Over in UO U.HAll on Stratics a player pleads for Blood Oath to be removed.It ttok 7 pages before a dev responded,then we had not one but 2 devs respond.

To read all the pages click the link above ,otherwise read a few excerpts below.



Blood Oath is a great idea for PvP. It gives the Necros some defense against the 70-point-a-hit pointjuicers.

But mind you, we're talking about a relatively comparable hitpoint pool. Nobody has over 200 hitpoints.

Consider: a paragon has THOUSANDS of hitpoints. Reflecting point-for-point damage for players who have maybe 120 hitpoints: isn't that just a BIT overkill?

Since EA's one-size-fits-all "solution" to make any monster challenging is to give it an insane glut of hitpoints, Blood Oath suddenly becomes incredibly unfair. Now the only way to take down a monster is to hit for hundreds of points of damage. Damage that does moderate damage to the foe, but snuffs us out in a microsecond if Blood Oath is up.

I could understand this if not for the fact that YOU CANNOT RESIST THIS GADDAMN SPELL. IT HITS 100% OF THE TIME, REGARDLESS OF RESISTANCES. IT NEVER, EVER, EVER MISSES. THAT needs to change.

Twice tonight I was fighting lich paragons. And both times, the thing cast BO a MICROSECOND AFTER I fired my arrow. So of course, the very next microsecond, I'm dead. And necro casters seem to machinegun this spell constantly.

Solution: They need to do RELATIVE damage. If my hit took 10% of the para's hitpoints, it takes 10% of mine. Again, with PvP, this works OK, since everyone has around the same hitpoint pool, give or take 50-70 points. But when the difference is like 2,000 points, it's very clear that this spell is ridiculously overpowered, ESPECIALLY given the chance it has a 100%, guaranteed-hit-every-time accuracy.

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you make a good point


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you died to a monster so you come to stratics and cry?

WTB a translator to make sure I got that right

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Pretty much. You can just eat an enchanted apple.

OR play a different type of character?

You don't use a blacksmith to fight mobs so why would you use a character that doesn't do well against Dark Fathers?

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Play the game before you post, please.



Yes. Because I'm sure it was really intended that warriors and paladins be ineffective against ALL spell casting undead and anyone else who uses necromancy spells. That makes sooooo much sense from both a balance perspective and a traditional fantasy one. Why, every story and game I've ever read and played made paladins completely uneffective and suicidal against undead and told them to go use another class against undead!

FYI, that was sarcasm, since you might need help with this sort of logic.


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[i]Is there something stopping you from reducing your damage?
Maybe remove the slayer or EOO?

Common sense tells me, if you are one hit killing yourself, maybe reduce your damage so you live? [i]

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I like my solution a lot better. It's low-tech, easy to implement, and it requires NO fiddling whatsoever over game mechanics. Whenever game mechanics are changed, even only for PvM, there has to be a big discussion over whether it's viable, fair, etc, etc, or not.

Adding some gold and extra loot to liches, shadow wyrms, and other Necromancy-wielding monsters makes a LOT more sense than changing the game mechanics.

If you think the lich is too hard, go kill a blood elemental. They're easier and have better loot, too.

The Dark Father on the other hand, like I said, shouldn't even have BO. All the other spells, sure, but when you're fighting a boss character with 30,000 hitpoints, asking someone to do less damage is kind of like asking someone to use a spoon to dig out a house foundation.

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I'd agree that blood oath can be overpowered in pvm but still before DF's got necro skills u could easily 1v1 em without comming close to dieing this was not the purpose of this spawn though the purpose was for it to be a challenge that u needed a group to fight with to overcome it.

and only place that it is "overpowered" is on thise top end mobs that are supposed to be hard and supposed to kill u this is the challenge. what fun is there in killing things that has no chance of killing u anyways...

someone mentioned the undead spawn it being overpowered there to I'd say no the spawn ain't even as hard as spiders or imps yet.
this spawn used to be as easy as rats if not easier which is silly I wish they would make rat spawn harder to it's just nuts that one vampire can do desp in 20mins or so without getting close to dieing really.

and for the record undead spawn is still easy to easy if u play a bush dexxer 2 bush dexxers and u can do it in 20-30mins only spawn there spamming blood oath is skeletal mages which die in 1hit when they done it and u don't get damaged by blood oath when the target that done it dies...

Blood oath is nothing more than a minor anoyance that is there to challenge u if u use a double slayer bow on a DF u are asking for the instant kill. use a weapon that does 100damage maybe instead u will still survive having blood oath on u then and u will still kill the spawn fast...thise creatures was never meant to be a walkover they where meant to be some of the hardest creatures ingame to kill and that is how they should stay...

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But the spell is still available. It still functions as it once did. That's all I was pointing out.




There's many ways to adjust a tamer template to be top of the food chain. A high end dexer/tamer would fall under that.

