Info Item Team Update Thread - Latest Updates, Rebalance Changelogs & More - Update 28/6

with high def you wont be taking fatal damage from anywhere, giving you the chance to heal everything right back
mage's natural def being higher than archer's and having heal makes defense mage much more viable than defense archer

lament is another great wand but that doesnt make monster trash

 

monster has -water dmg and -int, just put some def points in a build with litterally any other mythic wand and boom, better than monster

 

Monster isn't a good wand, but what makes it really bad isn't necessary the wand itself. Courage is still broken, which further limits the amount of damage it can do. Along with this, defense is ineffective compared to agility. You'll still take a great deal of damage even if your defense stat is capped out.

From my experience, a Monster build with good survivability needs a good amount of agility as well. It's why I chose to switch to melee Monster from my old spell, since wearing tierstacking equipment like Centipede and Thanos Plate gives you the agility necessary to survive. No amount of defense will save you at the moment.

As for the wand itself, the -intel and -water damage are a huge drawback. Yes, Monster gets great damage, some HP, and (now) maxes out your defense stat. However, I don't think the benefits of the wand outweigh the cons.

 

Seeing the massive hate that Monster has been getting in general, guess I should drop my two cents.

I have been using Monster for a pretty long time now (mainly for wars) and I must say: it's an amazing wand.

First I'd like to comment that it's near impossible to die with Monster, even if you lack agility. Mainly because the combination of insane defense making you take moderate to low damage and the great heals this weapon can perform.
Secondly, I'd like to mention that the weapon's drawbacks are not such a great deal as everyone makes it appear to be. Fortunately items such as Anamnesis exist that give everything this weapon needs: huge mana regen and mana steal, intelligence, water damage to fix heals, spell damage to boost it's power; and in return gets it's negative health countered by the weapon. So the correct build can push this weapon to great levels.
Third thing to point out is that fire mage has the easiest time abusing it's powder specials: Courage (ignoring now that it's broken at the moment) is an amazing powder special to both empower your attacks by a ton and steal mana from the mobs around yourself, meanwhile Endurance ensures your damage will reach nuclear levels. All you have to do is get hit. The damage you took can be washed away easily with heals (a spell you'd use anyways with any other mage build, and guess what you don't have to spam it only leaving no opening for meteors) which, as mentioned before, with the correct build can keep you in motion, overall leaving you with the insane damage boost the armor powder special provides.

Fourth point... uh-oh... The most stupid thing I could ever argue of: a tanky item compared to all those glass cannon wands and other shit: Monster compared to other mythic wands. (Subjective, these are all based on my opinion. Also I'd like to point out that I am mainly comparing their performance in wars, because you'd get 1-shot anyways in LI lol... just kidding). Besides Monster I have used two other mythic wands: Fatal and Singularity. I have used both for quite a long time, and my opinion is:
- Fatal compared with Monster is interesting. Of course, Fatal has the chance to deal almost twice as much damage Monster would, however it's really unreliable. This randomness added with the general glassiness of the element and therefore the lower heals it gets to keep itself on track makes it a risky option compared to Monster, as Monster has a reliable damage source and it's much safer. Glass vs. tank. I don't have a definitive answer for which one is better utility-wise. *shrug*
- Singularity compared to Monster. Singularity has both a hard time because how it's reqs limit the items one can use for self-sustain and survivability and both because it doesn't have the best time of taking advantage of powder specials' damage boosts. In my opinion and from personal experiences, it's much weaker than Monster. Not exactly damage-wise (although I didn't see it outshine Monster by a lot), but utility-wise. (Also the knockback of super slow is super annoying )

