Let's talk about Named Loot

[DANTEIL]

I agree with many that Green Steel is probably the best named loot system -- even as a casual player when the cap was at 20, I was able to join in on Shroud runs and gather enough ingredients to make something that suited me. Most of the other named loot systems have seemed either out of reach for me (epic shard seals scrolls) or just too random to bother with (Reaver's). That being said, however, I agree with this:

Green Steel. It is hard to see what you can get. You have to do an external search for a planner. That is silly. A build tree similar to the way that enhancements works would be nice. Some way to see what you can get, what you can combine and how you get from where you are to where you are going would be appreciated.

Needing an external planner seems like an unnecessary burden.

[droid327]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

I like the Cannith Challenge system. I'm a soloist, so anything that's raid-gated is essentially non-existent, as far as I'm concerned. I like how its incremental, how you can do something to progress it without it being a complete jackpot/bust mechanic. I like how it integrates crafting (more Craftable +X on named items!!!). The items themselves are also very desirable over alternatives at-level.

I like when systems let you choose your base item (eg Eveningstar, Greensteel, Alchemical). Too often you're left out of new content if you're not a Q-staff, Shortsword, or Greataxe user. Likewise, too many nice items get underutilized because its a (for example) Maul, and the only decent Maul in the game, and no one's going to build a Maul user just to use it from L16-22...

Quiver of Alacrity is too hard to acquire, especially now that its not the only named quiver in the game anymore. Anything that's raid-gated runs into the problem of being too hard to acquire, once that raid is deprecated, which inevitably every raid does become...

I feel like Gianthold gear is appropriately difficult. You have to run half a dozen or a dozen quests, just like completing a quest arc, which I think is an appropriate amount of effort for a named item.

Item types I *personally* find myself wishing there were more named versions: **REPEATERS**. Docents. Quivers. Trinkets (quality more than quantity, most trinkets are junk). Throwers. Ammo (how about some 100% returning named bolts and arrows?). Scimitars, especially now that Tempest is Scimitar-specialist.

Named items I currently use on my main, a WF Arti/Rgr (or have in my TR cache to use later): Minos Legens, Giantcraft Docent, Bracers of Wind, both Cannith rings, Backstabber's Gloves, Ghost-Waking Cloak (Eveningstar repeaters, Archaic Device and Lucid Dreams, Golden Guile, Needle courtesy of the Raiders Reward).

[Qhualor]

1. I like the Shroud crafting. With crafting planners its easy to understand and there lots of different weapon effects with bonus procs. A lot of item and weapon choices. Except for shards, the ingredients are not bound so you could trade or sell easily enough without feeling forced to run Shroud for one more large scale. This isn't to say it couldn't be improved or expanded on.

The scroll/shard/seal upgrade system is good too. Its a much simpler system requiring less ingredients to make an epic weapon or item.

2. Never thought the difficulty for level appropriate named items was a problem. We all have different tastes and what we think is a good item for our characters may differ from others. I just think a named item should be as powerful as level appropriate and worth going after.

A named item that I think is too hard to acquire? That's a tough one without including your * bards make for good loot sacrifices, but even better if they are halfling bards.

3. Eberron epics. All of it needs a good pass and long overdue. Start with Sands and Von.

My feeling for heroic level named loot is that I don't stay in those 1-20 level ranges for very long to really enjoy the named loot. Since the changes from BTA to BTCoE, I just sell all that when I like to pass heroic gear to my characters for TRing purposes. It doesn't matter if that level 15 named item is badass. I would only enjoy it for a day or two on one character than I would just vendor it off. Unless its BTA, I won't bother running heroic quests for named loot. The exception would be heroic items I can upgrade to epic versions. That I don't have a problem with.

after thinking more on this, i would like to add also..

DT crafting. it needs to be updated badly. getting the runes isn't as hard as it used to be, be the effects you can put on the armor needs to be bumped up that is more fitting for the level range. there are better random items that are also found on those runes. also would like to see additional armor types and maybe shield crafting too? i would love to see a similar Shroud crafting for armor and i think DT crafting would be good for that.

TOD sets need to be fixed. i don't see much of a reason to even run the pack except for Yugo favor, despite that i do actually think its one of the best packs in the game. with the set bonus not working and the changes to exceptional not stacking, it pretty much killed it off.

