Incoming seriously long wall of text not for the weak at heart. Your day will vanish, you have been warned. This post comes in 3 pieces because character limit, so take that for what you will. This post is going to go through a few phases, and they are going to be somewhat separate and unique, but some things will also be blurred and possibly seem in the wrong area. That's just what happens in something so broad and encompassing. What is the post going to entail? Problem identification and why these things are problems. Mechanics changes needed to facilitate good itemization. Solutions and Items that could be unique, desirable, and thought provoking. My ideal itemization scheme. It's also been done over a period of time, not all at once, so things may seem scattered from time to time. Itemization is one of those things that people generally really haven't been happy about in eq2 in a long time, and even the stints of happiness aren't long lived. Over the past few years we've heard a lot of "We want to make it more unique, desirable, and have items that make you go WOW." It isn't to say there haven't been good items, but even those kind of good and unique items are really overshadowed by a lot of problems. You get a cool Ethereal item, but it isn't even really cool, it's just item +2 instead of +1. Problems Uniqueness The major one right now is that nothing is really unique at all. Itemization is clearly on a template, and the template isn't unique, all that desirable, all that balanced, or really even all that effective. There are pretty much 4 items for every slot (or a few more where double slot or armor restricted), 1 each Fighter/Scout/Mage/Priest. Sometimes these are restricted to class, sometimes they aren't. There is no variety, there is no choice, there is nothing unique. This is the Elephant in the room, and the hardest one to get away from. I think it is this way because it's the "easiest" to "balance" from a class/game balance perspective. Loot Equality One of the things that results from number 1 will bring you to number 2. Not all mobs are created equal, yet all the loot is created equal. I'll use the latest zone as an example, although most will just have to take my word for it. Difficulty is supposed to get harder as you go through the zone right, even through just the non-challenge mobs. But the loot doesn't get better? Sometimes mobs drop more or less items then others, and I think that this is try to address the issue of increased difficulty, but is it consistent and is it a good solution? I'll talk about non-standard rewards later. Stacking More specifically, effect stacking. Right now, seemingly nothing stacks, and you can't even kind of tell what does and doesn't stack. Things that seem like they should stack don't, things that don't seem like they should do. It's really a completely unmitigated disaster. Should things be limited on stacking? In my opinion, not a chance. This is something that can easily be solved in other ways, like limiting certain effect types to certain slots. Want to put it outside that slot? The value of it increases. D&D has done this since inception, and it works. Currently effects are kind of just thrown on things. I believe this is in an attempt to try to make certain things more desirable by putting things on the item outside of the template, since they template doesn't necessarily do effects. Honestly, aside from the ridiculous problems we've had telling what doesn't stack lately (and trust me, there are definitely items that don't stack that seem like they should, and we have no way to know until we try) I'm pretty sure all this non-stacking stuff doesn't help the server in the least bit. It's that much more code that has to constantly be gone through on every item for every player in raid. Balance of items This is somewhat touched on in point 1, but it needs more elaboration. It doesn't feel like the current templates have ever truly been valued out. How much DPS increase does stat A give Archtype A vs Stat B to Archtype B? Lets look at the following 2 rings. The left ring is the Priest ring, while the right ring is the Mage one. Are these items really even remotely balanced? The Priest ring has 8 Ability reuse (the better stat) over the 6 Spell reuse, 152 more ability mod, both spell (while having spell attack speed, generally the more desirable of the spell stats) and melee stats (you'll be able to reforge the one you don't want into something else) while only losing 28 Disruption and Subjugation (not even focus, the stat that determines spell weapon hit rates!). This to me, is not even kind of balanced, never mind the effect on the priest ring that doesn't stack yet is on multiple slots across the board. Now, you might say it isn't a problem since these 2 items aren't restricted to class and these just give you a choice (although one is clearly superior to