Gear needs substantial reworking

Spottswoode

As the title says, it is my humble opinion that there are serious flaws in the gear in this game. I have a number of gripes with the current gear setup but I generally wish it to remain intact as is. Mostly my gripes revolve around gears generally inability to assist in the specialization of your builds, but I have some general ones as well.

• Named items that are not part of sets are worthless. Pretty much any named item drop is completely worthless unless it belongs to a set. Even if the item is epic or higher, the extra boost from the items condition isn't enough to offset removing the set bonuses. Named items should, at minimum, have unique enchantments or particularly powerful enchantments to make them worth using. Multiple enchantments would also make named items worth an item set bonus. Dropped named items, especially dungeon boss drops, should be part of sets. This gives players a reason to play dungeons multiple times aside from pledges.
• The lowest trait crafted item sets are immediately worthless and forever useless upon obtaining higher trait sets. The first three crafted sets are completely worthless and immediately outclassed once you get three trait sets. (Okay, Night's Silence isn't totally useless.) The lower level crafted sets, particularly the first three, should be reworked to fit the three basic styles of play for the series: Mage, Fighter, and Thief. Night's Silence pretty much fits into the thief catergory and does not necessarily need to be changed, but the other two are completely worthless past trait 2 sets. I actually have few gripes with the high level sets as they fit into specialized needs. But for low level players, the first crafted set bonuses are all worthless outside of Night's Silence.
• Gear sets should be divided into pvp and pve based sets and should be balanced for their particularized use. Sets should really focus on either PVE bonuses (such as regeneration and damage reflection) and PVP bonuses. (Such as damage reduction and spell penetration.) There are currently PVP sets, I know, but the two groups should not be balanced with both purposes in mind. We can have universal sets, but by necessity PVP gear should be inferior at PVE and vice versa. You can put together set bonuses from both groups to make universal sets.
• Class items should be introduced. With all of the imbalance gripes, this is a pretty easy way to bridge much of the gaps between class performance at specific roles. Class items should focus on specializing a class's abilities, give multiple bonuses to assist in specific roles (especially high level class items), and altering the way specific class abilities work. With class items constructed in the aforementioned fashion, we can focus on balancing the class items against each other instead of trying to add abilities to balance classes against each other.

Gyudan

There are already class-specific items, for example the Necropotence set.

Because
- pets are extremely strong and do a lot of damage
- pets never die from AoE attacks and are able to block/dodge incoming damage
- all sorcerers use pets at high level
- sturdy is the best possible trait, it saves you tons of gold

[/sarcasm]

Joke aside, I agree with most of your post OP.

As for crafted sets, after you reach the 6 traits, there isn't much improvement. 8 traits are quite bad, apart from Way of the Arena for PVP and 9 traits is too annoying to use (go back to the mundus stone to activate 2nd boon every time you switch gear, especially in the middle of trials).
The low requirements sets are not all bad: Ashen 4 pieces (2 traits), Torug's 4 pieces (3 traits), Twilight's 5 pieces (3 traits), ...

IMO the get too easily outperformed by dropped gear.

Nihil

I think a lot of your concerns are already being addressed / worked on... or might not be part of their vision.

Spottswoode wrote: »

As the title says, it is my humble opinion that there are serious flaws in the gear in this game. I have a number of gripes with the current gear setup but I generally wish it to remain intact as is. Mostly my gripes revolve around gears generally inability to assist in the specialization of your builds, but I have some general ones as well.

• Named items that are not part of sets are worthless. Pretty much any named item drop is completely worthless unless it belongs to a set. Even if the item is epic or higher, the extra boost from the items condition isn't enough to offset removing the set bonuses. Named items should, at minimum, have unique enchantments or particularly powerful enchantments to make them worth using. Multiple enchantments would also make named items worth an item set bonus. Dropped named items, especially dungeon boss drops, should be part of sets. This gives players a reason to play dungeons multiple times aside from pledges.

They mentioned that they would like to make more items that alter attacks like the reward from dragonstar arena. Most epic tier items also that drop through out the world are just generic type of gear, which I believe is done on purpose. This allows for people to have some descent grade gear, but also gives reason for crafting at lower levels (which most games completely neglect).

