The announced removal of Critical Mitigation will coincide with the conversion of Yellow and Red Crit Mit adornments into Health adornments. So why will the replacement adornments have less Health (less than 250 points each) than White health adornments? According to Omougi, it’s because the EQ2 team thinks we should have other viable choices, like DPS. Adornments should be about choice!

From Omougi on the EQ2 Forums:

Our goal with these adornment and spell conversions is to give you guys something in the place of nothing essentially. Before, you were playing a zero-sum game if you had enough crit mit. If you didn’t have enough crit mit, you couldn’t do the encounters — period. All these adornments and spells did is bring you up to a threshold. If you were past that threshold, it does nothing for you.

Now, [while] these adornments and spells actually do increase your survivability at all times – equating the amount of crit mit lost to an equivalent form of HP doesn’t really work out, because any amount of HP is infinitely better than a threshold stat with no use. If you were slotting your adornments for survivability before, you are still slotting them for survivability with HP – the only change is the adornments have been made more powerful in their actual effectiveness with crit mit out of the picture.

This change equates to a free survivability gain across the board, and we need to be very careful with numbers at first to ensure things do not get drastically easier. Changing the difficulty of content is not the goal here – changing the accessibility of content is.

A point which has been made by several raiders on the official forums as well as Flames is that the top end guilds already have more than enough Crit Mit on all their characters to meet the requirements of the zones they’re doing. These changes only affect up-and-coming guilds which are trying to do harder content, but can’t because they haven’t spent months farming obsolete gear whose only saving grace is Crit Mitt.

An oft-seen comment is “The EQ2 team will just replace needing 290 Crit Mit with needing 100k health to survive.” Omougi has a great response to this:

A few more HP is possibly the difference between an AE one-shotting and being survivable. We really don’t want guilds to “force” their members into slotting for survivability if they are trying to push progression. If the HP difference on the adornments was significantly higher, people would feel the need to stack up on HP adorns, similar to how they feel the need to stack up on crit mit adorns now.

We are trying to make customizing your gear with adornments a viable option while progressing through content. If we make an adornment choice too powerful, then there really isn’t much choice there…especially if what you are “forced” into adorning isn’t what your class is about. Many mages and scouts would really prefer to slot more adornments to increase their DPS, but they are forced into critmit adorns in order to not hinder their guild’s chance of progress. We really don’t want to replace crit mit adorns with hp adorns and have essentially the same problem.

and some great news about the relatively limited choice of adornments we have now:

Now, our available choices need some work, specifically with mage options. We are trying to alleviate the problem by allowing more adornments to go in more slots (critbonus, potency, etc), so that scouts do not get more benefit from this change than mages. Adding more adornment choices in the future is definitely something we want to do.

Just to clarify some confusion.

• Crit mit as a mechanic is being removed.
• NPC crit bonus was countered by crit mit and we are reducing crit bonus to 0 across the board.
• Critical avoidance is staying around. Critical avoidance is an NPCs way of contesting your chance to critically hit them.
• Replacing the adornments with HP is not to compensate for anything. Since the critical mitgiation stat is no longer useful we are converting to a stat that benefits all players.
• The goal is for this change to not change the difficulty of the encounters. This is why we ask that you all take some time to log on to test once we push it there. We plan on having this on test by the weekend.

Note: NPC crit bonus may be used in the future on a case by case bases and will be considered in the balance of the encounter so that crit mit is not required.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to PM me.

In what may go down as the best decision in EQ2 history, or a total overreaction to a problem that could have been solved with a 15-20% reduction across the board, Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has announced that in the very near future, the Critical Mitigation stat will be COMPLETELY GOING AWAY.

First introduced in The Shadow Odyssey, greatly expanded in Sentinel’s Fate, and then becoming the most important stat within Destiny of Velious as an alternative form of progression to raising the level cap (which is technologically challenging), here’s the announcement of this revelation from the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve listened to all of your conversations since Critical Mitigation was originally introduced. The dev team has extensively debated about it internally. (Very extensively.) But ultimately, we decided that the right move for EQII is to remove Critical Mitigation entirely from the game.

