Tradeskill Armor

[robopirateninja]

I'm honestly curious, can you post your level of education? The last grade/year/degree you completed, or a GED or whatever?

edit: you can Pm me if you don't want to post it here

 

[Malleus2]

They are screwing us over for personal profit, and most of them know it. Given time, they start to rationalize that it was "for the betterment of the game" or some such nonsense, and a little more time, they imagine themselves saviors, not jackasses.

I am just bringing back some reality to the coversation.

The only ones making a profit are those of us with large stock holdings in Alcan.

 

[Daelius]

i loled reading your post mog. First off, tradeskills exist as an alternative way of making money. So to say we are "screwed over for profit" is pretty ignorant, as no one would actually do tradeskills if there wasn't that incentive (some exceptions are made for really nice items and really masochistic people who like carpal tunnel). Find me one tradeskiller who has no intention of ever making any money off of a tradeskill. Even those doing it to "help their guild" are still trying to make money.

/economics off

I say this thread needs to be locked again, until changes are actually made. Just my 2cp

 

[Tarutao]

Find me one tradeskiller who has no intention of ever making any money off of a tradeskill.

If I ever recoup the money I've sunk into tradeskills, I'll consider it a personal failure.


Back on topic: It seems that the problem of "tradeskill armor is overpowered" needs to be more precisely defined. Until then, people like myself will simply continue to propose changes that address the aspects that they perceive as overpowered. In doing so, they "lop off his arms" as Tyrone metaphorically stated. Thus, at the risk of being criticized for failing to trudge through this whole thread again, I perceive the following [INCOMPLETE AND POTENTIALLY JUST PLAIN WRONG] list of issues that I encourage others to modify as needed:

(1) Overall, these armors are simply too powerful at around level 45.

(2) When double 30-mana augmented, the Shadow Silk armor has too much mana even for a level 65 just beginning the raid game.

(3) The word "courtesy" is still misspelled as "curtesy" in Rule 1... which I have to look at every time I log in.

 

[robopirateninja]

You're confusing the obvious examples of the problem with the entirety of the problem. Reducing the stats on augments does nothing to change the stats on the items you put the augments into, which is the problem.

The ability to add a second augment into any piece of ts gear increases its power, it's just that the most effective way to do that is usually +mana for shadowsilk, +ac for deepmetal and so forth.

If item A has 60 raw mana and 2 aug slots, and is easier to get than an item B with 50 mana and one slot, there's a disparity in the progression of items. Nobody would ever go for item B, because it would be a waste of your time, when you could upgrade by putting in less effort. I use examples in terms of mana simply because it's easy for me and that was the primary stat I looked at when choosing shadowsilk over raid gear, you can replace that with X AC + 10 if it helps you.

The gear is in fact so powerful that it can replace a substantial portion of items that drop from the raid mobs that the unoffical list terms tiers 0-5. Personally (and this is the part of my post where my opinion is) I think that trivializing that much content is a bad idea. Raiding the first few tiers is a waste of time in terms of progression because in the several hours it takes 18 people to mount a successful raid on a zone like DFS, SE, SK, or DHK and get 10 items to divide among them, nearly any class, and just about EVERY duo can farm enough platinum to buy a few pieces of tradeskilled gear that is better.

The only "greed" in this thread is tradeskillers who want to see their market for items untouched, as it is now no casual player has much of a chance of improving on tradeskilled gear unless they get into a lucky group in a high-level XP zone or farm for a lot longer to buy superrare droppables like robe of the icarus and bonded blade of the torturer, which don't even exist for every slot.

 

[moghedancarns]

... I graduated Newnan High School in Georgia, 32nd of 350 odd people in 1993. I rarely did my homework because it was not worth my time. I instead just aced most of the tests. I did have trouble in Chemistry, Biology, and 11th grade English. I refer to those as the other classes where it was not a complete waste of time to be at school in the first place. I passed two with Bs, I failed one semester of Chemistry. I responded by talking AP Chemistry as my makeup. During that year, we competed in the University of Southwestern Georgia's Science Competition. I placed in third overall in a three way tie for first in Chemisty... ie, we all had the same chemistry scores, so they awarded based on overall scores of all the sciences. Our teacher chapperone was our Chemistry teacher. At the time, I was failing AP Chemistry.

