Chardok exploitation hurting the spirit of the game

[cd288]

Originally Posted by sammoHung [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I have a feeling well see this is way overcranked in practice, but time will tell.

Currently: if you cast and get hit 6 times mid-cast, you get a penalty 6 times to your roll to succeed cast.

With patch: if you cast and get hit 6 times mid-cast, you have to win all 6 rolls to finish your cast.

I have a feeling casting while being hit will be literally impossible, depending on how many hits you take. Even a 1s cast won't matter, like color slant - lets say if your pet breaks and you've torched and hasted it - there's no way you're winning 4/4 rolls per quad attack.

Necro charming will be dead because of this. Screaming terror is a 2.5s cast. As it is, my necro loses like 1k HP on a bad charm break before a cast gets off.

Grats, Loramin!

In a dungeon yeah may be difficult for a Necro, but they do have FD so if Charm breaks just FD immediately and reset, no big deal.

Enchanters I guess on a technical basis the risk goes up for dungeon soloing, but anyone who is good with an Enchanter isn't getting hit on Charm breaks anyway.

[Ekco]

alright, that doesn't sound like it will effect my favorite emergent game mechanic/exploit.

carry on, fuck enchanters(who don't cast c2 on me when i beg)

[cd288]

I do wonder how this would affect Shaman face tanking and soloing

[sammoHung]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I do wonder how this would affect Shaman face tanking and soloing

All classes that cast during combat will greatly suffer. Shaman will see a huge hit. Hell, even tanks like Paladin / SK. The mathematics of the proposed changes are pretty absurd, based on how it currently stands and Channeling skill's effect on rolls.

As it stands: If you start a cast and get hit mid-cast, you have to make a roll to succeed. Each subsequent hit during cast adds a penalty to your roll. This seems appropriately balanced for a non-classic server.

The changes would mean that every hit you have to perform a new roll. And you have to win ALL of the rolls in order to succeed the cast. I'm not sure how Channeling currently effects your roll chances, but let's say you had a 50% chance to win the roll. And you got hit 4 times between start of cast and end of cast. The probability of you winning all 4 rolls, at 50% odds per roll is 0.5 ^ 4, which is ~6%. If you got hit 8 times, the probability of winning all 8 rolls at 50% odds drops to ~0.3%.

Some things to consider:

• Rune / Bedlam, etc does NOT stop spells from being interrupted. You don't take damage, but still have to win rolls to continue cast.
• As it stands, with 252 Channeling and level 60, fighting against a level 40-45 mob: I have recorded many instances of 3-4 hits in a round interrupting a cast pretty reliably with the current channeling mechanic. There have been times on my 60 Necro where a green pet with a torch has chunked me down 1k+ HP before I could get a root or Mez off. I've had to kite around to gain enough distance to cast 2.5s Screaming Terror or 1.75s Immobilize, just to make sure I don't get interrupted.

There is no guarantee that you will succeed a cast currently, even with max channeling, even at level 60, even vs. a mob that is 15-20 levels lower than you. There is a guarantee that past a certain number of hits, it will be probabilistically impossible to actually succeed a cast. (Granted, I used a simple example of 50% odds to win, which may not be representative of how the channeling skill weights rolls vs. NPC)

a) I'm not sure that's how classic worked. I'm dubious of the source of most of these "proofs" about how classic worked. It seems nilbog is relying on player logs to implement mechanic changes. I can understand at low levels this being the case - but at 60 with max channeling against a green mob, it should most definitely not be the case.
b) With all of the non-classic "QoL" changes made to this server - why nerf this when there isn't sufficient data to support it. Again, nilbog is cherry picking little pet projects to implement, but we still have rooted dragons, item links in chat, /makeleader, 7 day corpses, etc, etc, etc.
c) and furthermore, the channeling skill is not implemented correctly on saving throws currently. Maybe fix that first?

[sammoHung]

EDIT in bold

Originally Posted by sammoHung [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There is no guarantee that you will succeed a cast currently, even with max channeling, even at level 60, even vs. a mob that is 15-20 levels lower than you. There is a guarantee that past a certain number of hits, it will be probabilistically impossible to actually succeed a cast with the proposed change.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by sammoHung [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

All classes that cast during combat will greatly suffer. Shaman will see a huge hit. Hell, even tanks like Paladin / SK. The mathematics of the proposed changes are pretty absurd, based on how it currently stands and Channeling skill's effect on rolls.

As it stands: If you start a cast and get hit mid-cast, you have to make a roll to succeed. Each subsequent hit during cast adds a penalty to your roll. This seems appropriately balanced for a non-classic server.

The changes would mean that every hit you have to perform a new roll. And you have to win ALL of the rolls in order to succeed the cast. I'm not sure how Channeling currently effects your roll chances, but let's say you had a 50% chance to win the roll. And you got hit 4 times between start of cast and end of cast. The probability of you winning all 4 rolls, at 50% odds per roll is 0.5 ^ 4, which is ~6%. If you got hit 8 times, the probability of winning all 8 rolls at 50% odds drops to ~0.3%.

Some things to consider:

• Rune / Bedlam, etc does NOT stop spells from being interrupted. You don't take damage, but still have to win rolls to continue cast.
• As it stands, with 252 Channeling and level 60, fighting against a level 40-45 mob: I have recorded many instances of 3-4 hits in a round interrupting a cast pretty reliably with the current channeling mechanic. There have been times on my 60 Necro where a green pet with a torch has chunked me down 1k+ HP before I could get a root or Mez off. I've had to kite around to gain enough distance to cast 2.5s Screaming Terror or 1.75s Immobilize, just to make sure I don't get interrupted.

