Actually, Spine Rend is a snare potion, not an attack speed reducer.

Here's a link to the effect: Spine Rend

As snares go a 55% snare would be enough, and the duration is okay, but actually getting it to proc and stick on every mob before the mob turns to run is problematic. It's just not dependable enough. In fact, in my experience even using a Fabled Serrated Bone Dirk and an Anklesmasher in conjunction with the Spine Rend Poison still leaves you with more than a few unsnared "runners" in high end group content.

The only POP+ era, buff-style style slowing poison I can think of is called Paralyzing Neurotoxin. It gives you a slow-proc buff called Paralyzing Neurotoxin that only lasts 2 minutes and procs an effect also called Paralyzing Neurotoxin that is a 30% slow (which is pretty weak as slows go) that also lasts 2 minutes. It has several significant disadvantages.

1. It is made with a blowfish barb that you can only get by fishing in Torgiran Mines. It's not the most common thing you'll get by fishing there, so expect to spend a good long while there fishing to get a few stacks.

2. The proc-buff itself only lasts 2 minutes so you'll go through a LOT of this stuff if you're the group's slower.

3. If you have a GMAS you can make them ahead of time in 5 or 10-dose versions, but using something like 25 to 30 doses per hour in an active group you're going to need a lot of these. How much do you like the idea of having to run over to deep inside Torgiran mines to fish for a few hours to prepare for an evening's worth of exp hunting?



4. Worst of all you have to keep in mind that you want a mob to be slowed as quickly as possible, so depending on a poison to proc and stick to accomplish that in an exp group is an abysmally bad idea right from the start.



We do have some old-style, "one-shot, first-hit" attack slowing poisons (Spine Break, Kinetic Suppressant and Stiffening Ergot), but from what I can recall hearing others here say about them they tend to get resisted too much, and you have to sit to apply them. That means when it is resisted you need to sit down for a couple seconds to apply a poison after just generating a large amount of agro by trying to slow the mob. That's a combination that can get you to the top of the agro list pretty quickly.



Add in the fact that they don't stack so you need to carry around a bag or two full of ingredients and a mortor and pestle to make them on the fly, the fact that the best of them requires hours of hunting a small number of slow spawning green mobs for rare drops, and the cost of making them and you wind up having a line of poisons that few people are willing to bother with.

You make it sound like poison needs a reevamp

It does. Even the developer in charge of tradeskills agrees.

D'accord! (I agree) Poison definitely needs a revamp. It is system that has been cobbled together across multiple expansions, and is in great need of being totally overhauled to be of any use.

And, like Alchemy, the lower level poison ingredients should be cheap and easy to get. The highest level should have a difficult to obtain farmed component. When I say difficult, it should either take some time/skill to kill the mobs that have it, but not that in combination with it also being a rare drop - one or the other.

I'm tired of trying to do OoW poisons and never seeing the ingredients drop in MPG or RSS, but the critters there are pretty tough too. If they were easier to kill, I'd expect the drop rate to be lower. The harder they are to kill, the more often they should drop the component, yeah?

Follow Up Question..

I am wondering about tradeskills in general, not just poison. I recently decided to get my smithing up for the singular purpose of making runic steel longflight Javelins. In doing this I was forced to get up my baking, brewing, fletching and pottery for the subcombines. I did no real farming but had to jump from zone to zone to get supplies. I had to do one quest in order to "resupply a vendor" in Sol A. (my least favorite zone in eq so far). I also had a couple of times where i needed a Enchanter.
In the end I was pretty happy that I began to get these neglected skills up, even if I did none of the shortcuts. May start the 1.5 now.
However, for people who do not have alts or dont use alts:
It seems like you can not effectively tradeskill for two reasons:
Some items being non-stackable that I need to have 100 or 200 of them., I have limited bank space. (Please dont tell me, "if it's too hard switch to EQ2"),
I also don't like the needing other players for tradeskills. I basically tradeskill while waiting for a group, or while AFKing alot.
I understand doing these things in order to get Grandmaster Armor but it seems like alot of work to get 200 throwing items.
Is it intended to be this time consuming? Do people who dont have alts do this. I kind of thought that to get 100 throwing items, once your skills are up, shouldnt take more then 10 minutes or 20 minutes is that too easy for these items.

Opinions?

Tradeskills are not something that you just grab a bunch of stuff, sit down next to the tradeskill container and pound to 300 in a short time.

You can be "effective" in the beginning, up until about 200 in most skills by running around and buying stuff. If "effective" is linked to "fast skillups" in your mind, then prepare to be disappointed.

Some of them are alternative paths from "dropped" gear, but have a lot of subcombines, rare components, etc to keep the degree of difficulty there to prevent everyone from running around with the highest level of tradeskilled gear and weapons. They should be hard to do in order to justify the alternate reward.