[*] The lowest trait crafted item sets are immediately worthless and forever useless upon obtaining higher trait sets. The first three crafted sets are completely worthless and immediately outclassed once you get three trait sets. (Okay, Night's Silence isn't totally useless.) The lower level crafted sets, particularly the first three, should be reworked to fit the three basic styles of play for the series: Mage, Fighter, and Thief. Night's Silence pretty much fits into the thief catergory and does not necessarily need to be changed, but the other two are completely worthless past trait 2 sets. I actually have few gripes with the high level sets as they fit into specialized needs. But for low level players, the first crafted set bonuses are all worthless outside of Night's Silence.

Some players actually see the inverse to this problem, the higher requirement of trait armors aren't normally worth it in comparison to the lower requirement trait armor. As all gear non special stat are always comparable to each other (2 trait sets will have the same amount of hp / crit as an 8 piece set), this really just leaves synergies of stats and their final ability what sets the different sets apart. The synergy seems to apply to very low requirement gear making it harder for the higher tier gear to be really considered better (A large quantity of players stick to the 6 trait sets and lower).

[*] Gear sets should be divided into pvp and pve based sets and should be balanced for their particularized use. Sets should really focus on either PVE bonuses (such as regeneration and damage reflection) and PVP bonuses. (Such as damage reduction and spell penetration.) There are currently PVP sets, I know, but the two groups should not be balanced with both purposes in mind. We can have universal sets, but by necessity PVP gear should be inferior at PVE and vice versa. You can put together set bonuses from both groups to make universal sets.

To make a drastic divide in gear from pvp and pve is actually the opposite of what they stated in the past. They said they wanted players to feel like they could go between the two playing styles and not be forced to regear to be competative (if my memory serves at least), They do have a few specific sets that fall into primarily pve, or primarily pvp, but I believe they wanted the majority to be useable in both areas equally.

[*] Class items should be introduced. With all of the imbalance gripes, this is a pretty easy way to bridge much of the gaps between class performance at specific roles. Class items should focus on specializing a class's abilities, give multiple bonuses to assist in specific roles (especially high level class items), and altering the way specific class abilities work. With class items constructed in the aforementioned fashion, we can focus on balancing the class items against each other instead of trying to add abilities to balance classes against each other.

I am fine with this, as long as it is done right, you can actually create a ton of imbalances if done incorrectly. In Tera they had some sets like these and I know the Mystic one was barely wanted (or just one of the couple types was looked for) as it wasn't really helpful enough, specially in comparison to the other classes.

Rosveen

Spottswoode wrote: »

[*] The lowest trait crafted item sets are immediately worthless and forever useless upon obtaining higher trait sets. The first three crafted sets are completely worthless and immediately outclassed once you get three trait sets. (Okay, Night's Silence isn't totally useless.) The lower level crafted sets, particularly the first three, should be reworked to fit the three basic styles of play for the series: Mage, Fighter, and Thief. Night's Silence pretty much fits into the thief catergory and does not necessarily need to be changed, but the other two are completely worthless past trait 2 sets. I actually have few gripes with the high level sets as they fit into specialized needs. But for low level players, the first crafted set bonuses are all worthless outside of Night's Silence.

Ashen Grip is good, it makes for a solid medium armor combination with Hunding. If anything, the uselessness of HIGH tier crafted sets is a problem; how many people wear 8-trait sets compared to things like Hist Bark or Hunding?

Spottswoode

Nihil wrote: »

They mentioned that they would like to make more items that alter attacks like the reward from dragonstar arena. Most epic tier items also that drop through out the world are just generic type of gear, which I believe is done on purpose. This allows for people to have some descent grade gear, but also gives reason for crafting at lower levels (which most games completely neglect).

I don't mind crafted gear being awesome, I mind dropped items being garbage. I would much like to see the Dragonstar kind of items at lower levels.

