Over the course of the last few months, since we announced this project, we have had numerous discussions on the classes. During these discussions we identified some key changes, that are relatively easy for us to implement, that could result in better gameplay for all of you. While this is far from complete (the process and this list) it is the start of this class re-envisionment, reflections, redefinition, whatever we all decide to call it besides balance. Some of these changes you see on this list will make it live for our April 6th update. Others we would like to hear your thoughts and ideas on before continuing. We think that there are some very positive changes here, some of which kind of go against the grain of EQ gameplay. So let the discussion begin;
We'll start with some general gameplay changes that either affect all classes or multiple classes.
General
We are removing the level 55 fear cap and adding advanced spells to the fear lines to make them current. Now, this doesn't mean that all NPCs can be feared, we will be making use of a no-fear flag to stop potential game-play problems.
We will remove the hard coded aggro generated by poison based debuffs which will result in some DoTs and Tash generating less aggro than they currently do as well as more consistent aggro generation.
We are going to spread spell progression out for levels 1 to 50 to reduce the levels gaps between gaining new spells. We would like casters to gain new spells every level and enjoy more even progression.
We are planning to add new abilities and disciplines to non-casters and spread those out between levels 1 to 50, along with their current abilities to make sure non-casters also have progression, in the form of a new ability, every level.
Pet owners will be able to click off any buffs they do not want their pet to have.
We are changing many of the all-or-nothing immune flags so they mitigate the effect instead. We want you to use your abilities on most NPCs, but where we feel the ability might be problematic the ability will have a lesser effect.
You will see the healing messages for Heal Over Time spells. There will also be a filter for this new message.
We will change the potion "Essence of Concealment" from invisibility to improved invisibility and make the components easier for alchemists to find.
All spells will check for immunity before they are cast. So if the target is immune, the spell will not generate aggro for the caster.
We would like ammunition to auto-feed from your inventory directly to the ranged slot.
We are eliminating the +mana cap.
We are removing the inherent resist rate from rain spells.
Solo Play
EverQuest is a group-based game we all know that but we also know that there are times that many of us like to hunt alone. Some of our classes can solo effectively, while others can't. We plan to make changes to classes that struggle with soloing to allow them some solo play. These changes will be made to only affect their abilities while solo and not affect how they perform in groups.
1. We are still discussing the best way to go about this but some of the options we have discussed are listed here;
a. Add healing potions to the game. To prevent this from unbalancing the group game, we need to be careful how these potions work. They may need to be a healing potion that does heal-over-time and does not stack with any other healing spells. Another option is simply having a long reuse on the potion so its effectiveness in a group situation, where the player is generally taking on much more difficult NPCs, is not affected much.
b. We are exploring class abilities that add the pieces needed to solo while also taking away the abilities that make them useful in a group situation. An example of this is a warrior ability that increases their defensive abilities and gives them a damage boost, but causes them to be able to generate nearly no aggro while the ability is in effect, so the warrior would not be able to tank for most groups
Class Specific Changes
Now onto the class changes. We know that this is what most of you are looking for and we think we have a pretty solid plan. Again, as I mentioned above, this is just the beginning folks. Our team is still crunching numbers and other changes are dependent upon that data. We will not be making any changes to melee DPS, tanking and other combat balance issues until that data is completed and we see what effects these changes have on gameplay. We ask that you please discuss these changes on your class board. And please folks, be constructive. If you think the ideas have no merit, say why. We can't work on it with you with bad feedback. OMG This SUXXORS is not going to help.
Bards
We will be increasing your instrument mod cap and using itemization to limit the inherent power gains. This also means that certain songs will have built in maximums to prevent them from scaling indefinitely.
Beastlords
We will add at least one new slow spell for you which has an innate resistance mod built in so that it lands more often. This will help you perform the role of slower in your groups, since you don't have access to the powerful resistance lowering spells of other slowing classes.
We will be boosting your healing so it stays on par with ranger healing when we improve ranger heals.
We want to assure pet classes that we believe you should be able to use their pets in most gameplay situations, including raids. We believe that pet classes do not have many problems with pets on raids at the moment, but want you to understand that we intend for you to use pets on raids and if you find that there is a problem, we will find ways to correct it.
We will be increasing the availability of pet focus items, particularly for the more casual players.
We will be looking into the casting time of some of your pet healing spells and reducing the casting time where appropriate.
