Did they ever? ...

[Wakanda]

I'm an Enchanter main. I love leveling Enchanters so much I am literally about to make my 5th enchanter on P99, but I don't think charm is classic at all, and I would be okay with future projects making charm a gimmick instead of the entire game (game literally feels like Enchanter-quest, especially on new servers).

Monks were never this tanky either. I know people will be like oMg tHe MoNk miTiGaTioN NeRf cAmE LaTeR!!! I'm not talking about that nerf. I'm talking about during classic. I was a monk main in 1999. I was one of the first high level monks on my entire server. I remember having other players message me during raids or pointing out in ooc how insane my damage was because no one had really ever seen a high level monk before and had no idea what they could do, so when they saw my fists dominating the combat logs, they were stunned.

And also we did build AC back then. There was the whole AC is king thing that you never hear mentioned on P99. I remember being a noob and wanting stats, not AC, but a real-life friend convinced me I should try AC over every other stat, and I did, and was shocked at how game changing it was. This is why enameled breastplates were really expensive on classic. No warrior would ever choose a crafted BP over enameled breastplate back then because of how insane 25 ac was for a chest slot.

But my point is, I was building my monk for pure damage mitigation. Wearing weird things you would be unlikely to see on a level 50 monk on P99 during classic. Gatorscale leggings over planar leggings. Azure sleeves over planar sleeves. Froglok crown over planar head piece or over executioners hood. The top monks only cared about AC back then, whereas on P99, you will see them generally preferring lower AC items with more stats on them. It's not because we just didn't know how to play the game back then, it's because it's literally a different version of the game.

Despite building for damage mitigation however, I was never a tank. I remember being so confused when I discovered P99 and was reading discussions on the forums about how Monks are more mana efficient to heal than a lot of tanks for certain camps, because this was never the case. As the monk I was the puller and DPS. I had decent survivability because I was slightly tankier than a lot of DPS, had feign death (which if I didn't use, I would regularly die after getting aggro), and mend. But I remember many of our groups simply falling apart because we lost our tank. I remember one group in particular where our tank left and our healer straight up said they aren't healing if we don't get a tank because of how stressful it was to heal me. We found a Ranger, hoping he would be tanky enough (as a Monk I literally saw a Ranger as tankier than me, despite all the paper doll jokes about Rangers at the time). He wasn't tanky enough either, so the group still fell apart.

Another thing people seem to have forgotten about too is that Kunark armor was considered better than planar gear, again, because "AC is king." If you were wearing woven shadow and you got a piece of Mrylokars armor, you swapped it out for that piece of Mrylokars armor because AC was that damn good. Also even before Kunark came out. You know how woven shadow legs have wisdom on it? Terrible stat for a rogue right? It was the meta to still wear these over items like Mithril Leggings (which have strength on them), because the AC difference was huge and again, AC was king. On P99 you never see this.

This is not a knock on P99 either. I love the project and have nothing against it. It's just that I remember things really vividly.

I also remember when Disease Cloud was the meta for SKs on classic. I hated mine and felt like he was useless, and then I read on the forums that SKs were over-powered because they could cast disease cloud on any mob and hold aggro indefinitely, even without taunting, and I tried it and discovered that it was true. I suddenly felt super OP. Then I made an SK on P99 and I found myself spamming clinging darkness, sometimes multiple times on the same mob, to hold aggro. Disease cloud doesn't do much comparatively.

I'm sure there are other SKs from back in the day who remember what I'm talking about.

Also I remember another reason why disease cloud was OP back in 1999. You're a low level SK and you're solo'ing. Then you get rabies, and now you don't regenerate HP for a really long time, and can't level until it wears off. Sucks really bad. Well, actually it was learned that if you put disease cloud on yourself, it does little damage at all, but prevents mobs from putting rabies on you. I tried this on P99 and it didn't work at all; I still got rabies, lol.

Again, this isn't a big deal, but it's not true classic.

