skipping SoD visible raid armor ?

[Frakass]

I'm actually considering completely ignoring visible armor from SoD and keep my full set of Crystallos raid gear. The armor design is too complex imo and even thought I can get all essences easily and the upgrades are not minor, I'm still pondering if it is worth it.

complex item design is not content for a MMO. for each class in this expansion, we have 7 sets of armor, half of them being a waste of developers time (both because devs take time to make items and after release spend a bunch of time fixing the flaws of the system). 6 months after release of this expansions, items are still not finished, this says alot of the way SoE is managing the work of its employees.
I wish we could come back to a much simpler and smarter armor system in next expansion like we had in DoD, PoR or TSS. Once again, complex design is not game content.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

I like it. But then again I am an old DnD player and vary between don't mind, and love to run the numbers and find the sweet spots.

Saying you won't upgrade because you don't like the system, even though they are upgrades seems, well, odd. Now if you have a complaint about the low shielding, avoidance and ac on this armor vs. your raid gear, then you'd have something. Refering more to your alt warrior there.

What really seems the problem? I like this system where it is simplified and all classes can use the same essence and end up with their class result. I like that a lot better than getting 57 druid pieces, and 1 shm one.

Personally I much prefer the system in SOD over priors and don't support what you have stated here, unless there is some part of your argument I am overlooking or that wasn't stated.

[Finori]

Here. Doesn't get simpler!

[Frakass]

hehe, I know that link very well, it's one of my guildmates that works on it.

my problem is shown . from tier 3 to tier 4.5, 9 armor sets have been created, taking a lot more developer time than for example the tier2 to tier 4 in SoF expansion. people that pay attention and care of optimizing their stats will end up with the same mix of armor pieces, what was the point of creating the pieces that are not in the "top gear option". all these armor pieces took not only time to create te items but also the time to code all the combine recipes. this is what i call wasted dev time on useless items and currently we still don't have clickies on Sod gear ... for each class, 9 armor sets with the average 72 recipes to make everything compared to the time needed to add clickies on some 60-80 items. (that's 144 armor sets and 1152 recipes)

I shouldn't have mentioned DoD in my first post cause visible armor was class specific and I don't want class specific armor to rot.

[Finori]

All sets for a given tier have the same sum for a given stat. They are randomly spread across the various pieces. I seriously doubt that that part took much longer to make than lets say the various tiers of SoF gear. I also think even if you just upgrade randomly the end-result will still be better than SoF prismatic armor.

[Douglasone]

I also have full raid essenced gear from crystallos. I am concentrating on getting all my other gear upgraded 1st. We use DKP system-so have to bid on the t3 raid drop, then bid on the DT essence drop then try and get a grp to get the t5 group essence-OMG give me a break. On my server shm are fairly popular on raids but everyone has a shm bot or access to a shm for buffs so very few people actually use shms in a grp anymore. I have both the t5 bp essences but only have them because when I was exploring korefax so I could get to the raid points, there was a guy playing his warrior and boxing a wiz and a shm along with 3 mercs and he let me loot a couple essences. So far have yet to see any other t5 grp essences rotting, so since I prolly will not be able to upgrade the visible armor all the way why bother. I will save my DKP and buy the next set to come along.

[Finori]

So you'd forfeit all the foci from the visible gear for another 4+ months? Bene. Spellhaste, Healing, Poison, Magic ... Just wow. And you don't even know the armor system for UF.

[Douglasone]

No I don't, but then since we work on a DKP system, by saving my DKP for 4 months til UF then a few more months until we we get to the final raid content, I will be able to buy what I need. Meanwhile, I am finishing up the last few other items I really need. Besides, I already get those foci, just at a little lower level, so I don't get the Dannals bonus, big deal- hell I have yet to even get the faction-or for that matter the money to buy the type 3 augs. I spend a ton of time in PoF farming gems and everything else trying to make money for summons and rezzes. As for the UF armor system, it will in all likelyhood be the same mess that SoD is. Get a raid drop, then add an essence from a later raid to upgrade then a groupable drop for the final upgrade. Thats the reason I am not going for the SoD, I cannot get the t5 group drops unless I see some rot calls and get there fast enough. A shaman cannot solo those nameds even with a merc.

[Frakass]

In the end, I waited I got my non visible slots covered before getting visible armor essences. I'm glad the SoD style armor upgrading is abandoned in next expansion.
I took first tier of raid armor but will wait that the rest goes on rot status to get it. No rush at all since I'm already massively overgeared for any SoD content unless i want to tank raid mobs.

[Veril]

Skipping gear every other expansion is perfectly viable for priests and casters. OK so we perform a little less, but it is only a little less.

Taking Healing
+80% to healing @ lvl 80 on our level 83 heal scales down to +68%. but since it varys from 1-68 you are in fact getting +34%. A fully twinked out heal on the 4.5 gear is 90% - which is +45% on average. So you are 11% behind where you could be on average.
The static effects such as spell haste or duration are similarly effected.

[Zama]

[Retron]

[Veril]

Depends how they do the range 15 - 60. If you do random 1-60 and coerce any value less than 15 to be 15 this gives an average of 32.25% (up from 30.5%). If the random generated is from 15-60 then that is 37.5%