I want to start off by saying how much I have been impressed by the rebalance. Group endgame content is the main draw for me at this stage in the game’s life, so the focus hits the bullseye. As an old guard who ported over from TSW, I can say the endgame group content now feels much more engaging, and is much more reminiscent of the original in all the right ways. The developers and testers have obviously worked incredibly hard to get to this point. In addition, the allowance for feedback and testing from the community is the type of positive PR that this game has been missing. I enjoy both tanking and healing, and I am glad to see them get the fix they deserve.
My enjoyment of tanking and healing also allows me to see one important caveat that comes with the rebalance, and it is the elephant in the room. It appears that players with one gear set will have to choose to be able to heal or tank, but the choice will be mutually exclusive. After that point, no matter whether they picked healing or tanking, if they want to be able to adequately fill the other role at E11+, they will have to grind out most of a second set of gear. Regardless of method, the time/money required to do that for E11+ content is prohibitive, even after the new loot we have seen so far is taken into account. From where I stand, it does not seem unreasonable to say most players will be choosing the role they will be locked into for the rest of their time playing the game.
It is also worth noting that the choice is even more painful for those who choose tank, because , even after the changes to make it possible for them to dps, they will effectively be unable to wield 6 of the 9 weapons while dpsing/soloing, a problem not shared by those who choose the healer route. The last thing we need is more roadblocks for people who are willing to tank.
TL;DR I don’t want to see a new gear barrier get between the players and their ability to enjoy an otherwise incredible reintroduction of the holy trinity to endgame group content.
I can understand your apprehension, but crit glyphing covering all roles was not intended from the beginning, people just got too used to it and to be able to swap between roles. Wait & see, maybe we’ll get even more extras in terms of grind efficiency in the future, especially for people below E10.
That’s not exactly true. You’ll be able to keep your signature ability usage covered by the offhand, provided you’ve got decent matching tank glyphs to reduce its cooldown in the best way. You’ll lose out on some of it due to the fact that you’re not using the weapon in the mainhand, but it’s still possible to do it like that.
Also, with how the signets work in this game, the majority of people are stuck with their 1 weapon of choice anyway. Generic signets exist, but they aren’t the most popular nor the most used option.
I think it’s understandable to be concerned about the amount of time and effort a second gear set will take, but I don’t think it’ll necessarily be as bad as people think.
My reasoning is based on the amount of effort it took to grind up a new talisman for my second hit glyph once I’d passed e11 in DA, faction missions and OD. With 4.4k max distillates, (blue chests, gotta love em,) from current e10 dungeons, it took me a week to grind up a new talisman to lvl 1 red. With the new, bigger distillates, the various extra crit bonus ones and catalysts, that should be even quicker.
To be fair, that does mean that it’d still potentially be almost 2 months of running stuff for a totally new gear set. But at least it’d be a one time grind - once you’ve got the crit and defensive sets, you’re not going to have to do it again.
It’s going to force people to decide what role they want to mainline tbh. Running as a healer or tank is a decision that most MMOs force you to make pretty early, so it’s not too much of a shock that your decision will dominate your game play for a while.
We still don’t know what funcom has planned for the key system, hopefully that’ll further improve the speed of gearing. Like I said, I think it’s entirely understandable to be concerned about having to level another set of gear, but only having one set that everyone uses also drastically limits the options about mechanics that can be used. I can see why the tanking glyphs matter with the changes, and I think it’s an inconvenience we’re just going to have to live with for a bit. After a while, I don’t think it’ll be anywhere near as significant an issue as it will be to people when the patch goes live.
I exclusively use the generic signets and waist talisman because I like being able to change things up. If anything, I think the generic stuff should have been made to be as good as the specific ones, but much harder to get.
The flexibility and ease of swapping between roles and builds in the end game is what makes the end game interesting to me in the first place. It let’s me do things differently and keeps the small amount of end game content more interesting for longer.