Critical Mitigation initially seemed to do what it was designed for, but it has always suffered from a complete lack of intuitiveness for players, and it’s not a forward-extensible system. Ultimately, it doesn’t add any fun factor to the game.
So we’ve decided that a complete removal of it is by far the best solution for all concerned.

Here are the details:

• Critical Mitigation (the stat) has been removed from the game.
• Critical Mitigation no longer displays on the Character pane (for obvious reasons, since it’s no longer in the game).
• NPCs no longer use Critical Bonus to add to critical damage.
• Buffs and debuffs that have Critical Mitigation elements to them will have those elements replaced with other elements instead, so that those buffs/debuffs do not lose effectiveness.
• Critical Mitigation values on adornments will be replaced with hit point values instead.

This change will be coming to Test soon and then to the regular servers soon thereafter.

NOTE: This change has no effect on PvP game play. The “PvP Critical Mitigation” stat is still useful for game balance in PvP play and is not being changed.

Trust me when I say that I checked the calendar more than once when reading this announcement. The only proximate holiday is represented above.

What Do You Think?

• So do you think this is a good move?
• A total overreaction?
• How is SOE going to provide progression without raising the level cap?
• Is there any reason to run Heroic content anymore (outside of Drunder) now that armor is essentially free and shards are no longer needed for Critical Mitigation adornments?

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where some characters wouldn’t show on character select.

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Tower of Frozen Shadow (Raid)

• Tserrina’s spell “Wing Buffet” should no longer cause priests to become knocked back.

• Adds spawned from shadow doors should no longer spawn quite as quickly.

• The number of adds that spawn from shadow doors has been slightly reduced.

Tower of Frozen Shadow: Umbral Halls

• Demanti Sheda should no longer have issues resetting his encounter.

• Demanti Sheda’s spell “Paralyzing Fear” should now stun instead of fearing and has been reduced in duration.

Elements of War [Challenge]

• Terrinon Bloodclaw now has less strikethrough ability.

Tower of Tactics

• Lady V’uul will no longer spawn archers once defeated.

Vallon’s Tower [Challenge]

• Ambassador Grindstone’s Council Judgment proc now only lasts half as long and is no longer a curse.

• During the Hand of Vallon/Golem fight the golems should no longer get out of color synch or double cast any spells.

• During the final Vallon Zek fight – Fighters no longer destroy domes if they enter with the wrong color.  Only non-fighters destroy domes in this way.  You have more time to react before the domes spawn to get out of the way, and after the domes spawn to get in the proper color dome.  Tactical Toll no longer snares players.

Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge]

• Tyrax Terrolus will no longer curse the main tank with Tyrax’s Edict.

Kael Drakkel contested

• Boss mobs will now cast curses less frequently.

Stonebrunt Highlands

• Ghazi the Conqueror should no longer retreat from battle with mercenaries.

DUNGEON MAKER

• All Dungeon Maker avatars should now be the same tier.

ITEMS

• The elemental disc mounts from the 8th year veteran rewards should now be able to be used by 85th level tradeskillers.

• Yellow adornments on the Ry’Gorr, Thurgadin, and Snowfang merchants should now offer options for beastlords.

• Fertilizer treasure should once again be able to be sold on the broker.

• The AOE radius on Tradeskill Apprentice priest 2hander procs has been reduced from 25m to 5m.

• Added beastlord items to loot tables for [Echoes of War].

• Increased crit chance on [Echoes of War] 2 handed weapons.

QUESTS

Beastlord Epic

• There are no longer two axiom within the Great Divide that share the same name.

Come take another look at Dungeon Maker, one of the awesome new features in EverQuest II’s Age of Discovery Expansion. Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director of Global Community Relations), a huge fan of Dungeon Maker, will interview Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (Lead Designer). They will chat about Extra Dungeon Mark Days, tips on how to spend your rewards, and information on our Test Server initiative that allows you to play your characters in Dungeon Maker. We may even give you a sneak peek at a new dungeon that is in the works.

