Cultural Raid Armor vs Raid Armor

this again has nothing to do with emblems, and I wasn't commenting on emblems and what not, The Final results of the armor is what counts not the individual pieces.

Base stats unmodified and for obvious reasons no Emblems since they don't exist.

Take the FULL compliment of Cultural add up all the stats, Then take a full set of Raid gear and add the stats up. That is a justified comparison. They announced/said Stats without the emblem are going to "LOOK" differently even in beta because of the no need for emblem factor. But they "moved stats around to balance out the "sets". That is how I meant to compare them.

Show a full set comparison of the Class being compared
Bard
RoF / Raid Tier 2 (Apocryphal) Set:
AC: 2009
HP: 24345
Mana: 22889




This is what I meant by comparing the set

full sets dont matter. just individual pieces. tahts all im saying. you dontcmopare a full set unless youre erquired to havign matching sets, and only emblems made that necessary, only reason i mentioned them.

3 pages in and cultural people still will not post stats of their gear to compare to t2 / t1, speaks volumes

someone posted bp cmparison, here is helm for plate:
cultural:
245AC 2975hp 13-15 for heroics, 25-26 spell damage and heal amounts, 90 purity
T1 raid:
238 AC 2939hp 12-15 heroics, 24 heal/spdmg, up to 100 purity
focus is 1 rank different.
is there an improvement in cultural? yeah, is it much? no. 7ac, 36hps 0-1 heroic, 1-2 heal/spdmg, loss of 10purity gain of 1 rank in focus(depending on slot. even 5 years ago my guild would block "upgrades" of less than 50hps, i wouldnt call this much of an upgrade if even today its only 36hp would you? is it? some, is it worth the wait for drops, the enormous price difference and the lore tag thus requiring to have all materials on hand all the time? hell no. for a cmoparison...here's t2 and the gain fromcultural to t2 same slot

252ac 3132 hp 13-15 heroics, 26heal/spdmg, max 100 purity, same focus
so going from cultural to t2 is the same 7ac, 157hp, same heroics, same or 1more heal/spdmg, 10more purity, same focus.

its not huge either way, but definitely far closer to t1 than t2, 39hp vs 157? loss in purity in cultural regardless of comparison, huge pricedifference (now you only need pay 10k once and lasts whole expac, cultural even at cost wil lbe 40k+ per slot) and more rare materials and augs. what exactly is the point of it this year? honestly there isnt a HUGE difference between t1 and t2 themselves, cultural falls right in the middle faras ac goes on plate and get higher focus earlier so thats something (if you're an sk anyway) but the other differences are negligible and come at a cost..10% purity per slot, 40k or more cost per slot, and more rare drops. we're just pointing out that without raising cultural when the new tier comes there will continue to be zero reason to make it even for the diehard cultural wearers, at best i can see maybe using 1 wrist in cultural if your class doesnt get a wristspecific focus, then you woudlnt have to pay for the AOAA etc just plop aug in and go. 1 slot, and without looking, im not so sure it would even be worth doing that.

not asking for handouts, hell i dont have any cultural from rof, for the above reasons (and thefact they dont drop in what we're farming while t1 gear does) but IF the aim is NOT to shut down cultural use next year by making it pointless this year, then some tweaking needs done methinks.

http://eq.magelo.com/profile/1313695

That's mine. I am wearing Cultural in all slots minus BP. Comparing it to others in full T2, it's fairly lacking.

I had made a spreadsheet (unfortunate I deleted it, and I'm too lazy to redo it) of the iksar plate w/raid augs compared to the warrior T1 raid armor, and each piece of the cultural was slightly worse in the stats that mattered. Other classes might have different results, but none of our warriors bothered with cultural this expansion.

The leather cultural is higher in AC, slightly lower HP, 2-6 less on heroics but gives the benefit of cleave. This is compared to the T2 raid, the cultural crushes the T1 raid leather.

I made an imgur gallery comparing them. I had to switch websites in the middle because magelo didn't have all the pieces of T2 raid, but: http://imgur.com/a/vglY1#0

note: there is less purity on cultural, which drops it down in AC slightly, but it's still higher than the T2 raid. I'm 7 pieces of cultural and a T2 BP (magelo link is my sig)

There is no need to increase the cultural stats, lets be real. They drop very frequently, even from t1 events, they make gear halfway between t1 and t2. Cultural is where its supposed to be for groupers. The use for raids was always catch up gear, bonus gear, not "slightly less than best possible gear but you can get a full set in tier 1". That's why the things were always so relatively rare in low tier events.

I use 3 pieces. They were going to go to alts and I thought it was ridiculous that people are so cheap/lazy when mains were earing VoA gear. But I would never expect them to be bumped up just because new content is coming out. I could see you arguing for a new tier of cultural symbols or armor that comes from t3 drops to bump up the group gear, which has a consequential small increase in the raid versions, but come on, the whole premise here is absurd.