the other), and you would be right to say so. However, that is not always the case. Go a little farther up the progression ladder and suddenly you have some class restricted items. If it was just the case of giving choices or slightly better rings from farther in progression that would be one thing, but it isn't. It's just a case of inconsistent design created by computer generated gear. The following 2 rings are from one of the first 2 named in Dreadcutter, and continue the pattern, but are then class restricted. Now, you might say that priests don't gain as much from DPS stats so you can give them more. An assumption to some extent I might agree with, however it's not just limited to Mage/Priest gear (and never mind that some casters want melee stats as well) but also the comparison of Mage gear to Scout gear. Would you really say that Scouts get the same or less dps from this ring, from the same mob, as Mages get? While Mages get 17.2 Spell Weapon MA, 6 Spell Reuse (a generally capped stat with no overcap), 258 Mod, and 39 Casting Skills (though not focus, the auto hit rate stat) Scouts get 1 more CB, 4 AE Auto, 39 MA, 21.2 Attack Speed and DPS, 4 Flurry, and 117 less Mod. Was that really stated out and balanced? Yes, I understand Scouts have to to some extent get Auto Attack stats as well, because Potency doesn't effect all of their dps (but CB does). However, these things have to be balanced, and it certainly seems like the math was never done. The math is going to be different for different classes as well, something I'll touch on later. Class Restrictions When playing D&D we used to have a saying. It's a game about possibilities, not limitations. It was always about enabling you to do more, not restricting you from doing anything. Restricting gear to classes is kind of like this. In certain situations it really is necessary, like you can give a mage a stoneskin that you probably don't want to give a tank. Generally speaking though, is it really necessary? It aids in creating problem 1 (Uniqueness). If you have an Illusionist who is usually in a Melee oriented group and really wants to focus completely on Melee, is it a problem letting him equip a bunch of Scout gear? Generally this is restricted in 2 ways. 1 by the class restriction itself, and 2 by the lack of primary stat. There is nothing wrong with making some gear that is for example Agi Int Sta, while other gear might be Wis Agi Sta, or Str Int Sta for the mage that wants to be more defensive and try to tank some heroic instances. Variety is the spice of life. To some extent this gets partially solved by getting rid of spell weapon stats, but primary stat should still be considered. Scalability Simply put, a lot of stats scale rather poorly (if at all), even after overcap conversion to other stats. I'll break these out further in the mechanics area below.
Mechanics Mechanics and Itemization go hand in hand more often then not. You have to have mechanics you can itemize, and you have to have mechanics that are desirable to players in a manner they can be upgrades, functional, and useful. Some of the things I'm going to talk about are easier to implement, while others are a lot more work. My general focus here is making the mechanics work for the players with a path of advancement. Stats that cap are generally a problem because what do you do when those stats cap? Spell Weapon Stats SWS for short. I think they where introduced into the game for 2 reasons. One was a desire to give Mages something else they could get from itemization, and in this aspect it has completely failed. The other, which may not have been entirely intentional but was something that was necessary, was a means to balance out proc differences between scouts and Mages. Scouts often got double proc chance from Mages due to Auto Attack also proc'ing things. I've said this plenty of times in the past, and here it comes again. There are really only 2 solutions to SWS as they stand right now. What are the problems with it? It was never fully incorporated into the game. It was kind of tacked on, thrown some stats on some gear, and forgotten about. Add on to that the incredibly low dps it does (which is fine really) and the really high rate at which those SWS reforge, and suddenly you have a recipe for stats that everyone wants not to use, but so they can reforge them into something more desirable that might not be on the piece of gear. SWS are not included in any buffs or modified by anything other then a semblance of them thrown on gear. Generally everything bringing it to that really useless feeling. How can it be fixed? Get rid of SWS. Spell weapon auto should take benefit from all the normal DPS, Attack Speed, Flurry, AE Auto, etc. Using the normal stats would solve the problem of the reforge mess SWS created, and might actually give Mages more stats they want to go after. Not only