Cella/Crystalis nerf

[Otcho]

How is it you are arguing about the exact same things you argued about 7 months ago with the exact same complaints/responses.

 

[phroggonalog]

I feel like that proc should cost a lot less mana. You don't want it to drain a significant amount of mana over a long fight. It defeats the purpose of the near free minor amount of healing it provides.

Make it proc like, zealots strike or whatever at no mana cost or significantly reduce the mana drain in my opinion.

oh god you said zealots strike didnt you oh god

 

[Waldoff]

Probably just as many are now harder than when FWF did them at first.

Especially voidworm.

Yeah because Chaotic Winds did not farm the hell out of Spires with both a trivial/broken voidworm AND 100% bracer drops. The bracer drops were not even put in until near the time you first breached the zone, well after FWF had begun to move out.

I find it interesting that Prestige/Companions/Sacred Band or whatever other guilds are just now making into the tier, and actually have a legitimate complaint to make about the soon to be fixed overpowered tiers, are not the ones complaining.

Being at the front raid wise has its ups and its downs. At the end of the day, it generally evens out. These items have been in for a long time, and have mostly been used by more than one guild.

And even if you were 100% right and this change somehow puts a big crosshairs on Chaotic Winds and pulls the carpet out from under your progression, that still is not a good argument to not fix something broken. It just is an argument to make the fights easier to reflect the fix.

 

[Moraelintz]

My favorite part of the progression past tier 11/12 is that the fights took not only a gear check but more importantly a skill check. If anything is nerfed for these encounters please let it be how hard and fast the bosses hit and not the skill parts of the fights.

For instance I like if you mess up the first phase of nz it's almost guaranteed a wipe or should be or close pending how overtired you are for it. Or if you can't dodge an eye you die and train a raid. Making a tank and or players move throughout the fights are fun too see animation, custodian, shanre, rujik.

 

[cian2]

I would find it acceptable, and preferable in this situation, if Crystalis and Cella were changed to pure damage procs like Vitali suggested. I don't know what to do with Sharn'Rees Verdict, its by far the rarest of the 3, and currently has the worst stats by a wide margin. I like the proc on it, but I wouldn't mind seeing the heal removed and proc rate/stats increased back near where they were. It was already decidedly the most toy-ish of the priest weapons, since it drained 25x the mana of Cella and healed at a much slower rate (around half), and had very little raid application, except where you know you can sacrifice 30%+ mana to procs

 

[Animand]

First off, your "power gain" chart is just your imagination of things. The reality is that power gain is exponential from the very beginning. (although its not too far off from reality)

I *would* like Wold's graph if he would just make that "log(Player Power)" instead of "Player Power".

That's what Taru said, Solo (but in math language). Note that at lower tiers, this low base exponential looks similar to linear, with only around tier 8 or 9 having the numbers start to take off more. So you at least already have him agreeing there.

 

[Silosobi]

Tao and i never agree. So this happening, means it must be right. (and its pretty simple more mana/hp + higher dps/mitigation = tier*tier= power. There are multiple factors we are constantly upgrading that all multiply each other to create total power.

For power increase to be linear, each tier would have to provide less and less stat/dps/mitigation gains, but who really wants to play a game like that?

 

[Raxton]

I find it interesting that Prestige/Companions/Sacred Band or whatever other guilds are just now making into the tier, and actually have a legitimate complaint to make about the soon to be fixed overpowered tiers, are not the ones complaining.

...

And even if you were 100% right and this change somehow puts a big crosshairs on Chaotic Winds and pulls the carpet out from under your progression..

Woldaff I believe you have misunderstood my one sentence post. I merely meant to indicate that quite a few of the Spires/Turruj fights have been increased in difficulty since they were first killed / farmed by the previous guilds. So this is not a one way street. I'm not complaining at all and I didnt mean to indicate a between the lines reading indicating any complaining.

Specially about Voidworm, it was easiest mob in Spires with the worst loot, I thought in whatever broken trivial form he was in he was fine. He was buffed once, which I thought was plenty sufficient, but then since the second buff I doubt anyone's killed him. CW tried twice and got destroyed... So I suppose he's now he's the hardest mob in the zone with the worst loot. I feel sorry for anyone who actually wants to earn a key to the 2nd floor, but with the surplus of retired keyed toons I suppose noone will ever need to obtain one now. And his loot isnt even needed for bracers now that they can drop from any boss.