Like I've mentioned in other posts, there is a reason we almost always have a dexer on a high end mob. Wether it's a doom boss, a champion, or a harrower.

There's some cases where a single dexer can come close to halfing the killing time, even if there were 2 or 3 sets of tamers on it as well.

Now, I think the major difference between a tamer, or even bards, and dexers is that the dexer -does- have limits in solo play. Tamers enjoy the perk of a large HP pool, which can allow them to engage much more dangerous mobs with better success than dexers.

But on the flip side, and I can be faulted for this line of reasoning, I do not consider solo play to be proper usage of a MMORPG. I just about always consider how well a group of people perform. A dexer with healers, a bard controlling spawn, mages throwing mass spells. I spend 95% of my time in game with a group of people. It may be 2, or it may be 30.


If I had to pick between getting insta hit killed by a Lich Lord, or lich lords being nothing but part of gold farming machine, I'd pick the insta kill.

I also don't think 100k hp mobs are challanging either, but untill they adjust monsters so the challange comes from more usage of specials (Bleed, Corpse Skin, etc), something is needed to encourage more group play. If for nothing but throwing resses after being laid out for no reason.

I'll freely admit that I can be faulted for wanting to encourage/force group play with any high end mob (Or formely high end). I'm well aware that how I play, and view the game can differ from others. But never the less, that is how I feel about a multiplayer game.

And yes, I already get my solo play from single player games, which I do play on a regular basis. I find Single player games much more ballanced to playing by myself. Go figure.

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If you'd ever spent a significant time fighting necro-casting creatures (i.e. killing them, not just dieing once then complaining) you would probably understand the real problem.

The real problem with necro-casting monsters is that the magery spell-casting script overlays with the necromancy script and spells of both types are cast at the EXACT SAME TIME. In this way you can be targetted with explosion/ corpseskin, then pain spike/flamestrike all within the time it takes to cast TWO SPELLS. Then as you are running for your GD life you are targeted with a poison strike and ebolt (etc.).

The logic problem is that creatures that use necromancy also use magery and the spellcasting of both types of spells happens simultaneously, instead of making a new spell queue that includes both types, there seems to be two separate overlapping spell queues, which cause a VERY quick death to the unprepared, even from lower-level liches (and sometimes even stupid bone magi)... not to mention the Lich Lords or ancient liches. I killed hundreds (maybe thousands) in Fel Covetous for the BoT event and if you are unprepared or are not cautious and get more than 1 lich lord on you at a time then you simply die, no matter how good you are, unless you can run out the exit fast enough (which is pretty lame, devs!)

I have no problems at all with the necromancy script on monsters, I just wish they would follow the 'rules' that everything else follows and stop casting double-spells.

The necro changes basically ruined regular liches for hunting, as they were never worth hunting to veteran fighters, but were once very good targets for newer fighters. Now they are level 3 fame and hit like a balron because of the necro spells, but drop loot like an earth elemental so vets and newer players alike avoid them like the plague for being worthless to hunt!

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Nice post ...tabby

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I agree. I used to hunt liches / lich loards all the time back in the day... With necro spells (no blood oat) I would return to kill them, but with blood oath... it sucks...

So.. I see it as boost the loot to match the difficulty, or just remove blood oath from PVM situations.

It is fine in PVP,

and as another has stated, it cannot be removed by remove curse / apples... Only way is to wait for your resisitng spells to ware out its timer, but against a necro monster with a huge amount of ss... it takes awhile...


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Whining about "trammies" as a "siege player" (and therefore another pathetic attempt to hijack yet another thread into a trammel vs siege war. Is it no wonder why so many people think Siege players are stuck up even when you aren't representative of the entire siege playerbase?) while saying people want god mode as opposed to debunking the fact that you've proven that you don't know what you're talking about isn't particularly effective towards getting your (completely invalid due to aforementioned lack of knowledge about what you're talking about) point across regarding the topic at hand. "God mode" is also hardly relevant to something that INSTAKILLS players.

But putting together actually substantial statements to support your argument is probably too much to ask.


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Really? Then you better tell that to the Lich Lords that spawn when I dig T-maps, because they apparently don't know they aren't supposed to cast it.



Maybe they only cast BO in Tram, then. They certainly don't cast it in Fel Covetous.

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On to page 7


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Original Poster

The reason I posted this for a DEV to answer to. That's why I didn't post it in SnR (where Devs never go). So far no Devs have given any feedback, and just hearing where they weigh in would satisfy me.



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Jeremy_EAMythic UO Community Coordinator

Liches, except for Ancient Liches in Khaldun, SHOULD NOT cast Blood Oath - if one casts it on you, can you please submit a bug report at uobugs@uo.com with as much detail as you can think of?

