And if they had kept the 1 rare to 1 piece of MC gear people wouldn't bust their hump trying to get Lumium clusters. AoM is a game changer as far as the cost of crafting components (and effectiveness of what is crafted) is concerned. About the only thing that stayed consistent was expert spells. Fortunately if Dev decides to re-introduce dusts they probably won't revamp all of the gnostic potions to use them, because the upper end potions also used dust. Now how much poison each dust actually produces...if its equivalently more than what you can get from the current Hiven Root recipes why not just skip the dust nonsense and just increase the output from the current recipes? Regardless of which rare harvest poison is going to be based off of, it will drive the market for that rare. If dusts are used then Sapphires and Lumium become the new poison material, which is bad. First, half of the products produced by the same node are going to have a higher demand than just the use of poison. Three months after AoM launched Lumium still has a strong demand and that is before expert spells were recently revamped. Sapphires are a junk rare now, but poison will eat through the supply quickly and you'll run into the other problem. Out of all the rares Hiven roots are easier to harvest because there are 2 nodes that produce Hiven roots, and only Hiven roots. Versus stone nodes that produce a split of Lumium and Sapphires. With a split in the cost of the two rares, it means a substantial amount of the supply of potential poison will get diverted to other uses if dust is re-introduced, as was. I also had a dust idea, but I called for a change of source on dust. Instead of relying on expert spells to produce it I wanted dust to be made directly from any rare. You could combine both ideas, having expert spells produce 2 dust per spell, and the straight conversion produce 5-10 dust. That way you'd get the best of both without most of the negatives.
Simple Question: aimed at anyone who has an opinion... In your mind what *should* top tier poisons cost? ie, what would be fair for each Exemplar's xxxxx Poison? (Keep in mind fuel costs, 13.5g/use. Don't worry about the market cost of Hiven Root. That's easy math to do. And that's based on a completely artificial per server manipulated market price. This is purely a "It provides xxx benefit, and would be fair if it cost yyy" question. Looking for opinions from both sides of the argument.. (innocent bystanders, peanut gallery, etc...)
What about, instead of converting directly from rare to dust, have the dust result from the use of rares? So that it would open the source of the dust to any craft. That way the production of the dust would be directly tied to the production of items (and each rare used could yield a set number per rare - so that an item that takes, say, five rares to make produces five times the dust of an item that only takes one rare to make. That would increase the available components for poisons without completely trivializing them. __________________________________________________________________________ For those that wonder why I would prefer not to have them trivialized, it is simple. Once something becomes trivial to acquire, it starts to trickle down to content for which it was not intended. This means that items that were intended primarily for raid use will start to become used - and then required - in Heroic content, then it will start to be used in Advanced Solo content, and then in Solo and Overland content. In essence, it becomes the de facto standard for use. In response, later content must be tuned against that standard - otherwise the content will be considered trivial and people will quickly start complaining that they have exhausted the content. This happened with Adept spells and CAs (back when they were Adept I). It happened with Experts. It will likely soon happen to Masters (especially as the components for Grandmasters start becoming more prevalent). It will eventually happen with pretty much anything consumable. However, just because it is likely inevitable doesn't mean that we should seek to hasten toward that end. Folks don't have to agree with me. However, if acquisition of the poisons becomes trivialized, and people in later content start asking why all of the content is so hard, I'll just point them to this thread (assuming that it is available somewhere - such as in the archives at EQ2Wire) and let them make their own assumptions as to the identity of one of the contributing factors.
I'm not sure how long it takes to burn through 1 dose of poison. I'm personally thinking of a cost somewhere between 10-20p an hour. Its enough to discourage rare poison from being used constantly without becoming too much of a burden. Though some people will use it constantly anyways because most people earn more than that per hour adventuring. Maybe the price point should be a bit higher, since scouts are managing with what they report as a 100-150p an hour cost and its still a high usage, but I'm concerned that any higher than 20p and it will have a cooling effect on anyone not raiding. Then again, that could be a good thing.
