Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Nirgon said:

I like Joppas take on being against armor dye.

It turns into people being "murdered out" (all black) or some intentional rainbow mess to be an eyesore.


Inb4 why do u care

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TheBeagle said:

I took a Waylay to the face yesterday trying to solo a rockgoblin or some shit. Can I use withdraw to avoid it or am I shit out of luck as a ranger?

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Flobee said:

Patch notes for this week pretty light. Hopefully people will start grouping again at least

Spoiler

• Increased the experience bonus for elite NPCs and added a scaling modifier to the elite NPC experience bonus based on the NPCs level.

NPC

• Bonespike can now be interrupted

Cleric

• Writ of Refreshing cooldown removed
• Bond of Protection fixed
• Divine Enfeeblement changed to level 20 in the codex
• Invigorate buff duration normalized to 45 minutes
• Conviction removed from GCD
• Inspire Allies removed from GCD

Dire Lord

• Dire Mark fixed
• Blood Draw adds provoking phantom stacks

Enchanter

• Chaotic Imbuement duration increased to 15 minutes

Monk

• Gate of Anger upkeep cost removed, block rating removed, tooltip updated to 200% threat (not 250%)
• Chi Shield moved to Utility bar
• Chi Shield no longer breaks early on DoT or climate effects

Ranger

• Ferocious Assault fixed a graph issue where two parts of the attack were overlapping

Rogue

• Shadow Clone buff icon should show correctly
• Explosive Decoy added to vendors
• Elixir of Opportunity added to vendors
• Toxic Elixir added to vendors
• Escape Artist cost reduced to 2 opportunity
• Flash Bomb should toggle off auto-attack properly
• Smoke Trick toggles auto attack off
• Shadow Step cooldown adjusted to 30 seconds

Summoner

• Shield of Spinning Blades damage increased
• Orbiting Swords damage increased

Items

• Added itemization for Monks to the Lost Orcs
• The Greenmyst Cloth Wristbands should now equip to the appropriate slot.
• All shields have been rebalanced to account for changes in the block formula that were introduced with EA. As a result, all shields should now be more effective equipment options.
• Note: Crafted Shields will undergo further tuning and changes in future updates.

Crafting Weaponsmithing/Armorsmithing

• The schematic for the Combatant's Heavy Knuckles should now properly accept its components.
• The schematic for the Arena Fighting Gloves should now properly accept its components.

Tailoring/Leatherworking

• The schematic for the Proficient's Robe should now properly accept its components.

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Mat'hir Uth Gan said:

Pretty much any damaging ability that was challenging. Mostly on group mobs in the "dungeons", but some overland mobs as well.

On group mobs (currently chevron mobs), the level 5 skeletons used to Bone Spike, which would kill your tank if he didn't shield against it. It now takes like 25-40% health and you can ignore shielding it. Disease Cloud on the caster version of those same skellies would AoE wipe the group if you didn't have someone silencing/interrupting or curing disease. Now, it's negligible damage and nobody cares if it is cast.

The level 8-10 Goblin Group mobs in the first "dungeon" (Goblin Caves outside Thronefast, which is a massive area) had pretty much every single ability tuned down drastically. The Geomancers used to be able to AoE wipe the group with their fire AoEs if you they weren't interrupted. It was a fairly long cast though. Now, they just do moderate damage, no need to try and interrupt. The Goblin Savages used to do a 6 second wind up ability that would wipe the group if it wasn't interrupted. The Goblin Ritualists (Shaman), would kill you in seconds with their poison DoT if you didn't have remove poison, and they could almost complete heal if you let them cast their HoT on themselves. Both of those have been dumbed down to where it's minor annoyances. You still want to interrupt the heal though as it extends fights. The warrior goblins, still in the cave, had an ability named Pressure Plate (which is still in the game), that basically was a casted damage reflect. This one ability made discord cry for months about how hard it was. Because if they got the cast off uninterrupted, it would reflect any DoTs currently on the mob as well as any damage taken for the next 10-15 seconds. You had to turn attack off if you didn't block the ability from going off. Wizards kept killing themselves in one shot, and Shaman were getting eaten up by their DoTs. The damage reflect was probably 100-200%. It's now like 5-10%. You just ignore it completely and keep fighting.


In the overland, the Lost Orc would drop a bomb on the ground that would explode and kill the entire group. You had to watch for it and simply drag the mob away. Very similar to the dwarves in Gnomeregan in WoW. That got removed.

