News Rollup for March 14-20, 2010

The previous Thursday and Tuesday hotfixes have brought some itemization changes, specifically with the increase in the number of items holding Red Adornment slots, the introduction of Yellow Adornments for heroic gear, and the addition of Resists to Legendary and Fabled gear (previously, players were expected to run around with 2-3 pieces of Mastercrafted jewelry).

Now, we are starting to see the second prong of these changes, intended to fix the itemization mess that Sentinel’s Fate launched with. Frizznik brings us:

Thanks for your patience with us as we look at items, spells, and combat arts.  We are reading your concerns and are trying to make adjustments where we can.  This week we have been hard at work on raid item changes.  Those changes should happen in the next hotfix, so please don’t transmute those drops, you may want them after the changes hit.  After the changes next week, we are going to be looking at resistances on Legendary drops and some other things as well.

Please understand, we have a lot to think about.  The expansion, battlegrounds, and the golden path added a lot of content that we have to keep an eye on.  The content team did an excellent job with the golden path and if you haven’t tried it, you might want to talk to a chronomage or roll a new character to check it out.  Battlegrounds are a lot of fun too, even if you don’t like PVP combat you might want to give it a shot because the cooperative team play is a lot of fun.  I am not trying to make any excuses, but instead I am trying to say that there are only so many hours in the day.

Defense/Parry — Useless?

An interesting thread, which I’ve been following, on whether the +Defense and +Parry skills have any utility whatsoever.

Additional

• Frizznik and Xelgad are looking into the Crit Multiplier for Wards with regards to Shamans. They are currently falling behind Druids.
• Ward of Elements (T3) Armor may become available without the prerequisite of T2 Shard Armor. (link)

Yellow Adornments

A handful of Legendary items from level 80-83 received Yellow Adornment slots, however Yellow Adornments were all initially flagged level 84.  This has been remedied in the March 18th hotfix, as they are now level 80 adornments.

Flurry, Double Attack, and AE AutoAttack

When you Auto-attack with your mainhand weapon each of the following has their own independent chance firing off in addition to that mainhand attack (from EQ2 Forums):

• Flurry — results in 2 to 4 additional mainhand weapon swings. These swings do not proc additional procs.

• Double Attack — Auto-attack the target a second time, this can also proc (trigger) off an offhand weapon swing

• AE Auto Attack — Attacks up to 4 targets in front of the player, but cannot flurry or double attack

AE Auto-Attack is primarily an AA line that points can be spent in. Double Attack has a cap of 100% and now appears widely on gear of all kinds. Flurry is much rarer to find, and is mostly found in AA lines, but look for it on items.

Making Sense of Tier 2 & Tier 3 Raid Gear

Whether you are rewarded Tier 2 or Tier 3 raid gear is dependent upon which raid mob you are killing, and whether you are taking on the “easy” version of that mob, or the “hard mode” version of that mob. Hard mode mobs typically have more adds, more hitpoints, unique effects, stronger detrimentals, etc.

I have to tell you, even after reading this thread laid out by established raiders, I’m not clear on every single mob and Tier. 😉

Moonlight Enchantments

Don’t forget that Moonlight Enchantments start tonight!!

Itemization Puzzle Pt 2

We’re still working on part 2 of the Sentinel’s Fate Itemization Puzzle. SF Gear is still in a state of flux, and we now know that the “Tier 3” Sentinel’s Fate raid armor, which drops from the hardmode version of each mob are all being upgraded, loot tables adjusted, etc. so it’s hard to get an accurate picture of the gear at this point.

Development

Fyreflyte, itemization lead for EQ2, has been conspicuously absent from the EQ2 Forums in the last couple of weeks. Further, Xander, Frizznik, and timetravelling have all been stepping in to answer itemization-related questions. It is unclear what, if any conclusions can be drawn from this.

Meanwhile, a former EQ2 developer, Aeralik, has been posting some of his perspectives on how the Shadow Odyssey expansion played out behind-the-scenes. He still holds forth that he fought the good fight for the players against the Fighter Revamp and other sweeping, ill-considered changes. EQ2 team members I’ve spoken to on the condition of anonymity dispute this viewpoint.