Why did Drinal Steward Mage jewelry get screwed up?

I will try to keep this post as diplomatic as possible because I am very upset with how screwed up the mage gear from Drinal's Steward is. Before the patch yesterday I would say it was poor in comparison to Priest equivalents, but now its so bad I can only assume and pray that this is unintended.

Let's look at a straight piece versus piece comparison between priests and mages:



Looking at the belt, the Priest version has the Mage beat in every possible way. More ability reuse than spell reuse plus the addition of a ton of Attack Speed and some nice Spell Weapon Attack Speed which could be reforged.



Looking at this ring, again the Priest ring has the Mage version destroyed in every facet. More reuse speed and ability mod on the stats it shares and it has Attack Speed, Spell Weapon attack Speed, DPS, Spell Weapon DPS in addition.



On this wrist its the same story, Priest version has Ability mod, DPS, Spell Weapon DPS and identical everything else to the Mage.

These comparisons or lack thereof are so egregious that I really hope/pray that this is an oversight by SOE.


Also I would like to request that Priests/Mages can both equip either "of Divinity" or "of Arcane" items so they can perhaps have choices in their gear instead of being forced into one direction. Same goes for Fighters/Scouts - more options is never a bad thing, ESPECIALLY when it appears that the itemization is poor and/or incorrect in the first place.

Yes, I totally agree. I also assumed this was something that happened by mistake, and would be rectified. I also would also like Mages, and Priests be able to wear each others jewelry, as well as Fighters and Scouts. We are kind of forced to pick one set, and oh well deal with it. As it is now, when I went to buy gear for my Necromancer yesterday and saw how abysmal the jewelry was... I ended up sticking with advanced solo jewelry to be able to re-forge things into what I wanted, and needed for the class. So, as it is the Mage jewelry is poo-poo, and everyone else way more stats to enjoy, and re-forge and let them play their way.

/Co-sign...Unbalanced is an understatement (Mage vs Priest). Kinda disappointing farming obols and essences for items like this, especially when re-forging is one of the best ways to get what you need from items you pick up. How you manged to make legendary solo instance gear ALMOST better (because of the options on them to reforge) than drinal steward gear is kinda ridiculous!

Wow didn't realize how the mages got hosed on these pieces until i saw the stats on both,,, hopefully this was a mistake! Please fix this!

Agree 100%. Nice way of putting it btw OP

Very disappointing. At a minimum, the mage gear needs the corresponding "spell weapon" blue stats put (back) in. Why does it seem like every time I find something to be excited about in this game...oh well, nm.

You, sir, are a mouth full.

This itemization also hoses the melee mages.. who WANT those melee stats.. and abilty, not just spell, reuse...

Yes, this is posted from the perspective of my illy, so I just got completely hosed.

For the record, this covers more than just the steward gear. For some reason, mages get kicked in the kilt everywhere in this expansion. The very first quest-reward 130-stat belt in the signature line in the Jungle zonein area looks just like this... more blue stats on the priest version, and more and better (all-ability vs spell-only) reuse on the priest version.

Another example... add up the stats on the 160-stat weapons from the solo zones. The two brawler-usable one-handers (mace and claw) have stats exactly equal to half of the fighter two-hander staff... except the two-hander has 100+ multiattack and the one-handers have zero... they each need 50-ish multiattack added to them.

Seriously... even if this is done by an "item balancing script" rather than an active Dev... who the heck programmed the script such that "10.1% spell reuse speed" is equal to "11% ability reuse speed"... plus "57.8 attack speed" AND "25.7 spell weapon attack speed"? Even if it were just "10.1% spell reuse" vs "10.1% ability reuse", the priest one should would still score higher...

The script is balanced horribly, and it's obviously randomly dropping stats. Itemization is 95% of the reward for any end-game character (we're all already max-level and max-AA and mastered out.) Spend some Dev time getting it right rather than giving it all to a mindless script.

For most of the quest rewards, the non-armor items are wis/int/sta and healers and mages can choose and use either of the pieces.

Which doesn't change the fact that the Great Item Script is way out of alignment, and that half the gear it made is worthless. Mages need priest gear because their own gear stinks, and tanks need a lot of scout gear because their own gear doesn't do squat for their DPS. And that doesn't count the just-plain-buggy pieces, like the aforementioned tank 1Hs and their missing stats, or the tank item with a spell-weapon-improving proc I saw linked in-game tonight... presumably one of the new heroic pieces added last patch.

All the dual-archetype gear setup does (when the gear is broken) is let people steal other classes' gear for themselves. Not an issue on quest rewards, granted, but pretty lame everywhere else. In fact, the items that started this thread are INT/WIS/STA, so obviously meant for both archetypes... but class-restricted anyway. Why??

on my coercer this has been a non-stop problem as i tend to want the priest gear for the melee stats but to prove this even more look at the focus ranged the priest one has 65ma 41.9 spell ma 4.8 reuse amd 6 casting the mage one that priests can use has 10.2 spell atk 8.6 spell dps 10.2 spell ma and 4.8 reuse 28.8 spell wep total less then the 41.9 ma alone on the priest only one. also all i want the spell wep stats for is to reforge OUT of them and with 3 stats split up there is way less reforge options this goes for not just the steward gear when it comes to focus wep's. as a coercer if a focus wep has melee stats and can be used by a mage it has no int. this is also a problem with procs as the priest procs that go off on a healing spell normally don't go off on a combat or spell hit making the proc worthless for a mage even though i would love to use some of the healing procs even if they went off on myself only i recall a wep being changed so that a proc could go off on heals and dmg why can't all procs work this way. it goes the same way with the raid red runes that proc heals on my nec i can use these "on healing spell" procs and would love to add a bit more support to my group but all the red raid runes are priest only. to be honest i don't see why any of the runes have class-restrictions as without the class restrictions it adds something that is need and thats build versatility and more options for players this would also add some life to the game as you would have players going for more then one gear set so they could match solo vs grp vs raid rune set-ups. lets take the evade reaper rune that i would love on my death prone mage even with the 50% power cost as it keeps the raid death count down on fights were you need to stay alive. yet the fighters who can use it complain it goes off with other deathsave and is just a power drain. this opens up options and gives players some choice.

edit: also why don't mages get shields? we have the lowest mit of all the archtypes and i don't see how a bit of block would be overpowering. i think the bigger question is why isn't all jewelry str/agi/wis/int and useable by all with stat caps the way they are right now we should be opening up more options for builds not less as it extends the life of the game

Need to be fixed and to give mage loot some stat to reforge so that melee mage can do something with it.

Also, it's not just mage loot. Discounting the stats they have in equal amounts:

Fighter charm, Steward's Symbol of Battle: 24.1 DPS, 2.6 flurry
Scout charm, Steward's Symbol of Reckoning: 12.6 attack speed, 61.6 multiattack, 3.0 flurry

How is that balanced? I'm guessing the fighter charm lost it's multiattack and maybe some mitigation boost? The scout sword (of reckoning) is also quite outclassed by the scout dagger (also of reckoning), it has a bit more DPS, but zero AE autoattack.

Someone really needs to sit down and balance things properly.