I'm sure the list of armor needing balance and adjustment is extensive, but I am here to post about my little corner of the game and what affects me. While my guild goes through raid content and picks up relic pieces we often have to sit there and look at the pieces on a per class and slot basis to see if they are worth taking. Often times armor more readily available than this raid content armor is superior. And even more often there is wildly differing value to a slot just based upon class. which brings me to my discovery the other day; What the heck is going on here? The Guardian helmet has the usual KoS lazy omni-stat approach, ie +48 to all four primary stats even though the agility, int, and wisdom will do nothing for Guardians. It also has no green stats that would make it competitive when compared against dungeon or quest gear that offer defense, parry, or weapon skills. All in all it is a pretty mediocre helmet that may not even be an upgrade due to its poor itemization, the only thing it has going for it is the high mitigation. All of those above problems look much worse when compared to the SK helmet. The SK relic helmet has clearly actually had someone on staff pay attention to it and itemize it correctly. It offers only strength and stamina, unlike the omni-stat line of the previous helmet. It has defense and parry bonuses of an amount appropriate to where it came from, ie. a clear upgrade over quest and dungeon items. It even has better blue stats that the other helmet, block chance being much more valuable. And then last thing to kick the Guardian helmet while it's down is that the SK helm actually has more mitigation too. Somehow those 9 points of mit turn into 0.4% absorb, which translates into the SK helm being 6% stronger, on top of everything else pointed out.
I feel I forgot to add a good picture to summarize why the Guardian relic help was so lack luster in comparison. That is a fairly easily available helmet from the AoAx2 zone. Usable by all plate classes and except for the 90 mitigation difference between them, a superior helmet compared to the guardians relic helmet. The stat difference are minimal, 2 str/stam, 0.2 potency, attack speed vs multi attack, but the x2 helmet caries with it a massive +16 defense bonus while the relic helmet does not and that is a huge deal. In comparison to the SK helmet, where the x2 helmet is inferior to the relic helm in every way is another example of how under performing once classes piece of equivalent gear to another classes.
Just another example to continue piling on examples that the gear is poorly balanced at best and seems to show class favoritism at worst. The far left is a class specific drop from one of the first mobs in Labs. The other three are relic pieces. The boss loot isn't bad, it's actually a nice item, but we'll get back to it in a moment. For now compare the named loot to the guardian relic gauntlets. Honestly it's not that bad. The lack of +defense or something makes them noticeably worse, but at least it's close this time. If they just had some +defense they'd be set, but wait, whats this, the +defense is over the on the templar gloves, along with multi attack when I'm sure the casters would rather have the ability mod. Crazy. Again both show the signs of lazy omni-stats, 48 to all of them, even stats that don't matter at all. Let's look at the SK gauntlets then. No omni-stats, and oddly the str and stam values are swapped from what they are on the other relic pieces, 53 str instead od 48, and 48 stam instead of 53. A clear sign someone was poking around and adjusting values. It has nice green and blue stats as well, very well rounded and all together a great armor piece. And then oh, it also has 60 more mitigation than either the named loot piece or the other relic pieces. So it's a trash loot that has 11% more absorb than the piece found off a named boss. Going back to the raid piece at the end to compare it to the SK relic item, I see trash dropped loot that is superior to the loot dropped by the named bosses in the same zone. While i started this I was just thinking this was lazy or over looked itemization, it's starting to look more and more like class favoritism every time I see what looks like clear evidence of one classes gear being retouched and modified to be stronger and better than the others whom have lazy sweeping stats and bonuses that do not look like they are intended for that class.