Options are:

Work like everyone else and work up one skill, buy stuff from other people or ask friends that do the other skills when needed, then work on another skill if you wish. They are long and painful to get to 300, and they should be. That is why there are so few who have all of them at 300. Plan on having a full bank, and wishing that you had another 10 bank slots to fill with more bags for all the stuff.

Skip tradeskills all together and focus on getting alternative stuff through groups and/or raids. They are not required for anything major, and the trivials needed for the 1.5 combines can be achieved almost completely through vendor-bought combines.


Of course, your opinion may likely vary. A good resource and tradeskill message board is EQTraders.

Yea, i use eqtraders,

I just thought for an item like the Javelins which is like a 160 trivial, even with all the platt in the world it is still a PIA bc of bank slots and needing other players.

I dont mind the time, some farming, PP loss or effort. Just dont like that I have to bother other players and need more bank slots.

Was just curious if it's supposed to be this time consuming to make the Javelins or I am doing something wrong.

PS How do you add backround to Magelo

It takes a while. It is best to do as many heads as possible and stack those in the bank, then make the shafts as you need them since they are vendor bought and the staffs do not stack.

Sign in to http://www.magelo.com
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Hate to be right but here it is, straight from his mouth.

Dev-Ngreth
EQ Designer
Posts: 973
Registered: 08-05-2005
Reply 11 of 15
Viewed 202 times
Ok...
Now players are confusing me...
You do NOT want make poison to be useful?
As for how long to make something? You are right not too long.
How long to make a "system" than can then be expanded upon (see new spell research) longer..., but not a huge amount of time either
How long to make something that is not "required" for rogues to use to be effective, yet rogues want, and at the same time does not unbalance them? Much longer.
Next. Have me not do other things...
I have no spare time right now even for something "quick" So even if it "would not take long" I do not have time to do it.

So a quick band aid is possible if we wanted it but the Dev's and many of you want all or nothing which I understand. Just two points of view and YES I know I am new.

Maybe you need to re-read his response a few times. And before you hurt yourself patting yourself on the back, I'd like a link to that thread so I can read that response in its entire context.

First... no you are not "right".

It doesn't make a bit of difference what we want, EQ is SOE's game and they will do what they think is best, regardless of what you want. Just because Ngreth can pop out a couple poisons in 20 minutes of work doesn't make it a proper solution in any way, shape, or form.

But, since you are planning to beat this thing into the ground until someone finally tells you that you are "right", there is no making you understand it.

I took the liberty to highlight the appropriate parts of his response rather than the ones that you filtered out as making you "right". These are the ones that actually matter, and are the same thing we have been trying in vain to get you to comprehend.

Linky

I bet you can guess who the "Richard" is.


(btw, Thanks "Richardya" for now dragging this into the EQ Forums and making Ngreth think we all think like you.)

Hahahaha

Funny stuff.

I am just saying that IF we wanted a bandaid, which I do, it could be done. That was by intention with the original post.

I understand many dont want it
I understand the opinion that band aids delay revamp
I understand Ngreth agrees w revamp over band aid
I do not want to beat this to death except many told me to **** up bc i dodnt understand coding and the complexity of making new poisons.

My point since day 1 was if they could make a few better poisons and put some ingredients on vendors they should do it.

Some disagree:
I understand and appreciate their points. Some dont want to tie utility to a tradeskill. Some dont want band aid. etc etc

However the ones who said I know nothing about programming and it takes weeks to make poisons, to them, I say. Na na na na na na


Dragging it into forums????????? I was trying to find out how long it takes to make poisons. I was also told to if i wanted a Dev's opinion.
Also, i did not filter anything out of post.

They said weeks to do a revamp, not make a single untested poison.....big difference in the quality of work, which is why your version won't happen.

Seriously man, when the dev basically tells you to stfu because he has better things to do, it means you have some comprehension problems.

Good luck to ya.

You all win.
I am withdrawing from the safehouse.
Bye all, will still read posts.

Don't think any of us meant any harm Reamas. Most of us were just offering constructive criticism. My personal opinion is you're just a tad over ambitious and rogues in general are a very proud bunch. I don't proclaim to be any wiser than you and I'm generally very conservative when it comes to speaking my mind as I prefer to listen and learn than appear foolish... in the words of Mark Twain "It is best to keep your mouth shut and be presumed ignorant than to open it and remove all doubt." Lately it seems I've gone and removed all doubt as I'm a bit more vocal than normal, but I only try to respond when I strongly agree or disagree with something that has been said. In your case, I strongly disagree with your suggestion on poisons.

I'm a tad concerned about Ngreth's response... he seems to be under a lot of pressure and I doubt this helped the situation any. I wouldn't take anything said on these forums personally. That's not a healthy habit to get into.

It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
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