Any fix that lowers the cost will also make the "rare" poisons the defacto poisons in group content. Lets not kid ourselves here, scouts drive the price of Hiven Roots and raiders are willing to pay the current level to use poison constantly on raids. Until you can open the supply up to exceed their demand the price won't fall. It isn't like hiven roots have disappeared from the broker, just below a certain price (set by each servers population) a poison using scout will buy up all hiven roots for poison. By spreading the recipe over multiple rares your creating a new constraint. The demand generated by raiders for poison would be exceeded by the total population of rares, but the value of all rares will be held high by other uses. The "cheap" low demand rares will raise in value as they get used for poison. Other rares will hold higher value because of their use vs supply. If all poison only used dust and all MC recipes produced them then hiven root would crash in price bottoming out along side of sapphires. "Junk" belts and cloaks would be produced as well as junk experts just so dust would be created. Sure, lots of MC gear is being made but the demand for poison is strong. While everybody would be producing dust, getting that dust from lots of crafters to the ones that want to produce poison would be inefficient. Lots of crafters are natural hoarders, and the dust they produce would just sit in a bank or depot somewhere. There would also be a glut of MC gear produced to make dust for poison. Lots of carbinite salvaged, means lots of weapons and armor produced. Which generally means encouraging more people to compete in those markets. I don't see that as healthy for crafting overall as just allowing dust to be made directly from a rare.
OK, so your guys new argument is scouts should be able to do X DPS in raids, but then do less DPS in Heroic's and lesser still in Adv Solo's? That sure sounds like the new argument for why poisons should cost excessive amounts to use. The really sad thing is that makes sense to you. 22 other classes skills all work the same raid, heroic, adv solo. But the other four classes in game aren't allowed to because that will somehow break the game. Just WOW
Get rid of poisons and come up with more powerful potions for alchemists to make to offset the profits that alchemist crafters make. This opens up all 26 classes to then be able to buy potions off the alchemists instead of just 4 classes that use poisons buying from alchemists. If you elect not to use these new potions, then it's your own fault that you're DPS is not up to par with what others are doing. This is the same concept of food and drink. You have 26 classes buying food and drink, so with my suggestion, you'd have 26 classes buying your new potions and it will make up for the loss of poison income that you make from the 2 rogue and 2 predator classes. Turn the deaggro poison into a deaggro potion and open it up to everyone that wants to use it. Thing is, you can only have one of these new potions active at a time, so people will have to decide what potion they want to use. Four scout classes shouldn't have to rely on poisons to DPS, debuff, and deaggro. Make our combat arts powerful enough to compete with other classes and their DPS output and make our debuffs matter (swashbuckler vs brigand, ah heck give the BLs some love, too...poor sods).
Do you really see things like this, or is this just the best tactic you can come up with as an counter argument? First, there is nothing new about this. Second who is making an argument that it should cost excessive amounts? Third, the discussion is moving on to "what is a reasonable amount" which seems like its kryptonite to you because your running from it. And if there is anything sad its your attempts to drag the discussion backward into arguments that have quite frankly been discussed to the point there isn't any progress to be made with further discussion. We are discussing how people will actually use poison, both now and a theoretical "when a change gets made". There actually is a thought that if poison costs horrible amounts that maybe the sane people would only use exemplar poison on raids and use handcrafted for everything else. You know run a budget. Because the poison is expensive and you need to be top of your game for raiding, but do you for everything else? Especially if your actually successful on raids maybe you're starting to get overgeared for group content and you probably can cake walk group encounters and maybe you don't need to push yourself like your still raiding? Or maybe group instances are just as hard as raiding now? Are group instances so hard you need exemplar poison to do them? And honestly if you want to be exactly like the other 22 classes so much, why are you still a scout? This is a lame excuse that gets trotted out at the end of just about every post Crychtonn makes, and its dumb. Listen, if you feel these 4 classes are so put upon that its a real burden to play one, then why are you playing it? Is it because at heart your a leather wearing, poison using, knife carrying backstabber? Some survivalist hunter that enjoys the longer hunting season of bows? Or maybe just a masochist that enjoys the idea that someone out there punishes you? Is there something unfair going on with scouts and poison? We get that. This is an entire thread of people getting that. There are 10 pages of people getting that. Trying to play the martyr card with every post is a lot redundant. As I've said before, the best you can achieve by continuing with this attitude is to drive people away from your cause and create enemies. It would also help if you actually considered what people are saying, instead of trying to reshape their argument into something you can easily refute. Setting up your own strawman every other post is getting to be incredibly repeditive and unfortunately predictable.
