Higher End Weapons

[GrimwoodCT]

What I miss in smithing are the higher DPS weapons.

I am not expecting items on par with epics, high-end zone drops or MPG-type trials. But something attuneable that would really bring smithing into its own.

As smiths we can make darn nice cultural armor and augments, no doubt.
But look at the type of bows that fletchers can churn out. Nice DPS, nice stats, highly sought after for the non-raider.
When the higher-end GoD smithed weapons came out they were in great demand on my server. I would give my eye-teeth to be able to smith weapons that are up to speed with the needs of the melee classes of today.

Make them have ungodly high trivs, make the materials difficult to get, make them attuneable, make the mold be part of a quest akin to the DoN cultural armors/augments.

Would this be an unbalancing request or do others think that it is also overdue?

[Bara]

Hmm, I have started to reply to this twice but stoped because I'm not sure how I feel about this. I agree that fletching finaly got what was needed with the PoR bows. I think that; as nice as it would be to have something equal to the bows, Smithing is not as badly off as fletching was before the PoR bows were added. The bows basicly "fixed" fletching for your non-wood elf and non-Karana fletchers. I know of many folks who avoided the tradeskill because of the lack of a viable skill path to 300.
That said, as someone who wants to raise his smithing skill also to 300 I think it would be great if something for weapons could be done; but to be fair some other tradeskills have more important things they need attended to first. Now; just wishing, I would like to see it done in some sort of manner like this:

1 No keys or instances please!
2 make it farmable/exp worthy by a lvl 50ish
3 I picture a 3 stage process; sub-components (drops from mobs) tradeable, once combined they become no-trade, on final combine they become attuneable (possibly Lore also???)
4 give it an insanely low success rate on final combine... (1 out of 200? 1 out of 500?) to keep it from unbalancing the game?
Anyway just some ideas that I think (I'm not sure) could be done with out adding zones, instances, quests or other major code changes?

[Zaltak]

High end weapons

How about letting ppl smith their own weapon augs? 1.2,or even 3 extra damage per aug?
These would be for one handers.The two handed augs would of course be alittle higher.

[GrimwoodCT]

The bows basicly "fixed" fletching for your non-wood elf and non-Karana fletchers. I know of many folks who avoided the tradeskill because of the lack of a viable skill path to 300.

I wasn't thinking so much as a "fix" to smithing but rather a greater sense of parity in the end product as found in fletching.

[Astroshak]

The concept that fletching got its fix with por bows, and that smithing is strong, is a flawed one. Part of smithing is strong, part of it is not. Part of fletching is strong, part of it is not.

Armor smithing is going strong (though as the game moves on, and recipes remain static, armor smithing is slowly but surely falling down). Weaponsmithing is not going strong - the GoD weapons mentioned in the OP are the highest smithed weapons around.
(For fletching, Bowyering is strong, but making arrows has stagnated)

When they came out, GoD weapons were well below the top end raid gear from the previous actual raid expansion, Planes of Power. 23 damage 22 delay ranger weapon, 20 damage 20 delay generic slasher, I don't even remember the stats on vanazir. These were the top weapons from PoP. Velium Gemmed one handers were 16 damage 20 delay, and velium gemmed 2 handers are 34 damage 28 delay.

Nowadays, TSS groupable weapons should have been better than mpg group trial weapons (24 damage 21 delay Despair, 64 damage 39 delay Rime Encrusted Pikestaff) simply on the basis that groups at 75 in TSS are killing tougher content. Similarly, the next time that crafted weapons come into the game, they ought to be better than MPG group trial weapons. They won't be nearly as good as they should be compared to top end weapons (that'd require roughly 31 damage 20 delay weaponry, not something I expect to see dropping for groups much less craftable) but they do need to make an appearance.