Why were we so bad during live?

[koros]

It took a whole year for the AoW to legitimately die. Mallets, Soulfires, these things all all existed then, and guilds definitely knew how to use mechanics to their advantage. Why didn't any guilds just grab 4-5 level 50 giants, charm em, and chain CHs or Soulfires on em?

[Auvdar]

Because Furor was a dick.

[Bantam 1]

It took a whole year for the AoW to legitimately die. Mallets, Soulfires, these things all all existed then, and guilds definitely knew how to use mechanics to their advantage. Why didn't any guilds just grab 4-5 level 50 giants, charm em, and chain CHs or Soulfires on em?

Going to make fun of me... but my guild just got a bunch of warriors and a bunch of clerics.....

Took us about 5 warriors in before he died.

[Myth]

This would never work due to player hate mechanics. Charmed mobs could certainly add DPS, but as a viable tank the clerics, or players, healing the giants would get murdered. Correct me if I am wrong, but AoW is beast cause its unslowable, rampages, quads and flurries. You need solid tanks, a rampage tank, and a solid CH chain to sustain the duration of the fight. I faintly remember tanks having to swap in to rotate defensive stance as well (without it, the mana consumption and timing on CH chain was too intensive).

Running out of mana was commonplace during this fight and once that happens... Loading, please wait.

[Frieza_Prexus]

This would never work due to player hate mechanics. Charmed mobs could certainly add DPS, but as a viable tank the clerics, or players, healing the giants would get murdered. Correct me if I am wrong, but AoW is beast cause its unslowable, rampages, quads and flurries. You need solid tanks, a rampage tank, and a solid CH chain to sustain the duration of the fight. I faintly remember tanks having to swap in to rotate defensive stance as well (without it, the mana consumption and timing on CH chain was too intensive).

Running out of mana was commonplace during this fight and once that happens... Loading, please wait.

The Frozen Jesus/Moses kills were in an era where charmed pets ranked extremely high on the aggro list. With enough giants & aggro generating weapons, you could have charmed tanks with many thousands of HP generating sufficient aggro so that the clerics could easily keep them up.

[Atmas]

The percentage of people who were 60 was far lower. People hadn't farmed as much gear, the content prior hadn't been so dominated. They didn't know about all the strats or spawn chains. Etc...

[khanable]

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like guilds of yesteryears gave a shit about their reputation

LOL YOU FAGGOTS KILLED AOW WITH SOULFIRES AND CHARMED GIANTS WHAT A LOSER ZERG SHIT GUILD

-the EQ community

And to be honest I don't recall the rampant use of Soulfires and mallets in live.. maybe they were known but I certainly don't recall seeing any of them being used except for the rare instance I'd run into a Paladin with the Soulfire.

Fuck, I don't even remember seeing warriors with proc weapons all that much. I remember dual lammies being the standard. Maybe a CSS in the offhand.

Chalk it up to a bunch of ignorance perhaps.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

even frozen jesus could not kill the AoW

[Frieza_Prexus]

Also, we weren't nearly as organized as a playerbase. Consider Everlore and similar sites. They were so full of misinformation and rumor that it prevented the creation and use of certain strategies. Also, parsing and such had only just come into its infancy later in the game. True and powerful knowledge was a rare and jealously guarded thing back then. Now days people can't wait to update the wiki for the latest game as soon as they uncover something new.

[koros]

Every uber guild had only level 60 players at the start of Velious basically. Come partway through everyone was 60.

Aow quadded and flurried for iirc 1154 per hit, giving him a max damage of 1154 x 6 a round, definitely low enough for a charmed giant to survive a single max round.

Even if you used PC tanks, mallets would have made aggro transition easy, and a defensive warrior can always survive an AoW max round (also the odds of a max, no miss, + flurry round weren't very high).

Frozen moses/jesus were early Velious and used dictate to put out hella dps from what I understand (but I wasn't 100% on that), but FoH didn't manage to kill AoW with him before they got nerfed (but they got him quite low). LoS used charmed giants to tank while PCs were in range, for the month they switched pet aggro (summer 2001), and killed him.

Regardless, 5 charmed level 50 giants should put out a few hundred dps and should have been able to drop AoW after 10-15 minutes, even without melee in there. Just consistatly /assist AoW to switch targets on any given charm break.

[feanan]

I don't remember half the cheese dick "strats" that are used on this server to kill shit,
but...eh. Maybe EQ just seemed more magical back at that time.

[Loly Taa]

Because Furor was a dick.

back when I was in TMO on Live I used to chat with Furor in the FoH IRC channel and he was a pretty cool guy; wasn't afraid of anything.


Thing is, back in the day noone shared strats. I did however talk to a few people here and there and they were happy to share them- eventually all strats became public because with the advent of new expansions no one gave a fuck about older ones so they gave it all away.