Some players actually see the inverse to this problem, the higher requirement of trait armors aren't normally worth it in comparison to the lower requirement trait armor. As all gear non special stat are always comparable to each other (2 trait sets will have the same amount of hp / crit as an 8 piece set), this really just leaves synergies of stats and their final ability what sets the different sets apart. The synergy seems to apply to very low requirement gear making it harder for the higher tier gear to be really considered better (A large quantity of players stick to the 6 trait sets and lower).

Acknowledged. The higher level gear does need better bonuses, but honestly when you have 8 trait gear sets you are at least VR8 or higher. The dropped set gear you have then is substantially better than most of the crafted gear set stats anyway. It does need work, but until the Champion System rolls out I can't tell in which direction. The mid level stuff is great, however.

To make a drastic divide in gear from pvp and pve is actually the opposite of what they stated in the past. They said they wanted players to feel like they could go between the two playing styles and not be forced to regear to be competative (if my memory serves at least), They do have a few specific sets that fall into primarily pve, or primarily pvp, but I believe they wanted the majority to be useable in both areas equally.

The division need not be drastic but it can be substantial. Despite their intentions (and you are correct on that one) the fact remains that there is quite a bit of disparity between the gear one uses for high level PVE and PVP. Formalizing the difference with high end gear specc'd for one or the other lets us spend more time developing universal gear sets that performs "adequately" in either category. We can have plenty or even most of the gear in the middle and have high performance categorized gear too.

I am fine with this, as long as it is done right, you can actually create a ton of imbalances if done incorrectly. In Tera they had some sets like these and I know the Mystic one was barely wanted (or just one of the couple types was looked for) as it wasn't really helpful enough, specially in comparison to the other classes.

Originally, my idea was to make a ton of Class slot items. If you make a ton of them you can flavor your classes many different ways and switch it on the fly. That might pan out, but I fear for balance if we have 300 different class specializations for 4 classes. (Would be awesome though.) Making class specific gear might overdo it too. I understand the dilemma here. Class items would still be better than fine tuning the entire class for each job for the most part.

Rosveen wrote: »

Ashen Grip is good, it makes for a solid medium armor combination with Hunding. If anything, the uselessness of HIGH tier crafted sets is a problem; how many people were 8-trait sets compared to things like Hist Bark or Hunding?

You are one of, like, four people who use Ashen Grip instead of Nightmother's Gaze for dual wielding.
I don't actually mind Ashen Grip, I would rather the bonuses be broadened for lower level (as in player level) usage.
I would prefer something like this:
(2 Items) Stamina Regeneration Bonus
(3 Items) Health Regneration Bonus
(4 Items) Weapon Critical Bonus
(5 Items) 10% Chance to breathe Fire when struck by melee attacks. 6 Second cooldown.


I don't mind the overall set design, but relegating it to melee only usage really cuts into the use of it. If it were to be broadened for general warrior-esque usage I would be okay with it. Death's Wind is still trash.

Actually I've seen few tanks that use Shalidor's Curse/ Vampire's Kiss. Some healers use Eyes of Mara. It's specific gear needs, I'll grant you.

Voodoo

like the first two suggestion but the LAST thing we need is two different gear sets foir pve and pvp... that only alienate the pve'rs from the pvp'rs even more. not to mention is just more items you need to have in a small bag space. NO to pvp gear!

Dymence

Spottswoode wrote: »

[*] The lowest trait crafted item sets are immediately worthless and forever useless upon obtaining higher trait sets.

Maybe for your type of build. Seducer set is a 3 trait set and it's pretty much a mandatory set for every healer to use, and is also one of the most commonly used sets for magicka builds in pvp.

Spottswoode

Voodoo wrote: »

like the first two suggestion but the LAST thing we need is two different gear sets foir pve and pvp... that only alienate the pve'rs from the pvp'rs even more. not to mention is just more items you need to have in a small bag space. NO to pvp gear!

I have several sets of gear for different purposes. One of those happens to be PVP. (Impen Warlock/Seducer) In fact, a lot of player already have gear specifically made for PVP and gear for PVE. In my example, you wouldn't NEED either but they would generally perform better at those specific goals. Item space is a noted disincentive though.