[Wakanda]

Also I feel like you can probably find 20+ year old threads about people raving that a level 50 necromancer could solo ghoul lord or frenzied, but I never saw anyone raving about Enchanters doing that during the same time period. Even if charm was super OP back then, which I'm skeptical about, considering my best real-life friend was an Enchanter and we got super stoked when we heard stories of Enchanters getting lucky with charm and solo'ing crazy stuff, and were unable to replicate the same thing when we tried it together.

Charm was a gimmick, but it's success rates felt more like winning the lottery rather than some stable or reliable strategy.

[Wakanda]

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

Even if charm was super OP back then

I lost my chain of thought because I just woke up and over-dosed on coffee, but I meant to say, even if charm was super OP back then, it's safe to say that no one was playing the game around charm from 1999-2001. Like the servers are more inactive now, and having an Enchanter in your group, assuming you even find a group, is a scarce rarity. But when the servers are brand new the game feels like Enchanter-quest, and that every group and camp is built around Enchanters. Doesn't feel classic or nostalgic at all.

It kind of blows my mind how spoiled players will get too, arguing you can't do certain camps without an Enchanter, despite the fact that we did the same camps 25 years ago with no Enchanter, and relied on root or FD to split camps.

Like having to use a Druid for CC to split kobold royals was a true classic, experience. having a high level enchanter AOE mez the entire room and then solo everything with charm is not a classic experience I ever witnessed.

Also forever RIP magician pets, lol. I see people constantly talking about how useless magicians are and it's like... this isn't a classic experience. Their pets were considered OP and godly in a truly classic world because there wasn't charmed pets running around out-damaging entire groups.

[Solist]

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

P99 is the emulator of the memory of two dudes who played EQ.

It is not an emulator of everquest, it never has been, and it's varied towards and away from being the latter in most major patches without ever consistently attempting to be the former.

That is why everything is so severely over tuned.
That is why sneak pulling was never implimented correctly, then removed entirely.
That is why for 5 years AC didn't work here. And they still wont 'flick the switch' for rangers.
That is why 'rare' drops are insanely rare. Manastones should be a 1/4 or so drop rate, not 1/25 or so. Repeat for all 'rare'.
That is why dragons drop 2-3 less items than they did on live in most instances here.
That is why resist rates are so broken and player resists are comically useless compared to live.
That is why npc spell caster behaviour here was not correct for pre velious.
That is why npc spell caster behaviour is not correct even post velious.
And.....
That is why channeling is so broken here.

And many more things. This is the emulation of a memory of a game.

And I'm thankful we have it as it beats the shit out of the other options until someone finally fixes TAKP client.

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

Curious what the evidence for all of this is? Not disputing your claims, I'd actually find it interesting to read if you have sources.

Wasn't channeling a client issue or something? I feel like I remember someone saying something about it being hard to fix.

If you dispute any of that it's clear you didn't play early EQ on live as I did not mention any of the controversial ones. All of those are simple known facts we've been discussing on these forums for nearly 15 years now.

And I too get early p99 and my memories of live confused and actively have to seperate them as both are a lifetime ago. So in a way it was easier to establish all this a long time ago when there was a distinct delinieation of EQ and P99 during the first few years of P99.

AC was always king on live eq and once parsing software became more common place this was fairly well accepted. Not until mid luclin did HP become a focus and only for one class.

Sneak pulling was just reducing the assist radius of other mobs. Not some horrendously OP flop+sneak=memwipe shit we had here for years making monks broken as shit.

There was no 'ultra rares' in classic eq, not until luclin was anything like those low% drop rates a thing.

Every existing website will show you corpse pics of loot from back in the day, unsure if AL and co's websites are still a thing.

Resist rates here were tuned because we had 455 resists on p99 for a while. Even in to VP once that was released. They've never found a good balance on it and seemingly have given up. On the live videos of sontalak fights there is a cleric in ethereal mist and donals armor resisting multiple fears in a row..... Anyone who played live knew resists actually worked. The concept of stacking them like we do here wasn't a thing. At most you wore maybe +40-50 worth of gear over your regular crap, in a top end guild.

