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Fenier
09-12-2006, 06:50 AM
From Vets Forums

Over the course of beta, we've identified and corrected a number of issues that have been around for a while but were being exacerbated by the downtime changes we are making. There are two particular changes with the "call for help" routine that I want to draw attention to since they close loopholes that allow some questionable tactics that some of you may be using currently. I want you to be aware that they will no longer work after our next patch to save you the potential deaths from attempting them. These will also be in the patch notes.
When most NPCs call for help, they will only call for a small, set number of NPCs to respond to keep from swarming people with dozens of NPCs at once. There was a problem in the call for help routine that caused an NPC to not call for help again for a few seconds if it had already called for help and enough NPCs responded that they had met that maximum number the first time. This is what was enabling the so called "tick pulling" phenomenon whereby you could aggro an entire room, drop aggro, then immediate re-aggro a single NPC and it would come alone. This is now fixed and NPCs will now properly call for help every time they are aggro'd from a non-aggro state.
With the above problem fixed, we also had to address another bug in the same area to prevent just shifting the loophole form one tactic to another. This one had a similar effect, although for an entirely different reason. When a player sends a pet in to attack an NPC, the NPC uses the pet's leader to determine how the NPC reacts. In one part of the "call for help" routine, this check was missed and it was causing an NPC to not call for help if it was attacked by a green con pet of a PC. This particular bit of code is there for NPC vs NPC combat to keep NPCs from ganging up on each other, but the missing check for a PC leader caused it to not call for help if a PC sent a green con pet to aggro it. This is now fixed and the NPC is properly using the pet's leader for this check as well.Again, both of these fixes will go out with our patch next week.
Rashere

ToKu
09-12-2006, 07:26 AM
LOL HAHAHAHAHAHA poor necro's and mages. =(

dorda
09-12-2006, 08:15 AM
beastlords,SK's too?
bye bye petpull..

hmm this means that forming groups will be even harder ..
the mandatory "pull" role requires a proper class.

Tank - war!, pal, sk
Heal - cle!,dru,shm
Slow - shm!,enc,bst,bard?
Pull - bard!,monk,nec,sk
CC - enc!, bard
DPS- nec!,mag!,rog!,wiz .. or just anyone ..


The triade became a extuple (or how is it called?=)
I see group composition become sorta rigid ... hope im wrong
CC and DPS role can be skipped in some content (just about any1 can dps nowadays)
puller is hard to skip in most non-trivial content (thinking DOD mission-like stuff)
in dps slot i prefer necros and mages (sometimes rogues) to others due to utility.

Fenier
09-12-2006, 08:30 AM
nearly everything in DoD is rootable. Its going to require mroe teamwork for actual pulling, and that isn't a bad thing.

ToKu
09-12-2006, 09:58 AM
nearly everything in DoD is rootable. Its going to require mroe teamwork for actual pulling, and that isn't a bad thing.

Unless resists have changed some the rooting wasnt horribly useful. What I dislike is the nerfs to bard/monk pulling. I dont mind the pet pulling change, but they removed a aspect of monks and to a degree bards in the change.

Now groups are going to require more CC, especially in the mez section. And here I thought I was safe to get groups w/o chanters again. :eusa_booh

dorda
09-12-2006, 10:12 AM
UHHH?? does that mean that not only pet-pull but FD pull is gone too??
oh my!! well i like the pulling role =)

Fenier
09-12-2006, 10:17 AM
No.

Pet pulling is gone.

An expolited part of Fade/FD pulling is gone - but they still work as intended.

-Fenier

Lotharun
09-12-2006, 10:45 AM
Interesting. An unintended side issue to the resting out of combat changes. I wonder how many more of these we'll see, especially ones we'll see post patch.

I'm wondering - will they with all of these cleanup fixes now finally be able to remove the zoning we have to do with Succor. As you may recall it was add in order fix agro issues. With these resting changes and de-agro, they have to address all of those -- at least I'd think they would have to. If they do, that eliminates the need to zone on succor, etc. …would be nice.

dorda
09-12-2006, 10:57 AM
eheh i want a mad succor that repops the group in a random spot of a zone =) Ever played russian roulette? =)

:crazeye: :flipbg: :whistle:

ToKu
09-12-2006, 12:43 PM
UHHH?? does that mean that not only pet-pull but FD pull is gone too??
oh my!! well i like the pulling role =)
Aparantly there was a timer on a mob calling for help. As long as bards/monks can still perform thier jobs of splitting groups of mobs into sizes that can be handled I have np.

My concern is they will do the WoW path. (This group of mobs is fine as intended and should not be split, fight them all or none at all!)

Tilluen
09-12-2006, 12:56 PM
I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of monks and bards did not use the tick pulling technique. This will have implications for some raids but I doubt it'll change the game much for 95% of us.

dorda
09-12-2006, 12:59 PM
>>>(This group of mobs is fine as intended and should not be split, fight them all or none at all!)

hmm if they do they better remove all content for casuals except MM's =)

top groups i've been in dont even care about pulling in most content that casual find very challenging. Tanks can handle 3-4 mobs easily.