I went to High School because laws said that I HAD too. I went to College expecting something different. I was disappointed. I publicly berated the ineffectual teaching staff, in class and out, and was finally asked to not return following an angry tirade with the assistant dean. I was working 70 hours a week to pay for it as a manager of a pizza place, I thought I had a certain right to decent teachings from people who spoke English and were not openly communist.

I can converse on a great many subjects, as long as they interest me. Time has not yet taught me to suffer fools graciously. I can be kind, or I can be grouchy. I can recite most figures from memory, but do not always act upon them... once you dissect this game down to the bare numbers, it ceases to be fun... the excitement is in defying the numbers. I am right a high percentage of the time, and act accordingly. In arguements, I require as much proof that I am wrong as I present to back up my own case. However, occasionally, I am wrong. I always publicly conceed the point. If I stop argueing but do not conceed, I do not think that I am wrong... I just got bored of the arguement, usually because you have resorted to "I BELEIVE" as your basis of fact.

My Fomelo is linked in my sig in every post. My only tradeskilled item is a Black Sapphire Earring made by Maimai is 2005. It cost me 185pp. I have yet to find something better. I once had two, but my guild wants me to wear the other earring for the negative aggro. if you would like, you are certainly welcome to point out where my wardrobe can be vastly improved by using Shadowsilk. As My gear is ALL tier 3 or lower, this should be a very easy task for you, since SS so so overpowered. And I do mean vastly improved... as in, able to make an actual in game difference. I have a SS belt. Wearing my current belt, i lost ~200 mana. Find another couple of those gems and I can... CAST ONE MORE SPELL!!!! If the entire raid hinged on me casting one more potentially resisted spell, then we are out of our league, or my fellows need to step up. As such... nothing short of a thousand mana is worth while, in game. My CHA is always maxed with buffs, so no help there... and no other stats really mean anything to me. I count 1 FT as 50 mana, BTW... since OOM raid fights last about 5 minutes... I'll let you higher edumocation types figure out the math on that one.

Steel is not losing mobs to guilds wearing Shadowsilk. This is generally true. Generally, people in tradeskilled armor are not those whom feel the tradeskilled item is better, they are generally those who either have not had the drop, or or have been unlucky in winning the drop. Guilds do not hang around doing the same crap forever... some people invaribly never get something they want. If you have an actual guild of people, this i a problem... the new people just are not geared up enough. Oddly, SoD solves this problem by just getting people to replay someone else's already geared up characters. If this was not the case, if high end guilds actually had to deal with player rotation, Steel would be losing targets to guilds with at least one person wearing something Tradeskilled. It's just the nature of the beast.

As for the profit in my statement...

There are a number of single group targets in Dalaya. They can be done by most groups. Their items sell for a couple hundred pp. There are some harder one group mobs. They can be two boxed by a high tier player... guess which one gets the mob more often? These items sell for sub 2k. Some single group mobs are really not called that raid mobs to the lower tiered players. They can be done by 2 or 3 people twoboxing each... a whole group! Still much, much faster than a full raid of undisiplined noobs. These are the items we see for more than 2K. Do these players need these items... are they upgrades? No. These are farming items, to be sold to the players who do not move fast enough to outrun 2 or 3 people. Except, there is a problem... it is easy to sell the items for a couple hundred pp, but it takes a lot to reach charm money that way. Sub 2k items are sluggish, but still a slow way of earning money. The High pp 2k+ itmes... you can go for months, slowly chipping away at the price, each new item selling for less than the last, when they sell at all.... why? Because THESE items are inferior or not all that much better than tradeskilled. None of the noobs want to give a month's plat to the charm farmer for a single piece of gear... they want to buy a lot of tradeskill instead. This is part of the Greed.

