Abazzagorath wrote:

I suspect that a new cultural paradigm will fix the "ac problem" and it will end up not being very popular with anyone, not with foci fixed by slots (and on almost every item for those slots now), group and raid visible armors being extremely easy to obtain now, as opposed to rarer drops (the loot pinata problem), and the whole emblem issue.

I really hope any new cultural has a type 15 aug slot on the BP, else it will be unlikely to be used by anyone except plat rich players that are too lazy to farm anything for their alts.

Old cultural was popular because:

1) For groupers it was the best armor available bar none for a couple expansions after it came out when auged up (don, dodh, por, dodh hard mode tasks had some equivalent drops but not for all slots for all classes and some were hard to obtain)

2) For raiders it provided tanks a method of gaining higher ac, it provided a method of getting "rare" armor slots that were otherwise locked behind high end events (like dodh bracer being lore and dropping from mayong only) from earlier events, and provided an easier path to planning/obtaining foci when you had to plan foci

I guess I have a hard time believing the cultural will have the same appeal.

Things I'd like to see with "new" cultural (ideas for Ngreth if things not cut in stone yet):

1) Base armor + base symbol should be close to the best group gear stats (ac, hp, mod2s), but not exceed whatever the tier 5 group gear equivalent is

2) Group "seal" and raid "seal" type augs creatable from the start - group seal component drops randomly from any named in the top end group zone as bonus loot, and puts the total armor stats *above* the regular t5 type gear, raid seal drops from raid encounters obviously, balance it as you will, but if the stats are going to be like faycite was compared to crystallos gear, make them drop more often

3) Type 15 aug slot added to BP

4) Type 13 aug slot added to all for purity, and add 50 base purity to the armor, if you don't have enough aug slot space to do this, put 20 purity on the group seal and 25 purity on the raid seal

5) Make people have to make a choice on group/raid seals, heavy on shielding on some, on avoidance on others, on spell shield on others, on accuracy on others, etc, so you give groupers an option to max 1-2 of those important mods if they so choose to go light on the others.

6) Do not use the same pattern paradigm. I suggest a quest for a book as normal for the augs (reuse the armor slot patterns we already have for that portion), but the book doesn't degrade. Right now, your choice is to give up an entire bank slot for a tier of patterns, or destroy the patterns and basically have to constantly request the book. Make the quest harder if you have to, or longer, to justify it, but having to redo the quest or be willing to give up an entire bank slot is a bad choice right now. Since I know you can't make them tradeable (unless you could give 2 rewards on task completion, one that is a recipe book you right click, thats no drop, so you have to do the quest before you can ever do the combines, so patterns can be droppable, so we can mule store them =P).
1. It is between 1 and 2

2. *whistles innocently*

3. done

4. Though infusible... there is actually not room for a purity slot (I may have a bug... when people get on beta check... and be sure I have a purity...) BP has slot 7, (11), (12), 15, 1 so is full (11 and 12 are the new nslots... 1 is the hiden slot used by power sources) so there is not room for a purity aug. Could fit one on the other pieces, but not the BP. I will consider giving it a compromise level of purity though. More than "base" armor, but not "max"

5. just leads to min/maxing. As it is, I had to do slot specific to deal with the AC issue. (seals are slot specific... can still get all cultural focuses on all slots)

6. hope I have time to do somethinga bout that, but may not.



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