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Damascus

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Damascus
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  • Refined armor sets could be implemented better

    Damascus Please Stop Posting Your Bad Opinions edition

    Full disclosure: I've been trying to get the manual fragments for this stuff for a while now, but I promise there's more to this than complaining about drop rates.

    The refined armor sets were released with the last dungeon update, being retrains of existing armor sets (Dustin, Royal Knight, Northern Lights, and Majestic Knight) with enhanced base stats and added set bonuses. The manuals are acquired via manual fragments dropped from dungeon bosses. Stack 2 of the fragments for a corresponding manual, chosen at random. Simple enough; farm manual fragments until you get the one you want, sell the ones you don't/sell the crafted gear.

    The added set bonuses are pretty solid mid-game options, all suiting various specialized playstyles.
    -The Royal Knight's bonuses are tank-friendly, giving a 10% chance to no-sell any instance of damage and granting immunity to poison, which otherwise deals % hp as damage over time.
    -The Northern Lights set is mage-friendly, giving a movement speed bonus and lessened mana usage, allowing for faster repositioning and more freedom to spam spells pre-spirit.
    -The Majestic Knight set is perfect for every close combat main, sporting a damage bonus to Smash, Charge, and Windmill.
    -The Dustin set is a solid utility option, granting an attack delay reduction and granting protection to stomp and explosions.

    On their own, these sets aren't bad, even if some of the set bonuses are only occasionally helpful. However, anyone familiar with giant gear is already seeing some problems; Absorption, Smash, and Charge bonuses are all already available on the quintessential mid-game giant equipment, those being the Colossal Valiance armor set and Frosted Borealis sword and shield. Not only do these not require manuals, being crafted through Hillwen Engineering as opposed to Blacksmithing, but they are infinitely cheaper to craft, with relatively common materials from shadow missions and requiring far less of them compared to the refined armor sets. From what I remember, the only options available to humans and elves for the absorption set bonus is the refined royal knight set and Millia's outfit, which obviously doesn't provide any extra defenses from armor masteries, meaning giants have far easier access to this particular effect while still gaining defensive stats that don't rely on random chance.
    (HAHA OOPS I FORGOT ABOUT SAINT GUARDIAN oh well)

    What's more, the Refined Northern Lights set is rendered completely moot by the existence of gacha gear and spirit staves/wands granting innate mana recovery. With Refined manual drop rates as they currently are, it is not only easier to farm gold to buy +movespeed footwear, but arguably cheaper. Shooting Star Flying Shoes sit at roughly 50~60m at the time of this post, with no listings for completed Refined Northern Lights gear.
    (There are two manuals for the greaves listed at 20m and 45m, but the greaves grant anywhere from +2~5 for the set bonus, compared to the shoes' full +10, meaning you would still need the main body piece and crafting materials.)

    Taking things a step further, the Refined Dustin set's best bonus, attack delay reduction, comes from both the helmet (which has a completed manual drop, rather than fragments, mind you) and main body piece, meaning the vambraces and greaves only grant stomp and explosion protection. However, the original Dustin vambraces had a +4 to stamina usage reduction, which wasn't found anywhere else on the set. I don't have a point to make with this, I just really wish that was a set effect on one of the refined sets too. Attack delay reduction is still just annoying enough to get that I think it's fine splitting between two hard-to-get gear pieces, even if I personally wish it wasn't on heavy armor.

    Taking all of this into account, this means the only set bonuses really deserving of their rarity among these armor sets are attack delay reduction and windmill damage (the only other sources in the game being the Soluna Blade, Nightbringer sword and shield, and Nightbringer 2H sword, all of which are exceedingly rare).

    But, these were intended to be mid-game sets, right? These are all pretty solid armor sets that would be much more useful if they were more easily obtainable before things like the Geas sets become reasonable to farm, or before getting powerful enough that gold was easy to farm.

    Joke's on you, I was complaining about drop rates the whole time. Sort of. Only when other available gear is taken into consideration.

