State of Velious Raid Itemization

[slippery]

I'm rather tired at the time I'm making this post, so I'll likely miss things and have some weird statements. However, I feel like making this post now so I'm making it in my current state instead of putting it off further.

I'm going to start of with some more specific things before later getting in to the large picture scheme. The specific stuff is generally going to center around Fighters, becausse that is my current main.

Easy Fighter wrist and ears don't have 2 set bonus's. Other classes do, and I'm pretty sure Fighters did in beta as well, but they have gone mssing.

Taaltak and Eireen are still both dropping rings. I'm pretty sure one of these mobs is supposed to drop rings.

Bregdor and Iilatus having different loot tables is really silly. They should share a loot table, and if you can kill both you should get double the loot. Having them drop with different loot tables basically means people are going to farm Bregdor because weapons are vastly more important then wrists, especially so because of weapons being a high crit slot.

Multi-Attack seems to be all but completely absent from Fighter raid gear. Scouts are nearing 300 and Fighters lose more and more with every piece they take off so that they can't even get 100% anymore.

Hard weapons and shields should have a yellow slot.

Hard weapons need an increase in the damage rating. Weapons from last expansion actually hit harder if not for the blue stats. There is a problem with that. The Hard weapon drops need to hit harder. There is no difference in damage output from easy weapons and hard weapons, there is a problem there.

There needs to be an additional scout 4.0 and 6.0 weapon dropping from both easy and hard. They should be able to have 2 of each delay from easy, and 2 of each delay from hard.

Hard shields need to have increased defensive effectiveness over the easy ones.

Scouts need a round shield option. Multiple scouts have reasons to equip a shield, yet their is not a single round shield for scouts from raids. In fact one of the better ones is still from TSO, and it isn't even that good...

Priests need a more defensive buckler option for shield ally.

Wisdom doesn't really do much for priests, this needs to be accounted for somehow while making items.

I like War Runes, I think they add a lot. You pretty much put all your money on people liking them with how itemization was done. It is a good system, and I think it is the way to go. However, you limited it too much. They need to be on more slots. We are now expected to dump all the proc's we had on so many different slots and basically drop it down to 4 proc's (cloak belt charms, becuse casters can't put war runes on symbols). Some additional jewelery slots need to be opened to War Runes, and the ones not need to have better blue stats (sorry, the set bonus's are generally terrible, especially for fighters).

The point system is broke. You made the system too simple so you could only make one of every item. Aside from the fact that you are going to completely destroy the replayability of your raid content (the current 3 zones, once cleared, have about 2 months top playability after before everyone has all the loot they need and no longer need to run the zones, even for alts it wont' take much longer). You need to open up the system. When I played D&D years ago I remember looking at the rules for making your own magic items. It is incredibly similar to what I'd imagine is the current point building system for items. However, the D&D system allows for something you don't. Variety. There are no choices with items in raids right now. You get one thing, period. That is it. One in easy, one in hard. You have no other choice. If it is one a few slots that you can adorn with something maybe you'll get it a couple times so you can have a few spares for situational adorns, but you really have no options. You don't have the ability to manage things to suit your personal needs. A slot is high crit? That is fine. Another slot is low crit? Also fine. But the system needs to allow for those things to still be on other pieces. Belt and weapons from the crit slots? Great, now allow other slots to get crit but have the crit in those slots cost more then on the slots where crit is primary. The same goes for every stat. Figure out how you want to have it primary slotted, then allow it on other slots at differing costs. This would greatly allow people to vary their gear based on their current needs. Some people would use things for crit, especially in zones that require more of it. Then they might take off those pieces in favor of things with more double attack or reuse or potency or bonus when they don't need that crit. By not doing something like this this is where you lost the playerbase. This is where everyone comes from when they say itemization is boring. Yes, you are gonig to say you can customize red and yellow adorns, and that is all well, but we should haven't to get the  same piece of gear 4 times to put 4 different adorns on that make minimal impact to do different things. Not to mention the fact that you can't swap a piece for the same piece with a different adorn easily because it thinks you already have it equiped. You have  to unequip it then equip the new one, which makes hell on bags. We need options, and not from shards that we are going to be really limited on for quite some time. We went from having a ton last expansion to the fact that now we get less (not 3 from hard like last expansion, only 2) with lower costs to having higher shard costs plus having to spend them over more slots. Then you want us to vary gear based on adorns? lol. 

