Favorite Blast Spells

[Thraxas]

I guess frostbolt is still the best blast in game, with firewind in 2nd place.

I dont have either so tend to use destruction or dispel evil / good a lot.

There are however a lot of other alternatives ... I saw crimson scourge being used to great effect the other day ... a spell I have completely overlooked.

Just thought it would be worth an ask: What is your favorite blast?

T

[jezer]

I understand what your trying to dig up here... maybe some useful spell or debuff that's under used or under estimated... but I'm not sure it exists.

Crimson gives a nice little output message that a mob is effected with something that death is supposed to induce... but anyways... what does it really do? Stop regen... or does it work like some kind of poison reducing hp over the fight rounds? If things were a little bit more open, some of these skills might be used more often.

Maybe we should do some certification tests on a batch of hamsters... Maybe they work as super as deathgrip.... Maybe crimson isn't as good as it looks... It's a bit like proc weapons, guantlets of thunder or that weapon that makes the mob burn... whats really happening there? I remember my guantlets procing on cata mobs which are smallish and not seeing a great amount of damage done, or shorter fighting.

With burning the mob, Piasa had a breath weapon that did that... it appeared it did no damage over time, as I left mobs on awful while they burned... maybe it stoppped regen, but it wears off quickly.

My point is... I'm not sure how useful these things REALLY are, unless we can measure them, and I wish this info was open on proc weapons and some spells. Like the ac thing with ff, we only got told that info recently, I don't think it's in the help files.

[harik]

[quote="jezer":17efdpfv]I understand what your trying to dig up here... maybe some useful spell or debuff that's under used or under estimated... but I'm not sure it exists.[/quote:17efdpfv]

Arena?

[jezer]

Yeah, you can arena... but you can only really measure things "relatively" in the arena, as levels and prime factor too much in power. So at the end you say, how powerful is crimson...? well it's THIS measure relative to <your character prime, dam, order, level, skills> against <that characters prime dam, order, level, skills>.

Weird how we can see dam and hit at 1x40, but we can't see this information for our skills and spells... which we apparently learn to an expert level... So we are an expert at something, but we don't know how much of what it does? Illogical.

Bringing the argument down to it's bottom most level... it comes down to "information being made available" vs "spoiling the fun of finding that information yourself." Old Schoolers tend to argue about finding it out yourself... people like myself who like to know how stuff works argue we should be informed. I don't see this debate ever being resolved... I think sloth is partially moving towards being a little more open, ie, the new eq list coming will show everything, although there is a lot of reluctance still there.

As Strider points out about some new leaders, recalling from the tangle vines on BH because they are lost... it seems the new breed of player is less likely to want to learn and explore and gain depth and experience, than the older player who probably already has everything and is looking for new things. I don't know of a single new player who devotes there mud time to learning how things work, more than xping, eqing and getting coins, hence I think being more open encourages people to move in this direction, instead of being faced with the impossibility of working it out "relatively." I believe some of the old players have old sloth source code as well, another advantage to they can "hang" over newer players, and older players will use newer players to there advantage.

The less someone else knows, the better you can seem, and the more advantage you can take. Not a wonder old schooler's generally want the lid to remain shut.

[jezer]

This is an idea I hope is taken seriously...

A practise dummy with 1000/0hp, that will not engage a player but somehow autoreport the effects, (hp/spell effects) inflicted on it by the player. It will basically provide a ways to set a benchmark for everything. Our spell damages, our pokes/grips, poisons attacks etc. It would also be nice if it was encoded with a command to "reset it" to full health.

Think of the benefits... within the first week, I bet most players have investigated the effects of every spell they have on that mob... and through that have learned more about the game... is this not for the benefit of sloth?

As for players not knowing areas, how about some quests that require answers of runs, or room descriptions, that give just an aegis or iron skin. It's easy to encourage player depth than the mindless xp/eq/coins which just tripled with 8 classo's.

Also if bard's are given a song to say if a mob pops an item, doesn't this encourage exploring and cycling? I consider myself a patient person, but I'm not going to solo the new mobs in dweb 50 times to see if they pop anything... and who is?

[Thraxas]

[quote="jezer":36un9e9p]This is an idea I hope is taken seriously...

A practise dummy with 1000/0hp,

Also if bard's are given a song to say if a mob pops an item, doesn't this encourage exploring and cycling?[/quote:36un9e9p]

Practice Dummies : Theres even an area already made that would be perfect for this called ... erm ... Practice Dummies.

A bard song that every e.g. 10 mins gave the bard an insight such as:
While singing quietly under your breath the thought enters your mind unbidden that Lord Ixtl will have some Adamantine Gloves rarely.
or
You hum a little ditty the tune swirls in your head and turns to an aural picture of a Blue Male Dragon with a Dragonscale Cloak that he often has.

So bards will randomly discover what mob pops what item with an idea of p;oprate. Of course if eqlist got replaced with an a list that looked directly at the live db and showed all eq and where it popped this idea would be superceded.
So then it could be:
As you tap your toes the rythm seems to be telling you something ... there are some Mithril Shoulder Guards somewhere close by.

T