So according to Elidroth there's going to be some major changes in the way NPC's hit. I am somewhat curious if this will also affect our pet's damage since they are somewhat treated as NPC's. Anybody on the inside know if our pets (both regular and swarms) will get nerfed also or if it's just mobs the dev's are looking at?
Greetings all. Over the years, EverQuest has gone through many changes. Sometimes, these changes have had long-reaching effects the original designers could have never imagined. One of the biggest changes recently has been he dramatic scaling of NPC damage. In order to keep content challenging for raiders, the damage dished out by NPCs has increased to the point we're at today where only the mightiest of tanks can stand up to a difficult target for more than one round. Gone are the days when a caster who accidentally drew the attention of the enemy might have a chance to survive long enough for an experienced tank, or off-tank to draw agro and save the fleeing finger waggler. In our opinion, this has lessened the enjoyment of the game sufficiently that change is needed. Badly.
What kind of change you ask?
We will reduce NPC melee damage across the board. Primarily this would be raid NPCs, but there will be some group changes as well. In short, we want to return EQ to the days when a tank change didn't just mean how many people have to die before a tank can step in; when a caster drawing agro didn't just explode in a single hit. In short, making the game more survivable, more fun, and less punitive for even the smallest mistakes.
Along with the NPC dps reduction, the damage mitigation such as defensive, final stand, knights' mantle and carapace abilities would be overhauled so you still have some emergency situation abilities, but these would last for 18 seconds instead of the three minutes they do now. Warriors would retain their innate mitigation bonus over knights, and would receive a five percent mitigation advantage at 45% damage reduction, as well as an increase to agro generation while this ability is active. Knights will receive a flat 40% reduction ability with no damage caps, with added flavor of SK's adding a lifetap, while Paladins would receive an increase to their healing.
So what does this all mean to you?
Hopefully, more fun in the game again. We also NEED your help in testing the changes. This is obviously no small task. The changes will be pushed out to the test server for a couple months before being implemented on live servers. I can't stress enough how important this time will be for you to help us find any major problems. While we can account for most of the major changes, there is always a chance something will get missed.
Please note, the changes listed above are the MAJOR bullet points. I'm sure there will be more points of discussion and I'm absolutely open to talk about them. Most importantly, this path has NOT been set in stone. It is something we are discussing, but something I feel is very important to the game's health. We are VERY aware this is a big change, and we welcome your opinions on the matter.
Bastler, take a pill....this was a question for anybody that has more in depth info and knows coding a bit.
I'm wondering because our pets share a lot of similarities with NPC's, attk values may or may not be one of them; I simply don't know but would like to. For example, our pets have one bracer slot just like NPC's. When Eli posted "We will reduce NPC melee damage across the board." it naturally made me curious if the changes would also affect pets; they are NPC's afterall.
Tweelis wrote:...this was a question for anybody that has more in depth info and knows coding a bit.
I'm wondering because our pets share a lot of similarities with NPC's, attk values may or may not be one of them; I simply don't know but would like to. For example, our pets have one bracer slot just like NPC's. When Eli posted "We will reduce NPC melee damage across the board." it naturally made me curious if the changes would also affect pets; they are NPC's afterall.
Pets and mobs don't share a template. Pets are made independently of mobs. A mob of a type in a zone will share a template and has some sort of modifiers based on it's spawn level. So, the devs can't just go in and type a line that is more or less to the effect: "reduce mob damage by 10%". They have to enter the reduction manually for each mob template in that zone. This is probably the biggest reason for it to primarily effect raid bosses; in essence, it would be too time consuming. Also, my guess is that this really won't effect older content much but future content because the test will be finalizing about the time the next expansion is/is about to be rolling out.
tl;dr Pets are separate from mobs and each mob type is separate from each other so this change will not effect pets.
This change if it goes into the raid game will be moved into the group game later if it works. While it will be a bonus for the raiders and later for the group players, I wonder where it will leave us. People are still screaming about our pet tanking, and once this goes to the group level, I see big issues. Rangers are already tanking better than expected, Monks will be even better, Rogues will be able to take more than two or three rounds AND then there will be pets which with spikes leveled out will drasticly make our pets better. We will need to keep an active eye on this issue or there will be cries again about group mages soloing the eng game bosses, again!
It's discs that are making melees do so well. To compensate for mob dmg, melees have been receiving disc after disc after disc to help keep them alive. That just fed the vicious cycle that caused us to end up where we are. I'm guessing, and a few others have too, that such defensive abilities will be looked at and changed as well. I really doubt our pets will be tanking bosses all that well. Sure, we will be able to do it in a group, but I look forward to using goner to tank boss mobs again. We've always been able to do it. Pets will always be subpar to warriors and sk's and there's no way a change like this will move that status since everyone will equally be receiving less damage. They are keeping their ability to tank, actually it could end up being a bump in ability for those classes (they won't have to be discing 100% of the time in order to tank), so our pets will just get a little better at lasting. No more dead Goner's in the blink of an eye and a mage to boot.
An old timer in my guild mentioned something that this might be an indirect nerf to pet classes because pets innately behind the scenes use the same disciplines ... Sounds like complete nonsense to me but I thought I would pose the question. If anything sounds like it would push us the other direction if the change moved into group content. Not trying to be a rabble rowser or add to the insane screeching I'm reading on forums about this. Was merely hoping someone might have some insight.
My 2 cents on the issue is that devs are trying to resolve a very real issue, but basically have a bad plan and this change will never happen as outlined.
Pets don't use the same disciplines as players no, except for /shield. If the change does make it to the group game it's possible Fortify Companion would be affected, but I can't see them nerfing that because of raids.
