U56 Preview 2: TOEE Revamp Item Feedback

[Steelstar]

Hey everyone! While U56's Temple of Elemental Evil isn't quite ready for public preview, most of the new loot is! Here's the high level overview of loot in this pack, and then we'd love to hear your feedback.


Existing TOEE Items You Have
To start off, none of the existing Temple of Elemental Evil loot is changing at all. Everything you have, from the static drops to the crafted items, is staying exactly as it is, including its Minimum Level (7/26, or whatever else it may have had).


New Items!
Items that drop from the revamped Temple of Elemental Evil will now be ML8 in Heroic and ML31 in Legendary, reflecting the raised CR of this content. The Temple has also been split into a larger number of overall quests, and those quests need End Chest loot! Each of the new dungeons has items that drop in that dungeon's End Chest. These items are on the Loot Guy in the Test Dojo in this Preview! They're all new, with the exception (sort of) of the Armors, Docents, and Robes; these are new items with new names, but have the appearance and effects of the old TOEE's fully-upgraded armors. As the crafting system isn't returning (see below), we created static versions of these armors that don't require upgrading. Instead of one overall TOEE Set Bonus, there are now four - one for each of the four elements represented in the Temple.


Random Encounter Chests!
Random Encounter chests in the Temple no longer drop named equippables, but that doesn't mean they're not worth searching for! There are some new Augments to be found in the new Temple, including Rubies of (Element) Blast (an effect formerly found on the craftable weapons) and Rubies of Implement's (Element), which grants both an Equipment bonus to that element's Spell Power AND the standard Implement Bonus found on Spellcasting Implements. There are both Heroic and Legendary versions of all of these Augments! These are still being worked on, so they aren't available in this preview, but stay tuned!


Optional Encounters!
There will be a few tougher optionals in the new Temple, and that's where you will be able to locate the old named items you used to be able to find in the Temple's Random Encounter chests (Sapphire Sting, etc). These items are unchanged, still retaining their current stats and Minimum Level. We'd discussed upgrading these to the new power level and minimum level, but for balance and overall gameplay reasons we have decided to leave them alone. They are important items to a lot of builds, though, so we wanted to make sure they remained available to find, hence why they will be dropping in chests after defeating these optional encounters.


That's about it for new things! We did want to address one more point before we wrap up though:


What happened to the old crafting system?
We took a hard look at the existing TOEE crafting system and ultimately decided to leave it behind. Existing ingredients will continue to exist, but won't drop anymore. Existing bases and crafted weapons and armor will continue to exist, but won't drop anymore. The crafting station will still exist somewhere, so if you have leftover ingredients you can use them to finish up anything you might be working on. As we said above, we made static named versions of all of the fully-upgraded armors that you can find in end chests, but we won't be adding new Weapons to this pack.


The old crafting system had literally more than 500 distinct craftable bases. Obtaining the exact one you wanted was extremely daunting in Epics, and nearly impossible in Heroics. We experimented with a few methods of obtaining the bases in a different way, but dealing with that many base types was either performance-intensive or a bad gameplay experience. The existing crafting system was needlessly grindy in Epics and almost impossible to finish in one life in Heroics. And ultimately, there are already good weapons available in other content at both of these levels. The TOEE ones aren't holding up a critical niche, all of the weapon art can be found on other weapons in the game, and we've added some of the new Augments to help bring some of that flavor to your existing weapons.


We're really excited for you to check out the revamped Temple of Elemental Evil, and we hope you check out the items up for preview on Lamannia! Let us know what you think!

[QuantumFX]

Rubies of Implement's (Element), which grants both an Equipment bonus to that element's Spell Power AND the standard Implement Bonus found on Spellcasting Implements.

This reads like a standard Ruby of <Combustion/Corrosion/Glaciation/Magnetism>. What am I missing?

Digging the <element> blast augments.
Also, this seems like a missed opportunity for Elemental Spell Lore augments.

[R1ncewind]

This reads like a standard Ruby of <Combustion/Corrosion/Glaciation/Magnetism>. What am I missing?

Digging the <element> blast augments.
Also, this seems like a missed opportunity for Elemental Spell Lore augments.

+1 to the spell lore augments

[ThomasHunter]

This reads like a standard Ruby of <Combustion/Corrosion/Glaciation/Magnetism>. What am I missing?

Digging the <element> blast augments.
Also, this seems like a missed opportunity for Elemental Spell Lore augments.

Given the lack of “lore” in Isle if Dread items adding lore augments would make this a must run! I absolutely love this idea!

