Tradeskill Armor

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Spiritplx

Spiritplx

Dalayan Elder
Yeah, so I know I am going to get a lot of flak for this, but I am going to suggest that tradeskill armor be reduced a bit in power. Currently with 2 augment slots, the armor can last you into tier 4-5 and sometimes beyond with casters (hi2u 30mana augs). Apparently the second aug. slot was added in for some reason a while back (before I started this server), but I honestly do not see a point to this second slot. Tradeskill armor allows you to bypass content and generally makes a lot of the lower tiered items kind of worthless. I am not suggesting the tradeskill armor be nerfed into oblivion, but removing the second aug. slot would definitely bring it up to speed with the balancing issues.

I think this change is needed more now because of all of the higher end item nerfs. These nerfs have made TS items even more powerful, because none of them got nerfed, but many high end loots did.

I am not trying to make it harder for the lower end guilds (though, I know it will), but as a balancing side to this game, TS items definitely need looked at.


(Sorry guys)
 
As long as the tradeskill items (other then mantle of the forest kinda things) have no notable item effects i dont see the problem of them being ablet to have some more mana.
 
At around 2k a piece, it's not so easy to gear a raid force with it as to bypass content. Also, equipment does not make a raid guild; they also need the AAs to go along with it. Naturally progressing toons will not be able to deck a force out in tradeskilled armor just to jump past the first few tiers of content. That content will supplement the few pieces they are able to accumulate along the way. Sure a toon can be twinked with all tradeskill armor, but someone with the resources to do that will find a way to twink them in raid gear instead if the tradeskilled armor is reduced in power anyway.

Coming from a guild that is currently in tier 4-5, none of our members were ever decked out in full tradeskill, and most of the pieces that they did have are now replaced with raid gear.

Tradeskilled armor helps fill in some of the gaps while moving through the lower tiers, but does not eliminate the need for those tiers. It also provides people who cannot, or choose not to raid an alternative way to advance themselves.

Given the cost and farming involved with tradeskilled armor, reducing it in power would move it right back to having little place in the game; right where it was before the 2nd aug change. By the time you could afford it, you'd have already progressed past it.
 
I always thought shadowsilk was over powered. Toss double mana augs on and boom, you are a raid wizard with a healthy mana pool. An extra 60m per piece is just nutty as it doubles the mana in some of the slots.

Maybe I was the exception, but I farmed like mad to buy pieces of Shadowsilk when I was nearing 65 and I started looking for a raid guild cause it was well worth it....and that was before the double aug addition. I dont understand quite clearly why people dont think Tradeskilled top end gear was viable without double augs, its simply not true.

As far as the 'by the time you can afford it you progressed past it'...I think thats utter horseshit. If its something you want....you do what it takes to earn it. period.
 
Syalara said:
As far as the 'by the time you can afford it you progressed past it'...I think thats utter horseshit. If its something you want....you do what it takes to earn it. period.
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Like I said, it's an alternative to raiding. But the time you would spend farming the money to buy a full set could get you just as far with AAs and with a raiding guild. It's an alternative to spending your time improving yourself in other ways.

Toss double mana augs on and boom, you are a raid wizard with a healthy mana pool.
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With few AAs? Wizards are probably the only class that might be able to get away with this due to their demand. Any of the higher-tier guilds are looking for toons with AAs, since a toon with all their priority AAs done is a much better asset than a non-AA'd toon with far superior gear and mana pool.
 
Well I personally never understood the decision to add double augs to tradeskilled gear ... but to put things in perspective a little, I have a cleric, and if I had the choice which to go with, mana, the SS gear wins, the perk to wanting to pick Combine would be the resists of course. But scary to think all the time you have to grind out faction, farm the parts, the gems (all three sets of gems) and SS still wins out on mana, even has 1 more point of Wisdom too.

Code: 
Combine Platemail Bracer
MAGIC ITEM NO DROP
Slot: Wrist
AC: 18
STR: +8 STA: +8 AGI: +5 DEX: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +5 HP: +75 MANA: +75 (+105 with Exceptional Aug)
SV Poison: +5 SV Magic: +10 SV Disease: +5 SV Fire: +5 SV Cold: +5
WT: 4.0 Size: Small
Class: WAR CLR PAL SHD BRD
Race: ALL

VS.

Code: 
Shadow Silk Wristband
MAGIC ITEM
Slot: WRIST
AC: 7
STA: +5 STR: +5 CHA: +6 WIS: +6 INT: +6 HP: +30 MANA: +60 (+120 with Double Exceptional Augs)
SVMAGIC: +8
WT: 0.1 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL
 
GuiardoTuneweaver said:
Like I said, it's an alternative to raiding. But the time you would spend farming the money to buy a full set could get you just as far with AAs and with a raiding guild. It's an alternative to spending your time improving yourself in other ways.

