nyteshayd wrote:
Aaaaaaaand coming in way late and dead last...
gbaji wrote:
I've heard this a zillion times. Either it's a myth, or it's something that only occurs with *some* pacify/harmony spells, but not all. I can say with absolute first hand experience that I've used the paladin "pacify" spell probably 10s of thousands of times over the course of my EQ career, and I have *never* seen it fail, nor ever experienced the so-called "critical failure" where you'll actually get agro using the spell. Not once. If I don't get a "this target unaffected" message, it always works. Back in the day (before pretty much every mob in any zone I'm hunting in became too high level to be affected), I used to paci-pull for groups for hours at a time, day after day, week after week, though pretty much every expansion content.
I have firsthand experience with this, although it is indeed rare. When I was raising baby toons from around 30 to 45 in Echo Caverns (high side), one of them was a Cleric. Of course, the best camp was the Taskmaster's camp, and that required a little bit of finnesse if your group wasn't ready to take on 8 or 9 mobs at once.
Two times I can recall, I attempted to pacify one of the skeletons, and agro'd the whole room from what was otherwise WELL out of agro range.
Yeah. We've hashed this issue out many times on this forum. My current working theory is that the critical fail chance is derived based on the relative level of the caster to the base spell, and perhaps also related to the level of the mob it's being cast on. This sorta makes sense, since this is how resists are calculated. When you cast a spell there's some comparison of your level/skill with the spell type you are casting and the level of the spell. Then there's a roll. Based on the roll you either fail (fizzle), or succeed. If you succeed, the level of success (carry over of the roll for instance) is then applied to some comparison between your level and the mob's level (with appropriate resistance factors applied as well), this then determines if you get a full or partial effect.
This used to be really obvious when using root spells. Lots of casters would continue to use root in preference to newer versions purely because while the potential total duration was shorter, their odds of getting the full duration with root (a level 4 spell) was much higher then using a higher level spell. Seems counterintuitive, but that is the way the spell system works in EQ. It's also why wizards will often continue to use their older nukes for a level or so after getting a new one. While the max damage is higher, you'll get a lot more partial damage effects using the brand new one. Let me also note that this effect largely does not apply to the post 60 levels. They re-adjusted spells and skills in that range, so it's always better to get the newest spell (there may be some exceptions though).
When you look at the paladin paci spells, they get three:
Soothe: Level 5 cleric spell. Gained by paladins at level 25.
Calm: Level 15 cleric spell. Gained by paladins at level 43.
Pacify: Level 36 cleric spell. Gained by paladins at level 49.
The point is that every paladin paci spells is at least 20 levels "old" by the time they get it. That's going to dramatically affect their chance to fail, and to critical fail. Additionally, soothe only affects mobs up to level 40, calm up to level 50, and pacify up to level 55. What that means is that a cleric could be attempting to use calm or soothe on mobs as much as 35 levels higher then them. That's *also* going to have a huge effect on fails and crit fails.
It's interesting that everyone who says that they've seen this is either a cleric, chanter, or a druid. As I've said many many times. I play a paladin, and have *never* seen this happen. I really do suspect it has something to do with relative levels of caster, spell, and mob.
Oh. And the spell information is also a "do you know?" bit as well... :)
Quote:
I also remember a lovely little problem with that room, which leads me into my own Did You Know?...
On that same subject. Did you know that if you fear the taskmaster, he'll run down the hallway and to the zone line between EC and SH? He'll then sit there trying to run through the zone line while you beat on his backside. Probably a technical exploit, but not my fault. I needed his organs and using spook the dead made it a lot easier to kill him. I usually got him down most of the way before he made it all that distance, it was just funny to note that instead of running around in other directions, he just smooshed into the zone line.