Weekly Community Discussion (4/10/2019) - Set Item Changes

Idea from @Gigavern for the Black Catalyst set (he said the concept comes from @SilverMirror): Give Black Catalyst set bonus something along the lines of: +1 tier, -35% melee dmg, +100 raw melee, 50 Str req. This would give it a niche mainly for tier-boosting of Very Fast/Fast weapons, also preventing using basically the same +tier armors all the time in EFA-type playstyles.

 

Clock Set Random Idea
Thanks @Major_Lue for reminding me not to let ideas rot in Discord.

As it stands, the Clock Set is pretty useless. The one significant use case was 1-piece bonus for 15% fire damage, which beats out Ring of Fire by 1% for melee, and Fireball by 3% for spell, and this was erased with the current change (it's mediocre at-level too, outside of that one case). Here's a rework idea:

1-piece bonus - none.
8-piece bonus - perfectly cancels out the balanced full set's entire stat pool. You gain nothing from wearing all 8 pieces, aside from varying the rings for random boosts. Thus, bringing you all the way around the "clock".
2-piece through 7-piece sets - each supports an entirely different playstyle.
Gear - each has a selection of stats that make them in some way partially applicable to every one of the six playstyles in the set bonus. Armors should have a larger number of stats taht are geared mainly toward one playstyle (although obviously there aren't many stats that work only for one), while accessories should have a smaller number of stats that work in multiple playstyles.

Note, I'm pegging stats based on estimating current baselines (disregarding the fact that I think, for example, that the baselines for slow raw melee and elemental defenses are too low). And yeah, I leaned heavily into the clock theme for the numbers.

Consider the following example set bonuses:

• 2-piece (progression): +12% xp bonus, +12% loot bonus, +12% walk speed, +12% soul point regen
• 3-piece (hybrid spell): +1 mana regen, +1 mana steal, -2 tier attack speed
• 4-piece (fast melee): +1 tier attack speed, +12% walk speed, +12% melee damage, +120 raw melee damage
• 5-piece (tank): +1800 health, +240 health regen raw, +24% health regen, 240 life steal
• 6-piece (slow melee): +1800 raw melee, -5 attack speed tier, +480 life steal
• 7-piece (mana regen spell): +6 mana regen, +60% spell damage, +600 raw spell damage

And the following example gear stats:

• Clockwork Ring: +240 health, +6% loot bonus, +6% walk speed, +6% spell damage
• Time Ring: -240 health, +6% xp bonus, +60 raw melee damage, +60 raw spell damage
• Watch Bracelet: +240 health, +6% rainbow damages, +24 life steal, +1 mana steal
• Clock Amulet: -240 health, +24 rainbow defenses, +12% soul point regen, +1 mana regen
• Clock Helm: 1500 health, +12% xp bonus, +1 mana steal, +12% raw melee damage, +60 health regen raw, +60 life steal, +12% spell damage
• Clock Mail: 1800 health, +12% loot bonus, +6% spell damage, +60 raw melee damage, +240 health, +12% melee damage, +60 raw spell damage
• Clock Leggings: 1500 health, +12% walk speed, -1 tier attack speed, +240 raw melee, +60 life steal, +240 health, +1 mana regen
• Clock Boots: 1200 health, +12% soul point regen, +1 mana steal, +1 tier attack speed, +60 health regen raw, +600 poison, +1 mana regen

 

I like that idea, it's a lot more creative and interesting than the current set bonus and I think it will work as a fun gimmick (but it also seems pretty useful)

 

oh no

 

I haven't looked into Morph in detail yet. I'm liking the lv100 build at a first glance — it's worse than it is right now, but workable.

However, I'm not liking how incredibly sp tight it is when you're not high enough level to use the full set. Morph's always had its place as a solid levelling set but it doesn't look like it's really able to fulfill its role anymore, especially so as you descend the levels, since you're constantly forced to invest almost all (if not literally all) of your skill points into what pieces of the set you're allowed to wear, and thus leaving scarce options to fill in the rest of your equipment slots.

This might not be too bad if the lower-rarity or multi-elemental items split their sp reqs low enough to be Morph-friendly; if that's the case don't worry about what I'm saying, I trust it'll all be fine.

This same potential issue also essentially locks you into using a rainbow weapon, but perhaps that's the item team's intention. I did enjoy being able to run single-elemental secondaries with Morph as I levelled up so that I could hurt those bulky rainbow-eledef enemies out there.

 

I think I would like a lot of 2-3 sets that rely a lot on the set bonus.