And Spires isnt progression for CW. Sacred Band has killed everthing in Spires already and is mostly Spires geared, you just seem kinda outta touch with guild progression in general. ;-)

 

[Waldoff]

That's what Taru said, Solo (but in math language). Note that at lower tiers, this low base exponential looks similar to linear, with only around tier 8 or 9 having the numbers start to take off more. So you at least already have him agreeing there.

Yeah if they look linear, it is because the graph was made in ms paint with a touchpad. Of course you have to have slightly higher number increases - the question is of how much you want the slope to change per tier.

Woldaff I believe you have misunderstood my one sentence post. I merely meant to indicate that quite a few of the Spires/Turruj fights have been increased in difficulty since they were first killed / farmed by the previous guilds. So this is not a one way street. I'm not complaining at all and I didnt mean to indicate a between the lines reading indicating any complaining.

If you were not complaining, then I am not sure what you were doing. But if I incorrectly read your post, I apologize. Were you just deciding to bring an entirely unrelated topic (voidworm) into a thread about priest weapon nerfs? You might want to be more clear about that if that was your intention. Otherwise people might read your comments in a way pertinent to the discussion.

And Spires isnt progression for CW. Sacred Band has killed everthing in Spires already and is mostly Spires geared, you just seem kinda outta touch with guild progression in general. ;-)

This was the entire point. You have no standing to complain about the majority of these item changes. If FWF benefited from them, you are in second place for benefiting. With SB in third, and everyone else behind. Therefor it is ironic that the primary people decrying the change as unfair have largely benefited from the items being changed as compared to the majority of the raid game.

Out of touch with guild progression? Not so much. I see a group of people who have no legs to stand on as far as gaining benefit from overpowered or otherwise illegitimate items saying how unfair it is, on a relative basis to another guild, that items they had access to for years are being nerfed.

 

[Vitali]

Maybe this item could be used as well to think of a new view on Crystalis. Not just a DD or Heal or what it has currently:

[MAGIC ITEM] [LORE ITEM] [NO DROP]
Slot: PRIMARY
Skill: 2H Blunt Atk Delay: 30
DMG: 52
Effect: Zealot's Strike (Melee Proc, 9.1%)
Skill Mod: 2H Blunt +10
STR: +30 WIS: +30 HP: +125 MANA: +200
SV MAGIC: +20
Recommended level of 50.
WT: 8.0 Size: LARGE
Class: CLR DRU SHM
Race: ALL

 

[Silosobi]

Out of touch with guild progression? Not so much. I see a group of people who have no legs to stand on as far as gaining benefit from overpowered or otherwise illegitimate items saying how unfair it is, on a relative basis to another guild, that items they had access to for years are being nerfed.

I don't care about comparing guilds.

I do, however, still get a feeling that there is a sense that high tier players are too powerful, and that this is being attributed to a moderate-large degree to "overpowered or otherwise illegitimate items".

I just don't think this is the reality of the game/whats going on. I think the majority of "power gain" is coming from tomes, and more people finishing MQ, and finishing supreme, and more people finishing vah (and a slew of other quests, like ToT weapons, halloween clickly, iksith spells, etc). Note that for the most part, these things are not high-tier specific, its just that high tier is the only place where players gather in mass who have all of this completed.

Gear does play some smaller role, and a couple of the items that got nerfed did need it, however, as an overall trend, loot at t12-13 takes more time/effort to obtain for its relative "power" than anything before.

I'm starting to think you just don't like that model of difficulty yields cool loot though. An earlier post indicated you simply want there to be strat+gear checks that progress through all content tiers, meaning your typical, drunk, not paying attention, half boxed raid force can advance through all tiers uninhibited (just like they can do up to about t9-10). I'm not even going to tell you this is bad/wrong, its just unfortunate for all the current highend guilds who do seem to value (to some degree) the difficulty/challenge = reward model.

I'm honestly not trying to be negative or trolling or anything, just trying to understand the whole situation that is going on here.

The high end loot didn't seem vastly overpowered to players, because fights were all balanced around it, and none of it really was *that* powerful. You can nerf the gear, and nerf the fights, to somehow get back to about the same place, but as soon as t14 comes out we will be in exactly the same place.

You just cant continue to increase gear/raid tiers without eventually trivializing lower content. Heal weapons could only ever maintain heailing in content that they were so overtiered for that hots/clickies would already maintain healing.