I cannot apply practical experiences for the other wands, however I'd still talk about how I see them when faced with Monster:
- Lament compared to Monster. Lament gets good heals in one way, Monster gets it's in another. One abuses water damage that works well even with medium (10-12k) hp, while the other abuses high hp that, even if slightly worse than Lament's case, still keeps it in the competition. When it comes to the damage output topic, Lament is better in specific scenarios while Monster beats Lament in another. Lament can take better advantage of Concentration and Curse when fights lone enemies, because if you dodge manually well, you don't need to reset your mana cost of spells with heals, which affects the damage boost and the damage you deal with the boost's help ( because meteor still takes good time to land, so the 2 sec damage boost from a 2 mana meteor won't be quite useful). Monster has an easy time in group fights (and it doesn't have a built-in suicide option... -life steal... cough), while getting hit less times by lone enemies like bosses makes it fall slightly behind, as it activates Endurance less times. For teamfights both work really well: Lament heals allies quite better than Monster, but Monster while performing nice heals aswell, will also help to clean up quicker the enemy swarm than Lament would. Courage also works much better than Curse for this. Overal they are both amazing and I'd probably tie them because they both perform amazingly on different fields, they both have their own pros and cons, but no pros of one seem to outweight the other's when a look is taken into practical use and utility.
- Warp compared to Monster. I have heard that rage Warp builds exist but that seems a bit too luck based, having high ws makes positioning really hard and when the space is limited like on Sky Islands, there is fire around like in Molten Heights or the terrain is somewhat unstable like in the Light Realm, then Warp is both dependant on luck and suicide. Monster works well everywhere. Otherwise, Warp with a proper build due to agility, insane damage and good mobility (doesn't guarantee to not get hit, but guarantees to not get 1-shot) outperforms Monster. Warp is risk versus reward, a weapon that might require a tiny bit of skills to use, but in the right hands it works much better (well if it has godlike rolls lmao)
- Gaia compared to Monster. Gaia wins by doing absolutely nothing. Jokes aside, Gaia can easily outdamage Monster and get moderately tanky aswell, while Monster sits on medium melee damage and okay defenses. I'd say Gaia beats Monster here easily utility-wise.
- Pure compared to Monster. No.


TL;DR Monster is a nice and reliable weapon that is capable to stay competent with the other mythic weapons. It has good damage potential and it's super safe, aswell as it serves well in teamfights and isn't underwhelming when used solo too. Monster. Is. NOT. Trash.

 

buy my monster please.

 

well fuk

________________________________

bruh moment

 

The teasers will be discontinued. Here are some things that I have learnt from the past two weeks of making this ARG.

I think the context is important. The ARG started when I just wanna mess about and post some random teasers, and then seeing people speculating I feel like this might be a good opportunity to make it a pseudo-event, giving out clues and riddles as cryptic teasers to give people the Ah-Ha moment when the update is released and all the teasing make sense. But somewhere along the lines, I think I missed something.

First of all, now that I think about it, making this overly dramatic and try to go over the top with a whole ARG is pretty tough to begin with. The decoding community (well the people that are interested in deciphering cryptic teasers) are extremely niche in wynn, partly why other coding events by the community always only generated a, well, mediocre amount of interest, at best. This community is also used to the multiple layers of decoding method type of cyphers and not the type of internet ARG hunt riddles that I've prepared, so the interest misaligned. Moreover, the context of this ARG is about items, which, while the build making and custom item community isnt small, this community overlapping with the decoding community is as nichest as it can be, thus the whole thing fails to generate a large amount of interest.

Secondly, rare things are valued more. Splattering 7/8/9 teasers without a real means of measuring progress is pretty discouraging for the community to continue solving the riddles, especially when this event went from "oh look lets speculate this teaser from the IMs" to "oh look there goes another cryptic teaser the last one hasnt even been confirmed to worth anything heres another one". In other game's ARG, theres usually only 1 clue and often its discovered by the community instead of being shoved in the face by the developer, and the clue will often chain itself into another clue and progresses the ARG on itself. This one failed to do so mainly due to lack of planning.

So overall, I believe there is much to learn from this small experience. Mainly is to plan ahead, and to keep it short and traceable for the community, create short term reveals to confirm the progress the community has made (without leaking ideally but oh well) and in general get a better gauge in the breadth and the depth of how a good ARG should be.

Anyway, this has been fun, seeing you guys guessing which are the 6 keywords are pretty rewarding and motivating for us in the IM HQ. The final pieces are still in place if anyone wanna search up the final reveal but there are no plans to extend this any further. Thanks for participating and I hope you guys will enjoy whatever update we got going on soon enough.

 

Abyss imbued?


idk if I got everything but it sounds like a new item name? :eyes:

 

At some point SilverMirror was on Discord asking for name ideas relating to "abyss".

 

Of course, we already have some items named after the abyss.
http://prntscr.com/o07o3u
Which, looking at the stats of, we can infer that this new item is likely to be fire thunder.
That also means it's likely to have life steal and poison.

 

Fucking finally, fire will gain some good sustain.

 

Interesting read. I'm going to respond to each of your points seperately, and while I do agree with some of what you said, there are many things I don't agree with, simply due to my experiences with the item.

For your first point, I don't really know what build you've been using or how you play mage, but from my experiences you still take a significant amount of damage with Monster, especially in boss fights. My builds usually have decent (15k or so) hp with no negative elem defenses, and I often find myself struggling to maintain my health without agility. The reduced heal power makes it harder to maintain full HP, and eventually the damage I take is far greater than what I can restore, which results in my death. Keep in mind that many of my experiences come from LI, and yours from wars, which makes all the difference. In terms of wars, Monster works really nicely for me, never had much problems with it (going both spell or melee).

