January 9, 2009

Level 55 Coercer joins the ranks

stargrace January 9, 2009 4Comments

Has leveling in EQ2 gotten TOO easy? 

That’s a thought that’s been going through my mind lately. People take a look at the characters I have and then usually gasp in surprise or give some other reaction. The truth of the matter is that it’s only been since the experience was increased in EQ2 that I’ve managed to get all of these characters. Until that happened I had three steady ones that I played, with a whole lot of lowbie characters. 

So just how fast is the experience now?

Well. I do have five years playing the game. There are places I head to right away, and others I tend to avoid. I do know what I like, and what I don’t like and I realize that this plays into it a lot. I met up with a group of very good friends on the Kithicor server and have been spending some time over there while Najena has been quiet. I moved one of my characters over (not one of my level 80’s) and it was going to take a week for the manual transfer to go through so in the mean time I created a level 1 coercer on my main account. This means there is a 50% bonus experience on the account for already having level 80’s. 

I have had the help of a level 80 conjuror, and a level 67 (at the time) shadowknight. Neither are ‘uber’ by raid standards, but know their classes and are great to be around. 

Today would mark day four of the creation of my coercer. She has 1 day played, and is 50% away from level 55. I did use the orb of concentrated memories, and I have been taking advantage of the experience potions I have. I lack in aa (sevearly) but I know I can catch those up later on. My main ‘goal’ was to catch up to the group of friends. When I created the character I (jokingly) mentioned that I would be level 80 before the transfer went through and I’d have no need for it. I had no idea just how close to the truth that was going to be. 

My issue with this whole theory is that having a level 80 doesn’t mean anything any more. People have multiple level 80’s. It’s not a challenge. So where is the challenge? You basically have to find it and create it yourself. For some that may be questing, for others that may be obtaining gear or master quality spells. Others may not need a challenge at all and play only for their friends and couldn’t care less about actual game play – which is fine too, we all play for our reasons. On one hand I enjoy the fact that I was able to catch up so quickly, but looking back I begin to wonder if it is too much of a good thing.

Game Update – TEST Notes

stargrace January 9, 2009 0Comment

The original post can be found here on the SoE forums.  PLEASE remember these are on Test server ONLY right now, and are subject to change. There has been a LOT of feedback about the changes, some like them, some do not. Some pretty serious things are incoming in this GU. Thoughts?

GAMEPLAY

• Taunts and detaunts can now critical similar to how melee and spell criticals work.
• Threat output and hate position changes will now be displayed to the chat windows. You can find it under Combat in the Hate Adjustment category.
• Hate gain mods will no longer affect taunt adjustments.
• Area of effect spells and combat arts will no longer spread hate to encounter members when damage is applied.
• Imprisoner Ynosii’s death now results in his weakened soul spawning. Killing the weakened soul gives a key that will open Ynosii’s treasure chest.
• Auto-follow:
  • Your character will now swim up and down to follow the target underwater.
  • Characters on auto-follow will always turn to face their target when auto-attacking.
  • Players on auto-follow now follow up and down climbable walls.
  • You may now /camp (and, incidentally, sit) while on auto-follow. If the person you’re following moves (causing you to follow) your camp will be interrupted.
  • The camera will now re-center on the person you’re following only when you’re moving.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Bountiful Harvest should no longer displayed a combined harvest on root and foresting nodes. Instead you should see two harvests similar to how other node type work.

Warrior

• Executioner’s Anger now has a chance to increase your taunt critical chance instead of the player’s hate gain.

Crusader

• Idolic Axe has changed to increase the base amount of the crusaders taunts and gives them an additional chance to critically taunt an enemy.

Assassin

• Frontload will no longer cause poisons to cancel when it is toggled off or expires.

Berserker

• Perserverance is now a buff and works in a similar fashion to Reversal with a hidden spell that can only trigger once every 15 seconds.

Brawler

• Crane Twirl has been changed to increase the brawlers chance to aoe auto attack
• Eagle Spin now increases the threat of the brawler with their enemy.
• Eagle’s Talon now increases the chance of the brawler to critically taunt and increases the amount of threat applies by taunts.
• Monkey Dodge now increases the brawler’s defense and parry skill.

Shadowknight

• Enchance: Anguish will now increase the base damage of the combat art appropriately.

SPELLS

As a result of spell changes, the triggered effect on Charm’s Way has been changed to be upfront and target enemies in the area of effect.

Fighter

• Kick has been moved to level 3 to fill in a gap caused by spell consolidation

Guardian

• The Hold The Line spell line has been merged with the defensive stance lines.
• The Iron Will Spell line has been merged with both the offensive and defensive stances.
• The Battle Tactics line has been merged into the Call to Arms line of spells.
• The offensive stance line will now increase damage done to the guardian and also has a damage based proc while also reducing the hate gain of the guardian.
• The defensive stance will now also increase the amount of taunts and increase the hate gain of the guardian.
• The hate reduction of the allay line has been reduced.
• The Assault line now grants additional threat gains.
• Reduced the recast of the Shout line.
• The Kick line now generates additional threat.

