Itemization problems with the new content

First off, let me say that I'm really enjoying the new content, in fact i LOVE it, and I think it's all been very well put together and thought out. That said, there is a pretty significant problem with some of the itemization in that content. First I will focus on the group & solo content, as that is the progression to the raid content.

1) The loot tables are too big.

It's extremely hard to get something useful or something that is particularly needed. For example, I have currently run sufficient content that I have a full set of T5 gear in my primary role, a partial set in my secondary role, and have all my alert and solo feats. I have yet to see a single staff drop, or any bow greater than CR82 drop. For armor this isn't such a massive issue, because you can buy the T5 armor with the marks earned doing the content, but for weapons this becomes a problem because players like certain weapons that match their characters and play-styles, and if they can not get those weapons in a reasonable amount of time, then it becomes problematic for the player base as a whole.

I propose that there should be weapons purchasable with MoR to solve this problem.

2) CR84 gear is too rare. Loot drops from the alerts is no better than that which drops in the iconic anomalies.

The drop rate of CR83 gear is higher than that of the anomalies, but essentially all the gear available in solo instances. The drop rate of the CR84 gear is WAY too rare. In the time that it took for myself and several others in the league to grind through the T5 alerts enough times for us all to have full sets of T5 gear, we saw a grand total of TWO level 84 drops ever. A pair of 84 healer shoulders (psycho style) and an 84 dual wield weapon.The CR84 gear is so rare that by the time you actually see any of it drop, you already have T5 gear.

I propose that the final boss of both Brothers and Family Reunion should drop a guaranteed blue drop (84) each run. This gives motivation to run the alerts for more than just marks, because you stand a chance of actually obtaining upgrades to the solo armor prior to your having enough marks to purchase the T5 armor.

3) The "jewlery" and masks from the new content are inferior to older content items.

In particular the rings that drop, which we have been told are to be 'better' than the lockbox rings which are going away in GU26, are not in fact better. All the rings in the game other than lockbox rings have no modifier slots or socket affinities. During Home Turf there were cr78 rings that dropped from the bosses of the weekly solo instances which originally had white mainframe sockets, but there were no mainframe modifiers to put in them, and the sockets were eventually removed. The new rings have better base stats, but not nearly good enough to make up for the lack of sockets and affinities. The best rings in the game are still 'pure luck' based CR78 rings from lockboxes, and your character is held back by a player not being lucky enough to get 'perfect rings' for their class.

The new necklaces and masks are better than the old PVE necks and masks, yes, but... They were introduced after the new PVP revamp gear. The final tear vengeance / punchline necks and masks are in fact vastly superior to the new content drops, even the CR85 dropped rings and necks from Nexus. The reason? For a loss of VERY few stats, the PVP items give an enormous amount of hit points. With the difficulty of the T5 raid content, and the number of attacks that can do over 5000 points of damage, the extra 250 hp from the PVP necks and the extra 160ish hp from the PVP masks vastly out weighs the loss of minor stats such as 8 precision 10 might on the melee mask, or 15 reso and a few power on the healer neck.

I propose that the new rings need to be given sockets and affinities which are related to their roles, so that they are actual upgrades. I further propose that the new necks and masks need a major boost in hit points to make them competitive. People dont want to lose 250 hit points for minor stats, but they would probably sacrifice 50 for the same minor stat increases. Face and neck slots dont have any real defense stats to speak of, so wearing PVP items is not an actual loss of survivability for PVE in these cases.

4) Raid drops were supposed to be better than the gear not available in raids, this is not actually true in practice.

The only raid drops that are actually superior to the T5 gear is the one drop per raid from the final fight of the raid instance. Instead a massive amount of gear that is statistically equivalent to T5 gear drops from raid NPCs that you need T5 gear in order to defeat. This means that most of this gear is ALREADY rotting because no one needs it when it drops, because they've already farmed enough T5 gear to defeat the content and then get drops that are no better than that which they are wearing. In addition with the better gear being all crammed into one fight loot table at the end, it comes back to problem #1 The loot tables are too monstrously bloated to have a chance at getting the items that you want with any reasonable chance of success. This is even further compounded by the fact that the chase items such as the traces in time set are class specific, meaning there is an even smaller chance to get the drop that you need.

