100786-itemization-and-stats-in-wildstar-whats-being-done-about-it-page-2

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== Content ==
			Can we do something to make Grit more exciting vs pure Health crafting stat / runes?Maybe make Milestones give more?Making 2k-3k max health crafted pieces vs. epic Dungeon/GA drops with 50-80 Grit (barely over 1k) is kind of weird. Grit is very underwhelming at the moment.Tanks need cooler set bonuses. Shadow Guard is really depressing. We have nothing "cool" to work towards in regards to the shiny epic-y purple-y rune sets.	
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Please continue to give us feedback, with slightly less flames. Unless it's directed at me. Because I can take it. Because I'm not a hero. Because I'm the Itemization Lead Wildstar deserves.
 
I'm Batman.
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You don't get to be Batman with a post like that. You can be Squirrel Girl.
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AMP/Ability Points and Trigger Fingers
So, this one I will actually apologize for, again. Yeah, it was a bug and bugs happen. But, it was a pretty impactful bug to a lot of people. I'm sorry it took us as long as it did to find and fix those two.
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			The changes NEED to be retroactive.  I understand where you come from, logging in to find your items nerfed to oblivion and your whole gear progression needing to be redone will *cupcake* off a LOT of players.  Fine. But the problems introduced by applying a non-retroactive fix are worst.1) You essentially nerf all new players until the next tier of raiding at least.  There will be two categories: those who have OP crafted gear, and those who dont.  The difference in DPS between those will be so big that any new player might as well give up because he has no way to become competitive, a problem that is made 100x worst by the new loot system making it nearly impossible to actually gear up in a reasonable amount of time through dungeons and adventures (10% chance of getting a purple drop on a gold run on average at the moment by all actual accounts).2) Pre-nerf crafted gear will become premium items and completely demolish an already shaky economy, while new crafted items will be totaly worthless for a few months (until ppl run out of OP stock).  Already you can see crafters in my circles talk of stockpiling broken crafted pieces to sell for massive fortunes post-nerf, as these will be un-obtainable items at that point.3) It renders pre-fix raid loot, and raiding itself, obsolete.  Some of us are running DKP systems, or other types of loot distribution mechanics that are designed to spread the loot amongst participants.  We are already raiding, and items are being distributed.  Those players who get items now will be sent back to the end of the waiting list with sub-par items, pushing them to actually refuse to take loot until the fix is pushed through.  Worst, since your original post, I have already been hearing people say they might as well wait to raid at all.The change needs to be retroactive.  There is no way around it. 	
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The changes NEED to be retroactive.  I understand where you come from, logging in to find your items nerfed to oblivion and your whole gear progression needing to be redone will *cupcake* off a LOT of players.  Fine. 
 
But the problems introduced by applying a non-retroactive fix are worst.
1) You essentially nerf all new players.  There will be two categories: those who have OP crafted gear, and those who dont.  The difference in DPS between those will be so big that any new player might as well give up because he has no way to become competitive.
2) Pre-nerf crafted gear will become premium items and completely demolish an already shaky economy, while new crafted items will be totaly worthless for a few months (until ppl run out of OP stock).  Already you can see crafters in my circles talk of stockpiling broken crafted pieces to sell for massive fortunes post-nerf, as these will be un-obtainable items at that point.
3) It renders pre-fix raid loot obsolete.  Some of us are running DKP systems, or other types of loot distribution mechanics that are designed to spread the loot amongst participants.  We are already raiding, and items are being distributed.  Those players who get items now will be sent back to the end of the waiting list with sub-par items, pushing them to actually refuse to take loot until the fix is pushed through.  Worst, since your original post, I have already been hearing people say they might as well wait to raid at all.
 
The change needs to be retroactive.  There is no way around it.  Tough luck for those who abused a broken system.
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I really don't think it's a big deal. Most players will have progressed beyond that gear by the time these changes are even a thing… It's all leveling gear, it's temporary.
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I really don't think it's a big deal. Most players will have progressed beyond that gear by the time these changes are even a thing… It's all leveling gear, it's temporary.
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Level 50 gear isn't leveling gear.
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You clearly do not understand the situation.  At all.  We are talking about end game raiding gear, not leveling gear.
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I think I do. Perfectly well. The gear you are talking about "needing" to have a retroactive fix is going to be replaced during the first tier of raiding. Period.
 
The "gear" disparity, btw, is not the thing you're should be worrying about the most at those levels.
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All this will do is nerf people who were not on the crafting bandwagon beforehand, since you can not nerf gear after its already been invested in and sold.  
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either new players get crap craft gear and old players keep awesome gear, or everyone gets crap craft gear 
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1) You essentially nerf all new players until the next tier of raiding at least.  There will be two categories: those who have OP crafted gear, and those who dont.  The difference in DPS between those will be so big that any new player might as well give up because he has no way to become competitive
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While on the topic of runeslots.
Can you please for the love of god make items from the Elder Gem Vendor have Fixed Slots in the same way that PvP gear does. Pretty frustrating for people to spend several weeks worth of gems and get a terrible combination that isn't even an upgrade for them.	
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While on the topic of runeslots.
Can you please for the love of god make items from the Elder Gem Vendor have Fixed Slots in the same way that PvP gear does. Pretty frustrating for people to spend several weeks worth of gems and get a terrible combination that isn't even an upgrade for them.
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Who buys that junk?
 
Elder gems are for ability points or amp points or action sets.
 
Crafted is best until maybe (big maybe) 40-man raids.	
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You are making this assumption, that the change will make crafted gear useless.  It is an incorrect one.  After the change, assuming dual core functionality remains the same, you will still be able to craft three slotted blue items.  Three correct rune slots will still make an item extremely powerful.  I am at 1975 AP on my Engineer, without a PvP weapon or raid gear, and none of my crafted gear has more than three runeslots.
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Why is there no consumable or reforging for runes? I don't understand.You have this one-off items (Ghostpyre Voodoo) which are quite good, but because you can only ever get it once, it's really pure RNG. Someone might get an earth socket, while someone else gets fire/fire/assault. Can't even farm it to drop again, since it's a quest item.
 
Random rune sockets on Elder Gem gear? What the? This item could be ridiculously good... if it has at least 2 specific runes. Unfortunately, chances are shit that you are gonna get that, so youll probably have to buy it 5 times before you get something good.Make a vendor, or a crafting consumable, who can reforge and recolour sockets. Do it Path of Exile style even, if you are so attached to the RNG.20g to reforge socket numbers (or even a bit more to increase chance of more runes). Another 20g to reforge colours, completely randomly.THERE is a somewhat worthy gold sink. You give people the option to repeatedly farm the drop until they get the runes they want, OR they can spend some currency in order to reroll for the runes they want.
 
The current random rune system is absolutely stupid.	
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To start with, are the personal attacks really necessary?  Do they add anything to the debate, or help you get your point across?  You are very quick to use them, so I assume there is some purpose behind it.
 
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Irrelevant.  Yes, 3 slots make for a powerfull item.  4 slots + make for an even better one.  You are at 1975 AP.  If you had 4 slots per item you could have 2100.
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K now that the thread derail is over^
 
 
Will there be stat-floors for crafted gear? That way you would end the 125 main-stat on crafted gear being better than raid gear.
 
because
 
Currently crit/crit sev are very underwhelming choices compared to flat AP(main stat). Raid gear is currently balanced between crit/crit sev strikethrough/critsev and main stat. Since those stat points are less effective, sometimes crafted 125 main stat is still more interesting than raid gear.	
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What are you talking about "those levels"?  How confused are you?  Do you realise that you stop leveling at lvl 50?
 
