First the major bug, when the drinal merchant gear is auto unadorned and unattuned upon login, it reset the level of the green adorn attached to it back to lv 1. Now the new gear... +2 green stats and +.2 cb/pot still is not adequate. The screenshot below shows the solo zone BP compared to the Drinal's Steward BP: As you can plainly see, the solo bp (on the right) has higher bps, attack speed (42 before the reforge), crit bonus, potency, stamina, strength, mitigation and riposte chance which the drinal one does not have at all. PLUS it has a red slot. Boost the merchant loot to AT LEAST 180 str, 185 sta, 10.6 pot/cb, etc and add a red slot. It won't be a major upgrade over the solo loot but at least it will have visibly higher stats. As for the jewelry, maybe consider adding sleepers tomb esque set bonuses and procs. Especially on the charms as the sleeper's tomb set is not replaceable by the current merchant charms.
They can't buff things that high, 180's is the level of EM Raid Gear... which Steward gear is not. Honestly the proper solution to this situation is to reduce the Primal BP's stats down to 173 STR and 177 STA with 19% CB and 9% Potency *these are not actual numbers just estimates. I would have to look at Legendary CoE BP's to gauge where the Fabled Solo would have to fall but really Solo-Fabled should be just as strong as Heroic Legendary.
If the 180 mark is just too high/close to em raid then yea they would have to slightly nerf the solo loot but would still need to add red slots to the merchant loot, there is really no way around it at this point. It has taken way too long to be addressed and many people have invested a lot of time to be nerfed by that much.
Why do the Faction Merchants need Reds? If done right a few groups of Faction Players should be able to clear some EM-Raid with a pickup and earn the redslots that way. I could see maybe adding a Redslot to the Steward BP; then again I have never liked that the rare-Solo pieces have Reds given how hard it is for non-raiders to get Redslots and also the fact that Reds aren't super important to clearing Heroic/Solo content. It was my understanding that a Red Adornment was aimed to give a Raider the edge on a boss without making their Gear flat-out too good when compared to Heroic. *Sorry the grammar is a bit off, I think there is a run-on sentence in there but I am in the Plane of War atm.
The faction armor needs a red slot so that there's progression from Solo gear to Heroic gear to Raid gear that makes sense. The solo armor is still better than the faction merchant and adding a red slot will make the faction merchant gear viable vs. the solo gear. The OP CLEARLY showed the difference between solo and Heroic loot. Unless SOE all of a sudden now wants the progression for armor to be Heroic then Solo then Raid... then there's a fundamental issue that they need to resolve with the faction armor. With that being said, if you don't understand that Heroic gear that requires you do complete the Sig quest line, then loot 10 Obols and get a Greater Spirit should be better than Solo gear that requires substantially less time and effort to complete then you are beyond hope. SOE shouldn't nerf the Solo loot, but at the same time this faction gear needs to be slightly better. Plz stop posting non-sense questions and answers about topics that you clearly do not understand the core issues of. I'm not trying to be rude, just save your breath (and the efforts of the people that try to correct you). This topic, as well as many that you reply to, do not effect you and you have no relevance to.
Faction merchant gear needs red slots because there is no possible way to make the solo loot irrelevant without doing so aside from nerfing that gear to be less than SS loot. If the solo loot were to be nerfed to not have red slots it would be a DRAMATIC loss in stats. The devs waited way too long to do anything about this, if that loot had been nerfed in the first few weeks of the xpack, sure but its been 2 months of people running solos for hours upon hours everyday, you cannot just undo that amount of time spent overnight without upsetting a large number of people. How would you feel if your raid gear that you'd been farming for 2 months got instantly reduced to last xpack's gear? As far was red slots being for raiders, things change. Remember when yellow + red was hardmode only? Now it's dropping in solo zones. At the end of last xpack it was possible to have 5/7 slots red slotted solely from heroic gear. Natural gear progression would indicate possibly filling out those last 2 slots otherwise you are getting downgrades due to how much those red slots add.
