Today's patch message....note the bard section and bug fixes. Verant has
actually said that our single target snares breaking early was a bug! Also,
DDD was upgraded...but I have honestly only ever loaded DDD once, and doubt
I will load it after this fix.
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Source: EverQuest Patch Message.
Today's patch contains a wide variety of enhancements and changes. Due to
the number of
changes being made, this list is primarily a summary. Extended descriptions
of the changes and
the reasoning behind them can be solicited on the EverQuest Message Boards.
Spell and Skill Changes
Druids, Shaman, and Clerics:
Superior Healing moved to level 51 for shamans and druids.
Casting difficulty of Superior Heal reduced (less fizzles)
New level 55 Druid and shaman spell, Chloroblast, similar to remedy for
clerics.
New Druid spell at level 60, upgrade to superior healing, Natures Touch.
Created a new spell effect for Celestial Healing, Celestial Elixir, and
Torpor. This will allow
them to stack with all other spells, save spells of the same type (Heal over
time). Prior to
this, all heal-over-time spells followed the same rules as regeneration
spells.
Reduced the casting difficulty of Remedy.
Lowered recast time on Wake of Karana
Paladins:
Added Endure Magic spell at level 30
Added Resist Magic at 55
Moved Guard spell from 49 to 39
Moved Armor of Faith from 53 to 49
Added New level 53 paladin spell: Divine Glory
Added New level 59 spell: Celestial Cleansing
Defense skill cap made exactly same as warriors
Added Yaulp 4 at 60 and enhanced.
Shadowknights:
Removed artificially inflated mana cost for pre level 50 lifetap spells.
Please note that
post-50 lifetap spells never had an inflated mana cost.
Moved Spirit Tap to level 55
Moved Drain Spirit to level 57
Added Drain Soul at level 60
Grim Aura added at level 22 and enhanced
Moved Shieldskin to level 34
Pet buff added at 29
Added Diamondskin spell at 59
Defense skill cap made exactly same as warriors
Due to the recent improvements to "Harmtouch", it is doing much more damage
than it
would before and unbalances PvP. As such it will now do less damage in PvP
(68% of
PvE, down from 80%). In addition, Shadowknights on the PvP servers were
routinely
killing themselves via non-XP losing means and attacking other players with
Harmtouch
immediately upon respawn. In order to address this situation, Harmtouch is
no longer
automatically "recharged" by death on the PvP Servers.
The "Lifeleech" discipline now increases hit probability in addition to its
other effects.
Rangers:
Added Endure Cold at 22
Added Skin Like Nature at 59
Added FireFist at 22
Moved Bramblecoat from 49 to 39
Added Spikecoat at 49
Added resist cold at 55
Added Panic Animal at 22
Moved Jolt to 51
Moved Spirt of Wolf from 39 to 30
Added Cinder Jolt (fire-based Jolt spell) at 55.
Offense and weapons skill made identical to warriors
Added See Invisible at 39
Bards:
Added new level 20 Bard Song: Cassindra`s Chant of Clarity
Bards defensive skill made exactly the same as a warriors
Changed it so that the bard spell Denon's Desperate Dirge to increase damge
by 10pts
per level over 45. Also made it so the spell does 20% more damage using the
Puretone
discipline.
Magicians:
Added new level 59 spell: Valiant Companion
Added new level 39 spell: Summon Companion
Rain spells no longer count pets against total number of entities they can
damage (all
rain spells)
Added level 29 spell for Mages: Expedience
Enchanters:
Lowered recast time on Visions of Grandeur
Bug Fixes
Aggressive and Defensive disciplines have been fixed. Before they would only
affect
damage taken and not affect damage dealt out. Now they affect both as
designed.
Fixed the bug with going to the spellbook when the inventory window was up
in fullview
mode. It should work now. Also, fixed a minor bug where if you were in
normal mode
and tried to go to the spellbook from inventory via /book or the keymapped
key it would
not go, and it would make the done button not work properly for the
inventory mode.
Fixed NPC melee ranges to be the same as for player characters. In other
words, if you
can hit the NPC, he can hit you. This bug was a problem with one dragon that
could be
hit, but could not hit back.
Fixed a bug that made it impossible to "Call of the Hero" someone out of
water or lava.
Fixed the proc on the Chilled Scythe. Owners of this item will need to swap
it out with a
GM.
The Kromzek Surveyor Scope now fits in the "Ranged" slot rather than the
"Ammo" slot
as before.
Fixed a bug that caused the two single-target bard snare songs to break too
soon in
some cases.
Fixed a bug whereby NPCs would consider the race of a player prior to the
loading of the
faction table upon zoning or logging in. This would cause people to be
attacked by
things that normally like them.
Players should now be properly removed from the group regardless of how they
exit the
game.
Misc Changes
Added text labels to the fullview inventory window "body" slots (Available
only to Velious
Subscribers)
Added the ability to toggle those labels on and off. Use /invwinlabels
[on/off] (or no
arguments to toggle). This is saved in the eqclient.ini file in the
[Defaults] section with
the key InvWinLabels=[TRUE/FALSE]
Increased the pre-50 bind-wounds cap for rogues and warriors.
Pickpocket now works to a max of 5 levels below you, or level 45...whichever
is greater...
You can pickpocket NPC up to level 55 if you are level 60.
The mouse pointer will now move at a multiple of its normal speed when you
adjust the
MousePointerSpeedMod setting in the eqclient.ini file. You can set that
multiple on-the-fly
with the /mousespeed command.
