Item Design, and upcoming reviews

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Xeldan

Xeldan

Staff Emeritus
This is just a heads up to everyone that very soon, the content designers will be having a meeting to discuss past, present, and future items and their designs. We're going to be better situating encounters into tiers, and appropriately adjusting items that need to be toned down, including some of the more popular "irreplaceable" items. I know no one enjoys having items "nerfed", but it really does need to be done for the integrity of item progression, and future item design in general. We're going to be working out a system that should make it easier for each individual designer to create their items and ensure that they fall into each specific difficulty tier.

Some of the current problem items make it really difficult to design upgrades to them from harder content, without then placing those upgrade items into another league of silly items.

So, don't be surprised if your items change; I'll certainly try to build a list of changed items(sometimes even giving examples), but it could be rather large.
 
Sweet dude, I'd definitely like to suggest a look at companion focus items from 1 on up. Always seemed like when lands of magic got removed, a few left with it, and way back when I first started I noticed that whole tiers of them were absent. But sounds pretty cool
 
It's good to see that this design crew is paying attention to this. One of the things about Live is the accumulation of 'uber' weapons/items and the consequent degradation to the economy. It led to less and less challenge as more of these items got into more and more hands.

Keep at it :)
 
Bow Progression:

I talked to Woldo about this last night and I think it needs a little tweaking.

Here's a rough progression of bows starting at groupable 60+ encounters up to Woe. Elemental damage is rendered as half for ratio calculation.

I'm not really good with BB code, so if someone wants to reformat this into a table, be my guest, I'll try to make it look good.

*Droppable

Columns are: Name | Dmg/Dly | Ratio | Improvement over Previous | Encounter/Difficulty

Voice of the Centaur 18/25 .72 0 Soloable 40+
Takorus's Diamond Shatter 20+4/30 .7333 1.85 VE/E(?) Tmap
Crystalline Bow* 30/40 .75 2.27 1 group, ~60+
Bow of the Twin Tongues 18/22 .8182 9.09 Cmal1
Blackened (?) Longbow 25/25 1.000 22.22 Stasis Master / ToFS
Kedgemetal XBow* 60/55 1.091 9.09 1 group, ~65
Frost King's Hunting Bow 40/35 1.143 4.76 Rymaz
Searwood Bow 30/25 1.200 5.00 Vizerilla (WDHK)
Ashenstrike* 24/20 1.200 " " 1 group, ~60+
Swiftshot 31/24 1.292 7.64 Var. (See App.)
Windsinger 42/32 1.313 1.61 Arch Sultan Radriz
Bloodseeker 47/35 1.343 2.31 CoD (Need more info)
XBow of Tenacity 64+2/43 1.512 12.57 Valor (Need more info)
Woe 68/45 1.511 12.53@ Inner Prison

@: Woe vs. Bloodseeker

Woldo recently added a bow, Misery, to the new PoTorment Encounter.

Misery 43/31 1.403 (Discussed Below) New PoT Boss

This bow is only a 6.9% upgrade over Windsinger, which is fine because its a huge tier jump. However, it is also technically better than Bloodseeker (Which has a better proc, and a 10% archery mod, please note) by 4.49%.

The problem as I see it is that the jump from Windsinger to Bloodseeker is too small (2.31%!) and the jump from Bloodseeker to Woe/Tenacity is too big. Bloodseeker being from CoD, my personal opinion is that Bloodseeker needs a small bump upwards.

Bloodseeker at 49/35 would be a 6.66% upgrade to Windsinger, and Woe/Tenacity would be a 7.94% upgrade from them, a much more even jump. Even 48/35 would still be a 2.32% upgrade over Misery, which with the extra stats would balance the relative difficulties (New Torment boss is not cake). Elemental damage could also be considered once the resists are adjusted, as per another post in the forums.

Things not considered: Relative power of procs/stats (E.G. Misery has less stats than Bloodseeker, and NO proc or archery mod; Woe has a low aggro, good damage proc, etc.) Faction binding is not considered, because it makes things really complicated and neither FB'able bow gets hugely better.

I may have missed some bows, and I skipped lower level bows like Quickshot Shortbow, Tradeskilled bows, Treantwood XBow, etc. There is a random drop bow from Storm's Eye that I couldn't find stats for, but its at the low end of this chart. If I missed something which belongs in there, please PM me the stats and drop info and I will put it in.


Appendix: Swiftshot
The difficulty of getting Swiftshot can vary, but the minimum you need is a group that can clear Catacombs trash, and a raid that can kill Parcelan multiple times. In addition however, you need high fletching skill for some of the combines.
 
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