Patch 99 - April 23, 2009 - Last double digit patch.

[UnknownLord]

well there has been 0 pvp action all day except for a few "duels" to test it ending in "wtf, logging bye"

I myself am standing at brit GY while reading this thread and typing this reply and wow, not dead.

EDIT/ and the reason most didnt test it on TEST was because most ping 400 there. i ping 900 there myself. please change it back.

[Eulogy]

Well after 4 hours of duels(1v1,2v2), IMO I'm still pretty sure that the recast delays are a bit too long(.25?), and also the disrupt delays are a bit too short.

Back in T2A, if you disrupted someones big spell, you would end up being "on top" of your opponent, IE one step ahead of them.

The word 'Duel' was more fitting back in T2A due to the back and forth behavior of 1v1 duels back then.

This is such an interesting patch..

[CmaN]

First time i've logged in since this patch and wow..

I call patch 99, the last double digit patch, the pvp killer.

As if the weird delays in damage application working in conjunction with incredibly small disrupt windows (that arent even guarenteed) weren't bad enough (really?), now mages can stand there looking stupid because they physically can't cast a spell.

Fighting before had declined to mostly ganking, or precasting FS because nothing interupts here except curses.. I can't even imagine what pvp looks like now. Alot of pvpers gave up when this first started to get "weird" with delay applications and interupt changes.

All these nice patches you put out seek to fix or correct what needs to be corrected, please "fix" mage pvp by returning it to its original state. I don't care who is getting this information or from what silly demo it comes from, this is amazingly slow, boring, and not at all era accurate.

EDIT:
I'd rather edit my post then double up.

It's pretty certain the mechanic itself is correct, the poster above is correct in that we are making somewhat of a guess an the actual time, but we are pretty assuredly within 0.25 seconds of the correct number.

HOW is it pretty certain? This is how you guys remember it? I mean seriously, there's always some old patch note links or something people backup this stuff with, where is this stuff at?

Part of the process of making changes such as this is forums discussion and testing. Please don't be shocked when these changes go live if you've not participated in the process leading up to them.

I didn't see any open invitation to pvp testing. The last time testing on was test center for the interrupt/delay changes you had more then a few people telling you it was ridiculous (both on TC and forums) and it still got green lighted. Who actually gets to participate in the "process leading up to" these changes. I know I didn't, nor did I have the opportunity to.

I'm so irritated at how every time there is a "fix" to mages, its just a huge nerf. In the end, it really only serves to drive some population away from playing.

[Loathed]

i think yesterday jig said it best. GHEAL needed to be altered. It is very true, i never remember being able to spam gheal, but- i do remember being able to spam mini heal, magic arrow, and almost spam harm and other 2nd circle spells as well. I believe the recast delay or what have you, was not the same all the way across the board, I am 100% about the spamming of all circle 1 spells. It's ridiculous seeing that In Mani has the same recovery time as In Vas Mani- i say that because, it's not the way it was, but i'm sure it can be corrected.

I would love to see any hard evidence on the timers for the recast delay. I am sure there was a recast delay for all circles 3 and up, not sure about second. but i know the 1st circle of spells had no recast delay, it makes me wonder if it was based on circle as to how long the delay was, also- the fast casting method seems to be off now. Being able to fast cast depended on two things, is it a targetable spell and if so did you hold the target for the duration = to the casting time of the spell. not a flat 2 seconds no matter what the spell. in other words- if you casted Gheal- and held target for roughly 1.4 seconds then you could target and recast it instantly, not 2 seconds. fast casting was always holding the target for the casting time of the spell. (your casting is complete and have a target, don't target for additional x time, where x ='s casting time of spell) sorry i assumed i had to straighten that up.
Back on the subj. of recast/recovery delay: I think we all need to jump on test and get some info for the devs and what not. I am not 100% but i think the recast delay was based off the circle of the spell. so in other words gheal (4th circle) had a lower recovery/recast than say Flamestrike (7th circle). that would only make sense to me. I can't provide hard evidence of this. Though the majority of my UO career was from release to t2a and the start of UO:R

I know many dexers out there are loving this patch- but get the hell over it. everyone and their grandma knows that t2a was the time of the tank mage, dexers always sucked up until uo:r
sorry that's just the way it was. and we do aim for accuracy here.
so to sum things up, was the patch horrible? No. It was needed, you shouldn't be able to gheal through everything. you couldn't back when I played osi's server (t2a). Does it need to be tweaked, and if so how? I say yes to this. Tweaking it so that we make it more era accurate. A flat rate across the boards- is not the correct way. I think the changes will help us realize how it was in t2a, i know ppl are gonna bitch we can't be 100% accurate because ppl have razor now. so what- we're going by client accuracy not user. They also had gold dupes and crap back then and I sure as hell don't wanna see those hit the server.
ok i'm done rambling. btw it's my 2 cents. enjoy!

