Game Mechanics: Endurance

[Chushque]

I posted a thread on this right as the forum jumped to here, so I am posting again.

There has been a problem with the ENDR bar while using 2hs or heavy weapons. I never remember having to deal with endurance unless jumping caused the bar to go down.

I have noticed that I can only kill 2 mobs before i am in the 50% penalty area, which causes the worst part to happen. I had a Two Handed Sword with 50dly on it and the thing would take at least twice as long to swing. My group thought I wasn't even attacking ...it was that bad.

Just thought I would bring this to your attention..big problem for 2 handers especially non big classes.

[Villert]

I never noticed this, playing as a monk until I used a 2hb weapon.

With 1hb weapons (4.5stones or less at least) there seems to be no loss of endurance. Once I switched to a Fine Steel Great Staff, however, I also noticed the loss of endurance, and it became a big problem.

I feel for the classes who are more dependent on 2h weapons, as the endurance penalty really does make a huge difference in attack speed.

[Danth]

Endurance suffers some glaring problems.

First, and most importantly--endurance doesn't regenerate anywhere near as fast as it should. The yellow bar shouldn't take very long at all to fill up from zero, a mere handful of ticks.

I did a little test shortly before writing this post. I ran myself out of mana, then ran myself out of endurance. I'm a 22 Paladin.

From zero of both, it took me 4 minutes to regenerate my mana to full. (15:47:07 to 15:51:11). It took me 5--FIVE--minutes to regen my endurance to full (15:47:07 to 15:52:12). Yes, you're reading this correctly, a 22 Paladin's mana actually meditates back up about 25% more quickly than his yellow bar!

Second--and probably related to the above-noted complete lack of regen--weapons which should not cause stamina loss, do. A fine Steel 2H sword never in the history of any of my EQ Paladins caused net loss of stamina. On P1999, however, it does. Likewise, ~7 weight 1H weapons do the same, and shouldn't. I believe this may be due to the lack of endurance regen--if endurance regenerated anything like its classic level, such weapons would probably cause no net stamina loss.

Third--there's a strange attack rate penalty for running below 50% endurance. This should not happen. Nothing more to add here, it's just wrong. Penalties for running low on stamina should not occur until you're virtually out (say 10% or less).

Fourth--during testing, I noticed a harmless, yet amusing quirk. Swinging on an INVULNERABLE target (in this case, a willowisp with a non-magic weapon) caused no endurance loss no matter how many times I attacked.

-----------------------------------

For an idea of where "it should be", I never knew a sub-10 weight weapon to make the stamina bar move. This is on characters with as little as 70 stamina. The only weapons which caused net loss were a handful of extremely heavy, relatively fast (for their weight) weapons such as the Deep Six Cutlass, Wurmslayer (particularly when dual-wielded or hasted), Axe of the Iron Back, and such items--all of which have weight well in excess of 10.

In classic, the yellow bar was a total non-factor the vast majority of the time. Spells such as invigor were often regarded as near-worthless. The endurance system as it presently exists on P1999 in no way reflects the reality of classic-era Everquest.

Danth

[Grouch]

I wanted to thank Danth for the informative post, which I agree with everyone here.

It makes one wonder:

"Why ever use a 2hander?"

Endurance needs to be reconsidered and "fixed".

[Danth]

I don't ordinarily "bump" threads, but I was told this was the sort of issue Ladoth looks at and wasn't sure he'd seen it, so--bringing it back to the first page.

Edit: I'd also be happy to assist in any way I can with making this seem 'feel more classic'. I play a Paladin. I only ever played Paladins. I made probably 10 or 12 of them over the years, all leveled to the upper level ranges (if not always making it to the cap). It's what I do. My gear on P1999 is almost exactly identical to one of my historic characters, and broadly similar to several more. In this specific case, my own memory is a very useful resource.


Danth

[Feittin]

I just want to bump this and mention that I am having the same problem. My 17 warrior is DWing bull smasher and crookstinger. When grouped, I have to ask the clerics to cast zing on me after every fight if they have the mana. Usually even after the zing I am still only around 70% or so as each fight will take 40 - 50% endurance. Shouldn't need a zing after every fight.

Usually I end up having to use shield instead of DWing (still drains my endurance btw, just a little more slowly), which makes me sad...

[Smashed]

I also wouldn't getting some confirmation that at over 100 stamina, this slowdown no longer occurs? like on live?

[Lenowin]

This seems to be a signifigant problem on my alt monk as well. He runs out real quick, and it takes quite a while to regenerate it back to 100%.

[stormlord]

Having looked through some allah pages for different 2 handers, I'd say that 15wt is when players are going to need songs/spells to recover stamina at a respectable rate without having to repeatedly rest to recover it. This is the way it was in at least 2001, but I am not sure how it was in 1999. Anything below 15wt will decrease it, but the pace will be so slow that you'll make up most or all of it when you sit down to regain mana or hitpoints. It should scale too. A weapon that weighs 8 should require more stamina than a weapon that weighs 6, and this also applies to something that weighs 15 as opposed to something that weighs 12.

I know that in at last 2001 you did not suffer stat or attack rate penalties until you were out of stamina, and then only if you had < 100 stamina (the stat). So suffering penalties at 50% seems wrong, but I could be in error.

Whatever changes you make, be sure to not make the stamina heal spells useless. Make us consider the weight of a weapon when we buy it in regards to how much stamina it's using. Anyting else wouldn't be classic.

[Danth]

"It should scale too. A weapon that weighs 8 should require more stamina than a weapon that weighs 6"

At least on a non dual-wield class, neither of these hypothetical weapons should even make the yellow bar budge. I know this is a mere example, and you could easily change the numbers to something more accurate (say, a 10 weight weapon requires less stamina than a 12.5 weight weapon), but I point that out so as to prevent any confusion about how things should be.

I must reiterate that on Live spells such as invigor WERE regarded as worthless the majority of the time--there were only a relative handful of overweight weapons (I listed a few above) which could cause problems.

Danth