that, there are plenty of other ways you could give Mages stats meaningful to increase. Reuse Spell Reuse and Ability Reuse. They are redundant stats, every class would prefer Ability Reuse since no one has everything modified by Spell Reuse, they stack but are separate, there is no overcap conversion, and generally just create confusion. They should be merged, and really should have been merged a long time ago. Doublecast, Ability Mod, and Reactive damage Doublecast, or Spell Double, really has a lot of flaws. It is a stat that really shows how different classes don't gain the same amount of damage from the same amount of a given stat. It's a stat that currently really benefits Wizards more then any other class. Why? A variety of reasons. Wizards cast the least spells that don't Doublecast, and generally don't have to worry about that ones that did Doublecast getting dispelled or something similar. All the other mage classes have a lot of spells they cast that gain no benefit from Doublecast. Things like temp buffs (personal and group) and reactives (doublecast gives no additional triggers) don't gain anything, and all the other mages spend a whole lot of time on these types of abilities. The doublecasted spells also gain no benefit from ability mod. How do you fix this? First some classes need some spells merged. Illusionists started to get this (although not necessarily in a manner they are all happy with because it inadvertently destroyed the reset rate of Time Warp) with some temp buffs getting merged together with this GU. It's a treatment that could be expanded (Like Warlock Gift of Bertoxxulous being a maintained spell!). Second reactives (and likely wards) need to be able to benefit from Doublecast this. It's harder area to venture into because of the beneficial spells, but it needs to be addressed. Wards currently get hosed by doublecast since the double overwrites the initial, and the double doesn't get benefit from Ability Mod (or Fury Myth buff) and they end up losing a good chunk of the ward value. This can be remedied by having a doublecast on Wards increase the ward value by 25%, and doubling the base triggers to reactives for both hostile and beneficial (before anything else that gives extra triggers). This means the cap on extra triggers for reactives needs to removed, as certain spells hit that without this. The argument could be made that extra triggers should double as well, and it would be a solid argument. If this change does take place the extra triggers on reactives on Time Warp will need that portion removed. I'm including Ability Mod in this general area because the problem and solution relates. Certain classes and spells end up with a lot less value on Ability Mod because of it capping, while others have a virtually never reachable cap since potency increasing the damage outgrows the rate of gain for ability mod. You can kill two birds with one stone here by giving a means for those classes to grow since they won't have to worry as much about the Ability Mod cap, and way for spell double to gain from Ability Mod. It's rather simple, if a spell doubles and had ability mod over cap from the initial hit the overcap ability mod applies to the double. These things would actually make spell double desirable for more then just Wizards and a couple spells for other classes, while giving you means to improve it further through stacking of other stats as well. You could then uncap Doublecast (and name it back to Spell Multi Attack since SWS are now gone!) and give the Cast Speed to Spell Double conversion a realistic and meaningful conversion rate like 10:1 instead of the joke that is 100:1. CA Double At the same time, this mechanic could also be implemented following the same rules as Spell Double (including overcap ability mod). Scaling Items generally shouldn't scale with players. This is why I understand proc's not critting. However that means you need to actually increase their damage, we can't be using damage proc values from 6 years ago, it just doesn't work. That also means player abilities do need to upgrade. There are a lot of abilities with green effects added to them, for those green effects to scale with players those abilities need to upgrade. There's been an incredible amount of lazy in that regard and a lot of these abilities don't upgrade. Things like healer group cures are still level 70, yet they have a green heal component from AA's that hasn't increased in value since level 70 because they haven't gotten upgraded group cures. Abilities like Enchanter Haste/DPS buffs haven't been increased, yet we now have an overcap system, and you don't even need to increase the actual Haste/DPS when you could just add something else to the effect. Gear shouldn't scale, but it should be relevant. That means things like damage proc's if they aren't going to crit need to have another 0 added