Holy Burst = Silver Flame Pots. Discuss

[voodoogroves]

Not to mention that those folks who quickly hit the point to craft a bunch of holy burst shards are more likely the same ones to more easily get or have SF favor. It just widens the gap.

[kernal42]

The problem with the Silver Flame Pots isn't with the Silver Flame favor. That's inconvenient, and annoying, and probably a bad idea, but not necessarily a bad design choice.

The problem with the Silver Flame pots is that you now require for crafting an item which is Bound to Character. All of crafting is, so far, designed so that any one of your toons (it doesn't matter which!) can be your singular crafter. Now, suddenly, your crafter must possess certain qualities: Having 400 Silver Flame favor. This is bad.

This is part (but only part) of the reason that requiring raid loot is a terrible design choice: It is BTC, so that character needs to be able to land the chaosblade so he can make the BTA vampirism shard.

-Kernal

[BoolZ]

I don't see any reason why Holy Burst needed to be changed at all.

I understand the argument of a +4 Holy Burst Silver *weapon of choice* of Greater Evil Outsided Bane is better than a MinII against devils. Much worse against anything that's not a Devil.

I understand that once the first one is done it's a lot cheaper to make the next one. But I also hold the same to be true about Greensteel. It took me a couple months for my MinII. A couple weeks later (getting a second character flagged for Shroud) I had my LitII. I made money while running Shroud. I've spend near 2mil on greater essences. You can't farm silver Khopeshs, so you have to buy the blank or get a good pull. You can't buy the signet stones, and they're a static pull from 5 specific quests, to make a greensteel blank. You have to farm them.

As far as named raid loot not holding up to the ideal random generated loot? Maybe they need to look at some of their mostly useless raid loot. Maybe the developers need to understand that I 'can' (it is possible) pull a Chaosblade in about 15 minutes counting running to ADQ1, but I had to make 2mil plat before I could spend it on not enough essences to get to a level where I need the Chaosblade as an ingredient. Or just understand that raid loot is a lottery. You get your pretty or you don't. People just happen to be willing to grind for it. Crafting shouldn't be a step past that lottery, because regardless you don't have a choice but to grind for crafting levels. Or in my case, don't.

The change is complete nonsense and shows a vast gap between what the developers think players play and how players play. If that's from not playing and listening to a few to many squeeky wheels or just not playing without developer accounts I don't know. I don't know. I don't care. But most I play with or talk to are in the mid 30's for their crafting. Maybe higher if they were, were, bent on their +4 HB S GEOB min level 20 sword. Then the hardcore gamers that've been playing from the start, had nothing to do for a year but grind Shroud, and were able to buy their way with a half dozen or so plat capped alts to the highest crafting levels in a week. And of course the people that took advantage of the Crystal Cove non-exploit who could dump all their wealth just to be some of the first with the shinest new toy. Who really gets hurt by these changes? Most hardcore gamers that really truely farmed for thier precious raid loot or the benefactors of the CC, I suspect, are already able to make their shards. Now they just need to get their blanks. If that.

Such a collosal screw up. I think who ever's idea these changes were should have to personally PUG Titan Awakes until they pull a Chattering Ring. I can go weeks on Argo without seeing an LFM for Titan. I've finished plenty that wern't even full parties let alone raid groups. Same for Dreamspitter. Get your non-stacking BtC ingredients and dual wield the only worthwhile items in the Cannith Crafting so far. When not on timer they should have to farm Spectral and Tome pages.

You can throw me the lot that just doesn't like the Necro series. How a decision like this gets made, gets through the alleged test server, makes it to the preview server where it catches everyone by surprise, and then gets admitted to being an 'whoops' but there's no chance to fix it. Not even touching on how much the spell pass got 'fixed' on the preview server is simply beyond me.

Cannith Crafting was already full of fail for anything not DR breakers or specific twink gear. It just can't match up to named/raid/epic items in terms of slot consolodation, ML, or effects in slots that don't get those effects. There's a reason people wear Seeker +6 on a trinket but don't touch Seeker +10 on a weapon. Belt of Brute Strength is ML 9 for STR +6 and GFL. What would the crafted equal be? For trash I'm still going for LitII, and was planning on Min II until lvl20 when I was going to upgrade to specific crafted beaters. I'll just stick to Greensteel now.

