http://eqlive.station.sony.com/community/dev_view.jsp?id=59510

You've been asking for them and now we're ready to discuss them. We're taking a big departure from what many of you are used to when it comes to combat. With that in mind, here is a brief summary of these exciting enhancements to better help you target your questions to us during the live chat. Don't worry if you miss the chat, we'll post the logs on EverQuestLive.com


Increase the contributions melee classes provide in a group setting
Address the current deficit between the pure melee classes and other classes
Add more depth and potential for skilled play to melee combat
Provide a system that encourages attentiveness and decision-making skills, without focusing heavily on twitch gameplay

Take advantage of an opponent's weakness. See an opening, strike home for the kill!

Monks, Rogues and Warriors will gain the ability to recognize certain weaknesses in an opponent's defense. These "Openings" will be a variety of types and can occur based on several different situations during combat. Be quick though, an opening will not present itself for long. Strike quick with a new combat skill once your character recognizes an opening. These new combat skills are being designed just for this combat system revision. Using and maintaining these skills expends the character's Endurance (a new statistic, calculated from the character's basic stats).


Here's a combat example:

A warrior is serving as the tank for his group, standing in front of a goblin. While battling the goblin, the warrior makes an exceptional parry and is presented with an opening. An indicator appears with the "opening icon" and the word "Parry" next to it (this information also appears in the chat window).

Now is his opportunity to strike back after the exceptional parry! Only certain combat skills can be used to react to a parry opening. Other types of openings will allow the use of other skills. Some skills may be usable in response to more than one type of opening. Also, your position in relation to the target can change the effectiveness of certain skills.

In this case, our warrior knows that he can use one of three combat skills, each having some merit. One might stun the target, one might increase the hate generated by the warrior for a few rounds, and one might make it easier for everyone to hit the NPC.

In this case, our warrior elects to try to stun the goblin. He presses the appropriate button and luck smiles upon him as he successfully executes the strike, leaving the goblin standing dumbly for a combat round.

Increasing Your Endurance and Learning New Skills


Increase Endurance by increasing attributes or by acquiring special items that directly increase your Endurance pool
Find tomes or instructions manuals and take them to specific trainers to learn new skills
Choose your skills from skill categories (such as Tactical) containing skills focused to a purpose
Most openings are available only to a single character, but some are available to all nearby characters
Disciplines will be transferred to this new system
Existing Discipline timers will be reviewed, and several will probably be set to their own timer
Disciplines will require an Endurance cost
Hybrids will receive a limited Endurance pool for their disciplines
There will be other changes as well. Keep your eyes on the Test server and our update messages for more details as we move forward.

This new system is much more flexible than the existing disciplines. It will be relatively easy to add new combat skills, as well as new skills that are not limited to openings. This system creates the possibility for tremendous enhancement in the future, allowing groups a large number of options when it comes to melee combat.

Talk to you in the Live Chat!

Alan

Pretty dang kewl if you ask me.

Hrm, if they can really implement that kind of change... it might make combat interesting for rogues, other than auto-attack, bs, bs, bs, evade, bs, bs, bs, evade. Still, EQ has far too many lame timesinks and cockblocks for casuals for this to bring me back.

Melees with a manapool!.....no more autoattack afk melees! hehe

Tils

This sounds exactly like the special moves in SWG. When you use a weapon's special move/shot/whatever they have a certain cost to your HAM bars (Health - Action - Mind), which makes it prohibitive to use those special actions all the time, because after about 4 or 5 times they will deplete you HAM bars and make you even more vulnerable than if you hadn't used them.
This does nonetheless sound interesting to say the least, and I'm looking forward to seeing if warriors will be able to control aggro better.

Oh god I hope you dont get Endurance from gear :( I just blew way too much on my Sk twink...It would kill me to have to go get her new 'Endurance Gear'

I hope those little 'hit' boxes pop up frequently and only stay up for half a second. I'd like the pure melee classes to know what it feels like to punch a helluva lot of buttons during a raid or group. :)

Most of the ones that I've spoken too about this didn't like the idea that their disciplines are now like timed spells. Although if you think about it, the system makes a certain kind of sense, much more sense than the original discipline system.

