Weekly Community Discussion (27/09/2019) - Master Hive Items

Hey, bit late, but i wanted give my quick opinion on each of the items. small disclaimer that some of my points may be off as they usually are when they're not fresh off an indepth discord argument. *ahem*


General Feedback: I'm not a huge fan of the net negative 30 sp, It does prevent rainbowing outside of the 3 elements a certain piece is made for and does accomplish that, but feels like a little too much.
I would like to see the items get a +5 to their 3 main stats, both to reel in the net negative a bit, but also to help reach out to tri elemental builds that go high into all 3 elements involved with that hive piece.
Alternatively, +10 and -20 would also be good.

General Feedback 2: This was confirmed in the cancelled revamp thread and i'm not sure if circumstances have changed so i will ask here again: will there be a period of time after 1.19 where you can trade hive items back and forth without the need for boss catalysts? Massively appreciated as an opportunity to check out all the new pieces, but also trade in currently owned ones that may not fit one's current build goals anymore after they've been changed.


Boreal-Patterened Crown: Overall strong spell helmet, and it being a helmet does make alot of people sad. no obvious complaints about the helmet itself, but it massively overshadows Cumulonimbus, i would suggest bumping cumulo's minimum ranges up across the board by a small amount, and increasing its walk speed boost to the 20% range to distinguish it from boreal crown.
Alternatively: leave anima helmet and boreal chest in their current slots but with the new stats so they don't overshadow/compete with medeis and cumulonimbus*


Obsidian-Framed Helmet: There is an inherent problem with reverse tier stacking melee, The only way to compensate for losing attack tiers is to pile on the melee damage, but raw melee doesn't stack multiplicatively downwards in as good a way as positive tier stacking (This is just my experience with it) and you usually only go down tiers to take better advantage of life steal. So i would bump the lifesteal to 400-500 to really emphasize that steals are supposed to be strong for slow attack speeds, and potentially change the 1000 flat melee to some amount of %melee, since slow weapons scale better off that.


Twilight-Gilded Cloak: Fairly strong and directly competes with ineptitute for earth builds like rikter, alkatraz and gaia, ineptitude will still see play in fire based tier stacking such as apocalypse and final compulsion, so i think this is a great introduction into the meta. my only concern is that you won't be able to invest enough points into the 3 stats to reach those high requirement weapons like alkatraz, while also having the points you need for the rest of the build (battleground dancers, diamond static necklace, etc) but a fix for this would just be to implement my general feedback suggestion regarding sp on these items.


Anima-Infused Cuirass: Mana stats would indicate it wants to be a for a spell spam build, but yet is it more defensively specced for some reason? directly competes with Medeis for damage, which may be why it has been throttled back to a more defensively specced item, as Medeis is supposed to take the offensive seat. I don't like this compromis and want to see something done about it, but i'm not sure what.
Alternatively: leave anima helmet and boreal chest in their current slots but with the new stats so they don't overshadow/compete with medeis and cumulonimbus*


Elysium-Engraved Aegis: Nothing much to say here, wants to be in a faster non-tier based melee build, and the stats accomplish that. Solid.


Chaos-Woven Greaves: All-out offensive piece, yet seems throttled in its attempt to accomplish that. Unsure about how to fix, but in trying to preserve the elemental attack and defense pattern the hive armor has, i would suggest bumping the melee% and spell% from 30 to 50. Unsure if health is too high.


Abyss-Imbued Leggings: Fits into the same type of build you would find lunar spine, lament, slider, sitis and lustrous in, however mana steal is also very characteristic of thunder items, which this isn't. Aside from the afformentioned weapons, i had a very hard time finding weapons that fit with this piece that wouldn't rather want to be thunder based, not counting hive weapons. The leggings may also be completely depending on being in the same build as Atlas, as slower attack speeds especially love steals.


Eden-Blessed Guards: The ultimate tank item, yet doesn't have the most health out of the bunch? PLEASE change the health to 6000. Otherwise no complaints, the piece knows what it wants to do and accomplishes it (almost) whole-heartedly.


Hephaestus-Forged Sabatons: Same critique as abyss-imbued pretty much, except with the other half of the weapons. in both cases i feel like they would rather want to take advantage of the anima piece, or atleast they would be if there didn't exist such strong chest and helmet options for those builds. The life steal is also on the lower side, and needs to be high enough to compensate for the detrimental negative health stats that are usually on thunder based items. exactly the same reason why the health is as high as it is.


