Cestus Dmg/Dly : This will be Nerfed soon I Imagine

[Murias]

I made 2 of them tonight, stats are unchanged.

[thrashette]

Yeah

I suspect you'll be retracting that statment when you scratch more than just the surface of the Gates Smithing recipes (You did know there's roughly 700 new smithing recipes, right?).

Thanks for the response. I know you guys at Sony are trying to make it fun and not broken. You just don't get it, though, and neither do many of my indoctrinated peer crafters.

The game should work like this:

Your guild raids the Plane of Muffins to kill its named beings. Along the way you get enough components to craft 2 or 3 items that are competitive with the named drops in that zone. After you do this perhaps ten times, you are equipped enough to move forward to the next bit. Some people are wearing crafted items and some are wearing dropped items that are a little better.

When you are done with that plane, you can farm it a bit to fill in and perhaps sell a few pieces. Stuff shouldn't be so common that you can get a full set in a day--I'm talking 3 pieces per zone clearing rarity. Along the lines of Kunark random armor drops.

The key word though, is COMPETITIVE. Eighty percent or better of the power of the same zone's dropped items. Not eighty percent of the power of items that you got last tier.

That's where PoP missed the boat for traders. It is nigh impossible to get armor components that people in your tier will use. Basically, components for crafted silk, plate, and chain pieces are placed around one tier too high. The base stats of nightmare, hurricane, and elemental armors are all about 20% too low for where they come from. Elemental stuff is good, but by the time you get to farming it everyone already has half a dozen 100hp/100mana pieces and isn't looking forward to pieces based on 95hp/95mana.

Weapons are like that everywhere. The two exceptions I know of are Black Acrylia and Shissar Bane weapons. Black Acrylia is nigh perfect for its level and rarity. Everyone hates the SB timesink, but they are really happy to use thier SB weapons once they get them.

People worry about selling things. They shouldn't. Guilds won't sell things if they need and can use them. Elitist guilds won't sell things at all, because they think it enables thier competition. Eventually, when stuff gets replaced it is sold, but people who still need it and can afford to buy upwards can probably use the help.

[aruvqan]

Originally posted by Maddoc-the-Wayfarer
I suspect you'll be retracting that statment when you scratch more than just the surface of the Gates Smithing recipes (You did know there's roughly 700 new smithing recipes, right?).

I think some of you will be pleasantly surprised when you get to making the better weapons with the higher quality ore. Others won't be impressed at all, but overall, you should get a nice market for yourselves with these weapons.

-- Maddoc

Sir, I beg to differ. I have made the velium inlaid cestus, the next grade of ore up [shimmering nihilite] and it is a step *down* from the pale plat inlaid cestus.

As you see from a different posting at http://mboards.eqtraders.com/upload/...hreadid=14350, the ppic is a better weapon than a vic, and my game husband's beastlord has already better weapons than these would be if you nerfed them to *match* the rest of the weapons of this expansion. I have no problem level restricting these to 50 [iirc that was the level under discussion on the boards] but along with this level restriction, i will sat that making these weapons *will* be the province of the uber guilds as getting the drops for these was incredibly difficult for us at 56. Again, keeping the plat in the hands of uber guilded fold with exceptional equipment.

We both have the expansion, and even if we are not 65 and elementally eqquipped, we *would* like to do more than fish and hunt in natimbi when we can find others to group with....tribute masters and fishing arent worth the money we spent on buying 3 copies of the expansion...throw us a little bone here, give me a weapon i can smith and sell for a *little* profit in bazaar. heaven knows that at 750 to 1k per piece of aligned ore or raw pale nihilite doesnt leave much profit margin now as it is, and if hit with the nerf bat, will make it ia useless trinket.

[Kronepsis]

Um, I think you got your weapons confused.

Velium Inlaid Cestus IS supposed to be inferior to Pale Velium Inlaid Cestus. Velium Inlaid doesn't use a Pale Nihilite, and Pale Velium Inlaid does.

The Shimmering Aligned ore stuff makes the Claws and stuff like that is what he is talking about. Not the Cestus.

(Even more edits)

Ahhh, I see. You used the Shimmering NIHILITE. So the results of the recipes are switched! Or perhaps numbers were put in wrong. Reading comprehension is gud! I would guess that it means that whoever was putting the results in the database got confused by the names of the result, but yes, agreed, something's wrong there if putting in a Shimmering Nihilite results in a downgrade.

