Alchemical weapons cant be ONLY way for DPS in DDO

[xandariant]

Exactly!

However, I understand your idea is to buff the renewed epics. I'm not sure I like where this is going.

(Too?) powerful alchemicals, further upgrades to epic weapons.

First issue would be an obvious decrease in item's balance. Some hard-to-obtain items, especially the desert ones (Chaosblade, Marilith chain) are becoming less and less useful. I really hope new content mobs/bosses are lawful or chaosblades will become even less worth farming for (I don't own the epic versions anyway so I'm neutral). They used to be must-haves for some builds, which made up for the time you spent looking for them, now you can craft something nearly as good, if not better, or replace them in many ways.
So they could either increase desert epic shards/scrolls drop rate (meh solution) or make the old epic items (not just carnival/sentinels ones) more powerful (even more meh solution), or tune down the new crafts a bit...not much, just enough to make epics a viable pick over them, and the especially hard to obtain epics stronger. I highly doubt crafting a new T3 will be harder than crafting a eMC anyway...might even be easier than crafting an eSoS...

Another problem, as someone said, is that with more powerful gear around, the devs will eventually make a further increase in difficulty, which might just translate into even more boss damage/hp.

However, more powerful gear might also mean that we're getting the stage set for epic levels next year (yay!). Which would be nice, but still wouldn't solve the problem "Why am I killing myself for this epic marilith chain when I can have seeker +10 on a dps weapon that is "viable" at worst".

To sum up, I agree with people who said that new weapons might not look OP in a few months since more powerful stuff is likely to pop up in next updates, hence more seekers, stunners, etc etc., but this still inevitably makes old, already uber rare stuff, less worth farming for, and this is not good IMHO. And there's always the monks' thing...monks are gonna hurt bad now...

You know what I mean. We can just toss all made epics and run for new ones. That's just mad.
Each items should have its usefulness and there have to be new items with better abilities, but don't so far better than a lot of stuff that was said will be remade to give players more balance.

And I'm sure difficulty will be lifted again when more ppl get better DPS so they won't get bored screaming for "challenging" that I personally hate to hear so often... Anyway be sure it will happen. Bust in U11 will be only for now.

I think the gist of what I was trying to say is this:

Want new stuff, old stuff irrelevant = loss for turbine

Don't want new stuff, old stuff wanted = no gain for turbine, loss in production costs

Want new stuff AND want the old stuff = Gain for turbine (basically, there's a reason I want both weapons/necklace etc)

Exactly so that is why i believe renewed epics should mach more not be weaker form the very start. Or have its uses like Epic Midnight Greetings or Epic Elyd Edge.
Items like Epic Antique Greataxe is behind (and shouldn't be) and items like epic chimeras fang should be upgraded with more dmg for sure considering new DPS output of Alchemical Weapons.

Actually they got something completely right with alchemical weapons. They are a boost to dps in a lot of cases (this has to be the case to make them desirable) but they all have a lot of utility and that's the point that really sets them apart from shroud weapons. Nothing wrong here.

Its not that Alchamical Weapons are bad, its about renewed content that is too far behind what we get to craft in U11. In this point its like upgrading your old PC and spending on it as much cash as for buying newer and better one instead. It's just sick joke if it goes like this.