Gaea-Hewn Boots: Just hands down the strongest boots in the game in an elemental archetype that has been solid for a very long time and they got to remain in the same slot which should make users of these very happy. no complaints here, only praise.

 

Hm, you raise some interesting points, some of which I agree with:
- BPC being a chestplate would definitely give it a better use case. However, I think Anima is better as a chestplate - it really doesn't compete with Medeis anymore. I've found reason to use both of them at different times, with Medeis having more use when the weapon already has mana steal and needs the sp, and Anima in many other cases.
- Regarding Obsidian-Framed Helmet, Gigavern has already explained the use of raw melee over percent melee. I don't think the lifesteal on here is too low since you'll be proccing it plenty with powder specials anyway, excepting the case of using it for fast melee (Wishing Star!).
- Agree that Cahos-Woven Greaves is just too weak for the playstyle it encourages.
- Mana Steal isn't really a characteristic of thunder specifically - it gets aligned to Earth-Thunder more heavily, but because of that the vast majority of mana steal items have either an earth or a thunder req. Abyss having mana steal and lifesteal is for much the same reasons as the voidstone weapons (if they mattered, lol).
- ye 6k hp Eden would be neat
- Thanks for the agreement on Heph lifesteal :P

 

I agree with this suggestion of a trial period to test pieces as my Anima helmet becomes Anima cuirass.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write an in-depth response. You've got some good thoughts and insights on this.

The decision we made regarding both the positive and negative skill points on these was based on the current sandbox, whereas the old versions (which included +10x3 skill points) were made to suit elem revamp. The reason we opted to ditch the positive skill-points and rather touch their 3 distinguishing IDs was to help reel in their power, as they have little to no downsides depending on how they're used. They currently have an overwhelming amount of positive stats with 3 main IDs, on top of the elemental stats, to represent the elemental combinations they're in. Without the restrictions elem revamp had in place the hive armours are extremely strong and don't quite need the added bonuses of positive skill points.

Yep, for a limited time after the update, you can trade in master hive items without the need for catalysts. You're right in saying that it gives both an opportunity to test each of the items, but also if a new item suits them more than a previous, or if the item got overhauled to no longer work for them.

Both cumulonimbus and medeis are on our radars right now, but this post was made to showcase the master division armours themselves so they were kept out of it. We'll release more information as things are finalized regarding them but we haven't forgotten about it.

Yeah, there's a current issue with the concept of Obsidian-Framed as the playstyle (heavy melee) it caters too is something that hasn't been concretely established quite yet, but it's not one we wanted to abandon, either. More work has to be done to bring this helmet up to par, but it doesn't involve the helm itself. Increasing its lifesteal is a way to get people to use it for its purpose, which is slower and heavier melee but it doesn't solve the problem or open up the build, it just makes the item "too good to pass up" in certain scenarios which is something we'd like to avoid. As for the decision with raw melee versus % melee, @Gigavern gives a good explanation here. Modifying it to be % melee rather than raw almost entirely shuts out weapons that aren't super slow speed. It'd force this playstyle to revolve entirely around already super slow weapons.

You can definitely reach the higher req items such as alka if you use some skill-boosting items. It's not restrictive to the point where you can't use them, but you'll have less survivability due to low(er) agility and walkspeed with some of these earth weapons, but they're definitely not close to unreachable. Here is a build I threw together quickly with tons of room for optimization and tweaks as I didn't put too much time into creating one. Things can be swapped out for more survivability, walkspeed and even more so if more accessible weapons (such as gaia/rikter) are used instead.

Spellspam builds don't always have to be full-blown for damage... They can be made to suit a more defensive build with more survivability as well. Spellspam just currently tends to be used in the meta as more damage oriented, which isn't what it has to be. Medis, like mentioned before, is on our radar for possible tuning alongside cumulonimbus as they both are occupying an unfortunate slot alongside master hive items.

Glad to hear it! It did get its raw melee toned back, but I'm glad to hear its still as formidable as it was before, even with its reductions.

For this item (and applicable to many others) I feel as though the problem is less with this, but with the build that it's going for as a whole. Glass cannons aren't well supported (much like heavy melee) and so this item trails behind others in terms of its effectiveness. Over buffing it, like Obsidian-Framed, would lead to a situation where it's used for it being too good rather than actually going for its intended playstyle which is not something we'd like to release these with.

Good point about its lack of thunder orientation. This is a remnant from elem revamp where EWA, classified as "void", was heavily focused on stealing effects and spells. Similar to ETF's heavy melee, it's not something we wanted to outright abandon but it needs more work to see a place in the meta. More to be said later in the post, as it doesn't only involve Abyss-Infused.

