Will work for Peanuts!!

Well, I've been gone the last 5 days... in the Windy City... or I should say.. in the "OMG WE LOVE ST. PATRICK'S DAY" City... Chicago, where they drink and drink and drink and then drink some more!! Running around in freezing temperature's dye'd in green .

Well, I when I got back to home, I hopped into EQ to see what I had missed in the last week. I thought, well, I'd try to find a LFG group and see what was up. I spent a few hours with my LFG flag on before I decides to actively pursue a group.

I was amazed at how hard it can be to find a pick up group. Even on Maelin Starpyre, which is what I call a healthy server! Eventually, I thought to myself, well if I can't find a normal group at my level, maybe I can whore myself out a bit....

So what I did, was go to PoK and advertise, 75 Berserker will kill anything you want, charging 10k a kill.... and BAM! I get about 10 requests for various mobs around the world. TONS of people are needing to get stuff done... but they did once ask me to come help before I started advertising... Why?

I thought to myself, why wouldn't people ask for help on stuff without a charge, but when I started asking for a charge, I suddenly was able to find a group looking for help... I was baffled...

To me, this says the LFG system and the Party reward system has gotten out of whack. People are no long inclined to explore for new friend and LFG people... the vast difference in power at lvl 75 has caused the LFG system to fail. Why join a group without knowing if the people in your group are anywhere near you in terms of power? But, when a big beefy berserker says, "hey, I'll kill stuff for you, for cheap..." players start to think, hey I can get something I want done without the worry of a real group!

I think another issue in the Social aspect of EQ is the fact that everything is treated like a favor... rarely do you find a group that is all working towards the same goal. Why? Because there are 4 billion different goals in EQ... What happens in reality is player A asks player B to do event X... player B says, sure, but can you help me with event Y afterwards? Player A does not want to do event Y for player B... and so player A thinks "fuck it, I hate event Y"... and logs off to player some WoW....

And here is a reason why we see EQ in decline... players have no incentive to group and help each other... beside the vague fantasy hope that good deeds will be returned!

It is a vicious cycle, but since it has been working like this for so long, it's almost accepted as a law.

"If you want help, you must give help!"

Now, when I advertsized "Will work for peanuts" then the player A realizes I don't have an event Y... instead I just want plat up front... and that is why players were eager to ask me to help them... I made the deal simple... give me plat, you get your goal.... half the time required (without considering where that plat came from).

So, I plan on taking this theory further... since no one will use the LFG tool, I'll just offer my services to people on Maeling... if I'm not raiding, just ask me for help! I'm cheap... peanuts will do!

In other news... seems that no one has beaten any new Solteris event...

I'm gonna post about why the 7th vetern's nerf was a good thing too...

I'm also going to post some coverage on the Anniversary and Fabled mob stuff!!

Ok. Sorry for that big gap in news! More posts this week! BACK TO THE GRIND

-Swampfunk

Slow Week and Spring Break!

Well, it's been a week, the time changed here in Indiana, it always disorients me. To prepare I spent the week with a tinfoil hat and avoided looking at the sun. Oddly, the tinfoil hat tends to prevent me from posting about EverQuest... who knew?

Not much has happened in EQ this last week. In highend guild news, Triality whipped their way all the way to Solteris Event 4... TR still on Event 2 ... and I think I heard Cestus Dei made a kill on event 1! Who keeps track anyways anymore?? Not like it's gonna matter soon...Momentum will be back! (<-- thats my weekly high end guild joke! get it?)

There were some picture leaks of the end fight of Solteris earlier this week. I'm not gonna post them but I am going to say, "shame on you for spoiling it!"... I know you aren't there yet, so using beta shots is bad!

But besides that, really not much else for me to mention. I've been working on my walk-through's for Qvic and Anguish. It's taking way longer than expected... mainly due to having to do them all again to remember! Qvic is way easier than I remembered too.

Oh... and my tip of the day: Get Corruption Resists...

ok... I got a tinfoil hat and some nice weather to go through...

Typical Mob Pins

Greetings to the over 3000 viewers I have had in the last 3 days!!

I'd like to start of and say thank you for checking out my stuff, I'm getting lots of good feedback and will be making some changes due to that feedback. Hopefully I'll be able to find a new domain, and design a fantastic new site for you guys.

I haven't received any email yet, and this makes me sad! How am I supposed to do a "Letters to Swampfunk" page, if I don't get any letters?! Oh well, hopefully some of the less "EQ experienced" players will ask some questions. Don't be shy, I promise to hide identity and to be kind!

