Incoming Nerf to Elegant and Last Blood?

[KyrosKrane]

That's why I made the spreadsheet above. I'm hoping it gives us a solid, factual source we can reference to craft our counter-arguments. From my past discussions with the devs, I think we have a shot at swaying them if we can provide a solid, rational argument, using hard data, that shows why this is a bad idea. But, and here's the catch, it has to be argued from the basis of why the change is good for the game as a whole, not just good for tradeskillers.

[Nolrog]

There is a good summary Nolrog did concerning who said what on the DEV side:

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/po...opic_id=124761

Thanks. Was a suggestion on the forums to cull out dev posts, so people could read them and not have to wade thru all the other "discussions."

[solithan]

That is a false assumption. Many of the people affected by this change will not have the matching seal for the armor. I think it shows how out of touch you are with the issue that you would even think that is true.

No you miss read my statement or I worded it poorly, to quote myself:
They've already said that folks that dont have Seals will get a boost in stats, shouldn't this make people happy not upset?

Yes I know they are rare, aka folks that dont have them will benefit.

However the "sticky" issue is those folks that have the old seals and just went out and bougt the new armor saw a massive improvement, this "improvement" was deemed too massive and is being corrected.

People are jumping to the logical conclusion that it will end up geting totally awful and worse less then the old armor they had.

read :
Zacatac: Another problem with this whole thing is people are going to "balance" the armor out as if they have Last Bloods in every slot now. Just because a handful of tanks actually have 8 LBs doesn't mean all of us do. In fact I'm pretty sure I'll never have 8 LBs. Do you think a guild is going to stay in DP for years to outfit everyone with a full set?

Do you really think they'll balance it out that badly? Perhapse I have misplaced faith.

[Leana]

Wow, apparently my statement was wildly misunderstood. My issue with Solithan's statement was that he appeared to state that people will have the seals to match the armor they have. I think that is not true for a whole lot of people, because in my case and the case of just about everyone I know, they will end up with Elegant/Sublime armor and Last Blood/Bazu seals. These are the people that are the big loosers in SOE's recommended changes.

The fact is that people will have the best cultural armor they can make or purchase. For a good portion of the player base, that will be the top level of the armor. The raid portion of the armor comes from whatever progression your guild can handle. Assuming someone who can make or buy Elegant/Sublime armor will be raiding TSS/Soltaris is a false assumption.

Basically, it all depends on where your guild is in progression.

• If you are a grouper, you win assuming you stay with level 70 armor.
• If you are Anguish level, you are probably ok, unless you have been farming Shyra or have been working on DP access.
• If you are DP/DK level and have been purchasing LB/Bazu over the last two years, you lose.
• If you are TSS, it all depends on whether you invested in LB or not as to whether you are affected.
• If you are Soltaris+, you are probably unaffected.

[solithan]

Lots of people dont have any seals and they wont be adversly affected, infact odds are they might improve.

Sounds like you will be affected as the stats from the seal are being moved away from and not being applied to the armor you are currently wearing. However the armor you are now wearing even after change will likely be more then your old armor so you will still see an over all improvement, just not as big as it currently is.

Do you think the seal is going to get nerfed down to no stats at all?


Also I would hazard a guess that the drop rates,(that got nerfed) were way to high and thusly too many people ended up in sublime gear in the first place.

[Maevenniia]

I'm not going to call you out here but do you happen to have the link to the post where they said "everythings fine here now thanks how are you?" I'd just kinda like to read it to see what was promised.

Nolrog has a sticky thread at The Artisan's Way (EQlive tradeskill forum) called Cultural Changes: Dev Summary Post in which he is copying * pasting all Dev comments on the issue


To be thorough, since Nolrog doesn't link the original threads, the Dev posts confirming the Cultural was intended to be as-is, are in THIS THREAD :

Ngreth posted 11-14-2007:

I am not saying that in some ways it is not better (maybe HP/MANA/END), but in many ways it is not, especially with the Focus effects. The Focus effects are definitely inferiors to what you get from Solteris, especially if you stay with Last Blood.

