Fires of Heaven - The good, the bad, and the whatever else.

Convo_sl said:

People would PayPal ours money so he could pay his cable bill. Lol the shit that went on back then

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Yeah my guild leadership circle was akin to a hippie commune. People gave them money, access to accounts, hell accounts even got donated when people quit playing and they pretty openly sold massive amounts of platinum on ebay. I purposely avoided getting loot first so that I wouldn't be pressured to give up my account info. There were several instances of clerics accounts getting abused because hey we geared you up man you owe us! For the most part it was cool but there were a few drama bombs that happened over account sharing/abuse and I wanted to steer way wide of that.

That's another thing that happen. The guild had access to some cleric and chanter accounts Incase those people couldn't log in for raids. One of the officers sold those accounts on eBay without the people knowing until it was too late.

xelene_sl said:

I was a Shaman in EQ and tanked a lot with slow, dots and the dogdot, skipped out for a while and in Velious/Luclin to play a monk for a bit. Around that time they launched Kane Bayle I think, and I respun as a SK and learnt about how snare mechanics worked with Feign, mostly in SolA/B solo. A whole bunch of us then moved to Venril Sathir, just around the time PoP launched and started from scratch. That time, I picked a Bard and it was a gigantic pain in the hand, but also was godlike. Once you had Highsun, the AA to recover mana, fading memories, knowledge of pathing and how mobs memwiped when they pathed back to their spawn it was trivial. Single pulling anything became trivial, and far quicker than the monks could do it - and far more reliable than the SK's could. Invariably would get splatted in one round once the boss was at the team and rampaged on the Bard. Vindi was actually a harder single pull, as you couldn't snare him or his guards and had to do tricks with pathing and walls to do it.

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This sounded good till you said Bards died, or pulling anything once FM was in game was hard.=P

I never figured that out, I think Fading Memories would remove the Bard from the first in the agro list and the rampage tank would get themself in the third place. As soon as the Bard dropped the mob on the raid and switched to wide area buffs, they slotted back into that empty spot and got splatted. It always felt like you'd drop FM and clear the spot, but would have a reservation on that spot in the agro list. Didn't really matter, you'd single pull a boss back to camp, die, and claim the reward when the other 70 folk finished killing it. The interesting part of the fight was always the pull. The rest of it was just tank and spank.

I'd fairly regularly drop a mob on the raid, fade and still be on rampage. Bards were not bullt to be rampaged on.

Vindi was still a hard pull, Bard tricks didn't work on him. (When he could quad for your entire life, not so hard when you could take 15 quad hits in a row and still be alive)

JTheRuler_sl said:

Ted crub! They landed on Saryrn though I don't remember them doing much. They may have had some contributing members to saryrns team Japan though I mostly remember Divine Winds being the main guild. They used to chat in say and it literally looked like they were just mashing the keyboard. I'm assuming it was because I didn't have language packs or something but was funny none the less. Burning Snow was another oddly named guild on saryrn.

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They eventually went by the Saryrn Raiders but they were a good bunch. Divine Winds, Ted Club, Samurais, Ravens Nest... I know there were more.

xelene_sl said:

I never figured that out, I think Fading Memories would remove the Bard from the first in the agro list and the rampage tank would get themself in the third place. As soon as the Bard dropped the mob on the raid and switched to wide area buffs, they slotted back into that empty spot and got splatted. It always felt like you'd drop FM and clear the spot, but would have a reservation on that spot in the agro list. Didn't really matter, you'd single pull a boss back to camp, die, and claim the reward when the other 70 folk finished killing it. The interesting part of the fight was always the pull. The rest of it was just tank and spank.

I'd fairly regularly drop a mob on the raid, fade and still be on rampage. Bards were not bullt to be rampaged on.

Vindi was still a hard pull, Bard tricks didn't work on him. (When he could quad for your entire life, not so hard when you could take 15 quad hits in a row and still be alive)

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Rampage worked funky. It was kind of like how you describe it; It creates a hard list of targets based on order of aggro. First on the hatelist=first on rampage list, and so forth. Then it goes down that list, invalidating the current target, and rampages on the top target in range that isn't the current one with aggro. This is why monks made great pullers, because due to high avoidance they were primo rampage tanks.

Its worth noting once the rampage list is created, it doesn't change until a full mem wipe. that means dropping yourself off the aggro list wont drop you off the rampage list. You wont be rampaged while not on the aggro list though. ITs weird. Thats how it worked through luclin at least.

Ramp list wasn't set until the first ramp though iirc. The ramp list was basically a snapshot of the aggro list during that first ramp. That's why you often had your dps not doing a ton of dmg until the first ramp came through.

I ramp tanked (SK) more fights than I can conveniently count, thanks to pulling most the bosses from NTOV and beyond. Prior to that we always used monks, but they were much better dps with epic than I was, so I pulled, and often. Ramp was exactly as Big remembers it: Once you aggroed, you were on the ramp list. This meant pullers were always ramp holders until they died. If you moved out of range/died, the next target on the ramp list would start getting hit. I was a desk, so I had shitloads of mana. Our warriors were always first in after the MT, so I would stand outside melee range and start casting spells like a champ if our healer situation wasn't amazing. Once tash and malo were on you would be surprised what you could stick on most mobs. I would joust in for some extra damage, but for the most part if I pulled I stood at range unless our healer group was solid. Shamans love torporing SKs because we just cast spells inbetween swings.

