Cultural Changes - Proposed Change Examples

[Aaneras]

That is not something SOE should really care about. Your guild has its own system for determining if they will use DKP and how much each piece is used for. The fact that the items are nerfed, is up to your individual guild/alliance to determine if they wish to return DKP to people who chose to loot LBs over other armor.

I think the 75 armor will be helpful to tradeskillers as well as it will provide a reasonably priced alternative to crafted armor without having to jump to the price and trivial levels of Elegant/Sublime. When SOF came out, I was a bit shocked that there would be a symbol set without an armor set.

With these revisions the armor is really aimed at people who need raw stats for survivability - for raiders it is severely devalued for non-plate tanks. Or, to put it another way, it was already well behind SoF group gear for casters and priests in important metrics (focus effects in particular); it made up some of these defects with extra HP/MA. With those advantages removed, I can't see any reason for anyone with access to tier 2+ SoF group gear to equip it unless you're filling in a focus gap with a subpar item. I also can't see any reason to bother with the agony of a AAAA combine for a 75-100 HP/MA aug.

It is a handy way for a low-end grouper to boost their raw HP/MA to survive a bit longer in more challenging content. But it makes no sense for raiders outside a handful of classes if changed as indicated.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Apparently it is a myth that AC is gained with the change. The detailed spreadsheet NGreth supplied apparently shows a missing Bracer or an extra Bracer (I couldn't find it myself).

According to the self-proclaimed experts, AC will remain the same, HP will be cut by 700+ HP on a set of LB's.

Doh. I fixed that on HP summaries... missed it on AC summaries... oh well :/ (the summaries not the items)

[Gorse]

I'm a pretty easy going casual player that will take whatever happens.

If it was my choice, I would not nerf the last blood / bazu augs.


How would I do it different, if accepting the armor "as is" is not a solution? I would change the 80 (or 75 and 80) armor to make the type 12 slot into a different slot (call it type 16 slot) and then change all the augs after Last Blood to type 12 or type 16.



Gorse

[gggrant]

That is not something SOE should really care about. Your guild has its own system for determining if they will use DKP and how much each piece is used for. The fact that the items are nerfed, is up to your individual guild/alliance to determine if they wish to return DKP to people who chose to loot LBs over other armor.

I think the 75 armor will be helpful to tradeskillers as well as it will provide a reasonably priced alternative to crafted armor without having to jump to the price and trivial levels of Elegant/Sublime. When SOF came out, I was a bit shocked that there would be a symbol set without an armor set.

I am not sure about that. The only people that really would be interested in the level 75 armor would be those that do not have the SoF expansion.

We have a series of augs (the seals) that will be nerfed. Essentially, the last bloods will be worse than what the discordants now are. Yes, I know, they have better Mod2's and foci but the initial arguments for the change discounted these. Nobody will burn an AAAA to build a Last Blood Seal or a Bazu Seal. Considering how bad the new Discordants will be it would be an insane decision to burn an ABAA to make one of those seals. A single grouper would sneer at a Chronal Stone considering the cost (even using an ABAA) in either time (if they were capable of creating everything themselves) or platinum (if they weren't), and a single grouper would have to raid to get a chronal stone. Chronal and Discordant Stones will not be worth the effort to right click twice to loot. Last Blood Stones will become questionable even if they are converted to require an ABAA instead of an AAAA.

It could be argued that the critical supplies for making the AAAA's (and by extension ABAA's, AGAA's and AOAA's) are more common. Clockwork Bolts (only one needed for the ABAA) drop like rain now. But Glowgems, Glowrocks, Witherin Bile, etc. only drop in DoDh zones where very few people hunt. So the shortages are still there, they are just different than they were.

As for the armor itself. Level 75 armor is a waypoint. The goal of everyone is the level 80 armor and symbol. When you consider that the loams, marrows and spinneret fluids only drop in any reason quantity in Tier 4 zones (for the level 80 armor/symbols), this pretty much makes it raider only. Yes, I know it drops in Tier 3 zones (as it should), but the drop rate in those zones is such that a non-raider group are likely see all of their steamcores drop before they see any of this stuff. As it stands, a single grouper that wanted this armor would have to gear up with Tier 3 armor to hunt Tier 4 zones to make Tier 3 armor. This is a step in the right direction because currently the armor isn't even close to Tier 3 quality (as it will be), but what non-raider would do such a thing and why would they? SOE might as well cut the pretense on the level 80 armor/symbols and make the type 7 slot a type 8 and declare it raid armor.

