U55 Preview 2: Itemization

[Carpone]

Heroic loot design doesn't get the praise it deserves. The new ML7 neck with insightful spellpowers is really, really good. That's 3 levels earlier than what can be Cannith crafted.

[Dandonk]

1. The Quality Dodge Bonus. This may or may not be useful depending on how the "Accurate" buff comes out later on (and whether there's a Dodge change coming as well), but since we don't know how exactly this buff is supposed to work on enemies attacking those with Dodge (since it currently ignores ALL Dodge), it leaves the question of whether the Quality Dodge is worthwhile enough or not. So depending on the outcome of that buff, this could be very useful, or rather bland.

Not sure I like this notion of an "accurate" buff for mobs. Even if it gets lowered, the debuff targets the only really viable defense for many builds. I understand that it may be overperforming, but that is only because, for most builds, AC and PRR and not really feasible to get to levels that they help enough at higher difficulties.

Lowering the effieciency of select defenses at specific levels seems a bad idea to me - players build up a character that works in a certain way, and suddenly, you get to level X and a core feature of the build gets severely nerfed. That's not great for player experience.

If something is overperforming, it should be fixed - generally, and not at specific levels. And in this instance, if dodge needs to be nerfed, then please look at making other physical defenses more useful for all builds.

[Lynnabel]

Some early morning thoughts on Artifact design:

You fine folks are right about the artifacts being helms crowding out the set helms, so here's what I'm thinking:

For next preview you'll see 6 new artifacts instead of the 6 that were there before:

• Belt
• Gloves
• Bracers
• Boots
• Necklace
• Ring

All of these will be in the Legendary Isle's Curse set (the 5pc set) and will have Scale/Fang/Claw/Horn slots (no set bonus slot). They will also still have 4 max filigree slots.

Why these slots? Mostly to help people craft around the 5pc set a bit (although it seems like the bonus might need more work beyond this) and to open up Dino Crafting to more slots. It also means that the artifacts are each fully customizable rather than all sharing a slot but being tagged with a different quality stat. Since quality stat didn't jump up in power level from 29 to 31, there wasn't a lot of compelling reasons to choose those helms over the dino crafted ones, and this way you can get an extra dino crafted item in your item layout without sacrificing a helmet.

You'll be able to mess around with these new artifacts next preview, so let me know what you think!

[Kielbasa]

The raid locked horn effects are severely limited especially for the accessory slots on armor/cloaks/helms. As is, armor piercing is the only thing that stood out as "i need to have this" or "this is worth even considering the grind". Even for the weapons, now that we know that they require raid ingredients, I was expecting more types of weapon effects that could be included. Salt for instance would be a nice add on, or if you want to keep lgs still a bit relevant, maybe make new effects?

At first glance I was very positive with the perceived options and flexibility. But delving deeper into the details its simply too restrictive.

Please,
- Add a 4th slot to the set so we can pick 3 out of 4. I would suggest belt. It is simply too restrictive having to use those exact 3 slots which collide with Magewright, Red Dragonscale Armor and to a degree Elders sets (and many more). Having the new stuff not mesh with the better old stuff makes it much less likely that the new stuff will be used.
- Add LGS Salt effect. With most of the other effects present it seems odd to leave out Salt.
- Add Spell Lore.
- Add Quality Spell Focus Mastery.
- Add the ability to craft entire accessory items with the "LGS style" augments outside the set. LGS had many more slots to craft on, so this new system seems like a downgrade without that.

I raid often so it wont effect me much that the important things in itemization of the expansion require raiding - but - its an awful design. Sure, raids need to add something special which is good, but locking pretty much the entire core of the itemization behind raids if far too much.

Further, shipping the expansion without the raid when the raid is required to use the new loot effectively pretty much means the new loot wont see much if any use till the raid actually ships.

Filigrees - are there no new filigress? That would be a sad surprise.

I think the ideas are great and show promise but the implementation is too restrictive and certain key components are missing.

The only way dino crafted gets lgs salt would be if they kept it rare and somewhat nitche. The way to do that is make it an extra effect for staffs. It would be a good selling point for tabaxi trailblazer as well.

