Qeynos or Freeport

[Fanforran]

Mmmmmm...without crowd control, AEing gnome wizzies could have a lot of fun...

Enchanters were always such spoilsports. And you were meant to be glad to see 'em too. Like I need your fecking crack now I only have one mob to nuke

*hides from Z*

Im with you Mari that Zer was a right tosser

 

[Zerine]

You two are so are so ungrateful - after all the mana I spent on you two, the mobs I Tashed, the haste I gave, the crack that filled your minds etc etc..

 

[Cadfiel]

Aye i hear the Oxford English Dictionary is including "Tashicide" in the next edition.

:>

Seriously. one of the things that i do like is the way they have "said" the fights will work, there is something seriously un heroic about getting monsters all lined up in a queue ready for you to kill.

Im hoping crowd control is at best a reactionary short term panic thing, ie buy the group a few seconds at most rather than the mechanic of rack 'em, stack 'em and whack 'em that can occur in EQLive.

SOme of the other enchanter spells do look interesting and i guess some will be used as crowd control but so far non seem to be as invasive as some of the old EQLive Enchanter spells.

 

[Fanforran]

You two are so are so ungrateful - after all the mana I spent on you two, the mobs I Tashed, the haste I gave, the crack that filled your minds etc etc..

Aww Bless

 

[Mosop]

Holding a group of 5 or 6 mobs with singles mezzes was the game play reward for chanters for all the crack and haste they gave out,keeping clerics on there toes rdy to save the chanter from one of there umpteen deaths made there fights more exciting.Part of the appeal of fights in EQ was the way you had to manage spells etc to get minimum sitting time,many a time ive been left standing holding the last mob on mez wile everyone else sits down and rests up.Crowd controll made fights a more thoughtfull process all round for everyone,you didnt just start throwing every spell move you got at every mob (like daoc).If theres no real CC then it just becomes a case of throwing every thing youve got at a group of mobs to take em down as fast as poss,and all thats left is to manage your agro and looks like itll just be a case of tanks first and casters to finish each mob off rinse and repeat.


Sitting and resting was a complete pain in the arse but those fights where the puller brought back more than expected,and the whole group had to manage every slither of heath and mana they had fighting each mob in the correct order.Manging the other forgoten CC spells like mem blur to aid the tanks to switch the agro from one to another,the wizard who was able to sit during the fight because of CC and gain more mana able to do more damage than he would without it.And finally just as the tanks are on there last bit of heath and about to die and the healers are out of mana one of the caster who sat down to get just enough for one spell stands up and nukes the last mob.Everyones on near zero mana and heath and has a long sit and wait in front of them,but those were the best fights the ones you only just won cos of how you fought.Take away CC and fights will just be decided before hand if they can be won or not

 

[Rochdale]

Sounds more like work than play to me

 

[Flight]

Holding a group of 5 or 6 mobs with singles mezzes was the game play reward for chanters for all the crack and haste they gave out,keeping clerics on there toes rdy to save the chanter from one of there umpteen deaths made there fights more exciting.Part of the appeal of fights in EQ was the way you had to manage spells etc to get minimum sitting time,

Sitting and resting was a complete pain in the arse but those fights where the puller brought back more than expected,and the whole group had to manage every slither of heath and mana they had fighting each mob in the correct order.

Theres been no need to sit and med for anyone for two or three years Mos. EQ has been a very different game since the launch of PoP.

The most neglected skill for most Chanters was always charm. Chanters have always been able to outdamage the whole group by taking a decent pet, but most Chanters never even tried that spell line. Since PoP charm became more widely used, producing inevitable class envy and nerfs which severly pissed off those of us who had Chanters and had been charming since EQ launched.

Two fun raids/encounters in GoD rely on Chanters in a big way; one the Chanter outdamages the raid (!!!) by taking a pet that can hit for 14K, fully hasted and keeping it for 90 minutes. The other twelve lvl 68 mobs have to be held mezzed for 20 minutes, while the raid happens.

The amount of HP you need to do this kind of stuff is pretty high though. Check out the back item on my Chanter; off the boss in Txevu :
Magos

 

[Adder]

IMHO chanters were needed a little way befor PoP, the Emp in Ssra was designed arround having 4 chanters and getting to the high end boss mobs in VT would have been a joyless job without chanters. I cant really remember sitting down to med up alot in the last year I played, mana seemed to last forever due to the improvements in chanter spells and items.

I agree the charm line was never utilised very efficently by alot of enchanters, who use to mez mobs, when they could have charmed and helped add to DPS.