Increasing its health is something we specifically shied away from. The combo this is a part of (water/fire/air) isn't a health-based combination. It focuses more on regeneration and more specifically, elemental defence. The elemental defences of this item are significantly higher than any of the other armours. The health won't match that of Hephaestus-Forged or go higher than it, as that's not the direction of the element combination it has.

And yep, same as Abyss-Infused, this is lacking in terms of other items rather than itself. More to come with this as things are finalized.

Once again, happy to hear it! =)

Reverting the slots would clash significantly with some of our planned changes. Changing them back would lead to even more changes and these are the more forgiving ones to change as they are exchangeable, while other items (drops, dungeon merchants, lootchests) aren't.

So, after all that has been said (apologies if it's not completely fluid, been on and off writing this for some hours now since I was doing other things in between, but anyways) one thing that I do want to get out there is that these changes aren't made in a bubble, nor are the hive armours expected to exist in one. Many of them rely on other items to build off their IDs and playstyle but might currently be lacking (ETF's heavy melee, EWA's spell-steal, TFA's sustain tank) whereas others are well established and possibly even thriving (ETA's tier melee, TWA's offensive spell, EWF's spell-tank). Some of the Hive armours might require other changes and additions for them to have a place with the currently established builds, but we don't want to abandon them if they don't immediately find a spot within the meta. I'm sure I missed some things, so apologies in advance.

 

I am not sure what you're saying here - presumably you're not talking about mechanics changes?

Fundamentally, Chaos-Woven Greaves is aiming at a spell-oriented playstyle*, and right now its draw is basically - 60% damages, high health, and an extra ~750 dps from poison, with the Def/Agi downsides. This is not that much higher than, say, Dark Channeler's damage boosts (roughly equivalent of 50% to 80%, depending on the class/weapon), Asphyxia's damage boost (~60% to ~90%), or Crestfallen's dmg boost (~35% to ~65%, plus the mana steal). None of those penalize both Def and Agi (although I'll admit Asphyxia's Agi penalty does matter pretty regularly, so there is that). Meanwhile, you can also use other mana and damage options like Elder Oak Roots, Rapids, Trench Scourer, which I would argue are likely more beneficial.

I'm also not sure how Obsidian-Framed would work as-is, with slower weapons - I would argue that it's simply not powerful enough. The inability to use potions generally balances out with the lifesteal-multiplying power of the relevant powder specials imo (although I can see why some people would say it's not enough). But for damage, even if you take Limbo (the most powerful non-mythic, non-archer weapon for this purpose, i.e. by base damage and access to a powder special) and build almost solely for damage: https://wynndata.tk/s/e0okrp (I used Momentum without the Agi req as bracelet, because why not?), and then throw an additional 5000 raw melee on top, you reach a somewhat viable effective dps of 13.5k**. I would definitely argue that the main weakness of Obsidian-Framed Helmet, and other armors for slow melee that presumably will have similar raw melee numbers along the same values, is that they aren't powerful enough in terms of damage.

* Chaos-Woven Greaves has no significant melee support in the vast majority of cases. This is less about the item and more about everything else. Consider items like Limbo - in exchange for natural Super Slow, to prevent it from being too powerful in melee it receives a base damage nerf, making it extremely difficult to use in spell (particularly since Chaos-Woven favors percent spell over raw spell). You can't realistically use the melee support with faster weapons, for the same reason mana steal hybrid is much less effective with faster speeds, so in practice for a hybrid ETW playstlye you're either using Super Slow and meleeing solely for mana steal, or using a Super Slow weapon with maybe one tier (maybe two tiers in case of Mage, because of the time to cast) and meleeing in between spells for some extra dps.

**6.5k, plus take the ~12.5k per-hit, times 4.15, divided by 7.5 which is the absolute shortest time in seconds between two specials for Super Slow Assassin, and add them.

 

Regarding Eden-Blessed Guards:

If it's truly focusing on regeneration, then why does Gaea-Hewn Boots match it almost entirely? Both of them carry 3mr+250hpr; and when you use either option to build towards health regen, the extra 50%hpr that Eden-Blessed Guards offers fails to make much of a difference. I would think that the vast majority of combat-oriented builds of this nature would much prefer Gaea-Hewn Boot's significant damage offer traded for that extra bit of hpr. i dont really have a build to prove this point cos i suck at building

I elaborate on my problem with these two items here.