[mikarddo]

Some early morning thoughts on Artifact design:

You fine folks are right about the artifacts being helms crowding out the set helms, so here's what I'm thinking:

For next preview you'll see 6 new artifacts:

• Belt
• Gloves
• Bracers
• Boots
• Necklace
• Ring

All of these will be in the Legendary Isle's Curse set (the 5pc set) and will have Scale/Fang/Claw/Horn slots (no set bonus slot). They will also still have 4 max filigree slots.

Why these slots? Mostly to help people craft around the 5pc set a bit (although it seems like the bonus might need more work beyond this) and to open up Dino Crafting to more slots. It also means that the artifacts are each fully customizable rather than all sharing a slot but being tagged with a different quality stat. Since quality stat didn't jump up in power level from 29 to 31, there wasn't a lot of compelling reasons to choose those helms over the dino crafted ones, and this way you can get an extra dino crafted item in your item layout without sacrificing a helmet.

You'll be able to mess around with these new artifacts next preview, so let me know what you think!

Will the helms still be Minor Artifacts? Thats not entirely clear to me from your post.

If so, you just made the 3 piece sets from IoD even less likely to be used by this change, and they were already not too hot.

Assuming though that the helms are no longer minor artifacts this definitely has more promise. The other items in the 5 piece set series still need more work though as they are fairly unfocused and weak to make a good set from.

[Lynnabel]

Will the helms still be Minor Artifacts? Thats not entirely clear to me from your post.
If so, you just made the 3 piece sets from IoD even less likely to be used by this change, and they were already not too hot.

There are still dino bone crafted helmets, the artifacts were other, different crafted helmets that also happened to be dino bone but were artifacts. So now there's dino bone crafted in 6 more slots than there were before.

In retrospect, "Oops! All Helms" was maybe not my best idea, but hey, we got there eventually :P

[Carpone]

Lowering the effieciency of select defenses at specific levels seems a bad idea to me - players build up a character that works in a certain way, and suddenly, you get to level X and a core feature of the build gets severely nerfed. That's not great for player experience.

Welcome to endgame. It already happens in reaper with concealment and incorporeality. That includes clouds, Blur, Displacement, Ghostly, Shadowdancer destiny mantle, and other effects coded as concealment or incorporeality. Adding Dodge to the list of defenses that gets mitigated was simply a matter of "when", not "if". It's how devs keep content challenging. Look back to 2011-era when defenses were not scaled appropriately. It was a snoozefest to play when mobs couldn't hurt you with 90 AC, or you healed to full with a cure moderate potion because you had 400% healing amp.

[mikarddo]

There are still dino bone crafted helmets, the artifacts were other, different crafted helmets that also happened to be dino bone but were artifacts. So now there's dino bone crafted in 6 more slots than there were before.

I see, thanks. I had overlooked that fact. I am definitely looking forward to seeing what you will do with the 5 piece set items including the new Minor Augments. Hopefully, that will insert some excitement into the expansion loot wise.

[J1NG]

Welcome to endgame. It already happens in reaper with concealment and incorporeality. That includes clouds, Blur, Displacement, Ghostly, Shadowdancer destiny mantle, and other effects coded as concealment or incorporeality. Adding Dodge to the list of defenses that gets mitigated was simply a matter of "when", not "if". It's how devs keep content challenging. Look back to 2011-era when defenses were not scaled appropriately. It was a snoozefest to play when mobs couldn't hurt you with 90 AC, or you healed to full with a cure moderate potion because you had 400% healing amp.

Just a minor correction there. The Concealment reduction in Reaper doesn't include Clouds (in most cases), as those are the offensive debuff variety that triggers Concealment bypass checks on those tagged as "enemies" through that debuff (whilst inside the cloud). There may be immunity to them for some enemies and thus they do not get that debuff applied to them so it doesn't trigger the Concealment check when they attack, but they do work even on R10 in most cases. Blur and Displacement, etc, because they are applied onto the "Ally" grouping, gets debuffed in Reaper. If you cast Blur on an enemy after you charm it, and watch it as they get hit by enemies, you'll notice the Blur never has any effect. But once you cast it on a charmed enemy that is returned to the "enemy side" that is then attacked, you'll notice that it works on them again. So it's basically a binary check on whether a target with beneficial Concealment is on the "ally" side or not and then reduced (player or player controlled, or player summoned, or in support of player side NPC, etc). Note I was not able to test if this was done by a boost to enemy Bypass roll checks, or if the numbers were reduced on the "ally side" tagged characters in game.