If you knew how to use IRC though and knew how to bullshit with people, you'd get the strats fed to you with a silver spoon.

That was before they were all known.

And now? well, we all spilled it because it was no longer tactically advantageous.

[Reguiy]

I don't remember half the cheese dick "strats" that are used on this server to kill shit,
but...eh. Maybe EQ just seemed more magical back at that time.


They were around, but we were just all too noob to realize it.

[Hamahakki]

There are a number of reasons it took so long. While I do think he will be killed much faster on p99 than he was on live, the fight is really hard. AoW hits so hard that the fight can spiral out of control very easily. If a tank dies or loses agro, the raid can get killed VERY quickly. The fight is also really long, you are 4-5 seconds away from losing the fight the whole time, so keeping it stable long enough to drop him is very difficult. The fight is also long enough that you can run out of mana if DPS isn't high enough.

My guild had the world-first AoW kill in live; here are a handful of reasons why I think it took us so long:

- Players were worse than they are now. Part of that is because the game was less than 2 years old then, but now there are people who have been playing Everquest for 15 years. Also, the web was also much more limited back then. You couldn't look up a strat online; everything we tried was something we came up with and we failed a LOT.

- We weren't ready for raiding in Velious. When EQ first came out, there was a technical limitation that no mob could have more than 32000 HP. The game was tuned so that the toughest mobs in the game (Nagafen/Vox) had exactly 32k, and everything else had less. For Kunark, this didn't change. Mobs did much nastier things: Trakanon did a huge amount of damage, VS can lifesteal back his entire health bar, and later mobs like Gorenaire or Hoshkar were even harder, but they all had 32k HP. The strategy was to bring a critical mass of players and just blow them up. The guild composition was also very different than what you see on P99. The most popular caster class, by far, was Wizard, and we had a ton of them. Wizards were awesome in Kunark as they could take 5% health off of the toughest mobs in the game with one spell. All of this changed in Velious. They fixed the 32k HP limitation and all of a sudden there were mobs with over a million HP. Wizards and Druids now sucked and Rogues, which we had very few of, were the best raid DPS in the game. The adjustment to 20 minute fights took a long time for us to get used to, a lot of the casters (myself included) rerolled into melee characters.

- There was no VOIP. All of our raids were conducted through in-game chat. This was fine when most of the raid setup was about making sure everyone's buffs were good and the pull was good then throwing yourselves at the mob, but not for a fight like Avatar of War. We didn't use any cheese, we set up a CH rotation for clerics and one for the tanks so that he was always tanked with disciplines on. With this strategy you are 4-5 seconds away from losing the fight the whole time, and there is very little time to adjust if something goes wrong. He hits so hard that the fight can spiral out of control very easily. If a tank dies or loses agro, the raid can get killed VERY quickly. The fight is also very long, so keeping it stable long enough to drop him is very difficult.

- There was a huge lack of urgency for killing the tough Velious mobs. The early parts of the expansion were spent exploring, with only occasional guild events in Velious. We also spent a ton of time killing classic and Kunark targets, excited by how much the competition for them had thinned out. There was also a lot of indecision about what the guild goals were. After the faction system of Velious was discovered, we decided to align ourselves with the giants because the gear had slightly higher AC which the guild tanks thought would be a key to progression and because "we are a guild which kills dragons." I remember being pissed because I had spent some time getting Kline to be non-KoS in Skyshrine. For a while, we had a number of guild members permanently in Plane of Mischief trying to progress there as well. We also had a number of growing pains killing Velious raid targets as well, either getting our ass handed to us, or killing some very difficult targets which ended up not being mobs which drop useful loot. It was hard to drag people away from the Plane of Growth farmfest to get killed all night by mobs which may not even drop anything.

[Treats]

Avatar of War has the potential to do 1152 x 8 -- 9216 damage in one single round (and thats excluding two kicks and bashes or one kick and one bash -- Its around 9700 without defensive.

With Defensive I think his max hit is around 750 or something, I forgot how to do the calculation with DB/DI. 750 x 8 -- 6000 + kick and bash again (2).

Max damage of around 6400 with defensive on in ONE round. If you thought Bzzt in Plane of Sky was hard quadding, AoW makes the bee look like a chump. You have absolutely no chance of tanking him without Defensive or a similar disc. If your tank dies anytime where it is not preplanned for your clerics to switch your raidforce is fucked and you will die. Ideally you need three to four warriors who are decked out in NTOV shit and all of your melee DPS equipped with Primals.

Half the fight is keeping your tanks alive and actually performing a good transition to the next Warrior without a mishap. The other half is how many times you need to transition and making sure your clerics do not run out of mana. This depends mostly on your melee DPS. This could be as many as three to four if your raid force is not geared in the best velious shit.

I just don't understand how everyone here can think he will die so fast. This guy can drop an entire raid in 30 seconds. He will run your shit over and not look back.