They get their own form of research. The pure melee classes get special hitboxes to inflict special attacks. Discipline timers will be reduced, but cost endurance. Other melee classes will be going to endurance based disciplines also. Sounds like a well thought out and rounded new system.

Really am looking forward to trying it out.

I'd like the pure melee classes to know what it feels like to punch a helluva lot of buttons during a raid or group.

I do a lot more mashing of keys on my monk than I ever do on my druid. Trying to stay behind the mob, in range of the mob, mashing flying kick, fd'ing now and then, readjusting range (you cannot see your target!), moving behind again, kicking, watching for enrage/aggro/outofrange/cannotseeyourtarget messages, etc.

Triple that when underwater.

Playing a caster is relaxing comparitively.

I dont need more things to do on my monk. I need the tools I have to work, to have stupid things like tiny hitboxes fixed, killer riposte addressed, enrage removed, disciplines that make sense (and are unlinked), proper itemization for all levels/styles of play, balance not hinged on said itemization, a reworking of the double bonus hybrids get through gear (not a nerf, but why do I have so much mana on my pure melee gear, and why cant I do something with it?), some sort of group utility, and burst damage that actually does more than my regular damage (the tiny burst discs I have, dont.)

I'd really rather they fixed the existing problems, rather than sweeping them all under the carpet and introducing a whole new set of unknown problems. +end items? Endurance clarity? Flowing endurance? Am I going to have to re-gear my monk because they put the melee bonuses on ntov caster gear? (/snicker.)

Finally, I get worried any time they talk about itemization. Their itemization has been crap for a while now (since like caster focii were introduced), and I have no faith that it's somehow going to change for the better. And balance through itemization never works, in the history of any MMOG, so these special combat manuals, assuming they are more common than those special map parchments, better be vendor sold or retrievable with eths/specs/runes.

Yeah I dont have a lot of faith, but there's not been much to inspire it lately.

There's definitely a reason why when I'm playing a meleer it goes on the system in front of me, versus a caster which I don't even need to look at the monitor to play.

Anyway, it sounds very interesting. I'm eager to see how it works.

I'm afraid they're not addressing the warrior aggro problem though.

if you want to mash buttons non stop, play a bard. For that matter, imagine trying to play a bard under this new system. In addition to meleeing, and twisting 4 songs, now you have to watch for vulnerabilites in your oponnents and hit those with the appropriate skill/discipline/whatever.

Hello carpal tunnel syndrome

Playing a caster is relaxing comparitively.

Wow, do you nuke more or heal more bud? When I raid, I am constantly casting and it requires a massive amount of attention. By the end of long raids alot of time, I'm burnt out mentally from remaining attentive to knowing when and where to heal for a hours straight. I guess I just mean that I find it anything but relaxing ;) Exciting and up-on-my-toes, but never relaxing :) Maybe if I just nuked it would be relaxing (and has been when we have enough healers that I can switch to that role). Tell me how I can relax Tiane!! Teach me! ;)

My bard requires alot more actual work, but I don't know if it requires more attention. I use him to play when I need a break :)

Oh, I should say that I really like the sound of the changes. I'm just happy they are finally giving something to pure melee. And this sounds like fun, not *just* itemization.

There's a potential problem for those with bad latency. Really it depends on how long an "opening" is available.

Say someone has a packet round trip time of 1000ms (not unusual for some). Likely that would be 500ms one way, and 500ms the other.

Anyway... A mob has an "opening", it takes 500ms (1/2 a second) for the client to hear about it. The player reacts (say another 500ms), and the packet is sent back to the server with the action, another 500ms. So, that's 1,500ms total (or 1.5 seconds), 1/2 of a second of which is the player reacting, and the other full second is out of his/her control.