    The real argument I'm trying to make here is that they're far too rare for their own good. They aren't able to provide to players who could still benefit from their set bonuses, since the more universally useful set bonuses found on the Geas armor sets are infinitely easier and cheaper to obtain, and players are infinitely more likely to have access to the g22 techs by the time they even see one refined manual fragment, let alone two of the same type. The only players farming for these manuals are ones who want to sell the crafted gear for exorbitant amounts or weirdos like me who want to set up a lower level character to mess around on.

    This could easily be fixed with increased drop rates, making the manual fragments tradeable, or allowing players to choose which manual they get from collecting two fragments. All three would be optimal, but we all know asking for just one is already wishful thinking.

    tl;dr the refined armor sets are useless specifically because they're so rare that players will be able to farm materials for better sets well before they come across the manuals for a refined set they'd want, and also they're completely useless to giants (EXCEPT for the windmill set bonus for double hammer windmill machines) as the most useful set bonuses are already available on the colossal valiance and frosted borealis sets.
    Goldtiger01
  • Damascus' Assorted Weapon/Talent Gripes

    Hello I am a Huge Nerd(tm) with Opinions(c) on available gear and talents in the game and it would probably be best to dump them all into one post rather than making a separate thread for each since they're really not that substantial on their own and have probably been brought up several times already.

    1. The Divine Bastard Sword is really, truly terrible.
    This thing is lame. With a perfect max damage roll, the highest potential max damage through upgrading is 107, compared to the Celtic Royal Knight Sword's much easier to obtain 106. That's one whole max higher, stuck behind a pure random stat roll rather than giving the player some sway over its quality through Blacksmithing's minigame.

    What's more, the two weapons share set bonus effects, except for the bash enhancement. This means, were you to dual-wield, the CRKS holds a massive advantage over the DBS. In the case of using a sword and shield, the CRK pairs just as well with the Divine Shield as the DBS, gaining the same exact set bonuses at minimal loss to max damage.

    Even better is the Frosted Borealis Hammer, featuring the same exact set bonuses as the CRK, at a whopping 123 max after upgrades, handily beating both weapons out before enchants. A human who just wants to use a one-handed weapon and a shield is better off using a hammer intended to be dual-wielded by giants than the sword designed to pair with the Divine Shield in terms of raw damage.

    However,
    I will concede that Rift and Guardian pair well if the player wants to make heavy use of final hit while keeping a sword and shield equipped, rather than switching out to a 2-hander or dual-wielding. Rift is a suffix enchant exclusive to the DBS which grants up to +45 max. That's pretty hard to meet with other 1-handed weapons, the next closest options being Blade (up to +40 max, farmed from Corrib Cabin, meaning only 3 attempts per day if you only have one character capable of running it) and Heavy Rain (up to +70 max, which comes from Crom Bas, so good luck pal). On top of that, both Rift and Guardian grant up to +3 to the attack speed set bonus, meaning the player only needs to make up for 4 points with gear. With max attack speed rolls on both enchants, the player only needs to equip a languhiris chest piece to bring their Fast attack speed to Very Fast. It's not the most optimal setup to use with final hit, but it makes the skill far more effective for those wanting to keep a shield close.

    tl;dr why is a hammer intended for giants the best option for humans to pair with the divine shield reeeeEEEE

    2. Lances have been left in the dust.
    It's no secret how powerful mounted lance charge becomes after stacking reforges. It's one of the best burst damage options available on a 2.5s cooldown (or 0.5s if you manage to get a limit broken reforge). However, fighting with a lance on the ground has fallen by the wayside as other talents have been updated with new skills and improvements to old skills.

    This isn't a bad thing, by the way, old things being made better is good. I'm saying lances could benefit from the same treatment.

    When they were released, lances served as a clunkier, but potentially harder-hitting option for close combat. They played similiarly, the only real difference being the minimum distance required to attack with a lance and being able to use Lance Charge as a strong opener. Over time, it's become less and less attractive as an option, as close combat has received skills like Bash and Rage Impact, and giants have received the racial skills Stampede and Final Strike, none of which function with lances (probably for the best in the case of Bash). What's more, Lance Charge is only so powerful while mounted, meaning any content that frequently despawns pets more or less locks players out of using their favorite toothpicks if they want to be efficient.