That way, having one of the items is useless so you have to have both, but because there's only 2-3 items, it sort of becomes a big "double/triple-item" that takes multiple slots.
I feel something like that would make the sets more intresting: It's not "If you use normal items, you get a better build" or a "Want a good build? Just use a set, no thinking needed"
You would actually need to think to use the set effectively.

The set system has a lot of potential: "Anti-sets" like how the Hive Items function where you can have one but not two or more, and intresting things with set bonuses: Perhaps the bonus is big if 2-4 items are used, but becomes negative if 5 or more are used, and there's one set item for each slot so you get to choose what slots to put the set in and what other neat things to put in the other slots.

But right now, it's a pretty boring system. That's a pretty sad thing, since there's a lot of potential.

 

By this level you already have access to powerful options like Prognosticum (2 mana steal), Sinister (mana steal, much more lifesteal, and poison), etc. and for necklaces you have Royal Stormy Amulet and a ton of other options.

 

take the damages take the defenses
30 skill points and an attack speed is all i need

 

So this isn't related to just sets but why is elemental defense % treated like it has the same value as elemental damage % in so many items? Like values are roughly the same and sometimes when there's a choice between a tanky set and a dps set it also features a ele def vs ele dmg (such as choose either 15% earth defense or 15% earth damage. EVERYONE would choose 15% earth damage tanky or not) the values are the same and its dumb.

Ele def is way too weak and should be buffed. I also think its obvious why: with elemental damage, you can control to what extent this bonus applies to you, for instance by equipping a weapon of that element. However, with elemental defense, you have no choice in this matter. You'll just need to hope that enemies will deal damage of that element so that you can take less of it; it's really situational. And not only is it situational, the bonuses are also way too weak to matter most of the time. if you have 100 water defense and gain a 50% buff to it, you get 150 water def right? well if a mob deals 500 water damage per hit you only take 350 damage. but what if a mob deals more than that, like 1000? it wouldn't be double the damage you take from a 500 hit, but more. 1000-150=850. That's almost no change. Thus it is easy to assume that elemental defense isnt worth it when fighting strong bosses. Even with 500 defense in each element, which is really hard to get, you barely have any damage mitigation if the boss deals good damage. so yeah its stupid

 

The idea behind the Thanos set isnt to be an endgame build. It's OKAY at endgame, but definitely not the best for tier, nor should it be. The set is level 83, and at level 83 it's extremely powerful. For endgame tier builds a level 83 full set shouldn't be the option people gravitate towards.

 

I've complained about this to Salted so many times, but last I did he insisted that their drop rate is roughly between that of Uniques and Rares! And, for sets that don't drop from a specific type of mob, that's...somewhat correct...I ran a test on this.

Nether Set and Adventurer's Set are about at the same level, right, so I tried killing a ton of Nether mobs on the testing server to see. I ended up filling up eight chests worth of gear. I killed 2000 of the same mob(spawned manually) with 120% loot bonus and 1% stealing, then sorted all the drops into individual chests. The spread of item drops was as such:

-84 normals
-73 uniques
-33 sets
-27 rares
-7 legendaries
-20 potions
-48.5 stacks of emeralds
-13 powders, of varying kinds

Only four out of those 33 set items were Nether Set items; all the rest were Adventurer's Set, so they appear to be roughly as common as rares, slightly more...but that makes exclusive set items roughly rarer than LEGENDARIES!! I figured this was a big issue as to why sets weren't being used. I've convinced him something is up since then, and I'm hoping the drop rates will be fixed soon.

As for everyone else's feedback, like...jeez, that's a ton! A lot of it is useful and are things I'd like to touch on(Xavier already hit the Thanos Set topic for me, thanks), but I really need to organize my thoughts before going into it all. Cool to see everyone so immediate and helpful, though!

 

I wouldn't call it extremely powerful for its level, but I'll agree that it's a good tanky raw melee option at-level. Although, while I was testing, I'd like to note that there aren't many weapons that can properly take advantage of the set around its level range.

 

Morph isn’t too bad, but loss mr from 5 to 3 is a bit of a hit in the gut. I’m completely unknowledgable about everything else but the the random hpr and melee with morph is just weird.

 

Cough, cough... I mean, I know they're not super slow, but that's still a heck of a boost, and 160 raw melee is a pretty good help for faster attack speeds such as these.

 

Thanos Warsword is the only one that I would say even works somewhat well with this:

https://wynndata.tk/s/vxamhj bow
https://wynndata.tk/s/ebznfr dagger
https://wynndata.tk/s/ewr7jm spear
https://wynndata.tk/s/80evgb wand

Incidentally, while we're on the subject... a +1 tier Black Catalyst in the manner I described above would combo pretty well with these options.