[Durothil Skyreaver]

Avatar of War has the potential to do 1152 x 8 -- 9216 damage in one single round (and thats excluding two kicks and bashes or one kick and one bash -- Its around 9700 without defensive.

With Defensive I think his max hit is around 750 or something, I forgot how to do the calculation with DB/DI. 750 x 8 -- 6000 + kick and bash again (2).

Max damage of around 6400 with defensive on in ONE round. If you thought Bzzt in Plane of Sky was hard quadding, AoW makes the bee look like a chump. You have absolutely no chance of tanking him without Defensive or a similar disc. If your tank dies anytime where it is not preplanned for your clerics to switch your raidforce is fucked and you will die. Ideally you need three to four warriors who are decked out in NTOV shit and all of your melee DPS equipped with Primals.

Half the fight is keeping your tanks alive and actually performing a good transition to the next Warrior without a mishap. The other half is how many times you need to transition and making sure your clerics do not run out of mana. This depends mostly on your melee DPS. This could be as many as three to four if your raid force is not geared in the best velious shit.

I just don't understand how everyone here can think he will die so fast. This guy can drop an entire raid in 30 seconds. He will run your shit over and not look back.

Not to mention that it was Legacy of Steel AND Shock of Swords combining forces to take him down. I'll have to ask just how many were involved all together.

[Spitty]

Dialup was a significant problem.

By a year into Velious, I'd say a lot of people invested in a better connection if they were raiding alot.

Starting out, though - it's alot like what Kline said, people's connections weren't ready for 20 minute fights with 36+ people. Not to mention the hellish latency if another guild was racing for the spawn, or decided to bring their entire online force plus their bots and hang out in the arena.

I remember disconnecting and dialing until I got a decent connection before every raid, or bringing my entire tower PC over to a friend's spot, until they ran highspeed to our place.

[webrunner5]

Raids on here are a joke. They last about 3 minutes. I know that is the way it is in Kunark with the gear and knowledge we have here.. I was a Cleric in a big guild and man trying to chain heal for 20 minutes or more was some damn stressful crap I can tell you. Trying to time it right for that long of time was intense. Velious raids can pucker your butthole up. :eek: Indoor ones to me are the worse.

[Nyrod]

man, i need to find all my velious screenshots mmmm juuicy

[falkun]

Internet and computers were slower, broadband an i5's didn't exist, so there was less margin for error. As a bard, its pretty easy to see: keeping 4 songs up is easy on P99, but look through all the old bard websites on how "pro" it was to maintain 4 songs even keeping 3 up was considered "good". That's not a player limitation, that's a hardware limitation. That's just one reason.

[Layze]

Every uber guild had only level 60 players at the start of Velious basically. Come partway through everyone was 60.

Aow quadded and flurried for iirc 1154 per hit, giving him a max damage of 1154 x 6 a round, definitely low enough for a charmed giant to survive a single max round.

Even if you used PC tanks, mallets would have made aggro transition easy, and a defensive warrior can always survive an AoW max round (also the odds of a max, no miss, + flurry round weren't very high).

Frozen moses/jesus were early Velious and used dictate to put out hella dps from what I understand (but I wasn't 100% on that), but FoH didn't manage to kill AoW with him before they got nerfed (but they got him quite low). LoS used charmed giants to tank while PCs were in range, for the month they switched pet aggro (summer 2001), and killed him.

Regardless, 5 charmed level 50 giants should put out a few hundred dps and should have been able to drop AoW after 10-15 minutes, even without melee in there. Just consistatly /assist AoW to switch targets on any given charm break.


The problem was the giants would die even through CH chains. It took a while to find a charmable giant that could survive a whole fight and sustainably be CH'd through it. You have to rememberer the giants don't have disciplines like warrior do, so they drop quite quickly. Their AC is relatively terrible also so they take big hits constantly.

[Raavak]

Internet and computers were slower, broadband an i5's didn't exist, so there was less margin for error.Video cards. Raids of more than, say, 50 people were so laggy it was almost impossible to play. Now I've seen 100 people poopsocking Trak lair and stuff with no probs.

[xCry0x]

- There was a huge lack of urgency for killing the tough Velious mobs. The early parts of the expansion were spent exploring, with only occasional guild events in Velious. We also spent a ton of time killing classic and Kunark targets, excited by how much the competition for them had thinned out.

I think it is funny how true this was. I remember killing velk one time, "Hey velk is up, anyone want to kill him? sure.." Everyone walks over to velks lab, group up etc etc etc.

I think a lot of this had to do with the top guild(s) being tied up in ntov, sleepers, PoM (?) so a lot of the other shit was ignored.

