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I posted this on the EQPlayers site a week ago, and only one person commented. Hoping to get some more feedback here.
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I’d like to suggest a possible re-envisioning of cultural that may be less controversial than what we saw a year and a half ago:
1) Bring back Type 12 augs in Underfoot and SoD, but cap out slot 12 cultural armor at elegant.
The big controversy in SoF was folks (tanks at least) being able to take Last Bloods from DoDH and get Solteris-level armor by upgrading from elaborate to elegant gear.
If you don’t add any new slot 12 armor but make SoD and Underfoot Type 12 raid augs, that should provide a firm baseline to balance augs against. You want to make armor that is comparable to, say. SoD T3 raid gear? Great – you can balance the AC, HEM and foci of the new augs around Elegant armor. Same for Underfoot. No worried about massive gearflation if cultural is upgraded later, as it won’t have a slot 12. New cultural in Underfoot? Sorry, no slot 12 – leave your Last Blood at home, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 and 20 AC per slot.
This won’t bring a lot of money into tradeskills – elegant is cheap now, and there is such a glut of materials on the market I don’t think it will ever dry up – but it does bring back the flexibility inherent in the old slot 12 cultural. I want to be able to wear armor I smithed again on again on raids! (P.S. – Speaking as a highly biased tank, please keep the slightly higher AC and slightly lower HEM that characterized the initial elaborate + LB. Yes, I'm biased. But whatever you do, bring it back.)
2) Create new cultural armor for SoD + with slots 3, 7, 11.
This enables you to balance cultural against group gear – with no slot 12, no fear of someone getting SoD level armor if they have never raided above Solt or whatever.
What level should this be? Depends on the drop rate. If the drops fall like crazy, maybe between SoF T3 and T4 group. If the drop rate is like spongy loam (or uses spongy loam?), maybe between T3 and T4 SoD. That may seam high, but remember that this is a dead end – you can’t upgrade the AC/HP on this gear. Nor can you use powersources. So getting SoD T3 gear may be a leg up for some folks, but they will presumably want to progress to get superior T4 and T5 armor. It's a temporary stop on the gearing up path, not the destination. (Again, note that the cultural will also have drawbacks such as no powersources, and is a dead-end – decidedly inferior to end-game group gear.)
3) Cultural focii.
Make current group gear foci available in Type 3 augs for visible armor.
This is where pottery, JC and/or alchemy can be brought into the new cultural. To be competitive, cultural needs to have the focii that dropped gear has. It can either be built in – it comes out of the forge with Ferocity III or whatever – or make augs that folks can use to tailor their armor.
I really like choice, so I’d say create player-made slot 3 augs, with focii comparable to current group gear. Let players tailor their armor. Maybe make some focii recipes available only to smiths/tailors and others to JC/potters/etc. – or have multiple ways to make each aug.
4) Loose Ends.
Type 11 augs. In order to balance raid type 12 seals, they need to be balanced against both the elegant armor, and whatever type 11 augs come out. Probably the easiest way to do this is to basically stagnate type 11 augs. Either a very, very slow increase in Type 11 stats, with most of the HME growth on the base armor (or could be a big bump in new type 11s, use that to balance the SoD/Underfoot Type 12s, followed by stagnation after that), or simply make no new Type 11 augs past the SoF ones. This would mean more HME and stats on the cultural armor itself – a big change from the past. While this would be a break in tradition, I’m not sure there’s really any way around it.
One could retain the tradition of the old type 11 aug quests would be by requiring a similar quest to make the type 3 augs. So yes, you can get player-made armor with caster focus x or melee focus y – but you need to find someone who has done the pain in the **lfling quest for it. (No offense meant to the Denmother.)
Anyway, these are some thoughts on a way to restore cultural armor, keeping most of the tradition of what was introduced in 2005. It would provide competitive low-to-mid tier group armor, while not being overpowered in that it would quickly be superseded by higher lveel group gear. It would also restore the flexibility in raid armor in the old slot 12 system, but with slot 12 cultural armor capped at elegant armor making jumps in power directly related to the level of content someone is raiding rather than improvements in smithed armor.