The other part I have mentioned many times. SHadowsilk is not worn by real characters as a primary... it is worn by boxed healers for the flat mana. Boxes do not get the same roll for loot opertunities most of the time, and since box healers only really do one thing, shoadow silk meet those demands well enough. Deepmetal Plate... well, the point of every 65 want to be tank is to get DM plate armor, because, frankly, there really isn't anyhting else even remotely useful. There are a few drops from high end one group but really raid mobs for the level... but without a decent tank to start, you cannot get them. That's the whole crux of the issue... plate itemization is so crappy, that it requires that you already have it to aquire it. So, you can either buy it from the charm farmers, or go without. Recall two years ago... the basic plan for any new "raiding" guild was to steal, or borrow, an established tank. This tank requirement effectively kept anyone who could not meet it from ever joining the raid game... your other options were to become pick of the little for those guilds already established, or not play. Nice for the established, ain't it? Guess what, when a couple of guilds started geting a borrowed tank and joining the raid scene, the established guilds tried this exact same thing, nerfing items they no longer needed, but were vital to the up and coming guilds.

Please, I really hope you are not predicable to be already replying with something insipid like "if it was so impossible, how did the established tanks do it? huh?" desperately hoping you have a point, because, frankly, you don't. They were established in a different time, in a different system, with different rules, and different mobs. And yes, it really did make all the differnce in the world.

So, now, we have too many guilds already at the top end, more in the middle, and even more coming through the lower ranks, and the tank checkpoint does not exist... with DM and enough AAs, you can raid low tier mobs and challenge charm farmers for their farm mobs. People can form their own guilds and have a respectable chance of hitting something slightly decent; they are not forced into begging another guild for admission. None of this makes the established guilds happy. Thus, the OP. Unless you REALLY believe that a guy looked at gear that was worse than his own, far below the gear he sees ever day in raids, gear he claims never to have worn... just randomly pissed him off one day... some much... that he actually spent the time post about it. I mean, how often do you pause to write angry tirades about overpowered Blackburrow loot?

So, what does inspire this? I trust I have presented my case clearly enough that everyone can follow it, this time? No more Psyduck? I suppose you will have to resort to spelling and grammar. Anyway, feel free.

 

[Spiritplx]

This thread is now absolutely worthless. Thanks to the staff in looking into this concern, but I really do not see a point in keeping this thing alive.

 

[robopirateninja]

if you would like, you are certainly welcome to point out where my wardrobe can be vastly improved by using Shadowsilk. As My gear is ALL tier 3 or lower, this should be a very easy task for you, since SS so so overpowered. And I do mean vastly improved... as in, able to make an actual in game difference. I have a SS belt. Wearing my current belt, i lost ~200 mana. Find another couple of those gems and I can... CAST ONE MORE SPELL!!!! If the entire raid hinged on me casting one more potentially resisted spell, then we are out of our league, or my fellows need to step up. As such... nothing short of a thousand mana is worth while, in game. My CHA is always maxed with buffs, so no help there... and no other stats really mean anything to me. I count 1 FT as 50 mana, BTW... since OOM raid fights last about 5 minutes... I'll let you higher edumocation types figure out the math on that one.

Then quit playing. If it takes a +1000 mana improvement to matter to you you're never going to see a worthwhile return. This game doesn't give you a thousand mana every gear upgrade. A shadowsilk waistband with mana augments is 125 raw mana and 15 intelligence. On fomelo you're wearing a wintery flowsash. The item has seen an improvement since it dropped when I raided, true, it didn't have 25 mana then, jsut the 2 FT. Still, it rates roughly equivalent on your 5 minute fight IF your stats are totally capped. Under the first cap the shadowsilk beats it by 15int x 12mana-30, (or 150, assuming that you use exceptional augs in both pieces). Granted, that cap is easy to get to, but the aas to unlock the next one aren't too costly, and then it's still a 60 mana upgrade. I'm not sure where or how you figured a loss of 200 mana by wearing shadowsilk.

edit: I just realized I misunderstood your post here. You realize that it would be an huge upgrade, but you don't care. Why do you play this game? Why are you posting here?

