Best Of

zbitango wrote: »

⚔️ TTK – PvE & PvP Impressions
PvE (Tango’s Cave / Brightmound):
I farm Brightmound daily, and before the patch, I could take him down in under 2 minutes as a 550-power tank. He hit hard, and it required my full kit — a fun, tight fight.

Post-patch: it takes 8–9 minutes to kill him. He barely scratches me now, but the fight is a slog. I often run out of mana, and it’s no longer engaging — just long and dull.

They are already tweaking pve. There is a feedback thread on the Discord now saying that mobs are doing too much damage. Overall, they don't need to revert any changes to fix this. Decrease mob HP when appropriate, increase mob damage when appropriate.

zbitango wrote: »

PvP (Tank build):
With 244 power and new gear like the Blackfeather Tunic (which has absurd physical power even at uncommon), no other class can touch me in 1v1s. Either I outlast them completely or kill them fast through stun-locks, regen, and lifesteal.
Mana is the only real limiter, not threat from other players.

The game is not balanced for 1v1s. It should not be. Tanks/clerics being hard to kill at 1v1s is a sign of a well-balanced group vs group scenario. But even then, my current experience is that it is not true either. Rogues can easily kill a cleric with mana drain. Rangers can kite tanks if they know how to play, and it's a fairly even matchup, but it's winnable for rangers. Mages are just too broken still and can melt any archetype regardless.

Once players learn how to build for other stuff rather than try to push a heavily DRed power stat, it will get even easier to kill these archetypes, and TTK will go down (sadly).

zbitango wrote: »

🧪 Are Gear Changes Balanced?
Right now, none of the gear changes feel like they’re working as intended.

Stat Scaling (Con/HP/Mitigation): It’s unclear if the bonuses scale correctly.

Set Bonus Builds: It’s difficult now to assemble 3/5 medium or heavy sets due to stat changes, even though the bonuses are essential for tanks(and all classes in that matter).

Support Classes (Bards/Healers) need their own gear: Right now they’re lumped in with caster sets, which doesn’t work.

Damage gear should focus on offensive stats (magical power/int or STr/phys power)

Healing gear should prioritize healing +, wisdom, mana regen, and healing crit.

Wider gear diversity would make it much easier to balance builds across the board.

One example of gear imbalance:
A level 10 weapon like Flayer’s Fleshripper now has double the physical power of a Tumok raid boss weapon.
While I appreciate phys pen being more relevant now (more choices is good), this feels like unintended power creep.

Casters, in contrast, got kneecapped. Healers and mages need separate, class-appropriate gear.
Right now, casters feel like an afterthought.

They definitely need to do a gear pass and work out stat distribution on the available gear, but that's a good thing. It wasn't a problem before because ppl just stacked power, and no other stat mattered. Now that other stats are important, we are seeing a need for more diverse gear.

zbitango wrote: »

🏹 Weapon Trees and Class Impact
The weapon skill tree rework has hurt build freedom.
For example, the Longbow tree now forces you to take 3 useless points. It kills viable glass cannon builds and stifles creativity.

Also, changes to attack speed and accuracy hit some classes hard — especially those that relied on faster scaling weapons.

Weapon trees need a rework for sure. Overall, the limitations applied are good tho, to avoid players freely stacking a stat with no building cost.

zbitango wrote: »

💧 Mana Issues
This is critical. All classes burn through mana in 2–3 minutes of combat, sometimes less.

This makes long fights (sieges, raids, boss grinds) nearly impossible without being forced into awkward regen breaks.

And with Bards preventing pot drinking, it’s even worse.

Please prioritize fixing this. Mana is too central to combat pacing to be this broken.

I think they should fix this by slightly increasing mana regen out of combat and buffing the bards' ability to maintain their teammates' mana throughout combat.

zbitango wrote: »

🔨 Crafting & Economy Concerns
Right now, crafting level 10 gear is mostly pointless. Why not rush 20 and grind greens that outperform a +20 lvl 10 legendary item?


If it takes weeks to unlock Apprentice crafting, players will skip crafted gear entirely and just farm level 20 drops.(they could just remove hard drops as well to fix this issue. )

Crafted level 10 gear is obsolete unless stats and scaling are fixed.

The solution to this issue is simple. Remove gear drop from mobs of rare and under rarity past level 10. Replace it with materials used for gear crafting. This helps several issues:

1. Level 10 gear becomes relevant while journeyman benches are not unlocked
2. Players now have more incentive to pvp over grind spots (gear mats dropping becomes a valuable reward to pvp)
3. Players are incentivized to engage with all systems in the game instead of grinding to max level only. Now players need to engage with the economy, do professions, run caravans to gear rather than just grind and get gear, and grind and get gear.

zbitango wrote: »

Enchanting also feels like a waste. New gear gives tiny stat boosts per enchant, not worth the time or gold.

I haven’t fully crunched the numbers, but here’s what seems obvious:

Enchanting adds almost no value, so crafting is de-incentivized.

There should be a progression floor:

For example, a +5 level 0 item should equal or beat a base level 10 drop of the same rarity.

Also: squishing stats between bad and good gear erodes player motivation.
You no longer feel stronger as you gear up — and that's a huge problem for long-term grind engagement.

Enchanting is not a waste. It is the last progression step on your gearing journey. It is supposed to be hundreds of hours for small % gains. Doesn't matter how small it is, players min-maxing their toons will engage with it because there is no other vertical progression path to engage with at that point.

