Planar Ceramic Focus Items

[Kakg]

I'm not sure about other class forums but there is a heated debate going on over at the chanter boards on www.therunes.net.

http://www.therunes.net/forums/viewt...t=4485&start=0

The subject of this debate is the implications of the Omens of War level increase to 70 and specifically the impact that will have on Focus Items. The expectation is that there is a good chance that Level IV focus items will be supplanted by new Level V focus items.

One thing that hasn't been brought out in their discussions and is actually more appropriate for this forum is, what will happen to all the Planar Ceramic Focus Items such as the Ceramic Sheild of Valor etc?

My view is that if the Level IV focus items are superceeded then we need to be sure that we will be getting some new recipes for Level V focus items in OoW or else face losing one of the few reasons left to do pottery as a skill.

Has anyone else realised this problem yet and wishes to make comment? Or does anyone have better information that might calm this rather worried tradeskiller?

[Jarak_akn]

Im sure that I remember a comment in one of the Summit write-ups that SoE hinted that they would extend the current focus to cover to 70.

Of course I cant find the ref now and it was only a side comment any way :-/

Jarak.

[Zephaus]

We touched on it briefly in the "What would you like to see next" thread. The hope was that if we had Focus V effects, that Pottery would get new recipes to make such items.

While I think it's important to express our feelings on the subject to SoE, I don't think there's any reason to get all worked up into a tizzy.

[Muldamai]

What's the big deal anyway? Progression with more levels means progression of focus items too. If people are arguing divine right and they are entitled to free upgrades:

1) Monarchies are often put to death to kill blood lines

2) Entitlement programs are generally government run, and (thankfully) EQ is no government.

[Soriano]

Focus Items

what I have read says that all Focus effects will work, but at a lesser percent above 65...some excuse about game balance...

They will not make level V items to replace level IV items, instead, the level IV items will be 90% effective on a 66 spell and 80% on a 67 spell, at level 70 the items will be 50% effective...

atleast this is what I have heard....

[Zephaus]

Soriano, I've not heard that they won't make Focus V items, only that the Focus IV items will lose power as one progresses, as you said.

I wouldn't assume that because SoE has made it so that Focus IV items will still have some effect up to level 70 that this means no Focus V items will exist. I expect we will see a great deal of Focus V items to give casters more room for progression in Armor.

I'm not sure pottery will get the replacement items -- they may decide to spread the wealth...

[Soriano]

Focus V items

According to what I read they will not be making Focus V items because it screws up the class balancing...it makes spell casters too powerful, since they said they would not make Focus V items they said that they would raise the cap on Focus IV items beyond lvl 65 but make them drop down 10% in effectiveness per level to level 70...meaning at lvl 70 a Focus IV item will be 50% effective...

As anything else with EQ this could change but Class balancing was the reason they gave for not moving forward to Focus V items...

[Maevenniia]

According to what I read they will not be making Focus V items...

Nope, Lucy has Focus V effects now.
Just a few examples:
Improved Healing V
Extended Enhancement V
Burning Affliction V
Improved Damage V

Also, certain Named focus effects have been extended past level 65...

Discordant focii will work up to level 68 and scale down for 69-70.
Anger/Fury/Wrath focii will work to level 67 and scale down for 68-69-70.

Link to Graffe's thread about the Focus Updates

[Soriano]

Sorry Lucy added those in anticipation...they made the assumption...

This is from the SoE website...

Focus Effects

[Jaradis Stormcaller]

Sorry Lucy added those in anticipation...they made the assumption...

This is from the SoE website...

Focus Effects

/boggle.

Lucy doesn't add anything in anticipation, everything Lucy has is pulled directly from the game's spell database. Those new focuses were created and added to the game by SOE, not Lucy.

[Maevenniia]

Sorry Lucy added those in anticipation...they made the assumption...

This is from the SoE website...

Focus Effects

Try to pay attention please.

The new focii and the changes to the named focii were done September 7th.....note that Dev Corner announcement is dated August 27th...so it couldn't have been in anticipation, now could it?

In fact, SOE got a lot of flak for the Aug 27 announcemnet (and a lot of constructive feedback from the non-mouth-foaming players too), and saw that cutting off at least the end-game PoP & GoD named focii at 65 was ridiculous. And of course level V focii were coming, if only because mages were getting those "Summon bangle/trinket/doo-dad" spells again.

[Soriano]

Re:Focus items

Lucy's Source list TEST...

ofcourse they are on test that is how they learn that it would not be feasible...

until I see it on SoE web page or on the live server...just because it is in Lucy's database does not mean it will ever make it live...

I bet there has been a lot of feedback on the issue....it could change but as of now it has not...

[Maevenniia]

I am not arguing whether this information is from the Test server or not...of course it is. However this close to launch I can't really imagine that they will remove the Level V effects.