* * *
I’d like to suggest a possible re-envisioning of cultural that may be less controversial than what we saw a year and a half ago:
1) Bring back Type 12 augs in Underfoot and SoD, but cap out slot 12 cultural armor at elegant.
The big controversy in SoF was folks (tanks at least) being able to take Last Bloods from DoDH and get Solteris-level armor by upgrading from elaborate to elegant gear.
If you don’t add any new slot 12 armor but make SoD and Underfoot Type 12 raid augs, that should provide a firm baseline to balance augs against. You want to make armor that is comparable to, say. SoD T3 raid gear? Great – you can balance the AC, HEM and foci of the new augs around Elegant armor. Same for Underfoot. No worried about massive gearflation if cultural is upgraded later, as it won’t have a slot 12. New cultural in Underfoot? Sorry, no slot 12 – leave your Last Blood at home, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 and 20 AC per slot.
This won’t bring a lot of money into tradeskills – elegant is cheap now, and there is such a glut of materials on the market I don’t think it will ever dry up – but it does bring back the flexibility inherent in the old slot 12 cultural. I want to be able to wear armor I smithed again on again on raids! (P.S. – Speaking as a highly biased tank, please keep the slightly higher AC and slightly lower HEM that characterized the initial elaborate + LB. Yes, I'm biased. But whatever you do, bring it back.)
2) Create new cultural armor for SoD + with slots 3, 7, 11.
This enables you to balance cultural against group gear – with no slot 12, no fear of someone getting SoD level armor if they have never raided above Solt or whatever.
What level should this be? Depends on the drop rate. If the drops fall like crazy, maybe between SoF T3 and T4 group. If the drop rate is like spongy loam (or uses spongy loam?), maybe between T3 and T4 SoD. That may seam high, but remember that this is a dead end – you can’t upgrade the AC/HP on this gear. Nor can you use powersources. So getting SoD T3 gear may be a leg up for some folks, but they will presumably want to progress to get superior T4 and T5 armor. It's a temporary stop on the gearing up path, not the destination. (Again, note that the cultural will also have drawbacks such as no powersources, and is a dead-end – decidedly inferior to end-game group gear.)
3) Cultural focii.
Make current group gear foci available in Type 3 augs for visible armor.
This is where pottery, JC and/or alchemy can be brought into the new cultural. To be competitive, cultural needs to have the focii that dropped gear has. It can either be built in – it comes out of the forge with Ferocity III or whatever – or make augs that folks can use to tailor their armor.
I really like choice, so I’d say create player-made slot 3 augs, with focii comparable to current group gear. Let players tailor their armor. Maybe make some focii recipes available only to smiths/tailors and others to JC/potters/etc. – or have multiple ways to make each aug.
4) Loose Ends.
Type 11 augs. In order to balance raid type 12 seals, they need to be balanced against both the elegant armor, and whatever type 11 augs come out. Probably the easiest way to do this is to basically stagnate type 11 augs. Either a very, very slow increase in Type 11 stats, with most of the HME growth on the base armor (or could be a big bump in new type 11s, use that to balance the SoD/Underfoot Type 12s, followed by stagnation after that), or simply make no new Type 11 augs past the SoF ones. This would mean more HME and stats on the cultural armor itself – a big change from the past. While this would be a break in tradition, I’m not sure there’s really any way around it.
One could retain the tradition of the old type 11 aug quests would be by requiring a similar quest to make the type 3 augs. So yes, you can get player-made armor with caster focus x or melee focus y – but you need to find someone who has done the pain in the **lfling quest for it. (No offense meant to the Denmother.)
Anyway, these are some thoughts on a way to restore cultural armor, keeping most of the tradition of what was introduced in 2005. It would provide competitive low-to-mid tier group armor, while not being overpowered in that it would quickly be superseded by higher lveel group gear. It would also restore the flexibility in raid armor in the old slot 12 system, but with slot 12 cultural armor capped at elegant armor making jumps in power directly related to the level of content someone is raiding rather than improvements in smithed armor.
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