Melee Changes on Test
 

Changes went Live on Dec 02, but were not effective till the 3rd.

Feel free to discuss what you liked, didnt like, or even suggested here..

--- ADDED Dec 5th ---

Last night the "effects" were in the game. as a 25th lvl warrior I found 4 skills I got that I got..

Provoke
Headbash
Backslash
Flurry

• Provoke •
This is a non-opening skill, meaning it can be used anytime, and can be used about every 90 seconds... its message is "You bellow something obsene at your oppenent". Let me say... its works well, another warrior and I could bounce a mob between us using just it. With Taunt, mob would follow me anywhere.

• Headbash •
This skill requires an opening, but it appears to be a high level bash.. I hit for 30-35 (at lvl 25) and stunned my target for up to 4 or 5 seconds. I did not see what the animation for this is, but we all hope it has a head smashing animation.

• Backslash •
This skill requires an opening, this one seem to just be extra damage, a free attack. I believe its one of the lowest level skills.

• Flurry •
This skill requires and opening, I never really saw much of a change with this, it said "You hit your target with a flurry of blows" when I hit with this. Sooo I am sure it will do something nice, or IS doing something nice..

I grouped with a monk, who loved his new abilities, and I talked to a rogue who was just getting started but loved the look of his.

Over all I think that once this is polished up over the next few weeks its going to really be something fun and exciting for the melee classes.

Things that Need Improving
They need to make the Melee skill window like the pet window where you can make it stay open, its annoying to have to open it everytime you want to watch (I am sure it pops open too)

Animations, they are using casting animations for the skills such as Provoke.. I pray they put some custom animations on the skills.. its still in the testing phase soo I am not worried just yet.. but it is something that I left feedback for.

/bow

any screenshots of what the new windows look like?

is how the default looks.

Yeah this is so early in test its still like it doesnt exist. The opening occur and you can execute ability's but theres no confirmation if it worked or not and no animations for them.

I am eagerly awaiting how this works out, because I have a high-level warrior I shelved because of reasons I wont get into here (sure you know most if you been following the stories going around).

In any case, I logged in and discovered much of what you did Neiloch. No confirmation (dialog, emote, animation, etc.) of any sort that new skill was used properly. I would love to see a message like this for headbash, "Warrior_01 siezes an opening and smashes his head into Ugly_Goblin, causing 45 damage!" OR
"Warrior_01 senses an opening and rips a Ugly_Goblin's hamstring, causing him to limp away in pain".

Among other issues that i sent /feedback on, I hope this is addressed to say the least. Also, its hard to test things that you can't find information for. How we supposed to judge these skills if we really dont know what they are supposed to do? (For those that dont know - you cannot inspect Tomes because it crashes you to desktop so, problems I see so far are:

1. No knowledge about said skills leaves me guessing what they do.
2. No confirmation that skill used is successful (very important in my eyes).
3. Miscellaneous message about GM timer reset without getting a successful opening message first (anyone else get this?).

Overall, more information should be provided to help test these properly.

Sadly, not been impressed yet. Hoepfully that will change soon. Still wonder though if this will help melees at all. /shrug

-Reed*** EDIT - as Kudane pointed out, this has been fixed, however no information is shown as of time of this edit. /bow Kudane :P *** ).

This was actually fixed yesterday, the tomes were causing crashes on the 2nd...

I inspected several tomes, (well tried.. there is no info put in yet)

Effects added on 12/4 read my review in first post for basic warrior info.

/bow

ps. thanks Reed for the nod... it was nice of ya!

Pet window goes away when your pet dies.. I would rather hope they would make it more like the spellcast window so that it's easier for us UI designers to incorporate it into our UIs (unless it's also usable by hybrids) .. It's rather annoying to have to make two versions of a UI for the different classes, or have to figure out a layout that accomodates both types.. (I do the latter as I don't really care to maintain two sets of code) ..

Anyway, I'll reserve judgement until they actually release it to see how it works with the rest of the UI.. with all the windows they keep adding, pretty soon you just don't have room to use them all. Gonna be interesting trying to put this into a workable UI..

Not if you go into the options menu and select turn off "pet window closes on death"

it stays open all the time and hitting ESC does not cause it to close..

the melee window ESC closes it as well..

and yes.. waiting till its done is a great idea.

Just got some rogue melee skills, before the server shut down. Only had time to try double stab and tendon slice. Double Stab: Requires an opening. Seems to be nothing more than extra damage(didn't really get much from this....maybe I have to be behind the opponent, since the skill modifier is backstab). Tendon Slice: My favorite so far. Slows the target.)...The others are blood slice and indirection, can't wait to try those.

Just got back from the test server and did a raid on freeport. The melee abilities make for a twitchy game play. In high lag situations(like raids) trying to hit an opening is almost imposable with the mouse. I hope when this goes live they get a better handle on letting everyone know what type of opening you get and what type of opening each thing needs.

Didn't they say they were doing this without making timing very important? I think they failed miserably on that one. Also the tomb merchants really need to be organized better. Took me a while to find all the abilities I could use.

hurpf
 

Ok..wint and tryed the changes. Where to start ...

1) 8 more buttons... that dont stay whin u zone or hit esc.(why cant the new boxes stay up whin u open them like the old.)
2) Spell effects .. i dont need any more lag in a big fight.
3) looks to me that they made them spells so they can screw with them at will.
4) Now some of the abilites are very interesting.

My thought if they going to do this give us MORE hk's! Thats where these keys are going to end up. 10 holes are not going to cut it. In battle you dont have time to move mouse around to hit these things. On the whole it a lot of crap for a small fix. But that why they always been. Since this is something for eq2 we just get to be the lab rats.

Taunt
 

So did they Fix taunt? Is there a message for when it successfully taunts a mob? Those of you who played warriors on test, post if ya would your findings on the "New Taunt". ?? Thanks !

- Whasats Helpsalot, Prexus

Re: hurpf
 

this is not something for EQ2

nothing annoys me more than when people see something new and make the asumption that they are just testing something for another game.

The Dev Team that is making these changes is totally different than the Dev Team for EQ2. I have been to the San Diego Office and can tell you that EQ2 people are in an entirely different building from the EQ1 Dev Team. When I asked some of the EQ1 Dev Team who they knew on the EQ2 Dev Team I got blank stares..

So, While I agree these skills will need some refining not to look like spells for melee.. please don't jump to conclussion..

/bow

Aha.. never knew that option existed.. and my ESC key is broke on my keyboard so I've never discovered that other little gem.. ;p