BEFORE the bonus that a powersource adds this is a set of legs from Solteris (just the stats you are highlighting)

AC: 126
HP: +550 ENDUR: +550
Combat Effects: +12 Shielding: +5% Spell Shield: +3% Avoidance: +15 Stun Resist: +6% DoT Shielding: +3% Attack: +50 Regeneration: +5 Damage Shield: +4
Effect: Ferocity VII

Depending on what you are looking for, MUCH of this is superior to what you get with this symbol. If you are ONLY interested in HP sure (though I think the Powersource gives enough HP so really... no longer even superior there)

And as someone mentioned. Those augments are not going to be very common. Actually fairly rare.

And also, additionally as mentioned above, this is intended for level 80, not 75.


Message edited by Dev-Ngreth on 11/14/2007 13:36:53.

Then Maddoc posted 11-15-2007

BastardLunatic wrote:

I spent DKP and a couple million plat to make 8 last bloods with a full set of cultural. I'm glad I'll be able to carry that investment of time and plat forward. These items only cover half the armor slots, they are going to have very inferior focus and mods, and it's going to take a lot of time, effort and plat to add them to a complete set of level 80 cultural armor and symbols. I still have 13 other slots to fill, and I'm going to have to continue raiding to get those slots filled.

All you elitists are actually shooting yourselves in the foot. This is another avenue for you to get undergeared recruits up to a raidable level for you. Spend more time learning new events, rather than the boring recruit/regear farmfest death spiral that has been the EQ raiding scene for years.

For mid tier guilds, a nice non raid boost to 1/3rd of your slots is not going to cause any guild to collapse. If anything, it's going to make your progression a lot less stressful. You can progress faster to the modern content and you will have a lot less farming to do along the way.

If you truly believe that last bloods plus the new armor is superior to solteris armor, then go farm DP and spend about 5 million plat making a full set of 80 cultural armor, symbols, AAAA's and mechanoinstructions.

BastardLunatic wrote:

I spent DKP and a couple million plat to make 8 last bloods with a full set of cultural. I'm glad I'll be able to carry that investment of time and plat forward. These items only cover half the armor slots, they are going to have very inferior focus and mods, and it's going to take a lot of time, effort and plat to add them to a complete set of level 80 cultural armor and symbols. I still have 13 other slots to fill, and I'm going to have to continue raiding to get those slots filled.

That pretty much sums up the entire reason why I designed the cultural armor system this way from the beginning.

The overall time investment of getting all the pieces to make a piece of cultural armor and symbol is not trivial by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's likely faster and easier to go out with a group or raid and kill rares / complete quests / whatever to get an equivalent piece of gear.

The overall time investment of getting a raid-level augment for the cultural is no less than getting a raid-level piece of loot from the corpses of the same guys dropping the last blood, except... It requires that you have the base armor and symbol itself just to wind up with gear that's as good as the other raid drops (not counting Last Bloods, since they were high on the AC side of things).

The fact that a player can take their last blood augment and put it in a piece of level 80 cultural armor is really not as powerful as you may think, for a number of reasons.

First, the base armor and symbol have no focus effects at all, which makes them a pretty drastic downgrade from just about any group-attainable piece of gear you can find for the same slots. That instantly makes it less desirable, even if it may have a slight hp advantage.

Second, the focus effects on the last blood augments are going to be subpar to any group-attainable piece of gear. The net effect is that the level 80 cultural armor and symbol with a last blood augment in it now has a maintenance cost associated with it. That maintenance cost is the extra mana consumed by having subpar effects. That maintenance cost isn't just affecting the player wearing the armor, it's may also affect the group of that player by making larger / more frequent heals necessary or causing additional downtime.

Any benefit that you can see to allowing the last blood augments to be used in the level 80 gear is easily countered by a drawback in the armor, and for what the cultural armor system has in flexibilty, it certainly makes up for it in drawbacks.