on to the damage they do. Players gain power exponentially, because we don't just get gear, we get 14% more from an ability every time we level, we get new AA/Prestige options, we get multiple levels of gear. Damage proc's especially need to grow at the same rate that players power grows. A damage proc shouldn't be doing .2% of my parse, it should be doing 2%. Why does my level 80 Avatar Neutral Charm 2 Set Bonus proc over 2k power while the brand new ethereal charm 2 set from Sirens only proc's 600 power? Because we haven't scaled effects on gear that have damage/power numbers up at all, even though player power has dramatically increased since then. That extra 0 on things like damage proc's is really important, and power proc's need to get looked at as well. Procing 600 power might not even get me a single spell cast on some of these encounters that increase power cost. For the love of all that is holy please stop taking the extraordinarily lazy route when it comes to what do with things like AA's. These absolutely need to scale with player power. It's exactly the same as the green effects I talked about, which are generally AA or character traits. 5 Crit bonus to 1 ability does not scale. It becomes useless over time (like useless right now). AA's, prestige tree stuff, it needs to have the ability to grow with the player. It needs to see an increase with the player growth. These type of things shouldn't be 5% CB or Pot, they should be 5% before any other mod so that it multiplies with everything and grows with the player as they increase in power. We can't be asking for a revamp of AA's every 2 years because they've never been done in a way that grows. Increase crit chance? Stop this 1.6% per rank thing, make it a 1% increase in what the player has per rank. Stuff like this across the board.
Things We've Lost Along the Way Sadly, a lot of the answers to itemization come from things we've already done in this game. Things that got lost along the way and forgotten about. There has been a lot of creative thinking in this game over the years, unfortunately right now it seems to be more about streamlining everything then creative thinking. More about is everything equal then is this something people will like. Balance is fine, but balanced isn't very balanced. Different classes gain from different things, and gear should reflect that. The fact that different classes gain differently from different stats means you should have options. It isn't just about creating unique desirable gear if there is no choice. If there is only 1 possible item for me to equip and a clear line of if you've killed mob difficulty 11.3 you wear 11.3 difficulty loot, but then when you kill 11.4 difficulty loot you'll upgrade to that one. No, there should be options. There should be multiple different choices at 11.3. It shouldn't be man I killed 11.3v4 and got another neck with the same stats but instead of a damage proc I got a non stacking max health increase. That's not creative, it's not desirable, it doesn't make you got wow. You should kill mob 11.3v4 and get options like below. Red Stats There was nothing wrong with negative stats on gear. Fyreflyte had amazing insight with this, and I'm sad it died along the way. Powerful items had a negative. Sure, some of those negatives you could deal with overtime. The Bloodthirsty choker could be healed through on most encounters over time, but originally it was a good idea to take off sometimes. Not only that, but it gave healers a reason to heal all the time. Wicked Wand of Malice was a creative item, could it be used without pulling agro and getting you killed? The Jewel of Animosity gave a good DPS increase, but it also proc'd a ton of damage on them. What about an item that proc's increased magical damage on the mob (stacking effect 1% magical damage per person with the proc after debuff cap) but increases magical damage the player receives by 5%? Choices, can I still live with that AE hitting 5% harder? The negatives on gear doesn't have to stick to things like that either. Maybe this item is going to decrease my max health by 10%. Can I still live through the AE? Maybe this item has -10 Crit bonus, but if it has 30 Potency is it worth it for me? Maybe this item only has 6 CB and Pot, but it has 2k Ability Mod, is that worth it? This means work, because it means you have know roughly how much real increase in damage things are for players, and you're going to have to do that math based on a variety of classes to have a real idea. It opens up a ton of possibilities on how to vary gear though. Especially when you consider that with the current reforging system those negative stats on the piece of gear also mean you can't reforge into that stat. Different classes have different desires, and providing real meaningful options that strongly vary stat outside of do I get Haste/DPS or do I get