Incoming Nerf to Elegant and Last Blood?

[Ngreth Thergn]

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

A handful of folks have complained about the lack of level requirements on dwerium jewelry, so it's scheduled to get "nerfed."

well. I had always planned on recommended / required levels (and have since dropped the thought of required), but got soooo busy at the end of the expansion that I frankly dropped the ball.

[Ngreth Thergn]

"The numbers" evidently indicate to SoE that too many of these items are already making it "into the game," so some have been adjusted down. Now, it's impossible for most of us to understand which numbers they are using to make this decision - is this number of drops (i.e. drop rate), number looted, number appearing in bazaar, number actually used in making armor, number of armors actually appearing in the market, or ?????

We found people with literally more than a hundred eminent symbols (spread over more than one bazaar mule) in the bazaar... and confirmed that they were not duping items... they legitimately made them.

[Quaras]

Away from the tirades of the SOE boards about this, I am still completely confused about what is actually being proposed here.

Lets say I have Elegant plus Sublime plus Bazu on a set of cultural leggings right now -- that settles in at 630hp/mana. Does this mean that Elegant plus Sublime stay the same and Bazu drops from 180hp/mana to 100? If so, I know that a lot of folks in my guild who have been focusing on slot 12 drops lately will get quite cranky. If the nerfs are more moderate (50hp/mana) I think folks will adjust. The problem is it is hard to tell what the actual baseline target is going to be.

[MumbaJumba]

We found people with literally more than a hundred eminent symbols (spread over more than one bazaar mule) in the bazaar... and confirmed that they were not duping items... they legitimately made them.

Hmm... I seriously hope the House ogre made a booboo and wrote down the wrong name on the symbol.

The EMINENT symbol is the lvl70 symbol from DoN that used to use metallic drake scales. So no wonder you find bazaar mules with hundreds of those.

The EXHALTED however, and the SUBLIME however are hard to find. At least on Antonius Bayle. 8 sublimes for sale as i speak,0 exhalted and yes, hundreds of eminent.

So basically my next question would be, did the house ogre make a booboo here on the board or here on the board and in the research he made to adjust the rates?

[Bobaten]

Well, to be fair, the Alkalai Loam and Flawless Spinneret fluid were dropping a month before the expansion launched, so people had time to stock up. I know I had 40ish on a mule before the expansion even launched.

[Roanne]

We clearly need *specifics* on what adjustments will be made to properly react.

Little changes will minimize outrage but not really solve the "problem." Big changes will bring big outrage. As a warrior invested in LB aug combos, this will be the metaphoric straw that breaks the camel's back if it greatly hurts me. On the plus side, maybe enough people will quit so servers can be merged to get remaining populations up.

The gist of the issue is that players sink time, pp, and DKP into researching and acquiring the most cost effective upgrades. Now SoE comes along and depreciates the value of those investments without effective warning. The practice is certainly not unprecedented but indirect message board posts alluding to the possibility of items being evaluated do not constitute effective warning.

In no uncertain terms, this is a nerf. Again, the question remains how much of one.

Yes, SoE developers have stated in the past they felt Last Blood augmentations were too good, but also said the effect of that would be in higher tier augs not improving as much as opposed to the LB aug being toned down. What did they think would be the effect of lowering the utility of upgrading the line? This appears to be a complete reversal of that approach with a creative spin to imply this change was planned all along.

I dont see a lot worth in, "move[ing] some of the stats from the seals into the symbol and armor of the set and out of the seals of the set." This will clearly make Elegant armor and Sublime symbols better in the 80-80-LB combo, presumedly at the expense of the LB seal to lower the overall stats of that specific combo. The problem with this is it simultaneously makes every 70-70-anything except LB combo better (unless those symbols are simultaneously devalued by the same amount, but as pointed out by Gaell, theres not enough room in the lower seals to do this --Last Blood seals are clearly the inflating augmentation in the progression--). The overall effect is that if the 70-70-LB combo remains unchanged after the shifts, something has to absorb the "inflation." Since the only way to make the 80-80-LB worse but keep the 80-80-Faycite also stable is to shift fewer of the stats from the seals as their tiers increase, it seems Chronal, Discordant, and Bazu combos should get better. The "inflation" is shifted from the specific level where most players are currently playing to the lower tiers where people consider the stats from the seals unworthy of the cost to produce them.