[Flabbo]

Here's a positive response. I am positve the pale velium weapons are bad :P

Serious, they need their stats upgraded. Perhaps an inherent icicle claw (100dd) proc. Anyting. I cant imagine even the MOST casual melee wanting to buy this for the cost required to make it. They are a pure plat sink as is. If the ore was SUPER common, it might be useful as a way for EQ plat billionaires to get skilled up really fast. 10/22 is pretty laughable with what is out there. The thing is, if you reduce the vendor sold component cost, you ahve fiery weapons, and we all know how rad those are. Lets conserve database space, and have the recipes produce something that will be used. I took great pride in forging tae ew shields/gear for everyone in my old guild. These weapons are just flat out a waste of someone's time to code.

Another thought is to give them a new aug slot. Type 9 (produced by jewelcraft) which adds a lot of stats, damage, customizability.

[dailyus]

Honesly On morrell thule people are eating these up! I Made a run of 5 of them and quickly sold them for 8 k pp each.... no one can say there is not a market for them

[Sulkano]

I just hope they fix the graphic

[Aethn]

Ahhh, I see. You used the Shimmering NIHILITE. So the results of the recipes are switched! Or perhaps numbers were put in wrong. Reading comprehension is gud! I would guess that it means that whoever was putting the results in the database got confused by the names of the result, but yes, agreed, something's wrong there if putting in a Shimmering Nihilite results in a downgrade.

You are likely correct, as the nihilite only recipe is DNC on Test Server as of last week. Probably going to be fixed next patch I am sure.

So in my original post that starte this thread, I was correct in assuming Nihilte only recipe was too good risk vs reward. It was infact the intended result of shimmering, not Nihilite, which IMO is fine for risk vs reward on the stats.

[Cavel]

I have read through this post and I must say that thrashette put it the best for positive feed back.

The problem is that we too often see Tempers or Ore or parts of tempers out of reach. Take for example even the tier 1 and 2 PoP zones.

Night Terror Armor requires 3 drops only 1 of those can be readily found on any Mob in the zone (Midnight stone). The other parts Mephit blood and Fetid slime come from only one mob type in the zone. With the opening of the Tier 2 zones not many hunt Nightmare any longer and even if they do they almost ALWAYS avoid going after the Caster mobs there. Thus even if you can get a group to go with you to Nightmare most of the time you will be hitting Hobgoblins, WW or Night stalkers. Simply put the risk VS reward for Non-tradeskillers is too great to go after the Mephits or Slurghilugs.

Looking at the Tier 2 Armor we come to the same issue. In Plane of Storms you will get Electrified Copper off several Mobs however it was not untill I reached Bastion of Thunder that I saw Stormrider Blood, Sand Storm Pearls and Drops of pure rain. Now by the time I reach BOT I have a Shot at Ornate armor (Far better than what I can make).

No for the constructive bit... I would ask that there be some way that Smiths could put additional Augment slots on items. The way I see it is these Augments are gems and the like that fit into areas on the item. Why not make it so Jewel Crafters can make Augment settings for the different augment types that can be added to smithed armor and weapons, up to 3 on armor and 2 on weapons (I think that is the norm)? This would give us a chance to make the items we craft worth more the the every day player and ourselves.

[Jarkorsis]

Recommneded levels is alll that is needed on caestus.

Here is my 2 cents. There is a formula for average DPS in primary hand. This has been on the monk and beastlord boards to help figure out what weapon to use in which hand. For offhand remove the damage bonus and multiply the result by .70.

[(2*damage) + Damage Bonus]/(Delay/10)


This is an approximation. I am using the Lvl 65 damage bonus of 13 for thew following calculations. All of the items are easy to find in the bazaar or with a single group or maybe 2 group raid.

Fist of Darkness (12/18) = 20.6
Waning Light Katar (16/22) = 20.5 plus 84 damage process. Recommened lvl 55 I think.
LDON HTH from EC (15/19) = 22.6 required lvl 60+
add the type 3 damage aug +2 (17/19) = 24.7 plus add process up to 150

GOD Caestus (5/11) = 20.9 no base process.
GOD Claws (6/10) = 25.0 no base process.


Anyway you can see these weapons are on par with most weapons available to the 50+ crowd for less than 25k or with a good group. There are some 14/21 and 12/19 plus 75 process claws available as well.

