Why Lament Is A Bad Mythic

Lack of Personality
Sorry for the clickbait title. As a Lament user, I think it is a good weapon, however, it lacks the qualities to justify its mythical status. First, let’s break down what makes a mythic According, to Salted quite some time ago, Mythics are legendaries with big personalities.

Lament at a surface level meets these criteria. It is very distinctive with its identifications, any player who knows about mythics can instantly recognize it based on its 10/4 mana steal along with its negative life steal. But, I feel it is important to consider the greater context of how Lament is used. Lament is commonly used in spell spam builds and due to its high intelligence requirement probably only used in spell spam builds. Now because spell spam builds innately have high mana regen does that 10/4 mana steal really make it have a noticeable and unique effect? In other words is it a legendary with a big personality? I think not. Lament is meant to be a spell spam wand but when spell spam builds innately are good at that especially when most of them have low mana costs due to high intelligence that 10/4 mana steal isn’t noticeable.

Mediocre Damage
Okay well, other mythics don’t have that big of a personality either. So why should we change Lament? Well take Fatal for example, besides the random damage, in essence, all it is is a high damaging wand, a beat stick. It doesn’t have many noticeable quirks or downsides besides its high requirements so why shouldn’t this be reworked? Well, I’ve noticed that Mythics that lack personality make it up in pure stats. Fatal is still a huge step above regular items due to its damage alone. Lament doesn’t do this. It only deals marginally more damage than its pseudo-mythic counterpart Nepta Floodbringer and when raw spell damage is included, that damage gap is even less noticeable. Even worse, crafted wands completely overshadow Lament. So we have a generic spell damage wand with little personality that’s out damaged by its crafted counterpart. Why use Lament, and why is it a mythic? I’d argue that pure is a better spell spamming wand because it can cast spells faster and The Nothing is more mythic like because of its extremely unique stats. Overall Lament, though a decent wand, doesn’t live up to its mythical status.

Solutions
There are many ways we can fix Lament. The first solution and probably the simplest and boring is to buff lament to Mythic level damages. This justifies its status as a mythic but I don’t like this one because we already have damage oriented wands like Fatal. The next solution is to rework it to fill a new niche such as being the best support wand. Possibly a major ID that can overheal players or constantly heal them or offer some sort of buff to distinguish Lament from any other wand would do. Another solution is focusing on what it was meant to excel at, spell spamming. I think there is a hard ceiling to spell spamming. When you have 125+ intelligence mana doesn’t become an issue and you are limited by how fast you spells activate, pure breaks this ceiling by making its spells faster so we can just give Lament Entropy, but anything that allows Lament to break the spell spamming ceiling could fix it. Please tell me if this is an issue in the first place and if so what other solutions can be implemented. I’ve decided to put this in the general section because I want to start a discussion of mythics in a broader sense also.

TL;DR
Lament lacks the personality and damage to be a mythic therefore it should be reworked

 

When IceBear refers to IceBear in the first person, you know things are serious.

 

...this is the first time i see ice bear talk in first person..

 

I used Lament for a while, and I gotta say, mana steal does NOT work on it. It's not meant to be a hybrid weapon. And without having really good rolls on water damage%, you're doing less damage than NEPTA. Granted, it isn't completely meant for damage, but still. It's very underwhelming in my experience using it. -heal% should be raw too IMO.

Also the image is too small to read, btw

 

try using super slow speed or meleeing more so your mana steal actually procs, it depends on attack speed. From experience mana steal works very well

 

Back when I had Lament, I did try this. Even with -tiers I found I wasnt getting enough chances to melee in general. Probably just a playstyle issue on my part then.

 

Ice bear makes a very solid argument here, the fact that Lament "Lacks a personality"
And it certainly isn't the first that the players talk about this mythic.

Spoiler: Video about Lament made by Adomorn 2 years ago

And two years later, we are still having the same discussion, so obviously something isn't working.
While I do believe dmg rework is needed to make the mythic less "bad" than it is right now, Ice bear's alternative solutions are also worth considering.
Quoting Salted here, "Mythics are legendaries with big personalities", the uniqueness of mythics makes them stand out and easily differentiable among other weapons, and the "big personality" doesn't necessarily have to be dmg output ability.
Anyways...
You know something's up when ice bear starts using first person

 

Ice Bear says thanks edited with the proper image.

 

Part of the problem is that there aren't sufficient pure damage armors to make use of that free mana

 

my sleep deprived brain thought you were talking about the wand pure for 90% of the sentence holy shit im stupid

 

It only gives mana if you melee, but punishes you for meleeing, and I've actually found that nepta typically seems to surpass it in damage. It kind of lacks a reason to exist. Fatal is better for spells, gaia is better for melee and singularity is better for both. Monster is honestly not that much worse in spells and also renders you unkillable. Warp gives you warp, but it's kind of... special... anyway, I totally agree, lament needs something to give it a reason to exist.

