For a while now, there have been items that give a bonus to mitigation.  These bonuses are shown as the blue stat on gear that says +x% Mitigation Increase.  Apparently, for a long time now, there has been a bug with how this bonus is calculated which has been granting more of an increase than intended.

A fix for this has crept its way onto the test server which is lowering the mitigation of most tanks.  So, on the test server, if you have any of this gear and yesterday you were barely able to survive during a given fight, chances are, today you’ll go splat.  Xelgad posted an explanation on the EQ2players.com forums.

Xelgad says that they aren’t in a rush to get this to live and that they will take the time to get it working right.  Hopefully this means tweaking other things if needed, like mob damage output.  Xelgad writes:

You may have noticed that currently on test mitigation numbers seem lower. There was no notes in the Test Update notes because it was pushed to Test a little sooner than we expected.

We’ve been evaluating all of the systems in the game to find out what is working and what is not working correctly. During this investigation, we found that there was a bug with the blue stat “Mitigation Increase” causing it to give noticably more than the listed amount of mitigation. This bug has been fixed and is currently on the test servers.

A mitigation increase of 10% was increasing plate mitigation by about 30% and leather mitigation by about 54%. This has been fixed so that the mitigation increase that says 10% will increase your mitigation by 10%. The addition of mitigation to the brawler self buffs was to be in tandem with this bug fix. This change is important because reaching the cap on mitigation causes some abilities, advancements and gear options to become irrelevent. That is obviously detrimental to gameplay and it can be detrimental to balance as well. If some classes have been balanced around having abilities to boost their mitigation and players end up capping out that stat then that element of balance is lost.

This bug has been in the game for a long time so the fix will reduce the mitigation of most tanks. For the sake of being able to balance the tanks in the future, we needed to correct the formula that was used to calculate the effectiveness of “Mitigation Increase.”

We’ll try to address questions and concerns regarding this fix and we aren’t in a rush to get this change to Live. If it looks like there may be problems with it, we’ll take the time to get it working right.

Update: Xelgad just posted this on the official forums:

As stated earlier in this thread, we’re taking our time with this change. It is looking like it is going to wait all the way until the expansion, and we’ll have the expansion beta to test the changes. Of course, we’ll still be looking into Sentinel’s Fate content, gear and alternate advancements in conjunction with the fix.

Here are your hotfix notes for September 1, 2010 after the break:

What’s on Test this weekend? Here are just a few items:

• UI: The XP bar will now stay put between logins.
• UI: Designers of custom UIs can now set the XP bar to not “snap” to top/bottom.
• UI: The Character window has seen multiple improvements.
• UI: The Implied Target arrow now reflects the ‘con’ color of the enemy, and can have its opacity adjusted.
• Items: 2-handed Weapons and Ranged Weapons have had their damage ratings increased. Ranged weapons will also have a bit of a damage penalty in PvP to compensate.
• The Guardian class has had over 25 changes made.
• Resident’s of Omen’s Call (Fens of Nathsar) now have a World Travel Globe on their dock.
• Items: The Wicked Wand of Malice effect has been changed to on-equip.
• The Palace of Roehn-Theer zone-in bug has been fixed.

If you’re wondering about other announced changes which aren’t on Test yet, they will come later. For instance Ranged Flurry and Ranged AA Auto-Attack changes are still in the queue. Remember, Game Update 57b is still 4-7 weeks away.

If you haven’t tested out these changes yet on the Test server, check em out!

Complete update notes after the jump…

When you target another player (say your group’s tank, or the raid Main Assist) to channel your damage through, it is sometimes helpful to not only see the Target Arrow (who you have selected), but the Implied Target Arrow (the enemy which your target has chosen). This can be especially important for scouts.

So players have asked for a way to customize or more easily distinguish the color and opacity of the Implied Target Arrow.

Rothgar’s comments after the jump…

From Silius on the EQ2 Forums:

Hello again,

I just wanted to update everyone on the situation. We will be unable to get this fix live until Tuesday. Once again I am sorry for the inconvenience but I offer some assistance. If you are unable to get into the same instance please do the following:

1. Have your raid leader petition so their is only one petition generated for the raid.

2. Place the petition in the stuck character category.

The CS team is aware of this issue and they will do their best to promptly assist by pulling everyone into the same instance. There is no guarantee that they will be able to get to you quickly so I ask that you please be patient. While not an ideal solution, I hope that this is a satisfactory compromise and that you will extinguish your torches and lay down your pitchforks.

The hits keep coming for GU57, and we don’t mean critical heals. Some quick updates on GU57 from the overnight dev responses all in one handy post…

Players on a variety of servers (in two different threads) have reported that yesterday’s change to how players reach the Palace of Roehn Theer, requiring each player to individually click on the zone-in, instead of a raidwide zone-in, is resulting in multiple separate instances.

