Gear Level Matters too Much. Gear Quality Needs to Scale Non-linear.

- Gear Level matters too much. Gear quality matters too little. Result: Apprentice crafting is useless

Forsaken Blades Wand is the most magic power rated apprentice item, while Pinion Pen is an easily farmed boss drop. It would take 100s of gold to craft the first wand, the 2nd option would take me like 2-5 hours to farm. While a level 19 and 20 wand aren't that farm apart Forsaken vs an Iron wand as examples. The reality is no one is going to craft and iron wand (20) either, when you can farm a level 27-29 boss drop.

- Why was apprentice useful before: Enchanting

Due to the scaling nature of strength(str) and intelligence(int) enchanting made any time with these stats scale very hard. Allowing for apprentice gear to surpass most journeyman gear that could be farmed as drops. Allow players to get very "cheap" gear and enchant it.

- This came with its own set of problems, such as gear int/str gear scaling so high that power numbers got ridiculous, making a very short Time to Kill (TTK). Also any Journeyman gear w/o int or str would never be better than its novice/apprentice counterpart.

This can be broken into 2 problems. A. All secondary stats went up by an equal amount. B. Waterfall was too powerful
A. An item with 10 Int (30 Magical Power Rating) and an Item with 42 Magical Power Rating( 14 Int worth) as a base item the magical power is better. But after +8 enchantment we would have 18 Int (54 Magical Power Rating) and the other item would have 50 Magical Power rating ( 16 2/3 Int) making the Int item better. This cause the INT is king meta and could have easily been fixed by making Magic Power rating scale by 3.

B. Waterfall was too power power partially due to reason A. Int/Str/Con were just scaling harder than there waterfall stat counterpoint Power/Health on top that they also gave stats such as crit power and mitigation leaving any stat that wasn't a core stat in the dust with enchanting.

- My solution, if you care, would be to make quality value have a bigger impact on items. Make quality a more logarithmic curve making common, uncommon worse and making rare and heroic close and epic and legendary better. This would allow for apprentice epic and legendary gear to surpass rare journeyman gear and give people a worthwhile reason to craft apprentice gear high-end gear while waiting on Journeyman Stations to appear. But would also allow for Journeyman gear to eventually be better than all apprentice gear

- For enchanting it really just needs a more thorough investigation for how you important Intrepid wants it to be. Current enchanting won't be touched until people have Best in Slot (BiS) gear. Its too expensive to every use on bad gear and only gives a minimal benefit. This will still be used by Sweat Lords that want to give every drop of power they can, but average users probably won't touch enchanting until a BiS or an time obtainable BiS has been acquired.

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Comments

Azhrei

Ok, I agree with the intent; it seems you want crafted items to be more valuable than dropped due to time/resource which I totally back. Your second point is a more fleshed out enchanting artisan tree.

I agree with both. I think you want value for your time in crafting as you spend exponentially more time gathering/processing/crafting. I think enchanting may be better utilized adding different stats or abilities than just flat increases.

Overall great thoughts you had.

SovereignGaming

As a crafter who was excited for phase 3, this change made me happy and depressed. I finally get to prioritize certain stat builds, but all my crafting plans are trashed. What can I make and sell? A dropped green lvl 20 earring will easily dwarf anything I want to sell. I can't even make profit or craft worthwhile gear until 2 months into p3.

Imnotkio

Xherra wrote: »

As a crafter who was excited for phase 3, this change made me happy and depressed. I finally get to prioritize certain stat builds, but all my crafting plans are trashed. What can I make and sell? A dropped green lvl 20 earring will easily dwarf anything I want to sell. I can't even make profit or craft worthwhile gear until 2 months into p3.

They need to remove rare and below mob gear drops for at least level 20 gear, and maybe level 10 gear

Bribzy

To the credit of the enchanting points, I do agree. Among the problems enchanting had pre-changes, the greatest problem in my mind was that waterfall stats scaled poorly. Getting a +1 on Max Health is absolutely meaningless compared to the bonus you could get from con. I would have liked to see base stats scale the hardest, and secondary stats scale slowly. Adds a give and take from quality bonuses.
Saying nothing on the str/int meta as it is now, i do agree that pre-change was preferable. Base stats felt nice to get on items, and felt like they matter. Now they feel like an afterthought at best.

