U42 Preview 3: Loot

[Iriale]

I make another plea to Lynnabel to introduce the generic spell lore somewhere in the loot of sharn. Please. We need that kind of effects consolidation, and the two items where it appeared before are in conflict with the loot of sharn. The number does not have to grow, it can be perfectly the same as before. Simply that we have the effect available.

[Cantor]

I was happy with most of the content in Ravenloft, but the loot left a lot to be desired. Some of it was good but there also seemed to be a lot of missing effects, bad effects, odd combinations and redundancy. There seems to be similar problems with Sharn loot so far too. It may work well for some mainstream builds but it doesn't work well for others.

On a number of other occasions, I've complained about the four effects per item limitation with gear design. But what I discovered, after spending some time seeing what effects I'd put on an ideal gearset of my own design, is four could actually be enough. It would be tight, but it could work.

The core problem really seems to be how the gear we're being given all fits together so poorly, so that to get a desirable effect or two you might end up with two or three other effects on an item that aren't useful. Having more effects per item would give more leeway for adding flavour effects and catering to different builds rather than producing some of these dreadful items.

Anyway, I'd prefer that my criticisms of the loot be left in my own words rather than you editing them when quoting me. I didn't call the gear designers blind but that is what the quote you used was changed to say, among other things. That is really poor form and something you should definitely not be doing.

Thanks.

It's a balance, I don't want gear that "fits together" so well that everyone puts on the same cookie cutter gear sets. That leaves you with no choice. Deciding if you want that insightful or quality effect at the opportunity cost of an effect or two is a good thing.

What I don't want is:
Items that are OMG 4 overpowered effect, must have!!!1!
or:
Absolutely no one would use this, it's objectively outclassed by this other item.

1 great effect, 2 good, and 1 meh is about right.

[Iriale]

It's a balance, I don't want gear that "fits together" so well that everyone puts on the same cookie cutter gear sets. That leaves you with no choice. Deciding if you want that insightful or quality effect at the opportunity cost of an effect or two is a good thing.

What I don't want is:
Items that are OMG 4 overpowered effect, must have!!!1!
or:
Absolutely no one would use this, it's objectively outclassed by this other item.

1 great effect, 2 good, and 1 meh is about right.

In my opinion what we have now is what does not leave freedom of choice. There are no options to choose from. Just a rampant powercreep and a confusing nightmare where there are items competing for the same slots and lack of certain stats not represented anywhere.

[GordolGreydon]

It would be nice if 'The Hallowed Splinters' (Heavy Crossbow) was a good endgame weapon instead of being a meme weapon. The game currently has no decent named light/heavy crossbows, and after the introduction of the inquisitive enhancement tree I would like this to change, so it's actually a viable option for endgame. I suggest changing the weapon to the following:

The Hallowed Splinters Heavy Crossbow

• Upgrade Effect: Fetters of Unreality
• Soul Tear This weapon tears at the soul of your foes, reducing their PRR and Healing Amplification.
• Cursed Maelstom This weapon is wracked with a dangerous and volatile curse. Striking an enemy has a chance to place a random, debilitating, and deadly debuff on your foe.
• Improved Destruction

Maybe Everstar could be added to the 'Impetus' (Repeating Heavy Crossbow), replacing Starshatter.

I like your idea! I do think having both fetters and dust may be too OP though. Also why the cursed maelstom if you don't mind me asking?

[blerkington]

It's a balance, I don't want gear that "fits together" so well that everyone puts on the same cookie cutter gear sets. That leaves you with no choice. Deciding if you want that insightful or quality effect at the opportunity cost of an effect or two is a good thing.

What I don't want is:
Items that are OMG 4 overpowered effect, must have!!!1!
or:
Absolutely no one would use this, it's objectively outclassed by this other item.

1 great effect, 2 good, and 1 meh is about right.

I'm not asking for four overpowered effects, I just want to be able to include effects that support play in more demanding endgame content.

I would have been quite happy for very minimal or even no increase in power over Ravenloft gear, I just wanted better options for fitting all the pieces together. Nor am I saying that I need to have BiS numbers for all important effects, just that I would like to fit the important stuff in at all.

