to 90 CD is meh but however it's cut, with the skin change that issue will have to be addressed too.

Zymral, buffs get kind of awkward with durations that are not close or at 6 second intervals (as ticks occur every 6 seconds). As for information, I cannot provide full example for each as I'm trying to gather feedback before I make any changes. I know that's not exactly fun, but what other game asks for so much feedback and spends days hashing it out? :-)

---

As for the "every NPC is ranged too" will be looked at with/soon-after caster update. T10 is priority when time permits obviously, but I'm working with these other things when I have 10-30min here or there.


-Hate

     Yeah I understand the 6 sec thing. I mistyped my time. As for the buff TBH it I would rather ya just change it and be done with it. All I was saying earlier is with the ammount of information that is given in the poll and you can derive out of the other thread amounts to Drake now bad...must change... choose # of hits or shorter duration and everything else it up in the air. It gives absolutely no more information  if everyone votes for # of hits and it is low then no one playes the class because it will just fade. If it is too high it is effectively no change. But asking for us to choose at this point seems foolish. it is like asking do you want a new car or money when the new car could be a plastic toy and the money being a penny.

    What I would like is the change to be done so i can figure out if i want to keep my healer or deep six him before i get another two tiers done and then have to go back. I love what you all have done with the server but I am tired of wondering what will happen and if i need to change my group.

As for the debuff choice: It would make druid be the only class that can't effectively do anything in multiples in a raid except very low damage.

This should give an idea of what the hit count suggestion entails.  The number of hits can be scaled pretty easily and I'm sure with some work the desired number of incoming hits before the buff fades can be figured out, whether it be scaled around the idea of pulling 4 mobs or 40 mobs or somewhere in between.  Ultimately it's going to be a number that Hate feels comfortable with and the actual number isn't something we need to quantify in order to either choose the hit count or other options.

Why I mentioned hit box + lack of magical arrows. If I decide to use the buff for the burst of the pull, if I pull greater than the hit marker doesn't that just disadvantage me instead of benefiting me , which is my choice to do. Won't make me god mode, I'll still have to bust out the cleric faster than before if I chose to do that.

Hate,
I think your instincts are right about adjusting drake, but why not just tweak the heal amount or something, and see how that works? Having a hit count seems lame to me as you could pull a bunch of mobs, reach hit count then die. Peeps will just stop using the Druid imo. Longer duration recast just means another situational use and again Druid gets shelved.

Just halve the healing for now and leave rest alone and see where it leads? Why the rush to totally nuke drake?

Also was any content or drop rate adjusted to take drake into account? Someone mentioned t8 drop rates and the drake nerf affecting ones ability to get them at the same rate. If so that should be considered too.

I chose other as I will likely bench my druid with any of these changes so doesn't matter to me ;)

Not complaining about the nerf, just being honest. As a test I tried using my druid for everything but drake yesterday and didn't seem of value.

What would be the number of hits the buff would have, if that option were to be adopted?  I ask because I would like to be able to guess how long the buff might last, and the viability of having multiple druids to keep it up again.

It's pretty easy to gauge how many hits you can take before the buff fades, even if it's not totally spelled out in one of the wikis...use it and pull and see how many you get before it fades and you die, then adjust your pulls accordingly.  I don't understand why it has to be implicitly pointed out precisely how many, how much, what duration, heal value or any other spoilers you can offer up to figure out if it works for you or not.  It's simple, there are NO penalties for dying on EZ so play with it a bit, find out what works and what doesn't and adjust accordingly.  When you get upgrades or gear advantages to help mitigate, test again and see what you can do before dying and adjust accordingly.

Dimur, that actually made sense and was helpful. Get that crap off the boards! :D

Hit count IMO is the only viable way to work this. It keeps the original intent of drake intact, keeps druids viable as tank healers and gets rid of any invulnerability. In the long term the ONLY effect this is going to have is to 1) force tanks to pull less or 2) force em to go to UW mace, in essence almost halving warrior DPS. Either way this reduces the steamroll higher tiers have become, which regardless of your view on the matter IS AN ISSUE, if you're at all honest with yourself.

Oh, and for you newbies this simply puts drake back to where it was. Not so much a nerf as a re-correction.

My one and only concern about hateborne killing jesus, err fixing drake, is T9 and t7 are tuned for MASS pulls, mass kills, to spawn bosses and farm them normally.

Not only that but so are HOH tokens, Gemstone of the Ages, AA points in anguish (thats a big money maker there also).

Can we expect to see those tuned? and if so WHEN? if those will be tuned, then I say no changes to drake untill those changes are made as well. Because (and I do understand you have a life outside of everquest hate and not everything can be done in the blink of an eye) I dont want to have drake nerfed, then the other changes pushed to the back burner for a few months.

Dimur, bravo again Sir.

mpano66, well put and the higher tiers are...well..I'm mixed. I would say people are too content with pulling entire chunks of the zone at a time and expect it to be the norm when breaking in.

Krinkle, most players are already invulnerable when clearing HoH. Gemstones are chance based, Anguish is whatever. With the addition of the rainbow crystals, which were around the time people started to notice Drake is op as hell. I will not be making the already hilariously easy grind easier. Drake currently is allowing immortality, that allows one to pull literally EVERYTHING with 0 fear of dying, short of 1 rounding, which is HUGELY affecting the pull rate. I will increase the drop rate in T9 based on numerous requests, but that's about it. Sorry to be a negative nancy about it. :-\


-Hate

I vote other and agree with Warbash here.


And Krinkle here.

It seems as the content on EZ is designed around mass pulls/clear zones. Rinse repeat in order to grind aa's, farm essence, get enough HoH tokens to spawn the right boss to get that last piece of t4 gear, ect, ect...

I beg to differ on the content being designed around mass pulling, it's just that players figured out how to mass pull using the resources available to them and found it to be the most efficient way to farm.  Not trying to discount the rest of the post, it's a concrete opinion but I disagree with the assumption that Hunter or Hate wanted us to pull countless mobs to farm the items and AA we need.

I agree dim ... it wasn't till you were 3-4 tiers up that you could mass pull a zone now you can zone into t9 with uc3 and tank.the zone... the spell odds broken ... 20-30 mob pulls still allow 1-2 hgs an hour

^ This is another possibility.  Scale down the HP on each attack until it is no longer creating Invuln situations.  I would vote for this mechanic over the hits (which I voted for).

Please consider this one hate.

Yeah I honestly was not sure if it was or not. I stopped playing right after the new spells were implemented. But one could assume that the content was designed around the current abilities of players, of which drake could have been a factor.

I have not seen a GSOA in 3 months outside of buying a couple....thats with drake pulls...without....2 or 3 a year  seems like a silly drop rate

Seems a tad off topic.   However, I've seen 4 gsoa in the week that I've been back.

perl rand()

Thank you,

Going ahead and locking this thread. Thank everyone for their comments and votes!


-Hate