With few AAs? Wizards are probably the only class that might be able to get away with this due to their demand. Any of the higher-tier guilds are looking for toons with AAs, since a toon with all their priority AAs done is a much better asset than a non-AA'd toon with far superior gear and mana pool.
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Dont even bring AA's into this for 2 reasons.....1) AA's are stupid easy to get for the first 200 2) if you are farming money for Shadowsilk...you are getting xp unless you bottomfeed.

To give you an idea how far shadowsilk can get you, I wore the Shadowsilk tunic until it was replaced by Combine robe, I wore the arms until they were replaced in PoA, I had a wrist until that was replaced in ValorA.....exactly how far into the raidgame is tradeskilled stuff suposed to take you?
 
Seeing how hard it is to get combine, especially for a cleric and especially for pieces like the bracers (since tanks will be getting BP and legs before you most likely) it is kind of sad to see that you can still get more mana going the tradeskill route.

If you exp. and save your money from groups and drops, you can easily buy a lot of key pieces for your gear. Also, being in the high end doesn't make you rich and being in a lower tier guild doesn't make you poor. I do not see a correlation to these. If you spend the little extra time in farming great dropable gear, you will advance through raid content WAY faster. I think the power level of TS items makes this progression a little too fast.
 
The second aug slot is to allow for greater customization over dropped items.

Like for example the base Chain tunic can serve 8 Classes ( RNG ROG SHM WAR PAL SHD CLR BRD) Yes some are plate but they can all wear chain as well. Not all of the classes like the same stats. So if we try to create overly balanced items they would end up sucking. So by Dialing the stats back some across the board and adding a second aug slot you can focus your armor on the things most important to you. The question remains, should the stats be dialed back a little more on the base model (un-augged) armors. This is being looked into by staff currently prior to this thread even being made.
 
I dunno, 2k for small slots + cost of 2x Game augs is still at least hours of farming unless you are amazingly geared and don't need it in the first place. I would rather see the cost of components go up than a nerf to the tradeskilled armors. Say just for example prices doubled. Would this increase price [and therefore the time it takes to farm the PP] make the stats more justified?

Eg is prices were doubled or even tripled[by increasing cost of vendor bought components], would it still be so 'easy' to obtain? I personally do not think 25k? for a full suit * 2 or *3 is really that simple to obtain from a few xp groups as some would suggest.

Of course any changes to tailoring would probably hurt tailors, esp since blacksmiths can now make shields and tailors get nothing.
 
smadcatc said:
Of course any changes to tailoring would probably hurt tailors, esp since blacksmiths can now make shields and tailors get nothing.
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Mantle of the Forest and Robe of Flowing water are nothing? :psyduck:
 
smadcatc said:
I dunno, 2k for small slots + cost of 2x Game augs is still at least hours of farming unless you are amazingly geared and don't need it in the first place. I would rather see the cost of components go up than a nerf to the tradeskilled armors. Say just for example prices doubled. Would this increase price [and therefore the time it takes to farm the PP] make the stats more justified?

Eg is prices were doubled or even tripled[by increasing cost of vendor bought components], would it still be so 'easy' to obtain? I personally do not think 25k? for a full suit * 2 or *3 is really that simple to obtain from a few xp groups as some would suggest.

Of course any changes to tailoring would probably hurt tailors, esp since blacksmiths can now make shields and tailors get nothing.
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I think smithing has been behind tailoring for a while now. Shaman and Clerics were better served using SS over Deepmetal, and the Robe / Mantle had absolutely no smithed counter-part. Shields did a bit to close this gap but are in no way comparable to the Robe or Mantle.

I am the only person on staff reviewing Tailoring and Smithing, and adding new / updating old items. So maybe you could have a little patients with the fact I can't work on them all at the same time, and at least be happy that someone is trying to actively make them better for the server from all perspectives.
 
Tempus said:
The second aug slot is to allow for greater customization over dropped items.

Like for example the base Chain tunic can serve 8 Classes ( RNG ROG SHM WAR PAL SHD CLR BRD) Yes some are plate but they can all wear chain as well. Not all of the classes like the same stats. So if we try to create overly balanced items they would end up sucking. So by Dialing the stats back some across the board and adding a second aug slot you can focus your armor on the things most important to you. The question remains, should the stats be dialed back a little more on the base model (un-augged) armors. This is being looked into by staff currently prior to this thread even being made.
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I see your point for customization but Shadowsilk does not have the multitude of classes to serve. I would be shocked to see anything but +double mana augs on any SS item being worn.