BastardLunatic wrote:

All you elitists are actually shooting yourselves in the foot. This is another avenue for you to get undergeared recruits up to a raidable level for you. Spend more time learning new events, rather than the boring recruit/regear farmfest death spiral that has been the EQ raiding scene for years.

That was high on our list of priorities when we worked on the cultural armor system as well, and I know of more than a few guilds that used the last bloods as exactly that; A way to gear up undergeared people or recruits.

and then Maddoc posted again 11-15-2007:

Nirmalti wrote:

So for those melee classes that don't use the foci of their LB items....its just free 200hp per slot?

If the remainder of the items they're wearing covers whatever melee effects they would otherwise be using from the Last Bloods, then yes it's a few exta hp for them if they spend the hours / days / weeks getting the money or the pieces to craft the level 80 armor.

[Maevenniia]

The only question is, then, what is "just right" for the stats on the elegant/sublime/last blood combination? Note that this ONLY affects the raid version of the cultural armors, not the group version.

This is teh problem....nerfing teh Lsst Bloods, which are a RAID DROP, goes directly against SOE's own position that Raid items > Tradeskilled items.

I am a tradeskiller, but I am also a raider ...mid-tier, in fact. I don't have ANY Last Bloods yet (I keep being outbid, darn those tanks...) but this will affect my guildmates, they spent their DKP (well, we call it ERP=Earned Raid Points) and will see their legitimately earned RAID acquired items, nerfed. I am positive that if a few months down the road, SOE were to nerf all the newly acquired Faycite Seals, which only high-end raiders will have access to for teh forseeable future (given what content they drop in) that those raiders would scream long and loudly about it.

[solithan]

Thanks Maevenniia, that sorta clears it up for me. As it would appear the folks we thought were in charge of this, were told exactly what we planed on doing with all this. They said, yep its all good. Now they are coming along and saying "woah hmm yeah we didn't mean that". I can see why folks are upset they were lied to.

But didn't the president of the United States one say, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...Can't be fooled again!" ?
Maybe I'm jaded but why am I not suprised they changed their mind or lied to us.

[Leana]

Lots of people dont have any seals and they wont be adversly affected, infact odds are they might improve.

Sounds like you will be affected as the stats from the seal are being moved away from and not being applied to the armor you are currently wearing. However the armor you are now wearing even after change will likely be more then your old armor so you will still see an over all improvement, just not as big as it currently is.

Do you think the seal is going to get nerfed down to no stats at all?


Also I would hazard a guess that the drop rates,(that got nerfed) were way to high and thusly too many people ended up in sublime gear in the first place.

No, I don't think they will get nerfed to no stats at all. No one thinks that. SOE can't be that confused on the situation. However, if the stated goal is to make the Last Blood gear less than Soltaris, it will take a significant hit, Everything from Last Blood down will lose more AC/HP than I'd like to think.

Furthermore, I know that the net result will be better than what I was wearing prior to the release. That goes without saying as well. It only makes common sense that level 80 cultural will be superior to level 70 cultural and that is what I was wearing at the time.

Neither of those were things I feared and you are off base if you think so.

Nor am I as alarmed as a lot of people appear to be, so please don't try to paint me in that corner. I am concerned that the changes SOE is contemplating will adversely affect morale of players at my level of play, perhaps adversely affecting our raiding in the near future. In addition, it will adversely affect the value of tradeskill items. If key people in the raid force, namely tanks get upset and quit playing (they don't have to cancel accounts, just have to lose interest in playing), then it will likely have a significant impact on our play.

SOE's misdirection to all the players by first standing on the point, then flip-flopping has upset a lot of people who have been collecting what was the most AC/HP option available to them. They have spent considerable effort over an extended period of time working on getting and improving that path. Now, that path will be watered down to where it is no longer as effective as it used to be. This undermines their efforts over many months of work. You can't expect that they will be happy about this.

