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01-29-02


Well, since I've lost my job I am updating now from the Pacific Northwest Unemployed Technical Professional Homeless Ranch (PNWUTPHR).  Sorry for the delay in updates, but it's hard living here.

We don't have much more than the necessities; a single broadband cable connection shared among the entire network; only one computer per person; Windows 2k pro instead of Windows XP.  It's a tough life, I just hope the economy recovers soon so I can get back on my feet.  The hardest part is waiting for the goons who still haven't figured out that Starcraft isn't better than Warcraft 2 to get off the damn computers so I can get more xp for my EQ characters.

Some people are so selfish.

Which brings me to this little doodad I found on the EQ web site:

Pirotes wrote:

"Absor,

I've been playing Everquest before Kunark came out at a time when you had to raid to camp the Sol B Efreeti. Recently I have been wondering what happened to class balance. As a Mage I am horrified by Dire Charm. I worked hard to get my epic and it's effect is outdone by some guy who exp farmed for less time than I camped Quillmane for. I could have sworn that it was a mage's ability to have the best pets and now a class with better mana regen, stuns and messes also has a higher damage output than me. I have seen enchanters charm mobs that hit for 120+ with far more hp than mine, who can buff their pets just as well as I do and slow mobs to boot."

FYI, I've been charming things that hit for 120 with far more HP than your pet for more than a year and a half, get a damn clue you moron.

Fucking mages... they have no class.  For one dire charm is the ONLY compelling AAxp for enchanters.  I also notice that he forgets to mention that Druids and Necros get this ability too (though in a somewhat more limited fashion).  No, let pick on the damn enchanters who haven't had anything to do for the last YEAR besides cast C2 on your whiny boney mage ass.

Hell they've ALREADY nurfed dire charm a couple of times (did I mention it was the only compelling AAxp skill for enchanters?).  It used to be that you could charm up to 51 with the skill.  That lasted till the week after release (I guess they didn't figure anyone could POSSIBLY get that many points in the first week so they didn't change it... there goes VI thinking again).

Turns out that a level 51 mob was too much.  And even I agree with that.  So they lowered it to level 48.  This is a bit better, a bit more in line with where a perm-charm should be.  That wasn't enough, they now nurfed it to 46th... now the mobs we can charm are looking more and more anemic, and far less useful.  Why should I bother pumping 9 points (plus the 18 points required to unlock the class abilities) into a skill that's WORSE than what I can get with a Shissar staff or just by chain casting Allure??!!

Leave dire charm alone.  And mages need to get off their whine tirade before people start to think that Mages really ARE weak.  It happened with Necros and it took them over a YEAR to get back to the point where people started seeing them as viable grouping members.  The same thing happened to Rangers.  They complained and exaggerated SO much about how weak they are, and what a mana sponge they were that people shied away from inviting them into groups!

Bad PR, more than anything that VI does to a class, is where the most horrible nurfs are.  And the worse PR comes from whiney asses who just can't shut up and see past their few disadvantages to see their real advantages.

I am guilty of it myself.  I bitch and moan about how useless my enchanter in raids, I start new characters while bitching and moaning about how totally useless I am now that I'm 60th, I watch melees and hybrids and even PRIEST classes soak up new loot and engage in interesting encounters that Enchanters can never even CONSIDER being a part of, or getting any loot that's close in equality to what this loot does for the other classes.  It makes me very bitter, it makes me very angry, it makes me very disappointed.

Seriously!  Out of ALL the classes I could have picked, I picked one of the 4 that will never get better, because all they get is their spells and VI doesn't seem to believe that power should come from spells, they believe that it should come with gear.  Since int casters get little gear to speak of well, that's that...

But then I take him xp grinding, and there is NO replacement.  A well played enchanter on an xp grind is a beautiful thing.  Then I take him soloing.  A well played enchanter charm soloing is a beautiful thing... with or without Dire Charm!  Unfortunately for the longest time all I was doing was raids, and that destroyed my morale.

For all you bitchy PMS Mages out there that are oh-so-concerned with Dire charm, why don't you take that pansy epic pet of yours (ya know, the one you can heal that has the 50pt damage shield?) and go solo somewhere beside a dire charmed enchanter and see how well things stack up?  I'd wager that you match, if not exceed the xp gain that the enchanter can get in the same time.

  1. You're pet is higher level, so you get more mileage out of the perhaps somewhat lower hit points since he will hit more often and kill the baddie faster..

  2. Your pet has that INCREDIBLE damage shield, balancing the usefulness of slow.  And, wait, doesn't that DS stack with your Cladu of flame?  Hail a 75pt damage shield?  Enchanter damage shields are 11 points... if we bother to memorize it.

  3. You can haste your pet more than we can with Shissar when you add Muzzle of Mardu to burnout.

  4. You can HEAL your pet with a fair amount of efficiency!  Enchanters have to wait for the pet to regen or chain cast a crummy 400pt ablative shield on the pet... which lasts for a round and a half maybe..

  5. You can get full xp per encounter by killing pet and nuking the critter to death then have a new pet summoned up in just a few seconds.  Or you can time any one of your nukes and get 100% xp from the critter without the pet death.

  6. Your pet won't kill you if you go LD.

  7. You zone and you can summon another pet very easily, where as a dire charm enchanter has to wait for an hour.

No, mages aren't hurting in the pet department... not when they take off their "woe is me" blinders that they persist in wearing to try and make themselves seem more needy than all the other int casters.

I don't know who you are, or what server you are on Pirotes, but maybe instead of feeling sorry for yourself you can pull your head out of your ass, take a deep breath of fresh are and learn how to evaluate things in a more objective fashion.

On a lighter note, in my last rant, I mentioned how crummy the implementation of the titles was.  Well, VI seems to be watching our page and added in a /shownames switch so we can turn those damn annoying things off!  Good job VI.

On an even brighter note, Steppyn got 60th!  Of course the first order of business when we got out of Howling stones was for him to track down an orc pawn to assassinate.  On a similar note, Kanax (HoD in heart!) got 60th within an hour of Steppyn!

Congrats you two, now lets start cranking on them alt xp skills!

Finally, looks like the next fan faire will be in Seattle!  Despite the fact that I hate you all, I may go anyway just so I can hate you all in person!  I may select people to the PNWTPHR to view the accommodations and commiserate with me on how terrible the tech market is now.

I've been working on my L33T ASP.Net stuff, I am thinking about mucking with the page some more and adding some spiffy keen stuff, like a scheduling calendar and so on.