[Nightmanis]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Heroic Comms tied to favor was my favorite. It gave PUGS incentive to run EE content, the favor wasn't set BONE CRUSHINGLY HIGH. Only problem is the minute chance of comms dropping in CITW (a huge mistake that persists to this day, and if FOT didn't give a guaranteed amount would make this my least favorite system.)

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Personally the VON series was just about right in difficulty in acquiring (but I know some have had a PITA time with SOS's and such), anything in the Sands was a **** shoot just because for the sheer amount of items reducing the chance to sub-minuscule. Shards from the old epic crafting are still so rare that it's stupid.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Throwing. GOOD Docents. Rapier's, Scimmy's, a good Maul. Throw in some really good augments.

Rapier's have Balizarde. They don't need a whole lot else, though some variety might be nice. Weaker version with more slots would be cool.

[N-0cturn]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel for the mentioned reasons. I also like the Weapons from the Cannith Challenges. You have a lot of choice regarding the weapon type and the weapons can be customized via Cannith Crafting.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Right: The GH-Armor system. I like that with the relict armor you have a starter version that is super easy to get and then can upgrade to dragonscale. The droprate from the scales rewards running at higher difficulties and you have a steady progress.

Wrong: Old Epics. Getting the Shard you need is a pain, especially for some Epics. Sometimes the drop rates for Shards is horrible (TTT) sometimes there are just to many different shards (Sands). Granted you gather quite a lot of stuff that you didn't want in the process but most of that is just useless junk even at level 20.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

- Longsword: There are quite a few named ones but no good ones after low/mid levels. It seems like every higher level Longsword is only good for one type of enemies (Evil Outsider, Dragons).
- Khopesh/Dwarven Waraxe: Very few named ones

[Jasparion]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Firstly on loot strengths:

1. Raid loot should be the best loot in the game.
2. Named dungeon loot should be the 2nd best loot in the game. If you are going to continue with difficulty based loot then Elite/Epic Elite loot should be nearly as good as Raid loot.
3. Random loot should be nice, but not as good as loot you need to actually hunt for - I should not be able to kit out a toon in 30 minutes of shopping on the Auction House and be nearly as good as someone who spent months or even years farming content endlessly for Raid items or EE items.
4. I really would like to see the love given to some of the iconic Named items which are from P&P. Maybe these should be as powerful as Elite versions. Maybe we can see some Epic versions of iconic P&P Named items.

Now, back to your first 2 points.

5. Im not a huge fan of loot upgrades, but the Dreaming Dark is a decent system now. So too Reavers Fate. If Im going to list something I really dont like - its the old Epic items with Scroll, Seal, Shard. Either remove this system, or give us the chance to swap any Scroll, any Seal, any Shard so we can complete our old items. You are already making it so we really dont run these much - with Epic Comms dropping in tiny numbers in the old dungeons.
6. The vast majority of items are a random drop rate. We'd probably like the idea of higher drop rates but then if everyone was rolling in uber Named loot we'd be complaining about power creep. I dont farm dungeons and raids, so Im probably not the best placed to give an opinion on how things could be made better. That said, if an item has a drop rate of 0.01% then you may as well make it a global item and not specific to any one dungeon. Even the serious farmer is relying on luck when they get that.

[xberto]

I'm a fan of sets and set bonuses. I thought the commendation collects in Eveningstar was great mechanic. The flawless dragon/helm and Tower ring sets worked well too. DDO has seen some way different ways a delivering loot !

A cool thing about some of the Tower rings, is they had special compliments for enhancements. I'd like to see this revisited. Maybe a set item that would have a general bonus but have something extra to compliment individual capstone enhancements (this idea inspired by the overpowered multiclass discussions.... they really are overpowered!). Enhancement complimenting sets would be a great followup to the Enhancement pass!

I loved sets back in the Diablo days!

- Khopesh/Dwarven Waraxe: Very few named ones

This too!

[MeliCat]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel - collecting and ton of ingredients and being able to make lots of different things that are still useful even today: 3x pos weapons, displacement clickies, haste clickies, raise dead. Shame it doesn't work for handwraps.

If you mean "named" named... then I'm going to say eSOS because it's still useful. I'm sick of systems that are only useful for lowbie stuff but not for the long term. Why would I bother investing time and effort into something if it's not going to last?