Steel is not losing mobs to guilds wearing Shadowsilk. This is generally true. Generally, people in tradeskilled armor are not those whom feel the tradeskilled item is better, they are generally those who either have not had the drop, or or have been unlucky in winning the drop. Guilds do not hang around doing the same crap forever... some people invaribly never get something they want. If you have an actual guild of people, this i a problem... the new people just are not geared up enough. Oddly, SoD solves this problem by just getting people to replay someone else's already geared up characters. If this was not the case, if high end guilds actually had to deal with player rotation, Steel would be losing targets to guilds with at least one person wearing something Tradeskilled. It's just the nature of the beast.

It's clear that you have never raided past a certain point in the game, and I guess I can understand how you could feel this way. A beefy maintank that's actually an established guild's offtank on a pickup raid makes a mob look like chump change and you think it works forever. LOTS of the lower tier fights can be twoboxed easily. Admittedly, some upper tier fights are like this as well, but a lot, maybe even most fights past a certain point, second boxes pretty much die. You need a single person playing a single character, and most people aren't willing to play someone else's. Very few characters are simply boxed forever, with the exception of main tanks.

As for the profit in my statement...

There are a number of single group targets in Dalaya. They can be done by most groups. Their items sell for a couple hundred pp. There are some harder one group mobs. They can be two boxed by a high tier player... guess which one gets the mob more often? These items sell for sub 2k. Some single group mobs are really not called that raid mobs to the lower tiered players. They can be done by 2 or 3 people twoboxing each... a whole group! Still much, much faster than a full raid of undisiplined noobs. These are the items we see for more than 2K. Do these players need these items... are they upgrades? No. These are farming items, to be sold to the players who do not move fast enough to outrun 2 or 3 people. Except, there is a problem... it is easy to sell the items for a couple hundred pp, but it takes a lot to reach charm money that way. Sub 2k items are sluggish, but still a slow way of earning money. The High pp 2k+ itmes... you can go for months, slowly chipping away at the price, each new item selling for less than the last, when they sell at all.... why? Because THESE items are inferior or not all that much better than tradeskilled. None of the noobs want to give a month's plat to the charm farmer for a single piece of gear... they want to buy a lot of tradeskill instead. This is part of the Greed.

Unreal, people who are bad at the game lose to people who are good at the game! Correct this grievous error!

There are very few 65 or lower mobs in the game that I think couldn't be killed by 6 people in currently-powered tradeskilled gear, with only one augment in all the pieces, or shitty augments in both. The gear would still be really good with only a single aug slot. If someone in an admin position wants to set up a group of blank characters and spawn mobs in zones, I'll box two of them. It's true that 6 people who know what they're doing are better than 18 retards. What kind of person tries to FIX that?

The other part I have mentioned many times. SHadowsilk is not worn by real characters as a primary... it is worn by boxed healers for the flat mana. Boxes do not get the same roll for loot opertunities most of the time, and since box healers only really do one thing, shoadow silk meet those demands well enough. Deepmetal Plate... well, the point of every 65 want to be tank is to get DM plate armor, because, frankly, there really isn't anyhting else even remotely useful. There are a few drops from high end one group but really raid mobs for the level... but without a decent tank to start, you cannot get them. That's the whole crux of the issue... plate itemization is so crappy, that it requires that you already have it to aquire it. So, you can either buy it from the charm farmers, or go without. Recall two years ago... the basic plan for any new "raiding" guild was to steal, or borrow, an established tank. This tank requirement effectively kept anyone who could not meet it from ever joining the raid game... your other options were to become pick of the little for those guilds already established, or not play. Nice for the established, ain't it? Guess what, when a couple of guilds started geting a borrowed tank and joining the raid scene, the established guilds tried this exact same thing, nerfing items they no longer needed, but were vital to the up and coming guilds.

Honestly, you're right here. No plate drops really compare to deepmetal aside from a few, rare pieces. We got incredibly lucky and got stormbreaker plate after only a few months of farming rymaz, otherwise we probably would have worm deepmetal until we farmed OP for combine. There are a few really good pieces for tanks, I think there's an 18AC tank wrist thats droppable, but by and large deepmetal is the best you can do until you hit several tiers of raid targets.

