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

This was never a theme, though. They were never meant to "match" the "prime" elements, and by that standard Ignis should be extremely powerful too, since two of Archer's spells also inflict fire damage(arrow storm+bomb arrow).

 

Thread updated.

 

When I'm disagreeing with an argument to buff Lament you know something is wrong

1, Classes don't have 'prime' elements, sure most people will wanna use water mage/fire earth warrior/air archer/thunder assassin, but classes are just as effective with other elements (except maybe water warrior and fire archer)
2, these arguments are subjective, alkatraz never "broke the game"

Buff Lament, but make better arguments telling why it actually needs a buff than comparing it to mythics that have no similarities or have anything to do with it

Edit: surprised you didnt mention Guardian here.

 

https://wynncraft.gamepedia.com/Elements
“("Brute" subclass) - The Earth element is linked to the Strength stat and is generally associated with the Warrior class.”

“("Assassin/Dark Magic" subclass) - The Thunder element is linked to the Dexterity stat and is generally identified with the Assassin class.”

“("Wizard/White Magic" subclass) - The Water element is linked to the Intelligence stat and is generally identified with the Mage class.”

“("Tank" subclass) - The Fire element is linked to the Defense stat and is generally identified with the Warrior class.”

“("Scout" subclass) - The Air element is linked to the Agility stat and is generally identified with the Archer class.”

 

^
So I can literally go and do this if I want to

 

Don't base your arguments on wiki, that was just made by someone with the same incorrect interpretation of elements as you.

________________________________

To further push my claim that wiki is inaccurate


Mage with 3 DMG 3 Defense and 3 Range

 

But we can't obtain it

/s​

 

Since you guys are taking in feedback for various items on this thread, I'll start throwing in my two cents. I have no incentive to join the IM team for my own reasons, but I do enjoy a good discussion about items and game balance.

I'll start giving feedback by expressing personal thoughts on specific items. If discussion spurs and counterarguments are made, I'd be interested in following up and further justifying my reasonings.

I'll start with two items I've been playing around with recently:

Spoiler: Beetle Aegis

Beetle Aegis

Issues: Beetle Aegis needs an extra powder slot to be viable for glassy earth builds.


Justifications:
Beetle Aegis is fine in terms of identifications and overall benefits, but the lack of a powder slot really harms its attempt at a superglass earth chestplate. Since rage stacks and your rage damage increases with each % you have, you end up losing a fair amount of damage in certain builds such as glass gma, even though Beetle Aegis has such amazing identifications.

I think that Beetle Aegis needs an extra powder slot in order to be viable in one of the build styles it attempts to push. To balance this, higher -elem defenses could be added to solidify the idea of a glassy thunder-earth chestplate.

Spoiler: Alkatraz

Alkatraz

Issues: Not rewarding enough when compared to its heavy drawbacks.

Also, Alkatraz makes my eyes hurt. Why does it have to be cluttered with a ton of useless IDs.


Justifications:

Yes, I know it can do the highest melee DPS in the game. But there are several drawbacks to the weapon:
- Its immensely high strength requirement limits your build options. On top of this, the -agility makes tier-stacking builds much glassier than they would be on a different weapon.
-Lack of any powder specials. Quake Alkatraz would be stupid powerful, but the lack of courage or curse means that Alkatraz isn't actually that powerful compared to other melee-oriented items.
-Negative walk speed also makes you really glassy. Being lethargic prevents you from easily dodging projectiles, forcing you to tank them.

While the drawbacks are fine in theory, Alkatraz simply doesn't give enough to justify them IMO. The high requirement ensures that the user has great difficulty setting up a tank build. A build with sufficient survivability is very often matched by other builds, as despite Alkatraz having excellent raw melee output, it can often be rivaled by other weapons through the use of powder specials.

In terms of spells, Alkatraz suffers from all of its drawbacks while lacking any special abilities. Its spell output is powerful, but can easily be challenged by other mythic spears with builds that lack the intense lethargy and restrictiveness that plague Alkatraz spell builds. Alkatraz is clearly made to be a melee weapon, but its strict requirements only combine with its lackluster spell performance to create a weapon that feels lacking and boring.

The only real outstanding option for Alkatraz is the super glassy melee stacking option. 25k+ melee DPS is undeniably powerful, but it comes with a hefty cost. All the drawbacks mentioned above play a role in weakening this option. -Agility and -walkspeed discourage tier stacking and make the weapon extremely glassy. Without any reliable stunlocking options due to the nature of melee builds and spell warrior, tier-stacked Alkatraz is immensely glassy, far too much to be viable.

I was really hoping that items like Rekkr and the revamped Warchief would make Alkatraz builds far more rewarding. To an extent, they did, but not enough to make Alkatraz worth using at the mythic level. If Alkatraz is to remain the highly restrictive, highly costly weapon it is right now, it needs something to make it worth the effort needed to set it up and use it. Its damage is dampened by the lack of a powder special, which makes it less impressive than many might think.

