Ok, so I think this item raises questions. They've now adjusted it to be GREATER ETHEREAL RELIC. Let's assume it's going to stay that way so we drop the chest/legs piece from last year. Makes sense, although I don't like it for my characters. The problem is, with the boost to melee damage this year, a good number of us have gone for a flurry spec, and with flurry mitigation in BoL around the 100 mark, it's essential to use 3 flurry items to get far enough beyond this mark to get a decent boost from it. As BoL has ZERO flurry items on any slots other than neck, cloak and waist, that means this item throws up a stark choice. To flurry or not to flurry? (Or perhaps, to use a very old low resolve flurry item from CD as they had rings/wrist etc too). For me, as a monk with ok challenge mode gear and a good but not perfect group setup, I calculate roughly that flurry boosts my dps by about 12-15%. Melee is for me about 25-35% of my overall parse, and after mitigation my flurry is around the 40-45% mark in challenge (about 149% minimum, more possible with a few tweaks to our group). So why doesn't this cloak have flurry on it? It's meant to be BiS and I'm sure in terms of potency, it will be. But Seru drops a 200 resolve cloak with flurry, ab mod, mit and all the tasty stuff I want. Why do I have to make such a horrible choice? And if we are all going to want this ethereal cloak, why are the flurry items in game? Who are they for? Because take 47% flurry off anyone and unless they're guardian (I think), they'll be below the mitigation threshold. So what's the point? AND! These new familiars are going to make crit bonus go sky high. Melee will outstrip everything else by even further. So we're going to want flurry even more than we do now. So what's the deal with this cloak? It just seems a bizarre piece of itemization, given the current meta. I would be really grateful for some insight from the red names. Anything to tell me there is a plan and this itemization is well thought out and we are going to want to drop flurry despite all I've said. Right now I'm just really confused.
These items when leveled would have to be incredibly strong for me to drop Ethereal armor with the ADC, AND the Flurry set I am wearing. The potency would have to be 12k+ To warrant such a loss, PER item, from a rough estimate point of view for equiv. exchange. Even then with higher CB values, as you said, OP, auto attack should jump up farther than before. People have been questioning this choice in discord as well, though not as loudly as the discussion about the adornments.I think the feedback in this matter is very important, as the cloak is on wave 1, and gets released on Tuesday if all goes according to the announcements say it will. Hope these concerns are heard by the development team for sure.
Yeah I was thinking about potency, and how much I'd need to actually drop flurry, especially when you add another 1500 crit bonus into the equation. Let's say I'm lucky (or stupid and pay) and get a celestial familiar. I have well over 1 million familiar xp in my bank, so it'll be level 10 on day 1. I have the eyeless at level 10 right now, so yeah, about another 1500 overcap, roughly. If I'm able to take advantage of that, that'd put me at about 9-9.5k crit bonus in raid. Maybe more. I think it'd need to be a huge amount of potency to make flurry not worthwhile anymore. Will find out soon enough anyway.
I bugged both as affecting gameplay as they specifically set this expac up with 3 slots to have flurry. There should be flurry options available and shoot you can even make it to where if I have the flurry cloak bought and equipped I cannot buy the other one with adc. Waist/cloak/neck should all have flurry options just like we currently have.
A maxed S7 Familiar (celestial) is 2.4k potency and 1.1k more CB OC compared to a max eyeless. The CB on the Eth pieces if you level them completely, plat infuse, crafted, and up to fabled cobalt infuse, will sit at roughly 700 per piece of jewelry, potency is around 12.4k. So if you’re swapping out your familiar and your jewelry you’re going to gain about 600 CB outright and 1.1k OC, plus the extra 4-5k potency (assuming you’re wearing 195/200 res currently). And we don’t know about the level 5 effect on the Gear this year either (if any)
These are the screens of the cloak up to level 3 (I'm 11 tokens short for level 4 so it'll have to wait for next week). Base stats are on EQ2traders.
From a Ranger's point of view i do not know if more potency over flurry will help us. Correct me if i am wrong but were Ethereals not reforge able ? I only had the chest and couldn't do that.
I feel like it may be giving with one hand and taking away with the other. My assassin isn't brilliantly geared, but at 185k potency, he does far more with melee than even FFU at ancient. I think CA's are seriously lagging behind melee right now, and even seeing the upgraded cloak, I'm not convinced it's worth putting in in phase 1. If you wear it, you lose ALL your flurry. Yes you gain a bit here and there, but losing flurry is going to suck, especially when you just added a tonne more CB to your toon with a new familiar. A few k potency more always helps, but with fervor capped for most high end raiders, it's not like you've got that much further to go with your CA's/Spells, other than by increasing CB. Melee on the other hand, isn't affected by potency mitigation and the CB is going to make a huge difference. So flurry is still going to rock if you can find a way to max your CB without using the ethereal cloak. The ethereals could be reforged yes. I still use last year's, as the abdc on level 12 is just too good to lose, and the potency is comparable to 195/200 gear.
As an inquisitor I do not need potency at all (and I mean it, there is literally no meaningful difference between 100 k, 150k and 200 k potency for the inquisitor), my damage consists of autoattack on 95%. So yes, items without flurry are uselees.
It's just occurred to me that the fight night buff on the charm from Diaku challenge mode massively boosts melee damage stats. It further strengthens the need for flurry to be on that cloak. How can you have one BiS item directing you towards speccing one way, and another which completely contradicts it? This isn't choice, this is bad itemisation.
It is not a problem for devs to create and give each player a super relic item that boost everything two times or three times or even ten times. But then they would need to make mobs and bosses two, three and ten times stronger. When I look at the health of my paladin I see a number 465000000 and I realize that something like happened many times before. These days when we have a new item, it is certainly better than the previous one, but it is not two or three times better, but just about 5% or 10% better and then not for everyone and not in every situation. I think it is smart.
A lot of attributes on a new item are certainly better than on all other items. Resolve, Potency, Critical Bonus, Primary Attribute, Ability Doublecast, DPS via Ability Mod. And this item is easy to obtain, so basically everyone can get it, which is important too. I do not agree that EQ2 should have best items that suit everyone. That would be too easy, too simple, too predictable. Everyone has it even my brother, my grandmother and my dog too, where is the challenge?
It's only 3 items, chosen from 5. The one item you MUST use, is one of only 3 slots which can be used to boost flurry. So as I said above, if you spec melee, and use flurry, you're SOL. The players do not choose the meta, that's the designers. And the meta was clear from only a day or two into the xpac. Melee auto attack, dps, wdb, melee dmg multiplier, and flurry. That is why it's strange itemisation.
It is possible to equip one ethereal greater relic and two ethereal relics. As far as I know it is also possible to equip three ethereal relics instead We still have some options to chose from if I am not mistaken.
Another case for a flurry cloak or belt is class balance. Guardians and Caster /mages who don't go down the melee route have more options. That means those classes will have more CB and Pot.
It's not that they don't go melee, just that they don't need flurry on their cloak if they're in singular focus, gotcha.
