Dang, my cover's blown

Yay at haste

 

-----signature-----

Some nice stuff that has been long wanted especially buffers in the BGs and the addition of haste and spec AF buffs to them.

I actually fooled around playing my bainshee solo with ES spec a while back. Cutting the range to 1000 makes the line totally worthless. At a minimum they now need to add a single target spec bolt comparable to a fire wizard's.

I can't wait to see what new overpowered crap drops in the Summoner's Hall that invalidates every existing template.

I'm almost tempted to return once this goes live now that I won't have to screw with buff potions in the BGs (assuming they don't have too weak buffs).

 

-----signature-----

Of course, this will pretty much kill the market for my pots. Oh well. Things change.

But why not buff everybody all the time? Just completely remover buffers from the game and make it so that every time your character respawns you have a full set of buffs.

I hope MMO developers can look back on the history of DAoC buffing and learn coherent lessons from it.

 

-----signature-----

BG quests are easy-mode, and actually a little but fun. repetitive but at least there's a small risk of PvP, and not as repetitive as grinding. If you get proper group together you can essentially get the same XP as a powerlevel. I'm sure you've already got 50's anyways though, the tough part is when you get to 50 without a bot and you can't farm anything.

 

-----signature-----

Very few MMO designers seem to look back at the mistakes of others and try to avoid them, they just design away and recreate the same mistakes in some slightly new form

This game is too heavily dependent on buffs to balance it without a doubt. A person playing the game without a buffbot is in most cases playing a completely different game from those with a buffbot (or buffbotS as some people run with). The point of buffbots is of course to level the playing field when everyone runs them - so giving us all full buffs every time we log in would achieve that. Most people though run with their buffbot in the hopes of meeting someone who doesnt have a second account (like me) so they can wail on them without any risk of losing.

A really good game design would have no buffs - either from spells, or potions, or equipment etc. Equipment wouldn't matter because it wouldn't make any difference. What should matter is character class, powers, and how well you play them period. Unfortunately this would alienate the huge segment of the population who wants to be Ub3r when everyone else isn't. The segment that will buy credits to get the uber stuff first, rather than earning it, the segment that will pay to be PLed so they don't have to work etc. The same folks that join together in groups of all stealthers (or whatever) so they can target single enemies and defeat them without giving them a chance. There are lots of those people in all MMOs unfortunately.

Give us all buffs all the time, or get rid of them entirely. I like the suggestion made years ago - that all buffs from characters be group or single target instants of short duration on timers. So the person playing the shaman in your group has to decide when to buff up your group's strength or when not to because they run with the group and actually play their shaman (or equivalent class)

 

-----signature-----

I don't have time to play as much as some people. I think to get to 50 took me 22 hours playtime, but past 40 I wasted a bit of time trying to setup wisp groups that failed, and then switching XP spots all the time, trying to go to NF to xp but just got rolled all the time, and TD's were slow. I considered waiting til next patch cuz I knew they'd have the next BG quests, and I leveled up a Ranger at the same time. Oh well.

Also, yes the bainshee thing needs to be nerfed, I guess due to the zerginess and the baseline root, people started playing bainshee's. Once you get 2 fg's out there pwning mids and albs, everyone else is gonna roll one. Then you're gonna have 3-4 fg of Bainshee's which will wipe out any zerg that gets within 1875 range.

Saying that, Bainshee's are still bad. The guy who made the argument that we have the best DPS in Hib, well its very hard to run a body debuff train in a group. Bainshee's get less utility than Wizards, and even though the DD is nice, we don't have bolts and the ability to insta-gib someone in 3 bolts. They are a pretty bad class except for zerg surfing, and now I can't see the point of zerg surfing anyways. The bolt was probably just a bad idea to begin with, but Bainshee's still need fixing, especially now.

 

-----signature-----

So, they nerf Bainshee bomb groups, but aren't touching Mid/Warlock bomb groups?

PBAE v AE bolt, liddul different


don't think the nerf was really needed though tbh, zerg bombinb will still happen, but I guess it will shut up the QQ for a while

 

-----signature-----

I chose a Shammy on day one because I knew how important buffs would be after reading Mythic's take (1/3 is stats, 1/3 is equip, 1/3 is buffs). I'm not that good of a player but I thought as a buffing shammy I could participate as a supporter and still have fun.

And for the first two years it was TONS of fun. People would just LOVE you if you buffed them. No range conc buffs were great because I could buff a random newb and send them on their way. But therein lay the trap. What I could do for random players meant that more ambitious players could take it even farther.

So it goes.

 

-----signature-----

For stat buffs, yeah. End regen, healing, power, etc. should still sell.

 

-----signature-----