The new random loot is insane

[Deathdefy]

I will now need:
- +15 Intelligence item
- +7 Insightful Intelligence item

- +10 Insightful Search Swap Item
- +10 Insightful Disable Device Swap Item

That's it. So I feel like it's just three or four perfect pulls away. At this point, none of my existing raid gear is invalidated (e.g. Sightless, Gauntlets of Arcane Soldier, Countenance, Needle/TF weapons). I'm curious what specifically people are considering redundant (and will read the blog post)

The other stuff:
+ spell focus to evocation,
+ insightful spell focus to evocation
I'm unsure about the existence of levels exceeding named gear. i.e. +5 DC is the highest I've seen on random loot, and +2 Insightful DC is the highest I've seen. I could be wrong though, and these may create actual redundancies in raid gear.

Con and False Life may add another lootgen item. Maybe. It's a secondary 'nice to have' thing like Disable Device or Search +21 instead of +20.

I don't know. I'm not super bummed. And the high stat bonus items do seem RARE. e.g. Search for 'Astute' (the new Clever) ML 29-30 on the AH and you'll get... 3 items on Khyber. None of them being +14 or +15 int.

I have seen literally no Astute items yet either, so I think this could be good for just doing random high level quests for chests again.

Overall I'm a fan - though again we have serious nonsense clogging up the tables which obviously could use refinement. Someone else can make the Disease Resistance etc list.

[Saekee]

I am not sure why everyone is freaking out about the level 1 vorpal. At that level, a strength based THF character will be close to one-shotting everything anyhow, or at least be killing things faster than the average 20 hits it would take to hit the vorpal effect. Even a wizard wielding a greataxe at level one will likely kill most things in less than 20 hits. The lucky vorpal hits would be cool, but certainly not outclass the masterful crafted flaming burst or just plain +enhancement weapons for those levels.

The lowest level instakiller before now to my knowledge was a tier 3 master crafted stalker ring min level 11 knocked down to level 9. Vorpal on level 1 weapons does not mean you will only use them at level 1. They can be used later, right? So level 7, 8 etc quests just got easier. Power creep again.

I am ok with bloated stats in epics since it means mixing up stuff instead of static named loot. Nee builds can appear that were limited before due to the absence of X named item having the numbers (e.g. there are few insightful INT +3 and +4 items, now INT builds have new flexibility).

[Beelzebjorn]

A few notes on random loot so far:

The doubleshot +7 item I pulled displayed a 16,7% chance of doubleshot when equipped. Where's the decimal coming from?
Oh, and I managed to grab a companion collar ML 1 vorpal and feeding so I guess I won't be needing my toon to fight much the first 8 or so levels from now on.
Also, there are the +0 items and the armors with keen on them. Tackling gonna be a thing in an upcoming update?

My guess is they fixed the parts of u29 that caused the disaster last night, and left the rest of the mess broken to be resolved later. I very much doubt this is WAI.

I mean, one month they take away chunks of PRR and most of the MRR, and the next month any and all lootgen has insightful bonuses on it... If there's a consistent direction here, I don't see it.

Was there even a demand for a massive overhaul of lootgen?

[slarden]

I think I figured it out.

The new loot system is meant to trivialize past lives. It's meant to be so far over the top that past life bonuses just become very minor effects that will have no great impact on game play after the first several levels.

The way to trivialize past lifes would be to have a new bonus type and have it stack with everything except past life feats. This wouldn't trivialize it so much as give people without the past lifes a chance to make up for some of it through gearing while people with the past lifes benefit by not having to slot the gear.

[Faltout]

I will now need:
- +15 Intelligence item
- +7 Insightful Intelligence item

- +10 Insightful Search Swap Item
- +10 Insightful Disable Device Swap Item

That's it. So I feel like it's just three or four perfect pulls away. At this point, none of my existing raid gear is invalidated (e.g. Sightless, Gauntlets of Arcane Soldier, Countenance, Needle/TF weapons). I'm curious what specifically people are considering redundant (and will read the blog post)

The other stuff:
+ spell focus to evocation,
+ insightful spell focus to evocation
I'm unsure about the existence of levels exceeding named gear. i.e. +5 DC is the highest I've seen on random loot, and +2 Insightful DC is the highest I've seen. I could be wrong though, and these may create actual redundancies in raid gear.

Con and False Life may add another lootgen item. Maybe. It's a secondary 'nice to have' thing like Disable Device or Search +21 instead of +20.

I don't know. I'm not super bummed. And the high stat bonus items do seem RARE. e.g. Search for 'Astute' (the new Clever) ML 29-30 on the AH and you'll get... 3 items on Khyber. None of them being +14 or +15 int.

I have seen literally no Astute items yet either, so I think this could be good for just doing random high level quests for chests again.