[Fwerp]

I just think the delay between casting your first and second spell is wrong. The other delays might be right, but it's tough to tell for sure.

On OSI, you could drop an EXP and then an EB without having to fast cast the ebolt. You could do it on the fly, namely, cast an explosion, target it, and almost immediately begin casting your energy bolt. Here, you can't do that unless you fast cast the ebolt, which I am certain is wrong. Maybe the delays for subsequent spell casts is right, but this first one I'm afraid is misguided.

[Jiggo]

I believe that the previous recovery delay was correct, at .75, but what we needed was the disrupt delay, the waiting out a spell thats cast, on top of the recovery delay. That way, theres actual penalties for being disrupted. As it stands, the person who is disrupted will be recasting before the person that disrupted them. It seems like we are halfway there. This patch added some very useful features, with some timers that needed adjusting. Before we all say this patch killed pvp, lets wait until its tweaked. I think its a huge step in the right direction, lets help the staff get it right.

[Tronica]

The disrupt delays are not in AT ALL. To everyone saying the change is to short or soemthing it's because of that, there is no disrupt delay.

The recast delays need to be set by circle.

Isn't that how it was on t2a?

You could spam the lower circle spells much quicker then you could higher circle spells, which is why fast cast eb's was the way to go.

Jiggo has it right about the disrupts not breaking ghs.

As it stands right now you can gh twice and only the first will get interupted because the offender cannot cast 2 1st circle spells inside the timer to beat the gh's which have no disrupt delay.

Also you run into issues in group pvp with the to long spell delays not letting you cast enough ghs to successfully xheal from a multiple person synch.

Also, someone asked a good question, if disrupt timers get put in, do you get the timer if you disrupt with a weapon arm?

I can't remember that far back, and I'd hope not.

[Derrick]

if disrupt timers get put in, do you get the timer if you disrupt with a weapon arm?

I can't remember that far back, and I'd hope not.

This was one of the big questions I had as well. It's assumed that a self interupt is no different than another other form. I'm not sure how to resolve this question.

While we have some very definate information on most of the spell recovery info, these little details are just a complete mystery.

Is there any objection to reverting this system back out until we can gather more information? I'm out of town and am a little disconnected from what the compete sence of this patch is, beyond what's been posted here and in the suggestions forum.

[Jiggo]

I think a revert with more intensive research would be extremely beneficial

[UnknownLord]

and i think, fix those bloody white wyrms before you place another pvp nerf in :/

[Jaster]

i think yesterday jig said it best. GHEAL needed to be altered. It is very true, i never remember being able to spam gheal, but- i do remember being able to spam mini heal, magic arrow, and almost spam harm and other 2nd circle spells as well. I believe the recast delay or what have you, was not the same all the way across the board, I am 100% about the spamming of all circle 1 spells. It's ridiculous seeing that In Mani has the same recovery time as In Vas Mani- i say that because, it's not the way it was, but i'm sure it can be corrected.

You couldn't really spam spells until AoS .... If you were took take every era of UO and look at it from the perspective of how fast paced the game was ... it would look like this ...

Original UO: Terribly Slow Paced [ minus the 1 shot fireball kills ]
T2A: Slow paced
UO:R Medium Paced
AoS: Fast Paced
AoS w/ doom gauntlet working properly: Fastest paced the game ever was
AoS after fc/fcr cap: Faster Paced - between AoS launch and 5/6 casting fast ...

T2A didn't involve any spell spamming at all. I will say that you could exp/eb someone without it being fastcasted, but mini heal [spell that was rarely used until AoS], or any other small spell ... could not be spammed. Look at any old pictures, that show mages in them ... look at the spells they are casting ... even the one Faust brought up from wtfman.com .... Look at the Spell Choices ... EXP EB GH FS [BUFFS/DEBUFFS] POISON [on occasion], CURE ... now, why would someone gh if they were getting disrupted ifthey could just spam mini heal? ... they wouldn't, because it wasn't possible or practical. Mini Heal didn't heal for more than like 7-8 ...