[R1ncewind]

Some notes for the new items.

1.- Can we plz stop putting Stone skin as an effect in legendary items? unless we get a legendary versión of the spell that block lets say up to 40 or 50 dmg per hit with lets say 400 dmg cap. this effect is a wasted slot, even more so in items with no set bonus. (legendary earth and the sky ring)
2.- dusk on a legendary item? 10% concealment that wont stack with other items is not a good effect on an item of this level, either put one of the better effects (25%) or even better create a new tier with lets say 30% concealment its legendary content so.. (present in all armors)
3.- Talking about the armors. these are.. quite meh really there is nothing special about them, maybe puting something more offensive oriented like Dripping with Magma and similar effects for all different elements would be great.
4.- In general i think most of this items wont see much use. specially the ones that provides elemental resistances. This kind of items could be used as an oportunity to create items that are used only in certain situations to mitigate elemental dmg, for example an item with Fire resit, insightful resist and absorption fir the same element could still be useful on occasion.
5.- Considering the theme of the quest, I would consider the possibility to make this items focus on their respective elements, giving 1 dice to elemental arrow or spell sword and similar elemental effects, in the same item that give spell power(including insightful) and deadly. could be worth considering, specially if they have the elemental set in them

[QuantumFX]

2.- dusk on a legendary item? 10% concealment that wont stack with other items is not a good effect on an item of this level, either put one of the better effects (25%) or even better create a new tier with lets say 30% concealment its legendary content so.. (present in all armors)

This is also an issue with the various flavors of Duskheart. If you guys don't want to do a gear progression of Dusk -> Blurry -> Lesser Displacement, you could make it a +5% quality bonus to concealment effects so it stacks with Blurry/Displacement/Shadowdancer.

[Wdh]

I've never been so negative about something in this game. I just don't see a purpose for any of these gear items maybe a new player could put them on when they find them because its better than having an empty slot. The augments are great, that's it. All the new TOEE gear is worthless, the sets are weak and the gear is mismatched and terrible. I'm either going to stick with fey gear until lvl 10 and put on ravenloft or just craft something. You can get blurry from feywild at level 5. But the lvl 8 gear has dusk, and so does the legendary version? I play pure melees that I don't want this gear on, I don't want it on my tanks, or my healers. Every new item y'all made needs to be just redone, ground up. There is nothing to be salvaged here, even those set bonuses suck. Once again back to feywild, I would rather just wear some pieces of that until I hit 10, and in legendary I'd just rather stick with any other set. I understand you guys are trying to make like new and interesting stuff, but theres a line between interesting and terrible.

[hit_fido]

Existing TOEE Items You Have
To start off, none of the existing Temple of Elemental Evil loot is changing at all. Everything you have, from the static drops to the crafted items, is staying exactly as it is, including its Minimum Level (7/26, or whatever else it may have had).

This is a great player-friendly decision. Same with leaving the old crafting ingredients intact and usable even after discontinuing new drops. Thanks for this, this kind of stuff matters to some players...

[SWCarter]

Unfortunately, this gear is very lackluster. I play a lot of different builds and am unable to conjure up a situation where I would equip any of this loot. Please keep in mind that these are endgame items and should be sought-after to maximize a build.

Pros:
- Quality Attributes - we need these on more items, but those items must be part of a set and/or carry other highly-sought-after bonuses or they won't get worn.
- Quality Doublestrike, Quality Combat Mastery, and Insightful Doubleshot are all welcome additions. But again, the items they're attached to need to be part of a set or be unique in some way or they won't get worn.

Cons:
- The available set bonuses are uninspired. At least 1 of the 3 set bonuses are going to be throwaway for most builds, and the other bonuses are covered with a multitude of other sets.
- Many items carry no set bonus at all. In the current game, this makes them sentient food unless they carry unique or hard-to-find enhancements.
- Individual PRR/MRR enhancements using up valuable space vs. the single Sheltering enhancement.
- Can we please stop adding Speed +30% to endgame items? There are dozens at this point, and the problem is easy resolved with a single augment or an original day one spell (Haste).
- Until Lifesealed stops negative impacting negative healing, it just alienates part of the playerbase from those items.

My recommendation would be to include some Exceptional bonuses in here, bonuses we don't get from the Dread loot (Spell Lore, Quality Spell Focus Mastery, etc.), and perhaps some never-before-seen bonuses as well (i.e. +1 bonus to weapon crit range). Make a player choose between filling out a set or wearing an item that no other item in the game offers.