Strikethrough means something. It's all about making you think, giving you options, and forcing you to choose. Not just 1 time, but there should be choices that force you to rethink it based on encounter like some of the original negatives did. Class Effects Once upon a time we had class things on gear. Then it somehow ended up just on armor. Then it just got folded into the character. There used to be items that just increased certain abilities for certain classes. Remember this? \aITEM -1462860340 2111040210:Twelve Tone Earstone\/a They don't necessarily have to be powerful abilities, they could have just been things like that that are more desirable for those classes. That's a cool bard effect. You know what would have been more interesting and desirable on Pirate Kings loot? Instead of things we've already had, let getting us to replace our wrist set bonus by just putting the set bonus on a single piece, you could have done class stuff on some gear. There are so many options in what and how to do this. Increase bard stealth attack by 10%. Add an extra dot tick to a Warlock/Necro spell. Increase a specific spells by certain amounts. Add a so many trigger damage proc after using a certain ability. Add extra damage on the ability if you use it under a certain condition. Using an ability gives a bonus to your next used ability. What if my next spell after casting Absolution is instant cast? What a doozy. What if my next spell after Apocalypse is instant reuse? There's a lot that has been done with AA's that could extend to gear to make it cool and desirable. It doesn't have to be the same, it doesn't have to be overpowered. Would I rather have 10 potency or another tick of Plaguebringer? You know, I'd really have to think about it. The 10 potency is probably more unless it doesn't stack, but that extra tick of Plaguebring sounds nice. Would I rather have a 12% potency self proc or give the group 5% potency on Frigid Gift? A lot of these could be on lesser used abilities to give players a reason to think about adjusting how they cast. Constantly force you to rethink your play as you get gear. Give you reasons to think about what you are doing instead of it just always being the same old thing. Would I cast Distortion more if it got a 50% chance to apply it's damage twice (or a 50% doublecast if you actually go the route to uncap the stat)? It would change it's place in my rotation. If the next spell I cast after Arcane Bewilderment does 10% extra damage am I going to think about what I cast? What about if I give every taunt I use a 1% chance to reset the cooldown of rescue? That's what gear shoul do. Make you think. Right now, it doesn't, and it hasn't since DoV. I really can't even name a piece of gear anymore, because when you don't have to really think about what you wear you don't really notice the name of pieces of gear. It's sad that if I forget to do DKP and have to go back and input an item later I'll know "Ainaree got the Ethereal Shaman Hat" but not have the vaguest idea of what that item is called and actually have to find it in the notes. Yet I've told you multiple items from prior to DoV in this post by name all these years later. Alternate Increases It doesn't always have to be a dps increase. Things like immunity proc's are nice too. Remember when healers got things like Rings and Earrings that proc'd immunities on target of beneficial spell as well? It was nice for a healer to have that chance of proc'ing an extra immunity on someone on a group heal. There are lots of forms these alternate abilities can take. Things like the stoneskins/ae avoids for mages, immunity proc's, but it doesn't have to be limited in such a fashion either. Remember when tanks got items that had a chance to cure them when they got damaged? What about Mana cure type effects on items? I think it'd be pretty cool to swap in a piece for a fight and possibly save my group with a lucky cure when I nuke the mob. What about an item that increases my power cost of spells by 25% but every spell I cast proc's 5-10% of the power cost in power to the rest of the group? What about situational items? Everyone hates Brawler mobs, why not an item that has a 25% chance on parry/riposte/dodge to make my next swing a guaranteed hit? Not something useful all the time, but worth switching in on certain fights. The Path to Hell Is often paved with good intentions. So much has been done in the sack of balance that it has really taken the life and creativity out of itemization, itemization that is really the backbone of this game. Nerfing proc's drove a ton of people away, because it took enjoyment out of getting gear. That was the real start of all gear just being equal. Itemization really needs a kick of spice and variety. I hope you actually read this and take things from it. It's a world of possibilities, it shouldn't be about the limitations.