 

hey i made that up

 

Or you can use Alkatraz, Galleon, Taurus, because super slow earth weps with high dmg are actually insanely good

 

because 13k meteors are low (also rip all my hybrid dreams with silkweb now ms on that one brainwash build goes down to 13/4)

 

my guess would be a higher tier that will be almost impossible to solo

 

So speaking of this change when are we going to remove the negative WS on Grandmother? It just doesn't make any sense with the weapons design, Grandmothers biggest weakness is the high req and negative health regen making it harder to use with builds that don't specialize in earth and hard to use consistently as main weapon; the negative WS just gives it too many weaknesses. Cataclysm and Grandmother are very similar weapons in their gimmicks, they offer high damage while sacrificing survivability, if Cataclysm doesn't have negative WS I don't believe GMA should either.

 

Cataclysm is thunder element which is fast while grandmother is earth element is slow.

In general these weapons have a glassy design which is lowers survivability in exchange of big damage. The negatives are not uncounterable as well, but requires sacrificing some of your builds for them. -ws makes more sense in gma since it is themed to be slow and big damage in contrast of archer which is fast in nature. Elemental traits and class of the weapons are also something we consider when designing and rebalancing the items.

 

Oh okay but GMA has the negative walkspeed as part of the theme. The whole idea of GMA is supposed to be a joke, the reason it has -HPR is because your granny sucks the life out of you, the reason why it has that negative walkspeed is because your grandmother isn't the most athletic gal in the world.

It hurts the balance of the weapon even if it's thematic it shouldn't be balanced around that, and the Item Team seems to hold to that belief too.

 

Well maybe there is a bit of miscommunication on what the cata change means. While the -ws on cata change is thematic and not related to balance, but that doesn't mean a thematic trait can't be part of balance as well. The -ws on gma have both balance and thematic implications, for the amount of damage gma gets, -ws and -hpr is crucial to the core of balance since that's why they're there.

Gma actually does more damage than it should be, even for a mythic, that's why there are ws and hpr double negatives on it. If you ask me I think the core issue of gma is that it is more unpleasant to use than it is actually imbalance due to the double negatives. -hpr is good for comboing with rage and -ws is easy to counter as an archer if you run agility with it. Tho if we see more issues with gma in the future we'll be sure to take a further look at it!

Thank you so much for your feedback!

 

I do feel that if something is unpleasant it might be in need of a different approach to balance to make it more desirable to use. But thank you for the quick and respectful replies.

 

Thanks for your feedbacks!

For beetle aegis:
So the design principle behind beetle aegis is the lack of access to powder special, which is vital to its identity and gives it more room for power. The design itself is glass cannon (go figures) and well, it is a weird predicament because both cardiac and bete noire exists as endgame earth/thunder chestplates, it would seem we have more than enough options. While both cardiac and bete gives superior damage, they both give negative attack speeds and hpr, which makes beetle aegis the safer option as it does not have the two restrictions in exchange for slightly less power. I have actually tried to add a powder slot to it in the past in exchange for less power but at the end the team agrees that it would actually took away a portion of what makes the item special.

For Alkatraz:
I guess one thing that we can already agree on is alka doesnt really suffers from performance issues as you already kinda implied. Alkatraz, by its name and design, is to trap and constrict the player to a very specific playstyle, which in this case is represented by no slots, high requirement and stereotypical earth traits of negative ws and agility (agi counters str). In a way, alka's damage and negatives are less extreme than what you can find on some other mythics if you think about it, but that is also what makes it reliable too. As you have already suggested, it can perform well not only in glassy melee (which, you dont really need to be glassy if you sacrifice some dps) and even in spell builds, which most earth weapons only lend itself to melee. The only real option that alka is bad at is heavy melee (the irony lmao) due to loss of access to powder slots, but other than that, alka itself offers quite a diverse playstyle.

Rebut me if you will, but I think the negatives on alka is actually kinda, well, not that severe when compare to what you get from other glass type mythics. For the most part, the walk speed naturally gets countered half of the time if you tier stack it, the negative agility is the "real" downside which is only 10 point at the minimum, which is actually kinda relevant to balance out the 25k insane dps that it is getting.

High damage on alkatraz doesn't have to make alkatraz builds do the best damage, the negatives are manageable by countered with building less offensively and more defensively while the high damage on alka itself can compensate for the gap. If you build less dps you can easily find yourself countering the negatives on alka, much tankier, and with plenty of damage to spare. If someone can make a tank alka build I am sure that is quite something, but the idea that "tank alka" might actually be within the realm of possibility is one of the ways why alkatraz is rewarding if you dabble in tinkering how to optimise it for the best for your own playstyle.

Is it really not rewarding enough and is the drawbacks really that severe? I think there are rooms for some thinking here. *the following is my personal opinion* I think alka is quite a fantastic oddball of mythics as it is kinda gimmicky but it is not extreme, it hits that sweet spot. My personal favourite is spell alka with galleon but I actually use alka tier stack with 2 kaze which gives the build very good mobility and I have fun mowing down mobs (not so for bosses but its not exactly a boss build).

 

I see, a man of fine taste as well