Guess I'm sorry I got a bit off topic. As for changes to Holy Burst shards and needing 18 bucks or a month of VIP: I think it's bull****, and Turbine needs to talk to a wider section of the player base before coding changes like this. Even for their rumored 'test' server, or at least before putting it on the preview server.

Which if they now can't change fix stuff from Llama land before it goes live then why preview it at all? Just make it live so I don't have to wonder if it's going to be better to try to dump my essences to power crafters beating 10.1 or hold on to them for the inevitable day Turbine over corrects.

[Quikster]

Provided you are VIP or own 18 dollars worth of those specific packs.

I'm VIP, you're VIP last I checked. Sure, doesn't hurt us too bad. But those that aren't get a real kick in the teeth here.

Oh and btw... >.> come do every single SF quest on Elite for me? Including Abbot? I'll be a good piker, promise extra special.

Im not vip, and would have to buy 2 packs i believe to get there for anyone i have that is not at the favor mark.

but its not like anyone NEEDS to go do this. Holy is just fine for a prefix. Want the best suffix for devils, grind or buy the pack. Its not that unreasonable imo.


edit prefix. durp

[Persiflage]

Shade. Quit acting like you're the average player, or the average crafter, and perhaps what you're saying will hold more weight.

You have Silver Flame pots, so anyone who wants to craft has Silver Flame pots? C'mon dude.

For the record though - No. I don't have that Silver Flame Favor. Not even close. My level 78/76/73 crafter is currently a level 14, banking 15, TR. I didn't even *touch* Catacombs, or Necro 1, going through the lower levels, because they're that unneeded.

That said, I know people who are into crafting that haven't ever stepped foot in Abbot, on any toon, more less their crafter.

Right here. I'm at 90/85/86, having bust my b***s since crafting was released. I have exactly 69 SF favor, because I don't like a lot of those quests. BtC items for crafting is stupid, requiring X amount of favor equally so. The ENTIRE POINT of crafting, for me, is that I don't have to run content I don't want to, I just need to run content. And yes, I'm VIP. And no, I've never run Abbot, because it's one of those raids that's hard to get into if you've never done it... my caster is nearly flagged, out of ten toons, and that's it.

I got to that level through sheer hard work, as I've only been playing 8 months and didn't even have a million plat across all my toons. I've traded pretty much every non-bound desirable item I own - tomes, large ingredients, tap shreds, you name it - to get the essences to reach those levels, working literally hours every day to get there, and now... Well, I look like pretty much of an idiot, don't I? I can't describe how twisted up I'm feeling about these changes. I wish, I really wish, that the outpouring of opposing sentiment would be enough to prevent the update going to the live server, and in a more reasonable world it would be, but... yeah, well. "Upset" doesn't really cover it.

I'm with Boolz on pretty much every point. Holy Burst of Greater Bane isn't that big a deal, SHOULDN'T BE that big a deal, it's the fact that the only end-game content we have is chock-full of devils and that older content drops stuff that is mostly useless that's the issue here.

And as Boolz said, "Cannith Crafting was already full of fail for anything not DR breakers or specific twink gear. It just can't match up to named/raid/epic items in terms of slot consolodation, ML, or effects in slots that don't get those effects. There's a reason people wear Seeker +6 on a trinket but don't touch Seeker +10 on a weapon. Belt of Brute Strength is ML 9 for STR +6 and GFL. What would the crafted equal be? For trash I'm still going for LitII, and was planning on Min II until lvl20 when I was going to upgrade to specific crafted beaters. I'll just stick to Greensteel now."

Cannith Crafting as it stands a useful adjunct to running the raids you like for your consolidation gear: if you run lots of toons, it lets you make plenty of stuff that's "good enough" to tide you over until you FINALLY pull that specific shiny you've been grinding for. Post-changes, it'll be dead in the water.

[Dartwick]

Bound to account crafting material is fine.

Bound to character ingredients will just make the game more tedious.

