Balance between Type-12 Seals and other Raid Gear

[Bobaten]

The key word in this sentence

Everything she drops is intended to be "low quality" compared to what the raid force attempting her is wearing (Anguish gear).

is "intended".
Heck yeah we farmed the bejeezus out of Shyra. In December 2005 our raid schedule was: Plane of time, Inktu'ta, Uqua, MPG trial of Hatred, and Shyra. Shyra was by far the best loot we were getting at that time. But the event was not intended to be as easy as it is, you really aren't supposed to be able to single pull her. The target was "intended" for Anguish level raids trying to key for the next raid zone. That's just not how it worked out. But just because there were errors in the last round of type 12 seals (Bazus easier to aquire than intended, everything accidently tuned to chain AC instead of plate), doesn't mean we can expect those errors to propagate forward 2 years later to the next level of seals.

In short, they messed up 2 years ago and made them more powerful than they intended, and this time they are trying not to make the same mistake on the new seals.

[Aldier]

In short, they messed up 2 years ago and made them more powerful than they intended, and this time they are trying not to make the same mistake on the new seals.

By nerfing that 2 year old content? They are not changing the new Faycite augs. They are going to reduce the Serpent and Sunshard augs slightly but they did not even GAIN any AC over the LB augs to begin with.

[Bobaten]

They will have after next month .

[Aldier]

They will have after next month .

Not from my understanding of what they were going to be doing.

The way I read the nerf is that Faycite will remain at 45ac, and that LB, Serpent, and Sunshard are going to be reduced in ac with the Elaborate and the new Level 75 armor that will be added will gain some ac to keep the "sets" balanced to what they are now.

This means that unless you magically can go from raiding DP/DK to raiding SoF, you will LOSE ac. While a caster doesn't care much about ac, that is a HUGE nerf to tanks.

Issue: LB augs were deemed to have more ac than intended.
Solution: upgrades to the LB augs would not see any increase in ac.

Fine, problem solved.

But no, the few top end people that have not gotten their 1000+ hp/mana items with comparable ac, YET, to keep them well ahead of the rest of the players whine so the situation changes.

Issue: LB augs were deemed to have more ac than intended.
Solution: Nerf 2 year old (5 expansion old) content and make the NEW top of the line level 80 augments have the same ac as LB had.

[Wymp]

But no, the few top end people that have not gotten their 1000+ hp/mana items with comparable ac, YET, to keep them well ahead of the rest of the players whine so the situation changes.

This is the root cause of most all nerfs to non-raid content, imo. They can't stand not being constantly miles ahead of the rest of us.

And, unfortunately, it's not something I imagine Ngreth has much control over.


So, keep that in mind and cut the guy a little slack when some things conflict tradeskills with other content.

There are many other devs with agendas for content, while he is the only TS dev.

[Zopharr]

Issue: LB augs were deemed to have more ac than intended.
Solution: upgrades to the LB augs would not see any increase in ac.

Fine, problem solved.

But no, the few top end people that have not gotten their 1000+ hp/mana items with comparable ac, YET, to keep them well ahead of the rest of the players whine so the situation changes.

Issue: LB augs were deemed to have more ac than intended.
Solution: Nerf 2 year old (5 expansion old) content and make the NEW top of the line level 80 augments have the same ac as LB had.

When the 'Blue Diamond" cultural came out with Luclin, the visible Fierce Heraldic had 2 less AC than the Skyshrine quest armor from Velious (the preceeding expansion for those who don't recall); ogres could chose another version with 5% more AC and 20% more HP. (The advantages for no-warriors was even better.) No effects on the smithed gear, however - that was the balance. So cultural gear outclassing previous expansion gear in some aspects is not something new.

I can't recall if there was an outcry, but if so, SOE ignored it. I guess the game didn't have any "integrity" then.

The game seems to have survived, even prospered though- SOE was opening new servers, not merging them.

[Bobaten]

The way I read the nerf is that Faycite will remain at 45ac, and that LB, Serpent, and Sunshard are going to be reduced in ac with the Elaborate and the new Level 75 armor that will be added will gain some ac to keep the "sets" balanced to what they are now.

This means that unless you magically can go from raiding DP/DK to raiding SoF, you will LOSE ac. While a caster doesn't care much about ac, that is a HUGE nerf to tanks.

My understanding is that no one is going to have less AC than they had a month ago. If you still are wearing your Last Bloods with Elaborate, your AC will remain the same. If you upgraded to Elegant your AC will go down from what it is now, but still be better than it was when you were wearing Elaborate.

When the 'Blue Diamond" cultural came out with Luclin, the visible Fierce Heraldic had 2 less AC than the Skyshrine quest armor from Velious (the preceeding expansion for those who don't recall); ogres could chose another version with 5% more AC and 20% more HP. (The advantages for no-warriors was even better.) No effects on the smithed gear, however - that was the balance. So cultural gear outclassing previous expansion gear in some aspects is not something new.

I can't recall if there was an outcry, but if so, SOE ignored it. I guess the game didn't have any "integrity" then.