 

Boreal Patterned Crown: Nice damages, probably will still be used less than third eye because third eye is a better option seeing as it gives you more mana and intel, this item however could be used well with aquarius, but will most likely only be used with water weapons, most thunder and air weapons probably won't be able to get enough sp since the reqs are now too high except gales possibly. Also air is bulkier than fire so this seems unbalanced, it was a stupid decision to swap the roles of Boreal and Anima, I think you should've left the hive items we have now alone and stuck to the current template as well, building the new hive armor items around that.

Obsidian framed helmet: 1000 Melee damage isn't worth losing two tiers of attack speed when other items can be substituted in and you can use maybe shawl of gaea so you would not be needing other tier stack items and can run even more melee stack

Twilight-Gilded Cloak: Not bad tbh, although I know few people who use T-A-E for tier stack, it's glassy and you probably won't get much life steal or survivability. Not my play style, but well designed for the element trio it represents


Anima-Infused Cuirass: Probably the most annoying change for me personally, most people don't seem to understand that air is a bulkier element than fire and switching bpa and aih's roles makes BPC godly and AIC just pitiful, the only weapon that can get passed the bad damage of AIC is something like Black because cinderchain is there as a backup, but you can always use Medeis as a far better option, and it gives sp. The only way I can see this specific anima infused cuirass being useful with hilarious damages for the play style it's representing is in the update, that was thankfully cancelled, because of the mana it gives, the AIC proposed in the update with 2/4 mr/ms was just an awful idea and should never have seen the light of day. T-F-W works best as an offensive play style.

Elysium-Engraved Aegis: Ngl, I like it, no complains except for a universal one I'll get to later.

Chaos-Woven Greaves: Not my playstyle at all, but if you like it whatever I guess, fits a bad play style well.

Abyss-Imbued Leggings: We are on a streak here of good items tbh, nice.

Eden-Blessed guards: Another good item for its play style, well done.

Hephaestus-Forged Sabatons: The fact that it has mana steal somewhat infuriates me and this is where I'll talk about my universal disappointment with all these items, the negative sp. This has mana steal despite taking away too much int and not being able to get enough int to the point where it matters, any hybrid build without decent intel are useless unless you want to spend 30 minutes trying to kill mummy board, the only way I see this item working is in wars oddly enough if it's a bunch of level 50s you might be able to get enough mana to sustain yourself if you group them up or use chain lightning with a super slow weapon (which I hope was brought there by atlas since super slow weapons are shit for spell, also every warrior weapon, but that's a rant for another day) but I know the warring community isn't usually considered when making items, I learned that with the last update the item team tried to push which was utterly horrendous and thankfully got tossed away as it should've from the start. I don't see this item being used in any scenario unless it's a meme build

Gaea-Hewn Boots: Why the raw health regen and spell %? Doesn't really bother me, but I thought the raw spell was better

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Yeah, there's a current issue with the concept of Obsidian-Framed as the playstyle (heavy melee) it caters too is something that hasn't been concretely established quite yet, but it's not one we wanted to abandon, either. More work has to be done to bring this helmet up to par, but it doesn't involve the helm itself. Increasing its lifesteal is a way to get people to use it for its purpose, which is slower and heavier melee but it doesn't solve the problem or open up the build, it just makes the item "too good to pass up" in certain scenarios which is something we'd like to avoid. As for the decision with raw melee versus % melee, @Gigavern gives a good explanation here. Modifying it to be % melee rather than raw almost entirely shuts out weapons that aren't super slow speed. It'd force this playstyle to revolve entirely around already super slow weapons.



"Spellspam builds don't always have to be full-blown for damage... They can be made to suit a more defensive build with more survivability as well. Spellspam just currently tends to be used in the meta as more damage oriented, which isn't what it has to be. Medis, like mentioned before, is on our radar for possible tuning alongside cumulonimbus as they both are occupying an unfortunate slot alongside master hive items."
Wanted to give my opinions on these two comments of yours reacting to the other post. Super slow melee will never ever be viable and please don't think it will be. Just please. I know most item team members think fire tier stack is the worst evil in the universe, but it's not as good as you think it is and nerfing it to the point where fire tier stack is either impossible or incredible difficult was a dumb idea I'm glad and I hope was abandoned. Obsidian framed helmet only works for items that are already a very high attack speed and I don't think needing to build at the very minimum 2 tiers of attack speed without the possibility of using burnout or battleground dancer is worth only 1000 melee damage, 1350 would probably be a better number off the top of my head. Raw melee is definitely the way to go here, but it needs to be increased otherwise it's just a worthless item.

