Feldon That’s a lot of notes to read, so I will distill some of the key points.
Procs
If you read Bruce Ferguson’s parting comments, and you generate a good potion of your DPS from gear with effects like Goblin Bane, Void Bane, or Vampire Bane, or if you are an Assassin wearing Soul Lancer armor, you might want to read the relevant section again:
We’ve discovered that with the items that we released with The Shadow Odyssey, that proc additional damage, the amount of damage being caused has grown considerably, and we need to adjust it. So, in the next game update, we’re going to be adjusting to the way triggered procs on items work.
We’re removing critical damage from the item’s base proc.
Procs can no longer be modified, with a few notable exception.
Generic bonuses will no longer apply to triggered damage generated from items
Predators will see a change to Toxic Expertise. We are refocusing affected combat arts back to improved poison damage, rather than spell crit damage. Spell Crit is going away as a benefit to Rangers and Assassins.
and the relevant lines from the Test Update notes:
Item based triggered effects can no longer critical or have their damage components modified unless done directly through something like an achievement or set bonus.
We were told that Soul Lancer’s days of generating massive dps for Assassins would come to a close, and this confirms it.
Of course GU52 also brings 2 new dungeons including Charasis 3 and Kurn’s Tower, 80 new quests, an overall improvement in Achievement Experience earned, Research Assistants, Player-made Books, etc. but I wanted to highlight these points.
I’ve made my points on Research Assistants elsewhere. I do believe it will kill the market for Masters if every month, everyone can get one for free without any questing or effort. I think other measures such as producing T8 upgrades for all non-upgraded spells would have been a great idea. Also adding more mobs that have these rare masters on their loot tables would have worked. Hailing an NPC twice 30 days apart and rewarding people for NOT playing the game seems very odd to me. But we shall see…
I really do encourage everyone to head over to the Test Server and try out GU52, check out the Test Server FAQ.
I have a few comments
procs:
This was a necessary change. It is really going to hurt my raidwide dps, but I think it was necessary for long term balancing purposes. However, after this goes live, it is going to close the gap between tank dps and mage/scout dps even more. Sure, tanks have procs, but nothing compared to dps classes, so it is just going to show even more how imbalanced tanks are. I bet a lot of dps classes are going to be calling for tank nerfs after this goes live.
Research Assistants:
I agree that it is going to hurt the market for masters. However, I am glad that they removed the ability to upgrade from Adept 1 to Adept 3 (or whatever the new names are) so the tradeskill market is still alive. It would be nice, but it should be 3 months for a master, not 1.
New Zones and Quests:
Apparently, the new quests are a lead-in to the expansion coming this November, so it will be curious to see what kind of theories are spun from people doing these quests. Let’s just hope it isn’t the void again.
People spend the majority of plat on three things: Buying looting rights, masters, and collection items for AA. With the combat AA xp gain (which I love), people will no longer need to dump plat for AA. With research assistants, buying masters will go down immensely. So that leaves looting rights. Something that the devs didn’t even intend to happen. So what DID they intend us to spend plat on? SOE needs to make more Attunable gear drops from raids. They are getting sold anyway, so it won’t hurt anything.
I realize that itemization is a mess and things have to be done to fix it.
But currently in EQ2 (particularly outside of raids) the average mage class can not compete with the average scout class in dps. I can see this pretty clearly watching people shelve their mages for scouts in frustration. It will become even worse after GU52.
Why? Freebie autoattack damage.
This proc change is a nerf to 90-100% of mage damage (10% if the mage melees) and a nerf to only 40-50% of a melee classes damage. The 40-50% autoattack damage that melee classes achieve is untouched.
What really needs to be done to level out the dps in the game, aside from the proc change, is to remove melee crit from autoattack and compensate by making CAs do more damage.