Meirril you are the one that's turned a simple request into a 10 page thread. You've also ignored every time you were proven wrong. Along with changing your argument anytime someone pointed out a flaw of yours. You also like to ignore how big a change in cost has occurred. Playing blind to 10 years of history on the costs of what's being discussed. You keep saying you're looking out for alchemist. When you don't even understand this high cost hurts them. Most people I know including myself that used to spend on the broker for poisons no longer do. We waste our game time harvesting or getting buy from nice people in guild for hiven roots. The only people that'd get hurt by the change I proposed are the harvesters. That's where all the money is at. I play my ranger still because I enjoy the class. As I pointed out before this thread is the exact same as when arrow usage went through the roof do to game changes. There were people exactly like you claiming to be defenders of the woodworkers of the world. And like you had no first hand knowledge of the situation because they didn't play the class involved. It took some time and long threads just like this one. But guess what changes where made to drastically reduce that cost. Caith has posted they are working on the scout revamp among other things. Which if those other things includes opening up poisons to all classes I'm perfectly fine with it. Hey there I go again saying I'm fine with one of your suggestions. Don't worry I won't feel bad if you ignore that again like the last time I said it.
Funny, here you are again saying the same stuff and trying to rephrase the argument. Maybe because you want to avoid discussing what might actually be a reasonable cost? Your mister experience, mister "you don't play so you can't know". Well then, come on down and testify. Actually participate in the discussion. Instead of trying to go back and beat a dead horse. And I'm wrong about what? Everything you've brought up I've discussed. I've even considered if you were right. Nevermind the ton and a half of counter points I've brought up to Crychtonn's arguments. He can't be bothered to address them because he's got nothing. The best he can do is throw lame accusations at me personally because he can't actually refute the counter points I've made. This is almost like taking Argumentation 105 again and Crychtonn is just matching down the do not list of making an argument. How does high cost of materials hurt alchemists? This is the first time you've made this argument, and you really haven't bothered to flesh out this point at all. Hiven roots are widely available. There is high demand for the exemplar poison. What part of this is bad for alchemists? Actually in a really perverted way, the high cost is making the handcrafted poison more marketable, because if the exemplar becomes cheap enough to use constantly there won't be a market for the handcrafted. Really, the only thing that really effects the demand is going to be the popularity of the poison using classes, and the effectiveness of poison. Or if the supply of materials suddenly becomes constricted. And as far as crafting is concerned, the money has always been in harvesting. Or rather I should say in who ever provides the rare ingredients. That is the way it is. The only time the crafters are in charge is when the crafters provide the rare ingredients, which really only happens with blank runes. Or I suppose provisioners and food, and you can see where that market is. Fighting over coppers. Which also goes to illustrate that making poison dirt cheap isn't good for alchemists, there simply won't be any room for profit when the only cost is fuel and the undercutting goes ballistic like it does with food and drink. There have been lots of threads like this one. Not only was there a time when arrow consumption got to be ridiculous because of the changes to combat mechanics, but there was also a point when the market for arrows almost completely disappeared. Remember when all the upper tier ranged weapons clicked to create ammo? That killed the market for ammo. There wasn't as much rage then as there was with massive ammo consumption, but it did have a cooling effect on crafting. The point being is when a few scouts are in a bad situation the screaming starts and something happens to change it in a few months. If you have any memory at all you'll realize what I just said is absolutely true. When something similar happens to crafters it can take YEARS to fix. Hell, Jewelers just got fixed and that has been needed for 5 years now. So as long as we're discussing crafting you'll have to forgive me for defending a crafting class. The really weird thing is essentially we're both making arguments on reducing the costs of poison. I just don't agree with your ideas, and I've pointed out why. Especially the one where you called for the elimination of poisons and that those benifits be converted to class abilities. Anyways, your fine if poisons get opened up to everybody, as part of the scout revamp. Great. Personally I'd love for the scout revamp to come sooner than later. Maybe then poison (with no change in poison mechanics) would get reduced to the ~10% of scout DPS is should be. Not that it would really change things, poison usage wouldn't go down so the problem would still exist.