Bazu Stones and below should be removed from the game. Last Blood Seals should be converted to use the ABAA. The AAAA should be removed from the game as it will no longer serve a purpose.

[gggrant]

I very much support adjustment to New Cultural armor be it through adjustment in Seals and/or Armor/Symbol.

I do understand disappointment of those who have gotten new armor at current stats but I ask you to please understand that this was an unreasonable situation that will create major issues as time goes on.

Losing 100 HP/Mana off current set up seems over the top but you also need to at least remind yourselves that you have gained a lot more than that. If new cultural armor is to be a reasonable alternative, and not just the only way to go, it needs to be balanced against other gear in progression.

If SoF is to raise all boats in Mid Tear raiding it cannot be so selective as to push gear of small number of players by a large amount and leave rest with nothing.

The most beneficial situation for everyone is to adjust New Cultural Armor down approximately. 100 HP/Mana and at the same time increase the flow of Seals. This means each event in Demi, TSS, Solteris should drop a Seal. The armor created each step of the way would still be better than zone drops by virtue of mixing higher level armor with lower level Seal.

This in turn requires that armor be more available and not mindlessly overpriced as it is now. Introducing 75 armor would be a major step in the right direction as would be increasing drop of rare Exquisit/Porous TS components. This would mean that a Demi/DK raider can affordably create 75/75/LB armor that will be a solid boost to Demi armor and just behind TSS armor. 80/80/LB armor would be better than TSS armor. Same would be true with TSS armor, 80/80/Serpant would be a nice boost over TSS armor.

This to me seams like a better alternative, it would add more HP/Mana to a raid force than the current situation and not create disparity between peers.

In order for them to do this, they would have to return the drop tables for the ores, silks, hides, loams, marrows and spinneret fluids to what they were when SoF was released. Point if fact, ALL Ancestral Armor is supposed to be single grouper gear. As is stands right now, the level 80 is not. The only place that one can reasonably expect to see some of the required components is in Tier 4 zones. In short, CURRENTLY the level 80 armor requires a person be in Tier 3 single group gear to hunt the drops and the armor CURRENTLY isn't of Tier 3 quality. Non-raider does not equal stupid. They will not go looking for this stuff.

The proposed change pushes the armor to a point where it is roughly equivalent to Tier 3 armor but the required drops can only be found in any reasonable quantity in Tier 4 zones. So the possibility exists that a few single groupers may wind up with one or two pieces of level 80 armor/symbols but most would consider it a waste of time as they will need to be predominately geared in better armor than they can make to get the drops to make it.

[Ratblaster]

Much of the discussion here has been over the use of 5-expansion-old LB augs in new lvl 80 armors, and the distribution of LB augs is FAR more widespread than any other type-12 seals, so any change to LB seals will have the most impact. I would have preferred the smaller reduction in HP on the seals, though -100 hp on the LBs was not unexpected.

However, I did not also expect to see Serpent and Sunshard seals (TSS/TBS seals) to also loose approx 100hp each. These are new seals (added after SoF) dropped only on raid content in the 2 most recent expansions prior to SoF, and also have a lower drop raid per mob than the LB augs did.

Due to the low drop rate of serpent seals, I currently use a mix of serpents and LBs. I already have elegant armor since I made my own...so any arguments that I should be using TSS seals with 75 armor (which doesnt exist yet) are moot since I doubt anyone with lvl 80 elegant armor would go back to lvl 75 armor (if introduced) to make a proper "set".

A reduction in range of 50 hp for Serpent/Sunshard would be more reasonable, IMO.

[Woland]

Serpant Seal is the easiest to balance. It is a no brainer.

In 75 Cultural it needs to be similar HP/Mana as TSS drops. Take arms as a mid point, 465 HP, if 75/75 is 300 base, Serpant has to be 165.

It would be very hard to argue that 75/75/Serpant should produce more. This is the major mistake made with Ngreth's original design. This point which is so obvious was not balanced.

From this point you see that LB in same set up has to be less, and there has to be some reasonable distance between the 2.

[MareeTP]

Im not clear whether anyone has taken a look at whether people are beating content faster than intended .. or if this is solely related to a very small percentage of leaderboard complaints.