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Getting things on my 20th - so things from Reavers and TOD. Things like the Torc - well I've been lucky but others haven't. And before you go blaming it on lady luck don't you dare. You set drop rates of things to 2% or whatever. Therefore you are responsible for if a player only has a sample size of say 30, they miss out. Drop rates of 2 out of 100 are only seen as a true percentage if your sample size is in the 1000s. An *individual* doesn't have that sample size. You may look at it as "oh out of 1000 players the drop rate looks right". We look at it from our individual perspective. It is not fair for you to say that a 2% (or 3% etc) drop rate is ok - it's not. Suggestion: Make the 20th end rewards list contain *all* raid loot items instead of just a selection.

Also changing the DQ raid so that the 20th offers shards instead of base items without telling anyone was not cool. I still haven't got it confirmed if I run 19 runs on epic (for xp) if I run the 20th on normal I get a chance at a base item and it's not percentage of runs based. It also seems odd that this is the only raid that does this. Please don't do the same to Von56. DQ you can solo. Von56 you need at least a couple of bodies to help you open North von5 and going up South.

Another one with a crappy drop rate and not even a hope of a 20th end reward - mysterious bauble.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Um - handwraps of course. Also I would love to see caster kamas. Seriously good ones. I would like to see more armors with more 'stuff' on them - useful stuff not just flavour stuff - in random loot gen these days I just vendor trash armour automatically anything past level 10. More and interesting quivers too.

A reversal of the BTCoE nonsense would also be good.

[NPC]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Dreamforge - can solo - some OCD required, but not major OCD. ...and worth upgrading - the cost benefit analysis of the time to upgrade is equal to the benefit of the upgrade.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
right difficulty - multi-part quest chains
too hard - Ring of Spell Storing - I've given up

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Eveningstar - I would like augment slots and multiple armor types for each Commendation trader.
Multiclass equipment - Nice equipment sets in Eveningstar, most don't work well if you've splashed for evasion.
I'd like more named longswords and repeaters.

[Dunklerlindwurm]

One of the most important things about named items is (in my opinion) unique abilitys.

The reason why greensteel equipment is so nice and still very useful at level cap, is because it has effects you cant find anywhere else, yet it doesnt make other named loot pointless.

I even find cannith challenge loot very useful because it has unique effects and augment slots. For example i still wear the rock boots because they have earthgrab guard,stone prison guard and a yellow slot for striding. Where else can i find that ?

A very bad example is the "new" deadly prefix(and other similar new replacement effects)on random loot that outclasses high level named items.
Example here Epic Elite Dream Visor a level 25 named item is outclasses by a level 13!! random heroic deadly item.
Dream visor gives +5 damage..random item +6 damage not to mention that deadly items make bards pointless somehow.

But to answer your questions.

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel like others already said. Best upgrade system. Unique effects+almost all slots and weapons covered.
Followed by Lord of Blades for the same Reasons. It is just not as good as greensteel.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

The right difficulty-Epic items from Red Fens,Sentinels of Stormreach,Phiarlan Carneval

Too hard to aquire-Epic items from Demon Sands. The problem here is the super high number of named items+the very very low droprate of Shards(Slayer area shards even lower than Raid shards)


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

If you believe it or not there are still weapon types that dont have a single named raid item.

If you dont count crafted items....

Great Xbow for example the only named one is a level 2 from Korthos.

There are no Raid Dwarven axes...
There are no Raid throwing weapons...

[Sebastrd]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Green Steel

- Every run brought you a little bit closer to your goal. I cannot overstate how important that was. With most of the other systems you could run a quest 100 times and be no closer to your goal than when you started. Named loot systems shouldn't be a lottery. That's what Daily Dice and random loot are for.
- It was customizable, meaning I could make what was right for my build instead of building my character around the loot.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

- Green Steel, Dragontouched after the update, Ioun Stones and IQ upgraded gear were all just about right.
- The whole Shard/Seal/Scroll system is just garbage. I wouldn't even call it too hard; I'd call it frustrating.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Honestly, it's not necessarily the loot that needs love. It's the acquiring of the loot that's important. There's a lot of really good stuff out there worth getting. But there are just certain items that I don't ever bother going after - no matter how good they are - because the road to acquiring them is no fun. Abbot and Twilight Forge are probably the two most notorious offenders, but someday when epic weapon options are broadened CitW will go on that list, as well.