Do not ruin medeis because anima infused cuirass sucks, that would be such a pitiful move on your part, I usually try to be polite here, but that would be ridiculous. "Spellspam builds don't always have to be full-blown for damage... They can be made to suit a more defensive build with more survivability as well. Spellspam just currently tends to be used in the meta as more damage oriented, which isn't what it has to be. Medis, like mentioned before, is on our radar for possible tuning alongside cumulonimbus as they both are occupying an unfortunate slot alongside master hive items." Spell spam builds usually do prefer full blown damage instead of bulk because if you can spam spells that are higher power, that's better than spamming lower powered spells if you can take some more hits, T-F-W is not a bulky play style, it's glassy and it's meant for damage, not being able to build walk speed and being a stationary target that gets hit by literally every attack thrown at you because of lack of agility is not what I would call bulky at all from my own experience, even if you slapped diamond solar bracelet on here I doubt it'd save it. Hybrid builds are the ones that require the most damage because of how bad mana steal is compared to mana regen and usually can squeeze in, not a lot, but a bit of life steal which can be used for increased survivability as long as your mana sustain is worse than it could be. Hybrid is meant to be higher damage with **potential** increased survivability at the cost of inconsistently being able to deal good damage (spells, not good damage as in high damage, I mean spell over melee) melee is only a part of hybrid to justify the high damage because you need to take a break from spells which is why I didn't appreciate the proposed black and cinderchain nerfs, even most of my hybrid builds severely tank in power if I try to put life steal in. Spell spam is meant to be high damage with low survivability because it gets the job done quicker and doesn't need good defense if the offense is high enough, in this scenario the bulk does not justify the poor damage.

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https://wynndata.tk/s/a9vynw at least put chain lightning or quake on it man cmon lmao. But I appreciate how you understand that this item is only good if it can be used in a super fast build, some people unfortunately thing slower weapons work for melee builds, but that's delusion that I can't help unfortunately.
https://wynndata.tk/s/6r2g08 slight tweak to the BPC
I would never use a glassy alka 6 tier stack build so I won't critique it and therefore have virtually no knowledge on it at all

 

I second this. I've already talked about its similarity Eden-Blessed Guards, but Haisay has a point about the %spell; now that I look at it again, isn't this also starting to invade Chaos-Woven Greaves's territory? I think it's either broken or deserves some reconsideration.

Druser already showed that 6000 melee was still unimpressive. Where did 1350 come from?

You sound like you're describing what I would deem ETW here, but in all fairness it's not like Chaos-Woven Greaves represents it very well at the moment. I used to think ETW was going to be more glassy and less sustain-friendly than it seems to end up being, but then again WFA also fell below my expectations with Eden-Blessed Guards's role being contested by Gaea-Hewn Boots, as is the case also with ETF and TFA from what I'm gauging from other players' comments on it.

 

can you open this up for me a little better? i seem to be under the impression that air's survivability comes from walk speed where fire gets its from health, setting the now-equal sp bonuses aside

raw spell really doesnt fit EWF imo, since it uses two "heavy" elements (earth, fire) % damage suits much better. hpr makes sense since it's like the nature elements

if you stop thinking about cinderchain and black for second, is there a reason for you to think that way
TWF is in the middle-ground of damage and tankiness. thunder is a damage element, water is a must for spells (unless brainwashing) and defense is a defensive element. i find anima cuirass is representing all of those at least decently on fire's and water's end, though it's lacking some damage that items of thunder element should have

 

There's going to be someone out there who'll be like "wAlK sPeEd = sKiLl" and therefore thinks that as long as you're good enough at the game agility's always a cooler option.

 

yeah but why is it bulkier when defense is literally the health element

 

Because that's the truth as there is little need for different types of builds. Once you have a strong build you like you can do almost anything.

Walk speed letting you dodge eventually means potions are more efficient in button pressing simulator wars. That or he isn't aware of the patch to defense.

 

Yeah, exactly, it's not. Now excuse me while I find something else to talk about so I'm not making random useless posts.

Aphotic works as an alternative to Atlas, and let's hope that IMs have at least something else planned to cater for Atlas's near-monopoly on lifesteal support in this sector. Also if you have a brain as small as mine you will consider dual-wielding a viable option and thus conclude that Stinger, too, is an amazing option to cater to an EWA build's needs (credits to Madkurre for the original build that this was derived from).