As for replacing gear... the problem, in the first place, is that crafted gear, barring extreme luck on runes for drops, is BETTER than the first tier of raiding gear due to the ease of rerolling rune slots + maximizing OP stats.  This is what you dont seem to understand at all: the gear that needs to be retroactively fixed IS the first tier of raiding. 
 
Have you even killed X89?  Or are you just talking through your hat of things you know nothing about? 
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You both claim that the current raid tier is obsoleted by the current crafting gear, and that this change is making people not want to raid because they don't want drops.  Those statements are contradictory.  If drops are currently pointless because of crafted gear, and people are still raiding, then a future improvement to crafting gear shouldn't change that.  But if people are legitimately not wanting to raid until the loot changes go through for the reasons you stated, then their must be upgrades available from the current tier, albeit ones that might be better in the future 
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Alright, let's do this:
 
Assault Power/Support Power:
We're looking at adjusting the way AP/SP scales per budget point, scales from Primary Stat, and is gained from Runes and Imbuements. The most generalized summary of this will be that AP/SP from Primary Stat will go up for some classes and pure AP/SP per budget point and from runes will likely go down, such that Primary Stat will be more valuable in some circumstances and pure AP/SP will be more valuable in other circumstances. We will have more information on this when it is closer to being released (and tested on PTR).
 
Runes and Runecrafting:
I'm not gonna lie. This system needs a lot of rework. We'll be looking into in the next couple of weeks focusing mostly on the following major issues.
1) Random Rune Counts suck. This directly affects the items actual power level. And generally is just a very bad thing balance-wise. We're looking at reeling this in heavily.
2) Random Rune Colors also suck, but less so. We'll probably keep a lot of the random variance in rune colors but are looking at ways to mitigate this as much as possible. We're considering potentially adding ways to reroll colors and/or adding new runes to fill in gaps where certain colors are either extremely valuable or woefully unwanted to some players.
3) Runes are fairly expensive and replaced too quickly in the leveling experience to be worthwhile. One of the ideas we're tossing around is potentially adding a "weakened" version of the basic runes to a vendor. These would add less bonus and be much cheaper, basically be throw-away runes, and would be more of an incentive to participate in the rune system and actually rune your items as you level up. Definitely not a final plan, just letting you know we're actively thinking about it.
4) Rune Sets (and Item Specials, and also Gadgets) can vary from basically the best thing since individually wrapped cheese slices to something closer to a wet paper towel. We're looking at balancing a lot of these out in the next few patches and adding new ones where we feel we are lacking options for certain playstyles.
 
AMP/Ability Points and Trigger Fingers
So, this one I will actually apologize for, again. Yeah, it was a bug and bugs happen. But, it was a pretty impactful bug to a lot of people. I'm sorry it took us as long as it did to find and fix those two.
 
Hmm, what else? There's a lot of other things. We're taking a few weeks now, after we've gotten ahead on new content implementation for future patches, to work exclusively on exactly these types of issues - fixing bugs, auditing our systems, and making QoL improvements. It's ... a very long list.
 
Please continue to give us feedback, with slightly less flames. Unless it's directed at me. Because I can take it. Because I'm not a hero. Because I'm the Itemization Lead Wildstar deserves.
 
I'm Batman.
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Everytime is the same dam thing.They working on it  and will be ready in a few weeks...Meaning pay us another 15$ a month till the game is fix lol.
 
 
 
Well Guess what? MY 15$ will be ready in a few weeks too and will be waiting till then and maybe ill play the game or move to next mmo...	
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Everytime is the same dam thing.They working on it  and will be ready in a few weeks...Meaning pay us another 15$ a month till the game is fix lol.
 
 
 
Well Guess what? MY 15$ will be ready in a few weeks too and will be waiting till then and maybe ill play the game or move to next mmo...
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Chua explain Human how works:
Developer cost money. Developer get paid by Carbine.
Carbine need money. Carbine get money from Human.
Human pay subscription. Human stop paying? Carbine stop paying, dev stop working.
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Why can't I put people who RP on the forums on ignore? That's all I want, forget rune slots and crafted gear changes, just let me put people on ignore on the forums and I'll be happy. 
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3) Runes are fairly expensive and replaced too quickly in the leveling experience to be worthwhile. One of the ideas we're tossing around is potentially adding a "weakened" version of the basic runes to a vendor. These would add less bonus and be much cheaper, basically be throw-away runes, and would be more of an incentive to participate in the rune system and actually rune your items as you level up. Definitely not a final plan, just letting you know we're actively thinking about it.
 
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The changes NEED to be retroactive.  I understand where you come from, logging in to find your items nerfed to oblivion and your whole gear progression needing to be redone will *cupcake* off a LOT of players.  Fine. 
 
But the problems introduced by applying a non-retroactive fix are worst.
 
1) You essentially nerf all new players until the next tier of raiding at least.  There will be two categories: those who have OP crafted gear, and those who dont.  The difference in DPS between those will be so big that any new player might as well give up because he has no way to become competitive, a problem that is made 100x worst by the new loot system making it nearly impossible to actually gear up in a reasonable amount of time through dungeons and adventures (10% chance of getting a purple drop on a gold run on average at the moment by all actual accounts).
 
2) Pre-nerf crafted gear will become premium items and completely demolish an already shaky economy, while new crafted items will be totaly worthless for a few months (until ppl run out of OP stock).  Already you can see crafters in my circles talk of stockpiling broken crafted pieces to sell for massive fortunes post-nerf, as these will be un-obtainable items at that point.
 
3) It renders pre-fix raid loot, and raiding itself, obsolete.  Some of us are running DKP systems, or other types of loot distribution mechanics that are designed to spread the loot amongst participants.  We are already raiding, and items are being distributed.  Those players who get items now will be sent back to the end of the waiting list with sub-par items, pushing them to actually refuse to take loot until the fix is pushed through.  Worst, since your original post, I have already been hearing people say they might as well wait to raid at all.
 
The change needs to be retroactive.  There is no way around it. 
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What are you talking about "those levels"?  How confused are you?  Do you realise that you stop leveling at lvl 50?
 
As for replacing gear... the problem, in the first place, is that crafted gear, barring extreme luck on runes for drops, is BETTER than the first tier of raiding gear due to the ease of rerolling rune slots + maximizing OP stats.  This is what you dont seem to understand at all: the gear that needs to be retroactively fixed IS the first tier of raiding. 
 
Have you even killed X89?  Or are you just talking through your hat of things you know nothing about?
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Everytime is the same dam thing.They working on it  and will be ready in a few weeks...Meaning pay us another 15$ a month till the game is fix lol.
 
 
 
Well Guess what? MY 15$ will be ready in a few weeks too and will be waiting till then and maybe ill play the game or move to next mmo...
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I have the feeling we are back in the days of Wildstar Alpha. There is way to much things that have to be reworked to varify a believeable gameworld. The current game rules lead to strong rise of power for characters that are unnecessary for the current content and let you feel a bad taste of balance. Just a few Items can increase the output numbers tremendously. Tanks rise from <30k life to over 60k in just one Tier of Raiding. Dps starts with AP around 1000 and grow to over 2.3k, while the output was improved between 5x to 10x times. A healer like a medic can fill energy shield values from times twice to threefold in raids.
 
I have to quote these three things, just because they show a line of thoughts that leads to a fearful end!
 
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Hmm, probably won't do #1. Might expand a few more stats and options into more Rune elements but likely not all stats to all elements.
Definitely looking at doing the second part of #2. (Should note that Grit/Health also has this issue. Health is always better than Grit and it shouldn't be.)Definitely looking at doing #3. (I'm actually putting together some new Rune Sets for a future patch right now, and we're taking a much harder look at their benefits and power.)
 