Make sense? If the "opening" is only available for... say, one second, then this scenario poses problems for some people (mostly modem types overseas I'd guess).

So, hopefully it's at least a 2 second opening. And hopefully they didn't just test/balance this internally on < 10ms connections.

Wyte

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Stormlin
[B]Wow, do you nuke more or heal more bud? When I raid, I am constantly casting and it requires a massive amount of attention. By the end of long raids alot of time, I'm burnt out mentally from remaining attentive to knowing when and where to heal for a hours straight. I guess I just mean that I find it anything but relaxing ;) Exciting and up-on-my-toes, but never relaxing :) Maybe if I just nuked it would be relaxing (and has been when we have enough healers that I can switch to that role). Tell me how I can relax Tiane!! Teach me! ;)
----

I can answer that easy. Quit healing over anxious clerics. *jk*

That and chains suck for "relaxing"

I can answer that easy. Quit healing over anxious clerics. *jk*

That and chains suck for "relaxing"

corlathist knows me too well ><

I played a Druid, and then an Enchanter, both to relatively high levels (relative to the max available at the time).

I dropped both for my warrior because up until Nov. 24 2003 playing a melee has been *fun*.

This change wont fix the problems, and sound slike it will utterly destroy the flavor of what playing a melee was like.

(and no, meles have never been a "hit A and then go afk" type of char to play. that stereotype is a joke. melees take FAR more attention than casters. After nov. 24th, we also get to memorize ABAB right down up combos a la mortal kombat. yay.)

I know it's early yet, but word on my guild's forums is "Oh NO! Too much like DAoC. That's why I hated playing a melee there and quit".

Change is good to an established game in small increments. To completely change entire classes and a portion of many others is pretty risky business. It's not like making a change to Modrods....

Playing a melee properly in raids requires a lot of attention. Especially if you are dps, because it means you have to constantly adjust your range to the mob (aggro is partially determinated by range), constantly make sure you are behind the mob (ripostes for 3k+ are nono) and with blurring mobs this can be very, very tedious and then you also have to do your job which, as a rogue, involves smashing backstab and evade constantly. Add in mobs that have harsh AEs, AE rampage and such and you have even more work. It's not turning on your attack and going afk, like some seem to think. Then again, bad players don't do any of the above and often end up dead and brag later, or at boards, how easy and relaxing it is to be a melee. No doubt it is easy when you are sitting in PoT naked.

It's not hard, no, but it does require attention and because of this, I'm glad of this new system. I don't really have to change anything since I'm already used to having to pay attention full time during combat, so, now I just have few more buttons to smash every now and then. I just hope the effect is real and not just pretty, flashy things.

Oh! And for those who say "It's about time warriors had to WORK some" I have something to say: CLASS ENVY has hurt a LOT of classes in EQ.

I don't know about your melees, but ours actually have to WORK some to play their class. Positioning in raids is a huge issue. Managing aggro is another. Maybe they don't work as hard as other classes, but they do have to pay attention. I believe that the issue most have had in MY guild is that taunt is broken. When pallies can steal taunt from a heavy tank, there IS a problem.

Looks like another PoMischief fiasco in the making to me.

Before I am tainted by the rest of the replies I want to give mine.

This sounds very interesting, I think it will add a new dimension to melee combat that is badly needed.

Now on the other hand, I see that melees are so disgruntled and have so many differing ideas of what to do to fix things that they will not be happy with this or any fix.

I already see in the reply at the bottom of the page that someone is exagerating what the changes will entail even without seeing them. I seem to have read that twitch reflexes aren't required. To me, and I can be wrong, that means no "abab right down up" combos.

I also am wary of the differing definitions of a melee.

For me, as a paladin, I sometimes have to fill in for many differing jobs. Mostly, that means I do anything I can to keep people alive.

I sometimes have to heal someone who gets overzealous or otherwise gets aggro at a bad time. I sometimes have to take care of adds. Sometimes I am MT, sometimes I am not. I adjust what I do accordingly.