The game seems to have survived, even prospered though- SOE was opening new servers, not merging them.

The major difference between then and now, is that Blue Diamond Cultural did not get introduced at the launch of Luclin, but rather 6 months later. So the high end raiders had already had time to upgrade beyond Velious gear. I suspect if Elegant and Sublimes weren't introduced until next May, we wouldn't have thousands of posts arguing about them.

[Brael]

One of the biggest power factors of any piece of gear is the power and level of the focus effect it has. Thus although Bazu and Last Blood Seals have quite nice stats, the fact that their foci cap at 67 and 70 is a significant disadvantage to using them - thus (in their current pre-nerf state) they are balanced.

I understand now however, from details on another thread, that Sunshard Seals are being given weaker % foci and lower level capped foci than is on other gear *that drops from the exact same raid event*. Presumably it is also similar for the Serpents Seals.

I don't particularly want to begin arguing over this change and why it's a good thing overall on this board too (btw, non raiders really luck out here... anyone with the spare cash should really be picking up loam/marrow/fluid from people cheap while this whole misinformation thing is going on, cultural without a type 12 can only go up as a result of the change and atleast 90% of cultural goes to that purpose) but focus effects are near meaningless at this point of the game with the exceptions of damage effects for dots, mp, and haste. A case could also be made for range but it's a bit situational from person to person. There are several reasons behind this... to list a few of them (and hopefully this doesn't start class balance arguments since that's not my intention... only to show why several focus effects are of marginal benefit now):

1. Focus size - When you're running a 1-75 chance, 1-55 chance, and so on while the averages go up, you still hit those smaller numbers on occasion. In addition to this atleast in grouping situations those higher values goto waste often by healing HP that aren't missing, doing more damage to an NPC than is necessary, and short fights not giving an effect time to really average out in any given encounter.

2. Healing focus - Overheal. For the same reason many higher level heal spells are of marginal value (ancient hallowed light still gets the job done for clerics... and if you've geared up right has a superior ratio to solemn with max focus currently) higher focus effects are also of marginal value. What good is rolling a high focus when a crit will usually heal more than what's needed?

3. Lack of stacking - Wizards take the biggest "hit" (if it can be called that) here because they have the most ways to add damage to a nuke which ignore focus effects. Damage focus takes the base damage, puts that through the focus roll, and adds that damage on at the end. There are several other effects which also add damage though. Going through a short list and using Wizards for an example with rank 2 spells (Inizen's Fire Rk. II for the example)
Base: 6125
Crit (28% rate +80% damage): 3087
Focus: 1561.88 (50%/70), 2327.5 (75%/80)
Resurgance: 1828.01
Familiar: 1071.88
Tangleweave: 757.98
Pyromancy: 750
Bard focus: 1010.63
Bard damage: 824.19

There's something I'm forgetting too but it's not really important, what's listed is plenty to prove the point. The difference in the average size of those nukes is 17016.57 vs 17782.19 that's Last Blood vs Crystallos focus. Only a 4.499% increase. As I said however, Wizards get hit the worst there (or get an advantage depending on if you look at that as meaning they're the least reliant on focus effects) but any class relying on DD's to do damage has similar things happen. It really reduces the value of focus.

You are right about Sunshard focus however. Currently it's most likely too close to the other focus effects in Solt. In the case of the poison damage focus (and I think disease... I know it's one of them) it's the same percentage and even goes up to 77 while the others are the same percentage but to 75. Compared to the focus effects Bloods have they would make much more sense at Serpent being 50% to 75 and Sunshards being 55% to 75. Atleast for the bigger effects. MP on type 12's has always been equal minus the cap level, and distance I don't remember offhand.

[Aldier]

LB focus effects are to level 70. So a level 80 player, using their top spells will be getting HALF of the focus at best. This is the balance of using an LB aug in the cultural armor versus having a piece of raid gear from Solteris. Assuming the stats on the gear are the same.

50% to 70, on a level 80 nuke, will only give you 1-25%. There is a bigger difference than you let on. Also, if you want to think that using new spells WITHOUT mana preservation and spell haste is no big deal, then you either have much better gear for the content you are doing, or have others carrying most of the load for you.

The issue is still that the balance exists in that the cultural + LB does not have the focus effect to compete with the solteris raid gear. The cultural is based on level 80 armor needs in a new expansion and solteris is no longer the top raid gear. The Serpent, Sunshard, and Faycite augs were not given ac increases over the Last Blood augs because the developers felt that LBs were too strong for their time. Now, in addition to that restriction they are wanting to go back and nerf 2 year old content that was and still is balanced for its time.

