Warlock and Mage 1.6 bugs

[Kevin]

EQ took a lot longer to get popular.  Blizz has TONS of money from their previous games, and the deep pockets of Vivandi behind them.
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Actually EQ active players was pretty stable pretty quick. Other successful MMO's followed similar patterns to EQ as well as far as when they came out of loss and went into profit.

The amount of previous cash and other backing is only somewhat relevant to project finances. Though I will admit that at this stage in the game Blizzard should be able to admit to and work with money like WoW is going to bring them a strong cash flow. I'm just pointing out you are dealing with CFO's here and they don't think the same way most people do. :)

[LochnarITB]

As we found out, sheep is not fine PvE.  It's fine versus beasts supposedly, but it's most definately broken on humanoids.
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The problem now is to decide when to risk a re-sheep. It does not happen all the time. This morning, some of us did a Tribute run in DM. I re-sheeped ogres at least 8-10 times and they all worked. I'm wondering if the key is whether the re-sheep comes before or after a break. All the ogres had popped and were then sheeped again. It would actually make more sense that it happens when sheeping a baddie that is still a sheep because that would be a toggle not getting flipped correctly (action toggle flips when it shouldn't but appearance doesn't).

If we have come to the correct conclusions so far, the rules for sheeping would seem to be:
Beast/Critters - sheep to your heart's content
Humanoid - be sure only one person sheeps a target initially - do not sheep the target again until it has popped

Does that fit with what others are seeing? Sheep are just too valuable to some situations to not be able to trust them to function correctly. Of course, all mages could just be replaced with rogues. They do more damage anyway and their sap seems to be less prone to breaking lately. :angry:

[edit] Critters, while functionally equivalent, are differentiated types so I added that.

[oldmandennis]

I'm just pointing out you are dealing with CFO's here and they don't think the same way most people do.  :)
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That's what I'm afraid of and what seems like is happening. Either Blizz has gone more corporate, or they have to listen to Vivandi now. In the past Blizz has made bad business decisions to maintain the quality of the games, like canning almost completed games because they didn't live up to their standards http://www.gamespot.com/features/pcgraveyard/

But right now the bottom line is all that stands between them and an army of testers who can pound on BWL before it is released, and a full test suite that can accuratly diagnose network problems before they are released.

[Kevin]

That's what I'm afraid of and what seems like is happening.  Either Blizz has gone more corporate, or they have to listen to Vivandi now.  In the past Blizz has made bad business decisions to maintain the quality of the games, like canning almost completed games because they didn't live up to their standards http://www.gamespot.com/features/pcgraveyard/

But right now the bottom line is all that stands between them and an army of testers who can pound on BWL before it is released, and a full test suite that can accuratly diagnose network problems before they are released.
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And to me that is a very legit gripe and jives with some of the things I'd like to see them doing too.

Some of the BWL stuff almost seemed intentional to me. Lets make sure the power guilds can get in there and beat these first encounters so the knowledge of the loot can get out there to those people who might be thinkig about dropping their subscription because they don't want to play alts and have got all the onyxia and molten core gear. If we just say what loot is out there we piss off the explorers. It's obvious that with all the people still playing they don't care that much about bugs.

So yeah, I fear you are correct. I just don't want you to be.

[Quark]

Does that fit with what others are seeing?  Sheep are just too valuable to some situations to not be able to trust them to function correctly.

Yes, that fits what I've seen. Resheep after it breaks, don't do "pre-sheeping"

Of course, all mages could just be replaced with rogues.  They do more damage anyway and their sap seems to be less prone to breaking lately. :angry:
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You weren't with me while I was equipping up. Before I got my +%hit gear, I flat out missed on Saps too often, which means I'm stuck in combat, I can't try again, and there's 5 targets ticked off at me. It also broke early semi-frequently.

Now my Sap never misses, and very rarely breaks early. It's just the Improved part (staying in stealth) that I have issues with. I've seen it fail 7 out of 10 times, and it's a 10% failure rate.

One other observation: I've noticed Mages that have their sheeps typically last longer than other Mages. Two keys to them: higher levels and Arcane Focus.

[Treesh]

You weren't with me while I was equipping up.  Before I got my +%hit gear, I flat out missed on Saps too often, which means I'm stuck in combat, I can't try again, and there's 5 targets ticked off at me.  It also broke early semi-frequently.

Now my Sap never misses, and very rarely breaks early.  It's just the Improved part (staying in stealth) that I have issues with.  I've seen it fail 7 out of 10 times, and it's a 10% failure rate.
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Hunh. I guess Murder and Precision really do make a difference. Eth has rarely had saps miss, even while growing up. Of course, for some of those times the misses happened at the worst times, but there still haven't been too many missed saps. Nice to know the points I spent in there have actually made a difference then. :)

[fractaled]

I was stating they are still probably at a loss on the money side with this game so they can't hire more coders...
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i doubt that... considering they used to do a game/exp every year, and selling 5-10 million copies (10 is high i think, iirc, sc sold 7-8 million worldwide) at $50 per, that's only $50m per year (and they don't get all of that)...

right now they are pulling in $30m a month ($15 * $2m), with similar (within a factor of 10?) non-payroll expenses to d2... so $360m a year if they can keep 2 million subs (doubtful), but even half that is 3x as good as they used to be doing... and even if they have 2000 gms/phone support/support staff, that's only $10m a month in payroll (at $5k per person)... and i'm pretty sure they have nowhere near 2000 support staff... and probably less than 200 coders/artists/managers/designers, and if they get $10k a month, that's only $2m/month in salary...

so, unless you know something i don't, i really doubt that money is the reason of any of their problems... they rushed this game out the door in time for the holiday season (and probably due to pressure from eq2) and it obviously lacked polish in a few areas, so i think it's not unreasonable that they skimped on some stuff early (testing, documentation, etc) and its hitting them now... i've heard that it takes a year for a new hire to get ramped up, and that coupled with turnover can cause problems, especially if you have #$%&ty pay and work your employees hard (which i've heard they do)...

