First of all, thank you for the patch.
No dedicated post this time because I lack both the time and the motivation for one.
- The Lockout changes are a step towards the right direction (still 2 steps back, 1 step forwards though imo).
- The box collision changes seem very nice as described.
- Scenario rewards' changes also seem quite nice on paper. Let's hope they are enough to revitalize the game-mode.
- Good QoL stuff for PvE content too (
especially for the Reik ch.22 Hard PQ)
And now, regarding itemization:
- WEAPONS
If you ask me,this patch did some things right but not enough to address all major concerns.
- The KaK/K8P City PQ weapons were rightfully toned down in crit% values, making them no longer BIS for classes/specs who didnt care about weaponDps.
- Removing non-synergistic procs from Zealot/DOK/WP offhand Fortress weapons and replacing them with useful ones is also a great choice.
- Bloodlord weapon debuff now being a flat bane (-180 armor -30 TOU) on the one hand makes more sense (and is easier to calculate), but I'm a bit worried on how it will end up affecting the oRvR meta towards even more WS stacking (due to medium armor dps having about 100-150 more armor). Will majorly depend on the reitemization of gear sets of course, but that worry still remains.
- The Proc cost reduction across all tiers tried to address the issues of proc vs non-proc weapons, but in my opinion failed to actually do so. The same complaints that I raised on last months patch regarding weapons with "bad" procs still stand:
example for dps:
example for tanks:
and this issue is exacerbated even more by the fact that those weird (pre)bis weapons are not even mirrored across all classes within an archetype:
- Whether a class has a Great Hunt weapon with Weapon Skill or initiative is seemingly random, and even among those that have WS instead of INI, the stat distribution of STR/WS/TOU seems to vary too. Plus Choppa has access only to 2h Great Hunt weapons (2 of them) despite being a class able to dual-wield.
- Only Black Orc, Ironbreaker and Swordmaster get the 3% parry weapons. The other 3 tank classes don't.
Enough for the weapons. Now on to
- JEWELRIES
Here I like the majority of the changes.
- The upgrade costs for Genesis jewels might be a bit high, but it's good to have more progression options.
- DOK and WP having access to more block% jewelry than just GB Diamond is a nice change.
- The announcement for cost reduction and refund for Tri/Vic jewelries is also extremely welcome.
- Fixing the Overworld set drops might have been low in the priority list but it is a very nice change from my point of view.
I only have 3 gripes with the Jewelry changes introduced in this patch:
- ALL Parry% and Block% jewelries (excluding the no-longer-obtainable Skaven event rings) have been reduced to 2% Parry/Block as a maximum. That is quite fine in my eyes, but it introduces 2 problems:
- For whatever reason
was upgraded to 3% parry and is the sole exception. Is that intended?
- Especially in the case of 2h tanks, where parry% is their Focus-stat, the Band of Unfettered Fury as of today outperforms the best 2% parry jewelries (in parry%). Unsure if the extra reduced chance to be crit, dodge% and parry% overall outway options such as an Amethyst Annulus ring but, depending on how META/prevalent Mage dps classes end up being after the Rdps balance patch, we might be looking at another BIS item from PvE.
- Edited this point out due to it being a bug that was fixed.
- Finally, Fleshrender rings seem to be the only lair drops with a CRreq of 36 and ilvl 40. All the other CRreq 36 lair items have either an ilvl of 36 (Gnawbone) or ilvl of 45 (Vomitous, of the Pyre). I'm only comparing weapons here since they should have already been updated. Not only that, but the Fleshrender rings are also the only Epic tier lair items compared to the rest that are all Rare.
In the same patchnotes we are told that
Item levels/rarity are no longer arbitrary, and should now correctly match the level of the expected content.
Does this imply that different lairs of the same level should drop items of different ilvl and rarity tier according to their difficulty?
I want to conclude this by addressing one final elephant in the room.
Jewelry pieces/sets updated include : War Crest sets on the Genesis Vendor; Genesis sets; LotD Expedition sets; Tome Unlock sets; the Vainglorious set; city-PQ rings in all four cities; individual jewelry pieces from the Sewers/Sacellum, Hunter's Vale, Mount Gunbad, Bastion Stair; Blood-Iron Rings; Vale Rings; Annulus rings; Fleshrender; and Chapter Influence rings.
Since the Tome sets have been confirmed to be reworked, we can finally reverse-engineer what happens to procs as part of set bonuses (which the wiki has still not properly clarified).
The Seeping Larva set is a CRreq = 35 set with an ilvl/setlvl of 37. According to the itemization rules in the wiki, such a set should have 53/2~= 26 stats for each set bonus.
Indeed, we can see that for CRreq=35 the cost for 1% dodge + 1% disrupt = 8 stat points. So 6% Dodge should cost 48/2 = 24 which fits the 26 value after rounding.
However, the 3pc Bonus of the Clarity Proc according to the new patchnotes, can only be worth 8, 16, or 32 stat points.
This in my eyes implies that Clarity should either be a 8-cost or 16-cost proc and the remaining stat points (out of 26) simply were "lost".
This raises huge red flags regarding gear sets with procs as set bonuses, where we could see a set bonus worth e.g. 70 stat points, effectively waste 38 of them and only get a Proc worth 32.
Is that actually the case? Hopefully we can get an answer on it.
In any case, thank you for reading thus far.
Overall the patch has more shares of "good" than "bad" in it, but I think it's still quite important to point those things out in hope they eventually get addressed.
and Slayer dosent have Lifetap, its a tactic that heals on Exhaust skills not "passive healing" aka regen as u well know