Underpowered Emberflow Tomes

Nodnal

Nodnal

Dalayan Elder
Here is the list of tomes from Emberflow that the Devs were willing to share with the public.

Understanding and Working With Runes (Increase rune effects on *your* character) - 15 % damage mitigation on rune-absorbed damage

Dodging the Tears of Tarhyl (Decrease incoming Spell damage) - 5 % spell mitigation

Manual of Triggered Casting (Increase item proc rates) - 10 % increased chance to proc

Tales of Rapid Recovery (Decrease exhaustion timer) - 20 % decreased exhaustion time after extreme styles

Compendium of Aggressive Stances (Increase aggro generation) - 5 % increased aggro generation

Compendium of Passive Stances (Decrease aggro generation) - 5 % decreased aggro generation

Advanced Foe Management (Increase root, mesmerize, and charm duration) - 10 % increased duration

Treatise on Armor Optimization (Increase Damage Reduction) - 40 % increase to worn Damage Reduction

Secrets of the Wee Folk (Increase innate death save) - 10 % increased chance of innate death save (fatal hit dodge)

Now, I would like to start off by saying that these tomes are NOT easy to get by any means, and only a handful of people have them so far. Some of the tomes are better than others, and even though the effects on all of them are not gamebreaking, they all add up. However, I believe out of these listed tomes that a few of them could use a slight boost to bring them up to par with their brethren.

Understanding and Working with Runes: This tome is extremely narrow, and the very small increase you get from runes cast on you is very marginal at best. I would like to see the % increased to 25-35% on this one. Unless your enchanter is chain ruining you, the tome is pretty useless. Enchanters have better things to do than to chain rune on most fights. This tome is probably the second weakest from Emberflow.

Tales of Rapid Recovery: This tome cuts exhaustion time down by 20%. This is very underpowered as it basically does not help with combat and just decreases downtime after exhaustion by about a minute or so. It is only really nice while in exp. groups and popping a dodge stance and waiting one or two less minutes to not be exhausted. This tome is the most underwhelming out of all of the Emberflow tomes and I believe the % should be increased to 50-75% to make it a bit more useful. Even after exhaustion stances, you still have to worry about gaining your stamina back. On most fights, you won't have time to gain anything back anyways.

Advanced Foe Management: This is a solid tome, but I believe the % should be upped slightly (to 15-20%). It is extremely hard to parse this tome to even see if it works due to the mitigation differences between mobs (I am also still not sure if it affects bard mezzes/charms at all). If this increased duration is applied before mitigation, then the tome gets even weaker (unless mitigation is also always a % based mitigation).

Again, all of the Emberflow tomes give a small bonus, but most others are noticeable and worth the effort due to the difficulty of obtaining said tomes. The ones I have listed today seem to be lacking and could use a slight boost.

Thanks a lot~
 
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What exactly else are you going to use the exp for...

Now thats not a great answer, so let me be a bit more reasonable. The tomes as is, are just a nice little bonus to have.

Now maybe you only see the rune tome as something to assist an enchanter while chain runeing you. Fair enough. Maybe someone else sees it as an awesome way to get more bonus out of their rune procing weapon, effectively making that weapons rune protect them even more!

Now maybe you only see the the charm/mez/root tome as not worth the effort because you are not sure it works. Let me assure you now, it works, and works beautifully and nothing in the code at all indicates it doesn't work on bard songs. It is added up after all mitigation, as a pure bonus, just like one would expect. Now if you are a rogue, this tome probably is of alot less use to you... given that you can't do any of the above.

Now maybe JUST shaving off a minute or two from exhaustion seems lack luster to you. Here i'll respectfully just flat out disagree with you; your play style and stances may make it seems lack luster, but to much more for others would simply be over powered.

I think you really need to look at these tomes as AA's. Not everyone will cater to ever play style, but they all have uses, and if you got nothing better to spend the exp on...
 
I guess they aren't more powerful because then Ikisith tomes would be more limited?
I think his point is that these tomes are very hard to obtain, not very hard to complete. By the time you'd obtain them you'd likely already have all codices or power completed and possibly a few dozens of unused ovecap AAs. Why not just increase the amount of xp you need to do to finish them and increase their effects at least minimally?
 
