Dino Gear sets, and the lack of Repair Spell Power

[Abilbo]

So i was trying to work over the gear set I have for my Artificer, using the new Dino sets. You can have a Ring/Neck combo as part of the 5 piece for the Dread Island Curse set that gives 149 and an insightful 74. The spell powers from an option of 3 different ring/neck sets cover the following Spell Power, Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, Force, Positive, Negative, Poison, Light, Alignment, Sonic, Untyped, Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning.

This covers Everything except Repair and Rust spell powers. Not sure that rust spell power is used all that much, but repair spell power seems to have been overlooked?

[Tyrande]

So i was trying to work over the gear set I have for my Artificer, using the new Dino sets. You can have a Ring/Neck combo as part of the 5 piece for the Dread Island Curse set that gives 149 and an insightful 74. The spell powers from an option of 3 different ring/neck sets cover the following Spell Power, Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, Force, Positive, Negative, Poison, Light, Alignment, Sonic, Untyped, Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning.

This covers Everything except Repair and Rust spell powers. Not sure that rust spell power is used all that much, but repair spell power seems to have been overlooked?

Every non-worforged and non-bladeforge player that looted it would curse whoever (the developer) for creating it. We had it in the Cannith raids, most people (I don't have statistics) would put it in their sentient gems.

My characters looted the docent very often in the Ravenloft raids and also in Sharn. Put it up for roll even with it as Mythic and sometimes Reaper. Nobody in the party wanted it so it goes to reaper crafting or sentient XP.

Ask around and see who still plays WF and was told its a dying race.

[Abilbo]

Every non-worforged and non-bladeforge player that looted it would curse whoever (the developer) for creating it. We had it in the Cannith raids, most people (I don't have statistics) would put it in their sentient gems.

My characters looted the docent very often in the Ravenloft raids and also in Sharn. Put it up for roll even with it as Mythic and sometimes Reaper. Nobody in the party wanted it so it goes to reaper crafting or sentient XP.

Ask around and see who still plays WF and was told its a dying race.

WF is now, just as it was when it came out my favorite race. It is not the best race in game for many things, but a WF Artificer, which you can play Melee/Caster/Ranged with is still very good. However everytime they introduce new gear sets that exclude it, it takes a bit of a hit.

I know that players don't often like have WF in their party, as they can be hard to heal, but its not much different than trying to heal that undead wizard in your party.

[Tyrande]

WF is now, just as it was when it came out my favorite race. It is not the best race in game for many things, but a WF Artificer, which you can play Melee/Caster/Ranged with is still very good. However everytime they introduce new gear sets that exclude it, it takes a bit of a hit.

I know that players don't often like have WF in their party, as they can be hard to heal, but its not much different than trying to heal that undead wizard in your party.

I play 3 divines and don't mind healing the WF; and I do not think they dislike warforged in their party because of healing problems.

I think the majority of the problems is that the items that were created diluted the loot table, and make it less percentage chance to obtain actual good loot made for people not playing warforged;
if there is actually any loot dropped at all.

I often joked in the party saying that the DM was playing a joke on us, saying "the DM must hate me because it dropped a repair item or a docent!"

[Halciet]

Love WF as well, but...

The platings worked fine a decade ago before all the changes to combat systems, before %dodge and MRR were things. Similarly that Adamantine DR feels pretty irrelevant these days once you step outside Korthos.

If you want MRR you need to spend a feat. Taking light armor caps you at 5 MDB, (Heavy Armor caps you at 1.)
Normal Light Armor at end game tends to have 20+ (Heavy Armor has ~6)

Immediately you are in the decision of "do I want Dodge or MRR" because it is difficult to have both. Even trying to have light armor, as a Warforged, you end up with less dodge than anyone else in Heavy (and you had to spend a feat to do it)

As for the OP not sure rust/repair fits thematically into Dread (Dinobots?)

[Abilbo]

Love WF as well, but...

As for the OP not sure rust/repair fits thematically into Dread (Dinobots?)

INHO The ring/neck combo covering everything except repair seems to be more of an oversight than a "hey it doesn't fit thematically"

[mikarddo]

Every non-worforged and non-bladeforge player that looted it would curse whoever (the developer) for creating it. We had it in the Cannith raids, most people (I don't have statistics) would put it in their sentient gems.

My characters looted the docent very often in the Ravenloft raids and also in Sharn. Put it up for roll even with it as Mythic and sometimes Reaper. Nobody in the party wanted it so it goes to reaper crafting or sentient XP.

Ask around and see who still plays WF and was told its a dying race.

Well, 90%+ of the raid loot is looted for sentient food anyway, not just forged-only items, so that isnt all that different.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

I would love for WF to be modernized as well. You spend a feat to have worse light or heavy armor than other characters in every single metric, and the healing penalty is a raw % when HAmp hasn't been multiplicative in years. You must spend 4 AP in the racial tree to reduce that penalty to non-(less, really)extreme levels. WF immunities to poison and disease were nerfed (I think that was fair enough, personally), and FoM and level drain immunity are all over the place in gear and enhancement trees.

Unfortunately, they really do not mesh with the current meta of the game. And I think the fact that they were moved to the 400 favor unlock means that they are condemned to their fate as it would not be profitable to spend time on them.

That being said, quick ideas for modernizing WF:

-Racial healing penalty is converted to HAmp penalty. Naked WF with no enhancements would start at -50 HAmp (2/3 normal healing, still a significant penalty) and WF with 3/3 Healer's Friend would have -20 HAmp (5/6 normal healing, very slightly better than the current penalty before other sources of HAmp are considered). The advantage of this is WF builds that add HAmp will not be losing increasingly large amounts of actual health gained as they increase their healing/HAmp. I don't think the ability to be repaired is a very meaningful advantage these days. If healing reduction effects, such as the ones Reapers can put on you, don't affect Repair then I would change my mind about the necessity of this.