Also running an audit on the entire Rune system and finding some very ... interesting things.1) There are not enough options for Air, Earth and Water runes. Will have to look at Fire after the AP/SP changes, I think the AP runes might be carrying Fire a little bit.2) There are not enough options for Brutality, Finesse, Moxie, Deflect, Deflect Critical, Health, Armor, and Shield Capacity runes.
3) Resist runes make me sad.
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…
 
Let me say it more clearly so you can grasp it: You're playing it wrong.
 
Gear in WildStar is not the first place you should be looking if you're trying to get better. You are going to hit a skill barrier before you hit a gear barrier. The fact that crafting gear can be better than other leveling gear is nice, but it in no way can overcome player skill… the disparity is not that great. And as noted, as you progress through GA, this crafted gear (if you have the good stuff) will be replaced anyway.
 
No need for retroactivity on the fix. It's a non-issue.
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Why is there no consumable or reforging for runes? I don't understand.
 
You have this one-off items (Ghostpyre Voodoo) which are quite good, but because you can only ever get it once, it's really pure RNG. Someone might get an earth socket, while someone else gets fire/fire/assault. Can't even farm it to drop again, since it's a quest item.
 
Random rune sockets on Elder Gem gear? What the? This item could be ridiculously good... if it has at least 2 specific runes. Unfortunately, chances are shit that you are gonna get that, so youll probably have to buy it 5 times before you get something good.
 
Make a vendor, or a crafting consumable, who can reforge and recolour sockets. Do it Path of Exile style even, if you are so attached to the RNG.
20g to reforge socket numbers (or even a bit more to increase chance of more runes). Another 20g to reforge colours, completely randomly.
 
THERE is a somewhat worthy gold sink. You give people the option to repeatedly farm the drop until they get the runes they want, OR they can spend some currency in order to reroll for the runes they want.
 
The current random rune system is absolutely stupid.
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Even if you're skilled enough and don't die in every boss encounter like a scrub, if you don't do nuff DPS...you get kicked. 
 
 
Conclusion: You can be best player world, and won't be able to do some encounters cuz u need a certain amount DP *cupcake*ing S. And holy moly, it also depends what classes u bring to the raid...skilled player on medic DPS or not-as-skilled on engie/warr...Hm, who'll outdeeps who.
 
So unless you're dealing with seriously motorically challenged people after X wipes geared people will manage the encounter. If you're undergeared no amount of skill will help you since you won't beat the DPS race. Ofc skill will bridge some of the gap, there's no denying that. Besides, people can improve themselves usually...as in at, 1st boss try people wipe in 10 sec, but lo and behold, 40th attempt and they do it. While your gear won't magically improve like that. 
 
P.S. I haven't been in GA much, but noone wanted the shit it dropped. Except some healing gadget from phage maw.
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First, if you're doing GA right now you're doing it with a guild/team. If you're getting kicked, its your own fault… that shouldn't be happening.
 
 
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I gather you're not a DPS Medic by this line.
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True :)
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But mainly, you will gain MORE DPS from being better than a piece of gear. The more time you spend on the boss instead of dodging shit, the better your DPS will be. This is what I'm saying about WildStar… gear is of course important (and is provided naturally through progression.) But what you all should really be worried about is getting better at playing… that is going to be *more* than enough to make up any disparity being spoken of on the items at this stage.
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The changes NEED to be retroactive.  I understand where you come from, logging in to find your items nerfed to oblivion and your whole gear progression needing to be redone will *cupcake* off a LOT of players.  Fine. 
 
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Well, good to know I shouldn't waste time getting my crafting skill up on my alt. Time better spent learning dungeons and grinding for gear instead.
 
Sad that crafting once again is going to be worthless. Only so many times somebody can say "gee whiz neato I made a trenchcoat!"	
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Not nerfing gear that was crafted pre fix will be harmful to the game's balance for sure, nerfing it will bring out hordes with pitchforks.
 
It's like choosing between pest and cholera. Either way will upset the playerbase.
 
IMHO the best way to go about this is a buff to the gear from current dungeons and raids. This will indirectly nerf crafted gear without changing it. Simply wait and bring crafted gear in line once new content and a new tier of gear hits live servers and maybe, if you really have to, apply some small incremental changes to crafting in the meantime. This way no one can really be upset, it will all be sunshine and rainbows batman can fly through. :)
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I disagree. Buffing raid gear/purples will make content easier than the devs intended it to be due to the increase in player power. Crafted items are already very powerful and potentially better than the gear in GA. In order for this change to truly make sense you would have to make dungeon/raid loot stronger than the strongest crafting pieces you can get. That would result in ludicrously strong dungeon/raid loot and a massive jump in player power that would result in laughably easy dungeon bosses. I can't speak for the effect it would have on GA, seeing as I've never stepped foot in the place. A good group can already nuke a lot of dungeon bosses very quickly.
 
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…
 
Let me say it more clearly so you can grasp it: You're playing it wrong.
 
Gear in WildStar is not the first place you should be looking if you're trying to get better. You are going to hit a skill barrier before you hit a gear barrier. The fact that crafting gear can be better than other leveling gear is nice, but it in no way can overcome player skill… the disparity is not that great. And as noted, as you progress through GA, this crafted gear (if you have the good stuff) will be replaced anyway.
 
No need for retroactivity on the fix. It's a non-issue.
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			I haven't seen anything, although I haven't read the whoel thread, but is anything being done about Dungeon loot being worse or on par with Adventure loot? The difficulty spike going from adventures to dungeons is extremely steep but the gear itself is basically the same as those adventures. Makes doing dungeons for anything else besides attunement kind of pointless.	
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I haven't seen anything, although I haven't read the whoel thread, but is anything being done about Dungeon loot being worse or on par with Adventure loot? The difficulty spike going from adventures to dungeons is extremely steep but the gear itself is basically the same as those adventures. Makes doing dungeons for anything else besides attunement kind of pointless.
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Can you please for the love of god make items from the Elder Gem Vendor have Fixed Slots in the same way that PvP gear does.
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So, to see if I understand the dev line of thinking.  The reason randomized slot types is being kept is because the devs feel they can make the different rune types close enough in effectiveness that having two water will not be a big different than two fire.  Is that correct?
 
If that's the case I have to say that's a bit disappointing.  It points to hubris, "I know no other game has ever come close to making all choices equal enough that the players don't care, but I know that we can figure it out!"  There will always be a best set.  Now, it might be split up by class or purpose (PVP, PVE Raid, PVE Dungeon, Soloing, etc.), but there will always be a mathematically best set, and someone will figure it out and post it and that's what everyone will want and anything less will be considered bad.
 
I'm really a proponent of having fixed counts and types.  At least this way while people will still say "I wish that item has XYZ runes", at least they have to accept it and work with it.  Randomized types just means that people will get angry with Carbine every time RNG goes against them.	
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there will always be a mathematically best set, and someone will figure it out and post it and that's what everyone will want and anything less will be considered bad.
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I do not really envy the work Carbine has to do to fix the itemization. Pretty much every step from crafted through adventures, dungeons to raids + pvp are broken in some way. There's a few things they can change though:
 
1) AP/SP is vital on gear. A classes' main stat gives a lot more umph per point than any other stat. So normalize it. Have all dps/healer gear give standard amount to the main stat, i.e. (just an example) 110 for adventure, 125 for dungeon/crafted, 140-160 for 20 main raiding and so on(edit: obviously this varies based on the item slot, boots will have lower amount than leggings etc.). Secondary stats can be tuned to be fairly equal in power and won't matter as much in balancing because the efficiency is lower per point.
1a) Reduce item budget cost of specials where needed to not make them unattractive in this new system.
2a ) Do something about Grit. When you have hp in the same item budget as dps, guess what? You're gonna have a whole lot of glass cannons. No one wants to sacrifice dps for survivability, it's okay to have a choice between 'fair' and 'good' survivability, but up to a certain point I don't think grit should be included in the item budget.
 