Maybe before the changes go in, the same Dev who balances these items could examine itemization as a whole on the immediate tiers surrounding the intended level of deepmetal and other TS armors. That's a great fucking idea. Why not just post that instead of spewing off your conspiracy theory bullshit?

Please, I really hope you are not predicable to be already replying with something insipid like "if it was so impossible, how did the established tanks do it? huh?" desperately hoping you have a point, because, frankly, you don't. They were established in a different time, in a different system, with different rules, and different mobs. And yes, it really did make all the differnce in the world.

I don't know how other guilds made their tanks, really. kazimir was made a week before fusion was founded, for the specific purpose of being our tank. We kitted him out in deepmetal because it would let us attack bigger targets sooner, for better upgrades. We bought the next most expensive charm as soon as we could raise the money. We went pretty fast. If the WHOLE guild had been geared in TS armor, we would have moved even faster.

So, now, we have too many guilds already at the top end, more in the middle, and even more coming through the lower ranks, and the tank checkpoint does not exist... with DM and enough AAs, you can raid low tier mobs and challenge charm farmers for their farm mobs.

I don't have a problem with competition, There's enough of Dalaya for everyone and new zones coming out soon. If it gets seriously congested, I'll make another alt with an awesome name, or do tmaps. (BTW DID U KNO U CAN GET 400PP/hr ON TMAPS). Can you comprehend that I myself like this game very much and wish it to be balanced correctly? And then for some stupid reason I decided to invest way too much time posting about it on the internet? Quite frankly the numbers speak for themselves, the only concrete argument I've seen you offer in this whole thread is that "farming plat take way longer than everyone says it does" but frankly it's crap.

People can form their own guilds and have a respectable chance of hitting something slightly decent; they are not forced into begging another guild for admission. None of this makes the established guilds happy. Thus, the OP.

This is the kind of stuff that made me wonder if you went to some weird-ass private religious university or something. You start souding really fucking crazy, like there is a conspiracy about you. "The OP" that you refer to is from the worst guild on the server to cast that kind of aspersion at, there's content on the server that only they have a hope of killing, they have no competition for it, and can alt raid the content that the rest of the high end guilds fight over.

Unless you REALLY believe that a guy looked at gear that was worse than his own, far below the gear he sees ever day in raids, gear he claims never to have worn... just randomly pissed him off one day... some much... that he actually spent the time post about it. I mean, how often do you pause to write angry tirades about overpowered Blackburrow loot?

I dunno man, it kinda raises the same question someone else did several pages ago. Why haven't all the casual players noticed the unbalance in their easily acquired tradeskilled gear and posted about it? Oh yeah, because they profited from it. Anyone who does, probably wouldn't report it. I sure didn't when I wore TS gear to max out my mana. It was cheap and easy as shit to get, all I had to do was farm for a few hours and browse listsold!

So, what does inspire this? I trust I have presented my case clearly enough that everyone can follow it, this time? No more Psyduck? I suppose you will have to resort to spelling and grammar. Anyway, feel free.

I realize I came off as incredibly insulting. It was intentional, to provoke the kind of lengthy response you provided. I really sought to understand how you could look at the stats of the items in question, read the posts in this thread, and make the kind of posts you made. After reading your post, I'm still lost by your line of reasoning.

I'm sorry, I really tried.

 

[Andorraa]

Tyrone makes some excellent points in here.

What I don't think you realize, mogger, is that Tradeskill items as they are right now are REDICULOUSLY insane overpowered. No, this isn't coming from me, some high and mighty steel member who wants to fuck over the little guy, this is coming from an observer who has seen every bit of content (save deep Prison Sanctum) that the server has to offer. When I led Empire AND YOU WERE IN THE SAME GUILD AS ME, we still raided lower tiered things to get little minor upgrades for people to replace their shadow silk.

I KNOW you remember me and strylok arguing over who should get what because of what was a bigger upgrade, and usually giving it to someone with shadow silk so we got double upgrades. We were in deep Storm's Eye before you left Empire, which admittedly is still entry-level, but there were still items in there that were not better than shadow silk. Every little upgrade chips slowly away at how much mana you have, so your argument about casting ONE MORE NUKE is complete fucking asinine shit and makes you sound like a fucking moron.