[Drasca]

It is standard practice to resheep targets on extended fights. If that creates a wolf in sheep's clothing, toons will die.
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I'd say you're lucky the re-sheep is only affecting PvE. Warlocks toons and associated parties do die because fear cannot be pre-buffed from the same player, and mana & cast timing is just wasted.

You'll simply have to learn to adapt, as locks have, to interrupted re-charm/fear, and not to poly. More attention paid to sheeped targets. Breaking sheep a nice graphical suggestion too :)

Its just become more dangerous to cook mutton stew.

One other observation: I've noticed Mages that have their sheeps typically last longer than other Mages. Two keys to them: higher levels and Arcane Focus.

And locks around, Curse of Shadows (reduces Arcane resistence which Poly is based upon), which is an absolute must sheeping Major Domo's bodyguards.

I think they should leave it in as a reward to the 3 people who invested in the talent...

It amuses me too. Master conjurer was always a convenience, useful in a pinch, but never extremely helpful.

[Kevin]

i doubt that... considering they used to do a game/exp every year, and selling 5-10 million copies (10 is high i think, iirc, sc sold 7-8 million worldwide) at $50 per, that's only $50m per year (and they don't get all of that)...

right now they are pulling in $30m a month ($15 * $2m), with similar (within a factor of 10?) non-payroll expenses to d2... so $360m a year if they can keep 2 million subs (doubtful), but even half that is 3x as good as they used to be doing... and even if they have 2000 gms/phone support/support staff, that's only $10m a month in payroll (at $5k per person)... and i'm pretty sure they have nowhere near 2000 support staff... and probably less than 200 coders/artists/managers/designers, and if they get $10k a month, that's only $2m/month in salary... 

so, unless you know something i don't, i really doubt that money is the reason of any of their problems... they rushed this game out the door in time for the holiday season (and probably due to pressure from eq2) and it obviously lacked polish in a few areas, so i think it's not unreasonable that they skimped on some stuff early (testing, documentation, etc) and its hitting them now... i've heard that it takes a year for a new hire to get ramped up, and that coupled with turnover can cause problems, especially if you have #$%&ty pay and work your employees hard (which i've heard they do)...
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I'm not claiming to know all the details, but there is a lot more to an MMO than just employees pay. There is a large initial money sink in the servers, the massive monthly bandwidth bills that need to be paid for all the data that gets to fly around, the initial production sink, the 3 or 4 years of salary that have to be recovered from before the game was released. The bandwidth thing is a huge difference from the what battle.net was for everything else they did. For everything but D2 realm games b.net was just a match making service and recieved almost no data after the game was started since the game itself was hosted on one of the players systems.

I never claimed the game wasn't rushed, or didn't have problems, or that money wasn't mis managed. I'm just saying that most every other MMO before WoW took over a year and some of them nearly 2 years before it was turning a profit from the standpoint of project finances. Many people aren't familar with corporate finance thinking at all. That's all. I'm done talking about this since I really don't have any other informatio. It was just something else for people to think about it.

[LochnarITB]

You weren't with me while I was equipping up.  Before I got my +%hit gear, I flat out missed on Saps too often, which means I'm stuck in combat, I can't try again, and there's 5 targets ticked off at me.  It also broke early semi-frequently.
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Missing a sap is certainly a painful experience. However, I was actually referring to my feeling that sheep break much easier since one of the more recent patches. Again, it is something that means a shift in what to watch for while playing. It doesn't break the game, but it is necessary to be aware of it so you can work around it. It makes me sad that it seems that all classes have to make some change in their play style after each patch because Blizzard breaks/changes the way something was working.

[Treesh]

It makes me sad that it seems that all classes have to make some change in their play style after each patch because Blizzard breaks/changes the way something was working.
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That's actually typical of the genre though. Yeah, it's annoying to have your tried and true tricks now be something flaky or really situational or having to relearn aggro management, but it does keep those of us who like to try new tricks something else to do, regardless of if the changes were intentional or not. ;)

[Quark]

However, I was actually referring to my feeling that sheep break much easier since one of the more recent patches.
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I remember the patch where I had the same feeling - and my saps seemed to be breaking early more often then too. Since then, the problem has subsided, and I attribute it to me getting more +to hit%

[Kevin]

Haven't tested them all but it appears that several of these were fixed in Tuesday maint.

I taught my imp spells while it was phase shifted.

My imp autocast blood pact several times.

I was sheeped a lot in a duel and did not have control of the toon.


Didn't test other ones yet.

[TheDragoon]

Blizzard has acknowledged a LOT of warlock bugs that the warlock forum has been talking about in this thread.

Of course, the forum posters then pointed out that these bugs were originally listed while the patch was still on the test realm yet it took this long for Blizzard to actually start looking at the problems...