I also think there will be a screen shot contest coming up soon, so start collecting awesome screenshots!

Ok, today I want to talk through basic steps on how to pin a monster (mobile or mob for short). I'm sure there will be readers out there that think this is silly, mainly because they have been using these pins for years now. But I feel there are enough users out there who have no idea what pins are and when to use them that I'm going to post this anyways.

In EverQuest its pretty easy to tell that mobs die faster when they aren't being pushed around everywhere. It's much easier to focus your DPS's attention on a stationary target. I've calculate that a raid will lose 25-40% of it's melee DPS from a moving mob (also know as the moving pin!) Most of the time when a guild attacks a mob, they have an idea of how to pin the mob (or atleast they should!). But more times than not, they all act like noobies and push the mob in a weird unnatural way. This can be very frustrating to all the melee members as they keep getting "your target is too far away" messages meaning they lost valuable DPS (Damage Per Second)!!

Today, I will cover the basic pins.... keep an eye out for my advanced pin article in the future.

The "corner pin" is every one's favorite pin. If done properly, it gives everyone the rear arc of a mob for their DPS. The rear arc is important because mobs will not get a defensive skill (parry, riposte, block, dodge) check on the melee attacking it. It is also important that the majority of the DPS be aimed at directly pushing the mob into the corner evenly. If the push becomes unbalanced the mob will often be pushed through the wall or objects and then warp out to somewhere inconvenient... warping is always bad. I also suggest have 2 or so people designated to adjust to the majority push (designated as Escape Control here).

It's pretty hard to mess up the corner pin, but the lovely dev's at SOE have decided to design all their zones without corners lately or with object that interfer with corner pins. This is especially true in their raid zones. Apparently, being able to corner pin a mob is too powerful! Typical nerfage.

Since the dev team decided that corners were evil, the next best pin is called the "shoulder pin", or "side pin". The idea is to find a flat wall, place the mob and tank with their shoulders against the wall and then have the DPS push towards the wall. The DPS should do their best to align their push to be perpendicular (make a T) to the wall. But, even with the best push, the mob will still try to slide up and down the wall. To correct this I always suggest placing a few rogues in the positions marked 1. and 2. and then place a few monks, or tanks with good push, at positions 3. and 4. I always try to give the rogues rear arc in any pin.

Being able to react to the mobs position in this pin is very important. But once you have practised and get a good feel on how to balance the push, you will see a solid stationary mob. Also, the rear arc of a mob starts at the side position where I have the majority of the DPS here and thats important.

A good example of how the DPS should look at the various mob defense arcs.

As you can see, the front arc is very big, and the side arc eats up half of the rear arc. When you attack from the side arc you will still get the mob's defensive skill checks, but you will not suffer damage from any sort of Riposte damage. The priority should be pretty clear for where the melee want to attack from. Sadly, there are many situations that force the melee to attack from the less favorable positions.

For example, the dreaded circle pin:

The "circle pin" is the most painful of the basic pins. It's hard to balance and generally pushes the mob all over the place and wastes a lot of DPS. This is a situation where the melee must give up there rear arc preference and spread themselves around the mob evenly. It takes a while to get a good feeling for this pin. Furthermore, it's very difficult to assign the various melee to the various positions on the 360 degree attack arc. I always suggest placing rogues at position 1. and I always suggest placing monks and tanks at position 2. Berserkers, rangers, bards, and beastlords ( NO PETS) then need to fill in the side arcs.

It is important to note that pets are NOT allowed on a circle pin or the side pin. It is impossible to position and reposition the pets so that they don't ruin the pin's balance. Pets have a crazy amount of push, they also will ignore the pin's balance and push to whatever direction the mob begins to be pushed. (if the mob starts going left, the pets will all end up pushing the mob harder to the left, due to the way pets stick to a mob). Sorry pet users, but don't use your pets when the pin is important.

OK, well, that's my basic introduction to mob position and pins. I'll be writing more about pins soon, I still have many moving pins to cover. If your guild is having trouble with position, ask yourself, is there a place that I can pin this sucker? If not, start practising the circle pin. The guild who can master the circle pin, can defeat any mob in EverQuest.

Alrighty, enjoy your pins today!

Keep reading, and send me some email questions @ swampfunk@gmail.com

What is Class Desirability?