If I got a ~200 HP upgrade I'd be ecstatic. At my level of raiding, there is nearly nothing that will give you more than 15-20 mana more than you already have. With the rebalances (or lawl nerfs) that happened not too long ago, shadow silk fell out of line with the rest of the raid content and became MORE overpowered than it previously was. When an item that you can buy for under 2K has 125 mana, then something is wrong. As a raider, you don't see items with over 100 mana until you get to outer prison/sepulcher (usually). So for you to be able to BUY these items for around 2K makes me think, progressionwise, that they're... oh wait... OUT OF FUCKING LINE.

Also, don't compare Steel to any other guild on the server when you're talking about tradeskilled items. None of us are sub-7K mana and we have 9 casters/preists above 8K mana. I really don't think that we're on your tier, and have four-manned a bunch of entry level raid targets. I know my monk is better than most of the lower-end guilds main tanks by a long shot. My reasons for saying all of this? I could really give a fuck about lower end raid content, and the people that play in it. That means I don't care what goes on in the mind of a casual player, because they aren't wasting time like me. That doesn't make them bad people, nor does it make me too important to talk to them, because I interact with casual people and Dalaya's Beginners people all the time.

What I do care about is having a balanced game, and negating 4+ tiers of raiding content in favor of getting a bunch of tradeskilled items that put you over 5.5K mana. Yes, I want people to progress in the game, but not if it means skipping a bunch of content just because you have a shitload of money to waste. The items are overpowered, the admins/devs have even said so. There is nothing left for you to argue.

 

[articbre]

Tyrone makes some excellent points in here.

What I don't think you realize, mogger, is that Tradeskill items as they are right now are REDICULOUSLY insane overpowered. No, this isn't coming from me, some high and mighty steel member who wants to fuck over the little guy, this is coming from an observer who has seen every bit of content (save deep Prison Sanctum) that the server has to offer. When I led Empire AND YOU WERE IN THE SAME GUILD AS ME, we still raided lower tiered things to get little minor upgrades for people to replace their shadow silk.

I KNOW you remember me and strylok arguing over who should get what because of what was a bigger upgrade, and usually giving it to someone with shadow silk so we got double upgrades. We were in deep Storm's Eye before you left Empire, which admittedly is still entry-level, but there were still items in there that were not better than shadow silk. Every little upgrade chips slowly away at how much mana you have, so your argument about casting ONE MORE NUKE is complete fucking asinine shit and makes you sound like a fucking moron.

If I got a ~200 HP upgrade I'd be ecstatic. At my level of raiding, there is nearly nothing that will give you more than 15-20 mana more than you already have. With the rebalances (or lawl nerfs) that happened not too long ago, shadow silk fell out of line with the rest of the raid content and became MORE overpowered than it previously was. When an item that you can buy for under 2K has 125 mana, then something is wrong. As a raider, you don't see items with over 100 mana until you get to outer prison/sepulcher (usually). So for you to be able to BUY these items for around 2K makes me think, progressionwise, that they're... oh wait... OUT OF FUCKING LINE.

Also, don't compare Steel to any other guild on the server when you're talking about tradeskilled items. None of us are sub-7K mana and we have 9 casters/preists above 8K mana. I really don't think that we're on your tier, and have four-manned a bunch of entry level raid targets. I know my monk is better than most of the lower-end guilds main tanks by a long shot. My reasons for saying all of this? I could really give a fuck about lower end raid content, and the people that play in it. That means I don't care what goes on in the mind of a casual player, because they aren't wasting time like me. That doesn't make them bad people, nor does it make me too important to talk to them, because I interact with casual people and Dalaya's Beginners people all the time.

What I do care about is having a balanced game, and negating 4+ tiers of raiding content in favor of getting a bunch of tradeskilled items that put you over 5.5K mana. Yes, I want people to progress in the game, but not if it means skipping a bunch of content just because you have a shitload of money to waste. The items are overpowered, the admins/devs have even said so. There is nothing left for you to argue.