Join us on Thursday, January 19^th, 2012, at 4:00 p.m. US Pacific Time* on Twitch TV! The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes.

Time Zone Conversions

• PST: January 19 @ 4:00pm
• EST: January 19 @ 7:00pm
• GMT: January 20 @ 0:00
• CET: January 20 @ 1:00

Meanwhile, there are a few tweaks coming to the difficulty of Drunder Raid Zones. These changes are currently on Test will likely go live next Tuesday.

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Vallon’s Tower x4 (Tower of Tactics) [Challenge]

• Ambassador Grindstone will no longer reapply his Unbridled Fury of the Elements buff as soon as he has dispelled player debuffs, he waits a few seconds.

• Ambassador Grindstone no longer casts Crystalline Torrent Spell.

• Vallonite Sentinels no longer memwipe when they cast Sentinel’s Touch.

• Vallonite Sentinels no longer taunt lock players during the fight.

Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge]

• During the Tallon Zek fight Deathbringer’s Touch is now cureable as a curse.

• Tallon Zek will warn players as he teleports and will not fire his arrow volley until 10 seconds after he changes his location.

• Fighters will not take as harsh a punishment if they turn their back on Tallon Zek as he is firing arrows.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Extra Dungeon Mark Days are here from 17 January until 30 January! Dungeon Maker dungeon players and creators will receive 25% MORE tokens during this time period. To create and see listings of available dungeons, select Dungeon Maker from your EQ2 Menu button in game. Visit the Dungeon Maker category in the Marketplace to spend your tokens on items to equip your play character, as well as items to enjoy and build more dungeons.  Prepare to get your dungeoneering on!

GENERAL

• Fixed a UI bug on the mini-map window.

• Fixed a bug where if you had a single target maintained spell on a group member and logged out that the spell would still be there when you logged back in.

• Fixed an issue that prevented respec cards from working with beastlords.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

Elements of War

• Decorin Bonewing should now drop treasure each time he is killed in both the normal and the challenge versions.

Befallen: Halls of the Forsaken

• Sir Loros Highgarden should no longer cast his flawless charge relentlessly.

Tower of Tactics [Challenge]

• Ambassador Grindstone will not cast bullseye on anyone with Council Judgment, nor will he cast Council Judgment on any player who has Bullseye.

MERCENARIES

• Fixed a bug where maintained spells on mercenaries would drop when zoning.

• Fixed a display issue with mercenary salaries when mentored.

• Raid leaders with a mercenary should now be able to properly add/remove players from their raid groups.

TRADESKILL APPRENTICES

• Tradeskill Apprentice priest belts now have a proc.

• The additional heal amount provided by Tradeskill Apprentice priest food now affects wards as well as heals.

ITEMS

• Gnomish Safety Hat can now be equipped by beastlords.

QUESTS

The City of Freeport

• Maldreya Darkheart’s conversation with Xolantan should no longer give players an examine box instead of a dialog node on rare occasions.

• The quest description for “Qeynos Bounty: Yewon Martrcle” should reflect Yewon’s new location in the Gorowyn Chancery.

• It should no longer be possible to accidentally kill the conspiring citizens while working on the Freeport human racial quest, “Purification.”

• The corpses that show up before the sewer entrance for “To Make or Unmake” quest in West Freeport should now disappear once the quest is completed.

• The quest “On a Boat” should now award items appropriate for the level of the character that completes the quest. If you have already completed this quest the rewards should be available on the armor and weapon upgrade merchant within Freeport.

Moors of Ykesha

• The Quest “Swabber the Deck – Stock the Loft” will once again grant the Deckhand Labor Boots as a reward.

Great Divide

• For the quest “It’s a Trap!” you can now re-arm the traps for the eastern and western fronts in any order.

Antonica

• For the Shining Metallic Robes heritage quest line, the time breach portal and cog in Antonica should no longer be visible after the portal has been destroyed.