Consequences: medium to big buff to dps/healing classes. However, it's easy to adjust this back, since the only thing you have to balance now is main stat on gear.
 
2) As long as rune amount is fixed according to the quality of the item, and rune 'colors' are made more equal in usefulness, runes as a concept should be okay for now. I still think it's a concept that needs a serious looking at in the future though, even to the point of scrapping it altogether.
 
3) PvP armor and especially weapons are way too powerful for PvE. Imo the weapons needs a nerf. Bring the 1800 versions to about halfway between where they are now and the power of adventure blues, and buff the epic adventure/dungeon drops to about the same amount.
 
I feel these changes would do a lot to make the item progression in this game more logical and easy to follow. I also want to make a plea, for the sake of the health of this game;
 
don't use nerfs to fix PvE itemization!
 
The item system is already unintuitive, unrewarding, confusing and frustrating. If you start slapping AP/SP nerfs all over the place and reduce the quality of crafted items you're only going to turn more people away from this game. There are other ways to do it. Please. The game won't turn into farmville, I promise.	
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If the differences are minimal (unlike now), then the best player will understand that "less than perfect" will still be good enough.
 
Right now there are slots that are one step above worthless.
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If the differences are minimal (unlike now), then the best player will understand that "less than perfect" will still be good enough.
 
Right now there are slots that are one step above worthless.
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Fixed Rune Counts? Yes. I can.
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I have two medics at 50, a Chua and a Cassian.
 
My Chua has excellent gear; my Cassian has mediocre gear
 
One of the two out DPS's the other with regularity... care to guess which one?	
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Great, a fixed number of random rolls instead of a random number of random rolls. That's like painting dog shit gold so it looks more attractive on your lawn. 
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I have two medics at 50, a Chua and a Cassian.
 
My Chua has excellent gear; my Cassian has mediocre gear
 
One of the two out DPS's the other with regularity... care to guess which one?
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I actually agree but that's predicated on one huge if, that they differences are minimal.  First, what is minimal to you is not minimal to others.  To some, a 10% difference is minimal.  To others, a 0.01% difference is not minimal enough.  Second, and I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but no MMO has ever gotten it right.  If the difference between 16 water slots and 16 fire slots is say...1%, that IMO would be close enough.  But it's not going to be that way realistically speaking.  There are too many variables and I'm guessing the closes we might get is a 1% difference per slot, so in the end it would be something like a 16% overall difference, which is huge.  (Though to frame that properly, I mean 16% overall difference in DPS contributed by runes, not 16% difference in overall DPS)
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The Cassian. My less geared medic out dps' my well geared medic consistently and significantly. Why? LAS and ability spread.
 
Skill trumps gear hard in this game. A good LAS and well placed AMP's and points does more than gear by far. As been mentioned before; you will hit the skill cap long before you hit the gear cap. 
 
and before some chump goes there, I am not comparing a support med to an assault med; this is my two meds with their respective Assault load out and gear.
 
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I'd agree if crafting runes and opening up rune slots was extremely cheap.  However there is a significant cost associated with swapping out a piece due to runes.  For the average person, they'd see the new piece, think, "Well, it'll cost me X to just unlock the slots, then Y to craft all the new runes...oh wait, if I replace that, I lose my rune that makes the set...so then I have to re-rune this other piece....and then wait...it'll cost me Z to remove the runes from the other pieces I need to re-rune accordingly...so uhhhh....you know what?  Nevermind, I don't want that piece."
 
About the only way this will work is if literally runes can not cover the gap between tiers.  For example, the best runed blue can not be stronger than any purple.  I know from past raiding experiences that most people wait for the perfect piece and would rather let every piece of gear get sharded/salvaged/vendored before spending hard earned DKP on anything less than optimal.	
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Good point(s).
 
It will be interesting to see the effects. I think it will be an improvement over where we are now.
 
Good enough? I guess we'll see.	
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Just curious does the Refined cores have the same ability to get an extra slot like a dual core. It would make sense by the crafting results I been getting. the items are listed as 0-1 runeslots. I have never gotten a 0 result with a refined core but with a weak or rough core I have seen a 0 slot result. Considering refned cores are standard people notice that dual cores don't seem to give extra slots that often. Could it be that refined and dual core are + 100%+ extra slots meaning a garunteed slot and chance for an extra or they just raise the chance of the first slot having a rune it might as well be 100%. Considering on all the other types of cores are unused it means you changed the core progression to a linear one instead of a branching line of specials. This makes it seem very likley Refined cores do have the extra rune slots specials.
 
The other possible source from the runeslot is having the item quality be blue. Currently blue rep items are 2-3 slots and having a blue roll 0 runeslots is silly so perhaps it becomes a 1-2 runeslot recipe when a power core improves the item quality to blue.
 
If this is true
1 possible from base
+1-2 from core (1 slot may be from just from the core upgrading the gear to a blue item)
=3 slots
Does this mean the increadbly rare 4-5 slot items were the bugged items or were the 3 slot items also bugged due to refined cores not intending to have that extra rune slot?	
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			It would be better if RNG was taken out of the rune system completely. But I guess you have to keep the players wasting time fighting the RNG so you can keep them for a month longer. 	
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Something else most people are not seeing is to get a decent 3 slot armor piece most of us are crafting 100-300 pieces, to get a perfect 4 slot I have had over 500 crafted pieces for one of the pieces I am still working on. That's a huge time and money sink.
 
Most the crafted pieces also end up salvaged in search for runes or better cores (Bad RNG here too)
 
Now add in the fact that most of us min maxing lvl 50 crated gear are also spending 5-9 plat on a set of runes alone and even more when we replace gear. Add that cost to 2 full sets of gear and to get where some of us are at now we have spent 100's of plat.
 
So if Carbine would fix what is already in game there will be many mad end game players due t the time and cost invested alone, plus the huge set back for what we have accomplished.	
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I am fine with the RNG, What I am not fine with is that base stats are not even close to pure stats (AP, SP, HP etc) and that the rune sets for certain types are obviously 1000% better, fix the lack luster rune sets and fix the base stats.
 
Also I would like to see what the runes add by the mouse over, not at the final step of the insertion. However looking at someones gear these numbers seem to change from piece to piece also in the same slot number.
{| class="blockquote"
It would be better if RNG was taken out of the rune system completely. But I guess you have to keep the players wasting time fighting the RNG so you can keep them for a month longer. 
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This is the dumbest argument I've ever seen. I'm not even going to elaborate why.
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Fixed Rune Counts? Yes. I can.
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If anyone was wondering why itemization in this game is so godawful, well here you go: their itemization team lead actually thinks this is a "fix". The amount of incompetence we've seen from this team is astounding.
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{| class="blockquote"
If anyone was wondering why itemization in this game is so godawful, well here you go: their itemization team lead actually thinks this is a "fix". The amount of incompetence we've seen from this team is astounding.
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Because there isn't a good argument against it would be my guess. Skill is refreshingly important in W*, you miss a tele or two and your uber leet gear is useless compared to a decent crafted set. Better to optimize your LAS, abilities and amps, and your own reflexes and experience than to QQ about gear. There are at least a few folks who run vet dungeons in quest blues and do fine.
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{| class="blockquote"
If anyone was wondering why itemization in this game is so godawful, well here you go: their itemization team lead actually thinks this is a "fix". The amount of incompetence we've seen from this team is astounding.
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What I am not fine with is that base stats are not even close to pure stats (AP, SP, HP etc) and that the rune sets for certain types are obviously 1000% better, fix the lack luster rune sets and fix the base stats.
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snip
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			I'll reiterate, "So, to see if I understand the dev line of thinking.  The reason randomized slot types is being kept is because the devs feel they can make the different rune types close enough in effectiveness that having two water will not be a big difference than two fire (as an example).  Is that correct?"	
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{| class="blockquote"
We have several fixes coming in future patch(es) that should address this exact issue.
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{| class="blockquote"
I'll reiterate, "So, to see if I understand the dev line of thinking.  The reason randomized slot types is being kept is because the devs feel they can make the different rune types close enough in effectiveness that having two water will not be a big difference than two fire (as an example).  Is that correct?"
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Heh, that was actually me who said that it's impossible to make all things equal.
 
