Cmal (3.1 specifically)

Melestav

Melestav

Dalayan Beginner
Howdy folks, first time suggestion, be gentle.

I've been cleaning out 3.1 regularly for the past week or two, and, noticing that no balancing suggestions have been made for this wonderful zone in...well a long time, figured I'd throw mine in.

I worked my way through cmal, starting at...about 62? With only the wiki as a guide, taking groups of all fresh players through and keying out my paladin, up to 3.2 now. In that time, I've seen numerous tank style drops, but yet not a one has been of use. These days, any player can quite effectively farm a sufficient pile of cash through XP'ing to 65 and buy a full suit of Deepmetal plate.

"Ahha!," you say, "Crafted Armor is supposed be tier 3 equivalent!" to which I would agree. It is wonderful stuff and makes AA'ing a tank that much less painful. However, I would point you toward as low as Easy map loot that eclipses much of even up to 3.1 drops. At the lowest, a group of 62's can easily plow through E maps quite quickly to acquire http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Sisera's_Darkmesh_Coif let alone Thurg quest hat
and Mods for http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Sisera's_Darkmesh_Wristguard
heck, even VE http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Duroth's_Vambraces_of_Pugnacity are superior to each tanks specific (rare) class armor from 3.1 (not to mention Zounds better than 1-2 class armor) I won't even touch on D's, which are fully 1 groupable with the caliber players that could legitimately do cmal 3.1 w/o ringers.

Having not seen the paladin class Bp, I can only hope it has a nice clickie to make it useful, as the gloves sure aren't. http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Sacred_Crusader's_Gloves
Yaulp III? Not only is this considerably worse than our castable Yaulp IV, but I don't even use Yaulp IV! I know this argument has been done to death in the far reaches of the past, but it seems legitimate none-the-less. Needs to be Yaulp IV, or something else entirely. Clr gloves have group heal clicky, why not a self heal clicky?

Having said all this, am I saying "3.1 is worthless! zone sucks omfg etc." no, not at all. It contains loot that is both extremely useful and can be had nearly nowhere else for an up and coming tank. (hi shields, drop, thanks)

The zone is fun, the key crawl to get to it was fun, and I look forward to the day I can actually tank Arbiter in 3.2 through 20 seconds of healer stun (and boy was that first pull of 3.2 trash a "wtf" moment). However, in this day and age of crafted armor and tmap loot (and many other zones of much lower difficulty's loot) cmal needs a look for the new generation of SoD players that are just seeing it for the first time.

While I know 3.2, and 4 are still *highly* farmed by much higher tier folks for some choice drops/gearing alts, perhaps a look at spawn times may also be in order, as one can only expect 1-2 usable pieces of gear for an entire group of average geared chars out of a full clear of 3.1 *if* the mini-bosses with PH's happen to show up on a...very long respawn (Funeral Guardian and Funeral Master I'm looking at you)


TLDR Version: Much easier content has better loot (sometimes Much better) than cmal up to 3.2. Adjust respawn timers to compensate or adjust class specific loot accordingly.
 
good post

I've always felt the class specific loot there has needed a revamp for a while. Especially when you consider the pure chance of a piece dropping for your class, it should be more rewarding.
 
With the recent addition of reasonably-tiered instrument modifiers on most of the bard pieces, they are 1000x more desirable (and not at all overpowered). Would that such a simple solution were available for all other classes.
 
I do agree with everything you said: The zone is very fun and most boss lots are very good...but the class only set stuff is weak compared to VE/E/M maps which are much easier to do.



at least he pally gloves have a .5 sec cast time. the BST gloves are 5 seconds and cast a dot that only does 40dmg a tick =p Not that i'd use them anyway since i have +dmg gloves for my fists. That could be an easy fix for BST/MNK gloves, add in +2 of some elemental dmg and they would be very good. Couldn't be to "good" since monks starfall gets +2.
 
I do enjoy Cmal, its a rather fun zone working your way up throw the levels and it is a shame that the gear 95% of the time is a rot :( (ether because of classes or the gear being subpar to Simple/VE/E tmaps. At least the 1-3 Cmal)

I personaly would rather see the Gear Replaced b Rune drops. The Runes drops being non-class related (much like how the Valor Valorium orbs are done).

You gather, Small, Medium, and Large Runes for turn in to a quest NPC somewere (might not even be in Cmal).

Small runes = Small loots, bracers etc
Med Runes = Sleeves, Cloak etc
Lrg = Leggings and BP.

Turn in to NPC... poof Cmal Armor.

Prevents the current massive waste of Gear drops. With 15 classes out thier, and a 6 man limit with possible double classes in a group your looking at about 2/3 of the Armor that drops to auto rot based sololy on what classes happen to be there.

