What in the holy name of heck is this?

[xaanru]

Smart clerics ask me for PotC, and Symbol themselves.
Stubborn Clerics insist on Virtue/Aego instead.

Now, here's the funny problem with buff stacking. MY SELF BUFF Blessed Armor of the Risen adds HP/AC and 6 mana regen.

I am not yet level 60, so I do not have Aego yet, and have never bothered to quest temperance.

I use HB, Aegis, Symbol to buff.

Friendly druid comes along, casts POTC on me, and REMOVES BOTH BAoTR and HB. Resulting in a net loss of ac and HP, and a net gain of NONE when it comes to mana regen.

Aego and BAoTR stack. Once I hit 60, you bet I will use BoA/BAoTR rather than PoTC. In fact I'll be thrilled that any passing druid who MGBs PoTG can't wipe two of my buffs off for ONE inferior buff.

Worst one was the night I was headed into PoP to grind, had fresh buffs. got hit with a PoTG and a VoQ right as I zoned in to PoTranquility. Overwriting my fresh self buffs, AND my brand new KEI. Grrr.

[Eileah]

Pot9 = HP 618/AC 32/Mana 8 per tic

WoG = AC 54

SoK = HP 910

Pot9+WoG+SoK = AC 86/Hp 1528/Mana 8 per tic

HoV = HP 1405/AC 72

Pot9+WoG+SoK > Virtue for everyone Melee and Caster alike.

Eileah

[Grimina]

Armor of the Zealot will no longer be overwritten by Focus of Soul and Focus of the Seventh. Blessed Armor of the Risen and Ancient: High Priest's Bulwark will no longer be overwritten by Focus of Spirit or Khura's Focusing

Ie: BAotR and Ancient: High Priest's Bulwark WILL be overwritten by Focus of Soul and Focus of the Seventh. Sure those give more HPs, but I'd MUCH rather have my mana regen.

[Verdandi]

What are WoG and SoK?

Even if three spells together are better than Virtue, there are times when I'll prefer Virtue just to free up spell slots.

[Eileah]

WoG = Ward of Gallantry lvl 61

SoK = Symbol of Kazad lvl 61

[Moonlilly]

Originally posted by Lilosh
Probably started casting waited, waited, and toward sthe end let us know.


-Lilosh

I can see that. I usually don't call Mass Rod's till a couple seconds after the spell goes off.

[Sulkano]

/shrug.

The cleric probably just trying to rebuff the entire group at once. While I sympathize that you lost a buff you paid for, I also see her side...when in a group, you do the best you can with what you have: she was simply doing her job in the most efficient manner possible. Unless you as a group had set forth at formation that you would take breaks as various buffs wore off so you could go buy replacements, I dont really see where its your place to complain. On the other hand, If she was excited about reaching 60 and just started firing off her new spells...well, thats another thing altogether (and applies to all spell casters, not just clerics).

As far as the exp thing goes...I'd only guess you party fell victim to one of the myriad of bugs that rear their ugly heads now and again in PoP. Its sounds though like the whole group was bugged and it never got fixed casue you were the only one camping out.

[Verdandi]

Are there any spells in game that are mutually exclusive? If you have one the other will not land, and vice versa? Or is it always that one will overwrite the other?

Seems like that would be the ideal solution, but I can't recall if there is anything that works like that already.

[Nhin Impious]

I also see her side...when in a group, you do the best you can with what you have: she was simply doing her job in the most efficient manner possible.

"What you have" should include a brain. And in a group, doing YOUR job in an efficient manner means allowing others to do theirs in an efficient manner as well.

I'm constantly shocked and horrified by the people who can reach incredibly high levels without understanding the basics of game play.

Nhinx Aphsion

[eqNichola]

Originally posted by Grimina

Armor of the Zealot will no longer be overwritten by Focus of Soul and Focus of the Seventh. Blessed Armor of the Risen and Ancient: High Priest's Bulwark will no longer be overwritten by Focus of Spirit or Khura's Focusing

Ie: BAotR and Ancient: High Priest's Bulwark WILL be overwritten by Focus of Soul and Focus of the Seventh. Sure those give more HPs, but I'd MUCH rather have my mana regen.

You had me going there for a sec But as ever, trust what happens in the game more than what one reads in patch messages. And also trust Lucy more than patch messages.