Berserkers
Many Berserker complaints are about their damage output and this isn’t something we can really address without the results of the number crunching. Our thoughts are that you are fine at lower levels and pretty decent at high levels with your AAs, but you may need some help at the mid levels. Should our numbers support our thoughts, we will be adjusting things so your damage progression is smoother across the levels.
We are looking into the endurance cost of many of your abilities and lowering them as necessary.
We are looking into adding throwing quivers that grant innate haste similar to normal quivers.
Clerics
With Dragons of Norrath you gained two new spells that you seem to enjoy; Mark of Vengeance and Mark of Retribution. We will be changing these spells into full spell lines that you get early on and that scale up as you level.
We want to make your Turn Undead spells effective at all levels. Some of the suggested changes include:
a. Changing the fear part of the spell so the rest of the spell still works even if the fear fails or removing the fear portion of the spell entirely.
b. Adding a strong snare effect.
Druids
Druids are a unique challenge in that the class is divided evenly between you offensive druids who enjoy doing damage, and you defensive druids who prefer to play the role of healer. We want to support both play styles, but if we were to increase both halves of the druid equally the class would quickly become overpowered. Our plan is to introduce a new option where a druid can enter into a particular “mode” or “stance” where they become better at one part at the expense of the other. Our preferred solution for this is to add an innate ability for druids. The ability would get its own button similar to abilities such as backstab or track. You will be able to be in one of three states and can switch between them once every 5 minutes.
a. Normal – Their healing and offensive abilities are in balance. This is the state they exist in today.
b. Offensive – Their offensive power is boosted by 25%, but they suffer a 50% reduction in the power of their healing spells.
c. Defensive – Their healing power is boosted by 25%, but they suffer a 50% reduction in the power of their offensive spells.
Another of our goals is to broaden the core grouping roles to allow all classes to more easily put together groups. Similar to how any of the 3 main tanks should be able to perform that role in a group, we want any of the 3 healers to be able to perform the role of a main healer in a group. The changes mentioned above for druids will allow you to fill a healing role and perform at about 80% of the effectiveness of a cleric.
Enchanters
We will add higher level upgrades to the Word of Morell spell line.
We plan to change the way mana drain works. In the past the spell had diminishing effects on NPCs above level 53. We will be removing that limitation so you can use Theft of Thought on higher level caster NPCs and we can introduce more powerful spells in that line, in the future. However, we will also be changing drains so that they only return the mana the NPC has instead of always returning the full amount. If an NPC only has 100 mana and your spell does a 400 drain, you will only get 100 mana. This is a necessary change as most NPCs, including non-casters, are given small amounts of mana in order to power some innates.
We all know that the power of NPCs has climbed and the difficulty in charming NPCs has retreated. This has led to an imbalance where you were able to charm NPCs that do far more damage than ever intended and with minimal risk. This lead us to the unfortunate decision to make many NPC's uncharmable. With OOW, we introduced a change to charm that allowed us to make most NPCs charmable again, but reduce their effectiveness and remove the gameplay imbalance. We did this by reducing their stats while charmed. This presented some new problems though, the largest of which is you like to haste and buff your pets to get the most out of them and when the charm breaks, you face a much more powerful NPC. We have a plan to ensure charm’s usefulness and want to gather your opinion before putting it into motion.
a. We want charm to be an integral part of your gameplay. You should be able to grab a charmed pet in most circumstances and use that to benefit your group.
b. We will be looking at the stats NPCs use when charmed to ensure they are within the intended range.
c. We would like to add innate buff effects to enchanter charm spells. While an NPC is under the effects of the charm, they will also be under the effect of spells similar to what you would use to buff your pet. When charm breaks those effects will go away so you are only dealing with the NPC in its base state.
d. The change mentioned above would cause further imbalance in zones where NPCs don’t currently lower their stats when charmed, the changes that were made in Omens will need to be made across the rest of the game and this will be the way new charm works in all of Norrath.
e. After charm changes for all zones, we can go back and open up the use of charm in areas where it was previously excluded due to balance problems making charm much more usable throughout the game world.
Mages
We will be converting most, if not all, of your summons to place the items directly into the hands of the target. Of course, we will also need a new toggle that lets players turn off this ability from anyone not in their group, anyone not in their raid, or anyone at all.
We will be adding new pet pack spells that contain the more used summoned pet item to help relieve the tedium of summoning many different items.