The "AutoHelp" feature that can be set under the options menu has been
enhanced.
Spell casters in particular might want to turn it on and try depressing the
ALT key. It's
perfect for refreshing your memory in regards to your spell lineup.
If you are interrupted while trying to cast a spell that uses a component,
you will no
longer use that component. Jewelers should be very pleased with this change.

Reduced the casting difficulty (fizzle rate) of all spells over level 56.
Spells have always
previously been set up so that it's usually more efficient to use a spell
from a previous
circle than the current one. The formula did not take into account the fact
that everyone
stops at 60.
Changed it so that players will now lose experience when they die in the
Arena in Kael
Drakkel. It seems that people were fighting giants in that arena in order to
avoid the
death penalty.
Naked PC corpses that have experience and are above level 30 will now last 3
hours
instead of 3 minutes.
Avatar and Focus of Spirit should now stack
Raised the pre and post 50 bind wounds cap for paladins, clerics, druids,
and shaman.
Item Changes
The effect on the "Frost Giant Beard" can now be used at 35th level rather
than level 50.
The Wurmslayer will now fit in a bag.
Iksar can now use the Ashenbone Shield
Chandged Crystallized Shadow leggings to rentable
Changed Gorilla Hide Leggings to show up as leather, was cloth before
Changed Envy from a piercing weapon to a shield so players could Bash with
it. Envy is a
parrying dagger.
The Shralok Pack is now LORE. It was set to pending-lore some time ago.
The Guardian and Sentry Armor bracers are no longer LORE.
Donal's Breastplate can now only be used on any individual target once every
7.5
minutes. This addresses some of the balance issues that became apparent
given the
existence of a mana-free complete heal.
Trades and Crafts
Fixed the Gator Roll baking recipe.
Repaired the notetext instructions for creating a Mixing Bowl with pottery.
Repaired
Holgresh Fur Cap and Holgresh Fur Moccasins tailoring recipes.
Made it so that the file is returned in addition to the hammer when a
character fails to
forge any of the various chain jointings.
Repaired Recipe for Enchanted Tier`Dal Adamantite Bracelet
Made it so that the Dwarven Smithy Hammer is returned on a failure to forge
Brellium
Chain Jointing.
Repaired Field Plate Boots smithing recipe
Changed the name of the smithed Enchanted Cabilis Scale armor to Imbued
Cabilis Scale
armor for naming convention reasons.
Repaired the recipe for converting 3 Enchanted Large Adamantite Bricks into
1
Enchanted Block of Adamantite in the Tier`Dal Forge, it was previously only
possible in
the Oggok Forge.
Made it so that the Bread Tin is returned upon a failure to bake bread.
Mithril and Velium Bonings will be stackable.
Mithril Studs will be stackable.
NPC AI - Hate
We've made a number of changes to NPC AI, specifically to the section
dealing with
target-selection, or what's commonly referred to as "Hate". It is not so
much that NPCs react
differently to hate now than before, but that we've changed the way that
hate is awarded.
We reduced the amount of hate that can be caused by a proc. Due to the high
proc
rates at upper levels, the amount of hate generated from procs, and the
spells that
were selected for those procs, made keeping the attention of the creature
much too
easy a task for the tank. Simply, it nearly eliminated the challenge of
keeping a foes
attention at levels above 50.
We've capped the amount of hate that can be awarded to most casters,
specifically for
debuff-type spells like the Malo and Tash series. The hate calculation for
these spells
takes into account the number of hitpoints of the NPC and did not "play
nice" with the
increased HP limit of Velious. It explains why Enchanters, for instance,
would complain
that casting a Tash spell would lead to near-instant death.
We've redressed the amount of hate generated by heal spells. Previously, and
*partly*
due to a bug, the high level heal spells such as superior heal or complete
heal would
generate no more hate than greater heal. In fact, so little hate was
generated by these
spells that it made controlling NPC aggression trivial. Heal spells will now
generate an
amount of hate more in line with the number of hitpoints actually healed.
Due to our
desire to leave the lower level game more or less untouched, two separate
caps have
been placed for targets level 50 or below, and 51 or above. Heal spells will
generate
significantly less hate for targets below level 51 than those at or above
that level.
We've also re-evaluated ways that players have to reduce their own hate.
While spells
in place to allow this are OK, the Evade skill (possessed by rogues) let
them out of their
damage too easily. A rogue that successfully evaded would immediately drop
to a level
of hate lower than someone who was in the awareness range, but hadn't done
anything to really upset the creature such as damage it or heal its foe.
This problem was
exacerbated by the increase of the size of the hate list implemented with
Velious.
Tracking
Tracking now works in full view for all classes that can use it, and sports
a nifty scroll bar that
allows players to see everything on the list. In addition, the /trackplayer
setting is now saved
to the eqclient.ini file.
The following options have been put in for Rangers only:
/tracksort
/trackfilter
/tracksort options beginning with R are reverse order
Hybrid Casting
Hybrids that cast spells in combat were taking double penalties at higher
levels. The casting
times of their spells went up, and the amount of melee damage they do per
second went up.
This results is having to take longer to cast spells, and losing more
damage/second for each
second taken in casting.
To help offset this, Rangers, Paladins and Shadowknights casting
non-beneficial spells that
have casting times greater than or equal to 3 seconds, now get a 3 %
reduction in casting time
for each level over 50. 3% at 51, 6% at 52, etc., to 30% at 60. Again, this
applies only to
non-beneficial spells.