 

major id increases damage, (or water damage) of people being healed 5% each time
it might be dumb idk

 

I definitely think that mythics should get their own major id to differentiate them from other legendaries and crafted items and to really bring out their uniqueness
Right now crafted items are close to or even surpass mythic damages and that kinda defeats one aspect of most mythics
There needs to be something more than just a dark purple name

Although I do agree that some mythics are very unique (Toxo, olympic, pure, warp, etc.), some are just step up legendaries, of which i like to call "precursors". I.e. tidebinder is just legendary Idol, zephra shredder is legendary hero. Not just that though, some mythics like fatal are just pure damage boosts and that to me isn't really a unique weapon. Sure, the addition of spell costs allows the weapon to be slightly more unique but adding major ids would allow the CT to create something truly unique and engaging.

For example fatal could have a major id called Shocking Accident: 10% when damaging a mob to deal 5% of the damage to the player, but empowering them with 20% more damage for 5 seconds. (more damage at the cost of a little bit of health, kinda standard glass cannon)

Or grandmother could have one called Shared Agony: For a short time after your health reaches below 50%, inflict the withering properties of this bow onto the enemy, creating an aoe slow centered on the enemy, which slows by 35% for 6 seconds (Cooldown: 2 minutes). (helps the user not get buttraped, just slightly though)
or No Pain, No Gain: The more damage this bow inflicts in a time period, the more health drain and empowered damage this bow inflicts, decaying over time if more damage is not dealt (10000 dmg = -10% health regen and -25 raw health regen, + 3% earth damage). (idk what this one is supposed to be it just popped into my head)

Obviously these are probably pretty crude and would need lots of work but it's an idea, using major ids to propel mythics further in the direction their ids already suggest they should be. Although I do see some problems with this, and that being that mythics would then be too confining and narrow.

Just my 2 rambling cents.

 

Good idea, but it sounds like a coding nightmare and a lot of server lag. I would love to see it too

 

On the topic of a potential major ID for Fatal, which won't happen any time soon because of the developer time required, I think a major ID called "Fatal" would be pretty cool what it does is makes 25% of your damage defense piercing.

 

I’m gonna have to disagree on that; as they stand considering their rarity, mythics are already too far above legendaries in terms of damage and IDs; while mythics should be given major ID’s, it’s not a good idea to lock the vast majority of the playerbase out of entire major IDs without, at the very least, months of work for a single item, which becomes an even bigger problem if those IDs end up being powerful. Like, imagine if Hawkeye was exclusive to Stratiformis, or Greed was exclusive to Thrundacrack. Not only would the vast majority of people not be able to use some extremely powerful major IDs, most mythic users wouldn’t be able to afford it given that the demand for those weapons specifically would likely skyrocket. Hell, most mythic exclusive IDs currently in game should be brought to fabled items, especially considering how well certain weapons would benefit from certain mythic exclusives (Cough cough praesidium)

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Also Lament is a watered down Lunar Spine and you cannot change my mind

 

Balancing should not be around prices of the item.

 

Imo lament is perfectly fine as it is, lemme explain:

Your main arguments are:
1. Lament has no personality
2. You don't notice the high mana steal
3. The damage can compare with nepta

I think lament has a decent personality. It has really high mana steal, but at the same time negative life steal and up to -65% heal cost to counter it.

Now you are saying that you don't notice any of the mana steal because lament is used in spell builds and in a spell build you don't melee that often. Who said Lament is a spell spam weapon? Who said you can't use it in a hybrid build and utilise the high mana steal? Many people say it sucks because of the negative life steal, but you're a mage, you can heal, and lament even gives you -65% heal cost. It almost feels like the weapon is screaming at you "use my mana steal, don't put me into a spell spam, but in a hybrid build, and give a shit on the negative life steal, you can heal, I make your heals even cheaper than they already are with your 129 intel".

Now you are saying that the damage sucks. Well, if you put lament into a spell spam build, the damage will of course be similar to nepta, but as I said, lament is a hybrid weapon, and if you actually use it as a hybrid, you're damage will be a lot higher than nepta's, since all you need to build is damage.

That's what I think. Now I have never used lament, but I remember that even two years ago people have already been saying lament sucks because it's just as good as nepta. But these people made the same mistake, they used lament as a spell spam. Basically people have always used lament with a bad build and then they complained about the damage being bad.

 

neither should the rarity but this is the world we live in so here we are

 

Balancing should be around rarity.