[Chai]

Pay to win by proxy is still pay to win.

Theres no reason to jack up the requirements to something that is already a huge grind.

[Chai]

Right here. I'm at 90/85/86, having bust my b***s since crafting was released. I have exactly 69 SF favor, because I don't like a lot of those quests. BtC items for crafting is stupid, requiring X amount of favor equally so. The ENTIRE POINT of crafting, for me, is that I don't have to run content I don't want to, I just need to run content. And yes, I'm VIP. And no, I've never run Abbot, because it's one of those raids that's hard to get into if you've never done it... my caster is nearly flagged, out of ten toons, and that's it.

I got to that level through sheer hard work, as I've only been playing 8 months and didn't even have a million plat across all my toons. I've traded pretty much every non-bound desirable item I own - tomes, large ingredients, tap shreds, you name it - to get the essences to reach those levels, working literally hours every day to get there, and now... Well, I look like pretty much of an idiot, don't I? I can't describe how twisted up I'm feeling about these changes. I wish, I really wish, that the outpouring of opposing sentiment would be enough to prevent the update going to the live server, and in a more reasonable world it would be, but... yeah, well. "Upset" doesn't really cover it.

I'm with Boolz on pretty much every point. Holy Burst of Greater Bane isn't that big a deal, SHOULDN'T BE that big a deal, it's the fact that the only end-game content we have is chock-full of devils and that older content drops stuff that is mostly useless that's the issue here.

And as Boolz said, "Cannith Crafting was already full of fail for anything not DR breakers or specific twink gear. It just can't match up to named/raid/epic items in terms of slot consolodation, ML, or effects in slots that don't get those effects. There's a reason people wear Seeker +6 on a trinket but don't touch Seeker +10 on a weapon. Belt of Brute Strength is ML 9 for STR +6 and GFL. What would the crafted equal be? For trash I'm still going for LitII, and was planning on Min II until lvl20 when I was going to upgrade to specific crafted beaters. I'll just stick to Greensteel now."

Cannith Crafting as it stands a useful adjunct to running the raids you like for your consolidation gear: if you run lots of toons, it lets you make plenty of stuff that's "good enough" to tide you over until you FINALLY pull that specific shiny you've been grinding for. Post-changes, it'll be dead in the water.

Yeap.

Crafting was looking to be a GREAT alternative for those people who didnt want to grind out raids and epics on a schedule. Belt of brute strength doesnt drop from trees. Lit2 requires grinding raids only to be slightly better to continue grinding raids. While cannith crafting isnt point for point as good it seriously was looking to be a suitable alternative to the grind.

Now it will require the same type of in game repetition grind just to make a few good items.

[Luxx0r]

I have (only) 5 capped toons. Only one has SF favor pots... curiously he is (almost) the one less needing them. It's just a toon I did the elite-and-go aproach, I got the idea reading some PD thread.

funny fact that caught my eye:

Doing all SF quests on elite, except Litany and the raid, you just get... 399 favor!!

[sweez]

I don't see any reason why Holy Burst needed to be changed at all.

I understand the argument of a +4 Holy Burst Silver *weapon of choice* of Greater Evil Outsided Bane is better than a MinII against devils. Much worse against anything that's not a Devil.

I understand that once the first one is done it's a lot cheaper to make the next one. But I also hold the same to be true about Greensteel. It took me a couple months for my MinII. A couple weeks later (getting a second character flagged for Shroud) I had my LitII. I made money while running Shroud. I've spend near 2mil on greater essences. You can't farm silver Khopeshs, so you have to buy the blank or get a good pull. You can't buy the signet stones, and they're a static pull from 5 specific quests, to make a greensteel blank. You have to farm them.

Quoted for truth. It would seem Turbine got scared of game getting flooded with devil beaters that surpass greensteel which would consequently lead to lowering Vale pack sales? Maybe they just got scared of the speed at which people were attaining extremely high crafting levels and churning out high-end shards?

