High Keep Contested Item Feedback (Constructive Only)

1) Overall this concept of elemental weapons/etc is cool. Thanks!
2) The concept of "focus your abilities to be a specific damage type" is also cool - Great idea!

I want to help build off of these 2 things and hopefully my ideas will help make the concepts more... fun?

Ideas:

1) I think mage/priest ranged items aren't displaying their unique damage types correctly. I've had some people see unique damage types, and others not see them.
2) I wonder if it wouldn't be a great idea to have these items be able to be converted into a "polish" or "wand dust"

i.e. Fiery Polish - unlimited uses - when applied to weapon, that weapon's type is converted to fire damage
I would allow the polish to be maintained on up to 1 primary and 1 secondary weapon at a time.

i.e. Fiery Wand Dust - when inserted into the ammo slot, all damage from that character's wand is converted to fire damage.

3) The charm-focus your damage clickies are cool... but I think they'd be a ton more fun and provide a lot of customizable fun if they were able to be converted into an "optional" version that only converts the damage type and does NOT give the other bonuses. On top of that, items like Rod of Ruin do NOT play nicely with this item. This is unfortunate. I sort of wish that the item would flag all of your abilities so that the clickie charms would boost ALL abilities while the correct damage conversion charm is active. - i.e. "All your spells now do disease damage + rod of ruin = +400 potency for ALL spells" - yes, this is strong, but it would require deliberate combos, and would be feasible for all classes, not just Sorcs/Summoners.

Also

\aITEM 1151515504 2018138656:Bloody Summoner's Focus\/a

When used by a ranger, essentially is 18 seconds of +120+ Weapon Damage Bonus... and is insanely strong. Unsure if intended but yeah. Crazy strong.

it's the best item in the zone

SO it is is a slight upgraded Aerkyn Novelty card that not be used effectively in Melee

Idk. If the charm that turns spell damage into crushing with +5% doublecast makes wizard spells work with combat mastery......~

If that item is the best in zone, there is no incentive to go! Killing Chamber/Bell Tolls easily beat this item in a group/raid setting. ='(

Strong for building bard VCs I suppose (although detonation/detonation 2.0 are likely better...).

+1 to this idea.

This charm is twice as strong as salvo is at 50 meters, lol. I hope this gets changed so I don't have to sit at 50m where I can't cast anything all raid, that'll be fun.

Get run speed and joust every auto, sounds funnnnnn

I can sprint something like 30m a second. I guess I could get a workout...

IMO \aITEM 1151515504 2018138656:Bloody Summoner's Focus\/a should be 30wdb and 2 wdb per meter, if it's going to be a legendary drop. That way not jousting at all it is slightly worse than novelty card and jousting to 50m makes it on par with salvo charm.

+1

The rod of ruin thing is an excellent example of the kind of misleading item descriptions i though SOE was trying to get away from.

I mean really, if the item turns my spell into a poison spell, it should be a poison spell, period. The way these new charms work, i need to wonder if my spell is going to be a poison spell for situation A, but still an elemental spell for situation B and really there is no way in hell of knowing. If a future spell or item has description "affects poison" spells, does that mean all my spells will work with it if i use the "convert all to poison" charm? No way of knowing. "No way of knowing" = bad.

TL;DR: if an item turns your spell into poison, it should be a poison spell for all intents and purposes, not just some random collection of situations that one needs to figure out via extensive trial and error.

In other news, are useful healing items coming? EVER?

I've read through 20 pages of recently discovered items and every single healing item is completely garbage except for one, which also isn't that great (The 300k group heal thingy).

Also, out of all the possible in-game items to "repeat", SOE chose to repeat the Jakhir's Focus Wand? With it's 10 second out of 2 minutes inc. healing buff - this is an item that no healer has wanted - like ever.

Sorry if this is not constructive enough, but this is just the 100th thing in a row in regards to healers being completely overlooked when it comes to itemization. I'm certainly hoping that there are some - as yet undiscovered - items in HKC that change the trend.. but I'm not encouraged by what i see.

Also, regarding HQ rewards. It's nice to see HQs - and heroic quests in general - back in the game. THat's great. It's also nice to have an actual itemization plan that is being followed. HOWEVER, one of the major things that has always made HQ's interesting is that many of the items they yielded had unique effects. Those effects weren't always powerful (many outright sucked), but they were something special. If the current itemization plan doesn't allow for weapons to have any effects (procs, clickies, etc.) that's perfectly fine, but then don't make HQs with weapons for rewards, it takes away from the whole idea of what a HQ reward is - these rewards end up being "same stuff we get in a crate". Make HQs that give wrists or charms or earrings or whatever. Or make exceptions.

a small bit of positive feedback: i was happy to see many charms with high "up-times" - meaning long durations or low recast times. There is room for powerful charms with long recasts, but they just don't feel quite as fun to use as stuff you can reuse.

One of the things I've noticed about a number of the jewelry pieces in this zone is that they're seemingly arbitrarily archetype restricted.

One of the examples that sticks out is \aITEM -154326975 771244005:Twice-Bamboozled Studs\/a, as it's one of the better items from the zone and could easily be utilized by melee mages, priests, and reckless fighters, yet is restricted to scouts only. This restriction is inconsistent with the way jewelry has been handled up to this point in this expansion, where basically everything but items that boost healing can be used by anyone. Even within the zone itself it's inconsistent, as items with tank stats with procs that trigger on avoid like \aITEM 1989325019 456082624:Earrings of the Dearly Departed\/a aren't fighter restricted.

I think all the archetype restrictions on items in this zone should be removed, since in it's current state it goes against the design philosophy of giving players options.

Is that because max range of a bow will make it 125? Because it states max of 225.

. On top of that, items like Rod of Ruin do NOT play nicely with this item. This is unfortunate. I sort of wish that the item would flag all of your abilities so that the clickie charms would boost ALL abilities while the correct damage conversion charm is active. - i.e. "All your spells now do disease damage + rod of ruin = +400 potency for ALL spells" - yes, this is strong, but it would require deliberate combos, and would be feasible for all classes, not just Sorcs/Summoners.[/quote]

strong combo yeah,for 8 seconds you can ride the bull every 2 mins, results in l spike damage is about the most your going to get out of it. From looking at ACT the 400% potency , The initial hit with a Dot spell seems to be getting a boost but for some bugged out reason my Dot Ticks are consistently the same when compared to same spell without rod active , im looking more into it maybe there is a buff from another player that is conflicting.

I am not quite understanding you. Are you saying that you ARE seeing Rod of Ruin give +400 benefit to non-noxious spells in your testing? Which spells? Or are you just talking about the Rod of Ruin use in general, which has absolutely nothing to do with HK Items?

Swashbuckler charm.

Not a single 6sec scout weapon in the whole zone, but a million 4sec scout weapons. Did someone forget to check that box on the loot generator? =/

I'd really like to see Sparkling gems dropping somewhere in this zone. I understand the need to control the flow of these gems into the world, but they are still very rare from FHoF.