I didnt see it specifically stated. but did the pet stat/dmg absorb change screw p keep lords? spell dmg still does ok vs them, but mellee hits for 1 dmg now. after all the changes to make keep takes viable, its gone back to stupidity. without lifebane or caster dps, tanks mgiht as well not even swing on the lord.

Netchel wrote:I didnt see it specifically stated. but did the pet stat/dmg absorb change screw p keep lords? spell dmg still does ok vs them, but mellee hits for 1 dmg now. after all the changes to make keep takes viable, its gone back to stupidity. without lifebane or caster dps, tanks mgiht as well not even swing on the lord.

did u try on orange lord (i.e. you were max level of a bg) or red/purp lords? the miss-rate-dmg-decrease (if your miss rate falls below 0% dmg is decreased) will kick in at some point vs red+ mobs...that might be the reason

tried on both unupgraded and upgraded keeps. problem is the same either way. seems like melee does 1 dmg to the lords regardless of keep level. that cant be intended.

Jerrian wrote:@ Staff
... you have also new players who never played daoc before and if you use to play solo or don ´t find any players to group with, its impossible to level in a good way.

Oh yes! 12 yrs old game, and on a freeshard (hard to find, even harder to connect to it...), there´s tons of new players that don´t know anything about DAoC! Well, sarcasm off... even if there are total "noobs", they have to learn to play the game, get the knowledge about xp, mobs and so on. I can hardly remember all the poor players that died even on blue (!) mobs after DAoC release, just because they didn´t even know anything about the colors of the mobs, or about the abilities of their char.

And well, shall I be sad that those "No, I´ll stay solo, I can level faster that way" - players are forced to group up then? I say "no".

The biggest thing that's happened here is handicapping new and casual players. End of story. You can't really make an argument that changes that.

Of course, you can "make an argument". Whoever really played DAoC since release will remember how hard it was to lvl up. And for casuals, it was even harder. Just because there´s no sense to make it possible to gain 1x lvl ups / week while playing 1-2 hrs a day.

On live, it was fking impossible to gain 3-4 lvls a day above level 40 without good xp groups. What you needed on Uthgard was just a duo/trio to lvl up that easy.

Whoever says "baaah, i have downtime after 2 yellows!" never ever played DAoC right after release. Even on lvl 40+, yellow mobs haven´t been as easy as they´ve been on Uthgard.
I can remember how i leveled my wizz... yellow mob, bolt, bolt, nuke, root, run, bolt, bolt, nuke. 1 or 2 resists included. Lvling my armsman wasn´t "Pull, autoattack, afk", like it was on uthgard.

And I appreciate the patch.

Maybe, this will prevent those idiotic players that reroll new toons every 4 weeks from rerolling and soloing again. Now, you have to search groups, instead of asking "What specc is best to lvl solo?", and get them back to "what´s the best specc for xp grps?"

I am cautiously in favor of these changes because a pet fix was needed, and this was the way they were fixed. It is going to cause a lot of people to have to group more to xp, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

I don't completely understand the complaints people are making that say this affects casual players either. If anything this just seems to weed out the people that truly don't want to put the time and effort into the game a bit more quickly. If you like the game, you will put the time and effort into it, because even before the mob fix a lot of the casual gamers weren't making it to end game and really contributing on a major level. All that has happened now is the people that don't want to put the effort into it might stop playing at level 30ish instead of later when they realize that level 50 is only the beginning of this game.

Also, as I recall on live, your xp/hour was the important thing. I was surprised when I first came to this server on how much people killed yellows and oranges, because on live you got better xp/hour when soloing on blues. Sure they don't give you max xp on every kill, but you can move through 2 blues quicker and increase your xp/hour just fine. This same concept applies to groups as well, as with the group bonus and now the other bonuses in place, if people actually modify the way they level they should have no problems. A group can mow through a large camp of yellows and easily get the same amount of xp in the same amount of time they would off of a camp of oranges or reds. For this reason I hope SI comes out to provide a few more large camps of mobs for xping, as that is the one thing with this change that I don't particularly like. Hopefully more people will move to the frontiers as well, as that is where a few of the larger camps are for group leveling. That's my 2 cents.

Getting a group in old daoc days was A LOT easier than today on uthgard. The negative implications vs positive for this change weigh heavily on the negative side. Maybe up the xp gain say blue worth yellow xp etc etc. Making people have a longer "grind" to get to the real game at 50 is bogus. I play off peak hours, finding a group is disappointing 95% of the time.

meat803 wrote:I play off peak hours, finding a group is disappointing 95% of the time.

