Cultural Nerfage? (unsubstantiated rumour)

[Bedavir]

If that announcement has only to do with bumping TSS/TBS type 12s and nothing to do with the massive flaw in all drops that Span DPoB --> TBS, then we're still going to have problems.

Hopefully the entire system will get a tweak. I'm afraid that what we'll end up seeing is stats shifted from sublime/exalted to elegant with no real shift in power. It's paying lip service to a problem that goes a lot deeper than that.

What needs to happen is a global reduction in the boosts that the armor and type 11 augs gave with this expansion. The excess 'lost' stats can be placed in a few places: groupable type 12s to keep them where they're intended, TSS type 12s to give it appropriate edge over DPoB type 12 (say 50ac 300hp), and even more given to the TBS/SoF (say 55ac 350hp, 60ac 400hp). At the cost of a 15ac reduction on average to the ac gains per piece from the new tradeskill gear, and a 100-150hp reduction in sublime/exalted augs with a shift of some of that hps to the new gear. For plate archetypes there's a several hundred ac gain from the whole set ... pretty unreasonable if you ask me.

Viola ... tradeskill armor has it's boost (5ac + some hp per slot), tradeskill augs still have their boost (50-100hp per aug + mod2s and heroic stats), non-raiders still have their end-product right where it needs to be, Last bloods are reigned in, and appropriate rewards can be given to TSS/TBS/SoF raid augs. For those looking to exploit the last blood anomaly, don't fret. You'd still get a 5ish ac + 50-100hp upgrade + mod2s + heroic stat upgrade ... it just wouldn't be 600hp/mana gear with ridiculous ac coming from Demiplane anymore.

-Drop the ac per slot on new armor to marginal gains over the last bunch
-Drop the hps per new aug ... and shift some (not all) of the dropped hps to the cultural armor
-Increase the stats on the groupable type 12 to compensate
-Appropriately increase TSS/TBS/SoF type 12s

Progress achieved on all fronts ... some of the mudflation/imbalance corrected.

Does that seem unreasonable Ngreth?

[thrashette]

blah blah

If that announcement has only to do with bumping TSS/TBS type 12s and nothing to do with the massive flaw in all drops that Span DPoB --> TBS, then we're still going to have problems.

The only flaw is YOU trying to force everyone into your idea of what loot WE should have.

How quickly people forget that mid-tier guilds were disintegrating over the inability to gear up in DP and DK events with reduced forces. The new tradeskill and group items give people a choice as what to wear, and how to get it. Having superior tradeskill + last blood gives smaller demiplane guilds both a reason to be in demi-plane, and a way to escape it.

The new cultural is the best thing to happen to Everquest in 5 years. I wish people at higher tiers would just shut up and raid SoF. You'll get better gear, faster, than anyone behind you if youi do.

[Bedavir]

How quickly people forget that mid-tier guilds were disintegrating over the inability to gear up in DP and DK events with reduced forces.

Your problem was never in your gear being too weak ... it was in your inability to keep your force up, and that is not an issue you can fix by throwing mudflated into the mix.

[cibby]

Oh the whiners are winning.

Post has been made on EQ forums.

He didn't mention Bazu but I am sure that will be nerfed too.

Right now I have 70 armor 75 aug and I guess 70 seal (bazu? even though he list Last Bloods at 70) so it will be curious to see how much my stats drop.

He did mention making 75 armor.

[Bedavir]

If I understood him correctly, the tradeskilled armor/augs will actually increase in total proportional power by shifting the stats away from the seals to a certain degree. The only drawback is for those who had already put their level 70 seals in their level 75/80 cultural sets. Those still wearing 70 armor/seals/augs will notice no change. Those upgrading from 70armor/augs + last blood to 80armor/augs + last blood will still see an improvement, just not to the degree it currently is.

[Twistagain]

/boggle

Does this make the raiders happy?

If so, great! Let's go about our business...nothing to see here.

(as someone who will likely never see a Last Blood, I really like this suggested change...though I feel slightly for those who have a LB in the new cultural already.)

[Aaneras]

Oh the whiners are winning.

Post has been made on EQ forums.

He didn't mention Bazu but I am sure that will be nerfed too.