You are mixing apples & oranges. You stated

According to what I read they will not be making Focus V items, instead, the level IV items will be 90% effective on a 66 spell and 80% on a 67 spell, at level 70 the items will be 50% effective...

So I attempted to answer the two issues:

Issue #1 "...they will not be making level V items to replace level IV items"

I pointed out that Level V basic effects were added to Lucy on 09/07. To further explain why I believe that SOE meant to add the basic Level V effects all along....when making expansions, this is usually how they add spells (we've seen this before):

-clone existing spells similar to new ones to create 'placeholders'
- modify to add or upgrade attributes &
- tweak in beta (and usually for the first couple of weeks of launch).

So, look at one of the mage summoning spells for levels 66-70, they were all were cloned from their predecessors back in May 2004. Below is the historical detail for the spell "Summon Pouch of Jerikor" (spell that summons a pouch with all the focus items inside), this spell was initially cloned from their level 63 "Summon Jewellry Bag" spell and has since been modified incrementally from its "placeholder status" to "ready-for-launch status"):

08-31 19:33 Changed Fizzle Adj from 25 to 5
08-31 19:33 Changed Recast Time from 10.0 seconds to 2.2 seconds
07-08 18:50 Changed Category from Summon Item to Unknown(218)
06-30 23:52 Changed Slot 7 from "Summon Item v2: Rallican's Steel Bracelet" to "Summon Item v2: #77516"
06-30 23:52 Changed Slot 6 from "Summon Item v2: Jolum's Glowing Bauble" to "Summon Item v2: #77515"
06-30 23:52 Changed Slot 5 from "Summon Item v2: Naki's Spiked Ring" to "Summon Item v2: #77514"
06-30 23:52 Changed Slot 4 from "Summon Item v2: Gallenite's Sapphire Bracelet" to "Summon Item v2: #77513"
06-30 23:52 Changed Slot 3 from "Summon Item v2: Tavee's Runed Mantle" to "Summon Item v2: #77512"
06-30 23:52 Changed Slot 2 from "Summon Item v2: Jedah's Platinum Choker" to "Summon Item v2: #77511"
06-04 01:57 Changed Name from Omen-Mage-Sum-Foc to Summon Pouch of Jerikor
06-04 01:57 Added MAG/68 to Classes
05-28 01:37 Changed Unknown130 from 100 to 0
05-21 02:58 Initial Entry

So they clearly intended to add the basic level V effects as far back as May 2004.


Issue #2 - August 27th announcement about the scaling of focus effects.

Yes, initially all currently existing focus effects (Level IV basic effects and Named effects such as "Discordant" and "Wrath/Anger/Fury" were gouing to loose effectiveness beyond their max level, so level 65 efefcts would scale -10% for every level from 66-70.

However, on Sept 7th, they made the changes as per my earlier post, so I mentioned that to give people a little hope that SOE was listening to players' feedback.

Then you went and commented how they did this in 'anticipation', so my next post pointed out the DATES of the announcement vs the changes, and that therefore the changes were not done in anticipation of the announcement, but likely were done in response to feedback ABOUT the announcement.


____


SOE may tweak things further, and either add more focii that will scale later than level 65, or backpedal on the 09-07 changes and go back to the way it was described in the 08-27 announcemnt, so I'm with you on that point, gotta wait and see.

[Maevenniia]

Oh, and to go back to teh topic of teh original post:

whether we will (or should) get new receipes with level V effects....


I would certainly love to see new recipes, in any skill, with Level V effects BUT.....SOE is not obliged to give them to us. Banded armor was fantastic back in the early days, but eventually mudflation came along. These pottery items don't have it quite so bad as that though. They are 100% effective all the way to 65, and still partially effective in downwards sliding scale to level 70.

OOW focus effect items will not likely be so easy to obtain that the market for Pottery focii will crash, casuals and non-endgame players will still need to fill a slot here or there, and always tracking down a willing mage to get the no-rent level V focii will probably not appeal to everyone.

I mean, look at the ornate pieces....Just because the effect on my Arantir's (Mana Preservation IV) sleeves is going to scale down after level 65, doesn't mean I'm going to delete them! ANY mana preservation is better than none!

[Soriano]

To clear this up...

Bottom line is the only official word we have on Focus V items was on Aug 27...It says not going to happen and explains why...which is all my post said ...the same post also told us Focus IV items would be scaled back in effectiveness by spell level...so I included that information also...

To add things because they show up on test is "anticipating" or "assuming" they will go live...

I will agree that they were probably added to test to see if they could make it feasible, and that they may add them before go LIVE...and most likely did so because of feedback...

My original post was on the 5th, I added the link after a reply said not to assume they would not make Focus V item just because they were going to let Focus IV items scale down to lvl 70...

The link I provided said BOTH, that Focus IV would lose effectiveness by 10% per level to 70, AND that to create Focus V items would not be feasible at this time...

Lucy got the information off test on 9/9 which is 4 days after my original post...

Source TEST 9/9