EQ2 combat changes -- first impression

Well, I patched EQ2 overnight. It took it four hours just to patch its patcher -- they changed all the artwork to make it into one big advertisement for Desert of Flames. No, I'm not going to be buying the level 50+ expansion any time soon, seeing as my highest character is level 27...

This morning it was done patching, so I logged on and... spent a half hour rearranging my hotbar to account for all the new and missing and changed combat arts and spells, then picked my traits. What's the point of the respec, anyway? None of them changed except that the health and power regen traits work in combat, and of course the *trainings* are different (instead of unique new spells to pick from you pick one spell to upgrade to Master II, which is better than it's possible to get otherwise -- but the spell still becomes obsolete in a few levels).

Then I looked over the new set of troubador songs, picked a selection to use up all my concentration (I went with the personal int buff, bria's power regen, aria of making spells do more damage, raxxl's stat buff, and... I think there was a group defense buff?), and checked out the result.

Before: Str 80, agi 170, sta 80, mitigation 38%, avoidance 72%
After: Str 80, agi 110, sta 60, mitigation 28%, avoidance 38%

Worrying, especially the massive avoidance nerf... but my combat arts all look better and more convenient to use, so it might even out. But before I could go verify that, I realized that it was too late to actually test out the changes, because I had to go to work.

So, maybe tonight.

EQ2 combat changes - first actual impression

I...

I'm not sure if I like the changes. It certainly makes the game a lot harder to solo, because any add is death and because the range of things that will attack you expanded by a LOT -- things don't grey out as early so yay more adds. And even green adds are dangerous, because while your defenses are 'stronger' against green things, your defenses are also essentially nonexistant.

OTOH, if you can control what you go up again, you can go up against the same things you used to be able to. At least, I can. Except that there's no level of greenness that lets you take on heroic things, because they still hit really really really hard -- before you could eventually get immune to their damage, but not anymore.

OTOOH, if you lag at all, you're probably dead. Unless you're fighting something so green you can autoattack it to death.

There doesn't seem to be any additional strategy added by the changes -- you just want to spam everything you can do at once, because all the casting times were reduced and you can do that now. And because Aria of Excitement triggers off everything.

As for grouping, well, I tried to get a group together to do a quest of mine, but it didn't work out:
Me: Invites a bunch of people, then "Hi, want to hunt deathbloom treants at the top of N'mar's?"
Evil person: "Giants are faster XP. Come to the thundering steppes."
Everyone else: "Yay, giants!"
Me: *quits group*

I hate giants, and don't understand the fascination with them. They're soooo booooring, because unlike every other type of thing you can hunt, they come only in singles. They don't give any loot. They're difficult to fight because they have a large aggro and melee radius -- to backstab them, you have to get out of range of the clerics healing you.