Changes to Zones and PoP

[wombat]

With the mooted changes to PoP access etc, better weapons and armour are also suggested to help mellees be less useless in the high DPS world of PoP.

I hope this means more improved smithed items, perhaps black acrylia plate or forged planar weapons. All our old weapons will become junk to 60+ (if they aren’t already) unless there are smithed upgrades. Currently the best 1hs we can make is 12/20 (51 required), we would need 18/20 (60+ required) now??

Already the flagged armours are far superior to smithed ones. The way to address this might be to improve the drop rates on the Smithed PoP armours, or new simpler recipes. Its bloody hard even with the expanded bank space to find room for all the PoP stuff as it is (as well as the Cazic Thule and BD gear!).

Anyway this is one Dwarfs thoughts, what does everyone else think?

[sumamael]

From the official announcement:

We are going to look at improving the damage capabilities of melee classes, as they've fallen behind their magic-using counterparts at the very high end of the game. Some options being considered are:



Improve melee damage-increasing disciplines

Improve Planes of Power melee weapons

I don't see anything in there about adding new (tradeskill made) weapons.

I think it's gonna mean the buffing up of some existing ones, like changing the ratio on a 40 dmg 35 dly Sol Ro Tower warrior 2hs to 50 dmg 30 dly for example.

edited grammar.

[wombat]

PoP Changes

You are correct “He who is one with the Duck” aka “Dances with Ducks”

However that is not to say that there is not more than one way of skinning a cat (feral cats are considered vermin in my country, make sure they are dead first, its much easier!) on this issue.

So better weapons and armour are required? (I have sent a message to Sony on this issue but have raised it here because many are far more experienced at planar smithing than I am) The logical people to include on this are those who make it, primarily smiths but also tailors and jewellers.

By all means include better drops but trades should also be included, it’s a form of giving us more interesting content and Risk vs Reward. To avoid further straining our banks an means of upgrading Black Acrylia and Tae Ew weapons would be useful. Using a brewed temper from difficult to get items, perhaps even no drop for the higher level upgrades the Smith converts the existing weapons to a much improved level restricted item. On failure, all is lost. Make it 30% success at 250 skill.

The same could be done with BD cultural armour upgrades.

[sumamael]

Well smithed weapons were always the red headed stepchild so they definitely could use a PoP boost I agree with that.
For example the some of the best bows in the game are tradeskill made out of elemental drops so I see no reason why we couldn't (weapon)smith some nice swords too.

Well of course I don't consider the Zek bane weapons into this since they only require a smith to make the sheet and not the weapon itself.

[sumamael]

For the heck of it I tried the following combines,

sheet of nightmare iron + standard weapon molds + mightmare temper = DNC with or without Tanaan hammer

sheet of nightmare iron + standard weapon molds + mightmare temper + emblem of nightmare = DNC with or without Tanaan hammer

in a PoK forge.

So I guess there is no hidden weapon recipe in the game.

[Sinuuyanea Nocturne]

...what's "mightmare temper"? <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/sinuuyanea/feliciachaorazz.gif alt="Spelling > You">

[Lilosh]

...what's "mightmare temper"? <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/sinuuyanea/feliciachaorazz.gif alt="Spelling > You">

A pissed off female horse of unusual strength?


-Lilosh

[Morgrist]

Gotta agree here. Weaponry (save for BA/Tae Ew) has gotten the shaft compared to armor.

There are no planar-forged weapon recipes. There's excellent (Imbued Velium) Velious-forged armor,but the weapons are so-so at best. I'd love to see them make imbued Velium weapons (using the gems) that have improved abilities.

And yes,they should be good. If I was going to quest for a weapon/armor and I had to get x,y,and z components from a mob-AND I have a chance to fail at it even if I DO use them correctly (combining in our case,as opposed to a handin)...well,darn straight it should be as good or maybe better than what I'd get from just killing something!

Though firey weapons (Lavastorm) aren't bad ones for the level. Post-Velious they've been pretty good at matching result to recipe.