But with the way the Nvidia driver issue is never getting fixed, I guess it doesn’t matter since I’m unlikely to ever be able to play consistently again anyway.
If the generic signets and belt were as good as the weapon specific then what would be the point in using anything else? I use the generalist belt, and generic signets too, but I think that the system where you pay a price for the versatility is a good one. Otherwise everything else just becomes a bit pointless.
In terms of making it harder to get, all that would happen is that they’d be more expensive. There are enough people that would farm items just to sell that you’d still be able to get hold of them easily enough, but you’d have to pay a premium for them. And then you never need to buy anything again.
As it is, if you want the highest dps/hps you can manage, you need to go specific. That means if you want to play with multiple weapon options, collecting multiple gear sets. That gets you playing more and for longer, and gives you greater replayability options, which is good for the longevity of the game.
To be clear, given the choice between what we have now, and the rebalance as is, I would still take the rebalance. It feels amazing. That said, it would be remiss to ignore the amount of gearing this will cause for people who want to both heal and tank given the medium for discussion we have been provided. Both of you pointed out that fixes around this problem might be in the works. I am counting on it. What better resource for them to come up with ideas from than a discussion by the very players they asked for feedback from?
But that’s not our fault; it’s the way the game forced us to play for literally years, so we did. Why do we have to pay for it? In TSW, getting a new piece of gear up to snuff for nightmare took a few days, so it wasn’t a problem. At the beginning of SWL, they introduced anima allocation to allow for more flexibility now that gearing takes weeks or months. Why is it suddenly okay to endanger that flexibility now that it is actually needed?
Now that you mention it, I could see shotgun running this strategy effectively; they have a lot of ways to force a reload, and rocket pod is now usable for dps. My limited experience dpsing in tank glyphs gave me the impression that it is going to toe the line of carrying its own weight, even when min-maxed. I think it would not be easy for hammer/chaos mains to justify relegating their only real damage to their offhand where it will have a longer average cool down.
Would it? I tried to keep math out of the OP to keep it clean, but let’s say you are an E11 geared player with E11 geared friends (remember, I don’t play this game in a vacuum, I have friends or cabal mates I play with). Using your times for gearing, I expect I could get a new set of gear in about 2 months, playing about three hours per day (1 hour each for my talisman/weapon, glyph, and signet grind) So ~two months and 150-200 gameplay hours later I can now get to E11s. Meanwhile, my friends can now get to E14s, or close to it, and are on the homestretch for having a full E17 group. They have to downgrade their progress to allow me to play with them regardless of the role I pick. If I want to join my friends for E17 NYR or penthouse, the calculations for E17s are even worse because the grind is larger and Dark Agartha starts becoming a serious bottleneck.
You are assuming things are going to progress in the same fashion as they are now. From what I’ve understood and have heard from others is that leveling items will be much easier than it is right now.
You are also assuming your friends already have everything they need and are not working towards anything but sweet IP numbers. I can assure you, they’ll be grinding right along with you and are not going to outpace you by the ridiculous margin you tossed out there… Unless, of course, you stop playing the game.
In this game YOU ARE ALWAYS WORKING ON SOMETHING. Whether it’s running Dark Agartha for talisman and glyph fragments to upgrade items from 3 to 4 pip or if it’s running Occult Defense to farm Nemains or glyphs. There is always something you can do by yourself or in a group to progress your gear.
I think instead of being overwhelmed, you need a plan. See what pieces of gear you need to work on, pick 2 talismans, 1 glyph, 1 signet and one weapon. Work on those items solely. Don’t try to level up an entire set of talismans at once or you’ll have a bank full of rubbish that you can’t make heads or tails out of. Good luck, don’t throw baby out with the bathwater; everything will be fine.
This is why I don’t like math. The margin in the example is of no consequence. The point I was making is that there is more to think about than just the time to build a second set of gear. There is also the opportunity cost of getting lower distillates, and the bottleneck of DA at super high levels to consider. Speaking of, if leveling gear is now much faster even at similar elite levels, then good, but outside of E11+ we don’t know that. It is worth bringing up.
