So if you are interested I think I have a basic understand of the gear now. The server is already mostly dead and will die for sure whenever we get Varsoon, but whatever, here is what I have seen. The LNL gear that drops from everything has stat caps on it. Even with a full set of 171 that is mixed up between priest/scout/tank/mage parts to fully maximize stats and get the highest possible you will be far too weak to clear any DOV content. What I have seen is although the devs added this new gear, they did not do anything to the old gear. I know this may seem to make no sense, but if you deck your character out in real gear from the DOV expansion it appears the caps will not get you at all. As a beastlord in full 171 I could not beat my own parses in a set of 75-80 crap gear off of the quests and drops in DOV. If you are planning to play here it may be in your best interest to do the GD/EW quests first for gear and just ignore the LNL drops completely.
With over 90% of the achievements being pre-DOV- does it matter? Dont you only need to worry about stats if/when you ready to clear DOV zones? While you are placed in Velious upon entrance to the TLE, I am not certain it is necessary to get DOV gear before going off and earning 100s of achievements. With Varsoon on horizon it will be hard to complete Raid ones for the casual folks that did not go pound them out right out the gate, that is for certain.
Yes it matters. Phee, Jum and I have cleared every zone pre dov for achievements. Well except nek2 because its broken. I am maxed 171 on every slot and they have quite a few upgrades. But to continue we will now have to completely re gear all slots to clear dov achievements. Meanwhile a few of our bot players are already clearing the zones as they just use dov gear. I suspect we will run out of time before we can collect enough equipment to clear kael. I seriously doubt the devs will fix the caps either, they are too busy making house items.
The only thing I would change about L&L gear is adding different adornment slots. The problem is the stat caps in DOV zones, mobs with far too much HP. I think if everyone knew that no change was going to happen to gear and stat caps in certain zones, they would have done what many of us suggested since beta if you want the 'best gear' -- get items with good procs/effects that bypass stat caps, get a few DoV items for yellow proc adornments, use L&L gear for all other slots. They should have dropped us in game on the Isle, putting us in GD was confusing and in contact with some of the worst balanced content on the server. No one would use GD/EW gear above L&L gear unless they had a powerful adornment for that slot since L&L gear only allows white slots. The mastercrafted DoV gear is preferred for that or some items from the DoV instances. I don't know if you're trying to clear DoV instances with just 3 people (sk/warden/bst, right?), but that's going to be rough even with 3 crate mercs and the best gear imaginable. Most of Velious discos have been by a one man team of 6, because he is patient, exceptional and has a ton of yellow adornments on each of his toons.
Gamb, are you saying if you take off your 17 potency L&L item and put on a DOV item the stat caps won't apply to that DOV item? For example say you have 340 potency from your L&L items, but in a zone like Eastern Wastes your character only has 200. You take off a 17 potency L&L item and put on a 10 potency DOV item your potency is now 210? If that's true then holy moly have we misunderstood the server caps.
