Zlandicar's Heart Mage reward feedback

To even get a decent one handed weapon I have to do the below:
1. Run fabled heroic zones over and over again to get collections to get one or pay a lot of plat for the collections.
2. Kill Pirate King
3. Run Labs in TOV till your eyes bleed(quest boxes from the zone quest)(already did this and no one has hander ever dropped) RNG hates me.
4. Clear ALL of TOV raid zone

We havent had the time to attempt to go to any old raid content and pull it, we are trying to progress through TOV at the moment with what little raid time we have. I am tired of running heroic zones to get a decent one handed weapon item, just personally speaking, I put most my time into raiding instead. It will be ages before we can ever make it all the way through TOV raid zone at our rate.

So nonetheless this HQ item is useless to me I am using a two handed weapon and ranged item and I would never put this in a ranged slot sorry. My healer is using a shield so useless to me there also. That's okay saved me a lot of time by not doing the quests for this. Maybe if we ever make it to the end of TOV raid zone if I see the item might be useful then I might do the quest or if we can ever even attempt to pull old raid content.

Really? Thanks for making me laugh this morning.

Right, which is a problem. It shouldn't be. For example, brawlers received an offhand weapon, crusaders/warriors received a shield. This is logical as those fulfill the same 'role' secondary block related item. Mages and priests would both receive secondary items (like scouts and fighters), which would be symbol and shield items respectively. This is the 'mechanical based' argument.

Your argument that Zlandicar drops a focus a focus and not a symbol holds weight for why you think the quest reward should be a symbol, however this does not change the fact that this quest reward will not be used by the majority of priest classes. Having a shiny quest reward, which realistically can't be used, is a problem - which is rooted in Zlandicar weapon itemization. For example, scouts would be upset if the HQ reward was an agi shield, but I doubt scouts would object to it existing on the loot table.

Because priests/mages are split between two & one handed weapons, there wasn't a 'go to' item. I realize the symbol was their attempt at approaching this. It doesn't work because focus damage is huge, and avoidance share is significant. It 'sort of works' for furies/channelers, but it is still inferior to a shield. For this reason, the itemization needs to be changed. This is the 'logical based' argument.

Make it exchangeable for the player's choice of a wand or bow with identical stats + damage.

For the scout version make it exchangeable for a 6s.

PS I love the tank rewards, very cool. Sorry if the thread title seemed offensive iirc correctly it just read "Zlandicar Mage reward is bad, please adjust". You'd have to be pretty thin skinned to be offended by that imo.

you don't understand, as many people in this thread.
you can't make the reward a scout 6s, cause that wouldn't make sense. since the only other weapon you get is a 4s

Look at what you people are asking for, please.

To the cries of "make it anything but a symbol" - it wont work.

It's a mage/priest reward, symbol is the only item that all mages/priests can use.

Should it be a mage reward and a priest reward independently? Perhaps. Even if that's true though, the best thing for it to be is a symbol.

You can get fabled wands from labs mob/labs crate, and x4 wants from Zlandicar. The game does not need more wands.

A 1h/shield/2h are playstyle-exclusive, so they're a bad choice for a generic quest-reward.

All of this complaining is akin to me as a tank crying that this shield can't be a 2h, because I'm a 'dps tank', and my reward didn't give me options to support both playstyles.

Actually, my complaint would be more valid, because currently a symbol WILL fit in both playstyles.

Wear a 2h, melee, and use a symbol in your ranged.

Wear a 1h, a symbol, and a wand and ranged things.

A symbol is the most diverse item slot in eq2, being equippable either as a secondary or a ranged weapon.

I'd take a symbol over a SHIELD in most scenarios, because I'd be able to benefit from the added stats/effect while tanking with my 1h/shield, or autobowing with my bow, or dpsing with my 2h.

Symbols are incredible.

Next, to address the complaint of 'let us choose!'. I'll touch on scout/mage/priest concerns here, because apparently plate tanks aren't objecting despite having the most reason to!

Scouts
Some of you want a 6s delay. That's cool, and neat, and you'd be able to use it until you get to the 'raid step' to upgrade the weapon. The problem with your desire is once you get to said raid step, you're going to be wearing a 4s delay from Zlandicar, paired with a 6s delay from the HQ. So at that point another itemization/CS nightmare occurs where people are wanting to exchange a quest reward from 6 months ago for a different delay weapon, but they've been using it for six months, and items once used shouldn't be exchanged. It's not fair. It's why you can't reimburse items etc once they're adorned.