*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Don't overlook RNG issues as simply a necessary evil. There are proven ways to mitigate bad luck with good design.

[Jasparion]

This too!

Melee combat focussed Heavy Maces could do with some love as well.

I will add to my post above by agreeing with others. Greensteel weapons or your first Greensteel item are fairly easy to do. Getting multiple items by Cleansing become a challenge.

Cannith challenge items are also fairly good - though I dont really enjoy the challenges themselves too much.

[danotmano1998]

Favorite Loot System:
Greensteel. Because there is something there for every build, and it is completely customizable.

Right Difficulty to Acquire:
Greensteel, or Cannith Challenges

Too hard to Acquire:
Anything with shard/seal/scrolls

Things that need some attention:
Orbs, Runearms, Augments!!!

[Systern]

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

1) Greensteel. The BTC, personal-achievement shards are fairly easy to acquire. The other ingredients being unbound adds a social, collaborative aspect to making the item you want. Every run offers incremental progress towards achieving your goal. The customization is integral to the raid still being popular and run. With static loot raids, once the 7 items in it have been outclassed or the meta shifts to different non-complimentary builds, the content falls out of favor.

Second Favorite is house C challenge gear. Although I don't like that tier 2 and tier 3 upgrades require mats from the level 15 band of challenges. Eveningstar challenges need a resource exchange like house C has. Again, incremental progress. No disclaimer necessary.

One that I don't particularly care for is the tiered N/H/E loot. The thing I don't like about those are the increasing MLs. Having the Normal item as ML 15, Hard as ML16, Elite as ML17 makes it these feel like 3 different items. Not Better versions of the same item. Coupled with the fact that loot is themed to the content of the pack, i.e. Gianthold Loot helps you do Gianthold content and not Necro 4 content, you usually get items with MLs after you need them.

2) Lucid Dreams was right. Third Completion lists made the grind through random chance tolerable. Quiver of Alacrity was too difficult. I held up our TR group because I insisted on getting the item before TRing again. I bought 12 bypass timers knowing that my only realistic hope of seeing one was on a 20th completion list. When that 20th list only had half the items and no quiver, I swore to never buy another raid bypass timer. Lotteries are a tax on people who are bad at math, and bypass timers are just lottery tickets. Turbine has accelerated the game so much lately that the reincarnation timer is the same length as the raid timers. You can TR, Reflag, and rerun the raid again sooner than you can rerun the raid without a bypass. 20 completions is just too far of a goal to have only a better chance at winning a lottery.

3) I've been looking at quarterstaves a lot lately, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of good staves for heroic levels. There's Breeze and Dreamspitter/slicer/which ever, but not a whole lot of sticks that are BTA or a New alt can reasonably hope to acquire. Souleater is good, but outclassed by the new Paragon/Epic +.5w weapons.
As for Class Equipment, Druids need some love. Medium Armor Prof, but all random medium armors are metal and break oath (Oh, but this is the named loot thread. There's a Imbued Darkleaf in TS, Leaves of the Forest, Terrorweb, Flawless Dragonscale for non-metal medium armors). There needs to be more 'gish' type weapons as there's random melee weapons and caster weapons, but very very few hybrid weapons like Ice Razor or Swailing Blade - ones with both caster and melee stats on the same item.

Also, Arti's seem to have fallen out of favor in the loot love. Most named repeaters do stat damage, which is useless with epic ward being a thing in the game. Rune Arms haven't appeared since GH (none in Shadowfell or U20).

[Rinnaldo]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Crystal Cove (Euphonia's barter box. Cannith Crafting is very similar to this.) I like that you can run content at your current, get an item for your current level, and upgrade it for your current level. If you want a higher level version, those are available, too. To contrast this, the loot upgrade barter box for the Mabar festival sucks. Here's why: You have start by buying the LOWEST LEVEL ITEM, instead of one of your level for a few more ingredients. Second, you cannot make good, incremental changes within a level range, you just upgrade to the next level version. It is way more expensive and that means way more farming. There is farming for the previous system, but it is more enjoyable the way it is set up.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Flawless Blue Dragon Armor felt about right. Once I started running Tor, it felt accessible at 20 scales, having gotten two or three in that first run. I happened to loot a Blue Dragon Helm that has a set bonus that goes with the armor, and that was more impetus to keep running to get the set bonus.