Overall I'm a fan - though again we have serious nonsense clogging up the tables which obviously could use refinement. Someone else can make the Disease Resistance etc list.

Sightless: You will find better CON, deathblock and Sheltering in random loot. You won't find true seeing but can scroll that. You also probably won't find melee and ranged power and augment slots, so let's not consider sightless useless.
Gauntlets: You won't find quality DC bonus, but will find much better insightful DC bonus on random loot. Higher spellcraft on random loot, higher wizardry. Not arcane augmentation, but that's not always useful. You can certainly find high spell pen items in random loot (and insightful), so only if you want 2 caster levels for damage you would consider those.
Countenance: Ok, everything on it is way higher on random loot. Radiance lore, CHA, evo focus, spell pen...
Needle: Try a weapon with.... more than +8 enhancement bonus and MUCH higher side damage than an effect that works only on certain targets. ML 7 weapons already have damage like that. You won't beat the x3 multiplier on it though so how about try another weapon type?

As for AH, keep in mind that the names of the effects are not working. Items can have 3 effects and only 2 names. Not to mention that those 2 names do not even correspond to the primary effects...

[knightgf]

Holy *#$%, Level 1 vorpals? That should be a artifact item if I ever saw one. The idea of being able to insta-kill any target without deathblock on a roll of a 20 is powerful, indeed. But its easy to forget that when your on the forums, the game is only very loosely based on PnP, so at those levels, vorpal is not as powerful as it seems, though it still has some power.

Between a item that has vorpal and a item that deals 2d6 damage (Not saying there is one, I have no clue what damage they did to loot), ill take the 2d6 at low levels any day. As weapon speed increases and mobs get tougher, the vorpal might, just might, be viable. But usually DPS is king in this game.

[mudfud]

I remember when vorpals were hard to come by.
Then I remembered when vorpals were easy to come by but still higher lvls atleast.
I pulled a vorpal today with some fluff stuff on it in a lvl 1 quest. Minimum lvl 4 to use.

[Raithe]

This was always going to be the flipside of many past lives. It just is what it is.

This did nothing to counteract prior power creep. The old system(s) undoubtedly had effects that are rare or nonexistent on the new treasure, this has been true of greensteel crafted stuff for a very long time, only greensteel has always been available if you can find people to run Shroud efficiently. The old lootgen stuff is simply no longer available except in people's guild chests and bank vaults. So now all the people who have 40 past lives also have the best of multiple loot systems (like Guild slots - some people still have those).

The only thing this might do is bore all the old-timers out of the game and allow new players some breathing space.

As for the reason why, I'd say it's simply to get people playing again, and not any sort of balancing countermeasure.

[Gremmlynn]

It used to be 3 per + of the item, so thunderforged would be +36 at tier 3, not including any buffs or past lives that would increase it further.

From what I've seen, they either changed it or accidentally coded it to +3/ML.

[Gremmlynn]

Holy *#$%, Level 1 vorpals? That should be a artifact item if I ever saw one. The idea of being able to insta-kill any target without deathblock on a roll of a 20 is powerful, indeed. But its easy to forget that when your on the forums, the game is only very loosely based on PnP, so at those levels, vorpal is not as powerful as it seems, though it still has some power.

Between a item that has vorpal and a item that deals 2d6 damage (Not saying there is one, I have no clue what damage they did to loot), ill take the 2d6 at low levels any day. As weapon speed increases and mobs get tougher, the vorpal might, just might, be viable. But usually DPS is king in this game.

Well, at level 1 we might actually be fighting something with few enough hps to actually be vorpalable. That's the problem with where they were, most mobs were far enough over the cap that actually insta killing them was rare and really saved very few swings when it happened.

[Gremmlynn]

The devs did what they had to do. They setup a loot system where a person can join DDO, like what they see and be geared and running endgame inside 6 months without playing 6 hours a day every day.

This was always going to be the flipside of many past lives. It just is what it is.

Outside of maybe spell pen for DC casters, what past lives are needed for end game? I know I can't find anything that is essential or really more than a minor bump.

[Heathir]

ye, you need to re equip your dude after lvl cap in all mmos.
but you re equip with higher level items from new raids, not random junk from few levels lower.

That's not true. WoW as an example....panda comes out and green items are better than existing raid items. It's how games work. People with tons of past lives will still be more powerful, but well built, well planned 1st and 2nd lifers will be able to break into EE and feel like they are able to contribute.

This change in gear isn't bad, it's just ddo evolving into a game that's trying to attract new players. Loot bridges the gap created by not being in the game for the past 2 years plus. To give you an idea I could roll a new toon on wow right now or everquest, level to cap in 1 to 2 months and be able to participate and be effective in top end raids and other end game content. That's a positive from a owners perspective ddo is doing similar and just using loot Gen to bridge the past life gap.

