[bcbrown]

Found another interesting mention:

One last item for today, and this one's going to involve mechanics talk. As of my last post, you saw me mention Damage Bonus. Damage Bonus is an extra mechanic for melee characters to watch; it is a direct bonus to damage done by a weapon. See, damage calculations in EverQuest start with (Base Damage)*2, and goes up based on your skill with that weapon and your Strength score. Damage Bonus adds a flat modifier at the end of the damage calculation, so you'll never hit for "1" ever again once you start to get it. This damage bonus starts at around level 20, and goes up solely based on your level; which is to say, that your level is the determining factor as to what level of damage bonus you get.

Now originally, the damage bonus was hugely in favor of one-handed weapons with low delay, as it was a flat number across all weapons, so it behooved you to slam as many attacks as you could out in as little a time as possible. Even relatively mundane weapons like Fine Steel Daggers (3/19) became absolute blenders with a haste item and a haste spell active on a level 50 melee character. It was changed, and we'll get to why in a moment, during Kunark to a more complicated formula based on level and the delay of the weapon involved. (It was later changed again just before Shadows of Luclin.)

The formula looked like this:

delay<29= ((level - 28)/3) + 1
28<delay<40 = (level - 25)/2
39<delay<43 = (level - 25)/2 + 1
42<delay<45 = (level - 25)/2 + 3
45<delay = (level - 25)/2 + (delay - 31)/3

Faster weapons get comparatively less damage bonus (at level 65, this is 13 points), while higher delay weapons get more, making two-handed weapons more viable. And since the Paladin and Shadow Knights' Epic Weapons are two-handers (which allow bashing without a shield), that made them more viable.

In Kunark, a weapon dropped that helped prompt the Kunark change to the formula above, some five months after Kunark's launch. This item was called the Mosscovered Twig. A comparatively lesser-known item, it dropped in the Frontier Mountains off a named yeti named Boogoog. This weapon was a 3/10 one-handed blunt.

In Kunark, there was no minimum delay. These days, 8 delay is the absolute lowest you can get melee attacks to, and it's because of weapons like this. With a good haste item, and a haste spell buff, this item could absolutely.

Positively.

DESTROY any enemy. 10 delay, plus damage bonus, even on a humble 3 damage weapon, became a completely and utterly destructive force in the hands of the two classes who only hit things - Warrior and Monk, both of whom could use it (along with Rangers, Shadow Knights, and Paladins). To say nothing of what happened when they were hasted below 10 delay; I believe with hitting the 100% haste cap, this became 5 delay, though it's been a while since I looked into the exact math haste does on delay.

To speak briefly on delay, as well - put a decimal point in between the two numbers. A 19 delay causes an attack every 1.9 seconds, for example. A 150 delay, and yes, there is a weapon with 150 delay, attacks every 15 seconds. At 5 delay, that's an attack roll every half-second (0.5), and every attack roll independently rolls for things like Double Attack and crits.

Unlike past nerfs, this was the first example of Verant straight up both replacing the item that caused problems, and nerfing the grandfathered version. The Mosscovered Twig was changed to Secondary only, and was replaced in Boogoog's drop table by the Mosscovered Branch, a 5/15 two-handed blunt weapon - which was positively useless for anything but leveling up your two-handed blunt skill. Secondary weapons do not get the damage bonus, and thus the problem was solved - and then only a few months later they changed the damage bonus calculation anyways which would have made the Twig an interesting, but only moderately useful weapon. Alas, Mosscovered Twig; your time was gone too soon.

From https://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...readid=4006486