I also think EQ was one of the if not the first really MMO raid type games where you had boss fights and strategy etc so a lot of it was all around new. You had lots of people who played MMOs for community, exploring, questing, role playing etc. Now you have a concentration of people who play mmo for loot farming primarily so you get a higher level of competition to control everything and kill shit first for bragging rights.

[Frieza_Prexus]

Video cards. Raids of more than, say, 50 people were so laggy it was almost impossible to play. Now I've seen 100 people poopsocking Trak lair and stuff with no probs.

I had to take my computer casing off and put a fan on my Voodoo 2 or it would freak.

[Lorraine]

I think a lot of this had to do with the top guild(s) being tied up in ntov, sleepers, PoM (?) so a lot of the other shit was ignored.



Shit wasn't 'ignored' , it was just priorities.
That, and noone ever had access to 5 chars 60lv and BiS geared. Your guild only allowed you to gear ONE main and in the majority of the time it was a PITA to even switch mains (unless it suited the needs of said guild at that time).

[Nirgon]

I think resists/melee damage/damage done etc all can use a review after we get the Velious content done.

Also, given the 4 years or so this project has been going, you're abouts year or so (less) into Luclin and farming only Kunark.

Trust me, I'm all for fixing invis pulling (it has other extremely important related mechanics, and gj Kanras) etc before Velious but some things I think require more research than development and can wait.

There's "more classic" with "quick" fixes, then there's the iron clad perfect formula. Some things need to get closer to classic that are in disarray, while others can be marked for perfect fine tuning later.

[Nirgon]

You can also run up melees and hit full mitigation disciplines (dodge/weapon shield) and then run them out when they fade to give breaks in the giants getting pounded

Many Velious raid targets are slowable too

[Lorraine]

Nirgon what are you arguing about?

If the community here decides that AoW has to die on day one, he WILL die on day one.
Just like the Sleeper did, when the community decided it was time to bite the dust.

The strat is flawless.
Enough people will be online (Velious release)
Enough cleric epics to res troops faster than AoW kills your entire raid.

The only thing that might prevent this, is massive zone desync due to the amount of people gathered.

[Ruenaros]

Fuck, I don't even remember seeing warriors with proc weapons all that much. I remember dual lammies being the standard. Maybe a CSS in the offhand.

I remember being shocked when I started on P99 at how ineffective fast, good ratio weapons were for holding agro. The regular ole white damage on live was giving way more threat for tanks than it does here... that's how they got away with it.

[Nirgon]

Nirgon what are you arguing about?

If the community here decides that AoW has to die on day one, he WILL die on day one.


I won't be up in arms on a kill, nor on the charm killing going on for months. I also expect early kills on all mobs in Velious, notably, because VP gear, epics and haste (especially 41% sky haste) are so prolific here.

My argument is only that when Velious has been finished content wise, we should revisit things like aggro generation on pull (max aggro on a pull given an ability/spell), aggro generated by melee weapons, spells, pets and of course damage done and received.

The formula here feels live-like, so I think it should stay as is until other more important things are completed.

I'm just saying, it needs a look after all is said and done.

Client stability here is literally 10 times better here than the old client. We'd engage Yelinak on live with 65 players and have 10-12 clients immediately shit the bed.

[WizardEQ]

I had to take my computer casing off and put a fan on my Voodoo 2 or it would freak.

One word: Dial-up!

You were hardcore if you remember that shit.

[Spitty]

One word: Dial-up!

You were hardcore if you remember that shit.

Page two, brah. I had a hot-rodded Modem Blaster with the speaker disabled. Made 33.6 on a good day. l33t.

[koros]

Avatar of War has the potential to do 1152 x 8 -- 9216 damage in one single round (and thats excluding two kicks and bashes or one kick and one bash -- Its around 9700 without defensive.

With Defensive I think his max hit is around 750 or something, I forgot how to do the calculation with DB/DI. 750 x 8 -- 6000 + kick and bash again (2).

Max damage of around 6400 with defensive on in ONE round. If you thought Bzzt in Plane of Sky was hard quadding, AoW makes the bee look like a chump. You have absolutely no chance of tanking him without Defensive or a similar disc. If your tank dies anytime where it is not preplanned for your clerics to switch your raidforce is fucked and you will die. Ideally you need three to four warriors who are decked out in NTOV shit and all of your melee DPS equipped with Primals.

Half the fight is keeping your tanks alive and actually performing a good transition to the next Warrior without a mishap. The other half is how many times you need to transition and making sure your clerics do not run out of mana. This depends mostly on your melee DPS. This could be as many as three to four if your raid force is not geared in the best velious shit.

I just don't understand how everyone here can think he will die so fast. This guy can drop an entire raid in 30 seconds. He will run your shit over and not look back.

Flurry added 2 hits, not 4.

[Lord Traxor]

Maybe it was harder cause some of us were 12 freaking years old at velious release.

[Treats]

Flurry added 2 hits, not 4.

