shard armor issue for preds after GU52

with the changes implimented today, many of the predators who chose to split their gear between the two types of chain due to the bonuses available on each, are now going to be wearing armor that is useless to them. before the update, the bonuses to spell dmg affected our poisons. now, that is not so.
this is not news and has been recognized by devs in previous posts. i am asking now though because i've not seen a definitive answer about this issue. to speak plainly, are those of us who chose this armor practice now out of luck? soe has made the armor worthless to us. can we exchange it now for armor that is beneficial or are we stuck with armor made worthless to the pred class by soe. We didn't choose this armor after the fact. it was done prior to soe making today's change. Reimbursement seems like the logical response to this since it was soe who created the situation.
Devs, if i missed a note about this in the update, my apologies. if not, your timely response (and affirmative action) is most appreciated.
thank you.

Luinne@Kithicor wrote:

A NPC to exchange hybrid armor for class specific armor for poison using scouts would be really appreciated. With the entire game up to this point allowing for poisons to be modified by spell bonuses, in fact an AA line helped emphasize that point, means that we made good faith decisions regarding gear choice. An exchange NPC for shard armor, and an option to disconnect +INT and any +Spell related adornments so we can sell them to get reimbursed for this shift in the proc paradigm.

near as i can tell from what i remember reading, INT will still affect poisons but +spell dmg modifiers will not. however, i may be mistaken about INT having any impact on poisons.
i am glad though i am not the only one who believe this is not only the most logical but also the most correct way to handle how the armor issue should be addressed. a turn-in NPC would spare many a heart-ache.
I have 3 pieces of each armor type, half T1 still the other half T2... that's a LOT of wasted shards and time spent, should soe decide to not do something about this. of course, the T2 portion of my set is the "off-type" armor...
i've heard rumors that the T3 merchants will be coded to accept either chain type for the turn in, however i have no real intentions of getting the T3 gear as i don't do the x2 raids. i imagine there are also others who are in the same situation.
Please soe, don't bork us on this.

Let's try and stay on topic, if you please.
Personally attacking developers is a fast track to thread lockage and vacations from the forums.
Less with the snarky and more with the debatey.
Thank you!

Well Fyre already has an Exchange Merchant in Moors, so I guess it could be possible to have an exchange set up for predators and rogues to trade in their hybrid armor pieces.
However even with the bonus on the shoulders that was increasing proc damage gone, the 3 piece set bonus is still grants you a +% to your CA. With that in mind, I'm betting that an exchange won't be added to the existing merchant in the near future.
My suggestion would be to work on your T3 armor pieces from WoE. Since predators and rogues don't have access to T3 hybrid pieces already, there is an existing merchant who will turn your Soul Lancer pieces into the appropriate T3 class set piece. While not a perfect solution, this option is already available in the game. Also considering that since the WoE timer has just been reduced to 3 days, you'll be able to run WoE twice a week and you should also see a lot more patterns being sold in chat.

I may not have legendary reading comprehension skills, but I think someone reads WAY too much in posts being made.
I see a person requesting something and giving points as to why something should happen. I even see that poster make apologies if something was missed. Dev attack post -1.
I see another person agreeing and requesting a similiar action and giving intelligent arguments as to why they believe so. Again, no Dev attack there....-2
I see the original poster replying to a reply to their post. No attack there. Where was the attack on the Dev's? I would appreciate the education on the matter, as I'm sure my reading comprehension could use some improvement.

Luinne@Kithicor wrote:

Yes, the t3 merchants will accept both types. That is how I was able to replace one of my pieces that was a hybrid armor piece.
It is clear from the discussion surrounding the upgrade to t3 armor allowing both types that the intent of the devs was that predators stick with their own class specific armor, and put that together with the upgrade merchants allowing the exchange and you get a really big justification for a simple exchange merchant.
The fact that this mechanic has been in game since the start, years ago, and the suddenness of the change means that we didnt really have time to prepare for the switch, and I think it is only fair and reasonable to allow for a swap out, preferably soon.

Dareena@Lucan DLere wrote:

This is not a solution for those of us who do not raid WoE, especially those of us who dont want to.

EverAfterIt wrote:

Quite possibly it was in the posts that I removed and I left the message as a reminder.
In the future, posts like this will inevitably lead to further epic fail on your part.

Edit: Removed explaination. Kiara beat me by less than 30 seconds LOL.

ArivenGemini wrote:

bingo. as stated before: the preds should not be forced to wear armor that was rendered useless by changes devs made to the class. It would be no different (this is an extreme example but it still applies) than taking away spells from a wizard yet giving them nothing to balance what was removed. They now simply have robes to wear and sticks to wave around. Sure, those robes and sticks have great stats but they are fundamentally worthless now to the neutered wizard class. Hybrid armored predators now have useless worthless pieces of gear which time and shards were spent to obtain. some sort of armor exchange or shard refund needs to be implimented.

Personally I don't have a problem with either direction SOE takes .. leave it the way it is or offer an exchage.

I don't hold SOE accountable for my decisions... they didnt force me to purchase a mixed set but I am glad they allowed it .... I own a mixed set myself but I made that choice .. SOE didnt ..
You can always get more shards and you don't have to raid if you don't want to ..
this is a game .. it's not life .. Do-Overs actually exist in this world .. if you have a mixed set you can either raid WOE for the tier 3 or raid the oher x4 zones for the tier 4 set ..which is a lot of fun..
or you can get more shards and get your gear that way ..
personally if you don't raid then you will have TONS of shards leftover and nothign to buy once you get your full tier 2 set and jeweler anyway. Unless you just get your shard armor to solo in old zones /shrug

I just don't see the big deal with it all .. go have fun !!