Well, I´ve made my way from 1-50 mostly in Groups. And I can´t complain that it was hard to find groups. Whenever I had to solo, it was just because other players preferred to xp as duo/trio, and they had no slots for others.

Lets look on the bright side
Atleast they didnt remove or take anything out of the game like they have done in previous "updates".

Netchel wrote:tried on both unupgraded and upgraded keeps. problem is the same either way. seems like melee does 1 dmg to the lords regardless of keep level. that cant be intended.

I asked that yesterday in #uthgard and it wasn't confirmed.

I just want to react to some assertions made in previous post :

Bonus to XP for group
Group bonus is not an xp bonus given to player who xp in a group. It's given because MOBS are "linked" and bring a friend if they face multiple opponents. Of course, thanks to this "cause", it gives benefits to groups BUT :
1. Some mobs have fixed friend and come with them even if you are solo, so i can get this bonus when i'm solo
2. A part of mobs don't have social mechanics and will never bring a friend, giving no bonus.
3. When you find social mobs, since they come with friend, you empty camp faster and then lost faster camp bonus.
This group bonus is clearly not a balance to the lost of camp bonus. I still prefer to xp solo, get full camp bonus longer, instead of wasting time to build a balance xp group, waste time to find a spot with social mobs to finally clear the camp bonus too fast.
If i group with another player to kill unlinked orange mobs, i have no bonus at all. It's like killing yellow alone.

Link between buff fix and damage fix
It is 2 fixes ! Blue has always said that buff fix will not be delivered if mob damage has not been fixed. I guess this positive fix is here to balance the "negative" fix to make it more acceptable... so don't use buff on mob to justify a "need" of mob damage fix.

Mob damage fix will make people play more in group
Hey dude, it's harder to survive against mob, i will think twice before grouping with an unknown player.
If i group with grey/green stuffed tank, he will take too much damage to be really efficient. If solo was better before, it will be better after. The 20% xp clamp is not measurable from player point of view. The difference is that before, solo xp with optimal stuff was better than the max possible gain (can kill orange solo, even if useless with camp bonus), so i could group, lost some efficiency and still have nice xp gain.
Now, it's useless to xp with an non optimal group.

As u said Blue, this mob damage fix don't change anything for pve at level 50. It make xp at low level harder. That means more time to up 50. That means more time in xp. That means less time in end game RvR...

HulkGris wrote:The difference is that before, solo xp with optimal stuff was better than the max possible gain (can kill orange solo, even if useless with camp bonus), so i could group, lost some efficiency and still have nice xp gain.
Now, it's useless to xp with an non optimal group.

i can absolutely not confirm this...i levelled several classes on uth now and except for my first class (caby, so no uber equip needed for levelling) i always had rather good armor and weapons and so on...

however, the best exp i ever had was, when i grped up...my arms levelled in grp from time to time and exp was so fast, it was amazing...solo-exping was really slow compared to this...especially at 40+ hulks or whatever were really awesome exp...

ofc some classes, that are really good solo (friar? ranger? dunno which are really good solo...prolly all selfbuffers and some casters), might still be faster solo...but exp in grp is definitely faster for most other classes...

I am still beffudled by people prefering soloing over grouping, granted, I leveled my last character perhaps years ago, but I remember killing purple mobs so fast in groups that you couldn't use 5 sec recast debuff to pull - the reuse timer was too high ! I leveled my friar solo, I would go to stonehenge and chain red/orange/yellow mobs and it was a major pain, and that was one of the best solo xp classes available...

Jezzmin wrote:i can absolutely not confirm this...

And you confirmed it lol
As i said, it's useless to xp with a non optimal group. And by the way, mob fix has just a little effect on lvl 40+ while i was talking of the mob fix effect on xp.
Before level ~35 (even maybe 40), it's another story.
And unbalance group has always been and will always be less effective than solo xp. It was acceptable to xp in such a group thanks to weak mob, now i will never do it again. Solo xp with good stuff will be clearly better than grouping with unstuff player or building an unbalance group. Too bad for new players.

Blue wrote:

Netchel wrote:tried on both unupgraded and upgraded keeps. problem is the same either way. seems like melee does 1 dmg to the lords regardless of keep level. that cant be intended.

I asked that yesterday in #uthgard and it wasn't confirmed.

My thane was doing 1 dmg in melee to the Wilt keep lord. I stepped out of combat and casted instead and did around 90-150 dmg per nuke. That seems a little uneven?

HulkGris wrote:1. Some mobs have fixed friend and come with them even if you are solo, so i can get this bonus when i'm solo

If you can deal with it alone you deserve the bonus. Groups get BAF adds way more since BAF triggers only for groups and brings any social mobs in the same mob group with it. There are not many hard linked mobs.