There is no guarantee that you will succeed a cast currently, even with max channeling, even at level 60, even vs. a mob that is 15-20 levels lower than you. There is a guarantee that past a certain number of hits, it will be probabilistically impossible to actually succeed a cast. (Granted, I used a simple example of 50% odds to win, which may not be representative of how the channeling skill weights rolls vs. NPC)

a) I'm not sure that's how classic worked. I'm dubious of the source of most of these "proofs" about how classic worked. It seems nilbog is relying on player logs to implement mechanic changes. I can understand at low levels this being the case - but at 60 with max channeling against a green mob, it should most definitely not be the case.
b) With all of the non-classic "QoL" changes made to this server - why nerf this when there isn't sufficient data to support it. Again, nilbog is cherry picking little pet projects to implement, but we still have rooted dragons, item links in chat, /makeleader, 7 day corpses, etc, etc, etc.
c) and furthermore, the channeling skill is not implemented correctly on saving throws currently. Maybe fix that first?

If you actually played in classic, you'd know that P99 has been unclassic for a very, very long time. As I've repeated often over more than a decade playing here: Enchanters were never the solo gods of classic. Hell, they weren't even in the top 3 of solo classes!

Now you (or anyone) can decide to be like Chicken Little, claim the sky is falling, and blame the people who worked incredibly hard to make this place more classic ... or you can celebrate the fact that, after all this time, you finally get to play classic EverQuest.

I hear it was a pretty good game ... maybe even a better game than the partial re-creation that you've gotten used to?

[Danth]

Shamans were doing West Wastes dragons in-era, but those are mostly solo pulls and can often be pre-slowed before going into melee. What really hurts is brute force type pulls where you need to split a room by pulling 3-5 mobs and rooting them as they whack on you. That shouldn't really be much of a thing. It's also why a charm break on a hasted quadding pet was hugely dangerous--could effectively get locked down by it--and why enchanters weren't a big solo class in the early days even ignoring charm duration irregularities on P99.

Oh, and just wait and see if they fix lull spells to behave more properly, too.

Ignoring all this, would be nice if they got around to fixing spell aggro sometime. Debuff counters still seem borked and doing minimal aggro. Being able to dot/debuff at virtually no risk feels like "EQ for dummies." Hope it gets a look.

That being said, after 16 years on P99 I'd also be fine with them leaving "blue" as-is and restricting these types of major changes to a new server. P99 has its own history at this point, and that history is far longer than the few short years of original-era EQ. Don't think the admins here want to maintain separate codebases though, so that's probably not going to be a thing.

[cd288]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you actually played in classic, you'd know that P99 has been unclassic for a very, very long time. As I've repeated often over more than a decade playing here: Enchanters were never the solo gods of classic. Hell, they weren't even in the top 3 of solo classes!

Now you (or anyone) can decide to be like Chicken Little, claim the sky is falling, and blame the people who worked incredibly hard to make this place more classic ... or you can celebrate the fact that, after all this time, you finally get to play classic EverQuest.

I hear it was a pretty good game ... maybe even a better game than the partial re-creation that you've gotten used to?

My advice to everyone else: Loramin is fun to talk to about certain EverQuest related things. But when he starts talking about classic vs non-classic just don't read his comments as they usually don't offer anything tangible...it's mostly just "I remember things a certain way so that's how it should be."

[Nickelback8469]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you actually played in classic, you'd know that P99 has been unclassic for a very, very long time. As I've repeated often over more than a decade playing here: Enchanters were never the solo gods of classic. Hell, they weren't even in the top 3 of solo classes!

Now you (or anyone) can decide to be like Chicken Little, claim the sky is falling, and blame the people who worked incredibly hard to make this place more classic ... or you can celebrate the fact that, after all this time, you finally get to play classic EverQuest.

I hear it was a pretty good game ... maybe even a better game than the partial re-creation that you've gotten used to?

How much of a difference between the "Classic" Enchanter experience versus what we see today in P99 would you attribute to better computers and more reliable internet connections? I think most people can agree that 26 years ago Enchanters weren't the soloing gods that we see today, but even if the code was perfectly restored on P99 to match what was seen on Live, I still believe that current knowledge of game mechanics combined with faster and more reliable internet speeds would change the "Classic" experience completely.

Are you arguing that the mechanics on P99 should emulate what was coded in 1999-2000 or that the code on P99 should be changed to force Enchanters to play like how the class was playing in 1999-2000?

[cd288]

Originally Posted by Nickelback8469 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

How much of a difference between the "Classic" Enchanter experience versus what we see today in P99 would you attribute to better computers and more reliable internet connections? I think most people can agree that 26 years ago Enchanters weren't the soloing gods that we see today, but even if the code was perfectly restored on P99 to match what was seen on Live, I still believe that current knowledge of game mechanics combined with faster and more reliable internet speeds would change the "Classic" experience completely.

Are you arguing that the mechanics on P99 should emulate what was coded in 1999-2000 or that the code on P99 should be changed to force Enchanters to play like how the class was playing in 1999-2000?

Piece of advice: Don't engage with Loramin on this stuff and just ignore it. You will basically always get a response that boils down to things should be what he remembers them being, and if they weren't a certain way then that 100% means that classic mechanics couldn't have allowed it (as opposed to a variety of other reasons why it could be the case). It's not worth discussing with him.