Currently there seems to be no fix, as even players who zone in one-at-a-time are still ending up in separate instances and must wait 30 minutes before their timers reset.

Xelgad has responded to a detailed thread on Illusionist Class Issues:

Hey guys, long time no see! We got some good feedback at Fan Faire which I wanted to share.
I agree that Time Warp ended up being more annoying than it is fun or rewarding. Unfortunately, it was one of those things that looked okay on paper but didn’t work in practice. We have it changed internally so that there is no longer an immunity timer associated with the spell, and it now grants the Illusionist the buff as well as the target. This should be coming to the test servers with (or before) GU58. If you want, you can just macro the spell to a group member and spam it as a self-buff, but I envision some players being more tactical with it. You can even spam it on yourself, but you don’t get double benefit – unless, of course, you cast it on your pet. We also changed the icon so that the warning icon looks different than the actual buff, and the buff now looks like the Tsunami (Monk ability) icon, so that it shouldn’t be shared with any other mage abilities.

Some of your other issues, such as buffs providing no benefit due to being capped, will be addressed with the upcoming expansion. There are some other changes that we hope to make before the expansion, but I can’t promise anything yet.

Please feel free to continue to post constructive feedback.

In response to a detailed list of issues with the Monk Class, Xelgad has provided an unexpected commentary:

Thanks for the up to date thread!

I can’t give an ETA, but we are looking for ways to make Monks more viable in AE-oriented content, especially with heroic content in mind. If the change benefits both brawlers, all the better. In that light, Crane Twirl would seem like a great candidate for a change, but I think the advancement is, at worst, balanced compared to other alternate advancements in the slot, and forcing everyone to take that one would not be an ideal solution. We may end up bitting the bullet on that, but a class ability change similar to the changes planned for Recapture and Plant would probably be a better way to go. If you have ideas for changes like that to the monk class, we’d love to hear them.

Again, we’re very busy here with all the mechanics changes we’re trying to get live and the upcoming expansion so I can’t give an exact time frame but Monks are on our radar.

You can provide your feedback on Monk issues and Xelgad’s response in the EQ2 Forums thread entitled Monk Changes Discussion.

Xelgad has posted a flurry of responses to specific class issues today.

This one, in regards to Critical Heals which have been removed from all fighters. For some fighter classes, critical heals might have been overpowered, but for Paladins (joshingly referred to as Healadins), losing all crititical heals has had class altering effects not only in solo situations (which this nerf was intended to fix) but in group and raid setups.

We’ve been hearing about some ranger love for about 3 expansions now, but at Fan Faire, we heard the first concrete info. Xelgad has elaborated on just what we can expect in an update falling between GU57 and GU58 (hopefully 4-6 weeks from now:

Greetings, Mighty Forces!

AE Auto-Attack and Flurry are indeed on the way for bows. We’re also removing the 20% damage penalty for bows, and we’re increasing the damage rating on all 81-90 bows (along with throwing weapons) by about 10%. The intent is to allow you guys to get full benefit from buffs and gear, not to make the class entirely focused on Auto-Attack.

You know how you get more auto-attack damage from your melee weapons in many cases than from your bow? These changes should fix that, unless your melee weapons are simply of much higher quality than your bow. At most, your auto-attack may jump from ~20% of your parse up to ~30% on raids, but I’d be surprised if many people end up with it higher than that.

Thanks for all of your feedback.

You can join the discussion on this issue in the thread What’s this all about? (bow changes) on the EQ2 Forums.

On the EQ2 Forums by Kander:

Changes to Zaalax, Xaalax, Saalax and Yaalax:

* They no longer mitigate significant amounts of elemental damage.
* The strength of the knockback on Zaalax’s Crushalanche spell has been reduced.
* Call of the Underfoot curse now lasts longer before going off
* Players now have more time to move away from Zaalax’s fissures before being hit by a seismic shock
* The splits off Zaalax now have lower maximum health.

Incidentally, the X,Y, Z encounter does indeed have loot.

and…

We are hoping for tomorrow with these changes. Watch for the patch in the morning.