Thanks for the clarification.	
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I see 3 issues right now:
 
1: The crafting system is a different team than dropped items.  Crafting has a different set of incentives than dropped items.  You have a different type of investment with crafting than drops. 
 
For instance, it takes a bit of effort to get to the point where you can create an item, doubly so with researched items.  There's an economic factor, you need to make sure that there's a market where players are willing to pay at least the cost of the materials to make an item, or even better, more than the cost of the materials. This means that for selling, it's in competition with anything else you can get from the AH. The other things you can get from the AH are world drops.  Crafted items are in a class of items that can be gathered by players who aren't able to complete dungeons or raids.  This kind of puts them in the difficulty level of daily quest items and world drops.   For instance, if you can't complete a dungeon because you're not a very good player, you can still spend a few hours and level a tradeskill to max, and spend a few weeks and research some patterns.  However, if you can complete a dungeon, you can get loot exclusive to dungeons. If you can complete a raid, you can get items exclusive to raids.  Even if you create tradeskill items that require items from dungeons or raids, a player that can't complete that content can still get the item.
 
Similarly, crafting is meant to be interesting in itself.  Item drops from dungeons have static stats, but crafted items have been given the ability to be custom tailored (get it?) to fit the stat layout that you want.  This is an interesting way to do customization, but really stretches the potency of a crafted item.
 
2: Stat balance sucks.  This is not items or crafting but character stuff.  For instance, as an esper, almost all of the dropped cloth has Brutality on it.  I'm an esper, I've always got a -10% deflect debuff if I want it with storm, and a 8% strikethrough buff half the time from true sight. So the strikethrough is pretty not useful.  Half the brutality left is put towards crit severity, which is something like 1% for 32(?) crit severity.  I've got about a 33% crit chance, and the base crit severity is 150%.  To get 1% more total damage from crit severity, I'd need to get 3.5% additional crit severity ((0.67+0.33*1.50)*1.01 = 0.67+0.33*1.535 which is like 224 or something Brutality.   I look through loot lists and everything's full of Brutality.   Because of this, the fact that I can get 125 Moxie on crafted gear and not on dropped gear means crafted gear is always better for base stats.
 
3: Item delivery is very different.  By this I mean, when I get an item drop, I get it after an hour or so of playing, if I get lucky and get it at all.  When you go and craft an item you spend a few seconds crafting it. There's a cost associated, in the materials cost, but you can earn money presumebly by selling crafted gear, or if not, you can get it from selling CREDD if nothing else. This means you can create a large number of copies of an item to get the random rolls just right.  A drop in a dungeon gets random runes, if you get a bad set, you have to spend hours trying again.  I ran multiple Siege of Tempest Refuge looking for my weapon (One of the only items I'm interested in because the base AP is not split with crappy stats), and have yet to see it drop.  If it dropped and I got crappy runes on it, I might not care that it was sub optimal.  But then I got a CW-3 weapon, with 3 decent runes, and a bunch of extra moxie, for 50g, or the value of one run of dailies.
 
 
 
I think these are three important points.  I think some cool ideas to fix them would be something like:
 
1: Have crafters create incomplete items.  By that I mean allow crafters to create shells of items with stat distributions and random effects, but essentially leave out the power cores.  There'd have to be a bit of retuning, but you would essentially see something like a boots shell with +20% Grit, +65% Moxie, +30% Finesse, Calisthenics, Fire Rune, Earth Rune, Air Rune, Logic Rune, Fusion Rune, Dead rune.  This would be a white item.  The stats total to 115% which indicates that it was a risky craft and was overcharged.
 
Within dungeons, you can get dungeon blues or dungeon purples.  If you get a drop and you don't like it, you can salvage it.  When you salvage it, you might get a compatible bind on pickup Power Core.  As a non-crafter, you can install this power core into your white shell (which binds it to you).  Each item can drop a core of similar quality.  If you put in a green core you get the stat distribution, but 2 runes, with a magnitude of stats correct for a green item. If you put a blue core in, you get the distribution of a blue item and 4 runes, if you put a purple core in, you get the distribution of a purple item and all runes.  Dead runes would leave an unusable rune slot, so in the example the purple item would have 5 runes, and the blue has a chance to have 3 or 4.
 
The shell could hold a maximum item level, and the drops you get from dungeons could have an item level.  You could also have a random variance when installing the core.  Maybe it goes from 50%-110% potency when you install the core.  Installing a core makes it bound.
 
This would mean that crafters would be creating the shells.  Players would buy the shells, and if they want the good crafted items, they need to go to dungeons and get good dungeon drops.  The dungeon drops are going to be pretty good, and predictable.  Once you have your dungeon drop, or when something drops that you don't need, you can salvage it, and try to install it into a crafted shell.  I said 50-110% potency, so most attempts are going to give you something under 100% as good as your standard blue, but your shell might be overcharged, and your stat distribution is ideal.  I would want it to be a risky thing to do so that you don't just immediately salvage usable appropriate armor with knoweldge that you can turn it into better crafted armor, but if you're repeatedly running content, you can try multiple times to try and get that nice 110% overcharged item. 
 
This doesn't screw with the balance in my opinion too much because it means that if you're farming world drops, you're going to be making crafted items with cores made out of world drops, so the potency will rival world drops.  If you're farming adventures you'll make cores with stuff out of adventures.  If you're farming raids, you can still make use of crafted items to get cool stuff from unused drops in raids.  However, the item level caps could be used to manage drops in more controlled scenarios like raids, or just limit the frequency, potency, or availability of the cores from raids.
 
2: AP needs to get nerfed.  This is going to have resounding effects though. I think a long look needs to be taken at strikethrough too.  A cappable stat on a primary stat is kind of crappy, especially when classes with different primary stats have some crossover in loot.
 
3: I like my idea for #1 because it would also solve the problem of #3 by limiting the best items' availability to be on par with other sources of item acquisition.  And if you wanted to get the perfect rune set, you'd need to get the perfect 6 runes, and in some cases (like getting a 4 rune item with 1 of one type, 2 of another, and 1 of a 3rd) it might just be impossible to guarantee. 
 
 
I personally like the idea of drops being the stable and predictable source of loot, and crafting being the way to burn excess time and money to get that exta couple percent.  I think that only works though if you can't skip the whole "getting item drops as the stable source of loot" and go straight to buying completed super items off the AH.	
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PvP gear is losing its fixed rune slots.  So I guess they are doing your request, but in reverse.
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We have several fixes coming in future patch(es) that should address this exact issue.
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2: AP needs to get nerfed.  This is going to have resounding effects though. I think a long look needs to be taken at strikethrough too.  A cappable stat on a primary stat is kind of crappy, especially when classes with different primary stats have some crossover in loot.
 
 
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RNG in itemization is just a lazy way to keep the player from getting what he wants.
 
We know itemization is a game of barricades as much as it is about character improvement.
 
From a dev's standpoint, he needs to make sure we don't all get our best stuff right away, because then we just stand around in town for a week or two and quit.
 