I dunno, but it seems like Turbine doesn't understand the meta-game at all - anything they introduce will be chewed up by powergamers in no-time. Sure, getting to 75+ crafting levels and having enough time and resources to churn out high-end shards was a speedy process... for power-gamers. I can't say I know many people who play this game casually or semi-casually that can just pop out holy burst, GLOB and +6 to +13 shards of potential at will. That's right, I don't know any.

This change is akin to completely changing the epic Chrono raid difficulty just because power gamers gear out their alts with 5-piece abishai sets in few weeks, while ignoring the fact that a lot of people still consider themselves happy if they actually complete an epic Chrono lol.

I recently got to the stage where I can craft holy burst greater banes, and I can say that it was a huge grind, and that due to the shard of potential essence-eating mechanism I'm nowhere near churning out +5 holy burst silver globs at will. I'm no powergamer, but I have much more free time than your average ddo player, and was willing to spend much more plat (millions of plat worth of greater essences and vendor trash crunched) and time on crafting than 95% of the people I know in-game would ever consider.

DDO is a heavily meta'd game, anything that Turbine brings out will be chewed out by the powergamers (imagine if they brought out a Shroud-like raid/loot system now, people would be making dual-shard equivalents in a matter of weeks), but that doesn't mean they have to make it into a ****** experience for the less-hardcore players.

[Sarisa]

Doing all SF quests on elite, except Litany and the raid, you just get... 399 favor!!

That's also excluding Demon's Den.

399 is Catacombs, Necro 1-3, the four Orchard quests, and the low level F2P Silver Flame quests all on elite.

You can still get your Silver Flame favour by doing Demon's Den casual after that; if you have no desire to flag for and do Litany and Abbot.

That still doesn't change the fact that Silver Flame favour is an enormous and frustrating grind, and it also doesn't change the fact that requiring BTC items for a BTA based crafting system is a poor design.

[Quikster]

IMO lumping all btc items in together is a fallacy. There is a big difference between sf pots and a chattering ring. Many here make it sound like sf pots are just a lucky drop. They are not.

Grinding out 400 sf favor is not that big of a deal. The largest obstacle being owning enough packs. Almost all of it can be done shortmanned at level, maybe with a hireling. Favor running used to be a staple of this game until the store came along. Personally Im glad to see it return.

[Quikster]

Yeap.

Crafting was looking to be a GREAT alternative for those people who didnt want to grind out raids and epics on a schedule. Belt of brute strength doesnt drop from trees. Lit2 requires grinding raids only to be slightly better to continue grinding raids. While cannith crafting isnt point for point as good it seriously was looking to be a suitable alternative to the grind.

Now it will require the same type of in game repetition grind just to make a few good items.

IMO it still is. You might run titan 100+ times before you see the belt. You can get sf pots and crafting levels much much easier.

[fool101]

Ok,

Silver flame favor is not easy to achieve nor desirable by many. What about other favor? How about that House J favor that nobody cares about at the moment. That seems like a good place for greater undead bane ingredients. Yugo would be tough, but a great place for GEOB ingredients.

I am against using specific weapons of any kind (let alone raid gear) for crafting. Using favor, for instance, is a much better alternative in my mind. This is especially true when unbound shards reach these higher levels. Don't have SF favor? No problem, find a crafter that does have it and purchase their services. Far from ideal but in my mind it is usable and useful in this manner.

Requiring large/rare ingredients? That's fine too and makes sense as long as single shards do no require more than say 1 +1 tomb; mostly to prevent the greed before need looting stated numerous times previously.

[Scraap]

Now that I'm a bit calmer. Perhaps an alternate suggestion of using Blessing of the Silver Flame (150 favor) as opposed to pots would serve?

The general notion isn't inherently horrific, but in my opinion, it's better demonstrated with the grinding down of a muckbane for greater ooze banes, by which I mean: rather than being able to make something that would have been useful after you've crushed all the content, provide a way for the content it's self to better your odds of completing it.

[dragons1ayer74]

Personal I am fine with SF Potions ingredient as top crafting property, more so than some of the other proposed requirements (I am more opposed to TOD Boot ingredients, Large Scales and Tomes). How many of my characters have 400 Silver Flame favor and access to the potions? Zero. However just knowing that if I wanted to craft a holy burst shard I could attain this if I felt I needed to. I can also see why this would be a bad idea for others (a BTC required item for crafting is not a good idea) and I think that the ideal solution would be to have multiple recipes to get the same thing especially at the top tier. Alternatively they could make some Silver Flame potions be collectible turn ins or rare unbound drops.