J1NG

[Dandonk]

Welcome to endgame. It already happens in reaper with concealment and incorporeality. That includes clouds, Blur, Displacement, Ghostly, Shadowdancer destiny mantle, and other effects coded as concealment or incorporeality. Adding Dodge to the list of defenses that gets mitigated was simply a matter of "when", not "if". It's how devs keep content challenging. Look back to 2011-era when defenses were not scaled appropriately. It was a snoozefest to play when mobs couldn't hurt you with 90 AC, or you healed to full with a cure moderate potion because you had 400% healing amp.

I know. That also feels wrong, but at least it's reaper-only, where all bets are off anyway. Still, it feels like cheating to me. Instead of making entire buffs and enchants completely useless, they could have made reaper mobs bypass a percentage of the defense. So a 50% bypass would make blur protect 10%, and displacement 25%. Instead, entire defenses become pointless. It's a bad way to go. Reduce the effectiveness, sure, but outright remove the use seems really bad to me.

And yes, AC needed rebalancing. Sure. And so might dodge. But, and I know this is a pointless to wish for, please don't nerf dodge from orbit like normally. Rebalance, yes. Nuke it like SSG does with everything, please no.

And once again, please make other defenses more viable to compensate.

[J1NG]

I know. That also feels wrong, but at least it's reaper-only, where all bets are off anyway. Still, it feels like cheating to me. Instead of making entire buffs and enchants completely useless, they could have made reaper mobs bypass a percentage of the defense. So a 50% bypass would make blur protect 10%, and displacement 25%. Instead, entire defenses become pointless. It's a bad way to go. Reduce the effectiveness, sure, but outright remove the use seems really bad to me.

From the way DDO works, there probably isn't an easy way that does a check for 50% debuff rating on your defences. Not from what I've seen (especially since our Concealment, Incorporeal, Dodge, etc can change in an instant in game and change rapidly too). Not without reworking DDO and that may cause other issues, including performance issues.

Thinking about it now, that's likely why everything is essentially uses the "bypass" system. Where on bypass roll checks you get a bonus to roll for bypass. And likely why they came up with the 5% reduction per Skull (capping out at around 30% reduction for Concealment and 35% for Incorporeal), as it's a simple +5 to the bypass roll on the enemy. This is also likely why we don't see our own defence ratings go down on our character sheets whilst in Reaper, as it's being given as a bonus to rolls on enemies instead.

J1NG

[DarkChilde]

Will we be able to get Raid Ingredients with Threads of Fate or Runes? Hopefully not to expensive.

I am not in a Raiding Guild. Most of my Raiding comes from Pugs, My main is on the TR train so I am not at Cap long, just grabbing my Legendary Reapers and gather gear for Alts or future Past lives.

[Dandonk]

From the way DDO works, there probably isn't an easy way that does a check for 50% debuff rating on your defences. Not from what I've seen (especially since our Concealment, Incorporeal, Dodge, etc can change in an instant in game and change rapidly too). Not without reworking DDO and that may cause other issues, including performance issues.

Thinking about it now, that's likely why everything is essentially uses the "bypass" system. Where on bypass roll checks you get a bonus to roll for bypass. And likely why they came up with the 5% reduction per Skull (capping out at around 30% reduction for Concealment and 35% for Incorporeal), as it's a simple +5 to the bypass roll on the enemy. This is also likely why we don't see our own defence ratings go down on our character sheets whilst in Reaper, as it's being given as a bonus to rolls on enemies instead.

J1NG

You could be right. I just hope not. It seems a really bad way to go, to me anyway. Making entire buffs pointless. I really hope they'll look into making it possible to redo it, because having high-level items with 25% concealment on that don't do anything anyway... but you won't know does nothing, until you read forums or wiki... that's just silly.