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you are joking right? They cast that in the champ spawns, Wind, and in the undead in Ill. I just don't one hit kill them so I am not asking for a nerf


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Leurocian Ultima Online Designer



Hey all,

Shortly after I left EA the first time, blood oath was disabled for liches and lich lords. For necro spells, Liches should only cast pain spike and poison strike. Lich Lords should only cast wither.

I just logged onto a real shard, went to Ilshenar Valor area where the Liches and Lich Lords reside, and neither one of them invoked blood oath on me. I even added special debugging messages on them so I could see exactly what they were casting necromancer spell wise, and my findings agreed with what I stated above.

Creatures that can currently cast Blood Oath are the following:
Devourer of Souls
Shadow Knight
Abyssmal Horror
Darknight Creeper
Dark Father
Lady Melisande
Skeleton/Bone Mage (they do blood oath, pain spike, and poison strike)
Grim Reaper (who is currently not in the game)
Neira
the Harrower
Shadow Wyrms
Ancient Liche
and Skeletal Dragons

There are also various invulnerable ML NPCs that have necro ai.

If anyone has any more information, please feel free to post in this thread, but as of right now, I'm not seeing how it's possible for liches or lich lords to ever cast blood oath.

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Leurocian Ultima Online Designer


To address the core topic of this thread. We are aware that you all feel that Blood Oath should be adjusted somehow when it comes to monsters using it on other players. There are severals ways we could adjust it such as the following:

1. Refactor the AI so it doesn't happen simultaneously with other spell ai. The short term fix could be to remove regular spellai from any creature that has necromancer spell ability. The long term fix would be to refactor the AI.

2. We can reevaluate which creatures possess the blood oath ability. Perhaps skeletal/bone mages shouldn't have it.

3. We could modify the effect of NPC blood oath vs. player characters.

4. We could allow full resists of blood oath instead of shorter duration with resisting spells skill.

5. We could remove the ability altogether from all creatures in the game. I don't think that's necessary though and some creatures in the game should provide significant risk - especially boss / peerless types.

Anyway, I chimed in on this thread to let you know that we are mindful of your concerns about NPC Blood Oath.

Once we've hammered out internally what we'd like to do, either myself or Jeremy will let you know.

Have a great weekend all!

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Remove regular spellai


Er, no. That would underpower oponents too much, I think.

Refactor the AI
Do this anyway!
It's long been said that you need to break the cycle of "powerful kit, powerful monsters, repeat". Making the AI better is one of the core means to do this.
I don't know about anyone else, but I like it when the monsters taunt me! It makes it feel like more than just a game

We can reevaluate which creatures possess the blood oath ability. Perhaps skeletal/bone mages shouldn't have it.
As I've not been out hunting in a while, I can't say for sure, but this looks to be sensible.



We could modify the effect of NPC blood oath vs. player characters.

Personally, I like this. Although it adds in more complexity, it keeps character. The difference between player and monster hit points and the ability to cause significantly greater damage on monsters is the cause of the problem with blood oath in the first place.


We could allow full resists of blood oath instead of shorter duration with resisting spells skill.

Hmm. I'm not sure about this. This would have to be PvM only, otherwise this would cause major PvP problems. But then why not simply change the damage routine for PvM?


We could remove the ability altogether from all creatures in the game. I don't think that's necessary though and some creatures in the game should provide significant risk - especially boss / peerless types.

I think that would be a bad idea. I like the challenge aspects of blood oath, just not the instant self-kill aspect.


Also suggested:

Add in a delay to the start of blood oath

Whilst this may be problematic with PvP, for PvM this would be of some help. Often the spell hits just before a hit, making it's effects impossible to avoid.

Make monsters use FC/FCR and speak words of power

This is a must, I really have to say! GrangerLS hit upon a great idea with this, although I'd vary the FC/RCR with different monsters, allowing player caps to be exceeded (hence non-blockable spells on high-end monsters).



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So what members here think of all this ?

Do you think BO should be removed?

Have you been hit by LL using it ?

Shouldn't be removed, but PvM BO does need tweeking.

No.

These would be nice. Although #4 should just be a small chance to fully resist, even at 120, but I think it should be possible.

I've always wondered why this wasn't in game, and why you can't interrupt monsters spells, atleast the low end. I think it's sad a Beginner will likely die to an imp because it can't interrupt it's spells.

I agree you should be able to interrupt monster spells.

On interrupting monster spells you have to be carefull what you do. If you have a group of ten PC's/NPC's fighting a DF he would never be able to cast because of all the interrupts. Might not be able to if there was only five fighting him. On imps.... they try to cast high end spells and can fizzle so that is almost as good as an interrupt. Not sure there is a one size fit all fix for it

Vepl

True there'd have to be some extensive testing. And in the end someone will either say it's been ________ (made too easy, or kept the same)

But one can imagine...

for instance, instead of getting hit with FS/E-bolt/Poison all in the matter of milisecond, you hit the monster casting on you and only get his with E-Bolt/Poison.