If you really think all this is off balance, I think you have to nerf the t10-11 gear (and content), and go up from there, because that is where all the stats suddenly jumped up a huge amount. Other than that, I'm really not aware of what was overpowered in raid progression. Healers loved their weapons and had a lot of fun with them, but after the first nerf, they really were not having a major impact on gameplay or player "power" Other items that got nerfed have been even more baffling to me.

The supposive giant boost of OP clickies and procs at high tiers I just dont see. Most of my OP clickies are shit I still have from t9 and below. All the tiers offered this sort of stuff.

I really want to be positive here and work towards a healthy solution for the game as a whole, but right now I feel like there is just a big disconnect between the players and devs. We had a period of time where Marza made super-difficult content with appropriately good rewards and certain highend players really enjoyed it, but now I guess the game is going in a different direction, I just dont understand what direction that is...

Players were constantly complaining at Marza for how *bad* his loot was because the stats were just insignificant compared to our previous gains, and his clickies were 'meh'. Pretty much the only "powerful" things I can think of were the healer weapons, which were more just fun than power, especially after their first nerf"

Sorry this is way too much to read. take what you want from it and ignore the rest. I really do love sod and want to see it succeed and continue to be fun for myself and everyone/anyone else that plays it.

 

[Waldoff]

Solo you are treading old points that I think I have answered.

Execution difficulty can never be the leading factor for gear quality. Gear requirements set the envelope, difficulty only sets the gear in that envelope. Are there items prior to the tier that are very powerful? Yes. Are they grouped together like lately? No. Are tomes a problem? Yes. Are we working to fix that? As said before, yes. Are we just going after Marza loot? No. Are we going after any loot we see as overpowered without enough oversight? Yes.

If you feel that a game where pure fight difficulty is where your items get their awesome numbers from, and that no guild should be able to substitute reasonably less perfect button pushing and hard work for progression over longer periods of time, then your not playing the right game. Every encounter on the latest tier is very hard to execute, and in response every encounter got gear with a higher percentage power increase (peripheral and base) than a normal progression at that level of gear requirement difference would have had. Unless we want to completely throw away the earlier tiers, the current progression of power increase is not sustainable. Part of this is also new levels of difficulty and "tier" being added on without fleshing out previous tiers appropriately.

Is it just the highest of tier where this is a problem? No. Are we going to ignore parts of the problem because other parts exist? No. Do some things need to be looked at mid tiers? Yes, and we are doing our best to get to them.

Is power only a factor of how much better your character is on new content? No, a majority of it might be - but you also have to take into consideration power in relation to all content. Does this mean that players should never get better and old content should always be as hard? No, you want to make sure there are reasonable increases over time and avoid anything that would make a singular character extremely overpowered in a earlier content group or raid setting.

 

[mad1337nes]

and avoid anything that would make a singular character extremely overpowered in a earlier content group or raid setting.

A 55 war (or pal) in BoE's can self heal/solo while pulling every single gemanthian in faentharc at once. Like 100 mobs. Lasanth can be cleared in 2-3 pulls.

65 same BoE gear can pull 10+ frogloks/rsm goblins/elds sentrys/wherever else the xp bonus is at mobs and stay up with just a HoT.

I think your idea of "extremely overpowered" might need a slight nerfing

 

[burt6]

I have mostly stayed out of this, but the takeaway I am getting, (and I am hoping someone corrects me,) but what I am hearing through the noise is that fight difficulty for high teir fights is not desired as much as gear checks for difficult fights and that alternate progression will be put in that allows tier 12 and 13 to be fleshed out with less skill dependent mobs.

I sincerely hope this is not the case as that is extremely depressing.

Further none of these fights are really difficult in any sense other than every member of the raid needs to understand the strat and have it memorized and every person in the raid needs to be able to move when the fight tells them to move. The reason that fwf kills these mobs and no one else does is because fwf was willing to beat their heads against them for weeks and months and wipe after wipe. If exo had tried sharn re day after day they would knock it over and so would cw and so would sacred band.

 

[Obscenitor]

I have mostly stayed out of this, but the takeaway I am getting, (and I am hoping someone corrects me,) but what I am hearing through the noise is that fight difficulty for high teir fights is not desired as much as gear checks for difficult fights and that alternate progression will be put in that allows tier 12 and 13 to be fleshed out with less skill dependent mobs.

I sincerely hope this is not the case as that is extremely depressing.

I don't often agree with Fidel... but I agree 100%

 

[sheer1]

I don't often agree with Fidel... but I agree 100%

double agree, with both bango about fidel, and fidel about the raid encounters

 

[Waldoff]

A 55 war (or pal) in BoE's can self heal/solo while pulling every single gemanthian in faentharc at once. Like 100 mobs. Lasanth can be cleared in 2-3 pulls.