[Artos_Fabril]

Some early morning thoughts on Artifact design:

You fine folks are right about the artifacts being helms crowding out the set helms, so here's what I'm thinking:

For next preview you'll see 6 new artifacts instead of the 6 that were there before:

• Belt
• Gloves
• Bracers
• Boots
• Necklace
• Ring

All of these will be in the Legendary Isle's Curse set (the 5pc set) and will have Scale/Fang/Claw/Horn slots (no set bonus slot). They will also still have 4 max filigree slots.

Why these slots? Mostly to help people craft around the 5pc set a bit (although it seems like the bonus might need more work beyond this) and to open up Dino Crafting to more slots. It also means that the artifacts are each fully customizable rather than all sharing a slot but being tagged with a different quality stat. Since quality stat didn't jump up in power level from 29 to 31, there wasn't a lot of compelling reasons to choose those helms over the dino crafted ones, and this way you can get an extra dino crafted item in your item layout without sacrificing a helmet.

You'll be able to mess around with these new artifacts next preview, so let me know what you think!

Hats off to Lynnabel for not only listening to feedback, but using it to make the game better.

[WiseFreelancer]

Some early morning thoughts on Artifact design:

If there had never been discussion about improving artefacts I would have been okay, but these are great improvements!

[Firebreed]

Hey, good job on fixing most of the bugs on the items of Preview 1.

Here are this Preview's bugs:

1) It has been mentioned on 3 different occasions that all Pirate items will have a single Dinosaur slot. Pirate armors, shields, and the runearm don't have their Dinosaur slot yet.

2) Naildriver/Twinchopper/Ol' Ironsides are missing effects in both heroic and leg versions (but you're certainly already aware of this).

3) Wheel of St. Marie should not have Armor Bonus as one of its enchantments since it is a Tower Shield. Especially on Legendary, where even cloth armors give +14 Armor Bonus by default.

4) Brightbane Emerald's "Command + 5" is way above the established curve for ML8. ML9 and ML10 items created in U50 only have "Command + 4".

5) Legendary Brightbane Emerald's "Command + 10" is way above the established curve for ML30. Other ML30 items created in U50 only have "Command + 7".

Thanks for your work.

[Aelonwy]

I think what is bothering me most about the crafting requiring raid is that in previous expansions the raid loot and the quest loot were mostly separate. If I did not engage in the raid and only did the quests there was no evidence or anything demonstrative that I was not getting to participate in some portion of the expansion for which I had paid. With a crafting system like this with part of it being quest accessible and part being raid only there will be ingredients constantly dropping as a constant reminder that I don't have full access to the itemization of the expansion. While I do NOT in general have resentment for raiders and their shinies somehow this hits differently maybe because its an expansion and not an adventure pack.

Its a moot point though because I am unlikely to purchase this expansion at this time.

[Matuse]

One part of my thought process on these items and systems is the future - in 3 weeks, this stuff will be mostly top end items. But in 2 years, 5 years, this will be leveling gear to get to the new cap. When the cap goes up a couple of times, the current endgame raids will just be left behind, as far as anybody trying to complete items. So if you don't get your dino bone stuff all finished before the next level increase, it's unlikely that you're ever going to do it, and then the whole system just sits and rots, like Dragontouched armor has.

[rabidfox]

One part of my thought process on these items and systems is the future - in 3 weeks, this stuff will be mostly top end items. But in 2 years, 5 years, this will be leveling gear to get to the new cap. When the cap goes up a couple of times, the current endgame raids will just be left behind, as far as anybody trying to complete items. So if you don't get your dino bone stuff all finished before the next level increase, it's unlikely that you're ever going to do it, and then the whole system just sits and rots, like Dragontouched armor has.

I still use LGS items/weapons right now in my endgame setup as they offered unique things there; the dino-crafted stuff has the LGS debuffs on sentient weapons and LGS spell crit damage (along with new types of spell damage like light, sonic, etc. that wasn't available before). So unless we get another source of those things, I think they'll still be desired for quite some time to come even as the level brackets go up. Hopefully, it'll be like L. Shroud is these days with groups still fairly often running it to farm out mats.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Heroic loot design doesn't get the praise it deserves.

Because no-one wants it. All the people here want is Legendary stuff.