If just leaderboard complaints, then this change makes no real sense at all to me. And I hear of exploits being used far more frequently to beat content at an abnormally fast pace, rather than the gear raiders have access to.

In any event, it's extremely bad customer relations to alter the LBs that have been in game for three years, and got the game where it is today. On that point, I agree with several prior posters.

I also agree that the new cultural has revitalized the game for more casual players and non-raiders and tradeskillers, it has helped close the huge gap in the pool of adequately geared players for raiding guilds to recruit from, and Im not convinced these improvements have been fully considered when reviewing the idea that the armor should change.

However it appears it will change, regardless of any of those prior points. It would be worse if at this point, three months after SoF release, they made the armor only match and not mix'n'match. Then the headache of getting the old gear or old augs back would be far worse than losing 100hps.

I can see it will highly affect people in full sets of cultural - particularly mid-level raiders in full sets of the new mix and match cultural. 1000 hps IS a big deal to lose suddenly when you are going against raid mobs. Leaderboard concerns aside. It will hurt those players and those raids. It will hurt the tradeskilling population.

If its just leaderboard complaints from a limited few, then its a shame that politics get into the game like this.

[Leana]

I think it's time for SOE to go ahead and make whatever changes they are going to make. Forget this proposal crap. This issue has been discussed to death, and it is clear that no new input is going to change anyone's minds on the subject. Every player who has a horse in this race is entrenched in their viewpoint. We are just waiting for the other shoe to fall.

If we all lost 800+ hp across the board, we'd all live through it. Many won't be happy, and some people will quit the game, but this waiting is causing more grief and damage to the game than getting it over.

[Skjohn]

At this point in time the only change to cultural armor that should happen is the addition of level 75 armor to go with the level 75 augs.

We are now 3 months into SoF. For 2 of those months, we were told cultural was "working as intended'. Then we were told it was going to be nerfed, but nothing happened in the last patch. A nerf in the next patch, guessing sometime in February, is 4 months into SoF - too late for a change of this magnitude.

The change in the drop rate was more than enough. On Stormm, if I could find level 80 armor / type 11 augs, the cost is insane. As of a few minutes ago there were only 4 pieces of elegant armor available in the bazaar. The only piece I could use is 1 million plat. No sublime augs period. If I wanted to make my own, I would need to spend over 500k plat just to try and make a bracer and another 500k plat to try and make the aug. (That also assumes I can get my smithing skill to 300 and do the aug quest.)

The people who will get hurt by a nerf to cultural armor are the mid-tier guilds who are trying to go through all the expansions they paid for with less than 54 people in the raid. Even demi-plane is tough at level 80 with a raid force of less than 40 people wearning mostly CoA armor. The little bit of cultural armor (a mix of 70 armor with some 75 and a few 80 augs coupled with mostly baza augs {not more than 10 or 12 pieces of 80 armor in the entire guild}) is all that allows us to do anything.

Before someone says it, yes we could skip straight to SoF. Raid tier 1 and 2 to equip our members for tier 3 and then tier 4. BUT why should we skip 3 expansions we paid for and would like to see.

The best set of cultural armor is not going to be as good as SoF raid gear - don't nerf it now.

[Catamander]

I have to say that I think tweaking the seals is the worst of all possible solutions and the tweaks here take too much hp/mana/end and leave too much ac.

Instead, why not tweak the actual armor and symbols and then finally offer up some groupable type12s? Heck, you could even make the type12s available both as drops and as tradeskilled bits.

Take 5-10ac off each piece of elegant armor, take 40-60 hp/mana/end off each sublime symbol.

Then add new easy groupable (an maybe even tradeskillable) type12s with 10-20ac and 100-150 hp/mana/end into the game.

End result = Elegant+Sublime+LastBlood goes down by 5-10ac and 40-60 hp/mana/end
AND the purely groupable gear with no raid aug but instead a groupable type12 goes UP in ac by 5-10 and up in hp/mana/end by 60-110.

That mitigates the excess power of the 80+80+LB down to right around T4 SoF groupable gear and boosts the purely 1-groupable 80+80+groupable12 up to about T3 SoF gear.

And we can leave the lastbloods alone! And this even leaves room to potentially boost the ac on the TBS and SoF raid type12s by a small amount so we don't have the current ac stagnation problem on those seals.