Betrayal

• The Old “Switcheroo,” Party Crasher, Extracting the Defector, and The Captain’s Ring betrayal quests should again update properly.

In a stream of responses to two threads discussing Mercenaries, Gninja answered several questions and provided useful information about the current and next waves of mercenaries. With a recent update, the number of mercenaries has increased to twenty (20) and mercenaries are now avilable in all 6 cities. Although they lack some of the innovative features and options of EverQuest Mercenaries, they are still one of the more popular features of the recently released Age of Discovery features expansion.

Mercenaries New & Old

Let’s take a look at the list of Mercenaries by class. This was posted by Slayacissa of Permafrost:

• Qeynos Harbor – wizard, paladin, troubador, swashbuckler, templar, monk

• Freeport – warlock, assassin, brigand, dirge, inquisitor, guardian

• Neriak (near DLW) – shadowknight, necromancer

• Gorowyn (near crafting) – Berserker, Defiler

• Kelethin (Jysolin Pub) – ranger, warden

• Halas (Coldwind Hall) – conjuror, mystic

That leaves just Beastlord, Bruiser, Fury, Coercer, and Illusionist with no mercenary.

After the jump, we talk about Mercenary Confidence, the “In Over Their Head” debuff, mercenary types, and where you can post your feedback on getting different types of mercenaries added.

Merc Confidence: “In Over Their Head”

One of the most talked about limits placed on non-fighter Mercenaries in EQ2 is the “In Over Their Head” mechanic.  Mercenaries will fight for you, but the pay isn’t necessarily worth dying for! If too many (or too powerful) enemies are wailing on your hired merc, they will cower in the corner and lose much effectiveness until the situation changes.

According to Gninja:

[Confidence] is a threshold value they have. Tank mercs can take on close to epic encounters(x4) but not quite so if the total number of creatures being fought equals up to that number with higher tier creatures costing more points then they will cower.

Tank mercs have much higher threshold than other mercs, and the [Shadowknight] merc has the same confidence as the other tank mercs.

[Mercs] should only get in over their head when creatures are targetting them. If they are getting in over their head with nothing targetting them it is a bug but I have yet to see that happen when I use them.

This came up in the context of the Forgotten Pools where Stamper, the inquisitor mercenary, stopped helping on the first named that drops noxious “goo” which players must avoid.

Ah that makes sense actually… The piles of goo that named summons are creatures casting spells so they were likely targetting him and there was nothing you could do about it. I will take a look at that situation and see if I can fix that.

Players have noted that mercenaries under this effect seem to stop all other actions and just stand there cowering. According to Gninja, they don’t stop fighting, healing, or curing, but instead their effectiveness is reduced:

Just because they cower does not mean they stop doing everything it just lowers their effectiveness.

The largest thing [In Over Their Head] affects is potency. Cures would not be affected by the “In over their head” debuff they gain when they hit their confidence threshold.

Gninja opened up the idea of adding other types of mercs that focus on certain tasks or roles in a group:

If there are certain roles you want a merc to fill and that doesn’t mean “Can do everything better than all other mercs” then I can take a look at adding new mercs in the future.

Player Response

Not everyone is impressed with the Mercenary AI. kahonen had this comment:

If mercs are meant to be like players (hence taking a split of the plat from mobs + chests) then why on earth are they cowering in the first place? When a pull goes bad our real tank players dont sit at home cowering in front of their keyboards do they? No, they knuckle down and try to make the best of it and end up with those “omg how did we survive that?” or “Wow that was rough but we got a couple of them at least!” moments. It seems its a “feature” for the sake of a feature that serves no real purpose.

LuckyPSD had a similar response:

Mercs are a waste of time and money as they are currently implemented.  Clearly, someone, somewhere has forgotten that the “I” in “AI” stands for INTELLIGENCE.  Think about it for a second:  if a healer merc realised we had a problem would he simply stand and watch me die while he did nothing?  Of course not!  If there are only 2 of us there, I’d suggest the fact that if I die, he’s gonna be next would play a large part in his reasoning

A few Frequently Asked Questions

When asked about Mercenaries using Area of Effect (AoE) attacks which tend to attract the attention of nearby enemies, Gninja had this response:

None of the mercs should have blue AEs at all. They were all changed into encounter AEs.

