I did low hp kiting from ~36 to 46. By the end of it, I was playing other games and starting low level alts whenever my bard friends weren't on.

Looking back on it, I lost out on experiencing a bunch of leveling dungeons, chances to meet other players, and all the loot I could have earned had I not been busy running circles on top of rotting corpses. It was fast, it was easy, but it wasn't at all fulfilling. At 46, I headed to CoM for exp and epic faction and realized exactly how little fun I'd been having.

I can't say I'm upset to see it go.

To each their own. Some people don't like the game until 50-60. Low HP kiting allowed them to get through low levels quickly.

I've always liked the aggro and kiting mechanics in EQ and think modern games mistakenly have abandoned a lot of it. However, if there're loopholes in it things can get exploited. Thing is, I think exploiting a games mechanics is not wrong unless it's a bug. And moreso, an exploit can cause negative outcomes for the server if a player becomes too powerful as result of being able to skirt around every rule. One of those negative outcomes is consuming too many spawns and thus not allowing other players access. Another thing it does is it floods the server with more powerful players who will in turn flood the bazaar(or ec) with items as result of leveling up so much faster. This is mudflation and it can have both positive and negative consequences.

If exploiting is widespread, being able to skirt around the rules would remove a lot of fun from the game as it'd lose its challenge. There're a lot of players who don't just play to get to the top, but for the challenge. On the other hand, if exploiting hasn't matured yet then the process of learning those exploits IS fun.

All in all, simple mechanics in a complex environment can produce engaging gameplay of this sort. Just think about a 2d platformer like Mario Brothers and how simple its mechanics were. Yet the real fun happened when Mariio entered the more complex environment around him and had to exploit it to do well. Same thing happens in EQ when you enter a dungeon and all of your abilities become nebulous as they merge with the environment. The more varied and tricky your environment, the more nebulous (and I'd say exciting) it becomes.

That's the heart of gaming: learning to exploit. The rest is just skinnerbox.

Make charm kiting work please.

Also this change doesnt affect the bards who know what their doing. Can still kill 60 to 80 mobs in OT in 15 mins :)

welcome to p99.

Charm kiting still works, you just have to use mobs that will assist one another (e.g. all aviaks) and be past a certain distance away from the mobs when you have the pet attack. Takes a bit more effort but is still faster than one on one

charm kiting works fine on p99.

you have to have a little bit of zone knowledge to find a place that makes it worth while...and then the actual coordination to pull it off. but both of those were true on live also.

Lol aye.

I often tag aggro from a cockhead bard thats taking pulls from groups and word of redemption myself on other size of zone.

Step in the right direction for correcting aggro. And really the only leveling patch this will effect will arguably be mid and late forties.