AlexDougherty

Spottswoode wrote: »

As the title says, it is my humble opinion that there are serious flaws in the gear in this game. I have a number of gripes with the current gear setup but I generally wish it to remain intact as is.

• Named items that are not part of sets are worthless. Pretty much any named item drop is completely worthless unless it belongs to a set. Even if the item is epic or higher, the extra boost from the items condition isn't enough to offset removing the set bonuses.

First thirty levels they are not useless, after that, well research them for the traits, or deconstruct them for crafting XP.

You can replace a set bonus with a decent enchantment for the first thirty levels and not even notice. For levels 30-50 it's quite often a close cut as to which is better, and I have replaced a set piece with a decet enchantment several times and not regretted it.

After you hit Veteran levels, the set bonuses are to goo to replace, but the value for research and deconstruction comes into play. If you haven't learned the trait, well research it. If you have learned it, deconstruct the item, and get some crafting XP, every little helps.

If you have maxed out that craft for every alt, well deconstruct it and sell the mats.

[*] The lowest trait crafted item sets are immediately worthless and forever useless upon obtaining higher trait sets. The first three crafted sets are completely worthless and immediately outclassed once you get three trait sets. (Okay, Night's Silence isn't totally useless.)

As I said earlier the first thirty levels set bonuses are optional, I personall had the five and six set bonuses before I left these levels (I alternate between three main alts, and researched like mad). Once you can do the five and six set bonuses, then yes the low trait sets are not worth looking at. But you need something for people to start with, and the three trait sets are an incentive to get started with crafting.

[*] Gear sets should be divided into pvp and pve based sets and should be balanced for their particularized use. Sets should really focus on either PVE bonuses (such as regeneration and damage reflection) and PVP bonuses. (Such as damage reduction and spell penetration.) There are currently PVP sets, I know, but the two groups should not be balanced with both purposes in mind. We can have universal sets, but by necessity PVP gear should be inferior at PVE and vice versa. You can put together set bonuses from both groups to make universal sets.

Not sure why you want to seperate them, the difference between PVE and PVP is not as extreme for this game as for other MMOs. Pretty sure there are plenty of people who do both, and don't want to craft two sets of gear.

[*] Class items should be introduced. With all of the imbalance gripes, this is a pretty easy way to bridge much of the gaps between class performance at specific roles. Class items should focus on specializing a class's abilities, give multiple bonuses to assist in specific roles (especially high level class items), and altering the way specific class abilities work. With class items constructed in the aforementioned fashion, we can focus on balancing the class items against each other instead of trying to add abilities to balance classes against each other.

Sounds like an over complicated way of doing it. It means people won't be sure if it's the class item or the underlying class ability, and knowing the devs they will try to fix both at once.
They have only been trying to balance the classes for six months, and most of that has been fixing broken abilities. They are just starting to get to a point where the classes are roughly balanced (yes, I know of issues, but it's not as bad as six months ago), and will soon get into the balance cycles of other mmos (no MMO has a finalised balance, ever).

Edit I have cut down quotes, not to misrepresent them, but for brevity (with my winding text it would take up an entire page), I think the main point is still in each bullet point.

tplink3r1

Spottswoode wrote: »

As the title says, it is my humble opinion that there are serious flaws in the gear in this game. I have a number of gripes with the current gear setup but I generally wish it to remain intact as is. Mostly my gripes revolve around gears generally inability to assist in the specialization of your builds, but I have some general ones as well.

• Gear sets should be divided into pvp and pve based sets and should be balanced for their particularized use. Sets should really focus on either PVE bonuses (such as regeneration and damage reflection) and PVP bonuses. (Such as damage reduction and spell penetration.) There are currently PVP sets, I know, but the two groups should not be balanced with both purposes in mind. We can have universal sets, but by necessity PVP gear should be inferior at PVE and vice versa. You can put together set bonuses from both groups to make universal sets.
• Class items should be introduced. With all of the imbalance gripes, this is a pretty easy way to bridge much of the gaps between class performance at specific roles. Class items should focus on specializing a class's abilities, give multiple bonuses to assist in specific roles (especially high level class items), and altering the way specific class abilities work. With class items constructed in the aforementioned fashion, we can focus on balancing the class items against each other instead of trying to add abilities to balance classes against each other.