I propose that the "good" loot drops need to be spread out across the entirety of the T5 raid content, and that the CR85 T5 equivalent items be boosted such that someone wearing T5 would have a reason to upgrade, even if its' a very minor stat boost such as the miniscule upgrade between T4 purchased armor and T4.1 runes of the norsemen codex armor. I am perfectly fine with 'random loot' that's a fact of MMO gaming, but when loot tables are so large, and the number of drops so small as they currently are, all it does is feed frustration at an inability to acquire the gear that players desire. The fact that players will have to plow through 'rotting loot' like crazy just for that one item chance at a drop they might need / be able to use (and then having to be lucky to win a roll after that) will only lead to player frustration and burn out prior to the next content update.

I agree completely with everything you said.

The only 84cr weapons that currently drop from OPs are brawlers and DW, if anyone got another 84cr wep from the OPs then please tell us.

The only 87cr DPS utility belt that currently drops from OPs is the completely useless 3 consumables/1 trinket belt while great other belts for all other roles drop.

Now people who are full T5 are only running the raid for a chance at ONE 87cr gear piece that drops from final bosses which isn't even unattuned? Hehe
So I can run the raids and get absolutely nothing? T5 gear I already have and marks I don't need?

Also either add new rings to lockboxes/vault or add mod sockets to existing T5 rings.

@uXix I got an 84cr staff from Family Reunion a couple days ago.

Completely agree with the OP. While I understand what the devs where trying to do with the introduction of the T5 content, adding content progression back to T5 along the lines of when the game was introduced. The decisions they made regarding the loot table have added a degree of disorder to the game that should have never come about. The only thing that can be deduced from this is that it was driven by greed and not by making sure the overall health of the game and the community was maintained. I just hope that in the future this is corrected in some form of fashion.

Got the 84 staff the first day

^^^ THIS ^^^

I agree with your entire post, but this is my main issue. I've only had 2H, Brawling and MA drop so far. I don't want to be forced into using a weapon/playstyle that I don't really like.

T5 Weapon Vendor !!!

Bring it on !!!

I got shinld, dp, ma, bow in the T5 solo

Cant agree with your last statement. The raids are designed to be t5 to complete. If you beat a few raid bosses and get t5.5 then the mark grind for t5 is not needed. Keep high end gear at the end of the raid only but increase the drops sizeably. I.e drop one piece of 5.5 gear for each role

Let me get this straight, you got 84CR BLUE weapons from solos? Post pics please.

There's the Utility Belt of Invasion (Item Level 86) that drops in either T5 Op. It has a Trinket slot, a Consumable slot and two Wildcard slots.

Yes I know I have that belt but I'm talking about 87CR purple belts.

Oh, the Precision-based belt of WTF were the devs thinking? Good question.

I won an Item Level 84 1-handed weapon drop from Brothers in Arms. A leaguemate found the staff in one of the operations.

I agree with the points the OP made. I see the Time Traveler gear more than what I see the Item Level 84 gear from the Ops. I've only seen one Item Level 84 weapon drop and I've done dozens of Ops runs.

I would but I lost my usb drive lol sucks to be me

I have a cr84 1h on my healer that dropped off of Luthor in the FR Op, so they do drop. They're just rare. FWIW I hate the idea of a t5 weapons vendor. Weapons have always (minus the Flash DLC) been a tough get in this game and I for one like the hunt. Maybe throw watered down versions of them on a vendor, but I want the best ones to remain as rare mob drops.