Mages
Okay, obviously you guys want a wand. The only reason to desire a wand however, is because the current 'best in slot' primary/secondary combination for raidwide DPS is the PK 2h because of it's groupwide effect. The problem with a wand is there already exists an x4 raid wand. There are multiple heroic wands if that's your playstyle.

If you wear a 2h, melee with it and wear the symbol in your ranged slot! If you wear a 1h, use it in your secondary slot and use the heroic/raid wand in your ranged slot! There's no gear setup that invalidates the symbol choice, whereas there are multiple gear setups that would invalidate any other item.

Priests
Priests suffer similarly to mages in that their best selection of primary/secondary resides with the PK 2h. If you're going to wear a 2h weapon, melee with it! If you're going to wear a 1h, use the symbol as your secondary! If you REALLY need to turtle up as a cleric with a shield, you can auto attack with your 1h and wear the symbol in your ranged slot, or you can forgo the symbol and wear a wand and auto-ranged.

As a tank I can tell you that shield ally is usually useless. It's so rarely the make/break for survival that if it hadn't been spec'd the entirety of this expansion, I can't honestly say it would have made any difference.

tl;dr -> I feel dirty tl;dring this, but I'm sure some people will try to skip over all the detailed points and just say 'but daddy, I WANT a wand!' without realizing why it's such a bad idea.

There's no situation where a symbol is useless. It's the most versatile and useful 'item slot' tag something could possibly have.

The real complaint should be the fact that the PK 2h(mage/priest) weapons are so godly. They break the itemization curve horribly and make adding anything else an absolute nightmare.

That's the issue here, not the fact that the item is a symbol.

So give them different rewards. Heck different rewards were used within the fighter archtype. It would make sense to do the same between different archtypes. Additionally, if the PK weapons didn't exist, the symbol would still never be used.

Wait what? How? A priest would use the 2h off of Zlandicar and the focus off of Zlandicar, the symbol would not be used. If a cleric were to use a 1h, they would use the 1h off of Zlandicar, a shield from some heroic zone, and the focus off of Zlandicar. If a fury/channeler were to use a 1h, then yeah, they could use the symbol (but only because a Zlandicar Shield doesn't exist, or they wanted to save DKP).

It should be fairly obvious at this point why priests want a shield or a focus, because they wouldn't use a symbol in any of their optimal setups. The only reason you even see focus mentioned is it is the only item in common with all setups. If your argument is "but that item is already on Zlandicar..." this only re-emphasizes that Zlandicar was itemized poorly with the quest, it doesn't nullify the argument.

Answer important points in your posts, rather than space them out and state redundant information. We've heard you say that before, answer how a symbol is "good" for the priest class. Answer how a reward, that will never be used, is "good" for the game.

Wearing a 2h and a focus is redundant. You'll only be auto attacking with one or the other at a time. I made a very detailed post addressing exactly why the symbol is the perfect choice. If you personally want to be slothful and only ever use one gear setup, then don't bother with the quest.

2h/focus is a bad item setup. If the symbol from the reward is ethereal, or mythical, you'll want to use it with every single gear setup. You wont want it to be exclusionary for any playstyle.

1h/symbol/focus
2h/symbol

Those are the two optimized setups.

I'm quite happy that the reward is a symbol and I'll use it in every gear setup. If it were changed I'd be fairly upset.

Shields on priests are useless, unfortunately. I don't know why you keep bringing it up. My only thought is you're a templar who is stuck in the out-dated methodology that you're a turtle priest who should 1h/shield/wand and simply toggle on ranged auto for minimal additional DPS.

If you could right click the item and convert it to a focus or a shield depending on the fight, that would be a solution but would open another can of worms. It would require designing two more items, at which point you'd have to design two more additional items because tanks would want to be able to convert their shield into a 2h weapon, and scouts would want to convert their 4s delay into a 6s delay.

Pretty well said. I think the "hole" they hit was that the Heroic ones "upgrade" into the Raid ones. If they had put in all types but only some were upgradable... I bet there would have been an outcry for that too.

The rewards were tailored to compliment Zlandicar's Drops. There just seems to have been a disconnect with the Heroic Level rewards.