Too hard: Trying to upgrade any item using scrolls, shards, and seals. I have never yet gotten a matching full set of all three AND the base item. Frankly, Green Steel also felt like it took way too long. Too many runs, too many rare ingredients at the higher levels making it very limiting to get over the hump of having a half-upgraded item.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

I don't really know enough about what's available to comment on this.


However, I will re-post something I mentioned in another thread, because I believe it is very relevant to future crafting systems:

A system that actually ties together some of the disparate crafting systems would be very welcome. For example, if you go ahead with sentient rune weapons (great idea, btw!), mixing the ingredients from Shroud and, say, Gianthold, could work. And please throw in some rarer recipes/conversions for other old stuff we have stored in bags, like Motes of Night and Winter, 10,000 gold doubloons, etc. If you mix ingredients from various crafting, you end up with some great combinations of weird recipes: 1 Large Demon Scale + 1 Flawless Green Dragon Scale + 1000 Motes of Nights + 1 Lesser Cannith Power Cell + Green Steel Min II = Demonic Green Demon Sword of Soul Sucking. (Or whatever.) Convert essences of earth to dragon scales to demon scales to dream shards to epic item shards. It would make everything flow a lot more nicely. And if you're worried that people will buy one pack and not another and yet use the converter to gain the ingredients for that latter pack, keep in mind they probably can't actually enter the proper zone without purchasing the pack - in order to actually craft.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Thank you for asking.

• Greensteel (but you knew that).
• Abbot - love the gear - the quiver, gloves, all of it.
• Alchemical (stone of change)- simple and everyone can do - even level 0 new players
• Cannith Challenge Gear - love the ability to craft onto tier 3 - love the multiple levels of gear

Unique items need to be extremely hard to obtain - Royal Guard Mask - eSoS - these make a character unique.

Want more unique items like that - something like a D.Door item that is as hard to get as the Royal Guard Mask (ml:9 say)

when I gear a character up - I follow this priority

• greensteel
• abbot
• cannith challenge
• cannith crafted to fill holes / niche

I haven't spent much time pursuing seal.scroll.shard items yet - but will shortly.

Right amount of difficulty - Quiver of Alacrity; mantle of worldshaper; voice of master; Visor of the Flesh Render Guards; Royal Guard Mask; Ring of Spell Storing; Ring of Ancestors (note - all of these are highly desired for ANY toon; some of them are btc, some are bta, and some are not bound - which is great since it allows everyone to rarely benefit from a freaky subsequent pull)
Too much - parasitic breastplate - but that was just really bad luck. Current augment system - augment slot should not have advanced weight - ie when an item is wiped the minimum level should be 0 until enchantments are added and / or crystals slotted.

need love:
Dragontouched
cannith crafted (yes I consider it named - it SHOULD have the makers name on it)
Ring of Spell Storing
Shaverath (Incredible Potential)
The Bloodstone
Shimmering Arrowhead
Suppressed Power

[voodoogroves]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

This is difficult, as I'm not sure what you consider "upgrade".

Augments are good, at least were augments do not have silly MLs. Augments paired with abilities on the item that scale based on ML would be my favorite proposal ever.

I generally DISLIKE the bajillion different ingredient+combine methods. Madness, Lords of Stormeach, Sigils, Signets, Marks, etc. There's no reason why a single pack can't have a smaller set of "currency" ... we don't need 12 different ingredients to have to collect to make one of 8 different upgrades. Too much to track / keep / whatever.

I dislike N/H/E flooding everything.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Good/right: New Gloves of Gnoll Hide. Solid, TR-twink gear. Not a guaranteed drop, but something you can chase / farm.

Too hard: Sands explorer epic items. Those are essentially so rare as to be not worth pursuing.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

For weapons - any weapon types that you have enhancement systems for but NO actual named items. Great Crossbows. Late-game non-shuriken throwers. Shortbows.

Medium / heavy armors. The defense pass normalized any of them that had better than normal AC / defensive benefits - esp. VoD / HoX gear.

[Seikojin]

Anyone who answers anything other than Green Steel needs to have their kneecaps smashed with a herring. It is by far the best system in the game. Customizable is GREAT. Let me put the HP/SP item when I want it, not have to arbitrariliy move 10 items around because a new shiny only exists as a tiara. Seriously, a Troll wearing a tiars? Oh the Humanity . . .

And weapons . . . lots of great weapon choices in the weapon that I WANT.