 
On the other hand, I as a player, used to farm and farm instances and then be really happy when my item finally dropped. With RNG, I have a chance to be disappointed when my item FINALLY drops, only to resign myself to starting all over again.
 
While this might be a fine barricade for randomly generated gear, I need something to strive for that I KNOW is going to be good.
 
 
Static count is a huge improvement in discerning power and progress in items, but we also need some really freakin' good static runeslot count AND static color DPS, healer or tank "named" gear in either role's favorite colors.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Who buys that junk?
 
Elder gems are for ability points or amp points or action sets.
 
Crafted is best until maybe (big maybe) 40-man raids.
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There is a problem whether you want to admit it or not regarding the current state of the game. When one thinks MMO's should have some RNG I think damage range and random loot items dropping, but Wildstar has so much RNG is actually quite disgusting almost if not worst then Asian MMO's. I like to think of myself as an oldschool player and I actually prefer a grind (without RNG) then both which is what you get in Wildstar. Now some might say well grind isn't skill based, sure it's not but nor is RNG and at least with grind you know eventually you will get what you want, while in a heavy RNG system it's always based on luck. The next problem is the Rune system so let me get down to the solutions.
 
 Gear and Loot solution for Adventures & Dungeons.
 
 -First of all I propose that we use a new money or EG point system to obtain loot you would normally get from finishing adventures or dungeons. This would require the weekly EG point system to be increased or cap taken off. This could be grinding by finishing adventures/dungeon for points which then could be spent on the NPC merchant for whichever adventure/dungeon. This can be a heavy grind system but at least people knew they would get rewarded
 
 -Medal system is not working as intended making people drop out at the first sign that the run wont be gold. The medal system should have been a point system allowing you to obtain certain amount of points to then purchase which item from a vender from that adventure/dungeon. Adding a slow increase in reward for bronze, silver, and gold would solve all these problems. Players would still finish the adventure/dungeon because the difference would be small and really wouldn't discourage people from not finishing it.
 
 Rune Solution
 
 First I will say one of the biggest problems in this game are the runes. The massive amount of RNG behind them make it so even some blue crafted gear can be superior to epic 20man gear. This is a red flag and must be addressed and of course I have the solution to this problem.
 
-Add two new item in the game which is dropped, purchased, or crafted which has the ability to change rune types. Also there should be one which can change any individual rune type and one which re-rolls them all. They can be hard to get maybe make the one which re-rolls all to be more accessible while the other a little more rare?
 
-Add a new item which adds rune slots to items, this can be dropped, purchased, or crafted. Again this can be hard to get.
 
-These items would make epic drops which would normally be junk to actually be worth something and not be salvaged because it only had 2 slots and they where both earth....
 
Gear progression
 
 -This game has by far the worst gear progression, at 50 some blues are better then epic's which really should not happen at the same level(exceptin expansions). This really comes down to one thing which is causing this and that's the rune system.
 
 -Crafted gear is actually too strong and should be reworked, currently as it stands you can hit 50 and in the same day get all crafted which is sufficient for vet dungeons and 20man raid. Gear needs to scale better, for example crafted and adventure epic's should push you through vet dungeons, while the vet dungeon gear should push you through 20man.
 
-
 
 This game is confusing as it presents itself as a hardcore players game but allows you to get geared in 1 day after reaching 50 with crafted gear which is sufficient for any content. The RNG is just horrendous, you must pray that your item drops, the right rune slots and the right rune types. This game is worse then any other MMO I can currently think of regarding how much luck is needed when this is suppose to be a skill based game. The point grind system for loot is far better and can be setup so players don't get all the gear in a week or two. Make this game a grind with a point system and at least people will do adventures and dungeons knowing it's not RNG. Keep the standard loot system to 20man and 40man raids. Add a way to change and add rune slots this is main reason why some blues are superior to epic's.
 
 The game is fun but until these problems are addressed myself and many others will refuse to continue investing time into this game.	
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			Craft op items before it will be fixed.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Gear and Loot solution for Adventures & Dungeons.
 
 -First of all I propose that we use a new money or EG point system to obtain loot you would normally get from finishing adventures or dungeons. This would require the weekly EG point system to be increased or cap taken off. This could be grinding by finishing adventures/dungeon for points which then could be spent on the NPC merchant for whichever adventure/dungeon. This can be a heavy grind system but at least people knew they would get rewarded
 
 -Medal system is not working as intended making people drop out at the first sign that the run wont be gold. The medal system should have been a point system allowing you to obtain certain amount of points to then purchase which item from a vender from that adventure/dungeon. Adding a slow increase in reward for bronze, silver, and gold would solve all these problems. Players would still finish the adventure/dungeon because the difference would be small and really wouldn't discourage people from not finishing it.
 
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When it comes to rune slot RNG, I think the best solution is a fairly simple one. Implement a way for players to edit the colours of existing rune slots. Be it a rune slot re-roll, or a more precise and controlled way that allows the player to change a slot colour to exactly what they desire. That's all you have to do. Leaving the number of rune slots to RNG as it is now will keep people coming back to re-do content even after they have received their BIS item. The amount of frustration will be minimal. There will still be a disparity between the hardcore player who plays very often and runs content all the time, has max rune slots in every piece of gear, and the more casual player who is happy with getting their item once regardless of the number of rune slots.
 
There is no need to revamp every single rune colour and attempt to balance them all to be negligible between each other. If they are all going to be so balanced that I truly wouldn't mind having a water over a fire, then what is the point of having multiple rune colours to begin with? You might as well just make each rune slot blank and compatible with every possible rune. Your attempts to balance each slot will not end well. There will still be certain colours that are BIS and colours that aren't. The min/maxers will still not be happy with sub-optimal rune slots, and your problem with rune slot RNG will still exist even after all of your hard re-balancing work. There is nothing wrong with DPS preferring fire over water/life etc.
 
PLEASE just take the simple route and get rid of the one layer of rune slot RNG that I outlined above J-Tal. Don't waste your time and don't make us wait for "balanced" rune slot colours.	
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{| class="blockquote"
 Gear and Loot solution for Adventures & Dungeons.
 
 -First of all I propose that we use a new money or EG point system to obtain loot you would normally get from finishing adventures or dungeons. This would require the weekly EG point system to be increased or cap taken off. This could be grinding by finishing adventures/dungeon for points which then could be spent on the NPC merchant for whichever adventure/dungeon. This can be a heavy grind system but at least people knew they would get rewarded
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{| class="blockquote"
That is part of it, yes. A quick look at the currently available Runes and it is immediately evident that some Elements are optimal, some are ok, but sub-optimal and some are just bad. Ideally, there shouldn't be any Elements that you simply don't want at all or actively loathe rolling. Now, as someone mentioned earlier, it is nigh-impossible to make all things equal. And that's pretty much true. But I am very confident that we can get the different Elements to be close enough so that when you get 2 Water, you aren't completely bummed and just salvage the item because it's garbage for you. But maintain that feeling when you do roll those 2 Fire slots, and you are super excited with your optimal roll.
 
