Cannith Crafting - Runearms and Challenge Gear

[Gene8808]

It's a shame to see the Cannith Challenge gear lose the ability to have modifiers crafted onto it as I recall Challenge gear being craftable as one of the 'highlights' of the crafting system.

That said, if it's buffed to be balanced with other gear in its level range, I'm okay with that. I'd obviously like to see the ability to craft on it stay, but if it's going to cause balance issues, I'm okay with the loss. That you'd be adding augment slots to offset the loss of ability to craft on them is a good compromise, I think, especially since I've heard mention that there are eventual plans to overhaul the augment system.

[RD2play]

I would love for the Challenge gear to keep some form of crafting on them, it is what makes them Cannith. I would say only the extra slot would suffice next to an augment slot, no need for a pre-/suffix as those are taken by the items initial effects.

Same for rune arms though I could live with the proposed change.

[UurlockYgmeov]

It looks like the Frozen Tunic, Cloak of Flames, Rock Boots, Ring of Master Artifice, Blasting Chime, and Bracers of Wind will all suffer a lose of 1 point of Spell Lore.

Maybe Add +1 Artifact Bonus to compensate? (at least don't let them lose that point of Spell Lore).

[LrdSlvrhnd]

I would almost rather the crafting slots on the named rune arms be replaced with augment slots and new rune arm blanks be created that were intended to be crafted to make them useful.

I like this idea.... I especially like the idea of blank runearms lol

I think ditching crafting on the Cannith items is the wrong way to go. I think they just need to be hardwired to only allow one, maybe two slots; current items don't really allow more than one semi-decent effect anyway.

Either way, I REALLY like the ideas to keep T3s BtA. That's always irked me no end, to the point where I've only ever made one T3 (an epic Blasting Chime for my bard... which my other character currently going through a bard life can't use, even though my bard's about to TR into something else...)

[Kielbasa]

Now that everyone has had a chance to look at the basics of the system, it is time to talk about the outliers. And to note, existing items are intended to stay how they are when these changes go live.

Challenge Gear:

The current plan is to simply have all those items be named gear that can't be crafted on. With everything we've done over the past year to bring a new consistency to Random Loot, Crafted Loot and Named Loot, having a side system that has several effects AND can have new scaling effects crafted on in addition, is simply too powerful.

This change would switch any effects that have scaling versions, into those versions, and leave any more unique effects as they are. It would also result in all tier 3 items having a colored augment slot.

Level appropriate effects and an augment slot for all tier 3 items yes please. I would also consider allowing one of a crafted: prefix/suffix or insightful effect. As others have said allowing the items to retain some of their flexibility would be nice.

Oh and replace undead bane with Ghostbane on all of the mournelode weapons please. Also feel free to add a pair of handwraps to the loot tables because monks.

[Enderoc]

In other words

Devs- Dis jus 2 hard, we scrap whole ding ... Here have augment slot

[elvesunited]

I had to look up that Cannith Challenge items allow you to craft on them. All my Cannith challenge items were level 20. I don't bother with non-epic challenge rewards.

As for the Rune Arms ....

Toven's Hammer:
Lightning Strike Weapons Potency +48 Exceptional Fortification (+10%) upgrade:+2 Insight int upgrade 2: transform kinetic energy

Lightning Strike Weapons is pretty much an enhancement unique to Toven's Hammer so you'd probably keep that on it. I can't imagine they'd remove either of the upgrade bonuses. So they'd lose the +48 potency and +10% fortification for enhanced crafting power on the rune arm? Be still my beating heart! That's not a bad trade in the slightest. I'm pretty sure the artificer is getting much higher electric / repair spell power bonuses from other equipment. he'll never miss it.

Lucid Dreams:
Nightmare Guard Potency +48 Spell Lore VI Mind Drain Will Save -2

Nightmare guard is pretty close to unique. ( only cloak of night as other source) Mind Drain I suppose is also unique. That leaves Potency, Spell Lore VI, and Will save -2 in exchange for enhanced crafting power. These are hardly game changer enhancements and the artificer will almost certainly strive to get superior force crit and force spellpower from other sources. Leaving only the -2 will saves which they'd want to get rid of. Even if you go whole hog and get rid on Nightmare guard, if you get rid of Mind Drain at the same time it almost a wash.

This doesn't look lie a curse. But a significant power upgrade for these rune arms with some clutter clean up when removing the existing heroic level enhancements already part of the rune arm.

[Lord_Asmodeus]

Do not take any effects that came with the rune arms, good or bad. I will miss being able to Masterful them, but can live without it. However instead of a 3rd slot perhaps we can change shot pattern for the rune arm. Ie think Luci Dream with a Toven's hammer blast! could make for some unique runearms.

[alancarp]

Cannith Challenge gear... would really like to see one more challenge rewards trader NPC who gives you Level 24-scaled gear. I wouldn't think it would be _that_ hard to do, and might assuage those concerned about losing the crafting ability on that stuff (also: scale the challenges to Level 30... I'm having to constantly hold back one of my toons in the Level 21-25 range just so that I can farm epic ingredients when needed).