Im fine with this, drops in t1 and should be more than only 1/2 a tier behind if u ask me ... hell this usually goes to our alts now anyway. IF u ask me cultural is the easy way to raid gear your alts and shouldnt be for mains.

Whether to stay with Cultural or not will depend on T3 gear, so we will see shortly.

We have already been warned. If you don't switch to T3 visibles you'll be severely hurting yourself in the raid game. It's just this expansion's reality. I'm sure cultural will be viable next expansion just as it was for the first half of RoF.

appanretly the usefulness of cultural varies widely for different classes this year. the ones that typically have used it have been tanks and melees, tanks get very little from it this year i guess melees its huge difference. not exactly well balanced acrosst he classes then vs the raid dropped gear. thats perhaps the real issue.

Where at all have I asked that? In fact I do believe that pretty much everyone has said that there should be a T3(/T4?) specific drops (one for group and one for raid) which would make type 17 seals that would upgrade the pieces to be 1/2 a tier behind whatever the new top tier is; as that has always been its intended quality.

All the the Anti-Cultural people are trying to make it out like the cultural wearers and the TS'ers are asking for Cultural to get free upgrades when that is in no way true.

I think that you're being way too optimistic. Going with past experience, this is showing us how things are going to be from now on. Cultural is not going to be worth getting for just about anyone, be they grouper or raider (but especially not for raiders); it will be way too cost restrictive compared to the stat lose for the most players. The only people who might want to go the cultural route still would be melee dps classes who are willing to sacrifice significant stats for the extra dps from cleave.

Well I guess it's a rather legit request that some kind of upgrade possibility for cultural wearers would be made avaiable when a new Tier comes out so cultural stays a viable route in line with previous expansions and the known tradeoffs compared to the final tier armor.
When you currently are wearing T2 armor and want to upgrade to T3 you don't start from scratch either but upgrade to T3 using the old T2 armor also.
Would only be reasonable and fair.

Noone is asking for a free upgrade with the release of another tier of armor.

I (did the equivalent of) spent DKP on T2 raid armor. When I committed to doing this it was the endtier armor for the expansion. Believe me, my whole looting strategy would have been radically different had I known in advance otherwise.

IF the new armor is Required Level 95 Recommended Level 105 and you can't use T2 armor as a turn in once you have the new template than from an armor standpoint this is a new expansion and cultural wearers should have to start from ground zero too.

Even IF you can use T2 armor as a turn in, how fair would it be if the raid dropped T3 piece was in T2 and T3 (much less T1 for heaven's sake) chests. Dropped T2 armor wearers go from endtier to inferior to cultural wearers who loot a T3 piece in T2. It's very nearly endtier armor for cultural wearers without endtier accomplishment all over again.

IMO the piece for T3 cultural should drop in T3 and devs need to figure out what's fair to every body, not just what would delight cultural wearers - TBH I don't think many cultural wearers want or expect advantage in this situation. They want what's fair too.

(And it may be "fair" means turn in cultural or dropped T2 toward T3 dropped - no new cultural for the upcoming tier).

To be completely honest I wish they would do almost what they did with SoD hardmode. The new tier drops the visibles we already have and only non-visibles get upgraded - no level change.

that's messed up man

i like this idea

The gear in Shadows of Fear isn't much of an upgrade at all, if any, for both visible and non-visible armor. This entire argument is therefore moot.

For easy comparison, just go to raidloot.com and select Regal ..., add the augs, and compare to T2 raid armor. As said, Regal is not as good as T2, better H/E/M than T1.

I'd like to see the "special" focus effects added to the Regal chest, i.e. for Druids the Spirit extension and "Stance" clickie. Why anyone would chose a Cultural chest over the raid drop is a mystery to me without the class specific focus.

Cultural raid gear will always have its niche. Typically it is best for those who have been away a while or in a recruit status with a DKP raiding guild and need to improve slots while not having much seniority or dkp to get the job done with. Yes, there will be better gear, but it beats no gear at all and if you have the wherewithall to go cultural, it is an easy route to gear up fast. Quite a few people "skip an expansion" when deciding to do cultural or normal raid dropped visibles in order to save up DKP, especially if they are not a tanking class. In all due honestly, unless you are a total min/maxxer who must have that every last iota of stats, it is the tanking classes that need the top tier gear above all others. While it may bruise egos or mean you parse number 2 or 3 instead of number 1, cultural even in a tier 1.5 state will still pull most non tanks through quite well.

PS: People chose the cultural chest because you can get the reduced form of the clickie on the group BP and can click it from inventory while having the stats from the cultural until you have an opportunity for a raid bp. Again, if you are going cultural, typically you are either a FNG in a guild with no ability to gear otherwise besides cultural or vendor currency, or you are going cheap in order to binge on the next expansion. I have a cultural BP now, but if a "normal tier" raid one happens to come my way, it will get replaced. It would be the only raid slot I would have but /shrug. No more chest emblem means mix and match is OK. For me as a rogue, I would rather make sure I have the best weapons I can get as opposed to having the highest tier armor. Highest Tier armor = if DKP were no object.