From the change history for BAotR and the change history for AotZ:

08-06 10:17 Added Slot 5: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 1 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 1300
08-06 10:17 Added Slot 5: Stacking: Block new spell if slot 1 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 1450

The Focus line is a slot-1 hp buff (that is, slot 1 is 'Max Hitpoints'), but whether Spirit, Khura's, Soul, or Seventh, none of them are anything like 1300 or 1450 hitpoiints. So - agreeing with my in-game experience as a cleric who self-buffs with BAotR and raids with level 65 shaman - since 6th August, the focus line no longer overwrites Blessed Armor of the Risen or Armor of the Zealot.

[Eumerin]

Originally posted by Verdandi
Are there any spells in game that are mutually exclusive? If you have one the other will not land, and vice versa? Or is it always that one will overwrite the other?

Seems like that would be the ideal solution, but I can't recall if there is anything that works like that already.

There are, but in each case, SoE has basically had to go through the database and specifically code spells to ensure that the proper spells bounced. For example, the Aego type spells have coding that prevents them from being overwritten by, say, an AC buff that has a higher AC number (i.e. that would replace Aego with a higher AC buff but remove all the extra hit points).

For the longest time 3 hybrid classes - Paladins, Rangers, and Beastlords - all had competing spell lines that would overwrite each other, and the paladin version (and only the paladin version afaik) was available as a group spell (the Brell line of spells). Rangers would use their version to buff up their atk and then a paladin would cast Brell's Stalwart Shield (which is pure hp, and of more interest to casters than a buff that focuses on atk) and overwrite the ranger buff. Eventually, the devs intervened and made it so that each spell bounced if one of the other two lines were up already.

Basically, its a matter of looking at a spell, finding a particular line that the problematic overwriting spell has, and inserting a < marker into a line along with some code that instructs the spell not to allow itself to be overwritten.

For example, the Brell's line uses line 4 to increase max hp. Protection of the Wild provides a number of benefits, including max hp in line 4 (although not as many). So Protection of the Wild also includes the following in line 5:

Stacking: Block new spell if slot 4 is effect 'Max Hitpoints' and < 10001

Brell's provides much less than 10,000 Max HP, so the Brell's line will bounce if Protection of the Wild is up.

[Sulkano]

Originally posted by Nhin Impious
"What you have" should include a brain. And in a group, doing YOUR job in an efficient manner means allowing others to do theirs in an efficient manner as well.

I'm constantly shocked and horrified by the people who can reach incredibly high levels without understanding the basics of game play.

Well, put that way....then everyone in that group is equally at fault for not knowing how those buffs interact. Pot9 vs aego/virt is a basic piece of knowledge. No, excuses really...you can spend 5 minutes on one of the myriad of EQ sites and find out anything you want to know.

As far as how folks get to 65 without knowing anything? Heh, I not sure theres even much left of the carcass of that dead horse.

[Reflan]

He just dinged 60; he was probably waiting to be able to cast aego for a long time and thrilled to finally be able to break his cherry on casting it. Probably just excitable, cut him some slack.

Kinda like when shamans first get canni 5. They want to use it more than think about it sometimes and canni 5 themselves to death at least a couple or few times, almost every one.

Or like that guy who just won the Oscar grabbing Hale Berri and kissing her. What the hell was that about? On the other hand, who cares? Wouldn't you?

[Montgomery0]

About your xp bug, you mentioned you had a bard in your group. Were you the leader? Did the bard seem especially quiet to you? Most importantly, does he own a pair of Composer's Greaves? If so, then you were a victim of a bug with the greaves (or the BP as well.) If the bard allows the song (selo's accelerando) from the greaves to pulse more than once, the group leader will no longer get the benefits of bard song, will not be able to read anything the bard writes and supposedly does not get group experience.

If this is the case, feel free to send some /feedback to the developers as this is a known bug, to the entire bard community at least, and has been for several months now.

[Grimina]

I'll take Lucy's as proof. I didn't do any research, no shaman has cast focus on me lately as I've become deft at avoiding it (plus generally no shaman around to cast it), so I had nothing to go on but what you said

In fact, today's patch message mentions this change

So going by that, you felt the patch message corroborated what you were saying. I was just pointing out that the patch message was corroborating what OTHERS were saying.

Either way, I'm glad to mark another buff off the list of those to "step quickly out of range". Now, anyone know which ranger and beastlord buffs cause yaulp V not to work? *snicker*