On the new crafting system: the only concern I have involves the number and quantity of collectibles required. Since there is no way to reliably go out and farm a particular ingredient, then it will be practically impossible to craft up any item to fulfill a need within a reasonable time frame if you don't happen to already have 30 slime molds or whatever. Either the drop rates of all collectibles need to be dramatically increased (not a great idea) or the quantities need to be reduced.

(My initial concern was that essence availability was going to be a problem... turns out that's not an issue at all. The real problem is the volume of specific collectibles required: you've improved the simplicity of the process by going to a single essence, but replaced those 12 essence types with a greater need for 60-ish different collectibles - so it's truly the same complexity as before!)

[Arkai]

First of all, the new crafting system is impressive: congratulations.

About the rune arms, my thoughts are that you should remove the craftable ability... by now.

Save the process until the Artificer Pass, since you don't want to mess things anymore and makes sense, just the same way you are doing with monk/wraps.


When arti pass comes, get the runes and see what kind of approach you really want. Add power, look the imbues, adjust the effects. Those are old devices and the game has champions and other challenges, this unique item/class need some love.

Oh, and please get the rune arm charging sound back, we missed it 3 updates ago.


Thanks and keep up the good work

[Livmo]

If crafting on Rune Arms is abandoned in the new system, them please consider doing a rune arm pass.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Rune_Arm

However, the old arms could use a pass aside from removing the crafting due to all the game changes in the last few years.

[Gratch]

Personally, I don't really use CC gear much anymore, mostly because it's behind the random item curve in all the properties others have discussed. I don't really care what you do to it's cannith crafting slot until you also rebalance the stats on the items to match current RNG item properties at level.

Priority wise, I'd much rather see you attend to rune-arms as that affects an entire class instead of a spread of weapons from one pack. Attend = rebalance their properties to RNG item property levels on the high side of the RNG range. The CCraft portion of rune-arms sort of went along with artificer's skill at customizing/"artificing" stuffs. If keeping rune-arms with CCrafting is too weird, would be cool if they could have orange augment slots that can take (or scale) augments one tier higher (4 levels higher) than the augment without increasing the item's ML, e.g., you can place an L20 augment in an L17 runearm and the augment is only ML16 for ML purposes even though the effects remain as an L20 augment. Probably breaks the streamlining of augments though.

Though then you'd also need to rebalance augments to the RNG scaling. Aka a level 20 strength augment is +6. A level 20 item can be as high as +9(10?) on blue items. Though I think Sev said rebalancing augments was something to do in some upcoming update.

[QuantumFX]

Challenge Gear:
You really need to do a complete pass on the old named loot to make them something other than 99% useless. But, in lieu of crafting slots, I think I could live with standard augment slots.

Runearms:
Why not make the rune arm maximum charges and imbues scale instead? Currently, certain rune arms firing patterns aren’t represented in the epic range. A change like this could allow you guys an easier time scaling rune arms into epic content, and allow players to use their favorite blast pattern.

Maximum Charge: 2 + 1 per 5 levels of ML shard. (This is the part that could allow you guys to scale rune arms into epic content.)
Blast Type / Rune Arm Imbue: Blast type is chosen, damage and Rune Arm Imbue power is determined by ML shard on Rune arm.

Unique Effects could be governed by an Absolute Minimum Level mechanic, similar to armor. Then you could distribute unique effects based on minimum levels.

For Example: (You may want to do a different progression. But, for illustration purposes, I went with 1 Unique effect every 10 Absolute Minimum levels. Penalty effects allow for additional unique effects.)


The Pea Shooter: (Absolute Minimum Level: 1)
- Static Effect: Acid Shot
- Static Effect: Rune Arm Imbue: Acid
- Preslotted: Minimum Level 7
- Preslotted: Potency
- Preslotted: Insightful Acid Resistance


The Turmoil Within: (Absolute Minimum Level: 1)
- Static Effect: Acid Shot
- Static Effect: Rune Arm Imbue: Acid
- Preslotted: Minimum Level 13
- Preslotted: Insightful Accuracy
- Preslotted: Insightful Acid Resistance


Corruption of Nature: (Absolute Minimum Level: 10)
- Static Effect: Acid Shot
- Static Effect: Rune Arm Imbue: Acid
- Unique Effect: Rough Hide +3
- Preslotted: Minimum Level 1
- Preslotted: Reflex Save
- Special: Hard version becomes Mythic +1; Elite Version becomes Mythic +2.


Glorious Obscenity: (Absolute Minimum Level: 10)
- Static Effect: Acid Shot
- Static Effect: Rune Arm Imbue: Acid
- Unique Effect: Enhanced Spot +5 (Benefit)
- Unique Effect: Mind Turbulence (Penalty)
- Unique Effect: Taint of Chaos (Penalty)
- Unique Effect: Trace of Madness (Benefit)
- Preslotted: Minimum Level 17
- Preslotted: Seeker


Epic Corruption of Nature: (Absolute Minimum Level: 20)
- Static Effect: Acid Shot
- Static Effect: Rune Arm Imbue: Acid
- Unique Effect: Rough Hide +6
- Unique Effect: Colorless Augment Slot - Preslotted Insightful INT Augment
- Preslotted: Minimum Level 25
- Preslotted: Corrosion
- Preslotted: Potency
- Special: Epic Hard version becomes Mythic +1; Epic Elite Version becomes Mythic +3.


