Spell: Disease Cloud

[Grakken]

I was dinking around with my emu server using p99 spell file. Disease cloud has an additional +400 hate on it.

I use the server that actually uses spell file for spell data, I hear the new one doesn't but has a table I'm unfamiliar with.

Point being, Disease Cloud should not have +400 hate on it. It should have the awsome innate aggro DOTs had from classic till 10 expansions in + the damage it does.

Be this bug?

[gintu01]

First rule of p99 - DO NOT TALK ABOUT DISEASE CLOUD!

[Kender]

disease cloud was always used by SK's as one of there 3 spells = never lose agro combo.

I was a shaman on live, and in PoG an SK mate challenged me to try take his portector of growth off him after he cast his 3 spell combo (we were tasked with pog add control). he used his best darkness line, disease cloud (the low level version), and one other spell which i can't remember. He refreshed disease cloud (only) every minute or so and ran around in a circle around me.

I slowed dotted debuffed and nuked the pog, and healed the SK. by the time the raid was ready for our pog i was oom and stil had not managed to pull agro


so no idea if it's meant to be +400 hate, but it sure used to piss off the mobs

[Grakken]

Dots used to have great hate. Rangers could snare, kite and spam flame lick and outhate necros and wizzies throwing their whole might at a mob.

SKs would spam clinging darkness. They would use Disease Cloud only if they need disease resist instead of magic and or AE.

+400 hate is pretty rediculous.

[Karrmer]

Disease Cloud was definitely completely broken and provided unbelievable amounts of hate for a long time, I used it for eons before the big nerf came probably somewhere in PoP or something. I am assuming the current hate it's providing is pretty accurate to Classic then

[girth]

It is classically accurate and it will not change through the life of this server.

[Grakken]

It is classically accurate and it will not change through the life of this server.

Boxing was classically accurate. Kiting was bannable for a time. Many things were broken.

The question is what drew us to classic ... was it bugs or stupid balancing? Or was it something else? When people talk about the things they loved in classic EQ that are just missing from live or from a WoW, what do they say? There are a lot of answers but I never hear broken mechanics, those are usually deterrents.

[Zeelot]

Aside from disease cloud, shadow vortex had crazy aggro in 1999....We should be talking about that!

[girth]

yeah shadow vortex sucks on this server for agro

[Lazortag]

Boxing was classically accurate. Kiting was bannable for a time. Many things were broken.

The question is what drew us to classic ... was it bugs or stupid balancing? Or was it something else? When people talk about the things they loved in classic EQ that are just missing from live or from a WoW, what do they say? There are a lot of answers but I never hear broken mechanics, those are usually deterrents.

Kiting was bannable? Seriously?

Also, the devs make sure everything is as classic as possible with the exception of really egregious bugs/exploits, or features that are simply not fixable yet. The aggro drawn from disease cloud doesn't really fit into either of those so I imagine the devs will let it stay. They've never adhered to the standard of what "draws people to classic" more, and for a good reason.

Sometimes they exercise discretion and implement things that are eventually classic, (ie: get implemented at the start of kunark) to save themselves the headache. Hence why they aren't going to ban kiting because it was unbanned at some later point in classic anyway (assuming it ever was banned, I find that really hard to believe).

Boxing is a whole other issue - it's been debated before so you can go to one of those threads and express your opinion on it if you really feel it should be allowed.

[Grakken]

Kiting was bannable? Seriously?

Kiting was considered an exploit. It was "breaking the encounter."


They've never adhered to the standard of what "draws people to classic" more, and for a good reason.

I very much disagree here. They don't allow boxing as it would kill the community. If one person (and I can) box 12 clients on one machine, why do I need EQ friends or even a guild? The sense of community was and is the greatest pull to EQ. So imo they are guilty of the above standard in the greatest sense.

Boxing is a whole other issue - it's been debated before so you can go to one of those threads and express your opinion on it if you really feel it should be allowed.

The point I was making is they clearly change things from classic in order to create the server they want. This isn't a Classic server, this is a modified classic server.

It is not up to me or you whether this massive hate should be on an AE dot. Its up to the Devs. The point of my post is to give information I am unsure whether they have or not.

Even with the above Shadow knights emotional appeal that it indeed should have this much hate on it, I highly doubt it. I'd like to see evidence from the SKs above that it had +400; because, I'd wager they just don't want to get nerfed. Even +100 hate on it would be "OMG this is crazy locked hate."

[Messianic]

I really don't think it drew this much aggro on live. Playing around on my gnome necro at level 4ish, I found that it was literally impossible for the pet to take aggro back after I disease clouded the mob, even if i let the pet solo the mob to 40-50%.

That's a very limited experience, but I don't remember my gnome necro on live being able to cast the spell once and be the equivalent of that much damage in terms of hate...

[skootr]

Yes it was crazy hate on live until some time in PoP I believe. SK's get fucked enough with the XP penility, let them keep the uber aggro.

[Haynar]

It is classically accurate and it will not change through the life of this server.
It is almost classically accurate.

It was disease counters that were what caused so much aggro, and some coding changes need to be made to account for this. If you played a shaman during the over DC era, and used disease based dots, you knew ever tick, aggro was going to possibly hit you.

So where the initial 400 might be a bit high, adjustments on the disease counters, are where the aggro should be changed. That way all spells with disease counters, should make lots of aggro. It was sometime in PoP that they fixed disease counters.