Regarding quality, I somewhat agree, but not fully. I do agree that high quality apprentice gear should beat out the lowest of quality level 20 gear, and especially the equips that are reasonably able to be grabbed from monster loot. However, one of the things I was most looking forward to with the gathering changes was the reduction of upper rarity gear, which in turn would make uncommons and rares more usable.The fact that greens and blues get tossed away so easily (even heroics within the current system aren't typically the best) doesn't feel very good. Given that greens and blues are common, and heroics+ was by intention supposed to be difficult to get, then naturally it makes sense that a heroic+ item could theoretically out-scale the next tier worth of power scaling. So overall, while I do wish to see a return to form on apprentice gear being comparable, I think there's a bit of nuance to the situation that needs to be ironed out.

Understandably, the current stats are in limbo and probably not fleshed out. I get it. But assuming based only on what is in front of us with the given changes (0.8.1 at the time), it feels like the level treadmill is getting way too much focus, and crafting/gearing is hurting as a result.

Ludullu

Feels like things would've been so much easier if enchanting would only increase the atk/def stats, while additional effects (waterfall stats included) simply existed on different gear.

Lvl10 legendary has 50atk. Lvl20 grey has 40atk. Lvl10 leg has +1 str, +2 con, +10% crit rate. Lvl20 grey has +2 str, +10% crt.dmg.

+2 atk per enchant at +8 would bring you to 66 (69) atk bonus from the Leg, while +8 grey would give 56 (62), but enchanting grey should be easier, because enchanting should be tied to rarity and in general making grey items should be way easier, so burning them would be fine too.

No damn item drops from mobs, so sticking with you lvl10 amazing weapon is still viable and it even gives you +2 con (which should be valuable too btw), but switching to a grey lvl20 is still fine, especially if you have enough hp and crit rate.

None of these insane stat values, none of the enchanting issues, not much of a rarity issue between gear tiers, crafting matters.

Azherae

We really are going to end up talking about everything but the actual problems, huh?

Yes it would be easier, but it would also be low quality.

I know I usually say that it's good if Ashes and Throne and Liberty go in different directions, but I don't mean that as 'Ashes should just not do things well if TL did too good a job at them'.

Incentives are broken so we can't give feedback on gear or gear numbers, they only need feedback on how the TTK feels, and while we aren't gonna get much agreement on that either from the look of it.

Anyways I'll hope that Intrepid isn't even taking feedback on gear specifically at this time but in case they are I'll repeat my previous:
1) I don't like that Rarities beyond Rare are 'sustainable'
2) I don't like that mobs drop gear
3) I don't like the enchanting values for this specific patch, considering it the worst of all serious MMOs, ranking below even ArcheAge.
4) I don't like the stats for this patch but also disagree with Ludullu above relative to what would be simpler/better (that ranking can go even lower, there are less serious MMOs)
5) I think more work needs to be done on how Durability works, soon, so that people can experience all this with more-intended incentives.

SmileGurney

One is lvl 10 item, another lvl 20. There is no lvl 12, 14 or 18 gear. Higher rarity lvl 10 gear, plus enchanting allow you to steadily increase your power level until you hit the level 20 milestone. I see nothing wrong with that approach or stats.

Xherra wrote: »

As a crafter who was excited for phase 3, this change made me happy and depressed. I finally get to prioritize certain stat builds, but all my crafting plans are trashed. What can I make and sell? A dropped green lvl 20 earring will easily dwarf anything I want to sell. I can't even make profit or craft worthwhile gear until 2 months into p3.

When it comes to gear dropped by mobs, I would personally prefer if mobs only dropped gear mats, and recipes. Yes even bosses. That addresses most of the crafting / economy concerns, at least when it comes to mob drops...

Veeshan

Easy fix make mobs only drop white gear mobs dropping greens and blue undermind the crafting system especially when it rather hard to get enough heroic+ resources to craft better than mob dropped blues to actualy sell to other players

Probs have some green grar drom quests and maybe slightly higher qualoty grar from long quests

greek

SmileGurney wrote: »

One is lvl 10 item, another lvl 20. There is no lvl 12, 14 or 18 gear. Higher rarity lvl 10 gear, plus enchanting allow you to steadily increase your power level until you hit the level 20 milestone. I see nothing wrong with that approach or stats.

This is false there are gear levels, they just aren't shown on an item. Codex shows the internal value and you can see it in how the stats trend. The threshold to wear it is rounded down to the nearest 10. So a level 19 item highly crafted is better than a 20 of rare or less. They other side of this is that gamers don't care about the level 10-18 and the 20-28 gear if there is a level 29 piece that they can make. You are never going use heroic+ materials on an item just to have to make a different item later.

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