Gloves are probably on the special chest you hate…

Today marks the introduction of Game Update 57 to the live servers. Key features of this update include:

• The EQ2 User Interface has received a facelift, with a new toolbar, a refresh of various windows, and a merged Character/Inventory/Profile window. The default theme is red, but easily switchable to blue by typing /loadui and choosing the Blue graphic set.
• More character classes are now neutral and may start in either good or evil cities.
• Spell animations and effects have been revamped.
• Intrazone travel now supports path linking. Travel within Kingdom of Sky has been improved.
• Erudin group instances (level 86-90) are now easier to reach.
• New tradeskill quests have been added in the level 10, 20, and 30 tiers. These quests reward a mount as well as access to what have previously been overpriced Advanced recipe books.
• Starting areas in Greater Faydark and Darklight Wood have received substantial revamps. Gorowyn has received further architectural rebuilding to improve navigation.
• All classes have had some group-specific spells postponed until later levels to reduce the number of spells new players get in the first 20 levels.
• Fighter heals will no longer critically heal.
• The “Notable Norrathian” contest winning paintings are now available within Norrath but only during the monthly City Festivals (next is Sept 1-7). They are guild hall placeable.
• Lucan D’Lere has returned to Freeport.

• Today’s update contains no new dungeons or raid zones.

EQ2X

Also going live today is the public beta for EverQuest II Extended, the Free-to-Play alternative to a monthly EQ2 subscription. Game Update 57 will arrive simultaneously on both servers. EQ2X, as it’s being abbreviated, may be discussed on the separate EQ2X Forums.

Here is the 6-part Question & Answer panel for EQ2 from Saturday at Fan Faire 2010.

[EQ2Wire] Fan Faire 2010 – EQ2 Q&A Saturday Panel (playlist)

I have just posted all 6 parts of the EQ2 Mechanics / Class Balance panel from Fan Faire 2010.

[EQ2Wire] Fan Faire 2010 – EQ2 Mechanics Panel (playlist)

Apologies for any typos. They jacked up the AC in here!! Remember folks, lots of EQ2 t shirts, hoodies, and polos.

EQ2 Mechanics and Class Balance panel.

Rich Waters, Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, Mike “Xelgad” Ganz.

Update: As of 2:00AM CDT I have made some cleanup and additional information added to these notes based on memory. There are 3-4 missing questions which will get filled in after the video is reviewed.

Live blog from Fan Faire with q&a on EverQuest II.

Here are your update notes for Wednesday, 28 July 2010:

UNDERFOOT DEPTHS

• Energized Taehric Construct (challenge mode): The Construct will try and cast Crippling Judgment on his main target whenever possible, rather than a random fighter.  The construct will try and cast Curse of Befuddlement on priests in separate groups, whenever possible, avoiding casting it on two priests in the same group whenever possible.

ITEMS

• The Twisted Alloy Wristlet’s proc, Torturous Paths, has had its damage increased and its proc chance raised.
• Many mage items within Underfoot Depths have received pet effects.

TINKERFEST

• The Tinkerfest quest “Great Balls of Fire” cannot be completed more than 25 times.
• The Tinkerfest titles awarded by the repeatable Tinkerfest quests can now be purchased from the Tinkerfest merchant if you have earned them but did not receive them.

Game Update 57 is now up on  the Test and Test Copy Servers and we’ve got the Update Notes. We’ve already taken some new screen shots of the new default interface including the new pictorial tutorials for new players.

• User Interface – One of the touted features of Game Update 57 is the revamped User Interface. The Persona and Inventory windows have been merged into a Character window. The XP bar has become a sort of “dock” at the bottom of your screen. All buttons and window corners have been rounded off. And for the most part, everything that was blue is now red! No doubt UI modders will come out with a classic re-skin to turn everything back to blue. We will be posting a preview of the GU57 Interface Changes soon. Discussed Here

• Map Points of Interest – Many points of interest have been added to the default map, including quest locations. This will provide some of the functionality of EQ2Maps.

• Additional Travel Revamp – There have been additional revamps to Travel. With path linking, you can now choose the ultimate destinations of any inter-zone travel and it will “connect the dots” to get you there. All transport pads in Kingdom of Sky connect to all others, and travel between the three Kingdom of Sky zones is much easier.

• Character Creation & More Neutrals – The Character Creation screens have been revamped, and several more classes have become neutral, including Assassin, Ranger, Templar, Inquisitor, Coercer, Illusionist, Monk and Bruiser.

• Extraneous Spells/CAs Removed from Levels 1-15 – Many spells and combat arts that new players generally did not use at level 1-20, such as Taunts, De-Agros, Agro-reduction, etc. have been postponed until level 15+ to decrease the number of new spells/CAs that players are exposed to in the increasingly brief sprint from level 1-20. First Discussed Here

• Spell Effects Visual Revamp which was rumored for GU55 is now on Test. This is an update/revamp of the animation which plays for each beneficial and hostile effect cast by characters.

• Lucan D’Lere has returned!

• Additional Tradeskill Quests have been added at level 20 and 30.

• Starting Zone Conflicts – Frostfang Sea (New Halas) and Greater Fay starting zones are now under attack by invaders, adding an additional level of interest to these zones. In addition, Gorowyn has received yet another architectural revamp to hopefully improve navigation.