With gearing as tight as it is for some builds there's not really any room for duplicated or wasted effects. And it's beyond annoying that if I choose to do something like go all-in on something crucial like my build's main stat for a DC build, I start losing other important effects. Especially in the context of content that's very unforgiving of weaknesses like having low MRR on a light armour melee build that has to be in amongst it to be effective.

The problem is this four effects per item rule, combined with items where maybe only half the effects are useful for a build, is very different in its consequences for different builds. For something like a melee rogue, that requires pretty much everything a normal melee does along with extra to support additional class functions, the outcomes being produced by the gearing we are getting now are just bad.

Choices are fine, and up until RL this hasn't been a problem for me. Since then endgame gearing has gone bad for some builds and I would like to see a return to circumstances when this wasn't such a problem.

In my opinion what we have now is what does not leave freedom of choice. There are no options to choose from. Just a rampant powercreep and a confusing nightmare where there are items competing for the same slots and lack of certain stats not represented anywhere.

Very well said. Your posts throughout these gearing threads have been right on point and I wish people were paying more attention to what you've said.

Thanks.

[reywas]

I make another plea to Lynnabel to introduce the generic spell lore somewhere in the loot of sharn. Please. We need that kind of effects consolidation, and the two items where it appeared before are in conflict with the loot of sharn. The number does not have to grow, it can be perfectly the same as before. Simply that we have the effect available.

I don't think they stated what the generic caster weapons are for Sharn. Spell Lore would be a great thing to put on generic scepter or orb, if we are in fact getting the generic caster Sharn weapons

[janave]

Could the Esoteric Goggles have kinetic lore and quality impulse instead of the enhanced metamagic? It would work wonders for Ruin feats, and I am a fan of fan of knives too .

[Pilgrim1]

The reason why slavelords was/is such great loot is people could put items where ever they wanted and build out what ever effect they wanted. You could even build multiple set bonuses from items if you wanted. Slavelords gear was Hands down the best gear designed set we have had in a looooong time. It is the greatest addition for hybrid toons as well.

The problem with slave lords was the insanity required to build an actual item. Also the melee and tank gear sets were trash.

I know its to late but i would be elated if you trashed the entirety of sharn loot and instead replaced it with an augment system like slave lords. Hell even go back to reavers reach and have it be rune bassed. So much fun, so much repayable content, and so much gear flexibility.

Limit the entire pack to like 8 inventory slots so future/past gear does not become obsolete.

*sigh* ill dream. Maybe the next expansion this may happen.

[btolson]

*sigh* ill dream. Maybe the next expansion this may happen.

I hope they're done making expacs.

Expansion is clearly a synonym for "planned obsolescence of everything that came before it" and frankly I'm sick of it.

[Zretch]

It's a balance, I don't want gear that "fits together" so well that everyone puts on the same cookie cutter gear sets. That leaves you with no choice. Deciding if you want that insightful or quality effect at the opportunity cost of an effect or two is a good thing.

What I don't want is:
Items that are OMG 4 overpowered effect, must have!!!1!
or:
Absolutely no one would use this, it's objectively outclassed by this other item.

1 great effect, 2 good, and 1 meh is about right.

You should not have to choose between necessary effects. A well designed gearing system goes hand in hand with a well designed enhancement system and a well designed multi-class system. You should be able to easily focus in a single area, but if you want to split focus, that's where you need to make tradeoffs.

Example, if you want to focus on spell DCs, it should be trivial to build a pure DC casting class, dump all your AP into the "DC Casting" tree, take the DC casting epic destiny, and your gear set should have all the necessary affixes for DC casting (spell focus (E/I/Q), spell pen (E/I/Q), casting stat (E/I/Q), etc). Whatever you have left you can use to generalize, but there shouldn't be a whole lot left.

If you want to focus on spell DPS, the same should apply. Pure class, dump all AP into the "Blasting" tree, take the blasting epic destiny, grab your blasting gear full of spellpower, spell lore, spell efficiency, etc.