We will be fixing Turn Summoned in a way similar to how we fix Turn Undead for clerics. See the cleric section for more details.
We want to assure pet classes that we believe you should be able to use their pets in most gameplay situations, including raids. We believe that pet classes do not have many problems with pets on raids at the moment, but want you to understand that we intend for you to use pets on raids and if you find that there is a problem, we will find ways to correct it.
We will be increasing the availability of pet focus items, particularly for the more casual players.
We will be looking into the casting time of some of your pet heals and reducing the casting time where appropriate.
Monks
We will be reversing the AC mitigation reduction that you received during the Planes of Power era.
Necromancers
We will add new spells in the Screaming Terror line to give you some more combat utility.
We want to assure pet classes that we believe you should be able to use their pets in most gameplay situations, including raids. We believe that pet classes do not have many problems with pets on raids at the moment, but want you to understand that we intend for you to use pets on raids and if you find that there is a problem, we will find ways to correct it.
We will be increasing the availability of pet focus items, particularly for the more casual players.
We will be looking into the casting time of some of your pet heal spells and reducing the casting times where appropriate.
Paladins
We want you to be a main tank in group situations. We believe that you are currently able to fill this role, but want to assure you that our intent is for a group to be able to grab a warrior, paladin, or shadowknight as their main tank and be effective with any of them.
With DoN, you gained a limited form of defensive. We are monitoring your feedback and if you like this direction; we plan to make it a full spell line that begins at the level warriors get the defensive discipline.
Rangers
Rangers are good at many things and when all the parts add up properly, they’re a class that is in heavy demand. Our feeling is that the parts are not adding up properly in the current game. We are still digesting all of the DPS numbers and stats but in the meantime we identified a couple of things we can increase in the short term.
a. We will be improving the damage you do through spells.
b. We will be boosting your healing ability, particularly at the top end of the game.
Rogues
We will fix the problems with Assassin’s Feint so it works correctly and then gauge your reaction to the working ability. If it turns out to be something that you like, we will look into adding more combat utility through a similar means.
We are looking into adding throwing quivers that grant innate haste similar to how normal quivers work
Shadowknights
We also want Shadowknights to be a main tank in group situations. We believe that you are currently able to fill this role, but want to assure you that our intent is for a group to be able to grab a warrior, paladin, or shadowknight as their main tank and be effective with any of them.
With DoN, you also gained a limited form of defensive. We are monitoring your feedback and if you like this direction; we plan to make it a full spell line that begins at the level warriors get the defensive discipline.
Shaman
In DoN you received the spells Spirit of the Leopard and Spirit of the Panther. You seem to like these new spells and they have added more desirability for you in groups. We will be extending these into full spell lines so that Shaman of other level ranges can see the benefits from these spells.
As with Druids, we are looking to increase your healing ability so you can function better as main healer in groups. You folks are a little problematic though, since your healing ability is the function of not just your heals, but your ability to reduce an NPCs damage output through slows. In a situation where an NPC is fully slowable, you are a superb healer but against an NPC who cannot be slowed, your healing falls behind. If we were to just improve your heals, you would quickly outshine any other healer when facing NPCs that can be slowed. So, we are investigating ways to improve your healing ability only in circumstances where an NPC cannot be slowed or you choose not to slow the NPC (for your own strange reasons). These changes will be rolled out at the same time as any druid healing changes to ensure that one class does not eclipse the other.
Warriors
Many of the ideas for changes to the warrior class are dependant upon the results of the data we are still compiling. However, we are looking into improving your ability to solo in the mid and high level game as well as;
We are looking into the endurance cost of many of your disciplines and lowering them as necessary.
We will increase the knockback on Press the Attack slightly.
Wizards
With DoN, you received more mana efficient nukes that are aimed at improving your sustained DPS. We will be extending this into a line of spells to help out with sustained DPS at different level ranges.
We will fix Manaburn. Our preferred method is to uncap the ability and implement a cap based on the maximum percentage of health you can do in a single hit. So one of you, facing a million hit point boss mob (fairly common in today’s game) can expect a full manaburn to land for 10s of thousands of points of damage in one hit.
Once again I would like to remind you that this is the beginning of the changes and there is still more to come. We encourage you to openly discuss these changes and let us know what you think. We want this to be a cooperative exchange and we will chime in on your discussions when appropriate.
Thanks all.