[Cavel]

Some say that trade skillers should take comfort in what we have been given (Armor for us and Bows for fletchers etc...) I say that even the bones we were tossed on the PoP expantion are not good enought. What happen to the post about "Tradeskill created items should be some of the best in the game?" that we got Pre-Pop? Where is this now?

OK that might have been better posted in the primal scream room. But seriously I have been looking at getting HoT armor to replace my Blessed Full Mithrial because of the Saves and Stats on it. There has got to be something that can be done...

[sumamael]

...what's "mightmare temper"? <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/sinuuyanea/feliciachaorazz.gif alt="Spelling > You">

It's commonly known as "Night Terror Temper".

[wombat]

Hmm

Hmm for the sake of simplicity and bank space/coding, perhaps a form of planar temper could be used with the various bloods and imbued diamonds being applied to existing top end weapons and armour to add AC and varying stats.

A 250+ Trivial with a 30% success rate should stop it becoming too mundane. The more difficult to get tempers would provide the best upgrades and so on. Certainly the point about Bows and Jewelry being the top of the range but smithing basically at tier one is well made.

Hell, make the armour and weapons level restricted or skill restricted if you want. That would stop the PL'd twink using it if the plate needed a defensive skill of 200, or if the 2hb needed a skill of 200 also. Uber gear requires uber skill to use QED! Skill levels follows character levels so it would be a nice fix

Thanks for trying "O' one of Ducklike visage" I didnt even hope for such hidden recipes, we must await the patch!

[Angelsyn]

If they're going to work on Smithing, then they need to do a number of things...

1) Reduce the Required Level on Nightmare Gear... it's much too high. I'd say level 51 would be fine. A slight increase in the AC on the Plate gear for Nightmare &amp; Hurricane would be good too.

2) If you want better weapons, start with Troll Smithing. Just as Cultural Armour is better than most any pre-Ssra/VT drops, Cultural Weapons should be excellent.

3) Fix the stupid drop-rates of Pristine Tae Ew Scales already!

4) Cultural Chain armour needs to be buffed a bit.

5) A second source for Cultural Weapons is in order... Heck, give it to Frogloks. Put the good-aligned Imbues on them. It would be best if they were different weapons from the ones Trolls use, of course.

[Meirril]

I'm going to voice a VERY unpopular opinion. The best stuff in the game should remain nodrop. Why? To "prevent" twinking (ok, honestly. To cut down on twinking. Once you get to 45 you can twink a character out and cheeply simply by getting them the keys/flags and dragging them around to places they have no right being in. CoTH is a wonderful thing.). While I agree that smithing needs better weapon recipees, if their realy going to compete with the best in the game, they should be NODROP as well.

As for those of you saying "but windblades arn't nodrop" your right. And the drop rate of windblades has been nerf'ed. Just like every other item in the game that Sony has introduced and realized afterward that is was a MISTAKE. Instead, they have done what they though was reasonable after the fact to fix it. Was it a reasonable fix? Did it need to be fixed? Not my call, but it was changed for what they feel was the good of EQ.

Anyways, if the smithed weapons get an upgrade, they should be in line with the best of the dropped weapons, not better. It would however be interesting for Sony to come out with a line of bane type weapons that are smithed and definatly competed with the best no-drop gear. A sort of a way to get someone started into hunting a certain plane. That seems...reasonable to me.

[wombat]

"5) A second source for Cultural Weapons is in order... Heck, give it to Frogloks. Put the good-aligned Imbues on them. It would be best if they were different weapons from the ones Trolls use, of course."

Ah, Angel of Syn this is a brilliant idea! 10/10 as far as I can see (bah why didnt I think of it! :shock: )

No problems with the very top stuff being no drop, after all, it is supposed to the equal to the best! With 100ac Elemental BP's being available we are looking at substantial increases in the Armour line similiar increases in weapon capability.

Basically at the moment there is no challenge in the PoP armours for me. I can make the best gear currently available, Dwarf BD plate is better than ToV for all but the BP if you are a Paladin. If I want PoP armour I am better off just levelling till my eyes pop! and getting the Quested armour rather than making the Legendary stuff. Quested Plate is far better than Legendary.

Either upgrade Legendary or allow us to upgrade BD etc gear with PoP imbues etc.