The Bears would Maul. If you didn't shield the Maul, you would die from a crit. If the healer didn't have a heal dropping as the Maul hit, you'd die from the follow up attacks. It was easy if you paid attention. The Deers would "Buck", this was a massive melee haste for 10 seconds. You had to shield or heal through that or the tank would die. If you let them get the ability off. That particular ability may have been uninterruptable though. But it made you pay attention as a team. Both of those abilities have been removed/or made negligible.

I can't express enough how many people cried on the Discord about how the game was too hard. And it was shocking to see that some of the most hardcore players, at least in terms of time spent playing the game and leveling, were the loudest. It was sad. And Joppa continually kept dumbing down the game. And the saddest part was that a lot of the people/groups complaining weren't running a two healer comp. I always had a Shaman/Cleric combo in my group, we never had any problems. You just had to pay attention. And we always did the hardest content available. The groups that were geared for more DPS to level faster should have had a harder time with the more damaging content because they chose to forego the second healer to try and speed up leveling. The game was great, it was hard, it was rewarding in the sense that it actually rewarded the groups that paid attention and had high individual skill caps with their class mechanics.

Right now, all of that is gone and removed. Maybe it got pushed to higher levels. But the 1-20 game is insanely easy now. They have ONE ability left (Waylay) that requires you to actually shield/heal through it, and you're seeing people complain about that being too hard and it needs to come out. It's fucking embarrassing as a fellow gamer, who is an old fart, to watch people continually demand the easiest/simplest approach to leveling/obtaining rewards. And it's sad that Joppa listens as much as he does. The game is still good, it used to be better. At least in terms of combat. The rest of the game has come a long way and is definitely much better.

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Daidraco said:

Just to be "that" guy: I love that just in the last page, Bone Spike was mentioned as too hard, and then explained it was nerfed, and then within the following page in the patch notes - we find out that it was uninterruptable. /SipsTea But no seriously - Im all for abilities having some imagination, but none of the shit that was mentioned were imaginative enough to give a fuck about them nerfing the abilities. "Oh fuck. I accidentally hit my interrupt early. Guess I can just go afk now that I know Im going to die, regardless of what I do, during this fight." This is not good game design - this is some "no map" bullshit.

Some really good changes to Cleric, though. Hopefully those changes to Elite exp make it worth it for people to not fuck off to SP and EP's at late teens and forego grouping. But I'm just gonna have to depend on parsing streams to see how it all plays out for exp/hour. Basically sitting on my hands waiting for the pvp server so I dont burn tf out by then.

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Mat'hir Uth Gan said:

It's a physical attack, so you would just shield/parry/heal through it. Hard stuns could interrupt it, like the Paladin. Not sure what they did to it now. It was already pretty much something you could ignore. At one point in time, it was legitimately terrifying and if you missed a shield as the tank, you prayed it didn't crit and kill you outright.

Folks have varying opinions. The game appears to be doing well atm, so maybe I'm the outlier that enjoyed it being more difficult. And you're right, if you hit your shield too soon, which was kind of hard to do, but possible, you did often die. At least to crits. And if no crit, you just hoped your healer had the big heal coming as soon as Bone Spike landed. But, all that is long gone now. Waylay kind of fills that gap a bit. I hope they leave that in at least.

But I will push back a smidge and say at no point, at least on the Dire Lord, did I ever feel like I couldn't dictate and make a difference with my choices during a fight. They can shield spells and physical attacks though, along with several other options like Silence, Blood Fiend, and Life Tap, so maybe it was just that class that could handle difficulty well in all its forms. And all it required not to miss a shield was to simply pay attention. And I worry that a lot of people might want a game where they don't have to pay attention and can half-ass it while watching movies on the other monitor.

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yerm said:

Eq didn't have a ton of gimmicks where you needed to actively hold cooldowns so you could hit something or the tank/group dies. That was very much a wow thing. Calling it skill is pretty rough; ddr gameplay of just if x then press y is not talent. An eq mess where you try to cope by kiting, or weird splits, or creative agro bouncing... that shit was using skill. Even the supposed interrupt stuff, gate or ch casting mobs, you could also deal with proactively by draining mana or positioning so it doesnt hurt you or just a dps burn.

But eq did have one "save your ability and press it at the correct timing moment or else the tank dies" feature: complete heal chains! Man were clerics that were able to press their button correctly and not get distracted good at the game. A real skill check for sure.

There are a billion better ways to make a game fun besides timed gimmicks. Clicking a certain button whenever a light flashes is not skill.

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