Something I forgot to touch on is rarity of item drops. Super rare items are cool, but you have to have a realistic chance to actually get the item in the life of the content, otherwise people will abandon it and not actual go for it, thereby making said item a non-function. Drunder Mythicals are like this. The Drinal neck is like this in that I think it is also way too rare. People want it, it's good, but when nothing else is really needed from the zone is the zone worth running for just that neck? Lots of other things along the way have been like this. No one wants to run 2 year old content that only has a chance to drop 1 useful item on a far too rare chance, even if said item is still better then what you can get today, unless said content can be done with vastly less people then it could have then. If content realistically gets easier and requires far less over time you might actually encourage pick ups to do so, but with the mechanics of late the content doesn't. Often mechanics don't scale based on the size of the raid (like number of curses) so since TSO you really haven't been able to do smaller pick ups unless you've vastly increased in dps since then. Group stuff can be made ridiculously rare, for a few reasons. 1, you can run group stuff vastly more times, especially if the item is heirloom as it should be. It gives people a reason to do zones, and don't tie everything to one zone, you want people to have different reason to run different zones. TSO did this well. That ability to run the zone so many more times really increases the ability to get the item over the long term. 2, the item is generally going to break the item progression so is somewhat justified on being more rare. Rare raid loot has generally been far far too rare for the past few years, while there hasn't been any good rare heroic loot to encourage everyone to do those group zones.
Well said. At this point, I will only a few points of mention, as I have mentioned elsewhere. 1. Added effects don't have to be strictly combat oriented and they don't have to be based on an entirely new mechanic or stat. A few 'convenience' effects can add value and provide some entertainment. Everyone like run speed. Everyone likes safefall/featherfall. There is a lot more potential beyond that, but a valuable addition to gear to see those effects, even if it doesn't necessarily impact the power equation. 2. Added effects don't have to directly speak to the normal or most common path. Things like reducing base recast of activated items /potions, or increasing the impact of those activated items/potions would at times have value. Slightly more common appearance of trigger chance. Periodically these type of things could have significant value. You may bristle at this, but in some regards it is innately self-balancing because a trade-off was made in choosing that effect over other effects available. Shaving 20 seconds off a 5 minute reuse item isn't going to be game changing. Making an item with a base 2 trigger per minute, instead trigger at 2.4 per minute or even up to 3 per minute also should not be game changing. If it is, the base effect may not be where it should be. 3. If an item or effect is so valuable that the thought is that it needs to be class restricted, stop. Is the effect or stat perhaps too good, or are the alternative effects just not good enough? Asking that question should help create more compelling items that fit, and should foster a system that creates choice and decision without creating a huge pool of contention. Perhaps the effect would be fine for everyone if simply the means of triggering it were adjusted, even slightly. There is a place for class restricted items, but I don't think this question is asked, let alone asked often enough.
Thanks for the aneurysm. I've never been a fan of gear, because if I had the choice I prefer creative development on encounters rather than 'pretty gear'. Everything is limited, they have other priorities at this stage so it is a choice and no you do not need gear to make interesting encounters, quite the opposite. I'd prefer they remove the bland damage procs, waste of code, unless they make them worthwhile but even then, who wants procs to make their parse, they are already dominated by group buffs. It is an absolute necessity they remove this ridiculous 1% drop rate items on raids, rather they never existed than be forced to raid old content. Remember the last time they went in this direction and we ended up with like 4/25 useful cloaks? That being said, any effort on their part would be appreciated.
Designing a unique encounter has limited results when people no longer want to play the game because the reward for said unique encounter is such a disappointment. The unique feeling wears off pretty quick, but chasing the gear carrot can last quite a while.
Well put. Everything is spot on. If SoE would just read this and do these things... Itemization is a complete joke lately. Something needs to be done, and Slippery has given a lot of great ideas and spelled out clearly what is currently wrong as well as how to fix it. Both raid, and group loot the past few years... just all very plain, its all the same, not unique, garbage... I particularly agree with how messed up it is that itemization is the same across the board, regardless of the actually difficulty of the named.