It seems to me that the term Desirability is often misunderstood to the majority of the EverQuest community. As you can easily deduce, the word describes the amount of desire, or demand, for a class.

But why do we desire/demand certain classes over other classes? The question comes down to the effect of the class on the group's ability to win. Everything in EverQuest can be boiled down to one predominate factor, the desire to improve your character. How do you improve your character? You improve by winning.

The win, its what drives most players. Of course there are always those who think outside of the box, and focus their attention elsewhere, but the majority of the players want to win. Winning can be accomplished in all area's of EQ. From your first fights and quests, to the leveling process, to the high end raids. You want to win in everything that you do in EQ.

But you don't always win in EQ. Sometimes you lose, and it stings! How do you translate a lose in EQ? Usually translate to when you fail a mission, or die in game. Another way of losing is when someone else gets a win before you do. It's a common practise for the high end guilds to race to be the first winners of new events. And while everyone gets the same exact reward for a win on the same event, the first win is always worth bragging rights.... even if you are Triality (just joking!). I find many top end guilds worry more about being the first winners, than they worry about just winning a fight. And of course, there is always the petty bickering that you'll see as one guild claims another guild exploited an event, or they use haxxx, or they had help from a dev... but that's really all about ego and face, and is mostly for show.

Now, back to class desire. Why do we desire some classes and not desire others? Well, since EverQuest is a group/raid based game, players will naturally start to consider how to maximize their wins. Think of it a Wins vs Loses, and naturally, players will seek the classes that they believe, from experience, will lead them to a better win:lose ratio. This all started a very long time ago, and the argument, "Your class is better than mine" became very popular. Why? Because the dev team pretends that they want the classes to all have about the same level of desire. Of course it is impossible to ever really balance the classes. Instead, what started was a 8 year long battle over who is the best and who is the worst. It's a constantly shifting process.

Take the berserker class. This class was a rushed experiment of advertising and stolen warrior class ideas. The dev team took a template from the warrior class, changed kick to frenzy, and then removed all the defensive ability of warrior, and added a few odd throwing skills. Nothing worked at first, so you basically had a crappy warrior who was stuck in chain armor and forced to use 2handed weapons. Berserker desirability sucked, no one wanted them in groups, no one wanted them in raids, no one wanted the class period (most rangers still are under this sentiment). So for the first 6 months of their existence berserkers were screwed... very few actually made it to the end game raiding, and the ones that did make it were mocked to the point of quitting. Thankfully, due to some strong community movement, the dev team was forced to take action on the class. With the release of the next expansion, Rashere was able to improve the berserker class to the point of where they had some demand. A few more expansion later and a few more key upgrades, all the sudden we start to hear the Cinderella story that is the berserker class. But this also shows how important the community was in the development/balance/tuning of a class.

So, now that we see how a class can go from low demand to high demand, you should start to understand why it is soo important to watch out for the classes with low demand. Druids and Beastlords are the two classes that I believe are in the lowest demand right now.

Druids are stuck in between healers and nukers... or at least that what it seems to me. Of course, if druids improve in healing, then the clerics throw a fit and say that druids have all this "utility" and "dps" that clerics don't have (which is total BS). Or if you go the other way and give druids better DPS ability, then you have classes like mages and wizards complaining that druids get nukes AND heals AND cures... its a really tricky path. If it were up to me, I'd give druids a form of Div. Arb and a group RGC type of ability and call it settled... but, alas, SOE doesn't see fit in hiring a troll.

Beastlords suffer from a similar problem. It's a hybrid class that is 1 part mage, 1 part shaman, and 1 part monk. Sadly, the beastlords get nothing special out of any of it's parent classes. You are left with the weakest melee, weakest slower, and weakest pet. And of course, in the raiding world there is a huge problem with Pet classes, due to the way raid npc's tend to have AE rampage abilities that WTFPWN the pets. Some would say the beastlord's paragon of spirit line of AA are what makes the class... but I truthfully don't believe that argument.

What it all boils down to, why would you want a beastlord when you could just as easily have a shaman (better buffs/healing/curing/dps) or a real dps (mnk or ranger)? Why would you want a druid when you could bring a cleric, shaman, or wizard instead? Does the overlap in ability justify the lack of power in the classes? Do the very few useful abilities of these classes make them worthy? I say NO!

There is a really long post on EQLive about this very same topic: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=106581
Its about 15 pages long, and is mostly full of wasted space. There are a few good posts in there that can really help the average EQ'r understand desirability/demand. I suggest taking a look at the post... but only if you can filter out the crap posts from the real board trolls.

