Cultural Nerfage? (unsubstantiated rumour)

[Bedavir]

Why should groupers get worse than LB aug, that would make no sense. If backward guilds can get LB aug why should best most commited groupers not get better?

Because the ability to for the 'backward guilds' to create gear as powerful as it is was imo an oversight. If they honestly intended it this way, they sorely underestimated the playerbase's response. I upgraded my TSS loot to 5 slots of the new tradeskills and my banked last bloods. If things remain unchanged I will not be buying solteris plate because it's a downgrade to my 2 year old DPoB loot. I've seen the disappointment on the faces of a few of my guilds' tanks so far. It's discouraging

I'm still hopeful that some sort of re-balancing will occur on a major scale. Tradeskill gear should be desirable. It should provide viable alternatives per content, but it should not provide viable alternatives to content that's beyond what you've hunted (Bloods to Solteris+ for example). I haven't seen anything in the first 2 tiers of SoF raids yet that would entice me away from my DPoB gear.

That's a problem.

[mulleteer]

I love these high end raiders who have joined the eqtraders boards in the last two days ( with a couple of posts total) to complain about how they made smithing and tailoring useful again.


Mulleteer Combover

[Ngreth Thergn]

Twistagain,

Groupers are getting seal for type 12 slot. Group armor in SoF is better than raid armor in DPoB, I would expect groupers to get seal that is better than LB.

I admit here that Merloc assigned the stats to this groupable slot 12 seal, and I have not even looked at it yet.

But, the goal of this seal is to catch up with GROUP drops from Crystalos.

Sice GROUP stuff from Crystalos is around DPoB stats... then 80 armor + 80 symbol + 80 group seal should get them stuff around Crystalos stats and thus DPoB stats (with new mods... so arguably better i9n some ways, worse in others (no focus)) **BUT** there is going to be a big thing missing. Focus Effects. Those come from the RAID seals not the group seals. So it will be a balancing act. Since the 80 armor and 80 symbol already have large stats, I do not expect this group seal to have much in the way of stats because it is only a bridge between T3 Group (which is 80 armor and 80 symbol already) and T4 group. In some ways it will be inferior to a last blood seal: less stats, ac, possibly Hp/mana/end. In some ways it will be better: More mods and probably some of the new mods.

Again, I admit to not having looked at the stats, so I could be very wrong. But that is definitely the goal of these group-able seals. The Goal is not to get them to top SoF RAID gear, but to get them to top SoF GROUP gear.

[Twistagain]

I think there is also some misunderstanding of what "group" means.

If the group gear requires a group that is made up of raid-geared characters...then is it still group gear?

As I understand it, we (the non-raiders) aren't going to be waltzing into Crystallos anytime soon to be getting this "group" gear. Therefore, it isn't even a part of our vocabulary. It might as well be raid gear. It we can't get the Last Bloods, then we won't be able to get these either, right?

[KyrosKrane]

As I understand it, we (the non-raiders) aren't going to be waltzing into Crystallos anytime soon to be getting this "group" gear. Therefore, it isn't even a part of our vocabulary. It might as well be raid gear. It we can't get the Last Bloods, then we won't be able to get these either, right?

That's not entirely true. Crystallos (Tier 4) is designed around and tuned for a group in full tier 3 gear. It's not an open zone, so you can't just walk in and start killing, but the key is also one-groupable, and I believe has about the same difficulty. So theoretically, if you and your group gear up in Elegant/Sublime armor and get a few tier 2 or 3 drops for your non-visible slots, then you should be all set to make headway in Crystallos and obtain both the dropped tier 4 armors and the type 12 upgrade drops for the Elegant armors.

Edit: It's also important to remember that Tier 4 group gear is weaker than Tier 1 raid gear. Raid and group tiers are not comparable; the weakest raid drops should be stronger than than the strongest group drops, if I understand the system right.

[Ngreth Thergn]

That's not entirely true. Crystallos (Tier 4) is designed around and tuned for a group in full tier 3 gear. It's not an open zone, so you can't just walk in and start killing, but the key is also one-groupable, and I believe has about the same difficulty. So theoretically, if you and your group gear up in Elegant/Sublime armor and get a few tier 2 or 3 drops for your non-visible slots, then you should be all set to make headway in Crystallos and obtain both the dropped tier 4 armors and the type 12 upgrade drops for the Elegant armors.

Edit: It's also important to remember that Tier 4 group gear is weaker than Tier 1 raid gear. Raid and group tiers are not comparable; the weakest raid drops should be stronger than than the strongest group drops, if I understand the system right.

Kyros has the Gist of it

[Woland]

From what I have seen, Tier 4 group gear (G4) is around Tier 2 Raid gear (R2) and that is about Solteris quality. Foci are weaker but raw numbers are about same. If Seal is to be balanced around these numbers it would suggest around 100 HP/Mana. I find it hard to accept this as an adequate reward compared to LB/Bazu aug. This also suggest that way to go for a grouper is to pursue Bazu aug.

