Here's what I posted to the thread this afternoon:
*****
I have strongly mixed feelings about the response by GZ. On the one hand, I
appreciate the by-and-large wonderful job he´┐¢s done on the magic system in
EQ, and I am grateful that he took the time to answer these questions. On
the other hand, I feel that several of his responses failed to answer the
questions posed. The following questions posed by Rokenn were not directly
addressed in GZ´┐¢s response:
Rokenn´┐¢s original post:
>>>Kelin's Lucid Lullaby, I recently tested this song out vs. a level one
>>>human warrior. My Bard was level 37 at the time, using the Lute of the
>>>Gypsy Princess and I have charisma of 141. Every round I got the 'so and
>>>so head nods' message and every nearly every round the test subject was
>>>able to attack me (about 1 in 10 rounds he would not).
***GZ SAYS***
As most high level enchanters from Beta+ can tell you, there are two saving
throws that happen with an "Enthrall" style effect (such as Kelin´┐¢s Lucid
Lullaby) hits a creature. The first saving throw is against the target´┐¢s
Magic Resistance. The second saving throw only happens with high level
monsters ´┐¢ they get a secondary save based on their level. The reason for
this is that the Enthrall effect is very, very powerful ´┐¢ it allows a single
player to remove a creature from combat. This means that a party that could
handle two "X" level mobs might be able to take three, or even four of them
on if there is somebody
around with the Enthrall effect.
MY QUESTION:
What in your response explains the tests Rokenn mentioned? "The second
saving throw only happens with high level monsters" does seem to exclude 1st
level monsters having a second save, doesn´┐¢t it? Because, as Rokenn stated,
the "A warrior´┐¢s head nods" message was displayed, this indicates that the
warrior failed the first save. Therefore the 90% resist rate can only be
explained by the second save, which you claim the first-level warrior should
not get (by virtue of not being a high-level monster). So what happened?
***GZ SAYS***
Because of this (read game balance) higher level monsters have a harder time
being enthralled. At lower levels, a single player can take out a single
opponent of equal level. By mid levels this is much harder, and by high
levels it is virtually impossible. Allowing a single player to remove one or
more creatures from combat at high levels is sick level powerful ´┐¢ to the
point that we designed an entire classes specialty around doing it.
MY QUESTION:
If I am reading this correctly, Kelin´┐¢s Lucid Lullaby was designed so that
it would be useful for low-level bards, moderately useful for mid-level
bards, and not useful at all for high-level bards (due to astronomically
high resists for high-level monsters). Is this the case?
***GZ SAYS***
Alenia´┐¢s Disenchanting Melody works as it was intended to ´┐¢ it follows the
design that we had for it from the beginning. It is particularly useful?
Depends if your buddy is dying from a nasty DoT. People use Egg Shaped
Pumice on themselves all the time on the PvP servers. Is the Disenchanting
Melody as generally useful as Cancel Magic? Not really.
MY QUESTION:
Granted that most parties buff their members, in your hypothetical example,
you have a buddy dying from a nasty DoT so you choose to ADM him, stripping
away his extra hit points/AC/damage shields etc (and your own) until you get
to the DoT in question. By thus weakening him, didn´┐¢t you just effectively
cause him to take as much damage over time as he would have from the DoT?
Let´┐¢s expand this hypothetical example to include a full party ´┐¢ you have
one guy dying from a DoT, and to prevent his death by DoT you instead
massively weaken the whole party? Because this song is party- rather than
target-oriented, the egg-shaped pumice is a poor analogy. Is there any point
at all to this song?
Rokenn´┐¢s original post:
>>>Denon's Dissension, The instrument portion of this song seems to be
>>>broken. In tests I have run using a horn made no difference in mana drain
>>>in PvP combat.
***GZ SAYS***
This was a very tough song to balance. It takes away mana from other casters
´┐¢ the virtual lifeblood of 7 of EverQuest´┐¢s 14 classes. The amount taken
away is nice, but not great. Using a Horn increases the amount of mana
drained. Again, nice, but not great.
**************
MY QUESTION:
Disregarding for the moment the issue of whether the amount of mana drained
is at all appreciable by 36th level when a bard gets this song, which in
turn determines whether the song has any utility, Rokenn´┐¢s tests revealed
that using a horn did nothing to increase the amount of mana drained. You
claim it does ´┐¢ by what means have you tested this? The same means by which
you tested whether Fufil´┐¢s does more damage when a drum is wielded?
Rokenn´┐¢s original post:
>>>DoT change a while back lowered the damage of our DoT songs but didn't
>>>increase the duration, any chance that this could be balanced in some
>>>way?
***GZ SAYS***
Bards are affected by the Kiting changes just like everybody else. Bard´┐¢s
kiting creatures will get the disadvantage ´┐¢ in all other cases, the songs
should work just as before. Minimal combat movement will not lower the
damage on a DoT or Bard Song.
MY QUESTION:
In what sense can you say "bards were affected just like everybody else? In
the kiting patch, the damage done by all DoTs was reduced across the board,
affecting bards and others equally. In order to tune the reduction, the
duration of DoTs was increased. Because bards´┐¢ DoT durations were NOT
increased like every other classes´┐¢, bards were NOT affected like everybody
else. Granted that we suffered the same reduction in damage as every other
class, why did we not receive the same increase in duration as other classes
to compensate?
I appreciate that GZ is a busy man, and that he doubtless gets hundreds of
demands each day to fix this or nerf that. As a result it must be difficult
for him to spend a great deal of time on any individual message. I certainly
don´┐¢t intend any of this as a flame or assault on GZ ´┐¢ but I do still crave
answers to the questions Rokenn posed, and GZ responded without answering
many of them.
Aloro Silvertongue (E´┐¢ci)
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