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I've been following the threads here and on the Ranger's Glade about Harmony today and wanted to give some more information on the reasoning behind the change.
Harmony is the druid and ranger version of the lull line of spells. Several classes get these types of spells, with enchanters, bards, and clerics being the best at it overall. Lulls work by lowering the range at which monsters will attack you, allowing you to pull a single monster out of a group by lulling it's companions.
Traditionally, most lull spells haven't really worked very well. Lull had a high resist rate and wasn't very reliable. We've recently looked at lulls and improved the way they work to make them more useful to players. You should find that the lull line of spells works more often than it did, though it will still fail some of the time.
Harmony was unique in that when you cast it on an NPC, it never failed. This essentially means that Harmony could be used for risk-free pulling every time. All other lull spells have a resist check, allowing a monster to not be affected by them. The fact that Harmony can't be resisted made it the very best of the lull spells - which is an odd thing to happen to a level 5 spell.
We've had the ability for awhile now to make it so certain monsters were totally immune to being lulled. This is especially common in higher level outdoor zones such as Cazic-Thule, since Harmony would take any challenge out of splitting groups of monsters. Having a such powerful game dynamic with no risk of failure made these encounters too easy, so we were forced to make many monsters totally lull immune to compensate. With this change to Harmony, we'll now be able to remove the lull immunity from many monsters, and turn this ability into a useful spell line that gives great benefits, but with some risk that your spell may be resisted.
This week, we'll be adding an upgrade to Harmony that works on higher level monsters. We'll also be removing the lull immunity from many higher level monsters in outdoor zones, to accommodate the new spell. The higher level version of Harmony will have some chance of being resisted, but will be a fairly reliable way to split up groups of outdoor monsters. We do want this spell line to be a useful tool for you at all levels, but as with all other forms of crowd control there needs to be some chance that it won't always work. Druids and rangers should get a excellent outdoor lull, but a level 5 spell probably shouldn't be the best it ever gets.
- Rich
So now Verant wants us "splitting groups of monsters"? I thought that was a big no-no.
I really have no problem with it either. I see thier concern and consider it a part of class balance. Yes, it is a nerf. However, druids have been given some much needed improvements in the healing department, so I consider this an extremely good trade. Besides, a higher level version of Harmony is apparently in the game now.
Harmony already didnt work in Cazic Thule, the only zone i'd really use it in, aside from 4-arms in ME i guess.
I suspect there are outdoor zones in PoP that have mobs with relatively low agro/pursuit ranges (harmony spell range isnt too too far), that an unresistable harmony spell would trivialize the 'breaking' of that spawn