-Ideally WF Body feats would be a Racial feat choice made at level 1 that did not cost a regular feat. Racial feat choices exist for HElves, Aasimar, probably others I'm not thinking of right now.

-Adamantine Body now grants an 8% Racial bonus to AC instead of flat +8. Docents have less starting AC than comparable heavy armors and by more than 8 points typically at higher levels. If this results in WF having higher AC than fleshies at high levels, that seems thematically on point and could be one of the reasons to play them (since immunities are not anymore) for some builds.

-Everything that grants or adds dr/addy in the WF feats and enhancements goes from a flat amount to a % just like Barb. Does not stack with Barb, is bypassed by Adamantine. If only this change occurred it would currently cost 2 feats and 8 AP to achieve 6% dr/addy. This would affect Adamantine Body (feat), Improved Damage Reduction (feat), Damage Reduction (enhancement).

-Mithral Body now grants +5% Racial bonus to AC instead of flat +5 and the MDB is 5 + (1/2 character level).

-Mithral Fluidity now grants its' current bonus but also grants +1 Max Dodge Cap.

-WF Tactics: Either double this bonus or change to extra action boosts. I'm not sure what current endgame DCs are or by how much maxed DC builds are overshooting those marks by, but +3 DCs is a pretty laughable bonus especially in comparison to the power of extra boosts. I personally think WF being able to fight longer than most squishies is again on-brand, but if it has to be DCs because we really only want to see HOrc Str melees at endgame, then at least make the number bigger.

-Spellcarved Soldier now grants an 8% Determination bonus to AC instead of an 8 bonus.

-WF Resolve:
1) Temp HP = Repair skill x2, CD 1 min
2) Temp HP = Repair skill x2, Racial bonus to PRR/MRR = (character level x2, or Repair skill, or something like that), CD 1-3 min

-Weapon Attachment either grants a full +1[W] or adds some to-hit. If WF Tactics is converted to extra ABs then definitely don't change this to +1[W]. If not however, I think at least adding a little bit of to-hit to keep WF a close competitor of Aasimar/HOrc would be reasonable. With current endgame GAxes I believe Weapon Attachment is adding ~9 damage, the real kicker is that this is compared against a lot of flat damage and to-hit as well, and extra boosts. This would be a low priority change though.

-Improved Fortification would grant a +% bonus to AC (amount and type, up to Devs), or at least something other than Fortification which I think WF have an extreme excess of, and the penalty would change from immunity to positive energy healing to a -50 HAmp penalty stacking with the base WF penalty. With no HAmp or enhancements this would be effective immunity to positive energy healing, but could be overcome with build/gear decisions somewhat. Ideally, this feat would be changed to something not completely worthless, just mostly worthless. This would be the lowest priority change.

[Ereshkigal]

So i was trying to work over the gear set I have for my Artificer, using the new Dino sets. You can have a Ring/Neck combo as part of the 5 piece for the Dread Island Curse set that gives 149 and an insightful 74. The spell powers from an option of 3 different ring/neck sets cover the following Spell Power, Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, Force, Positive, Negative, Poison, Light, Alignment, Sonic, Untyped, Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning.

This covers Everything except Repair and Rust spell powers. Not sure that rust spell power is used all that much, but repair spell power seems to have been overlooked?

Guess Dinosaurs ate all the robots...

[Fauxknight]

You can have a Ring/Neck combo as part of the 5 piece for the Dread Island Curse set that gives 149 and an insightful 74.

I would never use the ring/neck combo as a primary caster, lore is completely neglected there. All the 'lore' items from isle of dread come with their own primary spellpower, so other item with lore and primary plus necklace makes sense, but not the ring/neck combo...the ring is basically useless under most circumstances.

This covers Everything except Repair and Rust spell powers. Not sure that rust spell power is used all that much, but repair spell power seems to have been overlooked?

The Bronzed Bracers have Repair and Repair Lore so that's a great start. Just gotta grab insightful somewhere, at worst insightful potency like Dusk Lenses.

[Abilbo]

The Bronzed Bracers have Repair and Repair Lore so that's a great start. Just gotta grab insightful somewhere, at worst insightful potency like Dusk Lenses.

The last time the game added Insightful Reconstruction to the game, where it wasn't on a weapon, was Tethyamar. Yes there are places to get insightful potency, hoever the only "gear set" that has an item in it that gives insightful Potency, is the cloak from the Deacon set (which doesn't work well for what Im trying to build). Other than that, nothing from any set, No Fey, Saltmarsh, Sharn or Ravenloft sets have it built into gear that isn't a weapon, and I think only Fey has the weapon with it, but its not a "season" weapon.

[Fauxknight]

...the only "gear set" that has an item in it that gives insightful Potency, is the cloak from the Deacon set

I already mentioned Dusk Lenses, which are indeed part of a set, put on that list also the Sacrarium Cloak, which is also part of a set. Personally I'm usually a Sunken Slippers type of person for insightful and quality potency, even if they aren't part of a set.

[SWCarter]

The Warforged race is something very unique to DDO, and there was a reasonable amount of support for them in the earliest days of the game. But they have been neglected for years on both the gameplay mechanic and itemization fronts, and as such, many players have abandoned them outside of flavor builds.

I would love to see their feat requirements, MDB mechanics, and itemization options revisited, which would breathe new life into the race. And for someone to finally switch the exclusive Bladeforged costumes from BTC to BTA (the costumes granted to those of us who originally purchased the Shadowfell Conspiracy CE). I destroyed those cosmetics years ago on my main due to inventory management hell and have no way of ever recovering them.