if you don't rethink the ammo I for one will feel I have wasted 3+ weeks on researching the arrows, throwing stars and hammers and that does not make a happy camper. luckly I jsut got my provisioner to 95 and had not started her on the celestial food and drink guess i'm not going to be researching those right off.
That entire statement is so off board I simply don't know where to begin. First off, if the crafted items off the Celestial Motes are not intended to be the new baseline for raid consumables, then please answer if you intend to bring a new set of raid consumables in to take the main place or will we be stuck with the draconic food/drink/arrows/potions from the release of Skyshrine (which with the release of the new Tears of Veeshan xpac will be 2 xpacs and numerous GU's old) to be the main baseline for some time to come. Second, with the exception of the ammo, the stats on the potions and food and drink provide only negligible and extremely poor "upgrades" over the draconic food/drink/potions...was this intended? Finally, as others have brought this up your combine rate on ALL the celestial craftables is so amazingly poor that currently aside from the rare occasion batch of food/drink/potions only ammo will be made from the motes and even there 5k ammo total is a complete joke (50 ammo per mote?). If you intend to keep the crafted items limited but in a quantity that does make use of them then at the very least combines for ammo should be adjusted to 200 ammo per mote instead of the 50 currently. This would still keep the overall quantity low but to an give enough to cover all the scouts and tanks in a raid that can use them. In addition, as has been said previously on the food/drink and potions I would suggest any of the following as an option for adjusting them for the better: Currently it requires 5 motes per combine per potion that lasts about 4 hours more if racial trait or house/guild item that increases duration. In addition, the stats are poor upgrade in comparison to the acerbic ones (acerbic fortitude is 181.5 str/sta and 4% mitigation increase versus 198 str/sta and 4.4% mitigation increase on the celestial). The stat differences are negligible and tbh why waste 5 motes on crafting the new potions which return only 1 when a banyan root gives 10 of the acerbic....clearly illogical. Would suggest a reduction in amount of motes needed per batch and an increase in duration and amount of potions per batch...currently they are not even worth it tbh. Currently it is 1 mote per combine per drink/food. As above the stat bumps are so negligible as to be a bad joke. Would suggestion increasing the amount per mote per batch...as 1 is not even worth it. Possibly 2 to 5 per batch per mote would be more in line with your intention to keep them limited but accessible. Completely disappointing overall.
But wouldn't following these recommendations mean the motes produce enough to make them the new baseline for raid consumables?
The motes required to make food/drink may be only 1 but the return quite frankly sucks...considering draconic food/drink come in batches of 100 per combine increasing them to between 2 - 5 per batch is warranted. The motes to make potions is 5 per and completely off the mark as way too high considering as I stated the acerbic is 10 per batch with a banyan root and the stats on them is too low to be really noticeable so a reduction to 1 mote per and again maybe 2 to 5 potions per batch. As with the ammo moving this to 200 ammo per mote per batch is well within reason and would still not be overly high returns (remember spirit blessed is 750 per batch, dragon bone are 2000 per batch). The difference is that currently the returns are mostly prohibitive to most raids unless they are running the zone every chance its open for a loot drop and even then tbh ammo would be the prime use for the motes. My suggestions would make the returns on crafting them better and still be within the "limited quality" the devs have suggested. As for the devs not wanting them to become a "new baseline" craftables for raid since they have not advised if new raid craftables to take over for the draconic food/drink/ammo/potions will be coming in with the next xpac (a simple yes or no would be all we would require) these items are already taking the position as the new raid craftables regardless if intended or not the only thing that should be part of the discussion is enhancing the amounts per crafting combine. Side note: with all due respect to all the devs but if they want to continue using the line "We are not only developers but players too" then I would ask what game because any 2 week old newbie player to EQ2 upon looking at the amounts per crafting combine would begin asking the same questions everyone here is. Plain and simple this was another poorly thought-out moment.
So you run into ST and gank the golem for 3 AP and convert them all to primal horns = 6000 arrows. You run into Arena, gank Tunare and get 5000 arrows. Difference is you can spend extra effort to maybe get more AP or run even older content to get actual primal horn drops...but you waste a lot of time you could use on current content instead. Am I way off here or is this basically how the majority of components for these recipes get introduced into game?
ST1 HM you can du with one group... (regarding the phylacteries you may get horns from) Arena you need 4 groups...
Yes you're off a bit: First the dragon arrows are made with the heroic horns and not the primes and you only need the easily-attained Deshniak researcher to make. Its random what you get from the AP, you can't choose what you want. However the zone has a 90 minute timer and you can do it with a group and it may take several clears of all the named to get the 2 horns needed for each combine to make 2000 arrows. Some even molo (solo with merc) the Skyshrine instanced zones that can drop the horns from ornate or exquisite chests (Lyceum is one that comes to mind) that also has a 90 minute timer. The motes are dropped as a single stack of 100 (counted as one item in the chest) and can only be "farmed" twice a week as the reset timer is 2 days, 20 hours as other raid zones are and takes 24 people to get them. So one can do content from previous expansion (DoV's Skyshrine Introduction) every 90 minutes for the Maligonian Horns or get a raid of 24 people twice a week (you cannot summon an avatar without a full raid) to make 10k arrows to be divided amongst the scouts I still think they need to up the quantites! 1 mote for 50 arrows? It should be at least 1 stack of arrows (200) per mote. So I will still farm STHM for prime maligonian horns to make a stack of 100 raid food or drink and surprisingly the heroic version is also used for raid food / drink (in my case as a priest the prime make my drink and the heroic horn my food)
