This sounds Interesting

[Tylandi]

Notes from EQ team:

Hi,
We wanted to give you an update on some of the things we've been working on lately. We've been following the various class and server boards, and looking for pressing issues. While this isn't the complete list, here are some of the topics currently being reviewed -

PoP planar flags and how they are acquired. We're experimenting with some ideas that let people accompany their raids to the deeper planes without having all previous flags. Our goal is to allow a player to participate in raids and guild events, even if the player wasn't able to acquire a previous flag. This would not grant them a flag for that zone, but would give them access to it while on the raid. We're looking at several options, but our current version in testing allows a raid to bring along a small group of people without the necessary flags, if the raid has most of it's members flagged for an event or plane.

PoP zone access quests. We're looking at the difficulty of the quests for individual access to the various planes. Our goal is to make it reasonable to gain access to later planes by doing the quests, without making it trivial or unbalancing when compared to the raid-gained planar access methods.

We're looking at the state of Charm spells, and may make adjustments so that the cost and risk associated with charming high-level pets is balanced with the power of the spell.

We're continuing to evaluate the drop rates of PoP spell parchments to see if any further adjustments are needed.

We're reviewing the tanking ability of the various melee and hybrid classes to be sure each class is competitively balanced with the others. The main factors we're considering are the ability to take damage, deal damage, and the additional abilities of each class. The goal with this review is to find any issues where melee classes are not "bringing enough to the party" when comparing their package of abilities. We're paying particular attention to the avoidance-focused classes such as the monk, to be sure things end up where they should.

We're going back through priest classes to find any major balance issues. Currently we're focusing on healing, secondary abilities, and the value of each class in different situations.

Shields and blocking. We're reviewing the impact of giving an innate chance to block when using a shield. We'd like increase the value of shields, and make it a worthwhile choice for players who might normally dual-wield weapons or use a two-handed weapon. We're working on balancing this against classes which use shields by default, and therefore wouldn't be making any trade-offs to equip a shield.

Lull spells. We're watching the impact of recent changes to be sure these spells remain useful, but are not over-powered.

Riposte and Enrage on planar mobs. We're looking at alternatives to make these abilities less punishing on common planar monsters.

Tradeskills. We're reviewing the current recipe line-up for any gaps in skill progression, and items that aren't appropriately rewarding for their difficulty.
Thanks for playing,

The EverQuest Team

[Pedi Dustyboots]

[Jaffod]

I want dual wield for Trab

[VamprissX]

I have a hard time understanding how Mob Charming is not balanced. I mean, if charm breaks on Ulrich while soloing, he is toast for the most part (in the higher level planes). I think there is a standard RvR there. People worry about them soloing, but they really only have like 3 spots to solo .

I think that all PoP charm spells should be moved to level 65 spells though (like mine!). That would balance things.

[Jaffod]

That is actually the reason why none of my alts are charm types - I solo a lot and dont want to take the risk in regards to charm breaking. It appears to be one of the few balanced systems VI has - dire charm is...well a tad powerfull but I see it as a reward for risking your arse for so many levels

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For the record, wizards told themselves the exact same thing about Manaburn -- it was always far more dangerous to use than people realized. What matters isn't the actual RVR, but the perceived RVR. The perception is that it's too easy to a lot of people.