The important bit is that you should NOT be able to make a build that has both maximum DC and maximum blasting DPS at the same time. That's where the tradeoffs should be. Not "do I want Insightful Spell Pen or Insightful Spell Focus". If you want a hybrid build, you need to give up the insightful, quality, profane, and artifact benefits to get the core benefits in both play-styles.

You can do the exact same thing for melee DPS vs melee tactics. Why can my top flight DPS toon also have a 130+ dire charge DC? It's because the same stats used to pump damage are used to pump DCs. It's because KtA/KI/DW temp buffs increase both my damage and my tactical DCs. I can fit both stunning and vertigo on a DPS focused build but there's only one piece of gear that can give me any level of inightful doublestrike?

Pick your focused roles, create the gear to fulfill those roles, slot the gear such that combinations can't fulfull multiple roles simultaneously, and then see what people chose to give up to have some variety in their builds.

Yes, it means there WILL be a cookie cutter build for a CC focused wizard or a DPS focused tempest, but who cares? Those toons will and should be very one dimensional. If you want the mix in survivability, soloablility, off-healing capability, CC, etc, then you need to chose just how much you want to water down that focused role.

All of this could be kept organized (and the gear tetris reduced) but putting core effects (enhancement bonuses) on core gear (chest, helm, boots, gloves), insightful type bonuses on secondary slots (bracers, neck, cloak, goggles), and putting flavor effects, special effects, or quality effects on trinkets and rings. Then keep things like artifact / profane / alchemical bonuses for set bonuses. Then weapon stats could...gasp and horror...be focused on weapon effects so we can stop getting weapons with diplomacy or spell focus mastery on them....

[Rissten]

I can change the raid one to something else if you have a concrete suggestion for what should replace it

Insightful distant diversion , deception

[0ldschool]

I haven't read the whole thread, but I see that Parrying was added to a number of items since the first preview, so thanks for that. The lack of Parrying on armor makes for an interesting choice between RL and Sharn armor, perhaps that was the intention.

I want to make sure that Improved Deception is still slotted into the Sapphire Ring. There are so few non-weapon options for Improved Deception, and most of those are rings. Only the Echo of Ravenkind is really viable for end game. This one item, even if it has to be another ring, is desperately needed for us sneak attack types. Adding in Dodge 21% and CON/DEX/INT +21 makes it, for me, an almost must-have item. I was going to wait to buy Sharn, but might have to buy it now just for the ring.

Thanks

[Xxyyn]

Hi,

My concern is that unusual specs like wisdom melee dogs, or charisma to hit and damage, builds are a bit left out. For example, most of the melee stuff doesn't seem to have a wisdom option. Also, it seems like we are being guided into more standardized roles (e.g. spell dps, ranged dps, melee dps) using standardized stats (e.g. the Silver Dragonscale raid helmet can't be upgraded to have wisdom or charisma). I think the viability of these random builds is what makes DDO special. In my opinion, the more standardization there is, the more this game begins to look like every other mmo.

Thoughts?

PS: I do see the minor artifact with wisdom, quality accuracy, and quality deadly. That is good for a wisdom wolf, for example. However it is just 1 item and it's not part of any set (which makes it less desirable to use). I also don't think this one item addresses the overall concern.

[Ballrus]

Was checking an old thread in suggestions and ideas, and found this:

Heavy armor > set bonus with, at least, half of silent avenger power (10% d strike, 5% helpless dmg, 10% fort bypass and 15% gblows maybe?)

Set 2 (Melee DPS) - Part of the Family:
Set Bonus: +10/15% Doublestrike, +10/25 Melee Power, +5/15% Helpless Dmg, +5/10% Fortification Bypass

Really thank you devs for this set bonus on heavy armors.

[Evean]

Piston Boots Raid Boots
Minimum Level: 29

• Strength +21
• Fulcrum Shift When you jump, you benefit from 5 Melee Power for a short period of time.
• Quality Combat Mastery +5
• Stunning +24

Where exactly is the “jump” button in DDO?

[mikarddo]

Where exactly is the “jump” button in DDO?

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