Caster weapons again being ignored

[Wizza]

NO! My archmages would cry! What exactly is wrong with these combinations (I can see sorc savants don't want them... but for everyone else)?

They diluite the loot tables too much and we can't get matching high level Spellpower/Lore. But yes, as I said, just upgrade the drop chance of matching SP and Lore and everything is fine.

In my opinion random loot gen should be place holder items until you can get an improved named version of the item you are using.

There are no improved named version of caster weapons anyway. We are just stuck with Random gen sticks which sucks.

[Atremus]

-Readjust Spell Lore so Twilight and Flawless Blue Dragon are worth pursuing.

They could also boost the Spellpower on the Twilight and bump up the Potency on the blue set to at least be valid choices at Level 28 gear. Maybe move the spellpower from 120 to 130 (or 140) on the twig and then bump up the potency to 100 or 110 and put back the 9% crit chance

[Hathorian]

+1 to the OP. I agree!!

[Ryiah]

-Readjust Spell Lore so Twilight and Flawless Blue Dragon are worth pursuing.

Would be nice to see Twilight revisited, but flawless blue scales are so overly plentiful now that I just can't see them adjusting it in any meaningful way. I think it is more likely they'll introduce a new armor instead.

[RobbinB]

It's nice that you're revamping random loot for melee weapons, but caster weapons are in just as bad shape, if not worse, and a revamp is necessary. As it is, the large majority of caster weapons are vendor trash that people don't wnat, and what people do want is an extremely limited subset with no variety.

• Match the lore type suffix with the spellpower prefix. For thaumaturgy staves, choose one of the spellpower prefix.
• Add arcane/divine/{school type} augmentation as a possible attribute, up to +2 or +3.
• Instead or removing parrying from the game, add it to the suffix list of caster weapons.
• Lesser maximize, empower, etc - where did these attributes go? They were on loot post-U14 and seem to have disappeared.
• Make caster kamas and shortswords more available for monk splashes. We don't need a huge variety of different weapon types for caster weapons. Alternatively, change scepters to centered monk weapons along with orbs.
• Remove two-handed non-thaumaturgy caster weapons.

I agree with removing affixes or combinations of affixes that no one will ever want under any circumstances. However, I'm not convinced that only allowing certain combinations that make the "most" sense is the way to go. If the "optimal" prefix/suffix combo is fairly readily available, it becomes almost impossible to balance random vs raid/named loot. This occurs because if the optimal combo is better than named, you acquire it quickly and raid/named loot has no purpose. If the combo is weaker than raid loot than you only go after the named loot and you are done. By making the potential or existence of a random combo that can be awesome but is very rare to pull (at the expense of lots of "trash" loot), you find the happy medium.

Examples of this are vorpals and wop's when level cap was 10 versus 20. When an uber weapon is very rare it's not problematic, but once those weapons became commonplace they became a huge problem and need to be nerfed. It makes me wonder what the consequence would have been if when "nightmare" had been introduced to random loot (with proc on all criticals) the drop rate was controlled and rare (eg only about 1 in 1000 chests even when the chest level was way above the item ml).

Similar scenario for caster weapons. An item containing 132 glaciation and 20% ice lore might be possible and eclipse raid/named loot, but provided the odds of actually getting this item stay extremely rare I don't think it is a problem. Significantly upping the odds of ice lore always following glaciation (or making such an item a guaranteed end reward for example) is what makes such an item problematic.

[xTethx]

I think trying to find the best combination weapon/weapons for your build should be hard and the rarest in the game. I also agree that more variety enchantments, like efficient max, emp etc should be implemented.

[SirValentine]

[*]Match the lore type suffix with the spellpower prefix. For thaumaturgy staves, choose one of the spellpower prefix.

I'm not sure that should be the only possibility, but at the least it should have a higher chance of showing up than mismatches.

[*]Add arcane/divine/{school type} augmentation as a possible attribute, up to +2 or +3.

I'm not sure I'd like to see this on random loot instead of only named loot, but I'd suggest:

Rename "arcane" augmentation to "spell" augmentation, and make it work on everything, not just Wiz/Sorc spells.

[*]Make caster kamas and shortswords more available for monk splashes. We don't need a huge variety of different weapon types for caster weapons. Alternatively, change scepters to centered monk weapons along with orbs.

Make all weapons with which Monks are automatically proficient allow being centered:
Club, Dagger, Heavy Crossbow, Light Crossbow, Handaxe

Club covers scepter.

[*]Remove two-handed non-thaumaturgy caster weapons.

But allow Thaumaturgy (less commonly than on staves) on other 2-handers. I know a few folks like the caster mutations on their bows or greatswords.