This revision also begs the question of how specific slots will be rebalanced. Every slot of cultural armor at every tier has a slot for a type 12 aug. Every Last Blood seal (or any other type 12 augmentation label) has the exact same stats no matter what armor piece it goes into. If all Last Blood seals are reduced in stats by a specific amount, to remain true to the principle that the 70-70-LB set will remain unchanged, every Elaborate armor-Eminent Symbol combo has to be increased by that same amount. This inflates the "group gear" stats of the combo without the "raid gear" type 12 augmentation to a point it may become better than same tier raid gear in the case of traditionally lower stat slots like wrists and feet.

Same problem, new location. If your just going to redesign the "problem," don't change anything.

Hopefully the revised 80-80-LB or 75-75-LB combos will remain technical upgrades from the 70-70-LB combo (and how could they not?) but the question becomes whether the new stats would warrant the original cost to the individual.

In fairness to players who are already invested in the gear as it was released and feel the redefined gear no longer warrants the original cost, a means to compensate them aught to accompany the change. I don't know if this would be as simple as returning the augment in exchange for the AAAA, mechanoinstruction, seal, goo, and stone with a means to somehow trade the stone from something useful or an intermediate drop that helps upgrade the old stone to an equivalent new one.

Probably the solution will be a sloppy implementation of simple stat changes to see how many people get frustrated enough to quit playing, but I'm a pessimist.

Id encourage anyone who feels strongly about this issue to post on the SoE forum linked above and to submit /feedback in game. The developers are clearly listening to the vocal minority (who are right in their way but at no fault to the greater majority who will be adversely affected by this change).

[Deviator]

the only way to really fix this would be to lower the stats on sublime/elegant that hasnt yet been made... and only after a set amount of notice... like say a month. this way people who have spent tons of plat to get their sets made still have time to finish them and keep the stats they paid for, and those who already have the sets in anticipation of getting last bloods dont get screwed because they had to wait for them.

[olts]

this is bad. really bad. at least for my guild: our raid force kinda folded 1 year ago (much thx to vanguard), now ppl come back and we rdy again to redo demi - because of last bloods. as a small raiding guild we are in no position to do tss / tbs or sof atm. so demi and por is the way to go atm.

without the valuable last bloods, demi and por are pointless though. result: no raids - or tackling some undoable targets (and before ya say: they not undoable: i have raided up to solteris, i know pretty much what is doable and what is not for us. and tss / tbs are not). this will lead to frustration, this will lead - again - to quitting ppl. and this might kill the guild. and i know, my guild isnt the only guild with this problem.

the new cultural gave mid / low lvl guilds a chance to catch up. it also was fun for us tradeskillers. with this change you take it away - the chance to catch up and much of the fun.

i am very disappointed, even if we dont know yet how hard the nerf will be. it has to be hard though, otherwise you cant satisfy the whiners that got that nerf happen.

you do a great job ngreth, but this is plain sad and not needed.

caero snowbunniesbane
80 paladin of tunare
forgotten nemesis
firona vie
2100 in tradeskills

[penasi]

As one whom rarely complains and just takes what is given - I have to roll my eyes at this one.

Highest lvl raiders have their e-peepee challenged so they raised a stink. The tanks in my guild are going to be affected.

I'm not one that will threaten to quit over something that Sony does. What will make me eventually leave the game some day is when my friends don't play anymore. I pray this doesn't drive any tanks away from my guild. We're a mid lvl raid guild with a ton of time spent in demi - and have the augs we depend on becouse of it.

Seems wierd that those that design the game would adjust the stats on last bloods and not the newer items to balance it. Surely they realize how this will affect many of us.

Oh well- back to hitting "combine".

[Zolina]

My main concern is that many people destroyed their old armor to make room for the new cultural armor. If the cultural gets nerfed, they'll have to scramble to win the armor that they destroyed all over again, just to get back to where they were before the expansion came out.