The only time this should be used is if no appropriate 1h + Symbol is available or if the 2h has some special effect like the PK2h for buffing the group, which an Illusionist would wear as a buffstick to his spell-weapon/spells and his group. I've been stuck with a 2h + Focus because of no appropriate 1H/Symbol that I have obtained. I would rather have the Great Waters effect as an enchanter anyway for the rest of my Mage Group.

I personally wouldn't' mind a priest shield, I don't see why it would be a bad addition, more choice for players. Maybe a means of modifying the delay from 4s to 6s on Scout weapons as Bards prefer 6s atm it seems.

lol what? I really am shocked people are still arguing this. I mean it's clear that most don't raid it seems. or else it would all make sense.
different rewards within the fighter archtype? you mean the shield for plate and a brawler weapon? I am Shocked they did that..truly..cause that makes completely sense, since both were missing those things...shocking....in my whole history of eq2, I have never seen them split brawlers and plate tank items...idk where they pulled that idea from...I have also never seen them pair mage/priest items...what devil magic are they playing with
I know me personally, and much of my guild will love using the symbol since it's the 1 ITEM THAT IS MISSING IN THE LOOT TABLE.

shields and healers are quite outdated for the most part, this falls in the other aspect that "most of you don't seem to be raiding"

as Darkon already mentioned if you have a 2h, there is no point to use a focus anyway, you can use a symbol. if it's of equal or greater stats anyway.
Zlan is pretty well itemized tbh. as it has everything for every setup now thanks to the HQ (minus scout 6s weapons).

it's the same thing always circling back, I can't see why people can't get it through their head

this is perfectly said. What you guys are agruing with mear heroic rewards, you aren't thinking of the big picture (idk why). you can't have many rewards since they are gonna get upgraded

tbh I couldn't tell if you were serious or not, cause I hope you know that the Heroic rewards == the raid upgrade rewards, since you know they are the exact same item, merely upgraded, so a thread about the ITEM should contain both. considering if you change the heroic item you will have issues with the raid version.

this made me laugh, cause you are taking it to an extreme.
If people can't understand/figure out that the HQ exists to tailor the items for Zlan, well I have no help for them.
excluding all 2hs and wand stuff has really no correlation. I don't know why you even mentioned it.
you are just taking it to extremes for some reason as if it helps your point, when really it doesn't

Within current itemization, this is only true with regards to the PK weapons because of their innate effects and the way they were balanced. Outside of those weapons, there are no innate bonuses granted by a Symbol-based setup. If the eventual reward from the final HQ is truly amazing (and not equal in stats to current items), that will be another outlier in the current itemization. But, that could create it's own issue. If the eventual reward is of true Mythical/Ethereal quality, it could force a playstyle on players that do not wish it.

Do you raid? First you forgot that Zlandicar primarily a ranged fight, or overlook the ranged components of several encounters (e.g. anything outside a 5m range which happens all the time). Then you don't understand that a symbol is a poor item type.

Why? A ranged item will offer some damage, a shield will prevent some damage. Arguing otherwise makes you appear as an idiot. Arguing that a shield is 'outdated' is akin to arguing 1h weapons are outdated (e.g. one is pointless without the other). Everyone gets it but you and Darkon.

The symbol item type is inferior to a focus/shield in any priest gear setup. Because both 2h and 1h priests utilize focus items, it is the preferred item class for the HQ. Yes this already drops of Zlandicar. That item should be a symbol/shield instead of a focus.

Not every HQ in this game has offered a choice for every archetype, let alone multiple choices per.

On a personal note, I am pleased they chose a symbol as the mage reward, both for heroic and presumably the raid version.

Heroic: Mages already have the KoS collection primary and ToV ornate box spell weapon that both come in at above the ToV heroic baseline - but no symbol until now.

Raid: Options exist at the lower end for all slots (PK, DMP, AS), but there are only higher-end upgrades to PRIMARY/RANGED on Zlandicar.

Worth noting, is that the heroic symbol version of this HQ has matching stats to the DMP raid symbol.

We added a six second version of the dagger and a wand to these quests, which should be in the next hotfix. For those that have completed the quests, they can purchase the alternate reward choice from the Shady Swashbuckler after the hotfix.

edit- caith just answered what i wante done <3 thnx devs!

Does this apply to the raid version as well?
Also any chance to add a 6sec scout weapon to Zlandicars loot table?

Since they are different slots, will people be able to use both at the same time?

Both "A Monk's Heart" and "The Heart of Bones" have had the new reward types added.

Nope, you will not be able to use both at the same time.