For the sets, you could provide an alternative source for some of the rarer Feywild options (+ to HP %, + to Mana %, + to Tactics, + to Dodge Cap, etc.) and more themed options like energy resistance, energy absorption, spell absorption, etc. Maybe even a bonus to "weapon effect dice" to emphasize the new Sacred Fist and Dark Apostate enhancements, as well as former EK, AA, and VC dice.

Finally, we really need another source for artifact bonuses to Sonic and Alignment spell lore/spellpower. ToEE probably isn't the right place to include it, but I wouldn't complain. It would just be a real shame if all this new loot ends up going entirely unused.

[Greantun]

Not sure if you hooked up the wrong looks, but the docent itself does not have the same red look of the other eternal flame armors.

[Oxarhamar]

Problems with this sets

The set is a weapon & Armor but the weapon is weak on its own compareable to others and not sentient

set requiring armor excluded many other sets that would boost the lackluster 2 item bonus

Suggetion to strengthen the set is add more items & add better bonuses item 3 or 5 items

if its noncompetative it will not be used


I've got an old one and it was not worth the effort I'd love to ugrade it with mushrooms thats a cool feature but why when it's just trash

[Aelonwy]

First off, the regular heroic effect Dusk does NOT belong on Legendary armor. Its so ridiculous its laughable. At the very least at level 29 and above it should be Lesser Displacement, not that - that does very much anymore with the number of mobs that have True Seeing at these levels and its an absolutely useless layer of defense versus Reapers.

Secondly,
has a weird dissonance between the item's name and the set to which it belongs. With a name like Stormsniper I fully expected it to belong to Legendary Temple's Tempest but instead it belongs to Inferno. There may be some mistake because Inferno has 3 sets of goggles, Monolith has 3 sets of goggles but Tempest and Tide only have 1 choice each. Now Tempest and Tide each have a trinket option but Inferno also has a head item for 4 choices versus Tempest & Tide total of 2 each. Were these goggles meant to be Tempest and thus Inferno would have 3 options, Monolith 3 options, Tempest 3 options, but then Tide only 2?

Thirdly, how could you guys NOT have done something awesome with Elemental Victory? It should be a Minor Artifact, I would suggest keeping the Elemental Absorptions but at least add Inherent Elemental resistance for extra oomph.

Fourth, I would love for individual Spell Lore augments to exist as well.

[Arcanesnipr]

Questions and comments. For questions, one of the things i really liked about the toee weapons was the vulnerability to element as well as the blast since neither of those abilities exist in most other places, you already have the blast in an augment, is there any way to salvage the vulnerability, maybe even make a way to upgrade the augment to have it give both? I managed to make 2 fully upgraded melee weapons specifically for those bonuses. I would like to echo the concerns about life sealed, is there a way to code it so neg absorption does not impact undead players? This becomes increasingly troublesome as in the same update we will be given another way to become undead and get negative healing. I will also echo the concerns about the gear (this part of feedback is for heroic gear), as a general statement as new gear is released, any stat it has, i believe, should be equal to or superior to the stat on a lower level item, in this case dusk, we are getting blurry in a few sources at 5 from feywild gear and so it feels bad to have dusk since its a lower value stat, if it were perhaps ghostly or some different typing for the miss chance it would be fine, but having 10% concealment 3 levels higher than an item thats 20% concealment just doesnt feel good. With regard to the set bonuses, they seem like a good thought but unfortunately just a little lackluster, my thoughts when looking at the gear is that i will be 10 in two levels so it feels weird to have gear i swap after what would be a relatively short time, perhaps make the sets a little more encompassing/enticing, if possible maybe make items part of 2 sets like you did isle of dread or make it part of a bigger set like the feywild one and keep the flavorful set for epics. I will say that i do like that there are quite a few bonuses that i dont see in other places at the lower levels, keeping it unique is definitely a good selling point as long as they dont compete with the slots needed for other sets. That i saw none of the items give enhancement bonus to spell power, ie. combustion, glaciation, etc. ,would it be possible to make the armors have purple slots instead so they could then synergize with the goggles by being able to slot spell power into the armor? Another small complaint i would make, the rings that give elemental resists, could they be part of a set or a bit beefier, maybe even combined into a single ring to match the elemental victory helm? For me personally at least, i just cant see equipping an item primarily for elemental resist unless it seriously mitigated it since i can pop a potion and call it good and the extra effects are negligible mostly, it unfortunately holds up even less if you have to choose between the rings vs any of the other rings you get within the next two levels, like i said, maybe combine them or put them in a special set or something to make it more enticing. For the legendary gear, its a pretty similar story, the unique stuff, namely the melee/ranged catering items, look pretty rad and like something i would use, the dusk on the armor feels bad and is hopefully just something that slipped through the cracks, elemental resist rings still feel meh unless you can toss a unique bonus or absorption on them, make them something more than an elemental resist swap is more or less the hope or condense it to a single item, maybe make the earthen guard on legendary gear proc the gold skin from alch instead? or at least greater stoneskin? The magegloves look shiny because they are unique so good job with those, but again consider reworking life sealed so undead can love them too :P . The armors just kinda feel meh since in legendary we have to choose from several sets that require armor, we can still get toee sets without armor, but the armor just doesnt feel competitive with the loss of other sets, consider making a unique set if you have the armor equipped or different temple elements mixed so that theres incentive to go for the armor? The sets themselves are decent if you got an ek or aa build but if you dont use a spellpower then it doesnt do as much but still somewhat competitive with other 2 piece sets. Almost forgot, emblem of elemental evil, it needs more abilities or something special like being an artifact or extra augment slots, its a bit too generic and the bonuses it gives are found on many other items ( the natural armor and profane life force, also 47 hp isnt super impactful in legendary) and the 15 element resist is not super enticing, maybe reqork it to being an item that lives up to its name, the emblem of elemental evil, consider maybe something spicy like give it the temepered/balance of land and sky proc from heroic greensteel so it can do any element damage on hit, and maybe if theres a way to code it, in epics have it pull from dripping magma, crushing wave etc. procs to make it really spicy since it could do any of them. Overall i have mixed feelings about the new gear at the moment, some pieces im excited for but many im neutral towards and a few im a little disappointed with as they are. I hope this feedback was useful and can help give some ideas to adjust the loot