Thanks for making this post, hopefully someone at SOE listens. My 2¢: I don't mind cookie cutter gear for normal stuff. In fact I like it a lot, there should be solo, heroic, and raid cookie cutter gear as a baseline. But when it comes to challenge mode (solo, heroic, or raid) and rare drops there really need to be some Shard of Hate esque aspect to it. Some items like this do exist (ie Drinal's mythical shield) but are very few and there is not a unique version for each archetype. Bottomline devs can streamline all the gear they want as long as when you kill something worth half a **** you don't instantly want to throw it in the trash and never kill that mob again. Risk vs Reward is what's killing this game right now.
Well put and pretty much agree on all points. Gear seems be the one thing that gets the least amount of time, the least amount of attention, and the least amount of creative input from the team out of everything for the past.... years. I played EQ1 for years to continue bettering my character and forever chasing the gear carrot. It was pretty awesome. Now... not so much in EQ2. The randomness of what gear drops from where; the complete and utter lack of risk vs reward; the repetitive bland similarity in items -- it has become such a bore. Getting into things like content being broken is a whole other topic, but in all seriousness there's not many times you feel rewarded for sticking it out in EQ2 when it comes to items unfortunately. Also, clickies can be cool, but NOT when there are 50 of them and they are all short temps and exist in a game where we already need 6 hotbars for abilities. I love and hate clickies because of the hotbar situation. Maintained clickies: small effect, lasting desire is the correct formula!
Skipping past encounter design, as it deserves its own discourse, item procs could take a different path. Instead of simply doing direct damage as a unique effect, or bumping stats in often a largely meaningless manner, they could instead apply a consumable buff that applies to first use of an ability use. Any ability. As either an intensifier or an extender (without falling back on generic cb/pot/abmod). They would be class agnostic, and provides some innate scaling. Sort of like the shaman AA 'Ritual'. If they moved away from direct damage procs (and damage dots and short duration debuffs) being the norm, they could eventually open damage procs back up to not be so abysmal.
Only one side exploded, actually. I agree with a lot of what you say, but nothing in this game exists as an island, and I can see where there can be a lot of unintended consequences - in fact there have been many in the past. I think the real problem over the years has been that every new cycle of devs + xpacs, we get a different mechanic on gear, and nothing has stayed consistent. That has resulted in a lot of the Band-Aid type fixes you talked about. And it also occasionally leads to some really strange bugs, like Fire Seed being used by Conjurors in the Grotto Shyneera instance would bug it (maybe it still does, have not tried it lately). One problem I think that will prevent a lot these things being fixed is that there is a lot of old code in the game, and it would probably take more time than it is worth to go back at fix it all, as I suspect that there a many workarounds band-aided in that would then break.
There is a flip side to this - trash loot is far too common, and with little variety. Dreadcutter solo is a good example, I run this pretty often, not because I need any gear from there but because it is an easy 5 minutes to get 2 or 3 mutable items. But to be honest, I don't really see much hope of an overall fix. It would take far more dev time than justified. My biggest hope is that SOE takes the lessons learned here and applies them to EQ-Next.
The fastest way to do something is to do it right the first time. Then we wouldn't forever have all these threads of broken items, undesirable items, items that don't follow progression, and items that just plain don't make sense.