We are also considering other ways to mitigate getting sub-optimal Elements.
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			Really don't see any hope for a buff gold loot in adventure/dungeon and so doing these modes is pointless unless it's raid attunement so might as well be a crafter and win trade. At least sabotage can keep me entertain while I have to levelling up crafting from lvl 3 to lvl 50.	
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{| class="blockquote"
better gear leads to higher dps, leads to faster kill times leads to less situations where you can die... Gear helps always :P even more when it scales absurdly good like it does in W*
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{| class="blockquote"
Really don't see any hope for a buff gold loot in adventure/dungeon and so doing these modes is pointless unless it's raid attunement so might as well be a crafter and win trade. At least sabotage can keep me entertain while I have to levelling up crafting from lvl 3 to lvl 50.
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			Gear does matter, because the extra stats help big time.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Gear does matter, because the extra stats help big time.
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{| class="blockquote"
Why would you expect more purple loot in Adventures when they explicitly said those are not intended as a progression path to purple loot? They are supposed to be rare, and normally come form just 20 man raids.Players like you are really a cancer on the genre... you can't play the game for fun, and always look for the "easy mode" or efficient route to progression. Barely a step above exploiters.
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{| class="blockquote"
If you're not hitting your target and dying all the time, it doesn't help at all.
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{| class="blockquote"
Isn't there suppose to be a higher level loot than purple like orange ? Also why is blue crated gear more superior than gold looted gear in adventure and dungeon so which players are really exploiter, us who prefer getting gold loot in combat or crafters who can just craft better gear despite the recent gold loot nerf.
 
Glad they are finally going dealing with wintrade.
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{| class="blockquote"
Well you can also try a white gear and compare it with a blue gear and see if gear doesn't matter,
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{| class="blockquote"
Orange (Legendary) is from 40 man raids. Purple (Superb) is from 20s.Blue crafted gear *can* be superior in the hands of a dedicated crafter because it's not easy to do... it takes a ton of time, money and materials... its not click-n-craft.You can get hear any of the methods and be perfectly fine with whatever progression you make - nothing is going to hold you back. If you are playing this game only for gear, you are going to be woefully disappointed because it isn't the most important thing.
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			The Elder Gems Vendor really needs a revisit. I mean like there is a grand total of 4 items from all from non-raids and 2 from GA for a Spellslinger healer. I understand that the elder gems vendor is to be used for those unlucky moments but there should atleast be something worth saving for instead of just amp/ability points. 	
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Besides the rune here is the issue, and one that needs fixed not from crafting being ixed but from adventure and above items being ixe:
 
Crafters can designate where the stats go: So therefore Warriors push Stats they want, Healers push stats they want, etc,etc...
 
Dropped armor devs have no clue even though they made a chart of each classes primary, 2nd, and 3rd stat and instead through stats from other areas onto pieces. Add in that every adventure, dungeon, raid etc should have multiple pieces for every class/role and you have huge holes in the current system.
 
Heck even the lvl 50 rep vendors gear shows huge holes: My warrior tank spec found 1 semi useful item after grinding rep forever in the end zones, 1 item out of hundreds, that is sad.
 
If every class/role has 3-4 stats needed ( warrior Tank: Tech, armor, hp) then the gear should be tailored toward them and currently it is not. I could take a database in a weekend and rewrite every stat in now time given the same priority crafters do in there windows everyday, and not by pushing 1 stat to max and leave the others at min.
 
 
I also Think the 1 issue currently with crafting as it is would be the min settings are to low on stat allocation.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Fun fact, in the early betas there were hardly any drops in adventures, but they had their own rep. You got your adventure loot by grinding rep and then purchasing your item of preference from the respective rep vendor. However, people complained that they prefer the feels of getting a good drop as opposed to the certain but grindy vendor, so it got changed to what it is today. So blame the beta testers. :)
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{| class="blockquote"
You bet there are players out there who, in White gear could beat players in Blue gear. Absolutely. And that's the difference... something you can't really say for games like WoW.
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Well to bad I didn't beta test because I can't understand how people enjoy such a random system. Games have moved away from the grind mentality to the RNG one so people don't finish all the content in 1 week. I don't see the point in having random loot drop from bosses if it isn't at least guaranteed, but now in wildstar you can't while before you had a greater change if you ran gold runs. How awful it would be do complete a 20man or 40man dungeon and get only craft material, because that's how adventures and dungeons are currently.
 
 The medal system with loot will never work, while the way I proposed it with points is far better.
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{| class="blockquote"
If you're not hitting your target and dying all the time, it doesn't help at all.
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			A shield recharge gadget and a shield that gives you 1 interrupt armour when it's change could make a big difference against enemies that could stun you.	
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{| class="blockquote"
I dunno, remove soulbind, remove epics, remove unique items and go back to the old sandbox way of your items can break and disappear, crafted gear is all that's available, and you can only get the best crafting mats from rare spawns/boss type mobs.
 
Make the game less about collecting phat lewts and make it about... you know... having fun together.
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{| class="blockquote"
Well I can't say items breaking and disappearing would be fun, but I do come from DAoC where items did degrade and sooner or later needed to be replaced but that game is a million times better then wildstar and I won't even get started on that. The only problem I see is RNG makes it so not everything you do is a reward, instead of hard work you have to depend on luck. While some people might get lucky other aren't and it's not really fair that I spent 100 hours doing a dungeon trying to get an item to drop while someone else got it in 1 run. I want my time spent playing to mean something and with the current system it does not.
 
 Once I get my weekly EG points there really isn't anything else to do. If let's say a point system was added to adventures and dungeons then at least I could do them and feel like my time was not wasted. I don't think you should get loot from adventures since there more story driven, Instead I could get doing it get points and buy something nice every two days or so. The Epic's should stay in the 20man and 40 man raids.
 
 With the current Gear scaling there is no in between, it's just get crafted, get attuned, and do 20man.... seem a bit boring to me.
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			And until you got 20p you wont ever get it because not even a guild member would just give it away for free :P	
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And until you got 20p you wont ever get it because not even a guild member would just give it away for free :P
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Back on topic:
I'm 100% for the rune shake-up, as it's woefully needed, and it will definitely improve the situation.
 
But to point it out now, in case it's not clear: THEY ARE GOING TO NERF AP RUNES.
 
They need to. They're WAY too strong. Runes should never be -that- good.
They will still be BiS most likely, (imo) but only by a little bit over your primary stat rune.
They will also add options for Water, Earth, and the other crappy runeslots, that will mean you can at least put crit or something into them and get something out of them.
 
Step 1: Lock rune slot numbers (so any item can never have a differing number of slots)
Step 2: Make it so all rune slots are useful, but Fire/Fusion is not the ONLY ones you ever want.
RNG Rune troubles Solved. Job done.
(There's still issues with bad itemization, and OP crafting gear, but that's another issue)
 
 
But don't kid yourselves people: Fire/Fusion may still be BiS, but AP Runes will be Nerfed hard.
 
If you don't think this is a good idea, you need to take a few steps back and think it all over until you realize it. Rune slots are too important, to the point where it's the only thing people are looking for when Purples drop... and it's basically solely because AP runes are too strong. The only decent solution is to nerf hammer them back down to similar levels to primary stat runes. If you buff all the other runes, you've still got the issue where slots matter too much, but will be that slot Count matters too much. There should be some incentive to getting a better piece of gear other than "ooo what slots does it have?".	
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the runes slots should have been like this.
 
 1.) white items no sockets
 2.)green items 1 socket
 3.)blue items 2 sockets
 4.)purple 3 socket
 5.)orange and up 4 socket	
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Back on topic:
I'm 100% for the rune shake-up, as it's woefully needed, and it will definitely improve the situation.
 
But to point it out now, in case it's not clear: THEY ARE GOING TO NERF AP RUNES.
 
They need to. They're WAY too strong. Runes should never be -that- good.
They will still be BiS most likely, (imo) but only by a little bit over your primary stat rune.
They will also add options for Water, Earth, and the other crappy runeslots, that will mean you can at least put crit or something into them and get something out of them.
 
Step 1: Lock rune slot numbers (so any item can never have a differing number of slots)
Step 2: Make it so all rune slots are useful, but Fire/Fusion is not the ONLY ones you ever want.
RNG Rune troubles Solved. Job done.
(There's still issues with bad itemization, and OP crafting gear, but that's another issue)
 
 
But don't kid yourselves people: Fire/Fusion may still be BiS, but AP Runes will be Nerfed hard.
 