It is a maximum of four extra attacks + kick/bash. I have no clue what determines the exact amount of extra attacks an NPC gets though. It seems to vary between two and four + kick/bash. See below.

[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist hits Raptorshadowz for 231 points of damage.
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist hits Raptorshadowz for 312 points of damage.
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] a lightning warrior staticfist executes a FLURRY of attacks on Raptorshadowz!
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist hits Raptorshadowz for 594 points of damage.
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist tries to hit Raptorshadowz, but Raptorshadowz parries!
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist bashes Raptorshadowz for 193 points of damage.
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist tries to hit Raptorshadowz, but misses!
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist tries to hit Raptorshadowz, but misses!
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist tries to hit Raptorshadowz, but Raptorshadowz dodges!
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist tries to hit Raptorshadowz, but Raptorshadowz parries!
[Thu Nov 11 22:52:38 2004] A lightning warrior staticfist tries to bash Raptorshadowz, but Raptorshadowz parries!

http://www.goberserker.com/modstorage/Grendo/Parses/11-11.txt

[koros]

I was always under the impression it was an extra round during live, but logs from the AoW that I viewed always showed it as 6 max. Definitely could be wrong tho.

Also Treats, do you have a spdat parser? I can't get those spdat.effs from Velious Nirgon posted to parse correctly on the early 2001 version of Eqcaster that I have.

[pasi]

Kinda drunk, but AoW has a DI of 45 and a DB of 254. With defensive, that gives a max hit of 704 which in combination with Divine Strength, Focus of Spirit, and Glades (300ish more HP)- the top Kunark warriors can survive a full round and flurry of max hits. Add a bit more HP and kicks are fine too. Not that even a naked level 1 would see rounds full-max hits + kicks.

[Gwence]

no one used midnight mallets on live because they never pulled anywhere near as much agro on live as they do here.

aow hardest boss until elemental planes PoP 2 expansions later, no other fight exists where a raid that performs flawlessly can still fail to win, except AoW.

its the 2nd hardest boss relative to era the game has ever seen, that's why it took so long for people to kill it.

[Champion_Standing]

People actually had to figure out how to do stuff during live =)

Also, when a top raid guild found a strat to take down a mob they weren't exactly eager to publish it and lose their recruitment edge.

[Widan]

http://www.goberserker.com/modstorage/Grendo/Parses/11-11.txt

this is from nov 2004, 6 expansions past velious, incase you didnt notice

[Arteker]

back when I was in TMO on Live I used to chat with Furor in the FoH IRC channel and he was a pretty cool guy; wasn't afraid of anything.


Thing is, back in the day noone shared strats. I did however talk to a few people here and there and they were happy to share them- eventually all strats became public because with the advent of new expansions no one gave a fuck about older ones so they gave it all away.

If you knew how to use IRC though and knew how to bullshit with people, you'd get the strats fed to you with a silver spoon.

That was before they were all known.

And now? well, we all spilled it because it was no longer tactically advantageous.
was afraid the shit of paladins for sure ,

[Kender]

was afraid the shit of paladins for sure ,

and monks which was why he lead the charge to have them nerfed

[Treats]

this is from nov 2004, 6 expansions past velious, incase you didnt notice

Flurry and Rampage where never changed for NPCs, fantastic post.

I was always under the impression it was an extra round during live, but logs from the AoW that I viewed always showed it as 6 max. Definitely could be wrong tho.

Also Treats, do you have a spdat parser? I can't get those spdat.effs from Velious Nirgon posted to parse correctly on the early 2001 version of Eqcaster that I have.

Newp, my EQCaster will not work with the Velious spdat from August 22, 2001.

Heres one from AoW in 2002, I hope this is ok for you Widan:

[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War was hit by non-melee for 79 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War hits YOU for 659 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War was hit by non-melee for 79 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War hits YOU for 929 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War executes a FLURRY of attacks on Jrel!
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War tries to hit YOU, but misses!
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War tries to hit YOU, but YOU dodge!
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War was hit by non-melee for 79 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War bashes YOU for 255 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War was hit by non-melee for 79 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War hits YOU for 344 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] Pain and suffering tries to strike YOU, but misses!
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] You died.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War was hit by non-melee for 79 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War hits YOU for 929 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War was hit by non-melee for 79 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War hits YOU for 299 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War was hit by non-melee for 79 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War hits YOU for 389 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] The Avatar of War tries to kick YOU, but YOU parry!
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:26 2002] You have been healed for 385 points of damage.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:27 2002] Pain and suffering tries to strike YOU, but misses!
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:27 2002] You died.
[Wed Apr 03 22:14:28 2002] Returning to home point, please wait...

4 + Bash
4 + Kick
All in one round.

