"'Sic'em' retired"?!

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

That is one of the most enjoyable skills in the game. However, it seems SSG is too lazy or cheap to fix the servers and instead they are removing the skill to "eliminate severe performance issues." That doesn't eliminate any performance issues. The servers are still slow and laggy, you're just again removing enjoyment from the game.

Also, please tell us how calling up a bunch of crows is better for "performance" than calling up a single one of each pet.

[Brinuw]

I'm not computer science guru but considering that just the act of summoning a single pet is a performance hit already since it has to calculate the pets stats right then and there and a few of those processes are pretty poorly implemented.Pet moral can use up to 3 different calculations depending on your trait line for example.
Now expand that out to the 6 or 7 pets that Sic'em spawns and you've in effect got a lag machine on a 2min cooldown. It was so bad that once upon a time you could hard crash other peoples clients if you used Sic'em in a spar; not even had the pets attack, just summoning them would crash a client.

Now as how creating a swarm of crows is less lag intensive, simply put they arent real crows. The graphic effect for Murder of Crows is just an animation similar to that of Nature's Fury or Ents. It doesnt have to calculate stats for each one of the crows as they are just a skin for the skill.

[Vilan]

Loremasters have been called "lagmasters" for years. We have many skills that cause well-established problems for people. "Don't use Ring of Fire, it makes the group lag." "Don't use Lightning Storm, it makes the group lag." So they are trying to do something to fix it.

I haven't gotten on Bullrorarer to see Murder of Crows in action, but I'm imagining it just summons a cloud of tiny birds around a mob like the Potent Birdseed emote, rather than actually summoning a bunch of crow pets, because that would indeed not help the lag.

[Hephburz-2]

I'm not computer science guru but considering that just the act of summoning a single pet is a performance hit already since it has to calculate the pets stats right then and there and a few of those processes are pretty poorly implemented.Pet moral can use up to 3 different calculations depending on your trait line for example.
Now expand that out to the 6 or 7 pets that Sic'em spawns and you've in effect got a lag machine on a 2min cooldown. It was so bad that once upon a time you could hard crash other peoples clients if you used Sic'em in a spar; not even had the pets attack, just summoning them would crash a client.

Now as how creating a swarm of crows is less lag intensive, simply put they arent real crows. The graphic effect for Murder of Crows is just an animation similar to that of Nature's Fury or Ents. It doesnt have to calculate stats for each one of the crows as they are just a skin for the skill.

+1 to this.

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

It was so bad that once upon a time you could hard crash other peoples clients if you used Sic'em in a spar; not even had the pets attack, just summoning them would crash a client.

Thanks for the rest of the explanation. That makes sense if the crows aren't separate objects that draw as much as each pet. However, I do take exception to the above. As an altaholic, I can state the the lag and crashing didn't come from Sic 'Em, as so few players like blue line. What crashes was a bunch of LMs using the red line's big fire skill. Turbine increased the graphics needed for that, years back, and it caused major problems. Note, though, that SSG isn't being retired.

In addition, I still stick with the fact that it's SSG's cheapness and unwillingness to improve the servers that is causing the lag, not Sic 'Em.

[Frisco]

Thanks for the rest of the explanation. That makes sense if the crows aren't separate objects that draw as much as each pet. However, I do take exception to the above. As an altaholic, I can state the the lag and crashing didn't come from Sic 'Em, as so few players like blue line. What crashes was a bunch of LMs using the red line's big fire skill. Turbine increased the graphics needed for that, years back, and it caused major problems. Note, though, that SSG isn't being retired.

In addition, I still stick with the fact that it's SSG's cheapness and unwillingness to improve the servers that is causing the lag, not Sic 'Em.

Just because a lot of players don't use blue line doesn't mean that Sic 'em didn't cause lag. And by SSG I assume you mean ISG, which IS being changed as well, along with a few other LM skills that were identified as causing lag.

I'm sure we'd all love better servers, but they may be out of SSG's price range, at least if we all want to continue to receive regular content updates as well. Whether or not that constitutes "cheapness", it's hard to argue that they're unwilling to work on the lag issues. It seems like a good amount of their efforts lately have been to improve game performance.

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

Just because a lot of players don't use blue line doesn't mean that Sic 'em didn't cause lag. And by SSG I assume you mean ISG, which IS being changed as well, along with a few other LM skills that were identified as causing lag.

I'm sure we'd all love better servers, but they may be out of SSG's price range, at least if we all want to continue to receive regular content updates as well. Whether or not that constitutes "cheapness", it's hard to argue that they're unwilling to work on the lag issues. It seems like a good amount of their efforts lately have been to improve game performance.

Yes, I meant that, thanks for the correction. Meanwhile, about the lag. another thread seems to make clear that it wasn't lag that was the reason. It seems there was an exploit with Sic 'Em that almost nobody knows. Rather than fix the exploit, they removed the skill. This isn't the first time they punished the massive body of players because it's easier than fixing code.

Oh, well. My two favorite skills used to be Trample and Sic 'Em. Trample went away as they didn't level war-steeds so I moved light and heavy to medium steeds for Sacrifice. Now Sic 'Em's gone. Sigh.

[Twitcheetwitch]

Sic 'em was one of my favorites. I love summoning every pet to attack at once. Not happy that this has been removed.

[Loox]

Sic 'em was one of my favorites. I love summoning every pet to attack at once. Not happy that this has been removed.

I would have preferred they left the skill alone too. But it's never coming back like it or not.

With what we have now I would like to see some fixes.

1. class essence is fixed to work with the new change.

2. because there is no induction, it should be a mobile cast.

3. some type of skill combo that enhances its debuff, damage, adds a stun, a heal, player/fellow buff, in combat run buff, or something .. the skill is pretty "meh" at the moment

[wispsong]

Sad thing is that they nerf blue LM into extinction by removing iconic skills and pet nerfs across the board. Bear aggro, which was reduced already, will probably be reduced into nothingness next due to raider complaints seeing it as exploit on one of the bosses.

[Loox]

Sad thing is that they nerf blue LM into extinction by removing iconic skills and pet nerfs across the board. Bear aggro, which was reduced already, will probably be reduced into nothingness next due to raider complaints seeing it as exploit on one of the bosses.

Agreed, Blue Line Matters!