If you don't think this is a good idea, you need to take a few steps back and think it all over until you realize it. Rune slots are too important, to the point where it's the only thing people are looking for when Purples drop... and it's basically solely because AP runes are too strong. The only decent solution is to nerf hammer them back down to similar levels to primary stat runes. If you buff all the other runes, you've still got the issue where slots matter too much, but will be that slot Count matters too much. There should be some incentive to getting a better piece of gear other than "ooo what slots does it have?".
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			I just got the stalker DPS shoulders from War of the Wilds. Cool, says I, they're purple and surely must be an upgrade to my old Epochos crap. So I compared them and realized that my Epochos shoulders have 40something more brutality and 2 fire runes whereas the purple shoulders had 2 earth runes and more crit/strikethrough related stats. That's cool, but with 2 fire runes and 40+ more brutality I'm not sure I that crit/strikethrough stuff and 2 earth runes will be better. In other words, that felt like kind of a downgrade. And that right there feels like a problem. I wasn't even paying attention making those shoulders, just threw on a regular hybrid core and pumped up brutality. That's how easy it was to make something I feel I'll get more DPS out of than a purple drop. If the epic would have had fire slots I think it would have pulled ahead by a bit but since it got earth I'm not sure. . 	
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I just got the stalker DPS shoulders from War of the Wilds. Cool, says I, they're purple and surely must be an upgrade to my old Epochos crap. So I compared them and realized that my Epochos shoulders have 40something more brutality and 2 fire runes whereas the purple shoulders had 2 earth runes and more crit/strikethrough related stats. That's cool, but with 2 fire runes and 40+ more brutality I'm not sure I that crit/strikethrough stuff and 2 earth runes will be better. In other words, that felt like kind of a downgrade. And that right there feels like a problem. I wasn't even paying attention making those shoulders, just threw on a regular hybrid core and pumped up brutality. That's how easy it was to make something I feel I'll get more DPS out of than a purple drop. If the epic would have had fire slots I think it would have pulled ahead by a bit but since it got earth I'm not sure. .
 
 
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There are currently two big issues (imo) with itemisation 
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 just got the stalker DPS shoulders from War of the Wilds. Cool, says I, they're purple and surely must be an upgrade to my old Epochos crap. So I compared them and realized that my Epochos shoulders have 40something more brutality and 2 fire runes whereas the purple shoulders had 2 earth runes and more crit/strikethrough related stats. That's cool, but with 2 fire runes and 40+ more brutality I'm not sure I that crit/strikethrough stuff and 2 earth runes will be better. In other words, that felt like kind of a downgrade. And that right there feels like a problem.
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			They should have made gear check with every increase difficulty. crafted+adventure gear should have been set to get you past Vet dungeons, and vet dungeon gear to get past 20man, ext.	
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-snip-.
 
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There are currently two big issues (imo) with itemisation
 
This is the first: Tripple RNG drops = nu es bueno. Problem acknowledged and being worked on by J. 
 
This is the heart of the other. Crafting gear completely trivialises dungeon + adventure loot for the most part. There is no gear progression at all at the moment, no reason to run non-raid instances after attunements, and that creates a void of "things to do".
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Rune issues are easy to fix because they fall into 3 categories:
 
Slot type: Useful or not
Rune bonuses: Useful or not
Attributes: Biggest issues here as AP/SP/Health are 3x better then stats (Brut, Fin, Tech etc.) and 10x better then the other straight up abilities (Strike through, crit hit)
 
When you need 2.5:1 for stats to increase the AP/SP/ etc
And then 100+ points in crit hit etc to rasie your % there is a huge issue
 
Basically they built a system where:
Strike through is irrelevant with the low % needed
Crit hit is insane to try to raise above 30%
Crit Sev kinda blah since hit is so hard to rasie
AP/SP/HP are king of all stats and easy to get
 
Add in that as far as anyone can confirm anything besides Phy Resist is useless, Armor pierce does not seem to either work or not be useful enough and Lifesteal's % is so low it's worse then many procs.	
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What's the solution, though?
 
If the best that crafted gear can be is entry level into adventures then it's going to be utterly worthless. Why waste time crafting when you can run vet adventures and get elder gems, faction rep, and gear all at once?
 
I'd like to avoid that scenario because crafting in this game is actually interesting.
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Precisely Jarlhen.
 
And the problem would be fixed when:
1. Your Fire slots were only ~20% better than most slots.
2. Your Earth slots were on-par with other slots.
 
Crit/ST/etc are not useless, they're just no where near as useful as AP right now. (Differs between classes, but AP sits around 5x the value of your nearest other stat)
 
After the changes.
You will have 1 more slot on the Purple gear, than the Blue.
And when they nerf those fire AP runes back down, 2x fire runes will be roughly equal to, or slightly worse than 3 earth runes.
Then it will just be an issue of your crafted gear being too good, which is still a problem, but at least you'll have better/more runes.
 
 
And wingofbenu: I've got no idea what you're on about
When they make content they call "hard", and you can clear it in a bunch of blue gear you buy the day you ding max level, then there's something terribly wrong with the game. It's more like you hold a running race, and everyone's a crap runner, so uses cars to drive to the finish line... so you take away their cars. They were never intended to be that strong. It defies all reasoning that they should be that strong. The raid content is SUPPOSED to be hard. If you can clear it with such mediocre gear, runed up to the max with AP and rune sets, then there's something wrong. It's effectively 'cheating', and they need to nerf the AP runes to bring them back down to the level they should be.
 
What's more likely? Every single rune sucks ass... or the single only thing that is strong, is too strong? Hrmmm. Stop being carried through by your AP runes and l2p.
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Dude.
 
1: when it takes 130 strikethrough to get 1% strukethrough, then I dont care how much l2p a person doesm, the stat still is undervalued compared to the amount you need to stack for it to be worth stacking.
 
2: why should I bother learning how to play? I dont raid. I dont do dungeons. I alt and rp. I'm just concerned about the fact nerfing the gear seems more like a stopgap than an actual fix.
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Ok, it's obvious now that this thread has had a major impact in-game, with people scrambling to craft their OP blue items now while they still can. Prices of lvl 50 cores have more than doubled, and the crafting market is very fluid.
 
However, if you read all the comments here, everyone is asking for a scaling down of AP (which is obviously done by tinkering with skill damage scaling), meaning that even 10% scaling down on AP on future gear means that people who already have crafted items will have AMAZING +10% DPS items on them, making them nothing short of over-powered and unbalanced. I doubt you can make any significant changes to AP scaling without going back and transforming all items in the game.
 
 
If you want to fix runes, just remove AP runes from Fusion and Fire, and make all runes have all the main stats as a basic rune option (not all options like Strikethrough or Crit,....but have Moxie, Finesse, Brutality, Insight options). There, DONE!
 
 
Now, can we please have a timeline for these changes please? Saying "in a few patches" could mean 3-4 months away.	
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Don't know if the Devs are even reading this thread anymore, and really my question has nothing to do with rune itemization.... but it does concern crafting so figured what the hell.
 
Any plans to do something about the special abilities on the crafting items? I made it up to Tier 4 Adventus Claws last week and they are.... well... I'm trying to find a better phrase than "utterly fukkin terrible". The special ability (+18% Move Speed on Hit for 5.0s) is locked and not very good considering the tanking slot layout (mostly blue/green). It's an ability that's far more suited towards running down fleeing targets than tanking. And even then it's so overpriced on charge, that end stats are dramatically reduced, and the Tier 3 claws end up being superior in just about every way.
 
So is there any possibility of making the Special ability selectable with corresponding charge costs? (Not all special abilities are equal after all.)	
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