On occasion, particularly in the old world, I *DO* end up just hitting a and reading a book.

We do have some good warriors in our guild. They have learned to work around the aggro gaining gap and the rest of us work with them. I don't know, until after people can skillup on these abilities and get a chance to get to know them, if we won't have to continue to work around it.

For more than obvious reasons, I don't go in for "nerf knights" as a solution.

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.

Can't speak to playing a pure melee, but playing a hybrid USUALLY involves a lot of "work" and a lot of "attention." On the other hand, my 2-boxed druid manages to be active during an entire adventure (as main healer and nuking each mob 2-3 times, casting radiant cure, SotW, etc.) but requires almost ZERO attention. A few macros and an occasional check to make sure he sat down like he was supposed to and that's it. I'm CERTAIN that he is not playing to the same level as he would be if someone were completely devoted to him but that only matters in situations where the fecal material hits the fan.

On the other hand, attempting to maintain aggro on 3 mobs at once, staying in melee range while making sure that the ranger can hit the mob, etc. requires attention and movement throughout an encounter. I know that a pure melee class would need to do several of those things also, just without also dealing with a spell bar.

As for the change itself:

1. There's no way to tell whether this will fix any class imbalances. We have people who are terrified that this will blast hybrids back to kunark, people who believe that it will have no impact on pure melee power and people who believe that it will make matters WORSE for pure melee. The information we have so far is so vague that any of those are reasonable positions.

2. I'm glad to hear that combat itself will involve more than auto-swinging at the mob. I loved the DAoC system myself - you COULD just turn on attack but if that's all you did, well, you sucked. Chaining a series of attacks was fun and could be effective; realizing that you just blocked with your shield and so could return an extra powerful attack was fun. For that matter, having a freaking different animation for different kinds of attacks were FUN. I have always hated it that my character just keeps swinigng the same damn way every single time - boring.

The bottom line is that these changes sound like an injection of fun into the game. It is certainly possible (and, unfortunately, even probable) that things will get screwed up as a result, it is sad to think "please don't make any changes that would be good because you MIGHT screw them up."

It's just not possible to pass judgement yet and, as many have noted, there WILL be some people who don't like the change. Even if hybrids don't get any of these abilities, I'd be happy to know that other people got something new to do. Paladin disciplines are so bad that they could remove them without much of a change.

I think small openings is a relative term, they did in fact say they wanted to avoid being twitchy. I would not be suprised to have openings last 10 seconds.

It is really not that long when you want to avoid twitchy and figure in latency and lag.

I know a lot of melees just expected a massive free upgrade without restrictions like they have received in the past, but this seems like a much better solution,

While looking at this and thinking about how druids might benefit, it occured to me that, if this concept goes forward as stated, perhaps now is the time to start lobbying for making druids the "endurance-buffing" specialists, so that we might finally have a niche, highly desired role as a priest class. Just a thought...

Aldane Algond
Ayonae Ro

No thanks. Shamans can have that.

I like the changes upcoming. SoE will have much better control and versatility on what they can do with pure melee's with those abilities like they been able to do with spell casters. I forsee the endurance bar as maybe being like a total of sta/agi/dex/str divided by a number to make a total endurance point level. That will get rid of having to find "endurance" gear. They will probably add in focus/FT type deals for that bar eventually like spell casters have. Sounds like fun to come.

It sounds interesting. My SWG friend says they have a very nice combat system there.

My concerns are with mundane things like... lack of /doability spots, lack of hotkeys the annoyances of the user interface while trying to do something like this.

This sounds very much like the system I saw in EQOA during Beta.

I will hold off on an opinion on the changes until A) I actually know more about it and B) actually play my melees.

If they do a total makover of combat system...would be interesting to see how/if they change the way a bard is played.

No class really NEEDS much attention, I mean, I'm sure we can all come up with something to do that is pretty much the equivalent of hitting auto-attack and going afk. But to play well, most classes require a decent bit of attention. You can play some classes, such as straight up bot healer, with only moderate attention, but to play well, generally requires paying an ok amount of attention.