[Widan]

couldnt care less as ive never even been in kael. just wanted to point out how dumb using OoW data to argue a point was.

and according to patch archives rampage was fixed on april 23, 2003

[Splorf22]

It really amazes me that you think AOW will last more than 24 hours Treats. If you pop over to TMO's website, they have 100+ players who have been active in the last day or two. It'll be 150+ when the inactives come back for Velious. And pretty much everyone in TMO has at least 1 BIS toon if not more. Offensively I'm guessing they'd hit 5000 dps easily with 100+ players; defensively they have 5-10 tanks with 5500HP and full cobalt already. Throw in some mallets to help transfer aggro and its pretty hard for me to believe that they can't manage to keep at least one tank up for three minutes. And if they can't, for sure there will be some sort of casual zerg alliance that throws 400 players at him.

[Frieza_Prexus]

It really amazes me that you think AOW will last more than 24 hours Treats. If you pop over to TMO's website, they have 100+ players who have been active in the last day or two. It'll be 150+ when the inactives come back for Velious. And pretty much everyone in TMO has at least 1 BIS toon if not more. Offensively I'm guessing they'd hit 5000 dps easily with 100+ players; defensively they have 5-10 tanks with 5500HP and full cobalt already. Throw in some mallets to help transfer aggro and its pretty hard for me to believe that they can't manage to keep at least one tank up for three minutes. And if they can't, for sure there will be some sort of casual zerg alliance that throws 400 players at him.

I don't know how Nilbog keeps himself from doing undetectably evil things. I mean, I'd be incredibly tempted to make it so that uber-baddies got subtle bonuses to their AC, resistances, regen, atk, etc for every person over a certain number on the aggro list. Maybe even make the people who are #60 or beyond on the aggro list generate 3-4X as much aggro...

I'd deny everything of course.

[Treats]

It really amazes me that you think AOW will last more than 24 hours Treats. If you pop over to TMO's website, they have 100+ players who have been active in the last day or two. It'll be 150+ when the inactives come back for Velious. And pretty much everyone in TMO has at least 1 BIS toon if not more. Offensively I'm guessing they'd hit 5000 dps easily with 100+ players; defensively they have 5-10 tanks with 5500HP and full cobalt already. Throw in some mallets to help transfer aggro and its pretty hard for me to believe that they can't manage to keep at least one tank up for three minutes. And if they can't, for sure there will be some sort of casual zerg alliance that throws 400 players at him.

You do not gear out tanks and dps in Velious stuff in 24 hours. Avatar is pretty much the end all be all for increasing raid DPS in Velious and that shit takes a LONG time to equip. 5500HP? Good luck I guess, you better bring about 250 players to zerg rez the fuck out of him.

When Eabon led his raids in Plane of Sky I think everyone saw how much of a beast Bzzt was trying to CH chain. Making it through that fight with him tanking and living was a crapshoot. The bee only quadded and he even hits for LESS and DOES NOT FLURRY like AoW -- AoW has 30x more HP than that bee too.

I hope Nilbog is there when this guy decimates everyone for an hour or however long his depop timer is so he can laugh at all of you :P

[koros]

He's melee only and can only kill 1 target a round. 12 mages could probably kill him.

200 mana a pop for the 49 fire pet? Ain't shit.

[Frieza_Prexus]

Before Velious hits, don't we need to address some of the aggro issues on the server? Won't more classic aggro mechanics make AoW far harder?

For example, we all know proximity aggro for already engaged mobs needs to be added. But there were also huge modifiers for sitting down, and the distance you stood from a mob was also factored in. If you got far enough, the mob forgot you until you got back into range. This made kiting trains hellish. Someone commented that midnight mallets weren't that great at pulling aggro on live.

I may be way off here, but I very specifically remember Smed coming into Sleeper's tomb one night as Furor demonstrated that the devs misunderstood their own aggro mechanics. This happened right before the donal's nerf, and the Noows.com archive is here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010221232157/http://www.noows.com/

If I remember correctly, Furor demonstrated that mobs value recent hate most highly, and that you can only "bank" so much aggro. Smed then tested it by tashing a mob several hundred times and then watched as the aggro was pulled off of him relatively soon by the warrior attacking the mob while Smed stood there. Is this correct at all? I remember the mobs would eat people that pissed it off WAY more easily than they do here. That's part of what made those fights so difficult is that you'd have to spend a bit of time for the tank to build aggro, and when it came time to switch you had all the DPS getting eaten alive while the next warrior was being transitioned. I mean my server used to use rangers and monks to riposte/weapon shield VS, and the melee could walk in disc, and walk out with the next tank taking over almost seamlessly. It's almost like aggro was a very easy thing to snatch if you wanted to, and a very precarious thing to hold onto if you're the tank. Don't we all remember those jerks who'd overaggro the AoW and half the raid would get wacked with ripostes after it turns around?

Is this accurate at all? It seems that if aggro were looked at that these tank 'n spank Velious encounters might become much more difficult because of how easily the mob could switch targets.