 

https://wynndata.tk/s/mlqpvc
courage and hp

 

For one thing, there's also the Thanos accessories that are basically part of the set, even though they're not set items themselves. You didn't bother to equip anything except Jiandan Handwraps, and as good as they are that means you're kinda not representing what the set's fully capable of.

For another thing, when I was initially testing this set when first making it, I gave it a few runs to gauge its power, and(mind this is when some part of it were weaker than now) swept Hive as a warrior using the Thanos Warhammer.

And as for the Black Catalyst suggestion...I won't beat around the bush here, +Attack Tier is one of the strongest IDs in the game. We're not going to just throw it on an accessory like that! There's a grand total of six accessories with tier on them at all, and they are:
-Knucklebones, whose +2 tier is offset wonderfully by the -1250 life steal and -40 mana steal and makes attacking a severe risk
-Breezehands, which is a Hive Item with a req that helps bar it from where it's most effective and provides notable damage reduction
-Diamond Static Necklace, which is a Diamond LI reward. While it has little downside, most thunder items are on the faster side anyways
-Atlas, which has -tier and only is there to make Life Steal and Mana Steal lazier
-Tenuto, which has -tier and other debuffs besides
-Momentum, which has -tier and other debuffs besides

If you're noticing a pattern, they all have downsides relating to the fact that they have attack tier at all, be it positive or negative. +tier is incredibly dangerous to put on accessories, and doing so isn't anything we'd take lightly. Black Catalyst is not a good fit for such a dangerous ID! It'd have to have basically nothing but downsides, unlike what it is now. The -35% and +100 raw hurts less than it seems, and even for faster speed weapons that's going to be a ridiculous boost.

 

If you can put a whole tier on a singular ring, you can definitely put a tier on the set bonus of 2 rings with a few downsides. In fact, that is the reason Black Catalyst is the perfect candidate for being a tier ring set. If you continue to keep Black Catalyst as a spell ring set, you'll honestly be wasting an opportunity. And before you say Breezehands is hive, Black Catalyst is a dungeon item.

Also, I should note that predisposing tier to thunder/air and higher dosages of raw melee to earth/fire creates a helluva lot of incentives to use quad-element in melee builds. Adding alternatives like 2x Black Catalyst, even if they are weaker, helps avoid those perverse incentive systems.

Frankly, it's a bit insulting that you dismissed it as "just throw[ing] it on an accessory like that".

 

If accessories are so weak that you'd debate over whether two rings combined deserve even +1 tier AS, then how is it reasonable to suggest that the Thanos Legionnaire set is going to do any better with the 3 missing accessories? Do you really believe it makes such a difference? What accessories would you suggest to complete Druser's build?

I don't know when you tested this but if changes have applied to the Hive since you did so then it implies your results are outdated. As of now, even the best of Druser's four builds, the Warsword, is almost undoubtedly going to struggle in Water Division+ with just 5-6k melee dps tops, and certainly loses against Qira herself if you consider her a part of the Hive.

I'd be surprised to see the Warhammer, which offers 1k less damage and no redeeming advantages, fare any better in the current context. Couple that with some lack of skill because tHe ItEm TeAm CaTeRs To NeW pLaYeRs and Hive quite suddenly becomes an unbeatable nightmare for this build.

 

Jiandan Handwraps alone gives better damage than those 4 Thanos accessories combined, also nearly as much hp and really it only loses to elemental defs. Druser didn't bother using the inferior option, what a surprise!

Edit: Forgot to mention that with Jiandan Handwraps you still have 3 free accessory slots, so it's even more likely that the Thanos accessories will fall further behind.

And because most of the time there are better alternatives, people just don't bother to make a serious build with it at all.

Tenuto exists?

I (want to) believe you misunderstood peoples' suggestion and thought we are asking for +1 tier on each individual piece instead of the set bonus. Nevertheless, I wouldn't bring anything new other than what has been said already, so I'll just skip it.

On another hand, is Atlas' -tier really a downside? Practically people use it because it's so-called downside, not really because it flings some life and mana steal at you. In theory it is a downside to have your attack speed nullified but in practice it's a bless.

Momentum is rather held back by the fact that it doesn't give anything significant in exchange for the -tier (outside heavy melee builds) rather than the -tier itself. But then again, level 79 only.

If Breezehand's damage reduction was notable, Very Fast builds wouldn't have waaaay less dps than Super Fast builds that use it. It's not like the reqs don't hinder it at all from being used in, for example, fire melee builds.

Diamond Static Necklace actually showed no care for having an 100 dex req in the beta changelog because it could have been used with earth weapons aswell. I'd say for now it just exists. I admit I might be wrong with this one, though.