As a mid level raider and a crafter, I will be agitated by this event until the true impacts are known. I hope that states my concerns clear enough.

[rasi]

No you miss read my statement or I worded it poorly, to quote myself:
They've already said that folks that dont have Seals will get a boost in stats, shouldn't this make people happy not upset?

Yes I know they are rare, aka folks that dont have them will benefit.

However the "sticky" issue is those folks that have the old seals and just went out and bougt the new armor saw a massive improvement, this "improvement" was deemed too massive and is being corrected.

People are jumping to the logical conclusion that it will end up geting totally awful and worse less then the old armor they had.

read :
Zacatac: Another problem with this whole thing is people are going to "balance" the armor out as if they have Last Bloods in every slot now. Just because a handful of tanks actually have 8 LBs doesn't mean all of us do. In fact I'm pretty sure I'll never have 8 LBs. Do you think a guild is going to stay in DP for years to outfit everyone with a full set?

Do you really think they'll balance it out that badly? Perhapse I have misplaced faith.

You don t have misplaced faith... the fact that you have any faith left shows you are really an optimist.(which is a good thing)
Its been proven over and over again that a Sony representative can t be trusted...they just plain lie... a lot of them are incompetent (Can any one remember the last time a patch was done without at least 2 patches needed to rectify what was screwed up? )
As a member of the 2100 club i can only conclude... why the heck did i bother in the first place?

rasi

[Aldier]

However the "sticky" issue is those folks that have the old seals and just went out and bougt the new armor saw a massive improvement, this "improvement" was deemed too massive and is being corrected.

New items are upgraded and deemed to massive of an upgrade so they are going to nerf the old seals?

What kind of logic is that?

[Veril]

OK, I'm a mid tier raider. I spent 6 months getting all 8 of my Last Blood seals, while others spent theirs on DPoB gear instead. Now the new Cultural armor comes out, and of course I start working on getting that stuff...

Your existing lastblood + grandmaster armour/seal are all as good as before, ands will be as good as before. You have lost nothing on the gear you got before SoF

[Veril]

Next expansion with level 85 and new cultural, the level 80 stuff will be rebalanced also just like is happening for ther 70 and 75 now

[Archus]

Your existing lastblood + grandmaster armour/seal are all as good as before, ands will be as good as before. You have lost nothing on the gear you got before SoF

I got my last bloods before SoF. IF the changes go in (and they may not now), I will login one day and the Last Blood will have lesser stats than it had the day before. So, yes, I WILL have lost something on the gear I got before SoF.

[Taadieri]

To me, power sources are something of an odd duck. From what I've been told, if you equip a power source only during raid time, each power source will last you maybe one week of raiding. And on average, you get something like 30 power sources per clearing of Solteris (assuming everyone spends raid currency on power sources), which means that more or less half your guild will have a power source at any given time.

With that low a drop rate, I'm not sure how fair it is to include power sources in these comparisons. It's not an always-on thing, but it does add significantly during crunch time when you have it equipped. Add in the variability in stats for power sources, and it becomes a guessing game. A power source that removes AC and adds mana/endurance may be great for a caster, but no tank in his right mind would make that tradeoff. What about a power source that adds AC/hp but reduces all mod2's? How do you value you that?

For comparison purposes, I tend to value a power source at 50hp and ignore the other stats. That's assuming that the other positives and negatives more or less cancel each other out, particularly across classes. That's just my guess, though.

As far as I can tell from my research, there is nothing to stop you from using the any Energian Orbs with the raid armor, the raid bought power sources give better stats but given the price, I can't see why anyone would use them unless the currency used for power sources can't be used for anything else.

Assuming this is correct, the Misty or Translucent Energian Elemental Orb gives any raid level (75 purity) armor the follow stats to each piece:

Ac+6 Hp+56 All stats+11 All resists+17 (except corruption)

Adjust down for lower purity on group gear, adjust up if armor has the type 13/14 purity increase augment.

There are other choices, but elemental is the most balanced choice with no negatives.