    The only solution I can really think of is to give lances more tools to play around with while lance charge is cooling down, so it doesn't feel like the only viable option for the entire weapon class. A pseudo-charge that pierces through enemies in a linear aoe, sliding the player forward while leaving the mobs in place (think Stampede without carrying the enemies along). Updating windmill to knock enemies back to the lance's minimum attack range while equipped with one, for those who haven't unlocked the ego ultimate skill. Maybe even giving them their own unique sweeping attack, like a miniature Giant Full Swing. Aranwen describes using a lance as "like fighting with a giant," referring to how difficult it is to handle, but I much rather prefer "like fighting as a giant."

    PS give elves rapiers and let them use lance skills that way kthx

    tl;dr please make lances more than just charge spam, my favorite weapon class has been tarnished

    3. The Assorted Gripes part
    If rapiers aren't going to be given to elves as pseudo-lances or used in a new talent, they can pretty safely function as 2H swords. Scythes are in the same boat and can be safely classed as 2H axes if they aren't planned to be used in a new talent.

    Every 1H close combat weapon gains +1 max damage per erg level except for swords, which gain a whopping total of +21 at level 50. Ouch. Same goes for wands and (lol) atlatls. They really don't have a reason to have such poor erg bonuses. Now, I can't name anything else to give atlatls, but swords and wands can straight up copy hammers/axes and staves respectively and I don't think anyone would bat an eye.

    Fighter could do with some de-janking. Since the timer to use the next combo skill is treated as a skill in and of itself, using any other skill (or, god forbid, hitting esc) cancels the chain entirely, meaning you have to start from step 1 again. Very bad for those not invested in erg or rev/pers knuckles. In fact, the entire talent could do with some changes that lift it up out of mediocre status pre-rev/pers. Nothing that impacts its later performance, but definitely something to improve its early performance.

    Bead Burnishing did not need dan ranks, but here we are I guess, too late now.


    And that's it. All of the recent updates have been STELLAR, make no mistake. I absolutely love all of the recent buffs to talents, especially my beloved puppets and guns, and I hope to see more like it given to other talents that struggle early on or otherwise haven't gotten much love lately.

    Thank you for coming to my tedd talk.

    Edit for bonus gripe: Blaze would be great if it worked with close combat weapons, kthx
    Elris
  • Giving G19 to new characters is probably not great

    Or more accurately: Immediately dropping later gen quests onto fresh characters on new accounts is going to be exceedingly confusing when players unfamiliar with the game are being treated like world-weary adventurers with years of experience under their belts. This is especially bad since the first step of g19 is to speak to Duncan, who is involved with the non-Blaanid tutorial quests, and soon after sends the player to Kristell, who is heavily involved in G1. It's an incredibly awkward and confusing moment that disrupts the introductory segment of Mabinogi and I can only imagine it sours the initial experience of most new players.

    From what I recall, Apocalypse is also dropped onto new players (at least, one of my lower-level characters who had only completed up to g3 had access to it), which is an equally confusing design decision but not quite as bonkers considering it doesn't require you to speak to NPCs involved with the tutorial section right away.

    If it was a decision made to allow current players to rush the later content on newer characters, it's a poor reason considering we've always been able to start storylines we didn't automatically qualify for at Duncan, and Sagas I and II have always only been accessible via menus. Current players are aware of these tools and can start any story quest they want at any time on any character.

    If I were to choose a point where the game automatically started G19 for you, it would be after the completion of both G16 and Saga I, not only because it would fill the player in on most of the past events referenced in the Divine Knights and Apocalypse chapters, but G16's finale is actually kind of brutal for unprepared players and Saga I has... mobs that spam final hit, but once a player is able to deal with those, they can handle the boss enemies with advanced heavy stander in the following story content.

    So, yeah, it's dumb and stupid and I am biased and nitpicking, change it.

    (Please, before the inevitable Josh Strife Hayes review, I'm begging you)
    ElrisFluoretteDDSN