It feels like the Dev team just wants progression to stop at tier 10-11. After that it's too easy to roll through blue con shitty mobs for the best XP / Cash in the game because all the high end zones just get nerfed due to being "too good" for the players who worked hard enough to be able to take advantage. (Cita, OG)
Someone else was making this point earlier in the thread, and I agree. Player power greatly increased as a result of the release of ikisith (tomes/high end gear/overall higher player stats, etc.) Based on the continuous nerfing of high end gear and high end zones, it seems like that was all not intended. It sucks from a player's point of view because they played the awesome (and prohibited) version of sod for a year or two. That's just an aside about why the players are disheartened about having their cool toys taken away after a long time of using them in their "broken" state, which was their "intended" state. It is a hard pill to swallow that the staff did not know or didn't care, but it is what it is. Our choice is to believe the staff or
#oldcountryway basically.
Players wouldn't farm the low end zones to the extent they do if the high end zones weren't nerfed as harshly (looking at you, citadel). The other thing is that high end tanks are invincible, seriously. This weapon may have helped the devs realize it, but monsters like cractees or the undead cave (nerfed?) or any low tier xp zone seriously cannot harm a tank with overcap damage reduction and high ac. I can run fuwok from the entrance of MielC to the froglok bard area and back in a huge circuit, often sometimes also going up to that golem spawn at what used to be the zone in on live, all the while being hit in the back (ie not getting any ripostes/lifetaps/whatever) in regular stance and then ride out the entire resultant mêlée with a relic hot (or probably less) even without the scythe. The damage from mobs that are 12-13 tiers below you looks like this:
1
absorb
absorb
absorb
absorb
absorb
absorb
absorb
riposte
dodge
absorb
absorb
absorb
1
absorb
riposte
dodge
ad infinitem.
While this is amusing for at least 5 minutes in the same way that playing doom2 with godmode is amusing, it really is indicative of a bunch of conflicting gameplay principles:
1. High end players should endlessly farm low tier content to generate money (and sometimes xp) and for no other purpose.
2. High end xp/money is overnerfed (causing 1).
Basically, to put this in dungeons and dragons terms, 500d2 pp in a low end zone vs. 1d1000 pp in a high end zone, with lower risk in the lower end zone means that low end is going to be picked every time.
3. There's a point with ac/hp/resists that mobs cannot harm you. This is why mobs at higher tiers have insane atk, tons of unresistable spells, do mêlée strikes that ignore armor, do a % of your hp, and/or hit everyone in the raid.
4. Super high tier chars shouldn't walk around in great fear of mortality from wandering trash mobs. They are godlike characters.
Anyway, the scythe is the straw that broke the
camel's back for some people. The players liked the increase in power and their characters branching out some as a result of ikisith. The idea that raiding for hours (to put it very mildly, more like 4 hours per day plus another 4 of xping/6mans whatever at the high end minimum) is going to produce a 20hp upgrade to characters that are functionally maxed out (i.e. can only be killed on bleeding edge content or if everyone in your group passes out into heroin addled slumber) is not something that the playerbase looks forward to.