Feldon 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.
Before we begin…
Fighter heals — fighters are supposed to require healers not be able to solo everything. Paladin heal crit for example.
Ranger improvements as far as bow mechanics and weapon abilities.
Q&A
Q: Necro vs Conjy dps
A: we can look into it
Q: paladins are a hybrid class of fighter/healer so it’s off balance to cut off heal crit for tanks.
A: heal crit affects different classes differently. Potency should be enough to make up the difference.
Q: dumb fire pets dying too fast. You said you’d fix this last year. Spirit shrine vs Oberon.
A: I wasn’t here last here.(laughter) we want to look at this.
Q: guardians do I go dps or survivability?
A: aa gives you the choice. Look at guardian fixes 2-3 weeks after gu57.
Q: zero range on ranger mythical.
A: (much discussion) for zero range the goal is rangers to be able fight at range instead of 5m. We will look at hit boxes.
Q: three sages, some of our healer/other pets are tagged as fighter class, which triggers a stun.
A: I can talk to Roger about checking if they are pets.
Q: ranger bow. Lower recast speeds. Hawk attack finding some use other than fun spell?
A: bow mechanics and bow item changes hopefully with guard changes. Then we will reevaluate.
Q: Mitigation calculations. ——
A: We will look into it.
Q: Can amazing reflexes be permanent or increased in duration?
A: This would be overpowered.
Someone saying Druids are not powerful enough in raids.
(audience heckling)
Crabbok: bruisers group utility. Can we hear something about the class definitions?
Rothger: there is not a redesign of classes coming. Just a clarification of what our design and view of classes are. We will talk about bruisers.
Q: coercer. Possess essence can lead to up to 10% of our dps. Can we make a possessed essence of a group member?
A: we can talk about it.
Q: 100% crit and 100% da bugs not yielding 100%.
A: it’s a bug. We will look into it.
Rothgar: does it con to level?
A: it is not supposed to.
Q: I have an inquisitor with 105% but only getting 70% in ACT.
Rothgar: clearly a bug in ACT (laughter) we will look at it.
Q: sorcerer detaunt is doing -600,000 hate.
A: it’s a bug.
Q: Sanctuary not giving full immunity.
(audience: it’s 99%)
A: we will look at it and test it
Q: Templar death intervention outside of group
A: we can look at it
Q: Mage group cure arcane?
A: no plans
Q: can you make illusionist pet to stop mezzing during raids?
A: can look into it
—–
Q: Why are zerkers so low on dps and survivability?
(huge audience outrage)
Q: I am in t3 gear and only auto attack for 5k
(audience: you suck!!)
Q: why conjurors have EB with no limitations compared to life burn
A: we can look at balance between conjy and necro.
Q: undead horde. No bodies left after you loot bodies.
A: you should get at least 3 from the AAs. We can look at leaving corpses up longer.
Q: cure curse is burned when casting even if recipient doesn’t need the cure
A: we will look at the possibility of making it like a resist. Also reducing number of cure curse required.
Q: possess essence stay up on death in the same zone?
A: we can look at it
Q: Why do bards have no blue AOEs especially as we use sound waves as a weapon.
A: we will write it down.
Q: possess essence doesn’t benefit from all pet gear. Necro spell control undeath not useful anymore. Requires mobs to charm. It randomly breaks too.
A: can look at coercer parses. And a content issue as far as no charmeable undead in raid zones.
Q: Druid charm animal.
A: can look at it.
Q: any plan to upgrade 50-60 unique spells like dps mod or sanctuary
A: no plan
Q: lot of jewelry has blue stats but no AGI.
A: there are 10 sets of gear. Look for the Dps scout gear or, if you can live without the AGI, Dps fighter gear.
Q: keep classes unique? (basically asking to undo the changes where rogues and summoners share the tasks of debuffing)
A: we strive to keep uniqueness of the classes.
Q: steadfast resolve should be 100% but it’s not.
A: could be a bug. Any specific mob or the ticks after the initial hit?
Q: it seems to be on subsequent ticks.
A: We can look at it.
Q: thank you for making warden protective grove tree smaller.
Q: triple attack? Quadruple attack? Aoe auto attack more than 4 mobs.
A: looking at stats that are capped. The stat system isn’t where we want it to be.
Q: can reactive be held back if it’s not needed?
Rothgar: we can look at it.
—–
Q: can healers cure arcane while stifled?