Stormlin, all you have to do is try it if you dont believe me. I'm quite exhausted after raiding all night on my druid, but i dont have mash keys constantly. The point is there's nothing to do after you start casting, in fact you *have* to do nothing. Melees have no such breaks. I said it's relaxing by comparison, and it is.

*edit* less snarky... sorry I *hate* being called bud...

when....
(based on their comments, some of which were lies anyway, it sounds like they just came up with this)


how long will it take after that to gear up.....
(yeah more time sinks! yeah more plat sinks!)

how long after that for a correction nerf.....
(-never- get it right the first time)

how long after that do hybrids creep into getting the full benefit...
(Yeah gear w/ HP, Mana, and End!)

how about lag....
(the system itself is a bit questionable. Sitting there looking for an icon, and have at least the timing be dictated. Kinda minimizes any skill and tactics. "lvl 65 group seeks tank who might be able to 'get lucky' and land a snare at the correct time". GET LUCKY - PLEASE SONY STICK IT)

So what the hell does one do in the 6 months it takes to do this.
(when...)


It really sounds like a great system to achieve balance as time goes on (ie spells added, these things added), but the balance is bad right NOW. So Nov. 24th better have some friggin answers.

No I aint signin' up for Lords of EQ to get into EQ2 beta....I'm freakin in it right now.

*edit* less snarky... sorry I *hate* being called bud...

Uh ok, I meant no offense. I won't bother posting here again.

EDIT: BTW, I use "bud" when I want to ensure that someone takes me in a friendly discussion way, as opposed to a straight out jerk. Since text can be deceiving without tones and voice inflection.

Originally posted by Autumn10
Priest classes have to pay more attention than just about any other class, period. You can have all the macros you want but you still have to watch people's health and do all your other duties at the same time.

No question, you have to pay attention to hit points but what you don't have to do is move around alot. Most of a priest classes functionality is in moving to a spot and either healing or nuking. You don't move around much, unless you're root parking or something. And that's something I'm not good at doing when I bot.

You *do* have to move quite a lot with meleers. And there's quite a lot more button mashing going on.

The thing you do to effectively bot a healer is learn to pay attention to everyone's hit points on your meleer's screen. Then, when someone needs healing, you reach across and tap your heal key on the other keyboard.

To even compare the player required workload a melee goes through compared to a caster is a joke. There's a reason why casters are much easier to box on a second comp / screen then melee's, attention demand being one of them.

Sony can do what they want, alot melees will ALLWAYS be pissed and not satisfated with what Sony do.

Really, you moan, cry weeks, month for a change for melees. Sony finaly do something, you dont even KNOW how it will be in game, and you still cry and moan, instead to just STFU and wait what will come.

(TOWARD the one melee who wrote SUCH negative about the chantes).

Tubby

Originally posted by Kellaen
To even compare the player required workload a melee goes through compared to a caster is a joke. There's a reason why casters are much easier to box on a second comp / screen then melee's, attention demand being one of them.

comes from a.) a melee who have no really idea how much work it cost to be active Druid on a raid, or b.) from a Druid who sit on his butt, healing his group from time to time and nuke bit here and there.

I played a Rogue in a raiding guild, and i played (and still play) a Druid in a raiding guild.

Both chars required my attention, but IMHO the rogue were way less stressfull, than the druid is. Dunno what you do while an raid, but i am constantly pressing keys, ( /assist mostly), targeting one mob after another, looking if an mob goes on a rampage on other caster, reacting to tells and buffrequests, all in all i have alot more work than i had with my rogue.

Rogue were some kind of easy. Move into the back, press bs bs bs evade, circle a bit around and watching for my meleerange. I had no stress, because i didnt had to watch others. Playing a druid is sometimes really stress for me, and i am pretty often about to smash into my monitor if my NI lands 0.5 seconds to late (which happen PRETTY often, some ppl die really FAST)...