I am not overwhelmed, I happen to be in a situation where I have a second set of gear, but I know I am in the minority. I agree that keeping gear focused is important. Unfortunately, if you want to tank E11+, the game checks for how many tank glyphs you have slotted, and punishes you incrementally if you have less than five. Building gear one piece at a time will not change that players will need a full set before they are effective at their role. My very first sentence stated that I would take the baby over the bathwater even as is. I also said that despite how excited I am, it would be irresponsible to ignore potential issues just because the overall changes will be better than what we have.
Not being able to reasonably cover all the endgame roles in a game that has historically allowed this, despite the significant investment in the game that so many players who are still around have given is worth bringing up.
Just to chime in on this topic I think the aspect of specialization is very important in the long term and I’ll explain why. I feel that the ability to run all three roles with one set has actually HINDERED the availability of tanks in the game. This seems very counter intuitive but hear me out.
Players have been told from the very beginning or early on that defensive glyph’s are useless for tanking, there are no healers and to do solo content effectively you should spec as a DPS. Ok. So what do players do? Well of course they spec as DPS cause why wouldn’t you?
Here’s the problem. Some of them wanted to be tanks or healers specifically but now there at endgame and there fully optimized to be DPS. Could they still tank with the previous meta under these conditions? Of course, and I’m sure some of you did just that but if I may use myself as an example I hate to play a role I am not fully prepared to fulfill. I don’t want to half*** tank a dungeon with miss matched signets or a military belt that does nothing for hammer. I want to perform at my best as a tank and even though I “could” tank I simply won’t because its a role with a lot of responsibility and I don’t wish to let others down.
Maybe I am completely unique in this regard but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were many other players like this especially in the early elites when your still building your DPS set and your not even close to being set up for tanking.
After the changes this will no longer be a concern. Does it perhaps suck for players that have one set of gear and are comfortable performing multiple roles in a mediocre fashion? Sure. But in the long term I only see this as being hugely beneficial for the games group activity diversity.
I think that’s a reasonable way of thinking about roles. I certainly won’t argue against the fact that anyone who chooses to re-glyph their only gear set for tanking will be incentivized to tank, lol.
I don’t subscribe to your opinion on taking on roles you are good enough to handle, but don’t have optimal setups for, but I do know people who share it, and I can certainly see its value. In many of my original “way back when” videos for TSW, I intentionally tanked 18s with blue glyphs that weren’t good enough because if you wanted to tank, that’s where you had to start, and I didn’t see any guides that acknowledged that. I even went through how to handle letting others down when your gear fails you. Having said that I rarely ever see anyone do better in their role than you do, and many of the people who play this game that my view doesn’t speak to, yours does.
Since they have announced the new beta, I’m going to put this on hold for a while and see if it answers some of the questions we still have. I just hope you’re right about this helping correct non-dps role deficiencies, because with that number doubling, you’re going to have to be.
I’m fairly certain it wont correct it initially. To be fair this is something that should have been done two years ago. But retrospect is 20/20 as they say. I think it will help the newer players by giving them the choice to choose a role of there liking and therefore increase the number of these roles in the future but It may have initial negative consequences as existing players make a decision on which direction they wish to transition to.
I agree, perhaps I shouldn’t think so many people are like myself in that they require an optimal gear set to approach a role and, god bless those that don’t or else we would be waiting a lot longer for tanks. I do think the current gear system forces players into making tanking a secondary focus though. Its not uncommon for players to finish there DPS gear and then say “Hey! I’m bored I think Ill start tanking”. It becomes sort of an afterthought.