[Steelstar]

Not sure if you hooked up the wrong looks, but the docent itself does not have the same red look of the other eternal flame armors.

Thanks, we'll get that fixed up.

First off, the regular heroic effect Dusk does NOT belong on Legendary armor. At the very least at level 29 and above it should be Lesser Displacement

Secondly,
has a weird dissonance between the item's name and the set to which it belongs.

This didn't get fixed to the intended Lesser Displacement in time for this preview, but will be fixed in the next one.
As for the goggles, they changed sets shortly before this Preview and need a new name to match. Any suggestions?

[C-Dog]

As for the goggles, they changed sets shortly before this Preview and need a new name to match. Any suggestions?

Let's see, "Temple's Inferno" set...

Eyes of Flame
Fire-eye Lenses
Scorchsniper Lenses
Sparksniper Lenses
Searing Monacle (would need diff graphic)

[Aelonwy]

Thanks, we'll get that fixed up.

As for the goggles, they changed sets shortly before this Preview and need a new name to match. Any suggestions?

Lenses of Enflamed Zeal
Fierysniper's Lenses
Ardent Sniper's Lenses

I was going for the definition of fiery that means enthusiastic, intense, unrestrained because of the Deadly +Insightful Deadly

[Annex]

Let's see, "Temple's Inferno" set...

Eyes of Flame
Fire-eye Lenses
Scorchsniper Lenses
Sparksniper Lenses
Searing Monacle (would need diff graphic)

Vision of Conflagration: Upon donning these enchanted spectacles you see the world around you consumed in endless, roiling fire. Your gaze becomes a beam of searing heat and everything you behold turns to ash.

[SpardaX]

Thanks, we'll get that fixed up.



This didn't get fixed to the intended Lesser Displacement in time for this preview, but will be fixed in the next one.
As for the goggles, they changed sets shortly before this Preview and need a new name to match. Any suggestions?

Passion's Fiery Contact
Lens

Blazing Bifocal

Flaming Spectacles

Optic Firepower

Agitating Contact

Heat Vision Goggles

[hit_fido]

Blazing Bifocal

Ok, but only if the doubleshot stops working and turns into doublestrike against mobs in melee range.

[Rehmlah]

As for the goggles, they changed sets shortly before this Preview and need a new name to match. Any suggestions?

Infernal Sniper's Lenses
Hm, something related to lenses used to start a fire? Looks like that's often called a burning glass/burning lens, which sounds too much like a fire spell item.
Lenses of Burning Precision (sounds like an accuracy item rather than a ranged item)
Scorcharrow Goggles (An item with that name's just asking for a Flame Arrow clickie)
Rapidfire Goggles