Tharkis speaks nothing but truth. Please I love DCUO so listen to him. This isn't a QQ thread, this is simply a "please don't frustrate your players" thread.

lvl 86 gear from the non end bosses of raids would be great. It really is lame to see stuff drop and you just don't need it already. Very short lifespan of needing those drops. It would have been great if you carried over harder styles like Avatar Infiltrator and Hive Defender. Avatar = role gear, Hive Defender = dps versions. Simply having a reason to want this stuff would be nice. (you did make avatar infiltrator tank shoulders, but the other tank pieces I saw were biker iirc).

lvl 86 weapons purchasable with marks leaving the 87s there as chase items. IMO do it like Central City stuff, at cr 84 only lvl 82 is available. Upon reaching 89 lvl 83 pops up. Upon reaching cr 97 lvl 85 becomes available. Or really any way you want to break it down but being able to purchase a lvl 85 weapon for 150 MoR is something I'd like. I

Guaranteed lvl 84 from end bosses of alerts. We're already dealing with a random drop, no need to make it rare. As tharkis said by the time you get anything you want from these you're going to have better gear, and the weapons... GL getting one you need when it seems like a less than 1/10 chance of even seeing a blue, and then the huge loot table of different gear/weapons.

Sockets on the new rings. I simply don't understand why there are new ones that are worse than the ones I already have.

Closing the gap on the HP stat between pvp and PVE neck/face as atm it's preferable to be in pvp. It's just too large of a gap, not asking to make them equal just close the gap a little to promote the pve > pvp in pve content.


Utility belts is another issue. Please explain what you expect us to do with 3 consumable slots? I can't think of more than 1 I would want to have. Please adopt the idea of wildcard guarantees in the 2 unlocked slots. Leaving at max 2 consumables. And then actually put in every combination at lvl 87 for every role. No reason why you should limit it. It was stated that all combinations were available when they were put in, but there were very limited combinations that we saw from raids. Never saw a 4 trinket troller belt.

Yes leave the best of each level not on the vendor. can't beat the raid, don't ever unlock above lvl 83. Once you can do the raid unlock the lvl 86 but no the lvl 87.

But rare is one thing, doing like 150+ solos, and something like 60+ alerts so far and not seeing more than 1 weapon you want(and it's only lvl 82) is another. Luckily I'm not talking about me, I have had a little better luck.

I don't want the best handed to me, I simply want to be able to earn something to hold me over while I wait for the best of the best to drop. I'm not asking for it cheap either. If I saw weapons for less than 100 MOR I'd think it too cheap.

Being able to buy weapons with lvl 82/84 would be nice. I agree with the higher ones being boss drops only.
I've completed the solos endless times already and somewhere around 40 alerts. I can't even get a lvl81/82 weapon that I want, only seem to be melee weapons, not ranged. What good is brawling or 2 handed for a troller or healer with a ranged set-up?

If people can't or don't want to agree to a low level vendor then at least change the drop rates for the basic weapons.

I totally forgot to mention my point #5 which was
5) Unusable utility belt combinations.

There are far too many belts, including some of the rarest in the game, with unusable combinations of slots. 1 trinket 3 consumables is NOT usable. The 86 CR troller belt, the 87 CR precision DPS belt both have this combination, the result is, using inferior gear is superior to using 'the best'.

I propose that there be no 3 consumable belts in any combination. It would even make sense if all 'pay to unlock' slots were wildcard on all utility belts. This could leave you with 'at worst' consumable consumable wildcard wildcard, which while not ideal, can be worked with (say personal dampening field, PI consumable like Hex, and 2 trinkets) but I cant even think of a 3rd consumable that wouldn't hinder a player more than the loss of stats for wearing an inferior belt with more trinket slots. We've been given these overpowered Home Turf trinkets, and then we're given no way to use them in many of the utility belts out there.

only if they make it cost like 100 MoR and its moddable

It isn't just the new content though, it is content all over the place. The vault is just horrible and worthless. I think since the last up date I have only gotten the checkmate boots, and about 50 sharpshooter hands. 100 greens that I've had since day one(why are they still in the vault) and why am I still only getting 1 MoT. I'm at a CR of 92. I pee MoTs.

Then there are the styles that still have yet to be completed. Just a couple of days ago, I finally completed Sector Agent. Yep, after almost 2 years of trying, I finally got the boots to drop.

Honestly the mistake was making cr 81, 82, and 83 gear all greens. They drop everywhere and you are constantly looking for the 83s, so you don't even think about it, you say, hey, I got an 82 belt, Lets mod that, Then what do you know, an 83 drops on you. Then they have Might, and Precision gear, bloating the hell out of the tables even more.

Honestly, they only needed CR 82 gear and weapons drop from solos and alerts, while the 85 gear drops from raids.