I'm pretty sure some things from the past got missed when making adorns, however I'm too tired to remember what they are right now. I'm sure some people can post them.

I'm sure there is more, but I'll have to come back to this after it has had some replies and I've had some sleep before I can truly comment further.

[Sydares]

Going to throw in an itemization pet peeve of my own:

Forcing raiders to gear out their adornments by doing Public Quests is a baffling choice. The adorns given from PQs should be "bonuses" and not exclusive to the PQs themselves, as there's simply no reliable way to obtain them outside of grinding yourself stupid every time you'd like to upgrade the piece with a PQ adorn. Add the PQ adorns to rep merchants. Make them 30k or 40k if you'd like, but give us an alternate avenue of acquiring these things.

[Gaige]

The entire one item per slot per mode is so silly I can't even begin to address it.  This expansion has the least amount of loot and its the most boring loot of all time.  You have literally no choice at all.  There is ONE set of items for scouts from HM and one set of items for scouts off EM, that's it.

[Bruener]

Fighter itemization is just awful.  Everytime I supposedly get an "upgrade" it is me giving up offensive stats for Crit mit and hps.

There needs to be about 100% more MA total on Fighter gear and probably 35% more Potency...in addition to the stats that are already there.  As recommended in Beta, change the point value on block % and mit % increase to be a lot less than it is currently to make way for the stats that everybody else is benefitting from.

And yes, the itemization is boring.  Real boring.  EM loot to HM loot...wow a whole .6% more CB and .6% more Potency.  EM loot is fine as is, HM loot needs more uniqueness.

[Bremer]

The quality of Fighter rings/wrists/earring items is just plain horrible. It almost seems like the item designer doesn't understand, that 6 crit bonus/potency doesn't have the same benefit for Fighters as it has for Mages or Priests. And it's also great, that the supposed fix for giving Fighters inferior gear was increasing the hate gain cap, yet I still haven't see a single Fighter item with + hate gain.

[Cocytus]

The boring-ness of the raiding gear this expansion, as well as MOST of the gear in general, and the ridiculous tedium of pretty much every raid boss fight excepting the Kraytoc instance fights (I like most of the ones in there) is just ridiculous. Indifference to the game is quickly setting in.

Also, as I've always said...Every sphere of the game should not require that you go outside of that sphere in order to complete the content inside said sphere. You should not have to raid to get solo-quality gear (*cough* lower tier SF = DOV solo *cough*). You should not have to group to complete solo quests. You should not have to group to complete your raid gear.

Between work, an annoying family, and raiding...I pretty much just raid and duo. I shouldn't have to group to finish adorning my raid gear. Grouping is a different sphere than raiding.

I doubt this will ever be acquiesced, however...Because another example of this was the X2 debuff. While X2 and X4 are technically both raids, I don't really consider them to be the same sphere. Yet, regardless, you have to do the x2 content for the x4 debuff. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. A lot of people set it was a dumb idea in beta but it went live anyway.

/sleep-deprived ramble

[lollipop]

Bruener wrote:

Fighter itemization is just awful.  Everytime I supposedly get an "upgrade" it is me giving up offensive stats for Crit mit and hps.

There needs to be about 100% more MA total on Fighter gear and probably 35% more Potency...in addition to the stats that are already there.  As recommended in Beta, change the point value on block % and mit % increase to be a lot less than it is currently to make way for the stats that everybody else is benefitting from.

And yes, the itemization is boring.  Real boring.  EM loot to HM loot...wow a whole .6% more CB and .6% more Potency.  EM loot is fine as is, HM loot needs more uniqueness.

I agree, and they dont listen. I am giving it to the LU and see what gear drops and if the same crap im done.

[threat111]

pretty much everything stated to this point is true.  There is no flexibility on building your raid slots.  You are limited to picking up a second half s**t item and adorning it for another purpose.