[Abazagaroth]

We found people with literally more than a hundred eminent symbols (spread over more than one bazaar mule) in the bazaar... and confirmed that they were not duping items... they legitimately made them.

So what?

What did you expect when you let them drop from stuff like dodh missions and katta missions for a MONTH before release?

Not to mention, what do you expect when you have a barter system and people with 10s to 100s of millions of platinum to purchase them?

I didn't try and farm, but had 38 exalted symbols worth of components on release day. I made around 180 or so symbols from one of the bazaar wheeler and dealers who had purchased ALL of the components.

I am flabbergasted that this was a surprise, and rather than just nerfing the drop rates to where you want them, OR modifying the armor/symbol stats and making group type 12s available and make the new tss/tbs/sof seals better than they are to compensate, so that last bloods become a non-issue, that you are going to make the seals worse and make the real problem (ac on armor and hp on symbols) worse.

I wasn't aware that people using the drops to make the equipment you put in game at the rates you put them in and the stats you put them in was a problem.

[Kross]

this nerf is really going to upset alot of people, myself included. i have destroyed alot of tss armor to go back to last bloods and i'm sure i wont' get reimurbsed for that.

we've known/discussed that the ac would not change on the upgrades to last blood augs in SoF, yet no one complained then. now that the solteris geared tanks see the new cultural and don't have their "edge" over demi raiding tanks then they throw a hissy.

for one, these are only visiable pieces and their jewelry and mods/focus effects are a little dated on last bloods to say the least. so what their ac and hp went up a ton with cultural. they didnt' get a bp hate mod, they didn't get cleave 7 or spell haste 7 etc. they gave casual grouping folks some reasonable upgrades and mid level raiding folks a kick in the butt so they can do some of the more fun content. (demi for a year isn't fun)

raiders were complaining about tss/tbs weapon drops being too rare, i dont' see anyone changing that? the cultural gear is fine how it is, people are just judging this whole entire expansion after seeing a month into it. they haven't seen the raid drops that are clearly going to change the view of cultural. heck half these people haven't been in crystallos where you can get 460+ hp/mana items (includling weapons, althought the damage/delay isn't that great) from groupable mobs....the catch is the trash here hits for 4kish max on alot of folks, and fast. the ac/hp on cultural is needed heh. its a flagged zone, not meant to be a raid zone, so why can't a casual or mid range raiding guild character that spends the time to complete the key reap the benifits? cultural was a way to let them experience more of SoF. theres mobs that hit for 10k here, we stay away from them for now, but after the 1k+ hp/mana raid gear is doable, guess what? end game raiders ontop again...

i really think that they should leave things alone or just scale the tss/tbs/sof raid augments a little in hp. nerfing last bloods after so long is ridiculous, and the serpent seal only being 40hp more with the next level of focus is kinda weak too, scale it a little better. i can't begin to imagine how much gear was either destroyed or how much time farming/skilling up/money or whatever it took people to get their new cultural armor made (smurf you porous loam! )

i think its personally more unfair to nerf at this point. the raiders who got their panties in a bunch in the first month of the 1 year duration expansion aren't looking at the full picture. (i'm raiding tss and tbs now, i'm not upset heh. i've seen tss raid quality gear drop in xp zones. little early to complain about anything besides bugs)

[Wymp]

Myself, I was extremely glad to see the high numbers on cultural. It would finally provide a way for more casual people to gear themselves up to handle the increasing difficulty of the group-game. No reason you should have to be raid-geared just to be able to find a group and survive in it.

I honestly don't think the gear, even in it's current state, is any threat to what is probably going to be obtained in the end-raids of SoF.


I wish the devs would quit caving to the demands and whinings of the so-called "elite" raiders. They are the minority of the playerbase. Regardless of what they accomplish.

The complaints are just because they (the "elite") aren't miles ahead of the group/mid-tier players still because of the available cultural options now.

They fail to acknowledge that to get that cultural gear to it's highest stats still takes RAID drops, so not just anyone can get it that high.

Sure Last Bloods aren't technically as hard to get as Sunshards or Faycites. IF you're a relatively dedicated raider. For the guilds just now getting to Demiplane, Deathknell, PoR, or whatever, it's still a pretty good challenge.