On the note of Dexers/Townies ... if you geared yourself, you were just as powerful, if not more powerful than a tank mage during t2a ... Resist + Parry + good weapons + potions + jewels[if needed] > tank mage ... Anyone who played Atlantic T2A will remember Cherry Poppins, Agent Orange, Captain Ahab just to name a few ... they would wreck 99% of the mages 1v1 in or out of town.

[Kraarug]

if disrupt timers get put in, do you get the timer if you disrupt with a weapon arm?

I can't remember that far back, and I'd hope not.

This was one of the big questions I had as well. It's assumed that a self interupt is no different than another other form. I'm not sure how to resolve this question.

While we have some very definate information on most of the spell recovery info, these little details are just a complete mystery.

Is there any objection to reverting this system back out until we can gather more information? I'm out of town and am a little disconnected from what the compete sence of this patch is, beyond what's been posted here and in the suggestions forum.

In most development project I've been familur with once you put something in you keep it in, you just modify it. A total revert would be a reverse in momentum and literally a step backwards.

I know in some instances we are depending upon a players memory however it's been 10 years since T2A and far too many player run shards claiming to be "T2A" and very very tank mage friendly.

So, I understand why you'd like to back this change out, I'd just suggest that you make a modification or two because if you back it out you'll hear all sorts of reasons why it should stay out for good. As evidenced in some of the requests contained in this thread.

Besides, there was plenty of time for people to test and provide feedback. I think you were clear that there were going to be changes coming.

To the poster about T2A pvp.... it wasn't only about Tank Mages. They were a big part of the PvP but there was more to the scene that just one template.

[Kraarug]

...
Look at any old pictures, that show mages in them ... look at the spells they are casting ... even the one Faust brought up from wtfman.com .... Look at the Spell Choices ... EXP EB GH FS [BUFFS/DEBUFFS] POISON [on occasion], CURE ... now, why would someone gh if they were getting disrupted ifthey could just spam mini heal? ... they wouldn't, because it wasn't possible or practical. Mini Heal didn't heal for more than like 7-8 ...

On the note of Dexers/Townies ... if you geared yourself, you were just as powerful, if not more powerful than a tank mage during t2a ... Resist + Parry + good weapons + potions + jewels[if needed] > tank mage ... Anyone who played Atlantic T2A will remember Cherry Poppins, Agent Orange, Captain Ahab just to name a few ... they would wreck 99% of the mages 1v1 in or out of town.

I have to say that you are spot on in the above quote.

I don't know of anything past T2A so i can't comment on the AOS stuff but the points you made about spell choices and the strength of Dexxers and Townies. The key, as you mentioned is being equiped and having Parry and high resist for both town and out of town. If you had low resist, out of town ventures were not aviseable.

[Tronica]

if disrupt timers get put in, do you get the timer if you disrupt with a weapon arm?

I can't remember that far back, and I'd hope not.

This was one of the big questions I had as well. It's assumed that a self interupt is no different than another other form. I'm not sure how to resolve this question.

While we have some very definate information on most of the spell recovery info, these little details are just a complete mystery.

Is there any objection to reverting this system back out until we can gather more information? I'm out of town and am a little disconnected from what the compete sence of this patch is, beyond what's been posted here and in the suggestions forum.

In most development project I've been familur with once you put something in you keep it in, you just modify it. A total revert would be a reverse in momentum and literally a step backwards.

I know in some instances we are depending upon a players memory however it's been 10 years since T2A and far too many player run shards claiming to be "T2A" and very very tank mage friendly.

So, I understand why you'd like to back this change out, I'd just suggest that you make a modification or two because if you back it out you'll hear all sorts of reasons why it should stay out for good. As evidenced in some of the requests contained in this thread.

Besides, there was plenty of time for people to test and provide feedback. I think you were clear that there were going to be changes coming.

To the poster about T2A pvp.... it wasn't only about Tank Mages. They were a big part of the PvP but there was more to the scene that just one template.

plenty of time to test the changes that weren't actually put in

the delays that got put in now are not the same we tested.

and just because something was avail for test, then added, and is obviously wrong, doesn't mean it should stay in

thats anti logic, and anti logic is worse than religion.

[Fwerp]

Derrick, a revert and some further testing seems like the most prudent thing.

Maybe this will spur people to go to the test server and give feedback.