I recently had a conversation with my guild leader about what options we have because of this.  Tryn to find ways to distribute items to people that all ready bought them once, and simply want a second one with a differant adornment for flexibility in other situations.

Fighter itemization is horrid.  Putting the vast majority of weapon delays on the same timer off-sets any benefits we had using a 6 sec delay and a shield.  Six second delay weapons should be Primary hand only.  two-hand weapons should have the delays upped to 8-9 seconds.  Hate cap was lifted but not itemized.

Not enough adornments slots for red and yellow options.  The slots of some war runes should be limited, but the majority of them should be freed up to use more of them.  Do this by adding more slots on more gear and removing the slot restrictions on the vast majority of the runes.

[Nevao]

This may be more of general, rather than raid, issue but rogues need thrown weapons of the same quality as bows. Don't give us a CA that forces us to use one type of ranged weapon and then not make that weapon available. I shouldn't have to pick between lose access to this CA or use a weapon from SF.

Comment rendered pointless by Omougi's post.

[slippery]

DoV raids should drop the void wood. The primary secondary ranged upgrades in general all need major looking in to. A lot of them actually lose stats when they get upgraded....

[Darkor]

The whole itemization in DoV is just another a big disaster in this xpack. I mean almost always 4 item drops per raidboss? For each archtype? So in the end EVERYONE will be wearing the same items because there are zero other options? Great.

Additional to the poor selection you have hardmode drops that are worse than easymode drops. How is this even possible? I mean if you had only a single person taking half an hour of his time to go throu those few drops that you actually put on these mobs, he would have noticed how fubared the new items are. You dont go kill a hardmode mob for a mere of 0,6 potency more, that does not justify the difference in difficult.

We, the players, notice more and more how small the team is getting. The budget for this game has been drained way too much during the last year. You have zero quality control, HIRE MORE PEOPLE.

I could understand if you said Quality > Quantity, but if you actually release such a small expansion quantity wise, then you must shine with quality. And quality is not something i or several others can see in this xpack. We have patience, but dont stress it out too much.

[Dorieon]

I agree with everything posted so far.

And would like to add that currently 2 hand weapons are utter trash without having 2 red slot adorns no matter what the damage rating is.

[Banditman]

Dorieon@Guk wrote:

I agree with everything posted so far.

And would like to add that currently 2 hand weapons are utter trash without having 2 red slot adorns no matter what the damage rating is.

2 Handed weapons have been trash FOREVER and there is absolutely NO traction on the Developer side to fix it.  They are really only useful for melee DPS Priests.

For some reason, SOE cannot seem to get it through their heads that a 2H weapon needs to be the equivalent of two items - in terms of stats, adorns, effects . . . everything.

[circusgirl]

I'm extremely annoyed about legendary drops from the easiest instances (read: forgotten pools) having more crit mit than raid drops.

[Brildean]

Tank gear in general needs a look at.. where is the multi attack on tank raid gear.  Its on heroic fabled and legendary.. hardly any on tank raid gear.

[agememn]

Brildean wrote:

Tank gear in general needs a look at.. where is the multi attack on tank raid gear.  Its on heroic fabled and legendary.. hardly any on tank raid gear.

+1 Its horrible that I'm looking at raid drops and having to seriously think if I want to drop my legendary gear from the esiest instances because the raid drops have insufficient/no MA on it. 

[Brildean]

My exact thoughts. Wrist, ears, cloak and rings should ahve the same amount of multi attack as is found on even the quest gear.. rygorr cloak and ring and earings have 20 multi attack. This needs to be seriosly looked at..

the blade of woe has multi attack on it but the raid drops dont ? even the raid shields need multi attack but an easy group mob drops one that has almost 20 on it. 

[circusgirl]

I did a bit of research into the crit mit on raid drops and have noticed something of a pattern.  Legendary instance-dropped gear (including gear from the very easiest instances like Pools) tends to have a crit mit of +24.  This holds true for the entirety of the "Ettinhide" set and the equivalent gear pieces for plate fighters which basically serve as the lowest teir instanced gear sets.  If you compare this to the T1 raid sets you'll notice something interesting: while the legs and chest have very nice +critmit values, and the head and shoulders pieces have a critmit of +25 (1 more than the instanced gear), the feet, hands, and forearms items only have a critmit value of +15, nine less than the easiest instanced gear!  