Berserker

• Berserk has been incorporated into the defensive and offensive stances.
• The Battle Chant line has been merged into the Bloodlust line.
• The Bullying Defense line has been merged into the defensive stance line.
• Uproar has been moved to level 2 to fill in a gap created by the ability mergers.
• The Growl line is now 10 second reuse and more powerful.
• The Offend line has increased threat.
• The Whirl line now has a threat component.
• Reactive taunt strength of the Insolent Gibe line has been increased slightly.

Paladin

• The Redemption line now greatly increases your threat with the target instead of siphoning hate.
• The Incite line now increases threat initially instead of overtime.
• The Charge line now has a hate component.
• The Divine Circle line now has a hate component.
• The Blessing of the Penitent and Blessed Weapon lines have been merged into the offensive and defensive stances.
• The Blinding Rays line has had its reuse time reduced.

Shadowknight

• The Dark Caress and Unholy Weapon lines have merged into the offensive and defensive stances. 
• Defensive stance line will lower damage but increase threat output.
• Offensive stance boosts damage slightly but reduces hate gain.
• Sickening Circle will also increase threat now.
• The Kick line now has a threat component.

Bruiser

• The Roughhouse and Dodge and Strike lines have been merged into the bruiser’s stances.
• The Brag line is now more potent.
• The Kick line now has a threat component.
• The Blazing Strikes line now has a threat component.
• The Impose line has faster reuse speed now.

Monk

• The Martial Focus and Dragon stance lines have been merged into the monk’s stances.
• The Stare line increase threat by more.
• The Kick line now has a threat component.
• The Cobra Circle line now increases threat to any targets it hits.
• Beckon has had its reuse time lowered.

Swashbuckler

• The Swarthy Distraction line of spells has changed to be a short duration buff which greatly increases or decreases their target’s hate.

Assassin

• The Shadows line has changed to trigger a hate reduction effect.

Ranger

• The Reconnoiter line has had its hate reduction effect removed and has a chance on any hit to reduce the rangers hate.

Predator

• The Stalk line is now faster casting and lower recovery time.

Scout

• The Evade line no longer has any recovery time.

Sorceror

• Concussive is now faster casting and quicker reuse time.

Dirge

• Hyran’s line has reduced hate gain modifiers but also increases the threat amount.

GUILDHALLS

• Guild Hall Fuel Merchants will now buy back tier 1 fuels.
• The guild hall mender will now correctly remember the new coverage setting after it is changed.

ZONES

Veeshan’s Peak

• Milyex Vioren’s engineer should no longer occasionally become unkillable

Palace of Ferzhul

• Ferzhul should no longer fail to unlock his portion of Varsoon’s portal if players kill all of his adds before killing him.

Village of Shin

• Merchants in the Village of Shin will now buy as well as sell items.

Moors of Ykesha

• Spotting a business opportunity, a new fuel merchant has recently set up shop in Firmroot Moot near the mender.
• It should now be slightly easier to avoid the blood gorgers in the entry passage to Grobb, if you are careful.

ITEMS

• Overloaded heal procs will now trigger properly from reactives and wards.
• The Ferocious Presence spell from Stormbringer’s Bulwark of the Unstoppable will suspend if the shield is no longer equipped.

QUESTS

• Knight-Captain Santis will complete the quest, “Bog Sludge Hunt”.
• Zoning into the Nasin’s Library on Chapter 4 of The Shadow Odyssey should now automatically zone in a full party, regardless of whether all members have the quest.

MACROS

• You can now drag equipment from your appearance slots to the macro window.

GROUPS

• Group members can now use the /invite command to request that the group leader invite a player to the group. Just type /invite <playername>

UI

• The raid window has a new ‘Advanced’ mode that will display effect icons for all members of the raid. Right-click the raid window to switch views.
• The carat in text boxes will no longer render if the EQII client doesn’t have focus.
• Fixed a bug where damage reduction info was not displayed correctly in the mitigation tooltip.
• Fixed a bug in the raid window sometimes causing users to not be drag-able.
• The following modifications were made to UIScripting and are may be of interest to the modding community.
• UIScript now supports the following functions: int(), abs(), floor(), ceil().

• Results of math operations in UIScript now only return the required precision instead of always forcing 3 decimal places.
• Fixed a bug parsing negative floating-point numbers.
• The BackgroundEmpty image of a UIProgressbar will no longer render unless the progress value is zero.
• Support has been added for a new UIColorStyle object. Any object property that accepts a color will now accept a reference to a UIColorStyle object.