Right now I have 70 armor 75 aug and I guess 70 seal (bazu? even though he list Last Bloods at 70) so it will be curious to see how much my stats drop.

He did mention making 75 armor.

This will improve the raw stats of the group gear at the expense of the raid slot 12 augments. As long as that is what they're doing - I don't see a problem for tradeskillers (the TS part goes up), it's neutral for raiders (with a full set), and it's a benefit for groupers. However, I'm afraid that's not what they're doing.

I think they're boosting the 70 set, which no one needs to use anymore anyhow, and reducing the last bloods while leaving the 75 symbol and 80 set alone. e.g. a straight reduction in 80+80+LB, and an compensating increase only in an obsolete cultural set. I predict a fierce, fierce firestorm unless the adjustment is modest - there is a pretty large installed base of last bloods and bazu stones.
(Changes in 75 and 80 raid symbols will have much less impact whatever those changes are because there are so few of them already around). I'll have to hold back on further content until we see the parameters of the design; e.g. there is a difference between a 25% cut in LB and removing all AC from the augment in terms of what this will do.

[Daewood]

instead of changing the type 12s, add 2 more tiers of cultural. then use the same code restriction as the new jc type 11's have that prevents them from being put in the cultural to prevent mix matching on cultural levels. 70 armor + 70 symbol + last blood is then tuned for DPoB era. 75 tier 1 armor + 75 tier 1 symbol + serpent gets tuned to be on par with TSS armor. 75 tier 2 armor + 75 tier 2 symbol + sunshard gets tuned to be on par with TBS armor. 80 armor + 80 symbol + faycite gets tuned to be on par with SoF armor from the tier that the faycite drops in. The groupers still have a nice set of armor in the 80 stuff, add groupable type 12 augs to tune all the tiers at something less than the raid level but something more than the base with just the armor + symbol.

[Ratblaster]

One thing mentioned in other posts is the possibility of adding in lvl 75 armor to match the 75 augs... Smiths/Tailors may want to stockpile some alkalai loam, titanium ore, flawless spinners/silk/pelts, and superb marrow for January since i would expect any 75 armor to use the same materials as the 75 symbols, just as elegant armor shares ingredients with sublime symbols.

The posts in EQ forums seem to indicate that 70+70+70 may remain essentially unchanged, but that 80+80+70 set (Elegant+sublime+Last Blood) is going to see an overall decline (not sure how much of a decline it will get though)

[Woland]

Looking at what Ngreth posted on EQ live I imagine it would be along theses lines. I am sure numbers are different I just tried to imagine what would seem reasonable.

Armor Choices		Armor	Symbol	Seal	TOTAL
Lvl 70 Wrist		30	85	210	325
Lvl 70 Wrist Updated	50	135	140	325
Lvl 75 Wrist			250	250	500
Lvl 75 Wrist Updated	65	200	210	475
Lvl 80 Wrist		65	315	300	680
Lvl 80 Wrist Updated	85	295	300	680

What do you all think?

[dendail]

cultral prices

i know the kroy guy is paying over 150k for cultral items on luclin the price shot way up after the nerf look at the drop rate 6 hours in asengate 1 cultral drop sometimes the best thing to do would have just increased the drop rate of the porous loam and leave the rest alone seeing most need the loam to make the gear anyways on luclin the price for cultral drop in bazaar is over 300k mds never cost that much to buy the soe designers want to make the drops equal ,at the price of this new stuff should have just stayed with mds

[Leonis]

Do you have an issue with 80 armor + 80 symbol + 5 expansion old raid content being better than Solteris? One would assume that you don't because that's clearly the case as it stands.

DPoB is separated from TSS by 40hp and a trivial amount of mod2s. DPoB is separated from SoF by 90hp and a trivial amount of mod2s (anyone at that level already has no problems capping them). They have the same ac.

TBS is also seperated from ALL THAT CAME BEFORE IT by level of foci effects - this is NOT trivial, with the current level 80 cap on players AND THEIR SPELLS the foci effects from anything before TBS is almost NOTHING any more - even the level 75 foci effects from TBS are becoming noticeable dated.

[Leonis]

Aaneras,

Guild raiding Demi should be compared to groupers getting gear out of DoDH tasks and not to groupers getting SoF gear.