Tubby

Yeah, well, Kell had a raiding druid before you even started playing EQ Tubben. So assumptions are bad. (Yes, even that's an assumption, but Kel plays on my server, and has since release. VZ wasnt a release server, so... I spos he could have gotten a transfer to VZ, in which case I'm sorry and this assumption is wrong! See what happens!)

As for whining about these incoming changes, I can tell you this much... nobody, nowhere asked for gameplay changes for melees. They wanted fixes. They wanted to be able to play the same class that they had for years and not have it be a complete joke and waste of time. Druids of all people should know how this feels. If you realize that nobody asked or particularly wants these changes, perhaps you'll understand why some people are upset.

For months and months you ask for a, b, or c. After being ignored, they come back finally and say, "Hey, we brought you (d), isnt that amazing?!" Well... sure, except that really doesnt seem to address any of the problems.

As a druid, during many heated battles I'm typing constantly. Literally.

I set up a chat window that I set up for just "other melee" messages. In that spam I watch for non-tank players getting hit. While doing that, I am typing "/tar name" nonstop to check the health of various people. These include people that need to stay alive at all costs, people that I expect to get hit often, and those that I actually see taking damage. Sometimes I end up with a mental backlog of people that I need to check in the next few seconds, especially if there are AE spells going off.

Well, ok, sometimes I can fall back on repeated use of tab/assist so that I'm always targetting whoever some mob is fighting. Still, I'm pressing buttons much more often than I ever did with my monk, or even with my bard!

I suppose the other side is that I have more room to slack without losing as much performance. During easier periods I can get away with being distracted some of the time. When I'm on top of my game though, I'm just as busy as anyone else.

It is safe to assume that both melees and casters can be exhausting IF you play them at the outmost of their ability.

I know for a fact that you can box a caster without even watching its screen. You can't with a melee. You can box a cleric or a wiz for example but you won't box a pure melee or hardly: not because it is harder. Just because it is cumbersome to reposition constantly and dodge AEs, riposte, etc.

Those chances would be ok I guess if they weren't tied to RANDOM events and melee position: those are two of the more cumbersome aspects of EQ and don't fit well a gameplay adapted to gamepads or auto-follow meleeing.

Time will tell but those two aspects are a legitimate worry for pure melees if not the fact that Sony doesn't address much of what the classes have been advocating for many months.

Let alone Sony lack of caution when doing far fetching changes.

Uber vs. Casual

Melee vs. Caster

Both are pretty lame arguments that serve no purpose at the end of the day other than to detract from any worthwhile conversation.

On topic, I'm interested to see the changes first hand before forming a definate opinion. I don't believe the changes will be quite as drastic and the left is already complaining about or as ground breaking as the right is hoping. I think it will end up somewhere inbetween.

I congratulate the team on not being afraid to test and change something this important to gameplay. The team needs to continue to think outside the box if EQ is going to keep going forward.

If your only healing your group, or healing the MA, yeah boxing a healer is easy.

Now retry it, when you have multiple times a heal hotkey going off saying >>Heal John Doe now please<< and so you have to quickly type /tar john. Cast Heal. Then type /tar again and again and again.

Don't wait or pause either. Because if thats a cleric with heal agro, chanter with mez, shaman with slow, etc. Their dead.

However, yeah boxing a melee sucks. I 2 box a druid and shaman all the time. Works well. very little distinction ((some negative, yet some positive)) between me and 2 seperate players. Occasionally for need, I box a melee instead. It sucks totally and utterly. The movement factor makes it a definite drain on what I can do with the other char. IE: when i box druid shaman you get 1 shaman + 1 druid in effectiveness. When I box melee you get 1 melee + .5 druid or .5 melee + 1 druid in effectiveness.

HOWEVER, comparing ease in boxing the chars doesn't equal ease in playing the chars to thier maximum solo.

How many times has SoE stated that things were not broke. This is the perfect answer to melee wanting things fixed. SoE didn't see things as being broke, so they didn't fix them. The redesigned the system. Now if things 'break' they'll have the tools needed to modify what is in place.