Teeboy@Butcherblock wrote:

I think the "big deal" for these folks is that , and this is the key, based on information SOE gave them, they spent dozens of hours grinding shards to "buy" what SOE was offering and then the game changed. Fair enough, its SOE's right to do. But a grace period "exchange vendor" would be a nice gesture on the developers part since this is such a dramatic change.
Imagine buying a corvette and two weeks after you get it home, the dealership says "sorry - this is too fast, drive this Kia Spectra instead". You'd want your money back. Give the players their shards , or the correct armor they can use, back.

I personally don't have an issue on it since I don't have any shard armor... ( real men don't wear shard armor )
but op has a point... it's something that preexisted and was suddenly changed...you should have an option to exchange it.... it's like changing aa lines and providing a respect...
issue is whether soe can get this out for you in a reasonable amount of time...

Kiara wrote:

Hopefully this isn't a dev attack.
Please stop giving all the attention to the the Assassins. The other classes need rebalanced ESPECIALLY after this nerf which only included an offset for assassins and left all the other classes high and dry. The rest of the players in this game should be looked at next as opposed to anymore attention given to assassin class.
The changes recommended in this thread may or may not have merit, regardless other classes have issues that do have merit and have not been addressed and are due prior to anymore benifits going to the afforementioned class.
For example WHATEVER HAPPENED to the fighter balance??!

Skwor wrote:

This proc change causing the armor to become much less than it was affects 4 sub-classes, not just assassin.
All 4 poison using scouts are affected by the fact that poisons now no longer do critical damage, and as such any of those four that have that armor should get the option to exchange it for class specific armor.
I do not think that reimbursing the shards is really appropriate, they were spent on armor they should stay on armor, and we have been told all long that there would be no shards reimbursed. Not a problem, I need replacement armor for the stuff that has been invalidated.

Skwor wrote:

Oh please. Thsi thread is about assassins NOT getting something that they have complained about since the changes in this GU were announced. I agree that other classes need some love, but with this GU assassins get nerfed along with everyone else.
Whatever happened to the fighter balance? People complained about it. So it got canned. You can thank your fellow forum posters for that, not the Devs. A lot of fighters I know who are not obsessed with the almighty parse were very happy with the fighter changes that were on test.
Their view was this: I'm hitting the same number of buttons and can hold aggro. Just because im not DPS'ing so much means NOTHING. I'm performing my primary function, which, despite desperate hand wringing, crying and wailing, is NOT DPSing for Tanks.

Teeboy@Butcherblock wrote:

The fact that a core mechanic that has been in game from launch has been changed with really not much notice, causing gear that takes extensive time to acquire to become invalidated means that they should do the right thing and allow the for sub-classes affected by this to exchange their armor for class armor.
For the record, I do raid some zones, just not WoE, it doesnt interest me and I dont have "tons" of shards left over because I certainly dont hammer out multiple instances a day like some people do.
I have two characters that have been affected by this change to a core mechanic, there have been times in the past when equipment has been invalidated and there have been measures taken to allow those affected to be recompensed or make allowances for the change. That is all I am asking.. I dont want my shards back, I want class appropriate armor and not have to go run a bunch of instances to catch back up in my personal progression of gear.

Let's get this thread back on track please.
Further comments about any one class being favoured over others will result in a very cranky dark elf.
Thank you.

Sorry for my ignorance, but what armor choices are you talking about? I wasn't aware of shard armor choices for any class, let alone specific predator options with spell crit (presumably instead of melee crit).
I only know what wiki tells me, so I guess I missed this train.

Tyger@Antonia Bayle wrote:

There is both a hybrid set of armor for tier 1 and 2 that gives bonuses that used to work on poison procs (because it was classed as a spell), procs and spells. The boosts to the various stats were nice for anyone that used poison as a notable part of their damage (or who used procs as a notable part).
When the tier 3 stuff was released, there was not an upgrade path to it from the tier 2 hybrid for predators, and when this was asked about a conversion NPC was introduced to allow them to upgrade to class specific tier 3 armor.
The general gist as I recall was that the person making the shard armor didnt understand the mechanics behind procs and poison and how spell crit and INT affected them, and put in armor that was inadvertantly better for some classes than hybrid was supposed to be. This was corrected at the tier 3 level but they didnt go back and force the T1 and 2 armor off of the affected people, nor did they adjust the armor to remove this benefit.
Once the information came about about the t3 stuff, it was apparant that it was an unintended benefit, which was going to get "corrected" one way or another.. which is fine.. the devs should be able to have a clear understanding of what a class can do and how it benefits from gear, and adjusting the procs in game to not crit allows them to do that better and is a way to adjust this hybrid armor to no longer be that unintended benfit.
The problem as I see it is that this core mechanic, that of procs being boosted by spell crit, etc, has been in game since the beginning, and there have been people who have built their gear around that base mechanic. Such a major change to that core mechanic should allow for people who have spent considerable time setting up their gear to recoup some of that time by switching to an alternative.
In this case its a very simple switch, allow the 4 classes most affected to swap hybrid gear for class specific gear. Reimbursing the shards isnt really acceptable, it will cause no end of trouble from people wanting reimbursement of shards for all kinds of things.. but a one for one swap, armor piece for armor piece would allow people to just get what they bought... armor for their character.
At the end of all this, it shows us how complex the entire system is, and how minor mistakes can blossom into major changes... I am not upset at the proc change.. it does look like something that needs to happen for a clearer progression in the game. I am not upset that the gear is not something they want me to wear, I am willing to swap. I am just disappointed that they took our effort and invalidated it, giving us a good chunk of wasted time because there is no mechanic to recover this time.