I'd honestly have to disagree with you here on the "Tradeskilled items" here. Honestly this is the way that tradeskillers make their cash. Sure with mana. hp, resists augs etc. They may be able to make them into a teir of raiding. Although they will be replaced eventually, and yes it does cost them a large amount of money purchase, and for tradeskillers to be able to make them. Also, none of these items that you will buy from a tradeskiller will have any sort of special effect/ability that they will be able to be of much use, such as FT, focuses etc. So yeah, you have an item that has a ton of mana on it, decent stats, but you will still be able to pull out better items from raiding... and yes, even on lower tiers.

So as the raid game/game expands, these things will become obsolete and tradeskillers will have to make better items. Although they won't have any neat clickes/focus effects/FT/ATK bonus/AC bonus/higher stat wield/Haste/DR/stun resists.... you get what I'm saying here. Tradeskilling high end items isn't only for people that are getting into the lower end raid game, it's also for those people that don't have the time to raid or just don't feel like it. But still want to get more powerful, this is supposed to be a game of choice, and not all choices will lead to raiding high end content to get the best loots from killing a named mob at the end of a scary long deep dark dungeon. So yeah, they miss out on the "Fun" we enjoy and the special perks that we get with some items, but don't say that they are to be hindered because items with this much "mana/hp" Shouldn't be allowed to be made by players. In fact I believe that players should be able to craft even stronger weapons/armor. Although it will be subpar to in ALOT of ways to raid gear.

Lets face it, all these items that come off of these names are.. what?! "magic" and don't get made by anyone. Who says that the realm of Elves/Dwarves/Halflings/Darkelves/Humans/Frogloks etc... Can't form magical items that are in themselves amazing. To say that, is just honestly rude and entirely against all logical probability. Sure to make some amazing items you may need to collect stuff that could take months to find/create and have a trivial of 320 skill multiple times, so you could only make one every 20/30/100 times, but it would be something that would lets say match the tier level of Thaz.

Tradeskilling is honestly going in the proper direction, and it should keep progressing in my honest opinion.

Main point,
This is the way that people use to spend their time out of raiding/ a way to make cash/ an alternative to raiding.
People use this service to (A) Get a temporary upgrade for their slot until they can get another raid drop (B) Don't raid and still want superior items, but are willing to pay the price.

 

[moghedancarns]

Tyrone, I have overlooked this a couple of times, thinking I read more into your written word than was actually there. Not much doubt this time. Let's make something ABUNDANTLY clear...

I am in the guild I am in because I choose to be there. We raid the tiers that we raid because of the way we choose to play, and the way we choose to run our guild. I am not alone. The majority of the low tier players are there because of their choices. I do not mean they choose not to play enough, or to know enough, or choose not to have enough skill, it is because they CHOOSE to hang out when they like, show up when they like, and bring what character they like. This is not professional sports. The High tiers are not the MLB, and Tier 1 is not Division-AA where we play semi pro waiting on our shot to go to the big show. It not NOT a progression where the cream rises to the top.

As a case in point, I can think of at least two of the Exiuvs of their day with their names on the Chillville posts for top 5.

I play the game because I enjoy it, and I enjoy playing with the people that I play with. Seriously. Isn't that why you play? Because you really seem to be implying you only play to look at yourself in Fomelo and see some numbers go up by 4.

Where you say major upgrade, I do not see it. You do not explain, you just look around as if it should be obvious. It's not. How is 200 mana a MAJOR upgrade? What does it let me do in game that was not possible before? 200 mana is an ancient nuke, sure... 1600 damage, unresisted. If I have it loaded, and if I have a target not fairly cold resistant. Most of the nukes are more like 400-500 mana. So 200 mana is wasted. Focus/Mind cuts the numbers a little bit, but who are we to quibble? So yes, a major upgrade to me is something that allows me to do more, in game, than I could without it.