Even though mercenaries are now spread out to all 6 cities (excluding Maj’dul), remember you only have to track them down in their home city once. Thereafter, they will make an appearance in your home city when needed. From Gninja:

If you hire them from say Kelethin the next time you need to hire them you can go to Qeynos and they will be there. You only have to hire them the first time from their original city. I know its not quite as convenient as in a house or guildhall but at least they end up being centrally located.

Some players had drawn rather conspiratorial conclusions about how EQ2’s developers view wardens from the fact that the Warden mercenary heals from range and does not use any melee attacks. Gninja sought to debunk that:

In regards to the Warden merc being ranged vs. up close and personal: It is emulating a warden with no AAs and is meant to be a pure healer that doesn’t intentionally put itself in harms way and take ripostes etc. It is strictly a survivability mercenary. It has nothing to do with how players can play that class if they so choose.

Further:

The warden merc can cure but it has full priority given to healing over curing so they will likely only cure if your health is at a reasonable level or their heal spells are in refresh.

The warden mercenary is a ranged healer. She will not try to stand toe to toe and do any sort of damage. I have heard rumblings about her not healing if told to attack things but I havent been able to reproduce it thus far. But you can try to set her to assist none and that might help for the time being.

On the subject of mercs pulling agro or attacking too soon, Gninja had advice for fighters who have summoned mercenaries:

Using the assist drop down means he will attack what you attack so if you throw an arrow at something to pull it they will engage as well. I would suggest if you are the tank using a merc you should set them to follow another group member and assist someone else in group that way they dont engage till that person does and you are free to pull at will.

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where you would have to recast buffs on group members every time you zone.

• Fixed random lighting bugs on characters and environments.

• Players will now receive achievement credit for earning hall of fame status if they are offline when awards are processed.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Sense of Urgency: Debone Bonewing should correctly update when defeating the zone boss in under 30 minutes from zone in.

DUNGEON MAKER

• Dungeon Maker creatures will no longer temporarily reappear when defeated while under the effect of a tier-adjusting object.

• Dungeon Maker adventurers should now show up in the Marketplace preview tab.

• Fixed a UI bug with the Dungeon Maker create window.

BEASTLORDS

• Fixed an issue that allowed “a drakonine guardian” to be tameable.

MERCENARIES

• Ten new mercenaries can be found within the major cities of Norrath. This includes Freeport, Qeynos, Neriak, Gorowyn, New Halas, and Kelethin!

• Gaeri Tallspire (Warlock) and Firus Scorchtouch (Wizard) have returned to their normal hang out and can once again be hired! They have been rebalanced a bit to do less spike damage but in some cases might do more DPS on sustained battles! Gaeri is now more encounter based where as Firus is more single target based damage.

• Stamper (Inquisitor Merc) should no longer be invisible to players who have not hired him.

• Bdorn (Templar Merc) should no longer be invisible to players who have not hired him.

• All mercenaries should now have the correct amount of magical mitigation.

PVP GENERAL

• Beastlords should now be able to purchase gear from the Scions of War.

TRADESKILL APPRENTICES

• Tradeskill Apprentice food and drink no longer require reactants.

• Provisoners can now have their Tradeskill Apprentice research belt recipes.

• The recipes required for the daily Tradeskill Apprentice tasks no longer delete themselves from your recipe book.

• Tradeskill Apprentice scout bows should now use arrows as ammo.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

Tower of Tactics [Challenge]

• Ambassador grindstones Geonid Warriors will not spawn as frequently, have less health, and have less members per wave.

Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge]

• During the Tallon Zek fight the sparkfiend will not cast sparked as often.  Combustible Combination Curse (caused by spark interaction with greater avazek Concussive Winds) now lasts 7 secs instead of 24 secs.