NPC spellcasting was capped at level 34 spells for the longest time, except specific NPC's allowed to cast other shit. 'gate' wasn't an automatic cast at 20% and recast repeatedly behaviour. After the mid velious patch to fix npc spell casting to be more appropriate and things started ice cometing in hate it was hilarious to readjust. Back in the day you'd seek out kobald shamans and krup shamans etc as they would cast all these useless crap spells and were free kills. Here they are the most impossible mobs in the 'grouping' game. Mid luclin we got another spellcasting revamp (after that patch when all of a sudden NPC wizards were casting Garrisons and one shotting people lol).

Channeling is a laugh. On live you could hardly cast a single target mez with a low blue or green on you. Hence the colour stun cast speed is so fast. Other spells just....didn't get off with any reliability. Face tanking through a charm break to channel a boltrans, no. There was some good chanters on live (and lots of bad ones obviously) and the idea of charming in an xp group concept was a crowd control strategy, not a long term group strategy. Hence dire charm became a thing in pop, so enchanters could get groups again as they were useless otherwise as charming for dps as a steady grouping role was impossible.

I mean I'm not going to go back through over a decade of this forum finding posts with now expired links. We just have to accept P99 for what it is, and be thankful it exists. Just don't confuse it with an emulator of everquest.

[cd288]

Solist I was just asking because it's fun to read the old posts and sources. Based on your feedback it seemed like you must've read some pretty clear classic era sources so I was wondering what those were. Agree on channeling, but like I said I thought someone from the staff awhile back mentioned it's a Titanium client thing or something like that? Might be misremembering.

I thought extensive parsing ended up showing that AC wasn't as important as people thought though. But maybe I'm think like Luclin/PoP area and something had changed or something like that.

Drop rates is tough. Personally I feel like I remember things being pretty rare, but again that's the issue with our memories. Wish we could get access to the original code.

[cd288]

Wakanda they nerfed Disease Cloud on here because apparently it was generating too much aggro based on classic evidence. But then IIRC they nerfed it too hard by mistake? Not sure if it ever got fixed or if it's one of those things they're planning to fix.

I'm not sure what you mean about Monks being tanky. Are you referring to lower level content? Higher level content, unless the Monk is super geared they're kinda squishy.

[Namsaknoi]

From my memory, charm had a lot of resists at the time of cast, yes, you are reminded in your face with the bright red message each time.
Also, when it landed, it typically lasted something like 3-6 ticks, with each tick having some chance to undo it. Every tick was a hair raising moment.
AE stuns had a lot of resists also, usually at least one will resist it when you cast.
On P99, you can almost reliably land your charm, and use your timer to keep things in check, then keep things stunned on that 5% of time things doesn't follow your timer pretty reliably.
Root was also the same, lots of red resist messages, barely lasting over 6 ticks when they land, druid's dd component made it more likely to resist or break, and being in dungeon reduced the chance even further. I remember as a level 60 druid I would struggle to reliably keep a kobold in sol b rooted, let alone LDCs, and imps were not even worth trying. NTOV trash you need to start casting at 30% health to have few resists then eventually land.

Also in terms of resists, you were basically a walking granite if your resists were 200+, you didn't need extra buffs or mana songs to hit 400+ to somewhat reliably able to resist things, you were basically immune to everything except dispells and something like Klandicar AE. So it went both ways, NPC casting on player, player casting on NPC.

Regarding AC, soft cap of 1100AC and hard cap of 1300AC kind of worked as they were rumored to be, on P99 1400+AC paladin gets one shotted in NTOV, and I remember from forums that at a brief moment of time some guilds experienced with monk MTing AoW, which is probably impossible on P99.

[Namsaknoi]

NTOV trash you need to start casting at 30% health to have few resists then eventually land. <- I meant snare

[loramin]

Just ignore CD288: he likes popping into threads and defending P99's mechanics no matter how unclassic they are (because he never played in classic and thus can't understand why everyone else wants P99 to be classic).

[cd288]

I played plenty in classic and was also CSR. You just don't like that I told you your personal memories don't suffice as evidence and you need to provide actual evidence