Do you know what I consider major upgrades? Foci. Damage foci mean I may have to cast fewer spells. During summer, it took one fewer nuke to kill a Frost Giant Watchman that is does during the other seasons... thats a savings of ~400 mana. The proper foci to recreate that would be MAJOR upgrades. Range Increment is awesome. I can outrange NPCs, I can avoid retaliation, and I can reduce my aggro. Flowing Thought is a major upgrade. Rarely do I go OOM except on certain raid targets, and that was covered in an above post. In those cases, more pool does not hep me. Now, FT is not nearly as required as it once was with the med system currently in place, but even that can be improved with FT, and sometimes, you just do not get much time out of combat. Mana Conservation, not too much. I am told it is only 1% per level. So the MC6 robe I see being tried to peddle for 15K? On a 5k mana pool, that's the equivilent of 30 mana. Really not impressed. Notice that SS has none of these foci.

As for the plate itemization, it was brought up MANY times in the past. I did not play for several months, but I believe the fix for it was the DM plate.

 

[robopirateninja]

I don't understand your position. You WANT to kill the same things over and over endlessly? You have no goals within the game?

If you asked a bunch of low-tier players if they would rather raid stormkeep endlessly or kill other stuff sometimes, I'm pretty sure the overwhelming majority of responses would be that they would in fact like to branch out and try new things. Maybe I'm wrong.

I enjoy playing the game, but the thing I enjoy about playing the game is killing harder mobs, and improving my character with my friends in Fusion and other guilds. If I was stagnating in that same place for months upon months, it wouldn't be fun to me.

Here is how 200 mana is a major upgrade. There are a finite number of hitpoints in a mob's lifebar. The amount of mana on the class you play (wizard) can be turned into damage points using spells that consume mana points. By increasing your mana points you can do more damage to a mob's life points. This makes it die. When a raid of 18 people can all do more damage points, heal more life points on friendlies, and take bigger hits from monsters, most of us call that "advancement." The harder mobs you kill drop even better armor. More mana points, more life points, more ac points. 17 slots on each of your 18 players in a raid ( i left out primary, secondary, charm and range since you don't see much of the unbalanced tradeskilled stuff there) leaves a considerable amount of room for 200 mana improvements, or their equivalent, depending on class. In fact you could upgrade a couple thousand mana on an individual character this way, let alone the cumulative effect of all of these upgrades, which is the point of having a co-operative force of many people.

This is the core of the raiding game, and most of SoD in general. True, there is an engrossing storyline, a pretty good (all things considered) economy, and a host of tradeskills to work on, but in the end it comes down to going out and killing stuff, to get items, to kill more stuff.

If you aren't going oom on fights as a wizard you are either not playing a wizard effectively or fighting mobs below the total strength of your raid.

Hooray, in your opinion the only pieces of gear in the game that are worth getting are ones with foci. We'll ignore that you just shit on all of the rest of the itemization that the devs made, only foci matter. How do you think you're going to get them? BY IMPROVING YOUR GODDAMN CHARACTER and those of the rest of the group or raid you take to kill the mob that gives you the item with that focus. I guess it makes sense now how you can't understand that tradeskilled gear is overpowered, you don't understand how valuable it is because of your blind spot for foci, which are indeed absent on most tradeskilled gear.

If you don't care about gear's stats or improving yourself or your character in any way why even bother posting the reams of nonsense and bullshit you've been spewing? You don't care, that's great. Some of us do. If it bothers you that much go play in game with your friends and never read the forums again. No item focuses will be touched by this balancing.

As for plate itemization, if it was fixed it wouldn't be broken right now and it is. syduck:

 

[Tempus]

Where you say major upgrade, I do not see it. You do not explain, you just look around as if it should be obvious. It's not. How is 200 mana a MAJOR upgrade? What does it let me do in game that was not possible before? 200 mana is an ancient nuke, sure... 1600 damage, unresisted. If I have it loaded, and if I have a target not fairly cold resistant. Most of the nukes are more like 400-500 mana. So 200 mana is wasted. Focus/Mind cuts the numbers a little bit, but who are we to quibble? So yes, a major upgrade to me is something that allows me to do more, in game, than I could without it.

So losing 200 mana would not be a major Downgrade right? As it stands right now, unless something changes drastically the entire SS set of armor lost a total of 115 mana across the entire suit.

The actual changes will be live soon and I will post more details in a new thread once that happens. For now this one is closed.