That's kind of how we dealt with it, if a Bard pulled they would get the mob back to the Raid and get sacrificed for the greater good (or perhaps get out of range and go mana feed). Tank would tank via normal agro mechanics and we'd generally have either a War or Knight ping the thing with an arrow as it was incoming to establish agro and get on rampage. Bards couldn't tank for shit, they had basically no way to control agro because of all the wierd exceptions in the code base that invalidated the hatelist and couldn't take a hit anyway. There were higher caps on dodge etc that Bards had, but not convinced they made much difference really; every other hybrid and melee could take a hit better.

I remember trying to tank in exp groups, it was generally easier to let a cleric do the work because at least they could hold agro and took a hit just as well as a Bard. Shaman and Rangers were perfectly viable tanks IIRC.

Still, my favorite class in MMO's - hard to play and hard work to play, but they made the unpossible possible. The entire class was a giant exploit.

I couldn't pull Vindi as a bard (when it was level appropriate), that needed a monk or sk. He and his guards if I remember would instantly reset as soon as you feigned/faded and couldn't be snared - so would go charging towards home at top speed. The trick there was to finesse him into a corner so he ran against it for a bit while his guards pathed clearly home, but that would take a lot of feigns and I had like 6 or 7 before my mana pool was exhausted and a 2 hour wait to regen was due.

BrutulTM_sl said:

Until they fucking feign death and dump rampage on one of the CH chain clerics. Saw that happen several times. Cleric - Why am I getting rampaged!?! Monk - *silence*

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If your monks feigned when the mob didn't flip toward them they were idiots. Feign didn't lower hate much, and turning off auto attack for 20 seconds was a MUCH more effective way of controlling aggro than feigning for any length of time. Even if you were one that used feign to drop aggro down during the fight, you only needed to drop and stand instantly. Staying feigned for any length of time was fucking stupid unless you were splitting, AFK, trying to live during the wipe, or trying to make sure you weren't the one who flipped the big boss around. The only way rampage would fall off of them is if they were actively feigned during the rampage.

Also, your clerics shouldn't have been in melee range anyway, making rampage on them impossible.

I'm 99% sure it was. Even if it wasn't, a monk feigning isn't going to perma drop him off ramp, just while he's down. So, clerics shouldn't have been getting ramped regardless.

Rampage worked just like regular agro, it was just static. First on started on the top. Bard FM did drop you off rampage list, generally though you had another song on and it put you right back on top of the rampage list.

Best exploit in early EQ: if you pressed left-and-forward or right-and-forward at the same time, you ran faster than if you just pressed forward only. Newbie physics programming errors ftw.

My first toon was a troll and anyone who started in Grobb remembers the insane Froglok trains you could amass. The funniest part was b lining it to the guards and alternating between the near death slow walk and regening enough to run again.

Mazim_sl said:

Rampage worked just like regular agro, it was just static. First on started on the top. Bard FM did drop you off rampage list, generally though you had another song on and it put you right back on top of the rampage list.

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This is accurate and exactly what I was saying. Dropping aggro wouldn't change your position, like you said. So FM would only remove you from rampage until you ended back up on the aggro list. You were never actually removed from the rampage list, you were simply considered an invalid target while off the main rampage list.

Soygen_sl said:

Maybe I'm thinking of them getting summoned or something. I just remember on occasion, Rampage would get fucked up and you'd have chanters or healers complaining they were on it. As for FD, it could completely memwipe. It was a lower % chance after they nerfed it pre Kunark, but it still would happen.

Here's a snip from an old Steel Warrior post. Some mobs had super-range on rampage, according to #5. I always think of High Priest in Ssra. I think he was hitting people all over the room if you didn't set up the ramp list right.

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Yeah, FD could memwipe. BUT, the second the monk stood and re-aggro'd the mob he'd be right back at the top of the rampage list as previously stated. Thus, my point still stands; The only time a monk should've been off the rampage list is while laying down. The second he stood he should've turned attack back on and gotten re-validated as a rampage target, thus being ramptank again. There is literally no excuse for your healers or chanters, or anyone that you didn't design to be ramp tank ever getting hit by rampage. IF that is happening then either the ramp tank died or is feigning, or some how mem-wiped and disengaged. None of those scenarios is a proper one for a successful raid.

It is worth mentioning that Rampage changed in PoP, and I'm not 100% on how it did.

If a tank engaged after a pull and the cleric had a hot or something on them (or an enchanter had runed/madnessed' them right after the pull) they could easily end up on the ramp list. Hell, if your clerics -weren't- tossing a hot on the tank right before they engaged, they were probably doing shit wrong according to the cleric's handbook. This would put them at slot 2-3 on the ramp list, which means if a puller FD'd or got out of range, the caster would get hit next. Granted, for some reason I remember ramp ignoring FD for some reason. Like, I definitely got hit while successfully FD'd more than a few times.