The complainers only seem to look at the difficulty from their perspective. So, sure .. if you're already in 800-1000hp gear from TBS, it's rather easy to get Last Bloods and make 600hp cultural.

If you're just now starting Demiplane in your 300hp CoA duds, then it's a significantly more challenging endeavor.


While I can somewhat see a need to fine tune the stats a tad, I don't think it's a situation that merits the hammer that is assumedly going to be dropped in January just to placate the overly-vocal minority .. who will not be affected by the change themselves whatsoever, btw.

Pretty easy for them to sit back and cry for a nerf when they're not interested in the cultural anyway, for the most part, since they're waiting for the raid drops from Crystallos/MMM.


For certain, it would be a good idea to get some numbers posted somewhere showing the stat-variance from different combinations post-change, imo.

Much, much better to be open about it than to just toss it out there and have people find out their hard-bought/crafted items are now less useful than their 2 expansion-old gear.

[Eclapton]

Perspective

This is the honest truth. There are many many players who belong to mid level raiding guilds who dont even have many last bloods yet.

My guild has yet to see even one yet but we have had many bazu stones so far. So all our tradeskillers are working to get ppl into Elaborate/Exalted/DON-12-Ametrine until we can get more bazu/lastbloods.

If this change happens, then those ppl with no bazu/lastblood will make out better. But those ppl who spent DKP on bazu will be hurting. Not to mention, the cancelling of raids for more bazu.

Keeping the stats on the Bazu/Lastblood is actually a GOOD IDEA. Its the one hard and difficult part of the tradeskill. Its the one part that tradeskillers cannot do. Just keep it as it is, and who cares that the current 'thinking' is that the 'innate' value of lastbloods is higher because of SOF cultural armors.

If the value of lastbloods has increased because of this, this is so much the better. The guilds who can easily farm them get more, the lesser geared ppl in those guilds make out like bandits with all the other rotting loots. And it gives a huge incentive to guilds to spread out all over several expansions and not just concentrate all in one expansion. This even creates more DON groups as ppl need more crystals for DON-12-Ametrines, not to mention more raids in DoDH and POR expansions. All this spread-out raiding is facilitated by the new higher lvl base armors and symbols.

It gives all kinds of benefits to tradeskillers but does NOT give tradeskillers the power to craft over powerful stuff. By decreasing the stats on the bazu/lastbloods, you are decreasing the incentive for guilds to raid for it.

If you feel that the eminent lvl symbol is too low powered, well, its an older aug now. The LDON augs are also low powered by todays standards. Thats ok also. I see ppl NOW doing more LDON's because of the type 3 augs they need for the new armors. This is actually good news. More variety available for ppl to do who were not here for the hay-day of LDON points.

Personally, I made myself a full set of elegant plate already. I dont have all the sublimes but you bet i have exalted symbols in those. I dont even have all the bazu augs, but you bet I have the DON12-ametrines in those slots.

If ppl have hundreds of eminent symbols on their bazaar mules its because the guilds have chosen to raid for better armors than elaborate/eminent and none are selling. SO WHAT! If ppl have hundreds of Exalted symbols on their traders, its because they see a market and want to supply that market! If the market goes down, then sales go down, and prices go down. Whoop de do. If the rate of drops on Alkali loams is too high, just tone it down. This is the normal way of dealing with this. Tune the drop rate on alkali loams the same way it was tuned on porous loams!!! EZ does it. Its perfectly fair. Most everyone will be ok with that.

So PLEASE PLEASE dont overpower tradeskillers and underpower the strength of a raid by increasing the tradeskilled part of your sets and de-valueing the raided part of those sets. If ppl want what you call a lvl 70 set of Elaborate/Eminent/Lastblood then just keep what we currently have in place. Us tradeskillers dont want to take away the strength of a raid!!

This is coming from a tradeskiller with 300 in all (except 297 tailoring)!!

[Quaras]

As almost a 9 year veteran, I cant say how sad I am about this. I understand the spot Ngreth and the Devs are in, but they should not feel the pressure from a bunch of folks who have not even seen the final raid content. I am hopeful that the response proposed is reconsidered and or muted as much as possible.