Spells: Sentinel - Enchanter Spell

[TheLieka]

As always, I preface this by saying Thank you for all that you do, I truly appreciate it. It is with that appreciation that I bring this nugget that I have found.

The enchanter spell "Sentinel" does not function as it should. It is only a level 8 enchanter spell, but is extremely powerful (for folks that have never needed hacks to know which mobs have spawned), and is used throughout the game as an excellent utility.

• High Priority: The spell triggers aggro. I found this out when I was playing with it in North Freeport... note to self... don't test spells in cities. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Sentinel is a non-combat spell that is used by an enchanter to report on activity in an area; it never has and never should trigger aggro. Back in the "stare at your book to med" days, it was great because you could cast it on the area in front of you, and it would warn you when mobs were nearby (or when mobs spawned); it should not trigger any aggro.
  
  
• Normal Priority: Each tick, the spell should trigger a sentinel report for each player and NPC in the sentinel area; currently, it just reports just NPCs and the caster. When an enchanter casts sentinel in an area, any player or NPC present in that area should trigger the sentinel, and be reported to the enchanter.
  
  
• Normal Priority: Currently, only one sentinel appears to be active at a time, after casting the spell again, the first sentinel area is deactivated. A sentinel area should be present until it (or its caster) expires (I am not sure about the duration; multiple sentinel areas are possible at the same time. I know that multiple sentinels were active at the same time, and that they did have an expiration timer (something like 5 or 10 minutes), as I remember casting it over and over and over under the spires, then watching people LD when they ported into Toxx forest. At the very least, triggering several sentinels was like a flashbang to any players that had spell graphics enabled.
  
  
• Low Priority: The spell is self only, but it requires a target. It was like this in live as well, so I do not know that you would want to address this, but clearly it should have either been been 1) a self only, yellow gem spell or 2) a targetted spell with a range (I believe the current range is 0.0). Again, this is probably not something you will do, but it was something SOE never addressed.

Sentinel Example 1:
An enchanter is camping several areas. He clear one camp, then cast sentinel there. The enchanter moves to the next camp (perhaps on the other side of the zone). If any players or mobs pass through the area or mobs spawn in the area where sentinel has been cast, the enchanter receives the message "%t has triggered your sentinel." If the triggering actor is a player, then the player will receive the message "You feel that you are being watched."

Sentinel Example 2:
Before an enchanter begins meditating with his book in his face (as was the fashion of the day), he first casts sentinel and is notified of any approaching players or monsters before getting thumped by them.

Sentinel Example 3 (PvP):
An enchanter casts sentinel under the Toxx spires and runs south toward Paineel. When the opposing force ports into the Toxx spires, he receives an early warning.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=299

[TheLieka]

(bump)

[TheLieka]

(bump)

[Furme]

I seriously hope that this spell is never put back into it's "classic" capacity.

The reason for this is that sentinel was used to crash zones and players.

Back in the day on live, the Staff of the observers had 50 charges and was an instant click. If the two "Normal Priority" changes went into effect.. I'm 100% Positive we would see people bombing raid forces with them.

So, In effect, by fixing this spell to classic standards you would be permitting certain players to packet-bomb other raid forces while they were prepping for mobs.. Not to mention adding a lot of strain to the server by trying to send 50+ players the message "You feel like you are being watched." 50 times every tick and the spell effect trigger.


Evidence:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=514

It can be annoying and there have been reports (I have not confirmed) that this spamming has caused tremendous lag in certain areas. Ohterwise the weapon itself is pretty cool.

"Tremendous Lag"

Used Sentinel to escape being ganked by 5 attackers. Was on way back from guk to freeport carying 50 to 100pp. Was jumped by a team of PK'ers. As a cleric I used divine aura to bag and activated Sentinel. It lagged em out so bad I was able to gate to freedom! or at least it assisted my ability not to get interupted.

"Lagged em out"

This spell will get you ALOT of enemies when used. It spams the chars close to you with text and a highly irritating sound.

"Spams chars close to you"


So, with that being said, I'll reiterate.. I hope that this spell is never truly "fixed" and continues to be nerfed =p

[cyryllis]

i used to crash zones with it on live, and when luclin came out people used to crash bazaar with it all the time...

but who are we to question these poor mechanics? they were classic, just as much so as exp penalties for hybrids and no compass.

Fondly remember having dozens of sentinels at once and you could make an entire area glow for a looong time. Definitely was longer than 10 mins per sentinel. iirc it was until you zoned and was determined later to be a terrible design flaw.

[TheLieka]

Possible resolutions to those concerns -
1) limit each Sentinel to 10 trigger targets per cycle
2) limit the caster to 5 instances of Sentinel at a time (per zone)
- that would resolve the issues that you described with the live implementation while preserving the great aspects of the spell.

[Lisset]

bump

[Raev]

I did some testing today and the original bug report appears to be a bit outdated.

On the initial cast it picks up all PCs in range (no NPCs). It no longer generates aggro on NPCs (unless they are being trained on you by BDA "paladins") as it does not seem to affect them at all.

Subsequent casts only pick up the caster.

The animation generates a disgusting number of pixels.

[diabolica1]

The spell "Sentinel" is Still Broken - Tried Sentinel and it no longer reports anything moving through the area except the caster of the spell