Please, no.

Nihil

Spottswoode wrote: »

Nihil wrote: »

They mentioned that they would like to make more items that alter attacks like the reward from dragonstar arena. Most epic tier items also that drop through out the world are just generic type of gear, which I believe is done on purpose. This allows for people to have some descent grade gear, but also gives reason for crafting at lower levels (which most games completely neglect).

I don't mind crafted gear being awesome, I mind dropped items being garbage. I would much like to see the Dragonstar kind of items at lower levels.

I agree, I would also like to see the items (not the exact same ones) obtained through different methods. Have stage 2 obtained in like pvp (stage 2 meaning the second ability in a weapon skill line), Stage 3 be from dungeon drops, Stage 4 from special Boss monster drops out in the field (random location spawn would be my prefered method to promote exploration)... and so on just so every play style can have a way to obtain those type of gear.

Some players actually see the inverse to this problem, the higher requirement of trait armors aren't normally worth it in comparison to the lower requirement trait armor. As all gear non special stat are always comparable to each other (2 trait sets will have the same amount of hp / crit as an 8 piece set), this really just leaves synergies of stats and their final ability what sets the different sets apart. The synergy seems to apply to very low requirement gear making it harder for the higher tier gear to be really considered better (A large quantity of players stick to the 6 trait sets and lower).

Acknowledged. The higher level gear does need better bonuses, but honestly when you have 8 trait gear sets you are at least VR8 or higher. The dropped set gear you have then is substantially better than most of the crafted gear set stats anyway. It does need work, but until the Champion System rolls out I can't tell in which direction. The mid level stuff is great, however.

Here's to everything the champion system is changing, and just waiting to see XD.

To make a drastic divide in gear from pvp and pve is actually the opposite of what they stated in the past. They said they wanted players to feel like they could go between the two playing styles and not be forced to regear to be competative (if my memory serves at least), They do have a few specific sets that fall into primarily pve, or primarily pvp, but I believe they wanted the majority to be useable in both areas equally.

The division need not be drastic but it can be substantial. Despite their intentions (and you are correct on that one) the fact remains that there is quite a bit of disparity between the gear one uses for high level PVE and PVP. Formalizing the difference with high end gear specc'd for one or the other lets us spend more time developing universal gear sets that performs "adequately" in either category. We can have plenty or even most of the gear in the middle and have high performance categorized gear too.

If they were going to do that, I think it should fall more in customizing the gear, rather then necessarily making the gear specifically for one or the other. I would prefer to see this done in enchanting to give more versatility to enchanting, but allowing players still to go from one playing style to the other with ease (maybe changing out enchants if they REALLY want to).

I am fine with this, as long as it is done right, you can actually create a ton of imbalances if done incorrectly. In Tera they had some sets like these and I know the Mystic one was barely wanted (or just one of the couple types was looked for) as it wasn't really helpful enough, specially in comparison to the other classes.

Originally, my idea was to make a ton of Class slot items. If you make a ton of them you can flavor your classes many different ways and switch it on the fly. That might pan out, but I fear for balance if we have 300 different class specializations for 4 classes. (Would be awesome though.) Making class specific gear might overdo it too. I understand the dilemma here. Class items would still be better than fine tuning the entire class for each job for the most part.

err, this is very hard I would imagine to balance the gear correctly, we are already juggling our abilities, then they have to balance what a 5 set bonus is compared to what ability they want to modify and how useful that ability is in situation "X" or "Y" in comparison to the other armors they are making for the other classes. Why I look at it like this is largely again TERA, the armor Mystics choose from had like 1 good choice that all Mystics took (although they had like 5 different skill modifying armor) While other classes had at least 2-3 to pick from. If we also compared it to the shard system they had, their were classes that got really screwed their (worked similar concept of modifying abilities, but ate up shards instead of having a set bonus) in comparison to other classes.

I honestly think it would be easier to balance the skills, as if you tried to do so with armor, you then have to worry about still balancing the skill (as it still would need to be balanced without the armor) and then worry about balancing the armor as well.