It really boils down to old code versus new code. The old system as a whole was broken, there was no way to get it all balanced. The new system will make things easy to put in a fix to balance things out a little better.

When SoE says that things are working as intended, you can probably rest assured that it's valid. Problem is the intention was off, bigger problem is that it couldn't be corrected. Now it can.

Give it time, try the new system. Then state your opinions.

As for whining about these incoming changes, I can tell you this much... nobody, nowhere asked for gameplay changes for melees.

I actually think meleers do need gameplay changes, otherwise with the next expansion, they're out of date again. Here's why. With spell casters you enhance them by giving them new spells and abilities. A new expansion comes out, spell casters get cool new stuff in 2 different areas. Sometimes a new spell can represent a game play change for that caster! For instance, Complete Heal, changes a clerics life dramaticly, not sure if it's for the good though. The melee system has no real way to expand the usefulness or versatility of a pure meleer. It could have through disciplines, but they totally abandoned that with Kunark.

Generally a meleer gets a new AA and it doesn't really change much for them playwise, maybe a new button to press every 72 minutes. Maybe a 2% increase in damage, which... everything is so subtle you can't even measure it really. You just spent 18 AA's on something and you can't even prove you have it. Makes me nuts sometimes. Meleers need something like spells, disciplines or what-have-you, to keep them having things to look forward to.

Just about every game other than EQ has some kind of depth to their melee system, and EQ lacked that. Instead EQ keeps you involved with busy work, pushing mobs around, dealing with positioning. Other games, I think DAOC is one, you don't have the positioning issues, but you focus more on your personal combat style.

So yes, I think putting a REAL melee system in place, like there's a real spell system, is definitely a good thing to do. But they also need to fix the problems we've been howling about for years.

The other issue is that they need to make sure the UI is up to the task of a lot of complexity if that is what is required by the new melee system.

However, yeah boxing a melee sucks. I 2 box a druid and shaman all the time. Works well. very little distinction ((some negative, yet some positive)) between me and 2 seperate players. Occasionally for need, I box a melee instead. It sucks totally and utterly.

You should put the meleer on your main system. I couldn't do it any other way.

EDIT: BTW, I use "bud" when I want to ensure that someone takes me in a friendly discussion way, as opposed to a straight out jerk. Since text can be deceiving without tones and voice inflection.

Gotta be careful with that one and some of us old farts, it probably comes off sounding sarcastic. There you go, the generation gap at work! Besides, to me you don't call a woman a "bud". Sheesh... I'm getting old. Whenever someone calls me bud or dude I assume they've missed seeing my secondary sexual characteristics. However, I've seen my neice call other girls "dude" and it just seems so wrong!

Originally posted by Panamah
Whenever someone calls me bud or dude I assume they've missed seeing my secondary sexual characteristics. However, I've seen my neice call other girls "dude" and it just seems so wrong!


Very wrong. Leaves me thinking of Aerosmith. 'Dude, looks like a Lady!'. /shiver did I just date myself?

Playstyle doesn't not equate versatility or utility or relative power, for lack of a better word.

It isn't because you're mashing more buttons that your class got better: you just made your class more cumbersome to play.

But I agree: It's gonna have to wait till monday to know more and between now and monday to provide as much brainstorming as possible to help the dev hit the mark with something radically new and unaccounted for in the game design:

Which is reason enough to have melees worry knowing Sony track record.

There's some button mashing with melees but not even close to what certain types of casters go through. I play both a tank and a druid so I'm speaking from firsthand experience.

Well, funny, me too! Over four years playing cleric and druid. 3 years playing rogue. I still say button pushing wise, most casters don't even touch what a meleer has to deal with, perhaps an exception to that would be assist healers on raids. One thing I almost never do is use my mouse (except for slows), except to deal with the UI for things that can't be done on the keyboard

As far as attention, well, I'd say it's roughly equal. Meleers have issues like being too far or too close, positioning, watching for abilities to be reusable. Priests have to watch hit points, slows, debuffs etc. In group situations, it's pretty simple, IMHO. Otherwise it'd be entirely impossible to two-box a healer, and I've done quite well doing so.