[Bedazzlerr]

LOL if you think your prices listed are high transfer over to my server. High end TS bp 400k, sublime to go on it 600K no we have not talked about the aug another 600+k. So if you get away with about 300k for all dont wine trust me. Also this expansion was not about high end raiders etc, its about briniging the mid base peopel more inline to retain them so that they can do stuff. I am in a family guild who still raids PoP, moving to time soon and wan to hit CoA. I do not as most in my guild have time to spend raiding all the time. Guess what this is a big boon to us andwe realize we now have a chance to get some where. Most of our guys have mid armor at 75 so anything is a boot. I am grateful that they decided to look after my kind for a change after so many expansion geared only for raiders. LOL remember ldon was suppose to have solo events in it but got nerfed. SOE finaly had the balls to recoginize the game doesnt fully revolve around raiding and there are way more casual players today. Many who started at beginiing have quit, fore various reasons but I know alot due to burn out. They have erpeatedly said there isnt going to be much of a nerf in statistics. infact stated alot will be picked up in the armor and it wodl be minor. If youthink 100 hp makes or breaks your raid well then you need to do somethign else. 500 to 1000 is minimum today.


Have fun and flame
EX high end raider

[Sliggoth]

The really fun part about this upcoming nerf is how slowly the bulk of the player base is coming to understand whats going to happen. When I brought up this upcoming nerf in our raid chat only one other person had heard about it, and even he hadnt at that time read enough to understand the effects.

However, almost a quarter of the channel knew about the cultural armor as original to the sof expansion. Many people have gotten a piece or two of the new armor, usually spending most of their available resources to get the armor made.

The bulk of the player base doesnt understand that these nerfs are going to be made because two posts lost in the mass of the soe boards just isnt good information presentation.

And the bulk of the player base is still spending their resources to obtain these items...not realizing that they are soon to be nerfed.

It might be a good idea for someone to get an information update into the game just to stop people from wasting any more time and resources on items that may soon be worse than items that they are replacing.



If anyone thinks the current level of outrage is bad, just imagine what will happen: people spend a lot of time and resources getting the new TS items, destroy old gear, nerfs go in and now the TS combo they are using drops in ac (or hp, or mana) to lower than their old destroyed gear.


Sliggoth, druid/ tradeskiller of 7th Hammer

[Twistagain]

The bulk of the player base doesnt understand that these nerfs are going to be made because two posts lost in the mass of the soe boards just isnt good information presentation.

And the bulk of the player base is still spending their resources to obtain these items...not realizing that they are soon to be nerfed.

This is true...but to some of those people (those without LB/Bazu augs), the armor will get BETTER. Another problem is that you go to bazaar and some mid-tier raider is telling people not to buy elegant because it's being nerfed. When you say that the armor/symbol is getting better and the slot 12s are getting worse, they completely ignore that and still spew that the ARMOR is getting nerfed. This causes confusion in the player base. I've been trying to point people to the threads and have them actually read them, but quite frankly, those threads are also full of misinformation.

[Brael]

50% to 70, on a level 80 nuke, will only give you 1-25%. There is a bigger difference than you let on. Also, if you want to think that using new spells WITHOUT mana preservation and spell haste is no big deal, then you either have much better gear for the content you are doing, or have others carrying most of the load for you.

50% to 70 on a level 80 nuke is a 25% focus, a 25% focus is 13% damage on average (worn focus roll 1-X buff focus roll 0-X). You're right though, I made a small math error there and checked the 50/70 focus as it's max degraded value instead of half. Focus should have read 796.25 (50%/70) and 2327.5 (75%/80) so it should be:
Base: 6125
Crit (28% rate +80% damage): 3087
Focus: 796.25 (50%/70), 2327.5 (75%/80)
Resurgance: 1828.01
Familiar: 1071.88
Tangleweave: 757.98
Pyromancy: 750
Bard focus: 1010.63
Bard damage: 824.19

Overall damage of 16250.94 vs 17783.19. I forgot spell damage mods to but to leave the comparison the same as in the first post I won't add it in. You're still under a 10% difference between Last Bloods and Crystallos focus. There is a difference which actually matters in spell haste and mana pres but I mentioned that in the first post. Damage effects are of marginal benefit because of all the different ways there are to add damage which don't get effected by it. Heal effects are of marginal benefit because overheal can exist on every single cast (too much damage can only exist on the last cast). Regardless though, you have to admit that's a very small difference in spell power for the vast difference in those content tiers so the focus effect isn't all that important.

Of course, they clearly feel the differences between the armor when it comes to offensive abilities are fine, otherwise they would adjust attack, mod 2's, focus effects, and so on rather than simply focusing on the HP/Mana/End.

[solithan]

This is true...but to some of those people (those without LB/Bazu augs), the armor will get BETTER. Another problem is that you go to bazaar and some mid-tier raider is telling people not to buy elegant because it's being nerfed. When you say that the armor/symbol is getting better and the slot 12s are getting worse, they completely ignore that and still spew that the ARMOR is getting nerfed. This causes confusion in the player base. I've been trying to point people to the threads and have them actually read them, but quite frankly, those threads are also full of misinformation.

Huzaa!

If anyone thinks the current level of outrage is bad, just imagine what will happen: people spend a lot of time and resources getting the new TS items, destroy old gear, nerfs go in and now the TS combo they are using drops in ac (or hp, or mana) to lower than their old destroyed gear.

Ah the ever pesimist, I'll bet your wrong and the old destroyed gear wont be better. Guess we wont know until they change it eh?