Lol a warrior! was pulling the belfast3 mission .. lotsa adds, but np at all.

Vekx
09-12-2006, 01:59 PM
It will make learning Uqua a bit harder. If guilds even do that anymore.

Fenier
09-12-2006, 02:48 PM
It will make learning Uqua a bit harder. If guilds even do that anymore.

I don't see how that is true.

Perhaps I am missing something.

Fenier
09-12-2006, 03:04 PM
My concern is they will do the WoW path. (This group of mobs is fine as intended and should not be split, fight them all or none at all!)

There is already some raid content where this is inteded. Ikkinz 3 and Shyra are the two most commonly cited examples on Sony's Forums. Lets take a quick look at each case.

Shyra - Pet pulled, is leaps and bounds easier then any other DoD Event. She drops more loot then Bloodeye, and is no where near as difficult an encounter if she is singled from her guards with pet pulling.

If you mange to single her within her teather range due to this, all your tank needs to do is handle the beatdown for a few minutes and Boom - Loot and DoD progression flag for your guild.

Having seen Shyra killed both ways (killing her and her guards, and pet spiliting her) its pretty clear which the difficult ratig should be for that encounter.

In the other example of Ikkinz 3, toward the end of the raid you kill a trigger which spawns 4 Class-specfic kill golems which hit like mac trucks.
Knowing how the rest of GoD is (Inktu'ta Golems are good examples) Your supposd to learn how to handle multiple hard hitting mobs at the same time within this expansion.

Before they fixed the bug that introduced pet pulling, most guilds I know of used to use Eye of Zomm to get targeting for their tanks, would rush in, focus on one golem (or two) and kill them, then recover for the other 2 or 3. It was painful. But Ikkinz 3 is the block for 4, and was designed for 54 people.

When pet pulled, you can single pull all of the golems to just inside the door (so they don't teather) and kill them one by one.

I've done it both ways. When you look at any of the Guardian of X encounters which take place in the large circle rooms, or the Alter Construct from Ikkinz 4, its pretty clear this was not ment to be split up. Splitting it up due to a bug in the code effectively reduces the healing and tanks you require for winning from 4 geared tanks to one solid one and reduces the amount of damage to need to heal by 75%. There is no way at all anyone can claim thats intended given the difficult of the Ikkinz series for the people / gear content it was designed for.

The change restores the difficulty of various raid encounters back to where it should be within the progression series of their respective content. That is a good thing and guilds should not be able to by-pass content due to a bug in the system.

-Fenier

Lotharun
09-12-2006, 04:31 PM
Before they fixed the bug that introduced pet pulling, most guilds I know of used to use Eye of Zomm to get targeting for their tanks, would rush in, focus on one golem (or two) and kill them, then recover for the other 2 or 3. It was painful. But Ikkinz 3 is the block for 4, and was designed for 54 people.
.
.
.
There is no way at all anyone can claim thats intended given the difficult of the Ikkinz series for the people / gear content it was designed for.
-Fenier

Looks like a great change but why didn't it come sooner? Could have adressed this years ago when they glossed over the succor bug. Guilds that follow won't have the same advantages the others did for so long. Bugs like this should be fixed promptly or they become part of past practice... Then when you try to remove them...people complain.

Tilluen
09-12-2006, 06:29 PM
Guilds that follow will also consist of level 75 characters. Ikky, at least, was designed for level 65.

As Fenier points out, Shyra is ridiculously easy when you can pull her solo. Obviously not intended. I only lament that my guild just started on Shyra.

Alaene
09-12-2006, 09:19 PM
This is interesting to me given a "ye-olde" memory I have where Vanguard lamented the very existence of "pulling", which wasn't an intended tactic in EQ.

I'm in two minds - the need for a specialist puller in group content will restrict the flexibility of people to make up a group as they see fit. On the other hand, the class balance position of "designated" pulling classes is increased.

So many changes with TSS (largely level cap and the resulting spells and AA's, and Out of Combat regen) will have impacts on class balance that you just can't comment on this change in isolation.

Juniper
09-13-2006, 07:12 PM
We'll see how it all pans out. It's pretty rare that I used pet pull anyway.

dorda
09-14-2006, 06:39 AM
it seems to me that the devs are actually starting again to put some design effort in EQ, not just random changes without a global view as i feel they have been doing for sometime. They didnt communicate ( nor they will) the globaly view, but lets hope for good. It is a good thing anyway, unless they screw up badly imo.

Vekx
09-14-2006, 10:52 AM
it seems to me that the devs are actually starting again to put some design effort in EQ, not just random changes without a global view as i feel they have been doing for sometime. They didnt communicate ( nor they will) the globaly view, but lets hope for good. It is a good thing anyway, unless they screw up badly imo.

I read it as they only made this change, finally, because it was more of an issue with the new down time changes.