As a cleirc the enchanter was always the one who needed the most looking after, more so than the main tank, at least when grouping. It would be difficult to see EQlive without such an amazing mez line in the game. I'm sure SOE implimented alot of the hunts/raid to include the need for mez, and i'm also sure when they create hunts/raids and dungeons in EQ2 they will look at the fact mez is not there as much and make changes.

As for other ways to disable a mob when you have a few about, Root was very underestimated, the lowest level one required nearly no mana and usally always stuck.

 

[Mosop]

Yes i havent played EQ for years and im shure loads of classes have changed,i wasnt trying draw attention to what chanters could or couldent do.More the fact if you have CC classes able to controll things if they go bad,a few mezzes roots here and there for everybody to run etc.

If you saw a group of 5 mobs you couldent handle you'd try a draw 1 or 2 at a time and if more came it was the CCer jobs to manage them,it gave variety to the fights and led to taking on higher lvl mobs if you played it right.

What im trying to say is if you take out CC including the puller trying to draw only one or 2 (a good puller is a form of CC),then seeing a group of 5 mobs will be either doable or it wont.Youll have to fight all those 5 mobs at once knowing either there too high and youll all die or a forgone conclusion that more or less youll always win.And then group play becomes to much like solo play it will just be which group members offer the best buffs who heals most per mana and who who hits the hardest v damage taken.

 

[GBH]

I'll prob end up getting this, Gnome Necro for me

 

[Zerine]

Emp Ssra can be done with 2 (prolly one) Ench - I've killed Emp Ssra with just one other Ench with me (well, not personally killed him - but kept the mezzables mezzed).

I never really used the charm line in the 'old world' unless I was soloing griffons in the Karanas.

But used it more and more as I levelled - doing the 'zeks was so much easier with Charms =)

From what I gather (and I'm probably wrong) about EQ2, without any decent CC it will be inversed of the present EQ - instead of being caster-heavy, it will resort to being tank-heavy, getting groups as a Necromancer will become hard(er) than it was in EQLive, Furies/Wizards will be insta-death chars, clerics will live in fear of casting a heal etc. Of course this is based on the old EQlive aggro system.

The Daze spell I mentioned earlier in this thread does not specify how long the mob is stunned (as Cad pointed out), but then neither did the EQLive spells (until after extensive experimentation), but note that it's from a line of spells under the title of 'Control'? I'm guessing there is still mezz/cc/whateveryouwanttocall it in EQ2, they're just narrowed it down (eg only coercer's can mezz for long periods, but Illusionists can't - both from the Enchanter sub-class). Thus narrowing down the chance of getting a good CC class in your group instead of the regular 'Holy Trinity' (Warrior, Cleric, Enchanter + 3) and *having* to develop alternative strategies to take out mobs (oooooh root-mez!).


Which, imo, can only be an improvement.

 

[Byzah]

>> Sounds more like work than play to me

Yep That's part of the problem.

That said, CCing in a chaotic dungeon was seriously good fun. I used to use the basic charm spell extensively - it was a great defensive CC spell, because it had a fast casting time & getting it to stick would get any number of bad'uns off you (as your new buddy would taunt them off you!) If you ran round to the other side of the party tank, when charm broke, they'd all have to run right through him to reach you -- and most of 'em would decide to hit him instead

The problem with CC is for the rest of the party. A great CC'r just turns the whole thing into a serious yawnfest. I seriously used to pray for **** ups when I played my wizzie. Still, they were spectacular **** ups. And I guess they wouldn't be in a game with no CC at all...

 

[Adder]

Well, personally I think time will tell. I've got high hopes that SOE will have realised what sort of impact having no mez CC will have on the game and sort things out, it's unrealistic they will use the same agro system as EQlive.

Root mez was fine (as long as you had a decent amount of room to move about) i'm confident I could hold off 2 monsters at once, which if they wernt rooted would kill the group. Biggest problem would be the lack of enchanters leading to the lack of clarity, would make more of a difference for group hunts imho than having no mez. (based on EQlive)

Not that i'm knocking mez, it truely was a brilliant spell and made things alot easyer for me but took a little of the fun out of possible chaotic pulls, which in turn made players lazy so when somthing did go wrong people couldn't cope.

 

[Zerine]

Aha!

"The ability for certain classes to mez and charm will still be there, but those abilities won't be without practical limits. Other forms of crowd control will definitely come into play."

 

[Byzah]

>> Other forms of crowd control will definitely come into play.

Training works quite well.