To take the imbalance away would only require a recommended lvl of 55 or so for the caestus and maybe 60 for claws. This would allow smiths to make a few plat. And these weapons fit right into the same damage range as comparable weapons.

The 10/22 slashers have the same ratio as the caestus, but because of the damage bonus do considerably less damage than their HTH cousins. So their recommened level might be around lvl 40. At least comparable dropped have a recommened level of 40.

The HTH smithed weaponed generally have worse stats the equivalent dropped weapons. So the dropped weapons are more in demand, but they would make a nice stop gap while you are trying to get the better stated drop HTH's.

To make the slashing weapons close to the equivalent dropped weapons their damage ratio needs to be increased if you want the recomemded level to be 50+. Do not nerf the HTH ,make the slashers 12/22 or 13/22 which is more in line with the level these items were intended to be used. A ratio of 10/22 in this post GOD world is a lvl 35-40 non twinked ratio weapon.

Let the smiths make a little plat making some decent weapons. Nerfing the HTH weapons just makes smithing weapons not viable. There are plenty of good fast weapons to use. The smithed weapons just add more variety and help some of the non uber guilded players get some decent weapons.

[Kronepsis]

Originally posted by Aethn
You are likely correct, as the nihilite only recipe is DNC on Test Server as of last week. Probably going to be fixed next patch I am sure.

So in my original post that starte this thread, I was correct in assuming Nihilte only recipe was too good risk vs reward. It was infact the intended result of shimmering, not Nihilite, which IMO is fine for risk vs reward on the stats.

Just so you know, after comparing weapons to look for patterns, I found out that the Velium Inlaid Cestus and the Velium Cestus are EXACTLY the same.

Since the only difference in between them is the fact that there is a Shimmering Nihilite used in a subcombine, it's blatantly obvious that whatever changes the Shimmering Nihilite was supposed to add, didn't go in. I'm heavily suspecting that it adds a larger attack and higher resists than the Pale Nihilite.

[Zhao]

claws

OK, just wanted to chime in here as I'm a wanna be smith (178 skill) and a monk, the end user of these things.

The Pale Velium Inlaid Claws (next step up from cestus) are...
6/10 with 7 to a few stats and a few resist bonuses as well.

That weapon I have to say is the best droppable weapon, including the ldon 1 handers, in the game for primary hand. It will parse up there with the Battle Fists that drop off of Talon Zek if I'm not mistaken (18/20) with only the proc seperating them.

If you look at a modal of the weapon that is commonly used to compare weapons...

PViClaws = [(6*2)+13db+1min]/10delay = 2.6 comparatively
BF = [18*2)+13db+1min]/20delay = 2.5 comparitavely (not counting the nifty stun proc)

Now, off hand, the claws aren't so hot, worse than monk bare fists actually. Primary hand, because of the dmg bonus, the claws beat everything a non-raiding monk can get. I have heard people are pricing it at 30k (do you actually spend that much making this weapon, come on, there's some profit you need to make but that's insane) but I'm just here to tell you it's an incredible weapon, but please be fair in calculating your expenses for what you price it at.

That in main hand plus a waning light katar, or an ldon weapon of your choice will handily beat the best 2hander a monk can get as well. The only thing left to consider is the fact the weapon will splatter a monk on a wall if he trys to tank with it, or if he catches agro (or a mob turns) during an enrage. With chanter, bard overhaste and speedfocus, a monk could potentially hit 9 times in a single second with just this weapon in primary (125% haste plus speedfocus knocks 1/4 off base delay - 7.5/2.25 ~ one hit every third of a second, with monks potentially triple hitting with a primary weapon).

So I think you have something to be very very very happy about making if you can get the shimmering bars, and please be fair pricing considering how much effort/expense you put into it.

[Kronepsis]

That will depend on if people are willing to make that over something like a 34/28 Spear.

Edit: Flipped two numbers. Oops.

[Kronepsis]

OK, I'm projecting that the highest possible result for the weapons will be:

Hand to hand: 7/10

One handed weapons: 15/22

AFAIK The best two handed weapons have already been made and are 34/28.

Given those numbers, do those weapons suck?

[Itzena]

The velium gemmed 2-handers are the best droppable 2H weapons for DPS in the game right now (assuming there isn't anything silly mob-dropped that was added with GoD that I missed). 28 delay is the magic number for the 2H damage bonus.