GM DON armor set is out of balance

[Blayze Meduenin]

Now that enough data on the GM DON armor has been found, looking closely at the armor shows that the set is not balanced.

Here is a comparison of LDON 1492 plate (royal attendant) and the GM DON plate (chosen as both stats and aug slotting are the same regardless of plate class, and since the LDON suit is widely and easily available to all given time regardless of previous equipment and playstyle)
I have not compared the other levels of the DON cultural, or other armro types (due to time) so im unaware if the same imbalance is present accross the board or is more specific to plate.

............1492 LDON............GM DON including type 11 aug
Chest.....69ac 100hp/m.......99ac 145hp/m
Legs.......48ac 80hp/m........81ac 120hp/m
Arms.......34ac 80hp,70m.....59ac 85hp/m
Wrists.....28ac 70hp/m........32ac 50hp/m
Feet.......34ac 70hp,80m.....45ac 70hp/m
Hand.......34ac 75hp/m........45ac 70hp/m
Head.......39ac 75hp/m........59ac 85hp/m

comparing the 2 suits the chest and legs get a 40%+ upgrade, the arms, feet, hands and head get a similar upgrade in ac but virtually the same hp/m, the wrists get a minor 4ac upgrade but a 30% decrease in hp/m.
IMO each piece within a set of armor should all be about the same lvl, here some armor is a 40%+ upgrade in all 3 areas, some is 30%,0,0 (give or take) and wrists are +10%,-30%-30%!
They should rebalance the set accordingly bringing the pieces of the set into the same quality line by boosting the non chest,leg pieces as needed (they could lower those 2 and up the others but if it wasnt an upgrade to LDON it would be pointless and have no place in the progression).

Finally the slotting differences and stats shouldnt be used as a reason for this imbalance, as that is universal accross both sets and all pieces anyway. Every piece in the same set has the same slotting so the differences between the same piece in each set should be similar not so wildly different), and while the stat changes are not as universal there isnt any wild difference big enough to account for the huge imbalance with ac,hp and mana

[tnexus]

No offense, but your analyzations are out of whack. First off you're forgetting the effects that come with the new GM armor. A full suit alone yields 6FT, 60attk (I think), various regen, and some DS. While I agree the hps/mana are a little off on a few pieces, it was my understanding that you're trading off hps/mana for AC, aug slots, and effects. Bracers are the only piece that imho is way underpar. I think it's a bug that they only have 1FT instead of 2, and hopefully if they fix that it'll bring them up to par slightly (though 20 more hps would be helpful).

[Blayze Meduenin]

as i said its a question of pieces in the set not being in the same class.

They all have effects on the augs but while some have 40% more ac, hp and mana some have no extra hp and mana and wrists have 30% less.

If you want to talk about the effects making it better the ldon in the comparison still has 3 slots open, you can add 40hp and an effect of choice (rather than the fixed effect on the GM cultural) and have an aug slot open, if you add the same 40hp aug to teh gm you then have every piece except chest and legs with set effects (lesser in most cases) and less hp/manam while the chest/legs have more.

Again I was pointing out the pieces of the set are not all of the same quality which frankly is absurd

[Cloud]

imo the GM armor set is way unbalanced. Not only is the quest and drops so much harder to event make it but look at the recommend / required level on these 69/70. Seems like a waste on most of the pieces because by the time u get to 69/70 you probably been in MPG and wos enough to have won better armor. Also the Hp on this armor doesn't match up to the amount of hp / mana they have if u compair to ac on EP vs hp/ mana on EP u will see what i mean. I think alot of these trade skill armors seem unbalanced from what soe said they wanted to do with them. They said they wanted to make armor sets that u could trade skill for urself as u leveled but once again by the time u can make the armor it is no longer an upgrade for u.

[Arny]

Not only is the quest and drops so much harder to event make it but look at the recommend / required level on these 69/70. Seems like a waste on most of the pieces because by the time u get to 69/70 you probably been in MPG and wos enough to have won better armor.

Hard? It took me less than a week from finding what was available and which pieces I wanted, to completing my GM BP, legs, arms, boots, hands and helmet, and that is months less time than it took me to obtain the equivalent ldon gear.

With the exception of the bracers, which are way off the mark, there is no way in hell you are going to find better gear in MPG and WoS, for plate classes at least. In GoD, OOW and higher end DoN ac is king and DoN cultural delivers it by the bucketful!

[Twistagain]

Well, we're a middle of the road guild...and the quest is definitely not EASY for me. /shrug

I think the armor is good...but I'm hardly amazed at it. I might be amazed if I thought there was a reasonable chance that I'd ever see enough hides/scales to make a full set.

[Cloud]

I gotten around 500 don points and still don't have all the quest items for the wood elf quest which means i could buy don armor which has better hp if i remember don't remember what the ac is. But i don't know what u are talking about the plate armor is extremely weak on hp and HP > AC if u have ever played a tank.

[Bengali]

At the very least, the head, hands, arms and feet should all be the same hp-wise, and the bracer only slighly behind those.

