Tier 12-13 Gear's Lack of Focus Gain

[Silosobi]

I believe there is a problem with gear in the T12-13 range not providing similar focus effect (and to a lesser degree other stat) progression as previous gear. I am going to focus on caster/healer gear for this discussion (they rely on focuses the most).

There used to be a number of items in this tier range that provided unique, powerful effects that allowed caster/healer classes to gain strength through gear, but most of these have been significantly reduced or removed. Items that come to mind are 4.3 robe, 4.3 sword, cella, verdict, taeshlin earring, NZ ring, and everything with channeling. I am not asking for these items to be reverted to their previous state/power, but rather just have caster gear in general provide more consistent gains in focus effects and stats.

Focus effects from gear of a given raid tier look something like this:
Tier 1/Exp Content - 1,2,3
Tier 2 - 3,4
Tier 3 - 4,5
Tier 4 - 4,5
Tier 5 - 5,6
Tier 6 - 5,6
Tier 7 - 6,7
Tier 8 - 6,7
Tier 9 - 7,8
Tier 10 - 7,8
Tier 11 - 8
Tier 12 - 8
Tier 13 - 8 (and one item with a focus 9)

I believe this problem is highlighted by the fact that high tier raiding seems to just be stuck at T13. Not because of lack of content, but because even once a guild has attained full T12-13 gear, they are not sufficiently strong to consistently defeat these fights, much less give people the confidence to try new content.

At any prior raid tier, if your raid force is mostly geared out from that tier, it becomes significantly easier to defeat, and people have the time/confidence to try to progress into harder things.

T12-13 gear provides relatively less power gain than any previous point in the game. Much of this is due to the lack of new focus effects. There is also generally less hp/mana gain (especially hp on tank gear) than in previous tiers, but I will leave that for another discussion.

 

[enasc]

I thought this post was good and deserved more conversation than a handful of likes as it drifts down to the bottom of the forum.

I'm no expert on caster dps, but it seems to me like there are 3 primary ways for casters to improve their dps.

Way #1 - Spells
These are, in my opinion, the biggest and most dramatic improvement to caster dps. You get a new spell that does more damage per second and instantly you are better forever*. (* unless your spell gets changed)

Option 1 progresses along smoothly from level 1 to level 65. Then at 65 even through the low tiers, there are ancients and then relics. In the mid tiers there are archaics. Then there's runics and you're effectively done. Assuming you have those done in the tier 10-11 range, you're pushing 12, 13, and new content with effectively no additional dps through new spells.

Way #2 - Tomes
Tomes let you gain percentage points to your elemental damage, or to crit rate, so those are nice. They can be rough to get, but if/when you do, they're a nice increase to your dps.

Tomes, and then opus force tiered progression, which works. You can't do rank 3 or 4 until you're raiding zones where those drop. Makes sense and mostly works, in my opinion. At least until you run out. Which you probably will at tier 12/13.

Way #3 - Focus
Either elemental focus or general focus effects, these can be pretty significant. Gaining 3% in the case of damage inc or afflic enhancement is substantial and immediate.

Option 3 progresses along pretty nicely from BoE and low tiers through t10 where you reach the best focuses in the game. There are maybe 2 items above tier 10 that provide focus increases that I can think of. If someone knows of more than that, please correct me.

With melee classes, it seems like there's a clean and direct route of progression through "add a weapon that drops from monster x that lets them do more damage than the last tier" but doing that with casters (and maybe healers, I don't play one of those) seems to stop in nearly every way at t10/11. Seeing some general method for caster dps progression beyond +mana - like another tier of focuses, in my opinion, would be excellent.

 

[Tevinter]

Solosolki's original post is very well written, and a pretty well thought out thing. I seriously cannot add anything that was already stated by the original post

 

[Silosobi]

Any chance this can get some consideration from the Devs? If this is the way things are intended to be, let us know, and I won't bring it up anymore.

From my perspective though, Marza gave casters more power/progression by giving us channeling and unique powerful effects (old 43 sword, robe, etc) instead of the standard new focus effects. Since then that powerful unique stuff has been removed or made useless.

On top of this, it just seems odd that focus effects would steadily progress about one rank every other tier, then at t9-10 you get focus 8s, and from then on you are mostly just gaining more hp/mana. T10 to T13 is easily a year of raiding for a normally progressing guild, and while it was fun for me because I got to use the old OP items in their heyday, I can only imagine it would seem relatively boring (from a gear standpoint, the fights are still fun, but everyone likes gear).

Focus effects are the staple of caster progression, if a Dev was willing to look over T10-13 items, in light of the 43 sword/robe/channeling/etc changes, and allow Rank 9 focuses to enter the game in the T12-13 range that would seem appropriate to me.

For a little perspective, my character had ~16% more raw damage and 4% more cast speed (which worked on low cast time spells too, making it immeasurably powerful) with the old pre-nerf gear. Admittedly, that was too much, but with all of that removed, caster progression gets very bland (its even worse for healers than dps casters). Full rank 9 focuses would only be 3% damage, 2% cast speed, and 1% mana con, which is only ~1/4th the power I had by the pre-nerf items.