Thanks for the pointed response there lol. I haven't sat down and examined the whole progress table since I was crunching the Heroic vs Solo issue. Heroic is being fixed and I had not yet looked at the Steward Table. Yes perhaps my preference to Reds being Raid only is an old-world preference. Things do change. Either way SOE will fill out the Steward Gear how they feel it will balance. Perhaps when I take a more reasonable/in-depth look at it I will reach the same conclusion as you have. I still think it was a very bad idea to place Reds on Solo gear to begin with.
Though I wish to address this directly. I happen to have alts who use Steward gear so this does effect me. As I just said above I agreed that things do change. Perhaps you read to far into what is my opinion. Opinions can be said, I am not suggesting they nerf Solo out of sheer fact I hate solo play because I don't. I regret having said "the proper solution is" because really that is only one solution... not the only solution. Yes it was clearly shown above, and I agreed that the difference was not enough. Moving the Red off the Solo item and maybe adding it to the Steward would be a workable change, though a bit late. I really do find it sad that you had to add that bit directly attacking me. You are free to disagree with my opinion, attacking me though is not a constructive way to do so. Also I play this game; Raid, Solo and Heroic levels depending on the toon I am on. So these threads DO effect me, just because I list my Raider as my forum presence does not mean that I don't have thoughts about other play styles. It sounds to me like you read "I think Reds belong in raid only" and stopped there. Truthfully said Gaarysal gave a much more reasonable response. They pointed out that times do change and perhaps my thoughts are outdated and I should rethink my stance on Red Slots.
The items beeing handed out are not in line of any progres. Thats what SoE needs to address.... or should have addressed, about 1-2 mont ago.... I´m not into screaming nerv, but the solo should be a bit less powerfull (as all the solo loot should be, might make some peeps do more heroic zones ^^). But since when we got a faction vendor ?
We have had the "faction" vendor since launch of CoE. Though I wouldn't call it a faction merchant as there is no faction to grind... just the Signature Quest.
Perhaps a solution might be to make 160 legendary armor (two white and a yellow slot) drop in the solo zones commonly to match the jewelry, weapons, etc. already dropping there and remove the solo fabled armor entirely but allow those who have it to keep it. Along with adding red slots to steward merch with the new stat bump. This would accomplish a few things. First, it would be easier for new toons to gear appropriately for heroic zones by running solos, the 160 gear would replace SS faction merchant gear. Second, nobody would be unhappy because their gear got nerfed they would still have the armor they spent their time getting but would now need to do heroic zones to finish off their set. Third, heroic gear (steward set) would be a vast upgrade over both SS and solo gear. Additionally the solo zones would still be worthwhile for heroic and raid geared people since the rare ethereals are still very nice and appropriately rare. edit: also worth noting the current solo fabled which also drops off raid trash would be slightly better than steward armor and be acceptable as the very basic raid gear that it currently is.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I don't think going back and nerfing/reversing the fabled drops from solo is a good idea. I am never one to call for nerfs unless it is something that severely impacts the functions of the game. The major concern for me is the missing red slots from Drinal gear. This wouldn't really be a concern if the new "rare" loots from the heroic named were actually armor pieces with red slots that are slightly below CoE Easy Mode armor. Drinal gear can then be looked at as the Heroic starter gear and running the zones would give you chances at the upgraded set. If Drinal gear is considered the top of the line for Heroics, once you get your set, you would have zero reason to run a heroic again. The new "rare" loots need to be that reason. I think adding 165 stat Legendary armor is a great idea. It gives the solo players or new players/alts a functional and fairly quick way of getting a toon to the level of participating in heroic content. They can still get lucky and get a fabled drop which would put that single armor piece in the middle tier of heroic. They still have to deal with the RNG and getting lucky for a piece they can actually use. So this is the layout that would make the most sense in my opinion in regards to armor.. 165 Solo Legendary Armor w 1 Yellow > 175 Drinal Heroic Legendary Armor w 1 Yellow > 180 Solo Fabled Rare Armor w Red/Yellow > 185 Heroic Fabled Rare Armor w Red/Yellow > 190 Normal Raid Armor > 205 Hard Mode Armor Just to get started and get geared up, farm some solos with a chance at getting lucky and getting a rare drop thats slightly better than heroic starter gear. This gives the soloers good gear while also giving heroic players a reason to run solos between groups for a shot at gear slightly better than drinal without having to spend essences/obols. A design like this gives everyone involved a rare chance to loot an item that steps them up to the next tier. The only gap is between Heroic and Raid which should exist because you are going from a 6 person environment reward to a 24 person reward. Heroic rare fabled should come close to Easy Mode, not eclipse it.