[blerkington]

The way to trivialize past lifes would be to have a new bonus type and have it stack with everything except past life feats. This wouldn't trivialize it so much as give people without the past lifes a chance to make up for some of it through gearing while people with the past lifes benefit by not having to slot the gear.

Hi,

Good point. I'm not really buying that this loot pass was intended to level the playing field either. I think it was a sad mistake that looked good on paper but is actually very harmful to the game.

Most past life feats do very little to improve a character's power, particularly the heroic ones. The largest exceptions would be PRR for builds which otherwise have trouble achieving much PRR and spell pen for DC casters. My ranger sure as hell isn't deriving much benefit at all from many of his heroic past lives, and he's in a much better position to use them compared to more specialised builds.

It's also quite possible to do EE content as a first life character. There are a bunch of people on my server who do very well in harder content on characters with few to no past lives because they prefer to run a stable of characters and/or just don't like grinding xp. The game is not so hard that you need past lives to do the hardest parts, especially if you build, gear and play well.

The amount of power added by this change of loot more than makes up the difference between then and now. In some cases the increases are staggeringly large, putting a newly geared post update no past lives character well ahead of where characters with many past lives were before the loot changes.

Then there's also the problem of removing incentive for reincarnation. If past lives aren't needed for hard content (and they generally weren't even before the update) why bother reincarnating at all? Then it just becomes something to do for the OCD types and those who want to keep on replaying content for run.

Thanks.

[Vellrad]

That's not true. WoW as an example....panda comes out and green items are better than existing raid items. It's how games work. People with tons of past lives will still be more powerful, but well built, well planned 1st and 2nd lifers will be able to break into EE and feel like they are able to contribute.

This change in gear isn't bad, it's just ddo evolving into a game that's trying to attract new players. Loot bridges the gap created by not being in the game for the past 2 years plus. To give you an idea I could roll a new toon on wow right now or everquest, level to cap in 1 to 2 months and be able to participate and be effective in top end raids and other end game content. That's a positive from a owners perspective ddo is doing similar and just using loot Gen to bridge the past life gap.

In wow when cap raised from lvl90 to 100, people with gear from 5man dungeons replaced their items with lvl91-92 stuff, but people with raid loot replaced it at lvl94-95.

In DDO you replace lvl28 raid loot with lvl26-27 items.

Totally different.

[Greyhawk6]

Biggest problems I'm seeing is

* +0 items
* Armour with weapon effects on them (draining/feeding etc)
* Blunt vorpal items (these just dont make sense)
* 99.9% of all loot has a buff to spellcasting of some form. This is the new ghostbane to me.
* Item levels seem pretty random. Weapons at odd levels? Maybe WAI.
* You cant break down items with new effects on them to get crafting ingredients.

Its clear that this was either not tested at all or with very little testing as I found problems in the first chest I opened (+0 item)

[FuzzyDuck81]

Holy *#$%, Level 1 vorpals? That should be a artifact item if I ever saw one. The idea of being able to insta-kill any target without deathblock on a roll of a 20 is powerful, indeed. But its easy to forget that when your on the forums, the game is only very loosely based on PnP, so at those levels, vorpal is not as powerful as it seems, though it still has some power.

Between a item that has vorpal and a item that deals 2d6 damage (Not saying there is one, I have no clue what damage they did to loot), ill take the 2d6 at low levels any day. As weapon speed increases and mobs get tougher, the vorpal might, just might, be viable. But usually DPS is king in this game.

I agree, while it looks impressive, in actual use the extra 0.5W plus any other damage effect will be the most important part of it and the vorpal instakill part is just an occasional bonus at lower levels.

[Necrological]

when something is too good to be true......................



































it probably is.

[SirValentine]

For shame....people with all named items in slot are complaining the loot is too good? How many MMO'S have you played? Whenever there is a level increase in every MMO the loot drops of the new content are always better than the raid gear from the pass prior. It's the way it works.

Really? Other games do things where increasing the cap from 28 to 30 makes what you wear at level 10 obsolete?

Who's complaining that level 29 & 30 loot is more powerful than level 28 loot? Not me. I certainly expected a power increase at the new higher levels.

But why is level 20 random loot more powerful than level 20 named (including raid) loot? Or pick whatever level in the 1-28 range you like. Invalidating hundreds of lower level named loot items with a badly-designed random loot is stupid.

[SirValentine]

I'm unsure about the existence of levels exceeding named gear. i.e. +5 DC is the highest I've seen on random loot

I've seen +6 DC items.

[Iron_Claw]

Just got a +15 strength/+7 insightful strength combined as one single item.

Please tell me this is not WAI ???

What point is there in legendary greensteel (Or previous raid loot at all), when it is being obliterated by such randomness ???

Are you out of your mind ? So gross !