I can't believe that this is anything but an oversight.  The critmit on the feet, hands, and forearms needs to be increased from +15 to +25, to at least match the paltry upgrade that the head and shoulders pieces provide.

[Bremer]

This is also a great example. Legendary gear has up to 30 MA. The x2 raid item has 15 MA. And the x4 raid item has 8 MA.

[Ironcleaver]

Im also tired of seeing master spells drop. Ohh a fabled chest! Ohh another crummy monk master (nothing agains monks)

[Lethe5683]

Bremer wrote:

The quality of Fighter rings/wrists/earring items is just plain horrible. It almost seems like the item designer doesn't understand, that 6 crit bonus/potency doesn't have the same benefit for Fighters as it has for Mages or Priests.

I think that the item designer really does not understand that.

[Khurghan]

Bremer wrote:

This is also a great example. Legendary gear has up to 30 MA. The x2 raid item has 15 MA. And the x4 raid item has 8 MA.

^^ This ...

[Notsovilepriest]

Wisdom for priests should increase DPS mod, Haste, MA and a small bit of ability mod. That would make it somewhat useful and fix the total dumb melee priests got this expansion.

[Volmir2]

Scout itemization is messed up as well. There is WAY too much dps mod on nearly every item - that stat is useless in such quantities! I often find myself with well over 300 dps mod in a raid. On the other hand, as with fighters, many legendary items have way more Multiattack than their raid counterparts. It is not right that I server disco the Sig questline reward and immediately put it in bank and also pass on the neck from the x2 cause my neck item from Ascent is so much better. Same story with some other slots.

And as was mentioned earlier, we really need at least 2 scout weapons per delay per mode from raids, currently there is only one 4.0 and one 6.0 weapon from easy modes, and same with hard.

[Aurorrae]

Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:

Wisdom for priests should increase DPS mod, Haste, MA and a small bit of ability mod. That would make it somewhat useful and fix the total dumb melee priests got this expansion.

I'd much rather it, I dunno, benefit my heals.

[Gaige]

Volmir2 wrote:

Scout itemization is messed up as well. There is WAY too much dps mod on nearly every item - that stat is useless in such quantities! 

Told to Silius in beta numerous times, he attempted to change it I think, and obviously failed.

[Brildean]

Itemization for melee needs to be looked at period.. scouts and fighters. the gear is not exciting. Exspecialy from a hate standpoint when legendary provide more hate than a raid item there is a problem.

[Notsovilepriest]

Aurorrae@Unrest wrote:

Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:

Wisdom for priests should increase DPS mod, Haste, MA and a small bit of ability mod. That would make it somewhat useful and fix the total dumb melee priests got this expansion.

I'd much rather it, I dunno, benefit my heals.

Hence the ability mod part, Priests themselves dont' need a huge boost to healing currently

[Bremer]

Gaige wrote:

Volmir2 wrote:

Scout itemization is messed up as well. There is WAY too much dps mod on nearly every item - that stat is useless in such quantities! 

Told to Silius in beta numerous times, he attempted to change it I think, and obviously failed.

Same with tank gear. There is 30 DPS mod on every 2nd item, as if there was no DPS mod cap.

[rattlebonz]

Bremer wrote:

Gaige wrote:

Volmir2 wrote:

Scout itemization is messed up as well. There is WAY too much dps mod on nearly every item - that stat is useless in such quantities! 

Told to Silius in beta numerous times, he attempted to change it I think, and obviously failed.

Same with tank gear. There is 30 DPS mod on every 2nd item, as if there was no DPS mod cap.

What is the dps cap now? I read in an old post it was 125%, no idea if that is still the case. And actually is there a link to caps any where? I have an EQ2Wire article bookmarked somewhere but no idea if it is out of date or not. Sorry, for the slightly offtopic post, just wondering.