[dingal]

IMO lumping all btc items in together is a fallacy. There is a big difference between sf pots and a chattering ring. Many here make it sound like sf pots are just a lucky drop. They are not.

Grinding out 400 sf favor is not that big of a deal. The largest obstacle being owning enough packs. Almost all of it can be done shortmanned at level, maybe with a hireling. Favor running used to be a staple of this game until the store came along. Personally Im glad to see it return.

It really isn't that bad. It's bad AFTER you level but if you do it while leveling nearly all of the quests have solid XP so it doesn't feel like wasted time.

[Jandric]

Well, the silver flame pot seems a bit steep, but overall I don't have a problem with it.


The Silver Flame favor seems much easier to obtain than all the astral diamonds and dragons bloods necessary for a chance to create some of the other recipes.

I'd say that this represents an extreme case of an acceptable way to increase the cost of a sought after and powerful shard. I like the mechanic of using a favor reward- The only potential problem is how hard this particular favor reward is to achieve. I'm not opposed to it, per se, but it is a steep cost (and it requires you to sit through the rat maze. UGHHH! ). Perhaps turning in a "Blessing of the Silver Flame" token would be better? This can be achieved by hitting the F2P content and by going through Catacombs, Necro 1, and Necro 2 on elite. This is not all that onerous, and dedicated F2P folks could most likely pull this off with the requisite grinding of TP, guest passes, and elite unlock mates. Going premium to alleviate a bit of the grind isn't the end of the world either, and spending a few bucks here and there if you choose to helps to support the game we know, love, and are addicted to in some cases .

As for the dragon blood ingredient, I'm hoping that gets axed in the patch review that Madfloyd announced.

[Quikster]

I'd say that this represents an extreme case of an acceptable way to increase the cost of a sought after and powerful shard. I like the mechanic of using a favor reward- The only potential problem is how hard this particular favor reward is to achieve. I'm not opposed to it, per se, but it is a steep cost (and it requires you to sit through the rat maze. UGHHH! ). Perhaps turning in a "Blessing of the Silver Flame" token would be better? This can be achieved by hitting the F2P content and by going through Catacombs, Necro 1, and Necro 2 on elite. This is not all that onerous, and dedicated F2P folks could most likely pull this off with the requisite grinding of TP, guest passes, and elite unlock mates. If that's too much of a pain, then the TP cost of buying the packs is at least reduced from the SF pot requirement.

As for the dragon blood ingredient, I'm hoping that gets axed in the patch review that Madfloyd announced.

Yeah the rat maze isnt fun for me either. Luckily it is for a guildie of mine

I agree with the dragons blood however. Yugo pots, sf pots etc can be purchased at will once unlocked. This makes it so that once you achieve that level of crafting you can purchase as many as needed.

Again i am ok with the cost (usd cost) The item is not necessary to have to be a solid player and have good gear. A holy shard will fill that roll just fine. So if someone has to run through sf quests on elite to have the achievement of a better weapon, i dont mind at all.

[Quikster]

It really isn't that bad. It's bad AFTER you level but if you do it while leveling nearly all of the quests have solid XP so it doesn't feel like wasted time.

But its not wasted time. Its time spent so you can get a crafting ingredient. And imo its better than adding more F'ing clicks while standing in one place.

I realize there is a need for crafting in this game but its SO G.D. BORING to sit there and click the same button over and over. At least this adds difficulty to a powerful item without adding more static clicks. IMO they should do more stuff like this to increase the difficulty of the most powerful items.

I imagine you will see things more like they used to be. Lfms will start popping up for favor running. It will be a bit easier because there is no longer any need to get an opener or run the quest 3 times for many, though I would still need an opener

Im also ok with boot ingred in recipients. Though they can prolly up the drop rates a bit. Not quite a guaranteed drop, but higher than it is now IMO.