 

The warring community isn't often considered when making items because it's, despite the popularity of guilds, ultimately a very small fraction of what the game is, and a lot of people who do wars tend to forget this because the warring circle basically does nothing but war.

See, there's a rough estimate that, since we have 1000000+ unique logins, that the discord community(containing roughly 20000 people, last I checked) and forums community is only roughly 2% of the actual playerbase, and I'd be willing to say a decent 85% or so of people who are dedicated to guild politics and warring are a part of the discord and forums communities. I'm aware the numbers are lesser than this because "unique logins" does not mean "continuing to play", but consider those numbers and you'll see how tiny the warring community is, ultimately. It's close-knit and intense, sure! But because of that, a lot of guild-invested people seem to act like it's all the game is while ignoring all the other content.

It also must be remembered that guild people know the meta and game pretty intimately, and know how to level quickly to get through the game as fast as possible. Most players don't! So content that could be over in hours for you could take weeks or months for a casual player, and in the end we have to dedicate our resources to the majority. We keep track of player activity, and the paths for a new player, a casual player, a player on their second class, a player on their third class, a player on their fifth class, a donor on their seventh or tenth class, or a guild player are each radically different! Frankly it's amazing how fast some people can run the game when they put their minds to it, but ultimately that's a minority, and war strategies are also radically different from the rest of the game's overall play. If we catered everything to wars, then the face of the main game would be unrecognizable and a lot less approachable.

It sucks to not have your favorite part of the game catered to specifically; heck, that's one of the many reasons I joined the content team in particular. I had a vision for the game, and I had a way to make it happen! But, don't think we don't know you exist, and at the same time, try to remember that other players exist too. Oh, and...

The element revamp isn't being "tossed away". It's still coming, we're just approaching it more gradually and trying to field ways of implementing it that won't be as disruptive to the casual player. Part of the idea of these weekly discussions is to get a better idea of what players think of the game and what they want so we can adjust our plans around that. Though, it's not the only reason; heck, some of our upcoming threads don't have a whole lot, or in some cases anything at all, with the element revamp! Some threads, like this one pertaining to revamp-relevant changes, are, but just not all of them.

 

Now that I notice this argument, is Hephaestus-Forged Sabatons really that much worse than these two?

In the original elemental revamp, WFA literally could barely do any satisfactory damage without getting carried by Sizzling Shawl and pure-water items like the beta Condensation, whose roles were ultimately counter-intuitive to WFA's character. Without them, Eden-Blessed Guards is probably even more of a meme build candidate than Hephaestus-Forged Sabatons is — it's scarce in damage, and its regens, the central stats to the archetype, are closely matched by EWF (and utility-wise, probably beaten by the lifesteal on TWF too), which ultimately forces a meme build if you want to make anything that isn't just overshadowed by some of the more meta options.

Same applies to Chaos-Woven Greaves. Unless they're all nerfed when the update rolls in, every spell archetype except WFA can currently be adjusted to at least render ETW a weaker choice overall, if not more-or-less rival its damage and one-up it on top of that with a much stronger defensive footing.

But whether or not my argument about these two is valid, what's your solution to TFA? Increase intelligence to make use of that mana steal? Isn't that just undermining its identity as a tri-element archetype? And why does a build need both in the first place? I own a 11/4mr 0int archer and everything works out for me just fine. This kind of high-mana low intelligence playstyle places greater emphasis on using spells for their utility and less for their damage output, which makes sense if you use TFA as an evasive high-sustain class as its component elements would suggest.

The IMs also said in their original release of the elemental revamp that they wanted to open up mana recovery to other types of builds instead of reserving them only for water builds. I would think that the mana steal on Hephaestus-Forged Greaves is a comfortable step towards that.

Lastly, regarding meme builds, it's not clear what the IMs have in mind but I'm starting to accept that there will be archetypes that will simply revolve around being meme builds, and perhaps they'd like to integrate such builds into the game to coexist alongside the more meta builds that are typically used (and on the meta side of the game, I do agree with you that wars are central). Unless something's done about Eden-Blessed Guards, WFA is almost certainly going to fall under this "meme build" classification, and I suppose ETW won't have an easy time getting out of it either without good buildmaking skill. TFA's quite likely to join them in this way.

 

I know I’ve been posting too much today, but Selvut’s response feels odd to me. It’s almost as if it’s just a random attack on Haisay and doesn’t effectively address any issues that he raises.

Hey, I’m no war fanatic. I participate in war rather infrequently, and it shows in my statistics. I’m still nevertheless involved in the warring community and I care about how item changes impact the warring context. I don’t like the way wars work either right now but my concerns aren't the item team’s fault so I won’t talk about it here.