But, that being said. DC should be an aggro magnet, along with any spell that uses disease counters. Shaman slow anyone?

Haynar

[Grakken]

It is almost classically accurate.

It was disease counters that were what caused so much aggro, and some coding changes need to be made to account for this. If you played a shaman during the over DC era, and used disease based dots, you knew ever tick, aggro was going to possibly hit you.

So where the initial 400 might be a bit high, adjustments on the disease counters, are where the aggro should be changed. That way all spells with disease counters, should make lots of aggro. It was sometime in PoP that they fixed disease counters.

But, that being said. DC should be an aggro magnet, along with any spell that uses disease counters. Shaman slow anyone?

Haynar

So to be true to classic, are you going to add +400 hate to shaman slow? Or are we just keeping it "real" with conveniently a tank class.

[Haynar]

To be "real" classic, I would have to make the hate from spells based on disease counters, have a multiplier. And remove the direct 400 hate component. Then it would scale, with the spell's normal hate.

Haynar

[Sarkov]

So... are you planning to make shaman disease spells have crazy hate too, or what? Right now they certainly do not, not anywhere close to DC.

[Droxx]

So... are you planning to make shaman disease spells have crazy hate too, or what? Right now they certainly do not, not anywhere close to DC.

X2. I wouldn't mind having huge aggro on disease dots.

[Haynar]

When I have time, some adjustments might be made. I am focusing on other things right now.

Haynar

[quellren]

Kiting was considered an exploit. It was "breaking the encounter."


Oddly enough, they really only laid the smackdown on aggro kiting, apparently fear-kiting was OK. Most likely because the player couldn't control the pathing of the mob. Which made it appealing really only to Necros at the time. It was removed before anyone got animal fear.
After the period of ban-ability it was decided that if it wasn't an exploit, it was still highly discouraged, and thus, ALL DoTs, ticked for half damage if you were running away. I was playing a lowbie enchanter at the time and remember it taking FOREVER to aggro kite sand scarabs. Ironically, I don't believe this applied to bards.
Whatever the case, SoE apparently somehow never considered that giving a class both movement impairment AND Damage Over Time spells would result in stacking them and playing 'Nanni-nanni-boo-boo, You can't catch me!" with mobs that would make most into paste. Go Figure.
There was a good bit of time when the only ones not going toe-to-toe in combat, or root-rotting were wizards (snare+rain) and necros (snare/fear/dot/pet). Bards were the only ones that were still effectively kiting in the traditional sense.

'Twas a sad time for druids, to be sure.

Edit: DC on my shaman rocked my world every time I cast it. I've cast it exactly twice on my lowbie necro, as my pet doesn't have a prayer of holding aggro when I stack just Heat Blood and Darkness. No way am I gonna get DC off without wearing the mob all up in my grille. I swear they remember that shit even through Feign Death. It'd kick ass if you were gonna aggro kite, though. Hmmmmm.

[Uthgaard]

We've posted in 2 other threads that threat is on the to-do list. Right now, people are living with it, so you probably won't see much work done on it until after kunark.

[Grakken]

We've posted in 2 other threads that threat is on the to-do list. Right now, people are living with it, so you probably won't see much work done on it until after kunark.

Of course people are "living with it," It is uber hate for a tank class and conversly no uber hate for the non-tank classes that should have it.

I play a paladin ... I could "live" with stuns causing 1010101 hate :p

As to no work being done, hey man I just wanted to make sure you guys knew and you clearly do.

[girth]

It isn't THAT uber. Just spamming DC won't keep agro, at least in my raids it won't.
It was tons of agro on live and should be tons of agro on here, regardless how its done.

I wish they would take the same stance with snares though, increase the % to negate the high mob speed here. My highest level snare should not allow a walking mob to move, and yes this is pretty game breaking for snare classes.

I cannot pull or solo like I should be able to because of the snare issues, that's where people should be concerned...not with some spell that did a ton of agro on live and is needed on here as is for SK's to compete with paladins.

[Lazortag]

It isn't THAT uber. Just spamming DC won't keep agro, at least in my raids it won't.
It was tons of agro on live and should be tons of agro on here, regardless how its done.

I wish they would take the same stance with snares though, increase the % to negate the high mob speed here. My highest level snare should not allow a walking mob to move, and yes this is pretty game breaking for snare classes.

I cannot pull or solo like I should be able to because of the snare issues, that's where people should be concerned...not with some spell that did a ton of agro on live and is needed on here as is for SK's to compete with paladins.

This is actually a good point, but probably deserves its own thread. Some snare spells at certain levels actually slowed the mob's movement speed by over 100%. Now since some mobs actually moved faster than the normal movement speed this only fully "stopped" the mobs that moved at "100% normal speed" (though I have no idea how many or even which mobs moved at that speed). Basically the Bard snare would slow a mob's movement speed by about 80% at level 50, which, for the average mob, would be 80% of its maximum speed. Yet I don't think this holds true for any mobs on p99 (ie I don't think any mobs move to 1/5 of their speed when this is cast on them).

I'm not whining about it or anything, just trying to clarify what girth is saying, since the confusion might be in the fact that snare spells that slow a mob's speed by a certain %, say 80%, don't just take away 4/5 of the mob's movement speed - instead they reduce their movement speed by 80%, when the mob's normal speed may have been over 100%. If I'm wrong someone correct me.