>It was a SERIOUS issue and it needed a pretty drastic fix (this was in

BETA,

>not recently). The fix, however, was fine right after final started but
>they just kept adding more and more 'fixes' into it, rendering the song
>completely useless. Removing the 2nd resist and requiring the song to be
>lute only would give us back the usefulness without the overpowering

ability

I agree that it was fine in early final release. I just can't see why they
don't return it to that state.

Also, the enchanter an warrior I saw were doing exactly as you described.
Due to the enchanter's ability to AoE mez, and chain stun which is often
overlooked, they were taking down the mobs one at a time with very little
damage taken by the warrior. The warrior was complaining he wasn't getting
hurt enough to use bind wounds. Granted they were taking down blues and not
whites or yellows, but it still seemed just as powerful a tactic as what you
described with two bards.

>Try to be a little less negative, bud, it comes off really harsh and makes
>you sound like you hate EQ and bards in specific. Seriously, if you don't
>want to do crowd control why the hell do you care if Lullaby works at all?

I don't want to do just crowd control. I like the bard class because we can
do so many different things that I don't get bored by doing the same old
thing every night. That's probably why I don't like grouping with
enchanters, it takes away almost all of my tactical options. With
enchanters I feel like I get pigeon holed into one single role, and it isn't
one I feel bards are best suited to.

Actually I really like bards and EQ in general. It's just that some things
really tick me off. I work in software development and support and Verant's
approach to support is a really big sticking point with me. They are
unprofessional, incompetent, and unresponsive in that area. I've worked
that area in three wholly different industries and in any of them the people
that developed and implemented Verant's approach would be unemployed by now.
I have frankly never met more than a handful of programmers who were half as
arrogant as Verant's come off being. To have a different version of the
"Live" client on your testing machine is unbelieveable, yet that's exactly
why GZ was so astounded that there was no message for the secondary resist.

What really perplexes me more than anything. How did a company that had the
vision to come up with something like EQ, and do so well in so many places
with it, suddenly become so completely incapable of changing it without
breaking things so often?

Funny thing. I was reading a book on game software design and support and I
came accross a passage where Brad McQuaid is quoted supporting the concept
of extensive testing. I haven't laughed so loud in a long time. It's
funny, they obviously see some parts of testing as being necessary. After
all, we have people like you to thank for not having to fall through holes
in the geography every 30 minutes. I just can't figure out how they can
claim to test bard changes, when so many of the changes fail the simplest
test. We aren;t talking about obscure interelationships between seldom used
spells here, we're talking about songs that are meant to damage an opponent
but only work on the singer(The three DoT's), or damage spells that
heal(Brusco's II), or songs that do absolutely nothing (Alenia's). There
are more such examples.

My mood often mirrors these changes. Verant tries to nerf the 54th level
movement redux and claims to only change that one song. In reality they
reduced Chains as well, down to the secondary effect of a necro spell.
That's either incompetent or they out and out lied. I don't like being lied
too, it makes my cranky.

Kit

> Lyrnia I have to disagree on one point. There is no way the secondary
> resist was added before last Sept/Oct. Before that I never got a mob
> attacking me after a successful "nods" message. They might have thought

the

> secondary resist was in, but it didn't work if it was.
>
> An enchanter and any melee class can derail a large train of blues and
> slaughter them one by one. They face the same level of risk as two bards
> trying this. It was not overly powerful. Without being able to use other
> songs a bard is a very poor melee fighter at level 15+ when he has

Lullaby.

>
> Lullaby with just a Lute would be just as useless as it is now. It would

> cool for saving newbies from a train in Blackburrow, but pointless in

normal

> combat situations. Unless you want to just stand there and play just
> Lullaby while the rest of the group actually fights. That's why my
> enchanter is just gathering dust, I found I don;t want to just stand (err
> sit) there and Mez until someone needs Quickness or Breeze refreshed.
>
> Kit

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