I'd be fine with poison cost around 1 plat per vial or a little higher. I'd also have been less confrontational if you'd not been so hypocritical. You say you're here to defend crafters. That the high price of poisons (two items) is good for crafting. But as one of your arguments against changing the main component to Incandescent Material you use the following. You are saying on one hand a high price for the two poisons is good and then saying it would be bad if Xiocite items had an increased price. How can you claim it's good for one and bad for the other? You use the amount of DPS poisons do as a another reason they should cost a lot. Last time I checked auto attack does even more DPS on my parse then poisons. As a ranger my auto attack requires the use of ammo. Ammo is also a consumable. Using your method for why things should cost a lot arrows should be costing a fortune. Reality is they don't. Not anymore because the Dev's made changes to fix the problem when they did. For the record the Ethereal bows are the first ammo summoning bows since Kingdom of the Sky. They were also extremely rare selling in auction for upwards of 25,000 plat. But what's funning is you claiming that all the upper tier ranged weapons could create ammo. When in fact there was only one bow and not even the best bow that did. FYI the Consumer of Bones bow was the best and it didn't make ammo. What cooled off ammo sales for woodworkers were the tradeskill apprentice research recipes. Those things that allowed any crafter to research and be able to make the best ammo. The exact same as it is this expansion with the Fragment ammo. I can make the best ammo on Five different crafters non of which are woodworkers. You've posted enough in the Fragment thread I find it hard to believe you can't put one and one together. That would be the same thread that included ranged classes pointing out the unfairness of melee and ranged priest/mage weapons having unlimited hits and they only got 4,000 and would have to get another Fragment. I don't recall your outrage or pages of post against that. Nor any negative comment when the Dev's added an additional ammo only Fragment to correct the issue. At this point it's easiest to say we will never agree and wait and see what changes happen. Scout changes are going to happen. No one here knows what all they will change. I'll sit back and hope for certain changes and you can hope for others. I'll leave this thread with one last tidbit. You once asked for a consensus. While it may not be what you want I give you this. All the posts I've made in this thread have garnered 22 Likes vs your post collecting 7 Likes. That's even giving you the 2 you received on your sarcastic post stating give scouts everything. Pretty sure the 2 scouts that liked it did it in the same ilk as your post. That's a 3 to 1 ratio. Food for thought. With that I bid this thread goodbye PS - Scouts wear Chain armor not Leather. At least know the basics of the classes involved if you're going to argue this much.
Fact: New poisons are useful (FYI: poisons needed a serious overhaul and it was time they got some loving but who would have dreamed the loving would come with this kind of price tag?) New poisons require rares to make- must harvest the rares or buy - one is a time sink the other a money sink for 4 classes Rare prices are controlled by harvesters/economy not by 4 scout classes New poison recipe makes 10 poison - a puny amount considering infused posions from last xpac made 50 Price per poison controlled by alchemist/harvester not scout Only 4 classes use poisons - theose 4 classes happen to be scouts IMO: these 4 scout classes are being taken to the cleaners either by the hours of time spent harvesting or the plat paid out for hivens/posions. As stated earlier - no other class has this kind of burden placed on them in order to dps/debuff mobs in gorups/raids. It's not that these poisons are overpowered....because they aren't by todays standards.....right now they are a bandaid to an age old scout dps issue....meanwhile plat flows freely to those who seem to think they ultimately deserve to make a profit off these 4 classes...and 4 scout classes are upset and rightfully so!.