For your second point, I don't really have anything to respond with at this moment. I've never really tried Anamnesis with Monster if I'm being honest, but I just finished putting together a Guardian-Anam build, and it works like magic.

For your third point, I do agree with some of it. The reason I like fire mage is the simplicity behind the powder specials. I can restore lost HP and max out my damage with endurance, and my melee Monster build always has courage activated. However, I'd like to point out something that you said, which is:

Again, my experiences are very different, and oftentimes the damage I take is greater than what I can heal with Monster. But, spamming a spell like heal doesn't leave no opening for any other spells. It's very easy to cycle heal and meteor repeatedly. Having more intelligence, more mana, simply gives you the ability to do it faster from my experience.

For your fourth point, I like to compare or rate weapons by how well they can "shine" at something. For example, Divzer might be seen as a shitty weapon by several, but I think it's one of the best bows in the game for adventuring, and its damage is simply astonishing, making it extremely efficient in speedrunning bosses. Warp might not be super useful in LI or wars, but its immense walkspeed and huge gimmick make it incredibly fun to use. These weapons, for example, might not be the most practical or the most useful, but I find that they really stand out in a specific build/playstyle, thus making them 'good'. I find that Monster doesn't really shine superbly at, well, anything. It has reduced heal potential and Monster builds take a fair amount of damage, making it a decent-at-best tank wand. While it has great damage, this is hampered by the -intel, which greatly dampens your ability to cast spells quickly. Melee is so poorly designed that tierstacking is the only way to make a good melee build, and Monster isn't exactly optimal for tierstacking due to low base damage, making it get mediocre-at-best melee damage (unless you go insane glass).

In conclusion, I agree with some of what you said, but I disagree with a fair bit of it as well. Is Monster a bad wand overall? I'd say it isn't terrible, but it isn't great either. Is this the weapon's fault, or is Monster just the victim of game design flaws such as defense, intelligence, and melee? I'm honestly not sure anymore. There's certainly room for improvement for the weapon IMO, and I'd love to see more melee viability for Monster, since melee Monster is serious fun, but that's up to the IMs to decide.

On a different note, I'd love to hear about some other builds people may have for Monster, because maybe there is a really good way to use this wand that I'm just too blind to see. I asked awhile back, but nobody seemed to have the slightest clue on what to do with it.

 

heres mine https://wynndata.tk/s/wJmO9o
the accessories r outdated but its pretty cool i think

 

I guess I am a little late on the HP rebalance, but I noticed Capricorn feels way overbuffed. Before the buff, 2250 HP was low for a lv 99 legendary boots but it makes up for it mostly through its mr, spell dmg, and sp that it gives. After the buff, Capricorn is 3250 HP, which is almost a 50% increase. Is there a reason for this massive buff? I find myself using these boots in almost every single build I make now due to this massive buff.

What about Vigro then? Why does it miss out on the HP rebalance?

 

Capricorn was determined competitive or outshined in some aspects with memento, a much lower level set of boots. Yes, they have mildly different effects and cater to different things but in the overall scope they were direct comparisons and memento often won. The one thing that was meant to set them apart, which is their level difference had no impact as the health values game-wide catered off once items hit level 80. Things above this didn't have a health advantage and this set of rebalances aimed to fix that.

Virgo was excluded as it's a gimmicky option that doesn't abide by health. It has 5 health as a joke in reference to its lore stating that it's leather boots.

 

I guess that makes sense. Still feels a bit too high of a buff; 3k hp might be better since usually air builds tend to be a bit lighter on the hp side. But that's just my opinion.

Virgos: :(

 

Hey did we ever find out what this update was? If I remember correctly the release was supposed to be yesterday.

 

Nah, that was just the main theory for teaser 2 for a while. Silver said we would have to wait 10 days last Thursday, so the update would probably on the 30th or July 1st, depending on timezones and all.

 

RIP buff capricorn memes.
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/item-element-feedback-survey.249347/page-2#post-3053961
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/yikes.248224/page-2#post-3043684
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/build-for-a-new-player.247320/#post-3036654
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/air-cult.246634/#post-3031660
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/i-dont-care.246188/#post-3027248
https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/i-dont-care.246188/#post-3031138

 

This is extremely minor but could we get -6 to -10 on Aphotic? (same as the Atlas change)