I geared up a monk using pretty much all Imphide once she hit 45 and I did not feel that was as overpowered as SS and in part I think thats due to what you mentioned above. My augs on her ran the gamut from AC to HP and Resists making the cumulative effect of each type of aug alot less powerful then slapping 60m on every piece of silk gear.

I am glad its being looked into, I wish you luck as I know its not an easy task ahead of you.
 
Sorry tempus, I did not mean to say that you or anyone else is doing a bad job. I was just trying to offer a solution to SS being too easy to obtain. If you don't like my suggestion, that's fine. And yes, I did forget that tailoring has robe of flowing water and mantle of the forrest hehe :psyduck:
 
smadcatc said:
Sorry tempus, I did not mean to say that you or anyone else is doing a bad job. I was just trying to offer a solution to SS being too easy to obtain. If you don't like my suggestion, that's fine. And yes, I did forget that tailoring has robe of flowing water and mantle of the forrest hehe :psyduck:
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Making them more expensive doesn't fix anything. The problem is that right now double augged Tradeskill Armor ( not all pieces but most ) is comparable to tier 4 or 5 raid loot, and if you increase the cost ofthe armor you just make it even harder to obtain for casual players who won't likely see tier 4 and 5 raid loot or anything beyond tier 2 really. So the ideal situation is to make the TS armor fall into a tier 3ish power level WHEN it is DOUBLE AUGGED. Right now it falls into that level with basically no augs. This will not be an easy task, and may require some outside the box thinking on which armors are best suited for each class.
 
Tempus said:
The problem is that right now double augged Tradeskill Armor ( not all pieces but most ) is comparable to tier 4 or 5 raid loot ... So the ideal situation is to make the TS armor fall into a tier 3ish power level WHEN it is DOUBLE AUGGED. Right now it falls into that level with basically no augs.
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I don't think this is quite accurate. Our members are replacing their double-aug'd tradeskilled armor with most of the drops we're getting from Tier 4 according to Waldoff's Raid Tier profile, and even a good bit of the Tier 3 mobs. If tradeskilled armor were tier 3ish without the augs, that wouldn't be the case (our members have very little . According to this profile, I would say double-augged tradeskill gear is somewhere in the tier 2-3 range.

Is this categorization approximately the tiers you are referring to?
 
GuiardoTuneweaver said:
Just found Waldoff's updated tier categorization posted about a week after the previous link I provided; my previous comments hold. In fact, according to the new list, Rev is only tier 3/4 instead of tier 4/5. :(
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Don't mistake rebalance for nerf, though invariably some items will be nerfed others will not or just have their stats jumbled around a bit.
 
compared to droppable/sellable items like carrion flesh gloves, ench robe of deflection, crown of the depths, crown of the elements, carrion flesh band, boots of the bedeviler, bloodfire master's pendant, bloodfire insignia, arena lords protector, festering mask, seaweed breeches, damask leather tunic and others + items that can be gotten by grouping, its quite easy to skip over raidcontent without using tradeskilled items, if adding tmap items into the picture it gets even easier. With some of those items having been overfarmed it might even end up cheaper for some slots, and most of these items have lower lvl req or no lvl req at all, ie can be better used to twink out lower lvl alts. As the deepmetal market looked before double augs, there simply were no buyers of newly made items at the cost of components+time investment, and compared to droppable items ingame, classes that use hp and ac can often find better alternatives than tskilled items to wear. For some slots there are differences when it comes to mana when using double mana augs I suppose, especially on certain shadowsilk items that also sport a high int/wis (which is usually one of the downsides of tskilled items vs droppable gear.. the stats suck and if you want an ok overall char you need raidgear or other gear in some slots to make up for the crappy stats (like cha/wis/str/sta...) on the tskilled items.) for double ac or double hp a lot of droppable items still come out on top, especially with stats and modifiers/focuses included.

Also, some people dont play the game to raid, and there should be some content available to make them able to progress their characters as well, and to make them attractive to a group in more ways than someone being nice and taking pity on them.
 
Yep. We are gonna nerf it all to hell and back just to screw over Tradeskillers. This is clearly what I have said is going to happen.


EDIT: And yes you can find super high end droppable loot that will be better than Tradeskill items, that is why they are rare drop items in Super High end zones. They really aren't the same thing. Tradeskill items are meant to be readily available and universally attainable items. If high-end FR loot was supposed to be that way as well, the drop/spawn rates would be upped, the stats would be nerfed and you would have DIRECT competition with your Tradeskill Armors from dropped items not only in price but in availability.
 
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