Er...I'd say that the +10% chance to proc tome in coordination with the rune tome, blade of enthann, axe of brawn, denos/farg bp, pofrost bracer, and well boots would be incredibly potent as a combination. That would not only chain rune you through procs (bards especially, despite the inability to kick,) but would make all those rune procs enhanced as well as refreshing more swiftly. Increasing the amount a rune absorbs by 2% when you're decked out in procs can be a massive difference.

As for exhaustion...most of the time when someone is exhausted, it's because they had to use an evasion stance. I don't think it would be game-breaking to reduce exhaustion by even 5 minutes, but it also wouldn't be incredibly more useful. I don't see any way to make that tome actually more useful without making it overpowering.

No comment on mezz/charm/root duration. I really don't have a perspective on that one.
 
An option instead of increasing their power is give them an extremely rare chance to drop off trash mobs in ember.
 
Eustace said:
An option instead of increasing their power is give them an extremely rare chance to drop off trash mobs in ember.
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That is a bad idea since they are very hard to obtain otherwise.

One of the main reasons to do EF is for the tomes. Doing the tomes because I "have nothing else better to do" is a pretty terrible reason. Getting a whole 50 more rune on my procs after finishing a tome worth ~100aa is pretty depressing. I just think that the other tomes here are fine, and the tomes I mentioned be more in line with those tomes.

Most exhaustion stances are used sparingly due to the fact that being exhausted is horrible and makes you pretty powerless for the duration (you lose 25% to mitigation and damage iirc).

If you want the tomes to be..."Oh, let's dice this tome because it is silly and I have no other use for exp." then I guess I cannot argue. However, I think the fact that only a couple of groups have ever even gotten these tomes shows that they are hard to get, and should be a little more rewarding for the effort players have to put in to obtain them.

Edit: The mez/charm/root tome is easily the best out of all the ones I listed. I just thought a small boost might make the tome bonus a bit more noticeable.
 
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What Felyn is getting at is that for how hard they are to obtain, the increases are very minimal. This is a game of risk vs. reward, and things need to be balanced accordingly. If something is hard to get, it needs to be worth it, not some minor increase. More so with Emberflow, since any single mistake in the zone can be game over, and you have to start again. And that doesn't even include the named encounters, which are some of the hardest fights in the game, all for some minor increases, some of which would be incredibly hard to even know if they're working, and players would never really know if their new shiny tome of minimally increased runes that they worked hours and hours to get, and then to complete, even worked, because joe schmoe has no way to accurately parse such a thing.


Also the increase chance to proc for bards is pretty useless at the moment.
 
Correct me if I'm paraphrasing wrong, but the essential complaint seems to be, 'These are hard to get, and come from a really dangerous place. They should be better'. I'll give you that, they really do come from pretty much the hardest place in the game that 6 people can go.

Here is my counter question, purely as an intellectual talking point, and not something that I, or anyone else I know about intends to act on. These and all tomes are permanent bonuses to your character. Would any item, no matter the quality, be a better reward? Items are temporary unless they have a clicky, they'll all eventually be upgraded.

If anything my personal belief is that all the tomes out of there are far too powerful, given the direction tomes are taking in Ikisith, and since they are permanent buffs, I'd much sooner nerf the lot of them then buff any of them.
 
Eustace said:
As for exhaustion...most of the time when someone is exhausted, it's because they had to use an evasion stance. I don't think it would be game-breaking to reduce exhaustion by even 5 minutes, but it also wouldn't be incredibly more useful.
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Monk's invul stance uses exhaustion doesn't it? Reducing the cool down for using this stance by even 20% seems pretty substantial. Given the resistance to anything which would decrease the FD failure rate, it seems 50-75% would be unbalancing (since this stance is used to save the monk after a nasty fail).
 
GuiardoTuneweaver said:
Monk's invul stance uses exhaustion doesn't it? Reducing the cool down for using this stance by even 20% seems pretty substantial. Given the resistance to anything which would decrease the FD failure rate, it seems 50-75% would be unbalancing (since this stance is used to save the monk after a nasty fail).
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Yeah, that's why I said increasing it to make it "more useful" will probably result in making it overpowered.

Examples: Exhaustion reduced to 3 minutes, 2 minutes to get full endurance. Every 5 minutes, certain classes can go invulnerable for 30-45 seconds while still dealing full melee damage. OR, other classes can use double dps stances for a 5-minute downtime. Every 5 minutes, double damage or invulnerability. I'd call that gamebreaking.