[pasi]

Before Velious hits, don't we need to address some of the aggro issues on the server? Won't more classic aggro mechanics make AoW far harder?

For example, we all know proximity aggro for already engaged mobs needs to be added. But there were also huge modifiers for sitting down, and the distance you stood from a mob was also factored in. If you got far enough, the mob forgot you until you got back into range. This made kiting trains hellish. Someone commented that midnight mallets weren't that great at pulling aggro on live.

I may be way off here, but I very specifically remember Smed coming into Sleeper's tomb one night as Furor demonstrated that the devs misunderstood their own aggro mechanics. This happened right before the donal's nerf, and the Noows.com archive is here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010221232157/http://www.noows.com/

If I remember correctly, Furor demonstrated that mobs value recent hate most highly, and that you can only "bank" so much aggro. Smed then tested it by tashing a mob several hundred times and then watched as the aggro was pulled off of him relatively soon by the warrior attacking the mob while Smed stood there. Is this correct at all? I remember the mobs would eat people that pissed it off WAY more easily than they do here. That's part of what made those fights so difficult is that you'd have to spend a bit of time for the tank to build aggro, and when it came time to switch you had all the DPS getting eaten alive while the next warrior was being transitioned. I mean my server used to use rangers and monks to riposte/weapon shield VS, and the melee could walk in disc, and walk out with the next tank taking over almost seamlessly. It's almost like aggro was a very easy thing to snatch if you wanted to, and a very precarious thing to hold onto if you're the tank. Don't we all remember those jerks who'd overaggro the AoW and half the raid would get wacked with ripostes after it turns around?

Is this accurate at all? It seems that if aggro were looked at that these tank 'n spank Velious encounters might become much more difficult because of how easily the mob could switch targets.

Ironically, if aggro worked like live - he'd be killable with 16 or so mages spamming 200 mana pets like Koros indicated.

[pasi]

You do not gear out tanks and dps in Velious stuff in 24 hours. Avatar is pretty much the end all be all for increasing raid DPS in Velious and that shit takes a LONG time to equip. 5500HP? Good luck I guess, you better bring about 250 players to zerg rez the fuck out of him.



5500 plus Divine Strength, Focus of Spirit over Talisman, and POTG over NS/Heroism.
Avatar is nice and all, but the gain in DPS isn't something that having 100-150 players couldn't take care of.

[webrunner5]

"I remember the mobs would eat people that pissed it off WAY more easily than they do here. That's part of what made those fights so difficult is that you'd have to spend a bit of time for the tank to build aggro, and when it came time to switch you had all the DPS getting eaten alive while the next warrior was being transitioned."

Pretty much the way I remember it happening.

[t0lkien]

I remember even Vindi being a right of passage for guilds, and was no pushover. AoW required months of killing dragons to gear up for and have any chance at all. I think people are under-estimating Velious content.

[Splorf22]

You do not gear out tanks and dps in Velious stuff in 24 hours. Avatar is pretty much the end all be all for increasing raid DPS in Velious and that shit takes a LONG time to equip. 5500HP? Good luck I guess, you better bring about 250 players to zerg rez the fuck out of him.

When Eabon led his raids in Plane of Sky I think everyone saw how much of a beast Bzzt was trying to CH chain. Making it through that fight with him tanking and living was a crapshoot. The bee only quadded and he even hits for LESS and DOES NOT FLURRY like AoW -- AoW has 30x more HP than that bee too.

I hope Nilbog is there when this guy decimates everyone for an hour or however long his depop timer is so he can laugh at all of you :P

Heartbrand posted a log of the bee hitting 13 times in one second here. If the Avatar of war gets 3 attack rounds of 8 attacks per second, then yes he might be trouble. If he has a 'normal' three second cooldown, he won't be a problem at all.

Let's say for a moment that our defensive warrior has 5500HP + 300 in additional Velious buffs for 5800. 8 attacks at 700 each is only 5600, but with two kicks he might be one rounded. Lets then say that the Avatar of War hits 80% of the time and hits for max damage 80% of the time, and our warrior will parry/block/guard etc 12% of the time. The chance of him getting in 8 max hits is: [0.8*0.8*0.88]^8 = .56^8 = 0.01, or 1%. So our warrior can on average tank 100 rounds or 300 seconds which is actually longer than defensive discipline. And 80% hit/80% max damage is EXTREMELY conservative. I checked Sakuragi's logs and when evasive the Spiroc Lord hits him 30% of the time, and 30% of those hits are for max damage. And this is an Iksar Warrior with 1000AC unbuffed. If we knock the Avatar of War down to 50% max hits, the math becomes [0.8*0.5*0.88]^8 = .02%.