[tnexus]

I can't speak for them all, but as a Wood Elf having to collect in Thundercrest, I had absolutely NO problems collecting the items. It's great exp, Scales and Hides drop there, and I got points all in one swing. I know some are out of whack which should be addressed, but it was hardly a chore to do them.

[Bobaten]

I gotten around 500 don points and still don't have all the quest items for the wood elf quest which means i could buy don armor which has better hp if i remember don't remember what the ac is. But i don't know what u are talking about the plate armor is extremely weak on hp and HP > AC if u have ever played a tank.

The tricky thing about those absolute truths in EQ is the game keeps changing. While in the PoP era it was considered true that HP>AC for a tank, the general consensus now is that AC has surpassed hp in value. The big thing that made hp valuable was improving the efficiency of complete heal. Once your buffed hp gets above the healing cap of CH, the usefulness of hps drops of dramatically, while ac continues to scale up. That said, I'll agree that the GM bracer is weak.

[Wyvernwill]

I gotten around 500 don points and still don't have all the quest items for the wood elf quest which means i could buy don armor which has better hp if i remember don't remember what the ac is. But i don't know what u are talking about the plate armor is extremely weak on hp and HP > AC if u have ever played a tank.

I have to completely disagree with this statement also. Side information: My main is a lvl 70 Paladin with 455AA and 413 days played (0 bazaar time).

I also currently wear a Celestial Lorica and Kuuan Infantry Greaves. At this point, I am planing on most likely getting rid of both in favor of DON GM armors. I lose 1FT between the two, some resists if I remember right, but gain a fair amount of AC. Hps are not the primary focus, atleast for myself, nor many other paladins that I have spoken with, but the perk is... most high Ac items... generally have high hps with them.

[emandes]

/agree Wyv
I play a pala 70 too - partially elemental geared.
BP and greaves are hart to obtain in elementals and were outstaged by the DoN armor in terms of AC. I will upgrade my BP and greaves by DoN armor as soon as I can get hold on the items, have quest finished and my smithing skill in the range of 280+

The other slots are imho unbalanced when I compare this armor to the equivilant elemental armor i.e. trydans which has in all slots more AC and much more HP than DoN GMs for paladins and has also effects.

The informations of SOE about DoN armor made me think that they intended to make a set of elemental aquivilant armor available to family guild players so that they could group in zones which where only access restricted by level and not by key i.e. RSS. I've never seen a typical memeber of a family guild tank in RSS (it's even tricky for me with 2k AC and 11.2 khp) for several hours, 3 or 4 mobs ok (then cleric is oom). I guess that a fully DoN armor equipped pala 70 will have sth about 1900 AC but less than 10 k in hp, so he is not capable of tanking in RSS where he could get the apropriate hp augments to compensate the lack of hp of DoN armor.

I think that it will take such a player months to obtain the full set of DoN armor cause he has to skillup smithing too.

[Arny]

I guess that a fully DoN armor equipped pala 70 will have sth about 1900 AC but less than 10 k in hp, so he is not capable of tanking in RSS where he could get the apropriate hp augments to compensate the lack of hp of DoN armor.

The DoN armor enabled me, as a none raiding pally from a (very) small guild to reach 11.7k hp 2.7k ac fully buffed (and including 4x70hp, 4x25ac, 4x20ac rss augs), of course I skipped the bracers in favor of better, and I have close on the best available single group gear in the none visible slots, but just shows what can be achieved.

[emandes]

/cg arny - think you are a ubar or THE ubar pala of a non raiding guild. I play on KD and I've not seen a single pala tanking successfully in RSS that is not at least partially elemental geared. What AC and HP concerns I am in top 20 on our server with only time flagged palas ahead of me.
I do have to collect several RSS augs yet and hope to raid KT till summer.

[Wyvernwill]

/cg arny - think you are a ubar or THE ubar pala of a non raiding guild. I play on KD and I've not seen a single pala tanking successfully in RSS that is not at least partially elemental geared. What AC and HP concerns I am in top 20 on our server with only time flagged palas ahead of me.
I do have to collect several RSS augs yet and hope to raid KT till summer.

As for my gear... I have 1 piece of elemental loot in the Aid Grimel Earring. I have 1 piece of Time loot in Girdle of Restoration. That's it. The majority of my gear is through exp groups or from lower end PoP raids.

On a side note... I sit at 10969hps 1984ac. I tank RSS quite well. It is hard... a lot harder than any other zone I hunt, but AA's do make up for some lacking in stats. When I go to upgrade to the legs, I gain almost 40RAW ac, so in total, about 65-80 ac gained just from the leggings, Bp is another gain of 27 raw ac.

I will agree that the other slots really don't match up too well. Overall, I think the Bp/Legs are on par with omens dropped armors, but if they were aiming for close to elemental quality, Bp/Legs would need atleast a 25hp boost themselves. Boosting every slots hps by 25-35 would make them a lot better imo and still retain a good amount of balance gear wise.