Red/Yellow slots, on it or not, if you not happen to run raidinis from expac before (or do them right now), you aint have any shard to pay for and get them anyways (if you not raid). So most problem is, that we can´t buy any rune from new expac set anywhere.....
I think they are saying those who have Fabled Solo loot get to keep it and the loot is just removed from Solo Zones. Thus no one who has gear already is punished with nerfs, however you need Solo/Heroic to complete your set or you can go for full Heroic-Steward gear with Rare pieces being on par with EM-Raid. Issue currently is that Solo-Fabled is > Heroic Fabled. The stats are out of whack not to mention that Solo has a Red-Slot and Heroic does not. For some reason I am having a hard time comprehending the rest of your post though... I will write that off as having been awake for too long so I will stop there with my response.
Solo players can get reds from running advanced solos and crunching the rare fabled for the runes off of them. It's not optimal, but it is an option. It's honestly more reasonable to let them do that than it was to even include red slots on solo gear in my opinion. What's done is done though.
I know what they are saying and the issue is you either nerf the Fabled Solo to where they should have been for everyone or you remove the drops. If you remove the drops, YOU HAVE to add new legendary armor because otherwise a soloer can only obtain armor via tradeskilling/questing and forcing them down that route would be interesting..... The Solo-Fabled > Heroic Fabled can be fixed IF they add in new Heroic Fabled drops that include red slots. They already said they were adding new rare drops to the named. If this includes armor with reds then there isn't an issue. Drinal Faction with Yellow Easy to get > Solo Fabled with Red harder to get > Heroic Fabled with Red same difficulty as solo but better stats
By removing the gear but letting people who have it keep it, you reward people's time spent but you do not perpetuate the problem going forward. Yes, new armor drops would need to be added like I put in that post originally, it's a 3 step process (red slots to drinal would also be essential). As far as armor being included in the rare drops, I'd like to see this but it doesn't solve the current issue which is that solo > drinal merchant. Even simply adding a red slot to drinal gear won't be enough because it still has lesser stats than solo, albeit it's 1 point less but tbh that's enough to not incentivize people to group (why go through the trouble of forming or dealing with a pug when you can solo and get the same/better gear?). As far as boosting the stats on drinal gear further, estred had pointed out that this would make it too close to raid gear. My post was a suggestion that satisfies the raider concern that heroic is encroaching on their loot and flat out fixes the solo vs heroic debate. Also I'd like to add the new mcrafted armor is actually very viable after being refined and experimented.
Drinal merchant armor (if made to have red slots) would come with random red adorns. To get the one you want you buy duplicate gear with extra spirits.
Adding the red slot to drinal would be MORE than enough to fix the solo vs fabled issue. With the latest heroic changes, there is absolutely no comparison in the difficutly it takes to get 1 greater spirit and 10 obols versus actually getting the solo fabled rare item you are looking for. I have ran somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 to 500 advanced solo's and have never seen a plate fighter breastplate. With the new spirit changes, I have 4 sitting in the bank just waiting on me to get 10 obols to get the fighter breastplate. I got 1 of those greater spirits out of Dreadcutter which took less than 15 minutes to clear. Any heroic grouping player wasting time running advanced solos looking for a fabled armor drop over Drinal merchant buffed gear would be insane. Yes, mastercrafted refined/experimented would be an option for starter gear over adding armor to the advanced solos, but would still be FORCING someone who prefers the solo adventure experience to either craft, farm platinum to broker, or interact with other players to have the items made. While I don't feel that this would necessarily be a bad thing, it does force the player into avenues they may not be comfortable with or enjoy.
