Significant aggro changes on the way for EQII
There's a fairly hefty set of changes to EverQuest II's hate/aggro system currently being ironed out on Test, and they aren't to everyone's liking. Due to the the complexity of the changes, developer Chris "Aeralik" Kozak has offered up a summary for players to wrap their heads around. We'll attempt to boil it down even more for you, at the cost of including some of the finer details.
The problem with the aggro system begins with the fact that hate has scaled linearly as the game has progressed, and damage has scaled exponentially with gear and new skills, making it hard for designated aggro-holders to keep control of mobs. One of the changes on Test has given taunts the chance to hit critically, just like damage spells, and there will be a base and normalized amount of threat from taunt abilities.
It's some of the other changes that have testing players upset. The patch made the differing roles of single-target (Guardian, Paladin and Monk) and multi-target (Berserker, Shadowknight and Guardian) tanks more defined, by altering their abilities. The issue that the forum posters seem to have with this is that single-target tanks are easily overwhelmed by group encounters in newer content like The Shadow Odyssey, whereas multi-target tanks can handle the groups and single targets just fine. On top of this, the "stances and spell consolidation" described by Aeralik limits some of the buff combinations that used to be available, and reduces player choice; it does achieve the stated goal of reducing rebuffing times, however.
Since this is all still being tested, the best way to have your say is to log on to Test, take the changes for a spin, and give the developers your feedback.