Increase the exhaustion timer to 5 minutes, another 2 minutes added to get full endurance. It's the same thing really. Every 7 minutes, at least 3 people in the raid can go invulnerable for 30-45 seconds while dealing full melee damage, or use a double damage stance. That's still extremely overpowered.

I really don't see any way to make that tome "more useful" without making it horribly overpowered.

As far as "difficulty vs. reward" it'd be pretty easy to fix that. Require 5 codexes of power and 450 spent AA's to use the tomes. Then add them as a super-rare trash drop in EF. More people will pick them up, but even less people will be able to use them. As it is now, ubered-out knight Bob Alt can run in there with the right group of people, snag a defensive tome, bang that out, then go back to erimal tomes. IMO, you really should have to have full codexes of power to move on to the next step.

Granted, there aren't currently a lot of people who can take out the names in there. However, that's due more to gear than anything else. You really can't be expected to run in and tackle Mountain King without a very solid group of t9 or greater geared characters.
 
Eustace said:
Yeah, that's why I said increasing it to make it "more useful" will probably result in making it overpowered.

Examples: Exhaustion reduced to 3 minutes, 2 minutes to get full endurance. Every 5 minutes, certain classes can go invulnerable for 30-45 seconds while still dealing full melee damage. OR, other classes can use double dps stances for a 5-minute downtime. Every 5 minutes, double damage or invulnerability. I'd call that gamebreaking.

Increase the exhaustion timer to 5 minutes, another 2 minutes added to get full endurance. It's the same thing really. Every 7 minutes, at least 3 people in the raid can go invulnerable for 30-45 seconds while dealing full melee damage, or use a double damage stance. That's still extremely overpowered.

I really don't see any way to make that tome "more useful" without making it horribly overpowered.

As far as "difficulty vs. reward" it'd be pretty easy to fix that. Require 5 codexes of power and 450 spent AA's to use the tomes. Then add them as a super-rare trash drop in EF. More people will pick them up, but even less people will be able to use them. As it is now, ubered-out knight Bob Alt can run in there with the right group of people, snag a defensive tome, bang that out, then go back to erimal tomes. IMO, you really should have to have full codexes of power to move on to the next step.

Granted, there aren't currently a lot of people who can take out the names in there. However, that's due more to gear than anything else. You really can't be expected to run in and tackle Mountain King without a very solid group of t9 or greater geared characters.
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What alts have been getting tomes? I know ours have not. I still think adding these tomes to trash mobs even with a .00000001% chance is a bad idea.

Yes, tomes are nice because you always have the benefit. And I think the other ones are fine as is, I just think the ones I mentioned needed a slight boost. It just seems that EF is very skipable, and that makes me sad. Some of the bonuses are so small, I would compare them to getting a piece of situational gear from back content.
 
Eustace said:
Require 5 codexes of power and 450 spent AA's to use the tomes. IMO, you really should have to have full codexes of power to move on to the next step.
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I have to disagree here. For some classes, that's fine, but the codexes of power are really unbalanced in terms of usefulness for different classes. Setting that standard that these have to be done before other tomes is a bad president to get if tomes are "the new AAs". The codexes of power were added so that xp that was going to unspent AAs could actually be put to SOME use. Other, more relevant Tomes should be usable before finishing these.

Not sure about the useful-AA limit, but I'd suspect this is in the same boat as being different for different classes. I only have 447 AAs on my cleric, and have no intention of getting any more till tomes of power are done. Getting useless AAs just to be able to use tomes is silly. (The current limit for the codexes of power is reasonable since ALL classes have more than 250 useful AAs.)

Some of the bonuses are so small, I would compare them to getting a piece of situational gear from back content.
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A piece of situational gear from back content that you will wear forever....

If the tomes are considered too difficult for their benefit, and the benefit can't be increased due to balancing, what about reducing the amount of XP required to complete them? (Not saying I agree with the benefit argument, just proposing another solution if it's determined to be the case.)
 
GuiardoTuneweaver said:
I have to disagree here. For some classes, that's fine, but the codexes of power are really unbalanced in terms of usefulness for different classes. Setting that standard that these have to be done before other tomes is a bad president to get if tomes are "the new AAs". The codexes of power were added so that xp that was going to unspent AAs could actually be put to SOME use. Other, more relevant Tomes should be usable before finishing these.

Not sure about the useful-AA limit, but I'd suspect this is in the same boat as being different for different classes. I only have 447 AAs on my cleric, and have no intention of getting any more till tomes of power are done. Getting useless AAs just to be able to use tomes is silly. (The current limit for the codexes of power is reasonable since ALL classes have more than 250 useful AAs.)