Pretty much NOBODY bothers doing DoDH tasks any more unless it's to get DSK flagged.

A LOT if not a majority of current group action is in SoF. The majority of current RAID guilds are in Demiplane at most. Yes, Demi raid drops SHOULD be compared to SoF group drops by reasonable people, because that's what the demigraphics of the GAME are.

[Leonis]

The only flaw is YOU trying to force everyone into your idea of what loot WE should have.

How quickly people forget that mid-tier guilds were disintegrating over the inability to gear up in DP and DK events with reduced forces. The new tradeskill and group items give people a choice as what to wear, and how to get it. Having superior tradeskill + last blood gives smaller demiplane guilds both a reason to be in demi-plane, and a way to escape it.

Wasn't JUST mid-tier guilds having issues, though they were and still are having serious issues due to declining playerbase. Was AND STILL IS a lot of higher-tier guilds as well having to EAT lower-tier guilds(and then get them geared up) to even be able to handle the stuff they were ALREADY doing - and they're starting to run OUT of mid-tier guilds to do that with, even before SoF.

Povar alone has had 1 previously high-tier guild (Leviathan) flat out die, another (Forces Unknown) merge into a mid-tier guild to survive, only to have the resulting mid-tier guild (FoD) end up having to merge into yet ANOTHER mid-teir guild to survive (Darkova), Firestormers (longtime #2 guild on Povar) had to eat Lorekeepers (mid-tier) to survive, Triton almost disbanded, came back for a while, and is currently hurting enough that THEY expect Firestormers to pass them (Triton was for a long time one of the top 10 or even top 5 guilds in the GAME). Blades of Law hasn't progressed in a year and is slowly withering - the core of their raid force left a while ago. Final Empire gutted Catalysts' raid force to survive, Catalysts themselves had to eat at least one small guild to survive, Valheru/Sanity's Edge has eaten most of Defying Fate's raid force over the last couple months and is still marginal on survival.

MOST of the surviving Mid-Tier guilds have made more progression progress in the last MONTH, due in large part to gearing up via the new cultural, than in any 3 months of the last year. Nerfing the stuff is going to GUT most of those guilds - and I suspect that nerfing the stuff at THIS late date is going to GUT Everquest almost as badly as WoW=Guild Wars did 2 years ago.


The new cultural was the FIRST thing I've seen in this game that appeared to give mid-tier raiding guilds a CHANCE to finally start progression faster than expansions were released. Nerfing it is going to KILL that chance, and from comments I've already heard from a lot of folks, is probably going to kill a LARGE number if not an outright majority of mid-tier guilds - and THAT will end up longer-term killing high-end guilds as well, as their "recruiting pool" disappears.

[Leonis]

It's the same upgrade path that DPoB guilds are going to need now, because you won't get far into Solteris or SoF raids without TSS+ weaponry and the dps boosts that come with it.

Weapon ratios from ANGUISH to TBS are a small change - might be 30% at MOST. Weapon ratios from Demi to TBS were even less - 20% ballpark. Weapon dps does NOT take a big jump at ANY point after Anguish, untill you get to SoF - and even SoF weapons I've seen links to (including obvious high-tier raid drops listed in Lucy) aren't a LOT more DPS.

The large majority of improved DPS is from SPELL upgrades, not from weaponry. SPELL dps has grown a TON since Anguish - probably close to DOUBLE going from the best level 70/under DPS spells INCLUDING ANCIENTS (raid drop needed) to the best level 76-80 rank II (groupable) ones. Even going to the best level 71-75 rank II spells is often well over a 50% jump.

Tanks don't benefit a lot IF ANY from weapon upgrades for aggro, if you believe Yoda's calculator - BBoB (you remember that, from GoD) is STILL one of the top 10 aggro tools in the game, SC per his calculator is an aggro DROP and Arcekor is a push on aggro (and a bloody rare drop). As I recall, nothing in TBS even manages to match Arcekor as an aggro tool (the procs are non-existant to pathetic and the ratios are pretty much the same).

I strongly suspect that a MAJORITY of the "improvement in DPS" you may have seen from TBS geared melee folks was AA upgrades and FOCI upgrades and DISC upgrades, not in the actual weapon upgrades.