Balance of the gear is a whole other can of worms, but this change at least would allow a group to go into Cmal and see Armor drops for thier toons. Weather its a upgrade or not is another matter.
 
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Sounds like a good idea. I'd think that the class specific loot could be as good as the loot from the named considering how rare it is to get drops that are usable by the members of your group.
 
I noticed on the wiki that some of the class armor have weird redundancies. According to the wiki the cmal 3 cleric arms have Range Inc 4 and the cmal 3 cleric bracer has Range Inc 3. While Shamans have Affliction 4 on their arms and and Range Inc 3 on the bracer. Druids bracer is range inc 3 and I have no clue what the arms, but was hoping it's not Range inc 4.

This could be off, but was submitted on the wiki. But to keep with the other priest wrists perhaps change the arms to duration inc or reagant conservation instead would suit them accordingly if the stats on the cleric arms are indeed correct.

edit: I suck at grammar, still do.
 
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TBH, i've alwasy favored the idea of a Valor A type system. Especially now that you can't raid invite alts or friends and have them sit outside the zone.
 
Sounds like token system is a definite winner. Perhaps even an armor type token system, plate token, leather token, etc.
 
Even when cmal was the end game group zone, the armor still sucked and was rarely used outside of the gloves, and some BPs. I'm all in favor of it getting a little love. It's needed it.
 
Seeing as the thaz armor is widely seen as a major problem, I don't think simply improving the armor is a great solution.
 
The biggest problem with Thaz armor was that it attempted to be an end-all be-all solve every itemization issue a class would need with a whole set. That's not nearly necessary to make the cmal armor useful.

Of course, it's true with tradeskilled armor out and droppable high tier equivalents, Cmal might not end up being very competitive. But for those players who don't want to spend their money on replaceable upgrades (or who don't have the money to spend) it would be nice if Cmal at least dropped gear appropriate for its difficulty (and rarity!)

That means a likely bump from rank III Focus effects to rank IV Focus effects, and a slight bump in stats or resists (if not hp/ac). If nothing else, even modifying 1 cmal item per class to be useful (like warrior clickies) would go a long way to making this zone more useful.
 
Allielyn said:
If nothing else, even modifying 1 cmal item per class to be useful (like warrior clickies) would go a long way to making this zone more useful.
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After the Warrior clicky changes, they're not even worth going there for anymore due to the recast time and resist rate. :(
 
The item turn in, just seemed the lazy way out for a fix.

I would love to see the items as a whole revamped, but thats a lot more work. Like others have said, certainly doens't have to be Fantastic upgrades or beat out the high end Tradeskill items. But grinding throw some tmaps (which are easyer then cmal) for better gear leaves most of the player base wondering why they should bother with cmal.

If you were to revamp some of the gear, increaseing its drop rate slightly might also be nice.

A thought to, instead of drops for every single class you could consolidate the random dropping items of each class into groups (plate, chain etc) and leave the drop rate as is.

heck even just donig that alone without touching balance or anything else would help. thought you would then lose some of the unique flavor of the zone.
 
Apologies for bumping an oldish thread, but I had an idea. What if the gear was given an upgrade, and something simliar to thaz was put in. Named mobs can drop like chain bp for instance, and all mobs have a chance to drop a class specific gem, turn in both, get yoru class specific item. However, unlike thaz the chain bp will be statless until the gem also drops, kinda like aged runic armor. Thoughts?
 
Keeping the class specific items rare is the way to go. That way certain classes at least need to be in Cmal for quite some time if you do anything to make them less rare like a class gem thing they would need to nerf some clickies at least.

When I wanted/needed the warrior gloves I spend days upon days in cmal 3. Though true its less good now I still use it same for cleric gloves.
 
Noktar said:
When I wanted/needed the warrior gloves I spend days upon days in cmal 3. Though true its less good now I still use it same for cleric gloves.
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As did I and as do I. But if you didn't get them before the nerf, would you bother spending those days upon days in cmal 3? I sure wouldn't.
 
prolly wouldnt either since i think i got over 100AAs in cmal getting those gloves but it might just have looked like that long
 
I'd like to see the warrior Cmal bp sporting Thorncoat. The only argument I have in support of this is rarity of the warrior bp -- pretty superfuck rare. This would give me some incentive to farm it over paying 15k for Mantle of the Forest; I can promise it would take much less time to farm the 15k than it would to farm this bp.
 
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Budizzle said:
I'd like to see the warrior Cmal bp sporting Thorncoat. The only argument I have in support of this is rarity of the warrior bp -- pretty superfuck rare. This would give me some incentive to farm it over paying 15k for Mantle of the Forest; I can promise it would take much less time to farm the 15k than it would to farm this bp.
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just get mercury legs ;x

I believe your guild could use rust loot as well!
 
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