People joke about warriors going afk, but they don't. You will just be standing their picking your nose and not attacking because it doesn't take very long before the mob is pushed out of melee range. They might not be paying attention much, but they are constantly adjusting their range.

Like I said before, my only concern is that they make the necessary UI changes to support the new combat system. Being limited to 7 /doability things, 10 hotkeys, when there's already far more than 7 /doability skills for rogues and I hate switching banks of hotkeys... that's going to one of the issues they must address, IMHO.

Besides, to me you don't call a woman a "bud".

"Bud" is the term I generally use if I'm not certain of gender or not comfortable enough with the woman to call them "hon" without them getting offended. I'm from the south, shoot me. This is the first time I've ever actually offended someone by being what I consider friendly. So, oh well, live and learn.

This is the first time I've ever actually offended someone by being what I consider friendly. So, oh well, live and learn.

Aye, the process never stops! It's kind of fun when it isn't annoying, but you find out all kinds of stuff when you talk to people in different regions or countries.

Like, for the longest time I to tell people I was going to boff them, meaning bonk, or cuff them about the head... until someone pointed out that "to boff" means something entirely different. /blush

Originally posted by Tiane
Yeah, well, Kell had a raiding druid before you even started playing EQ Tubben. So assumptions are bad. (Yes, even that's an assumption, but Kel plays on my server, and has since release. VZ wasnt a release server, so... I spos he could have gotten a transfer to VZ, in which case I'm sorry and this assumption is wrong! See what happens!)

I started EQ with release on Solusek Ro, and changed to VZ after it went up ;-) And i still stand to what i said. I played both, a Rogue and a Druid, and i had and have allways more work and stress with the druid, than with the rogue.

Tubben.

Well, playing a rogue isn't stressful. However, I'd imagine being the MT or a pulling monk has its moments.

However, I'd imagine being the MT or a pulling monk has its moments.

Try being a healer with no group heals when those monks pull a train of cleric drakes after the NPC spell usage patch. A bunch came into the raid and they all started casting Upheaval.

I swear, I could hear one of 'em yelling "AE AE AE!!! INC A BUNCH OF LITTLE BAGS OF EXP! AE NOOBS AE!!!"

Actually, there are times I leave donut rings on my chair cushion...
That's when I have to go find the "mob" in LDoN dungeons and I've already used escape and I'm scared I'll stumble into a trap. That's a pretty tense time to be a rogue. :p

Originally posted by Panamah
Well, playing a rogue isn't stressful. However, I'd imagine being the MT or a pulling monk has its moments.

Well i agree with you =)

What i just mean, for ME playing a druid is way more stressfull than playing a melee. Its maybe because i only have to pay attention for myself, playing a druid i have to pay attention for others.. alot of others.

tubby

I think Pana implied that I am an old fart!

Well.... guess I cant argue too much with that 8P

Try being a healer with no group heals when those monks pull a train of cleric drakes after the NPC spell usage patch. A bunch came into the raid and they all started casting Upheaval.

I swear, I could hear one of 'em yelling "AE AE AE!!! INC A BUNCH OF LITTLE BAGS OF EXP! AE NOOBS AE!!!"

Hehe... I'm gonna script some monsters in NWN to cast AE spells and shout something like that.

I think it is way to early to draw any kind of conclusions about the new melee system. We have no idea if it will actually fix current melee balancing issue, introduce new ones, both or neither.

Since it is a new system hopefully they will have built in the tools needed to modify it to work as needed changes are discovered.

My bigger concern is how many encounters are these melee changes going to break. What is the impact going to be on current raid strategies especially older and seldom used content.



Borblefoot furtoe
Storm warden
Firiona Vie server

Hehe Panamah.. in NZ slang 'bonking' also has that meaning ;)