Not to mention the fact that TMO will have 5-10 such tanks and if a few die due to bad luck or confusion they'll still have 5 left :D The simple reality is that zerg wins EQ. If the encounter was limited to 50 players, you might be right. With 150? he dies.

[Nyrod]

going to get involed in this conversation because its making me wet.

i went through all my old SS from when Velious was open on VZTZ and although this isnt VZTZ i think in some ways it is the closest reflection to how it will look on an EMU considering all the arguments in this thread, specifically population and knowledge.

at the time of these SS, no one was NToV geared, most were only half geared with Thurgadin armor and many were still sporting kunark gear, not including VP.

not conclusive evidence but i highly doubt that AoW will not be downed on day 1. we did 3 attempts, got him to 92% 90% and then 82%. we didnt expect to win, we just wanted to attempt it with who we had online at the time. Heresy also made an attempt, dont know how that went except that they wiped. i cant remember, but i also think i remember someone saying that he wasnt doing flurries? so he may have been broken which would mean he will be far nastier than these few attempts. anyhow, hope this gets you excited.

http://s22.postimg.org/6uqxkcjyl/EQ001667.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/6uqxkcjyl/)

http://s22.postimg.org/qmt3jmvil/EQ001677.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/qmt3jmvil/)

http://s22.postimg.org/vzhxxrjf1/EQ001684.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/vzhxxrjf1/)

and here is a werewolf fucking a bear

http://s12.postimg.org/mryfv0bu1/EQ001679.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/mryfv0bu1/)

[Orruar]

You do not gear out tanks and dps in Velious stuff in 24 hours. Avatar is pretty much the end all be all for increasing raid DPS in Velious and that shit takes a LONG time to equip. 5500HP? Good luck I guess, you better bring about 250 players to zerg rez the fuck out of him.

When Eabon led his raids in Plane of Sky I think everyone saw how much of a beast Bzzt was trying to CH chain. Making it through that fight with him tanking and living was a crapshoot. The bee only quadded and he even hits for LESS and DOES NOT FLURRY like AoW -- AoW has 30x more HP than that bee too.

I hope Nilbog is there when this guy decimates everyone for an hour or however long his depop timer is so he can laugh at all of you :P

Avatar ain't shit compared to throwing an extra 30 toons at it. I have no idea how solid the TMO cleric team is, but if they are experienced at a ch chain, I don't see how AoW doesn't die. Velious gear is nice and all, but it's not required if you have a zerg with you.

[Orruar]

no one used midnight mallets on live because they never pulled anywhere near as much agro on live as they do here.

aow hardest boss until elemental planes PoP 2 expansions later, no other fight exists where a raid that performs flawlessly can still fail to win, except AoW.

its the 2nd hardest boss relative to era the game has ever seen, that's why it took so long for people to kill it.

I think the margin for error on AoW is actually higher than on many other fights in later expansions. It just took so long at the time due to the relative noobishness of raiding guilds at the time. A solid AoW strat will take into account the chance of warrior 1-rounding and other risks. Take a guild that had to beat things like OMM and put them into velious toons and AoW would seem like just another trivial boss.

[Gnomersy]

I know why I sucked....I had a bedtime. Nuff said

[pasi]

I think the margin for error on AoW is actually higher than on many other fights in later expansions. It just took so long at the time due to the relative noobishness of raiding guilds at the time. A solid AoW strat will take into account the chance of warrior 1-rounding and other risks. Take a guild that had to beat things like OMM and put them into velious toons and AoW would seem like just another trivial boss.

I missed you bro. Big Qelen was on Sunday to do Sky with us.

But yeah, any guild capable of running a 8-10 cleric CHeal chain (could be done with less, but you gotta allow gaps for chugging mod rods) can keep a tank up. The top tanks are 5500(?) HP right now in Kunark. Velious spells aren't rare like Kunark ones so you're looking at having Divine Strength, Focus, and PotGlades right out the gate. That's 5800 HP without even factoring in any gear upgrades on the way to AoW. That's statue BP, vindi BP, vindi boots, Vkjor's gaunts, tormax loot, and anything outside of Kael. AoW's max should be DI*10 = 45*10 + DB=254 = 704. With flurries and riposte, the potential to be one rounded is there, but it is still uncommon and can be prepared around.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

Avatar ain't shit compared to throwing an extra 30 toons at it. I have no idea how solid the TMO cleric team is, but if they are experienced at a ch chain, I don't see how AoW doesn't die. Velious gear is nice and all, but it's not required if you have a zerg with you.


facts. know them.

[Pringles]

Code on live isnt == code here, so theres that too.

[xarzzardorn]

not hard to imagine that mmo players as a whole have evolved a lot in 10+ years. methods advance, knowledge spreads and people just became more mechanically proficient than they were back in the day. even on p99 a good example of an evolution in strat would be the invis pull. it was ofc known about ~9 months ago but was it nearly as common as it became near the end? not really imo