Ngreth,

There is something amiss in the system you made, everything seems to be an issue. For some reason no matter if you look at group or raid use of Cultural it is creating conflict with other gear. There is no consistency.

[Woland]

Edit: It's also important to remember that Tier 4 group gear is weaker than Tier 1 raid gear. Raid and group tiers are not comparable; the weakest raid drops should be stronger than than the strongest group drops, if I understand the system right.

That is not so. R1 is TSS level, R2 is Solteris level. G4 is on par with R2 and better than R1.

[Twistagain]

That's not entirely true. Crystallos (Tier 4) is designed around and tuned for a group in full tier 3 gear. It's not an open zone, so you can't just walk in and start killing, but the key is also one-groupable, and I believe has about the same difficulty. So theoretically, if you and your group gear up in Elegant/Sublime armor and get a few tier 2 or 3 drops for your non-visible slots, then you should be all set to make headway in Crystallos and obtain both the dropped tier 4 armors and the type 12 upgrade drops for the Elegant armors.

My mistake then. Apparently this expansion is quite a bit different from all of the others...a lot of which I am happy about.

[KyrosKrane]

That is not so. R1 is TSS level, R2 is Solteris level. G4 is on par with R2 and better than R1.

Hmm. I'll have to go back and check the gear then. My understanding was based on dev comments at the time; it's very possible something may have changed since I last looked into this.

[Woland]

That's not entirely true. Crystallos (Tier 4) is designed around and tuned for a group in full tier 3 gear. It's not an open zone, so you can't just walk in and start killing, but the key is also one-groupable, and I believe has about the same difficulty. So theoretically, if you and your group gear up in Elegant/Sublime armor and get a few tier 2 or 3 drops for your non-visible slots, then you should be all set to make headway in Crystallos and obtain both the dropped tier 4 armors and the type 12 upgrade drops for the Elegant armors.

Edit: It's also important to remember that Tier 4 group gear is weaker than Tier 1 raid gear. Raid and group tiers are not comparable; the weakest raid drops should be stronger than than the strongest group drops, if I understand the system right.

Here is a handy link, this is magican armor but I imagine scaling is not exception for magicans.

http://sof.fuzzywuzzy.de/

[KyrosKrane]

Hey, you know what, that's a nice chart. It's incomplete, however. Here, let me fill it out for you:

http://www.kyros.info/Tradeskills/Magician_Armor.htm

I arbitrarily chose a human agnostic magician, and gave him several sets of tradeskilled armors. I couldn't find a Faycite seal to use, so that's not included, but I did include Last Blood, Serpent's, and Sunshard Seals of the Cutpurse (again, chosen arbitrarily). The data is sorted by hp, then mana.

That makes for a much more enlightening comparison, don't you think? It shows rather clearly that Elegant + Sublime is right in line with group tier 3 dropped armors, and that adding a raid-level aug to a level 80 tradeskilled combo makes (gasp!) a better piece of armor than a level 75 raid-dropped piece, or a level 70 tradeskilled piece with a raid drop. Seems like they got the balancing just right, to me.

Edit: I've got the data for additional combinations, but I didn't want to clutter up the chart too much. If you think adding a specific combination would help, let me know, and I'll get it added.

Edit 2: Bear in mind the chart doesn't take into account the benefits of a power source. This means the armors with purity can have their stats significantly boosted to suit your class. The tradeskill armors don't have that luxury.

[Bedavir]

Edit: It's also important to remember that Tier 4 group gear is weaker than Tier 1 raid gear.

Tier 1 raid gear doesn't have 500hps/mana. It's got less than that.

There is something amiss in the system you made, everything seems to be an issue. For some reason no matter if you look at group or raid use of Cultural it is creating conflict with other gear. There is no consistency.

QFT. The entire system needs a complete overhaul.

[Maevenniia]

Tier 1 raid gear doesn't have 500hps/mana. It's got less than that.



QFT. The entire system needs a complete overhaul.

It's not truth/fact - it's your opinion

Looking at the sample chart Kyros posted, seems to me that the progression of equipment is just fine

[Woland]

Kyros,

If you look at your chart and see no problem, I am not sure we are speaking the same language.

My point is that anything that has LB or any sort of seal is just way ahead of content that drops that seal. That makes no sense.

I realize you are trying to push the line how level 80 armor and Symbol are not comparable to previous content. There is a certain validity to that but that is a phylosophical view that is very much removed from what is happening in the game.
'
Why should 70 seal with any level 80 Cultural armor make better gear than anything that ever dropped in 75 level content?

How about leve 70 armor + level 75 Symbol + level 70 Seal making better armor than anything that drops in TSS? You surely cannot dispute that there is a problem with that.

If you add all combinations with LBs to your chart, you will see lots of inconsistancies.

One more point, look at Elegant + Sublime + Sunshard VS Phased Energeiac Silk !!! Ngreth says it should be better. How much better? This is just insulting to anyone who has ever gotten a piece of visable armor in Solteris.