First, I definitely appreciate the chore of balancing 25 classes as many other games have done worse with 6,8, or 10 classes. Class balance, overall, is a strength right now in the game and I understand the reluctance to do too much with itemization that requires additional balancing. But, like Slippery, I definitely agree there is room to spice some things up. Some points from this that I'd re-emphasize: Scaling aa's, but static gear: Obviously gear can't scale as you'd have no reason to ever pursue anything new. But aa's definitely should. Aa's should be more like Enchanted Vigor where the buff is always scaling with the chanter's primary stat. Static values for aa's start depreciating the second they are introduced. Scaling aa's should actually be something that is easier to balance as you wouldn't need more than minor tweaking on them going forward after balancing them to being with. Damage procs: Players have gone from doing 40-60k dps at the end of SF to 2 mil + dps. A 40 fold increase while the value on damage procs has barely moved. It's such a drop in the bucket now that players would probably gain more dps just by improved lag from removing the additional load of throwing damage procs in the logs. Either make them relevant with a very significant (adding a zero is a start) increase or just replace them with a proc that doesn't frustrate players. Choices in gear: There is a bit more choice than there was in DoV, but not by much. Everyone basically is guided down the same path pursuing the same gear. Itemization that forces us to make choices and think is fun. I know it's scary from a balance perspective to open up the restrictions on gear, but it'd be great if a solution could be found to give the players more options again. Set bonuses are the devil, btw. Excessive rarity: The Drunder myths were a great example. Never even saw a single one drop in all the times we ran the zones. Rare items should give you a reason to run the zone, but if you make them too rare then it's not worth it to the raid to extend their time there past when all the other loot has gone to 5th alts. You should realistically be able to attain the items over the course of the relevance of the zone. Same issue with removing the powerful items from last year's avatars. You just can't have best in slot items be discontinued or excessively rare. THIS is unbalancing. Friendly competition within the guild and within classes can generate a lot of enjoyment in a raiding and this issue absolutely kills competition. RNG streaking: Neiloch posted briefly about this in another thread, but while I don't think making 100% everything smart loot, the rng could definitely be smarter than it is. There should be some sort of safety net for streaking. We've had two scout helms over the seven months they've been in while other guilds have had ten. In that time we've had four brawler helms. On Pirate Kings each weapon has a 25% chance of dropping but the bow hasn't dropped in our first 16 kills. There's gotta be a better way to prevent the streaks. A couple things not mentioned that would be nice: The rarer the item, the better the appearance: The best appearance should be on Raid end boss drops and rare myth type loots. Gives the player an extra sense of pride in attaining and displaying the item on their toon. Mob or zone-specific drops: Others have mentioned this in the past and I'd love to see it implemented. You defeat a tough mob and it drops something that helps you exploit his weaknesses in future fights. Nothing too powerful, but something that makes each time you go back a little quicker. A mob like Eriak dropping a Blinding Gleam type fear-immunity proc, or Glokus dropping a damage vs Aviak boost, etc. Just seems like it would make sense by looting a monster you'd find an item or effect that would give you an edge to kill it the next time. On a positive note, I do think that with the fixed loot on the easy mode Dissension mobs there is a clear gear progression again and that's nice to see. You shouldn't ever need better loot than the mob drops to kill it. The Tavalan Abyss HM heroic is also done very well; reminds me of Elements of War (good thing). Trade-able heroic loot is good. Rare heroic myth chance is good. Tough but fun fights. More like this please.
Reminds me of the old addage that comes up in QA a lot... Never enough time to do it right, always enough time to do it again.
Mostly valid points, but the two that stand out, and have been frustrating me the most are as follows ... This is a no-brainer, and I have no idea why this system was ever introduced like this. The spell weapon system needs to utilize the same attributes as melee/ranged. You know, this is something that has been bugging me for years - but the posts I made on this in the past were never responded to. I was considering starting another topic on this, since I heard rumors of KoS tree revamps, and it is worthy of a thread of its own. But in short, the prestige trees were done well, but all the earlier trees suffer from the modifications being static additive values, as opposed to multiplicative. All AA options need to scale with character growth so that they can be (relatively) as useful in 5 years time, as they are today. This will also help maintain class balance a lot better than the fixed additive system we currently have. Every AA option for every class needs to be looked at with one question in mind - will this scale with further character growth?