65 same BoE gear can pull 10+ frogloks/rsm goblins/elds sentrys/wherever else the xp bonus is at mobs and stay up with just a HoT.

I think your idea of "extremely overpowered" might need a slight nerfing

I am afraid you are going to have to be more specific or elaborate on how this entails to the discussion if you want an actual response.

 

[sheer1]

i think he is referring to how BoE items have greatly increased in power, to the point where they are trivializing the late stages of leveling along with the early stages of raiding. And that if you are really worried about raid content being ignored or skipped due to overly powerful items, BoE gear is a prime place to start.

This is me expanding on that; right now a player/guild can effectively skip the first few tiers of raid content given they are sufficiently geared in newer BoE items. This is a much bigger jump in power than anything while a player is actively raiding the mid/later tiers. Also given how incredibly low vendor prices are for most of these BoE pieces of gear, and how common these items are on the server, it is incredibly cheap and easy for the average Joe player to achieve this.

example: last year i made a beastlord alt and spent ~50k on BoE gear (not including a charm) and he has far better stats focuses than people i used to raid tier4/5 content with regularly for around 7-8 months when i first started raiding a few year ago.

edit: want to make sure im clear here, this is 100% not trying to divert attention or plea to nerf BoE items, but just to point out how new things and new items will ALWAYS trivialize, to a certain extent, old things.

 

[Silosobi]

Its worth noting that in addition to being difficult, the current t13 fights are some of the biggest gear checks I have ever seen. Their loot honestly felt underwhelming for the most part compared to the gear check, and difficulty compared to everything before.

One point I would like to make in regards to this "make the highend easy" mentality is that (as fidel mentioned) these fights aren't really dont require high skill, fast button pushing, or anything that 98% of people can't do. I think the biggest requirement is that you have 18 on-tier un-boxed characters. FWF has never had to asy "oh x person is bad they cant do our content". What we have had to say is "well we have a few boxes tonight, so were not going to try the t13 fights".

I think this incentive to un-box raids is a good thing for the server on the whole. Guilds end up kind of stagnating and boxing the same characters over and over and over. Very few players actually enjoy this, but most will do it just so they can win. If instead of just endlessly boxing, people were incentivised to merge guilds and team up and work together with new people more often, I think we would have an overall better, more vibrant community.

I know every time I have been in a guild merger, or even just seen it happen to another guild, its hugely invigorating. Suddeny you have lots of people and can raid more frequently, defeat harder monsters, have more access to 6 mans and groups. It also makes people realize that, despite guild rivalries, most people playing SoD are actually pretty cool. Once we get past them having another "tag" and just hang out / work together we have more fun and are more successful.

With all that said, I'm not opposed to fleshing out t12/13 more including some "simpler" fights, but to make that the trend of the game as a whole would just be sad. The "hard" fights *should* drop slightly better loot, with interesting effects and whatnot.

I guess we just disagree, but I dont see any difference in power-gain-due-to-loot at t12 or t13. You are just adding higher tiers, which will *always* trivialize lower content. I remember being a nub and watching some T9 monk/cleric pull all of rat city and kill it with riptose stance, and thinking they were just fucking super-man-invincible. Add 4 tiers of loot to that (even if its slowly improving) and probably two "tiers" worth of power from tomes, and yes, characters are very powerful.

I dont think this is a problem or needs (or can) be fixed. The only way to stop this is to just stop adding higher tier content to the game.

 

[Waldoff]

i think he is referring to how BoE items have greatly increased in power, to the point where they are trivializing the late stages of leveling along with the early stages of raiding. And that if you are really worried about raid content being ignored or skipped due to overly powerful items, BoE gear is a prime place to start.

edit: want to make sure im clear here, this is 100% not trying to divert attention or plea to nerf BoE items, but just to point out how new things and new items will ALWAYS trivialize, to a certain extent, old things.

Absolutely, new things are always going to trivialize... ****to a certain extent****. The problem with Ikisith droppables being too powerful and plentiful is one that is much harder to solve. We sacrificed quite a few of the first tiers to droppables, and it stung. Pointing to other problems in the game, especially with the more recently released content, is a legitimate exercise. But it does not detract from us going after low hanging fruit where we can. The question is not "is older content sooner or later trivialized by later content", the question is "what sort of rate of trivialization do we want?"