Going to do a lot of taking apart this post so lets start by saying thank you for having some input on a part of the discussion that hasn't been fully explored.
And again with putting words in my mouth. So, source please? If I said it, quote it. The part you did quote is very valid. Trying to fix one part of crafting by punishing the rest of crafting is the exact same as trying to get the other 25 classes nerfed because your class isn't doing well. If your trying to fix something, you have to make sure your not breaking everything else. Again, I'm primarily concerned with crafting, and I mean all 9 classes. Trying to fix one crafting class at the detriment of another isn't a fix, its shifting the problem from one class to another. While the potential for causing that sort of wide spread issue is low, if poisons required 10 incandescent materials for each hiven root it uses now that could result in a wide spread shortage that isn't easily fixed. Since we're talking about hypotheticals, it would be negligent to not mention the worse possible case scenario.
You really don't seem to know what I was talking about. EoF was lousy with legendary and fabled bows that clicked to create ammo. Thrown weapons and bows. The second best bow in the game also clicked to create the best ammo in the game (better than any crafted ammo). Even commonly available group instance drops clicked to produce ammo that was equal to crafted ammo. The next expansion woodworkers couldn't sell arrows. People were still using the ammo from last tiers weapons and they were complaining that there were barely any weapons to replace the click effect from the last tier. The apprentice researchers have been a mixed bag for crafting. But just like specialized crafting in every tier since TSO there is a demand for the crafted items, and even if those recipes are generic overall its good for crafting. Most classes prefer the recipes be broken up by class, but the fact that it generates interest in crafting is enough for someone that is more concerned with the general activity than any single class. Also people did use handcrafted arrows when apprentices offered recipes for rare arrows. Sure, you would use the more expensive arrows for raids and even tough group encounters. But if you used them for everything you were just wasting plat. Some people did, lots of people switched ammo based on what they were facing.
Let see, what did I say over there? Back before the Fragment of Elements was introduced I said that it was a waste to make the ammo because you could have a permanent item. I also said there was some utility to the way ammo and bows work over how the rest of weapons work because you could pick and choose which damage type you do based on the encounter. And when something gets fixed in a satisfactory way, why make comments?
It isn't about agreeing, its about exploring the topic until you've exhausted the avenues to pursue. I'm actually not sure that has been accomplished. We have talked certain potions of this topic to death. As for scout changes, other than an overall improvement in performance I don't actually care about specific changes. Nor do I have an actual opinion. Until it involves a crafting class (or Lore) I really won't have an opinion. For what its worth, good luck.
Funny, I didn't think consensus was a popularity contest. I thought it was talking about a position until you've distilled it down to a point where everybody agrees. The only consensus we reached is that poison as it is now is too expensive and something needs to be done about it. What we didn't reach consensus about is how that should be achieved. Considering that the community couldn't reach a consensus, it isn't like we can say dev wasn't listening if and when they change poison recipes and we don't like the results. And while the likes were 22 to 7, your also talking about 8 different people vs 4. 7 of Cyrchtonn's likes were from Ruckus. And what is a like? I think of it as a "me too" for that one post. Not an overall validation of everything a person has said in a thread. Or at least when I give a like it means this person said something I support, not that I think the person who said it is necessarily important. I tried walking away from this thread once already. Good luck again.
I think those of us following this thread can see that this has become primarily nothing more than bantering back and forth he said I said you said between you and the OP. It doesn't matter who has the last word....what matters is exactly what you posted above!