The important thing though is that there are a lot of people who are involved in the warring community but undertake many non-war activities, such as myself. I’m sure I’m not alone in this regard.

You don’t account for how these players are distributed across your figures.

Your “1000000+” number assumedly includes a huge proportion of players who rarely play now, if at all. Even among those who do play, considering your downplaying of their ability to keep pace with “some people,” I question whether many of them have passed lv80.

On the contrary, players involved in the warring community are almost certainly still playing the game, and grossly more likely to have a lv80+ class, which makes them relevant to virtually every part of the revamp that the IMs have ever revealed to us since the announcement of the original elemental revamp a couple months ago.

I’m making up numbers because we don’t have the actual statistics in front of us, but if we assume that 20% of all Wynn players stil play, and a further 20% among them are lv80+, you’re suddenly looking at a mere 40k players against 20k forum users, which is certainly a non-negligible proportion even if it’s not as high as 1/2. The “2%” figure is quite suddenly out of the picture when you look at it in this light.

This is off-topic. Item changes have nothing to do with content, do they? Isn’t it more logical to presume the greater experience that warrers bring to the context of item making is highly valuable to the health of the game mechanics as a whole? When was content ever a concern when it came to items?

So, what’s the game’s overall play? Isn’t it just PvE and wars? What else would you talk about, PvP? The Nether’s not very relevant and duels are predominantly just-for-fun style skirmishes that end in several seconds tops with little skill involved. What else, lootrunning? Professions?

With these niche things out of the way, isn’t it sensible to presume that wars deserve, say, about 50% of the item team’s attention, being one of just 2 aspects that actually merit game-balancing? Why would you neglect something as important as warring?

I doubt Haisay believes the IMs didn’t notice the warring community. All it takes to solve something like that is to just speak up. The problem he illustrates is more that the warring community are being dismissed, that their opinions are simply being ignored. Maybe he doesn’t offer a specific solution either, but that doesn’t mean that the issue can just be waved aside with a “we know you exist”.

edit: grammar

 

would ilke to mention that hive rainbow items could also be, really cool.
currently theres no armor but all weapons and acessories can defo be used for rainbow (altthough weapons might be a lil weak since you gotta use t4-t3 powders) armor could be really cool.
not sure this would be thought of, considering what y'all did to rainbow in the ele revamp D: just throwing it out there tho. rainbow can use a lot of attention atm, especially with 5 new mythic boots coming out, i'm expecting another intel one, another air one, another fire and another thunder/intel. (since literally 3/5 of the current boots require str... lol) and the last one rainbow pls.

fr tho, pls hive rainbow armor

 

Obsidian-Framed in revamp did end up being able to boost raw melee options to higher damages than all other options at the cost of not having Agility. It wasn't a common approach, but it did work in a number of cases. It was the only time I got a nonmythic dagger to approach the melee dps output of Inferno (I got Agitation to 13k or so, while Inferno melee beta was at 14-15k).

I'd say Black is a particularly bad choice of weapon for AIC because it already has a bunch of mana steal. A weapon with no mana might benefit much more - you'd likely be better off playing Black with Medeis and Intensity. And I'll go ahead and repeat (not necessarily directed at you) that I really don't think Medeis is overshadowed by AIC in any way - they fit very different niches. It's a great example of two items in the same playstyle that both have use. Broadly speaking though, I agree that the health emphasis for TWF is, at least, not strong enough (like what does 40% hpr on Anima even mean? there's no way to use it without sacrificing all your damage). I am not certain how much walkspeed matters for a spell build (likely primarily for Assassin, and let's not talk about Warrior). For the purposes of Assassin at least, I'd definitely argue that the tradeoff of power requires quite a bit more tankiness than is shown in AIC - but we'll have to wait for the rest of the items.

Regarding Gaea-Hewn, I actually did an in-depth review of the EWF focus on percent spell vs. the TWA focus on raw spell... somewhere, I can't seem to find it now. Anyway, the change here gives Gaea-Hewn a reduction of around 5-20% damages depending on the weapon.

There's nothing wrong with WFA using damage items to go "glassier" or hpr/health/sp items to go tankier - Selvut has stated before that this mix and match was an intended feature. I do agree that items like Eden-Blessed are particularly susceptible to the existence or lack of variation in support.