A piece of situational gear from back content that you will wear forever....

If the tomes are considered too difficult for their benefit, and the benefit can't be increased due to balancing, what about reducing the amount of XP required to complete them? (Not saying I agree with the benefit argument, just proposing another solution if it's determined to be the case.)
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The ~100aa or so they take to complete isn't an issue, and I think that amount is fair.

There are several back tiered items I use on all of my characters depending on the sitatuion. (svs, shields, dam. red. gear, etc). For instance, Lower Air shield for bards is currently irreplaceable and has a huge impact on tanking.
 
Zaknafean said:
Here is my counter question, purely as an intellectual talking point, and not something that I, or anyone else I know about intends to act on. These and all tomes are permanent bonuses to your character. Would any item, no matter the quality, be a better reward? Items are temporary unless they have a clicky, they'll all eventually be upgraded.
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I think most item upgrades give more in stats, hp, mana, ac, dps, etc than any single tome. The only advantage to tomes is that the bonus is permanent, which means that they must by their design be underpowered. So I think that almost all items players get as upgrades improve your character more than most of these tomes.

The way I understand it, these tomes are meant to be exceptionally hard to get and only available to an extremely limited section of the playerbase. The reason so few players will ever get these is because of the difficulty of completing these fights with many different group setups. It's the same reason even now almost no enchanters have cmal 4.2 drops.

I see two problems here. The first is that tome bonuses are meant to be permanent. Tomes should be itemized the same way items are. There should be a 6% aggression tome in ikisith that overwrites the 5% bonus from emberflow. This makes your job tons easier, and makes players happier because then tomes can be increasingly impressive rather than increasingly marginal, adding up to an overall impressive bonus. This also makes it so that the xp used for tomes is a real cost, instead of a gift which devs seem to think it is (I've never understood why the xp required to complete a tome isn't argued as a balancing point).

The second problem is that there is no baseline for evaluating the strength of a tome. That makes every single argument about them, from here until there are enough tomes to make comparative arguments, grossly subjective. I agree with felyn that the decrease in exhaustion tome is utterly ridiculous. Someone else thinks it's extremely powerful. Okay great. The point felyn and I want to make is that we feel this stuff is too weak. We know what it feels like to be rewarded well for fights, and some of these tomes aren't there.

edit: I can't stress enough about how tomes should overwrite each other. Improving your character in increasingly marginal ways is vastly worse than increasingly impressive ways. Going from 5% aggresion tomes to 1% aggression tomes is much worse than going to a 6% aggression tome. This is largely psychological, but it is also much better for you in terms of designing them.
 
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Zaela said:
I'm not particularly involved with tomes, but I don't know that the assumption that lots of tomes will have overlapping effects is a good one. Stuff like +/- agression is pretty boring, I don't imagine there's gonna be like 5 tomes that do the exact same stuff in increasingly tiny increments.

edit: even if there were, I don't know that rewarding people for skipping over the e.g. 5% aggression tome to get the full bonus and more from a 6% aggression tome would be our prefered style. If someone skipped the 5% and just went for the 6%, they would ultimately get the bigger bonus for less exp, while the poor sap who bothered with the 5% tome wasted all the exp that went into it since they're just gonna have to do it all over again for that extra 1%. Balanced.
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Yeah, I don't expect there will be lots of overlapping stuff, but even if not a single one overlaps my suggestion changes nothing. I don't expect everyone will be getting tomes from the same places, nor do I think people should be required to go farm emberflow to be the best they can possibly be by getting massive 5% aggro tomes. Also, if tomes are balanced with a thought to having a 5% aggression tome somewhere else, it seems like people who don't get it would be screwed by only having a bunch of 1% aggro tomes.

Having tomes overwrite each other simply gives you more options as developers, and makes it so newer players doing higher content don't have to backfarm tomes to not suck.
 
I have two reasons for assuming it.

The first is that the more points you get in a single line, the more powerful overall that line is. So it should be much harder to get another 5% aggro tome than it was to get the first, just like a 10% aggression tome should be harder to get than a 5% one. If it's more difficult to get a second tome of equal value, then risk v reward gets all screwy.

Secondly, if tomes are going to be considered a regular reward in the future, it's better to have more smaller rewards than fewer large rewards, simply because you get the same change for more variety.
 
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