I'll be discussing Class Balance a lot here on Feeding the Troll. I feel it is really something that the community needs to hear about, and also, I'd like to be able to post opinions here without worrying that the Halflings will edit what I say. Hopefully we will see some resolution show up for these 2 leather based hybrid classes, and hopefully it won't take two years. Heck, I hope EQ lasts long enough to really take a good look at class balance!

Anyways, check back later, I should post one more article today!

Rant: WTF Merloc!

Incase you don't know who Merloc is, he is the dev incharge of designing all the items we get with expansions. He also designed a few zones (Jewel of Atiiki, for example). Merloc is a relatively new dev and has had Zajeer as his mentor (bad idea!).



Its obvious that Merloc played a caster class when he was a player in EQ. Its also obvious that he stopped playing EQ right around the time Gates of Discord (GoD) ended and Omens of War (OoW) started. I say this because all the items he tries to design have mod2 stats that would fit nicely in GoD's end zone Tacvi.



What is mod2? Mod2 is strikethrough (ST),shielding (S), spellshielding (SS), dotshielding(DotS), accuracy (acc), combateffects (ce), Stun Resist (SR), and Avoidance (avoid).

Merloc designs items with less mod2 stats than you would find in Demi-plane, Deathknell, or heck even Anguish... In TSS we saw the start of this trend, and MANY players all complained that, while the items have nice AC, HP, and Mana vlues, the TBS items totally sucked when you looked at the mod2 stats.

Another issue with Merloc's "item vision" is the complete lack of focus items on most of his itemization.

For example here is a belt that dropped from event one (Sisters) in Solteris last night:





At first look you'd think its a pretty darn good belt, right? 60 ac, 500 hp and mana... and then what? 5% shield? pfft, +3 damage shield? +3 regen +3 mana? WTF!!!! When you beat down the first boss of Solteris you expect to get a belt that either a) has a focus that means something or b) have enough mod2 stats to make it superior to the previous expansions.



All classes have to plan their gear carefully to keep all of their focus/mod stats up-to-snuff. With the way merloc is designing items, I have NO urge to want to beat this "super hard" raid content. And I'm as hardcore as raiders come! Not enough reward for the massive risks, for sure



YOU CAN'T SLAP A TON OF HP ON AN ITEM AND CALL IT GREAT, YOU CAN CALL IT CRAP THOUGH!



Another example of crap here:

Seriously, why is this a priest limited item? Makes no sense at all? Is it to help out those poor priests with their avoidance? CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!

Here we see the same pattern, big AC/HP/mana... itty bitty mod2.. NO FOCUS! This crap is not going to fly well when you are telling your high end raiders, "Greater Risk for Great Reward" when infact it should be read "Ridiculusly hard for utter crap loot". Tell me, when you play EverQuest, do you play it to work your way up to the good loot? If so, stop raiding before TSS and you'll be happier in the long run.

FIRE MERLOC!

Why do I say fire him? Because apparently the guy is soooo busy that he can't get the items from TBS to look half way decent, and he is SOOO busy that he couldn't get the items from TSS to be anywhere near what they should be. But, its amazing, if he is too busy to fix items, THEN WTF IS HE DOING AS AN ITEM DESIGNER? I know I could personally kick the crap out of Merloc item design, but that's mainly because I've been helping the item designers keep stuff good for the last 6 years. What I think is Merloc is incompetant, he doesn't know how to design items for the high end of EverQuest, he doesn't understand 90% of class mechanics, and he seems to be too busy doing nothing around SoE.... it's utter bullshit.

I mean, maybe I'd be ok with Merloc if he atleast did a good job on the single group/casual itemization. But HE SUCKED AT THAT TOO!

I've had enough, Merloc's waste of itemization is ruining EverQuest... and thats why I say: FIRE MERLOC!!

Here is my challenge to Mr.Item's... make some worthy changes to the focus effects of TSS and TBS, stop relying on HP and AC to act as your reward... players care more about focus and mod2 stats than they care about HP and AC... (except tanks... they really care more)...if he can't do these things enough to satisfy the community, THEN REMOVE HIM. Remove him before he personally ruins EQ. Itemization is the life blood of EverQuest... no matter how much fun the content is, no one will do it without a big reward at the end.

This rant was brought to you by the letters F and U.....Merloc.