With ETW, all that's needed is powerful spell-based damage options that have ET reqs. Bete Noire in revamp was a good example, giving up to 78% spell damage, up to 3 mana steal, -tiers, and a bunch of skill points. I do see some problems with not really being able to make ETW defensive at the cost of some damage, but I can't really think of a great way around this... (big health maybe, or walkspeed)

I do think I've been underestimating the effects of no Int spells slightly. They're certainly not going to carry a build (Brainwash spell focus is imo not viable) but I would say they do provide more benefit than I've previously given them credit for. Slow melee archetypes are of course the ideal place to have excess spell capacity, since you have plenty of time in between melee hits.

 

When I said a lot of players, I meant a lot of players, which is a very different scale from "all of the players." The vast majority of guild people I've seen have essentially disregarded the rest of the game and focus almost solely on warring and that sort of politics, but that isn't everyone. At the same time, if I weren't to generalize and I listed off every single other edge case, I'd never have been able to finish that post it would have been so long!

Your numbers are off.

If we take the 20% note of 1000000, we get 200k, not 20k. We compare that, and then it's 10%, and guild players are only a part of that total even within that category as well! So, even with your example, it's a fraction of a fraction of factions. That original "2%" figure was looking at overall discord and forums engagement in rough numbers and assuming guild players based off of that, but if you really get into the nitty-gritty of the numbers, that 2% estimate, that 20k? That's high-balling it like crazy.

Wait, what? Item changes have nothing to do with content, what?

Item changes are extremely important to the game's content, because items are how the player interacts with the game's content! It's an extremely basic thing, and absolutely core to the gameplay because without it, you're stuck with 510 health tops, punching mobs for 1 damage every 2 seconds.

But, onto the reason I brought up how fast people speed through the game: The faster you can get through something, the less it feels like there is.

Think about it, you look at speedruns and there's a bazillion different skips and glitches for anything and everything, and when an advertised 4-6 hour game can get beaten in three minutes, it suddenly feels like the game's got nothing to it, doesn't it?

War players and players who know the game well tend to progress through it quicker cause they've been through it already and know where to go and what to do to level efficiently, as well as having a pre-existing cache of items and emeralds. Now with crafting in the mix, a lot of people end up hoarding ingredients in their banks, so a new character even has that to draw off of should they go for professions. And don't even get me started on the trade market.

All in all, this means a person on a repeat class(or multiple repeat classes) will be getting through the game a lot faster on their second playthrough. This is pretty basic stuff; anyone will improve their game by playing a game more than once, right? But it means there's more speed to it, and since strong wars require either large teams or extremely well-equipped endgame players to beat them, guilds are basically limited to being an endgame activity. It's at the end, when you've done everything else. So guild people who level up a class, would do so very, very quickly compared to even most other "trained" players, and that makes it feel like there's so much less content in the game than there actually is. Let's see what you said:

-PvE
-Wars

Yeah, you covered about everything, but it's done in a misleading way. PvE covers a huge, huge, HUGE majority of the game's content! Just shuffling everything into that one, singular category makes it seem like there's barely anything to it, when you have:

-Exploration
-Quests
-Boss Altars/Bonus content a-la Legendary Island
-Lootrunning
-Professions
-Build experimentation

And there's content for all this from, quite literally, level 1 to level 100 and even slightly beyond! Lumping all that into the category of "PvE" and then trying to say that there's only two things, PvE and Wars, is super disingenuous, because sure. That's two categories, but one covers just about 99% of the game's entire total of content! Wars are super minor in the grand scheme of things, and everyone likes to say professions are optional, and frankly if such a basic and well-supported system is optional, something like wars which is relegated to endgame, locked behind a big LE paywall, and offers no benefits or profits whatsoever is absolutely optional too. If you really take stock of everything, it absolutely is not 50% of the game's content, not by a longshot.

Plus, there's the fact of the matter that war builds are far different than builds for traditional play. If we catered to wars, there'd basically have to be two different styles of item in the game, and that could be super alienating for those who don't play wars.

They're not just being dismissed; we take them into account, but we also have to take into account that, no matter the arguments, guild folks are a minority. Catering to their specific wants while also having a good experience for the rest of the game is something that's incredibly difficult to balance, since the guild warrer and the casual player both have totally different priorities for what they'd need out of a build to solo their challenges.

 

Alright! It's Friday again so we're going to be locking this thread and moving onto a new topic. You'll still be able to view this thread, its content and its replies by following the link on our main thread here where we'll keep a list updated with every weekly discussion thread. We appreciate all of the responses and discussions this week and hope to see you guys on this week's thread here.

Cheers =)
/locked