• General – You can also expect the usual array of tweaks and bugfixes to raid zones, battlegrounds, AA lines, Quests, and Items. Most classes got some kind of benefit here.

As this is all on Test and Test Copy, the EQ2 team are really looking for bug reports, feedback, and comments on everything that’s been added.

Complete Game Update 57 Notes after the jump…

Here are your hotfix notes for July 22, 2010:

LON MOUNTS

• Legends of Norrath mounts have all been upgraded to a standard 65% run speed.

PERAH’CELSIS’ ABOMINABLE LABORATORY

• Arkatanthis the Destroyer: The Benthic adds that challenge group members will try to challenge players unaffected by benthic freeze wherever possible.

Xelgad has been paying close attention to feedback on his Guardians: Requesting Feedback thread on the EQ2 Forums. His response to this feedback includes some additional tweaks we might see as a result of ideas submitted by players. These changes are expected after Game Update 57.

You can read his comments after the jump…

Xelgad has taken another measured step towards collecting player feedback. Last month, it was a shoutout for Top End Guilds to post some of their highest parses. Today’s request appears to be some light finally being shone on guardians after nearly 2 years at the lower middle of the “fighter” pack in tanking ability.

Greetings Guardians!

First off, allow me say that we understand that the class is being outshined at the moment, and we’re working on it. It’s going to take more than just one change to get Guardians back to working as a strong class again. I’m not going into details yet, but we do have a mechanics change in the works that will at least help a bit to distinguish Guardians as a more defensive tank. Even with that, the class is currently lacking in other areas, including threat generation and utility.

It’s utility that we want to focus this thread on. We want to bring Guardian utility up to the level that the other fighters bring to a group or raid. We have three tentative changes that will be going to test soon:

1. Got Your Back will become raidwide.
2. Cripple will become a maintainable debuff with a damage component.
3. Call of Shielding will also increase the health of the raid. The level 87 version at master will amount to around 1,000 hit points.

We’re looking for feedback on these ideas, and we’re open to boosting Guardian utility even a bit further, especially in heroic content. I want to emphasize that we’re not trying to turn Guardians into plate-wearing Bards or anything of the sort. However, I do want to try to focus this thread on the utility aspect of the class.

UPDATE: These changes will come after Game Update 57.

CORRECTION: Ikik is still on the Vanguard team.

Today we learn from EQ2Flames just who was laid off from the EQ2 team. Timetravelling designed some of the more interesting raid encounters in the Sentinel’s Fate expansion, including Roehn Theer:

I wanted to pop in and thank you all for playing EQ2 for the last few years.

You helped make it an absolute joy of a job, and I’m sorry to be moving on, but I suppose that thems the breaks.

Please keep on keepin’ on, having fun, and kicking the crap out of all of the encounters us poor Content designers create for you.

Hopefully y’all enjoyed some of everything I’ve worked on over the last few years as much as I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to create it for you.

And good luck with Roehn Theer…Slackers! =)

Brett – Timetravelling

Also, Saavedra, EQ2 designer from 2004-2008 and who had been working on other SOE projects also posted:

Guess I can post on flames now eh? Yeah, I am currently LFW

Vanguard

Also, if you have had any optimism for the future of Vanguard, they lost Wigin, as well as their Community Manager Raijinn. “On life support” would be a charitable way to describe the situation at this point.

Marketing?

Sources tell us that Marketing lost 2 team members during this layoff.

I guess now we know how SOE paid for those new Oracle 11G servers for EQ2.

The most difficult part of a raid encounter can be managing the Adds or additional enemies that come at predefined moments during the fight. EQ2 has a storied history of people trying different methods to manage, crowd control, confuse, or completely reset Adds during challenging fights. Clearly, the desire to beat more difficult enemies is a powerful temptation to cheat.

Manipulating the outcome of a fight through timely brawler death feigns or leashing certain mobs by fighting at a distance are tactics which have existed in EQ2 from the very beginning. Such exploits were very publicly documented in Veeshan’s Peak. But while it is one thing to participate in such tactics in a private instance. It is quite another to do so in a contested environment with plenty of witnesses!

EQ2Wire is not in the habit of pointing out particular guilds or players, but the controversy will likely be brewing until this exploit in the Klaaktuus Unbound fight can be closed.

With the recent attention to exploitation and penalizing players for various BattleGrounds exploits; the publicity of this event leaves one unanswered question, “Will SOE penalize guilds for exploiting a contested encounter, preventing others from enjoying its content legitimately?”

For those players interested in the exact details, the full transcription can be found on EQ2Flames from pages 124 to 129 (and continuing) (NOTE: Coarse language).