A huge feeling of progression and feeling stronger in pve and a game with a heavy focus on pvp and competition can't coexist. PvP needs a saturated and limited power creep, to allow for more casual players and for players that started late to participate in a lot of the "forced" content in the game (wars, sieges, PVP events, caravans, open world PVP, etc). Content that if the general audience ends up being one-shot over and over again without a chance to play the game, makes them just quit and never look back.

So while the feeling of being stronger may have been diminished, it is way healthier for the longevity of the game than having ridiculous power creep and the playerbase being limited to only the sweatiest players that started on launch day.

I feel like a lot of your post desperately needs clarity and is VERY vague.


What about the sets make it difficult to assemble? Stats that are not similar to what you're looking for?

Why would a support class need class specific items instead of the already present power, crit, and cast speed? Would that not already encompass what a support does? There are items that provide healing specific bonuses, crit, regen, etc. Do you mean you'd like to see more of those?

I'm not at all, not even remotely a fan of separate PvP balance. It's an absolute nuisance and completely unnecessary if balance in the game itself is done correctly. A player is no different than any other NPC, albeit players are more intelligent with tactics and pathing. TTK most definitely needed to be updated so that combat does not revolve around 1 hit kills and spiking, and instead on organized tactics and playing smart.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at about build freedom being hurt, as the weapon skill tree only affects that weapon now. It has no effect on your skills. So it does not at all affect builds, only basic attacks. And if projectiles get a a damage bonus, it doesn't hurt something that has projectiles.

You can get obscene crit and attack speed if you mix and match armor and sets. I reached 50% crit and 0.4 sec on Mace swing combo time. You need to pick a playstyle you like and focus into it.

Truthfully, a lot of players run through mana because they are reckless about spamming skills and pretty much activate anything that isn't on a cooldown. A lot of this comes from the lack of build variety, and the lack of options to output damage aside from skills themselves. This is something specifically that I will be making an in depth post about.

100% agree that crafting is not paced well at all, and is absolutely pointless pre-10, and possibly even pre-10 with the huge cost associated and small return associated with it.

I think with the crafting issues right now, it is harder to feel more powerful - but the base gear itself feels good. Its a smooth progression the provides small but noticeable changes in gearing - assuming you gear with a purpose. Going from level 1-10 will increase your power and crit meaningfully if you search for specific gear. As will your defensive ability for taking damage.

• Cleric 25, a mix of level 10 and 20 gear
• PvE
• Everything including the player character takes forever to kill compared to 0.7.8
• This patch must be a late April Fools' joke because I can't imagine someone looking at the earlier TTK situation and deciding that instead of adjusting soft caps based on character level they should nerf everyone across the board by half, bloat the stat page, give each attribute 2-3 extra waterfall stats, use AI to generate completely arbitrary stats for each gear piece, make consumables with absurd values and to add insult to injury shields are even worse than they used to be (which is quite a feat!)

Me: Mage, 25, Maxxed out +10 Enchanted legendary tier Best in Slot

Tested: PVE - Group PVE - PVP - Group PVP

What´s worse and feedback:

First off, i just have to say what in the f. Working hard to truly max out a character to the point of breaking more then 10 pieces of legendary tier gear to get to the point of being about 5% stronger then having went with a common tier piece ?

__Gear is useless__

a world boss item crafted at the absolute highest grade possible, from the best crafter with the highest crafting skill and pure legendary materials, enchanted at +8, is giving my character 20 power. This makes no damn sense to me at all, it gives my highest % coefficient spell of mine a whopping 50 more damage having the weapon equipped vs having nothing in the slot.

This is just an example of what the hell is going on. Getting a brand new item with the current system woulden´t even feel like a reward, upgrading from a lvl 10 common to a lvl 20 rare weapon mob drop just for your spell to deal 5-10% more damage ?

The grind is already tedious and long - speaking as a degen gamer used to korean MMO´s to try and get high tier high quality items - there is nothing in the game that´s worth chasing if the literal best is giving you almost nothing.

---

__Now gameplay__

Playing a Mage should make you feel strong and powerful - the spells themselves indicate the power as almost every spell you have is a charged ability, requiring time to load before it fires. Combining the elements to create deadly combos to shatter and combust the enemies.

At this power level the Mage have almost NO impact in a fight come PvP. All they have in their kit is heavily focused on combos of damage - specifically AOE.

Before the changes the mage could act like a bomb, they go in and get a big combo on a stack of players - then other mages would jump in and you all combo AOE them down together. Right now you try this and the players healthbars barely move, the power is completely and utterly gone and the only thing that matters is pure high single target DPS - which mages do not posses in comparison to physical classes.

For PVE, Mages are still mages - they´re the best AOE dps class so they will always be one of the pinnacle PVE classes - but changing all the power and keeping mobs defenses and HP the same does not sit right with me.

The incredibly HIGH TTK of starred mob in ashes has been a big pain always. Needing several minutes to kill one pack of monsters that barely reward you with anything loot or EXP wise is just not fun. The high risk high reward barely exists in Ashes and this change just reinforces the super slow and tedious grind while also making the incredibly rare item drops now also have next to no impact.

Getting +4 power from a legendary crafted scroll and +20 power from the literal best weapon in the game taking weeks of killing worldbosses and searching for the materials to gain is crazy.

__Overall__

the slower kill time in PVP feels good - but mages have no place in it at this moment. PVE just feels overall worse and every dopamine is now gone. Nothing is worth chasing, no drop is exciting, crafting and enchanting is a joke and the grind is SLOW.