New Merchant in Thalumbra, missing caster belts cloaks?

Good so we agree. But given that they are available outside of raids, it's messed up that its a complete lottery for people doing trivial content. If two assassins both spend 50 hours grinding gu100 key quests (totally trivial), in what world does it make sense that the luckier of the two assassins ends up doing 50% more DPS?

hope you put in duck helm as well

So your response to them making it available outside of raids is just to take it all the way down the slippery slope and say "everyone should be guaranteed the ability to buy them"? Because I guarantee everyone would do that token grind, and then the weapons are no longer really part of a "special tier above fabled" - they are just default gear that's required to get into groups or guilds.

The Immolation weapons and the ethereal runes and weapons are rare/hard enough to get that they can be justified as having special above baseline powers. If you make them gauranteed via a token grind, you do one of two things:

1) The cost In tokens is low enough that most non-casual people can get it. It becomes a default requirement. Casual players get frustrated because they aren't being allowed into groups and even easy raid content is being balanced around these items.
2) The cost in tokens is high enough that most people aren't willing to do the grind. Playerbase gets incredibly frustrated at, in their minds, "what the devs expect us to do to be competitive." People whine and quit.

It's a lose lose proposition from the Dev perspective.

The right answer in any MMO, when it comes to game-changing items, is to make them extremely rare (RNG) and hard to get (raid drops). When you start violating that paradigm, you're going to make your game damn hard to balance.

Riiiiiight...

Look, I'm all for putting powerful items behind hard to get mobs or hard to complete quest lines. Mythical weapons in RoK were an awesome implementation, maybe the best thing EQ2 has ever done, seriously. In solo/heroic you could complete a challenging questline to get a BiS (for heroic) weapon. Then for raiders, you could upgrade that weapon further by killing hard raid mobs. Excellent.

Ire-Dread is sort of reasonable. An extremely low drop-rate off a one-shot mob that has stiff fail conditions. Sure the mob itself isnt that hard, but all in all it is a defensible place to put that weapon. But putting eth runes as .01% chance rewards off solo quests? Get out of here. That's insane. "+50% dps if you got lucky that one time you opened a key from a trivial quest"

And regarding default gear that's required to get into groups or guilds? Two assassin's apply for 1 slot in a raid. Who's gonna get it, all else equal? Yeah you're damn right it's the one with the eth. At least if it was 'default gear' then assassin #2 would have the power to take the steps to get his eth and get that raid slot. But as it is, it's worse than eths being default gear. You got faithass? Free ride into any raid guild you want as long as you can show up and follow instructions. No faithass? spend all day grinding key quests hoping to get lucky.

I believe we are in violent agreement.

The problem with Ethereals/Immolation is that they will (if not already) force the Devs' hands when it comes to balancing encounters. Fights will need to be balanced around DPS having these items, which will leave those without the items at an extreme disadvantage.

Since I don't expect we'll see the removal of the effects, I hope that DBG finally lives up to their promise of making the effects "readily available." (RNG nonsense is not that)

Except that you are advocating that the current state is better than if there was a clear path to obtaining eths. Currently eths are a trump card - 'jump directly to the front of the line". whereas scouts with eths - "go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200."

I'd be alright with that as long as there was a clear path to getting one, if "jail" was "complete sig line X". But there isn't, and it's not. Jail is "spend all day farming keys for lottery tickets. one day you may get your eth, but it may be July. It may be August. have fun!"

These items should have never seen the light of day to begin with.... It quickly turns into oh you don't have this one distinct piece so you are a detriment to the raid. Good bye. Or even groups. You only did 80m dps you suck. Well it isn't my fault I don't have these fancy items. It's the fault of RNGeezus. Ya want to put them behind x4's then by all means do that. Because when it gets down to desirability of the player based on pure dumb luck over skill and dedication... I have a SERIOUS problem with that.

Rare(not ultra rare <1%) drops in ALL heroics, I'm ok with.
Hiding them behind x4's I'm ok with.
A looooooooooooong quest line like the myth weapons of old or heavy token grind, I'm ok with.
Key quests can go suck it.

Many of the items the merchant had, dropped in Heroic Zones--some of which we ran every day, to help folks get specific items. I had several of the vendor's items already on, like Will to Live, etc. I did buy a couple upgrades, including the Green Adorn. That is impressive.

Embrace the RNG, its not going anywhere and it does have its own benefits. It's pretty clear by now that a clear cut path to these items is not in the gameplan.

But they need to spread the ultra rare RNG chances throughout a wider range of current content in some manner. I don't want there to be a 0% chance of desirable loot dropping in a majority of zones. Just a tiny chance to drop from golem or kraletus or vanlith or zek raid. Same for challenge mode heroics.

I skimmed most of this thread but I will agree that raid loot should not be on the merchant but all key loot should be, because key quests are the dumbest RNG this game has to offer outside of the hammer and duck helm

Will have to forgive me I was referring to the "game changers".

I think the merchant is kind of silly when the content is still current but I didn't hesitate to go shopping.

This is 6 month old content now to be fair, and the vast majority of items there are better equivalents in the new content.

We always complain there was no rare merchant in AOM for ages, and now we've been given one before the asking began.

Will there be any different kinds of green adornments added to this merchant or will it remain to only have one?

Not sure if happy for any comment or frustrated cause max vague. =p

Will they be renamed Uber By Gawd or Super Duper instead?

Please, no more grindfest to chase that 0.05% drop rate. I pretty much wasted my entire summer last year and 0 scout weapons dropped in our group (same 8-10 people ran in this group). If we were not chasing after that super rare shiny that only showed up twice, we were chasing those ethereals that barely happened.

If I had gotten tokens for every failed attempt to get an ethereal, and then took them to an NPC to buy an ethereal, I would have at least felt like I accomplished something last summer.

ethereal robes!

Ethereal food and drink