A close second is the Colored slot system we now have. Customization is wonderful.

Honorable Mention to Cannith Challenge loot, but since I hate challenges with a passion I won't run them anyway.

Just right: Fens epics. TOD rings, Alchemicals back when Epic LOB was epic and not a joke (EE drops Tier 1 spirits? Are you high?). Green steel, non-Titan Raid loot.

Too ridiculous: Desert epics, VON Epics, especially the ESOS. Named loot in TOR. it's friggin ridiculous that at about 500 EE TOR runs (no, I'm not kidding) I'm still looking for helms (random SUCKS!!!). Titan gear but that's moot because it's all outdated junk.

Casters need some caster-sticks that consolidate stuff. Element of lore of necro DC or something. This is where the random revolution really sucks . . . I can't think of a named Caster stick that isn't ****.

Random loot wouldn't be so terrible if you'd adjust the halfling sacrifice modifier.

^This^ Pretty much.

GS had the right amount of work to reward ratio.

Most Epic unlocks are a pain to grind to get completed. Either the components drop too rarely to make it worthwhile, or the slot has something better in it.

I think something where you can add abilities to named items would be viable. This way if something is needed, you can slot it. Like augments.

Currently however, named items are far inferior to the random items for those specific tiers. For example:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Sun_Blade
Nice sword, however a plain lvl 6 sword with max enhancement may get chosen over this because it hits more often and does more damage to outside evil and undead areas. Same with something like:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Splinterskull_Chainmail
Same basic problem, the item is clearly inferior to lvl 6 armors. The slot stays empty since augments are not readily available (they don't drop), and what can be slotted usually doesn't make up for the lower bonuses.
The big hitter are non offense/armor slots, like rings and boots, etc.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Ring_of_Baphomet
A min lvl 11 that adds 11 to a single skill, an ability clickie you will never use (even at level), and penalties on top of it all. The slots, again are pointless (see above), so you are left with something to sell or skip over. It should offer at least +13 to intim, a scalable curse (or higher dc), and those 2 slots.

I think all named items need some scaling up in their abilities. Simple +3's moving to 4 or 5 should help make them more competitive, but wont make them best in slot.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Green Steel. It is hard to see what you can get. You have to do an external search for a planner. That is silly. A build tree similar to the way that enhancements works would be nice. Some way to see what you can get, what you can combine and how you get from where you are to where you are going would be appreciated.

Took some help from friends when I made first piece of GS some time ago - now have dozens. Love the crafting planner, the unbound ingredients, the whole taint concept, the update to the interface - but

a BUILD TREE is an excellent idea. Further expand the options and add Handwraps.

[Desonde]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

My favorite system is the greensteel system. When the level cap was 20, this raid was run constantly allowing for easy access to groups, something for guilds to build towards, improved the social aspect of the game, all while progressively moving your character towards an end goal. The best part is, after spending a month of farming materials you can change your mind and not have to restart, nor do you have to work on multiple congruent systems simultaneously. Also, the components had a market value allowing for a gold sink to help control the market.

For named items that are the right difficulty to acquire, I like the House D. system complete the final quest get a list of named items at sub par value. Complete each of the quests on elite and get a component to upgrade the item to an interesting degree.

A lot is overdue for some love, Sure the eSoS should be king of dps since that's all it's built for, but in a game that favors dps so heavily it can't be the only option, especially when many weapon types cannot dream of reaching 20% it's output. As far as other class based gear goes, what ever happened to the class based gear [midnight's greetings, Elyd's Edge, ToD sets]? These were things that enhanced the classes not just the builds, right now builds are purely; HP, +Dmg, Concealment, Incorp, Heal Amp, PRR (Result of another issue altogether sure, but is actually causing the death of viable class based items).

*Disclaimer on Random Number Disclaimer: Bad luck is bad luck, yes, however poor statistics is not an excuse to say 'It's random!'. If you have a 1:100 chance of getting an item at it takes 110 tries to get it, that's one thing. If you have a 1:6 chance to get anything, a 1:100 chance to get one part, but need two parts from one chest and a third part from another chest that has a 1:10 chance of giving you anything and 1:100 chance of getting the item you want, chances of getting the complete item suddenly become 1:1,200,000. If you are trying to control the number of said item in the game that's fine, but to claim it's anything else is a little short sighted.