[Aldier]

In order for them to do this, they would have to return the drop tables for the ores, silks, hides, loams, marrows and spinneret fluids to what they were when SoF was released. Point if fact, ALL Ancestral Armor is supposed to be single grouper gear. As is stands right now, the level 80 is not. The only place that one can reasonably expect to see some of the required components is in Tier 4 zones. In short, CURRENTLY the level 80 armor requires a person be in Tier 3 single group gear to hunt the drops and the armor CURRENTLY isn't of Tier 3 quality. Non-raider does not equal stupid. They will not go looking for this stuff.

The proposed change pushes the armor to a point where it is roughly equivalent to Tier 3 armor but the required drops can only be found in any reasonable quantity in Tier 4 zones. So the possibility exists that a few single groupers may wind up with one or two pieces of level 80 armor/symbols but most would consider it a waste of time as they will need to be predominately geared in better armor than they can make to get the drops to make it.

This is totally off base. Tier 3 zones from appropriate mobs drop the porous loam/exquisite marrow/fluid. Crystallos is not the only place to get them. Also, if you can handle the trash mobs in Steam does not mean you can handle the named there. The steam cores ONLY drop from named mobs. They tradeskill drops come from appropriate trash mobs. Stop double posting the same thing. Level 80 armor/symbol items DO drop from Tier 3 zones if you are hunting the correct mobs (not steamworks models).

[Anterouk]

At last some sense from a highish end raider, from what I remember from TSW Catamander, similar to my proposal above. You dont nerf the 3 years old drops that noone has complained about too vehemently before the introduction of the Exalted/Sublime Symbol and Elegant armour, your tweak the newly introduced items so there is a smoother progression from the lvl 70 armour and symbol, and so that the potential 70 armour/80 symbol and LB(or bazu) is roughly where you want it?

As ive also said most of the outcry for this change is high end raiders who are cosy with some of the developer, who have already beaten the content with these supposedly broken Lastbloods.

[Polt11]

Charts seemed to skip 70/75

There seems to have been a combination skipped. What is charted out is:

Piece Average
Old......L70/L75..........AC......HP/Mana/END
............Base.............57........290
............Base + PoP....57........345
............Base + GoD....67........410
............Base + OoW...87........470
............Base + DoD...102.......500
............Base + TSS...102.......540
............Base + TBS...102.......590
............Base + SOF...102.......640

New....L75/L75..........AC......HP/Mana/END...........Change
............Base............59........301......... .............+11
............Base + PoP....59........326......................-19
............Base + GoD....69........351......................-59
............Base + OoW...89........376......................-94
............Base + DoD....104......401......................-99
............Base + TSS....104......451......................-89
............Base + TBS....104......526......................-64
............Base + SOF....104......601......................-39

The "New" should be "L70/L75", otherwise you are comparing apples and oranges. The previous chart is Old L70/70 and New L70/70 and the following chart also matches that pattern, but this does not. As I have L70/L75 gear, I'd like to know how the new L70/L75 gear is going to change.

Polt, CT

PS: to continue the general discussion, I believe they would be better served to add small amounts of AC/Hps to the raid gear corresponding to the Cultural conflict. Having made a drastic, prolonged mistake, buffing older gear a bit would be much more well received than nerfing the new.

[gggrant]

This is totally off base. Tier 3 zones from appropriate mobs drop the porous loam/exquisite marrow/fluid. Crystallos is not the only place to get them. Also, if you can handle the trash mobs in Steam does not mean you can handle the named there. The steam cores ONLY drop from named mobs. They tradeskill drops come from appropriate trash mobs. Stop double posting the same thing. Level 80 armor/symbol items DO drop from Tier 3 zones if you are hunting the correct mobs (not steamworks models).

I stated they did drop in Tier 3 zones. My statement still stands as to the drop rate, though. While a group of T2/Praetorian geared non-raiders could go into a Tier 3 zone and hunt the drops, what possible reason would they have? Currently the armor is not as good as Tier 3. With the proposed change it would be about the equivalent of Tier 3 with the exception of some Mod2's and and Foci. With the possible exception of tanks, the level 80/80 armor holds either no or only transient benefits even when you factor in the soon (hopefully) to be released Type 12 Single Group Seals (which has been stated will NOT have foci). They WILL concentrate on the steamcores.