Epic The Turmoil Within: (Absolute Minimum Level: 20)
- Static Effect: Acid Shot
- Static Effect: Rune Arm Imbue: Acid
- Unique Effect: Green Augment Slot
- Unique Effect: Yellow Augment Slot
- Preslotted: Minimum Level 25
- Preslotted: Insightful Accuracy
- Preslotted: Insightful Acid Resistance
- Special: Epic Hard version becomes Mythic +1; Epic Elite Version becomes Mythic +3.

[alxz9]

how about stop killing rune arm, artificer abilities. its not to much given the added buy in

[Ziindarax]

Same goes with Rune Arms. Cannith Challenge gear should offer the ability to craft effects on to them, BUT what you could do is make it so that it uses the reagents and the collectibles [plus challenge reagents] to add a variety of limited effects that would not make anything too powerful.

Rune Arms - THEY MUST have craftable effects because many rune arms do not offer spell power (nor the lores) to make using the rune arms actually viable. If, again, you're concerned about them being too powerful from your new system, simply restrict the recipes that can go on them (and didn't you guys once mention we'd have the ability to CRAFT random gen rune arms via the Cannith system?).

In a nutshell, your challenge items can be kept in check by simply restricting recipe options so we can still add functional and sensible upgrades for their given level range and type [like holy/holy burst on the Fire axe]. However, I also think there should be updated options for challenges that go up to level 30.

Now that everyone has had a chance to look at the basics of the system, it is time to talk about the outliers. And to note, existing items are intended to stay how they are when these changes go live.

Challenge Gear:

The current plan is to simply have all those items be named gear that can't be crafted on. With everything we've done over the past year to bring a new consistency to Random Loot, Crafted Loot and Named Loot, having a side system that has several effects AND can have new scaling effects crafted on in addition, is simply too powerful.

This change would switch any effects that have scaling versions, into those versions, and leave any more unique effects as they are. It would also result in all tier 3 items having a colored augment slot.


Runearms:

A similar issue exists with Runearms. Having 3 effects on an item which can then have 3 powerful crafted effects added is too much.

The most straightforward solution would appear to be that the charge tier, the spell itself, the rune arm imbue, the ML, and any very unique effects (such as Coronauch) would stay. The rest of the effects would be removed when prepping for crafting and then you could craft on 2 effects (or 3 using the Mark of House Cannith). The list of effects for Runearms is still being worked on.


Thoughts, comments? And as always, all plans are subject to change for any numerous and unforeseen reasons.

[Andrash]

Thoughts, comments?

Shut the game down pls.

[Andrash]

Overall - sounds good.

Cannith Challenge Gear:

1. Tier 3 - since loosing the crafting (and only gaining a slot) - loose the BtC and make it BtA.
2. Add Frozen Tunic, and level 24 / 28 versions.
3. (Near Future) expand the Challenges to CR45

RuneArms:
Sounds Good.

1. Will the Int be fixed on that one Runearm at the same time?
2. Could and will all non-raid runearms that are currently BtC become Bta?

Keep up the solid hard work!

If your question "Will the Int be fixed on that one Runearm at the same time?" refers to Titan's Fist: no, they do not give a flying spaghetti monster about it, reported it many times, also heard many guildies and non-guildies reporting it...

Not sure if the "Keep up the solid hard work" is accurate, but, meh: Turbine.

[Andrash]

What if, for challenge items and rune arms both, you simply changed the existing craftable effect to the effect that allows for the addition of the 'extra' slot with the use of the mark of house C. Don't add a prefix slot and don't add a suffix slot, just the bonus effect slot.

Either way the power of the effects definitively needs to be re scaled and the T3 should be made BTA, especially if you go with your current proposition.

Also any news on what is happening with clickys and crafting? will they be added or not?

This is the LEAST WORST idea among the many terrible ones.

[slarden]

Overall - sounds good.

Cannith Challenge Gear:

1. Tier 3 - since loosing the crafting (and only gaining a slot) - loose the BtC and make it BtA.
2. Add Frozen Tunic, and level 24 / 28 versions.
3. (Near Future) expand the Challenges to CR45

RuneArms:
Sounds Good.

1. Will the Int be fixed on that one Runearm at the same time?
2. Could and will all non-raid runearms that are currently BtC become Bta?

Keep up the solid hard work!

If we had the option to convert our old btc tier 3s to bta that would be awesome. I don't care about losing the masterful craftmanship or crafting on these items.

[slarden]

I would almost rather the crafting slots on the named rune arms be replaced with augment slots and new rune arm blanks be created that were intended to be crafted to make them useful.

This.

If people want to use items at lower min level they have till u32 to make those items. They've already had 5 years.