This position might make sense if fully optimizing your tank gear would have a measurable effect on fulfilling your responsibilities. But, in fact, there are few requirements for a tank to perform their role. Even on Live, right now, the differences between a minimally and maximally geared tank come down to hate generation and the versatility that excess health can allow for a tank to take on more responsibilities than are strictly necessary. On Testlive, there is, perhaps, even fewer requirements since hate generation is in abundance and tanks have many tools available to compensate for lacking some niceties or coping with an inadequate healer. If you “let others down,” it’s probably not going to be for reasons optimization would have prevented.
The kind of tank requirements I have in mind are:
Five defensive glyphs and two Accurate glyphs
Elite Cooldown Reduction signet or Efficiency Mk III
Time and Space Alteration signet
An interrupt gadget
One tank weapon leveled well enough to match your IP
And possibly a well-leveled Power signet to match your primary weapon
Three of the six requirements would already be covered if you’ve been playing as a DPS and choose to use glyph exchangers to convert your DPS glyphs to tanking glyphs. I’m not positive to what extent the Basic and Power ability signets will be vital to hold aggro, but I’m sure they don’t need to be fully leveled. What is left are a method to reduce your Elite cooldown and a well-leveled tank weapon to cover the gear requirements for tanking–both of which could realistically be covered by the weapon alone if it has the proper affix attached to it. Everything else you could optimize for tanking is a bonus, including the particular extraordinary weapon you choose to tank with and the extraordinary tanking talismans.
The greatest barrier a player has to tanking once the update goes live is knowledge and experience in performing the role. All the little things that make a difference for DPS are greatly diminished for tanking, since there is little value in tanking overkill but ever greater value in damage overkill. If you have the right build and adequate gear, knowledge, and experience, you have everything you need to succeed.
This is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make but your not wrong. I don’t abstain from tanking with an optimal set because I can’t. I choose to do so because I prefer to play that way (and my point was that many others may share a similar view). It was clearly noted as a choice and I also mentioned that many perform the role just fine in sub-optimal gear. Tanking as you say though certainly has more knowledge barriers then it does gear barriers. Getting back to the OP’s concerns I think players will be more likely to engage in tanking after the patch given that they will be setting up as a tank from the beginning should they choose to do so.
The glyph exchangers do solve the problem for the handful of players who have two sets gear. I am not sure how common this is, I think I have one piece shared between the sets at the moment.
They do not address the issue of players wanting to take on multiple roles in a dungeon group. For this the player is going to have to make a choice.
It looks as though you are going to need a set of gear to slot the required defensive glyphs into. I can see this being a difficult choice for players who are still levelling their primary gear set and want to keep performing several roles. Whilst the grind is significantly easier, it’s not going to be quick.
If you’re at 1300 IP, do you push your main set to get to the E14-16 tier, or do you work on tank talismans and glyphs to get to tank the lower tiers?
The only solution I could see for this would be to allow gear to accept multiple glyphs and allow you to choose the active one, but that would take all the fun out of the grind and make the choice of talisman totally pointless
Personally I would have like to see a greater focus on the role specific talismans, at present you can throw the defensive glyphs into any old bit of gear you have around and be just fine at any dungeon tier.
If I wanted to make a healer, I would have liked to have been nudged, (quite brutally) into going back and getting some healing talismans and starting a set from scratch. Rather than utilising my dps optimised gear with perhaps one new talisman.
Tanking with all-crit/hit gear really makes any other gear difference seem trivial. I’d hope before using the reglyphing items, people at least try it out and see if it works for their needs.
One consequence of the big rebalance in AA is that item level undergearing becomes less important. I lose 3500 prot and 8% hp switching from red 70 (crit/damage signet) to yellow 35 head (evade/cooldown) which makes healing harder, in the rebalance it’ll only be ~hundreds of prot and 8% hp, which has much less effect on a healer’s abilities.
Making 5 new signets and glyphs is the big grind I see… talismans are quicker with the changes to dungeons (and I kept the faith so I still have half a yellow tank set in my bank), I’m not sure I’ll be getting signets significantly faster since there’s no “play at highest possible level and get a bonus”, lair content is pinned at E4/E8 or whatever.