Recent changes to Thaz gear..long post

[seferon]

Wow i agree totally Thaz is the biggest time sink in the world go get thoose class armors and the augs as said before only steel? has a lot of essences to get the augs.But like you make a new tier make new items that are better than zone before that as Mythryn said then you nerf it and make it harder every single time oh you just forget to bump down the encounters oh wait didnt you make Thaz a bit harder not to long ago syduck:

Like look at steel i guess thoose ppl just wanna beat the game and pretty much be done with it. I guess that is not something devs/admins wants to. Overpowered items hell its just the zone that says The end and you beat the game of course they are supose to be crazy items.

latten i dont even understand that and i have to read what i type...

 

[Xeldan]

I forgot that this is the other thing I didn't like. The whole "Soulspike: therefore any belt without ft2 can't be an upgrade" and "energized cord: therefore no melee dps will ever use a belt without +atk" takes away a lot of room to be original with items. I'm sorry, these legs can't have a unique effect; they have to have ft2, etc.

Hardly. It's the whole "ATK and Crit Strike are the only useful bonuses for a melee at Thaz tier" that makes it hard to be original with items.

 

[Xeldan]

Naturally all my points are invalid. At this point I'd have to say reverting all the thaz armor and deleting all the ToT items to be redesigned from scratch sounds nice. Most of them were poorly designed anyway.

No, your point about Soulspike is valid (but you also recognize why it was designed like that). Energized Cord is a little harder to get mad at because there isn't really much you can give a melee once they're stat-capped.

 

[Spiritplx]

Really, I think most ToT items are great. Some still need a little tweaking (especially from the harder parts of ToT), but in general, the ToT items fill in spots that are rare in Thaz, or replace more "replaceable" Thaz items. I don't think starting over on ToT items would be a good way to go (pretty sure you were mostly joking...mostly) and a few tweaks here and there to some of the items should make them more in line with their difficulty of obtaining. Last night we were talking in Vent about the Sanctum items. I thought they were fine with the recent change, but after getting destroyed (yet again) in there last night...I think the changes you were proposing to us sound pretty accurate.

Adding more regen, damage reduction, stun resistance, mind shield, and other effects that most players are not maxed on is a great idea for upper ToT items and Sanctum items (it looks like you are already going that route Zaela). I know it has been brought up and shot down a lot, but stamina regen on items (even if it is small) would be nice and melees would have something else to "max" out.

I agree Thaz class armor is ridiculously tedious to get, but they obviously have to be taken into consideration when balancing future items (which is the reason, and a good reason, they were reduced in powerlevel slightly). Really, I think the staff does a great job at itemization and it is sometimes hard to choose what you want to wear in any given situation because so many of the items are used for different encounters. Instead of just adding a bunch of crit strike/FT/attack to each item...make an item with more (different saves), more hp, more ac, etc but with no melee effects to make them decide if they want "survivability" or "dps" gear.

It really is a hard job, especially when trying to determine "how hard the encounters are". I think you all do a good job, and, though the players are sometimes frustrated with the "tweaks" that occur, it really does help with the game balancing and makes progression seem more "smooth".

Thanks for all the hard work!

 

[Thinkmeats]

The two defenses the staff has (that I've heard) are 'It was designed as the end-all be-all armor' and 'You can get it all in Lower Thaz'. Both of which are a bit silly.

If you put words in our mouths you shouldn't be surprised when they sound silly. That first 'position' is an oversimplistic caricature and I have no idea where you got the second from.

So, you say you don't want all these things, and yet there is a 235 mana, FT2 hat. I understand the need to nerf some overpowered items, but its a constant cycle of making 'overpowered' items and then nerfing them over again, and repeating in the next tier.

This is a silly and nonsensical objection.

The "nerfs" that we've done to the highest-end throughout the server's history have almost always been done to make room for a new tier, yes, but not because the numbers are getting too high or somesuch. If we start running into problems with everyone having capped FT, we can just make items that have negative FT but extra mana or somesuch. That's not the issue. The nerfs we do are intended to 'smooth out' the previous teir and to remove wacky items like the old 4-2 robe and Soulspike and so on that would just ripple down into new tiers and make new problems (such as how the Taeshlin robe was responsible for the old 4-2 robe).

Thaz is a little trickier than normal because the augs give you an extra option, which is 'farm after you'd already be done to get better gear', and since we definitely don't want to encourage players to raid something they just got done raiding a whole shitload we'd much rather the augs be something nice you get while you're there but not something you want to go back for when you don't need more gear. I think we've also accomplished that.

Lastly, I recall posting something like this:

To recap? No cluttering up the thread about why thaz needed changing (which it so, so obviously did) and no sanct stuff on account of how fluid it still is. Got it? Good.

and that's still true. I'd rather not have to threaten punishment but if I have to do it to keep you all from crawling up zaela's ass about something that isn't even remotely her fault, I will. If you're salty because your overall stats went down she's the last person in the world you should be talking to about it.

 

[Thinkmeats]

You know, I'd like to add something into my previous post. I'm not meaning to single any specific players out, but I just want to make something crystal clear:

The objections so far, outside of Safiya's post, have been very weak. She used examples and made a point, and her post was helpful. Generic weeping about how we're doing this or that without any real support to the point is not helpful. I'm not singling any one person out here, mind, I'm just criticising the general lump of players that have been giving zaela headaches over imaginary nonsense. Saying "you're making all items the same and each tier only have 10 mana upgrades!" doesn't make it true, it just makes it the topic for discussion. Saying "You want to keep nerfing the previous tier to make room for endless new tiers!" is silly and ridiculous, but hot damn does it start some conversations.

If we wanted to 'make room for new tiers', we'd squish down some older ones. We'd probably rearrange zones until the OP tier had as many options as the planar tiers did, move higher tier zones down to be next to IP, and so on. But we're not at all going to do that because we don't at all have to because the idea that we have to do things like that is gibberish.

Item-based arguments that have examples for comparison are how you're gonna win the most bread. Posting "hey you made such and such from thaz into dirt by adding 500 ft to this ToT thing!" is about a billion times more helpful than posting "quote=Duma]The sky is faaallllliiiinnngggg![/quote" is. And again, I'm not singling any specific players out. I even mean this post to be pointed at a few people who aren't in this thread, which means you can probably expect me to paraphrase this post in future threads. But from now on, I'm gonna be paying a lot more attention to the narrative of the discussion because if it turns into some useless imaginary fight over whether or not we're "making all upgrades 10 mana" or "making thaz class armor useless" or this or that other clearly exaggerated non-example, I'll want to put it back on track.

 

[Allielyn]

Adding more regen, damage reduction, stun resistance, mind shield, and other effects that most players are not maxed on is a great idea for upper ToT items and Sanctum items

Amen, brother! Preach it!

(I lubs me some DR).

 

[Spiritplx]

Just a friendly reminder, Zae...

I know we spoke in game, but I wanted to post it just as a reminder. The bard Thaz gear had the intelligence removed if you would be so kind to put it back whenever you have a free moment. Thanks!

(talking to me in-game is a very forgetful experience, so having it in writing may help a bit!)