A: we can look at it.
Q: Druid AA serenity. Can’t cast it while stifled.
A: it’s a known bug.
Q: fusion at 5m
A: fusion is designed to be a risk (dangerous) to cast. Ice comet hits 1 mob. Fusion hits 3 mobs.
Q: smart loot
A: for velious we want to look more into smart loot. We have to maintain the balance to keep going back and doing content. We can’t do more of this in sentinels fate because some items aren’t tagged for class need.
Q: change melée combat arts for rangers to ranged?
A: we are having more discussion. Need some melée attacks at low levels.
Q: spells and combat arts delay auto attack. Possible change?
A: If we just allowed autoattack swings during spells and CAs it would require class nerfs. Some classes would benefit disproportionately if we allowed autoattack swings to keep going during the casting of CAs or spells.
A: Also, might add auto attack bar to ui.
Q: tso armor at 80 has 20% crit mitigation. Mostly just brawler pants are dropping so no luck upgrading. Is the crit mit on 80 gear scaling down at 90?
A: no it doesn’t scale so still 20% at 90.
Q: pets dying from AoE
A: can look at it
Q: bards and chanters are buff classes but some folks are already capped or we can’t really help people as much as we used to.
A: will look at stats and how they interact
Q: raiding illusionist here. Are we dps or utility?
A: even with the illusionist nerf to myth you should still be able to generate power. soothing mind proc doesn’t show up as credited for illy but is still useful for generating power
Q: paladin: can you throw us a consolation prize because of the nerfs?
A: we try not to nerf any more than is needed. So if we gave you something else to go with the changes, then you’d be OP again. Paladins should still be desirable even with potency, rather than heal crit, affecting heals.
Q: can we reward devs with stationcash?(chuckles)
A: talk to us after 😉
Q: thus is actually 5 questions. (ok, he got stopped at one, but it was a good one!)
Q: flurry for ranged attacks?
A: Yes.
END PANEL
What about Ranger improvements? o_o
Can you get a time frame on ranger fixes man?
Or get him to elaborate?
Also, lawl at Ranger camping the hell out of this panel’s liveblog.
Where else would we be? 😀
*hits refresh again, and again*
In with the ranger camping the class balance panel, mwa ha ha.
Is that it on Ranger issues? Getting us evened up with assassins on DPS does not make us equally desirable in view of the disparity on Utility. We will still have nothing to recommend us in the groups we need to DPS. Making Hawk work in a raid environment? Extensions of FA?
Also at least Guard are getting a taste and providing some feedback. Will we get no input or warning on what the actual changes are until they are implemented?
Oh I see Feldon! Crabbok asks a quesition and you mention him by name. *I* ask and I’m just another random guy. T_T My pride has been destroyed.
I kid, I kid! Great job on this. We cant make out the questions so you’re a life saver!
Well it’s not like he would recognize you Ferrel. It’s not like he knows you or has had dinner with you or anything like tha…. er…. wait…. Nevermind…. Kidding, kidding. 🙂 Keep up the awesome work Feldon!
First, thank you, Feldon, for bringing this to those of us that don’t go to fan faire. Second, Xelgad is a tool.
“We’ll look into it” God, I feel bad for the people who paid to go see these people blow smoke up their ass. If you can’t provide in depth interaction then don’t hold a damn conference.
Thanks as always, Feldon.
Ferrel crap sorry dude.
Sure would have liked to hear some actual details on Ranger fixes instead of “we’ll look into it”. I can’t say I expected anything more but still disappointing. I guess the potential for getting flurry on ranged is something but that would be a very minor upgrade by itself.
meh wish I could go to these things, crit bonus halved for wards never gets asked. 100 crit bonus from gear/buffs in raid on a cleric/druid becomes 50 crit bonus for a shammy because 7years ago someone wanted to make a 0.3 into a 0.15 crit bonus modifier for wards and wrote ward crit bonus divided by 2 instead of ward crit bonus minus 0.15
The Ranger fixes aren’t so much Ranger fixes as they are going to look at bow mechanics and I believe give things like flurry and ae auto to bows before looking directly at rangers.
In one of the panels they also mentioned (no specifics) improvements to bows and two-handers.
EQ2Wire has posted a complete video of the EQ2 Mechanics and Class Balance panel on Youtube.
https://eq2wire.com/2010/08/12/video-everquest-ii-mechanics-panel-from-fan-faire/