QUESTS

The City of Freeport

• Atraxus Bhotlis, the titular target of the quest “Qeynos Bounty: Atraxas Bhotlis,” has moved to the Seafarer’s Roost.

• Adrianna has now agreed to complete the “Descent into Madness” quest for those who have already finished “Searching the Sewers for the Strix.”

• For the quest “Killing All the Birds,” it should now be more obvious if you’re on the Strix cultists’ hit list.  (Check your buff window!)

• An appearance-only Cultist’s White Cowl is now a reward for completing “Killing All the Birds.”  If you’ve already completed the quest, you can purchase the cowl from Viducius Festus in the Harbor Exchange.

• For the quest “To Make or Unmake,” it’s no longer necessary to target Lerenth to use the clickable items on him.

ITEMS

• The Ancient Diakan Grindstone and Grim Ring of the Ruthless should once again be able to be used by both fighters and scouts.

• Beastlords can now wear Roger Goldie’s Straw Hat and the Unseen Hand rewards from the Dark Mail Gauntlets quest line.

• Priestly Wand of Focused Power should now have a red adornment slot.

• Wand of Crystallized Shadows should now have a red adornment slot.

GENERAL

• Fixed an issue where the client could get stuck trying to load a character into Mok Rent.

PLAYER HOUSING

• The City of Freeport: The Magical Academy housing portal should no longer vanish after being placed in a house.

• Fixed a bug where loading a layout of an invalid file could cause the house zone to crash.

DUNGEON MAKER

• Mystic Guardian avatar for Dungeon Maker has had the zombie scare attack changed.

• Fixed an issue with Dungeons being put into the Housing hall of fame.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

The City of Freeport

• There is now only a single patrolling wraithguard within the passage way of the Overlord’s Plaza. The static wraithguards that were blocking the entry way from North, East, West Freeport have been removed.

Throne of Storms: Hall of Legends [Both Challenge and Normal]

• Legatus Prime Mikill should wait longer before unleashing his Killing Blow if he is stationary.

Elements of War [Challenge]

• Terrinon Bloodclaw has had his flurry chance removed. Health and damage has been slightly adjusted and adds should come a little less frequently.

Thundering Steppes

• Griffin flight between docks and the rest of the griffin tower stations should be working properly now.

LIVE EVENTS

Goddess Risen

• Love’s Golden Defense and the Bow of the Loving Huntress are now heirloom.

QUESTS

The City of Freeport

• It should no longer be possible to get the quest “Arcane Science Versus Dark Faith” if you are below level 40.

• The Shadow Odyssey quest “Chapter 4: History Repeating” will once again update properly when breaking into Nasin Manor.

• On a Boat: The zone ‘The Salty Lass II’ should properly instance now.

Steamfont

• Caustic Action now requires fewer updates, and Mazkeen witch doctors are easier to find.

Qeynos

• Good-aligned Beastlords can now speak to Ian Cathlan in Qeynos Harbor to begin their level 20 class armor quest line.

• As Ian Cathlan in Qeynos Harbor is now offering level 20 armor quests to beastlords, Selwyn Oakheart in South Qeynos will not.  Oh Selwyn, beastlords are a scout class!

Beastlord Epic

• The Path to Understanding: Dagoranon, Deep Protector’s frontal, Breath of Frost should now be much less punishing and allow 6 seconds to be cured.  Mercenaries are no longer immune to Breath of Frost.

ITEMS

• Pouch of Flaying Stars should now offer agility along with its other stats.

• Toxic Bow of Execution should now consume arrows instead of throwing ammo.

• Drammind’s Bat Whistle, Mystic Armwraps, Tiara of Thorn, Vigorus Darkpaw Tailisman, Chained Pants of the Fearless, Intrepid Chestguard, and Fearless Boots should now be able to be used by beastlords.

• Shoulder slot items from dungeon maker should now be correctly restricted to the appropriate classes that can use the armor type of the item.