Nerf the armor , yes? Nerf the Demo set, Nerf the Arcturia set, nerf Xuna, nerf the CW s, nerf the rangers, nerf the Oath paladin shield. Just 2 days of forum. .
Yeah well Xuna is a no brainer, the sooner the better. Build your character to do damage not your companion.
No nerfs. The up coming nerf however smal it may be to wizards, and the lack of good anything in mod 18 is why, for now I am resolving to not put any real cash into this game for 2020. We'll see what happens after it drops on console, and then after mod 19, but for now my coins are going to stupid HAMSTER like paying off debt, drinking, model trains, and car projects.
Just wanted to say it is always good to see players discussing the different approaches to design, just make sure to keep it respectful to each other.
This also highlights the fact that it is just as important to post on the forums about the things you do like, do want to stay as they are, along with the things you don't like and want to see changed. It is very common for forums to be places where only the negatives are discussed as people don't feel as much need to have conversation on what they do like/what is working.
Rewards/itemization tends to be the most contentious issue in game design, due to the fact that there are many different views on what makes that part of a game interesting/fun as this discussion is currently highlighting and several of you have directly pointed out. Hopefully you will all find these types of discussions/debates both interesting and enlightening to how other players view game design.
Both version of the item is +5% damage, which is pretty unsophistically is the best damage percentage you can get and the circumstance is whether or not you can ignore it, which is pretty binary. And items that give bonuses against specific enemies, like the devil set, is the same poor design as the only skills you need to consider in your decision is whether you can read the type of the enemy, which is also a trivially binary option.
The item had a harsh penalty and rewarded you for investing into making it work. Not everyone would be able to use it and in good groups, I would absolutely use it in ToMM. But sure, lets call these, "poor" decisions because they force you to make a choice. Change armour pieces for every piece of content in order to be BiS, or use the same armour everwhere and perform worse. Take a hit of -50% incoming healing in order to deal more damage, or have a tankier character. Such an, "awful" design compared to the current design of, "this item is always best in slot and I will always use it."
Sure, its possible to design much more interesting items, with far more interesting trade offs, but pretending this design is bad when it is in fact leagues better than the current design with no trade offs at all is being intellectually dishonest.
Except that your 2 point contradict each other. If you have to invest in it to make it work, then it's not specific, as after your investment, it's stays BiS in every case if you can pay the price. But if you think that it shouldn't be BiS, then you shouldn't be able to pave the way to make it universally BiS. And if you have to pay, then it's not a choice, until you can afford it. But after you can, then it's still not a choice, as 5% damage is universally better. So, you problem is not the side effect, but the +5% damage.
The only one who is pretending an objectional ground is you. You subjectively think that -25% incoming heal bonus is not a harsh penalty. I say that based off the cost it needs to be offset, it's amongst the harshest penalties you can get in the game. Comparatively, none of the BiS items currently have a penalty, so you are being biased by applying your standards to a single item, while the overall game is yet to share your perception about gear penalties. As I said earlier, you think the game should cater to you by making this item for your ideals.
And the old item, as in itself, had an unrealistic negative attached to it. You weren't be able to make items like these, because no one would wear 4x-50% incoming heal bonus. You were not be able to use gears like this with the same weight of detrimental effects combined as the effort to offset it way too high. You think it was fine because as a single existing item, you personally would be able to build your character around it, because you probably have the capital and care enough to do so.
The fact that we could design more interesting items is true, but not the point. The point is, you can design a set of items that is similar to the current version with cost/benefit/style, but you would be unable to design a vast array of items with similar weights attached to it as the old version. And even if those item would be made, because the brutally offset cost/value of the item, people would work around it or ignore it.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
The only one who is pretending an objectional ground is you. You subjectively think that -25% incoming heal bonus is not a harsh penalty. I say that based off the cost it needs to be offset, it's amongst the harshest penalties you can get in the game. Comparatively, none of the BiS items currently have a penalty, so you are being biased by applying your standards to a single item, while the overall game is yet to share your perception about gear penalties. As I said earlier, you think the game should cater to you by making this item for your ideals.
Except its not universally BiS, even if you can afford it, provided the downside (-50%) is big enough. With a downside like that, you can only afford to use the item provided the players you are playing with are also similarly geared (read: the healer can overcompensate for the boots). If you limit your gameplay to only playing within groups where you can get away with it, sure, you will never switch, but if you intend to random queue, or play with other people, the decision becomes more of a case by case basis.
The only one who is pretending an objectional ground is you. You subjectively think that -25% incoming heal bonus is not a harsh penalty. I say that based off the cost it needs to be offset, it's amongst the harshest penalties you can get in the game. Comparatively, none of the BiS items currently have a penalty, so you are being biased by applying your standards to a single item, while the overall game is yet to share your perception about gear penalties. As I said earlier, you think the game should cater to you by making this item for your ideals.
And the old item, as in itself, had an unrealistic negative attached to it. You weren't be able to make items like these, because no one would wear 4x-50% incoming heal bonus. You were not be able to use gears like this with the same weight of detrimental effects combined as the effort to offset it way too high. You think it was fine because as a single existing item, you personally would be able to build your character around it, because you probably have the capital and care enough to do so.
The fact that we could design more interesting items is true, but not the point. The point is, you can design a set of items that is similar to the current version with cost/benefit/style, but you would be unable to design a vast array of items with similar weights attached to it as the old version. And even if those item would be made, because the brutally offset cost/value of the item, people would work around it or ignore it.
And you just showed exactly how such an item would become far more interesting. Say every item slot had an optional item with a downside like this (not this exact downside, but one of equivalent value). There is no way at all you can build a character that takes advantage of all of them, simply because of how many maluses you would be applying to yourself. As a result, you would pick which of them you want, based on what fits your needs and you are forced to make a choice between many items across multiple gear slots.
About that, I was wondering I guess a page ago that what is the point of the hunt items, or more specifically, the new ones. The tl;dr version is that they are free item that are "sort of easy" to get, but also they consists most of the prize pool from this mod and just have the better end of the items as well. So, in a sense, I can look them as "okay to be bad", but also that players don't want to use the same old gear over the years, so the mod looks hollow if they are not things to be desired. But disregarding the item of the current debate, even if you want to get them, they are "sort of easy" and painless to get (even if you are low IL, you can get into a group). So I don't see how they incentivise player investment as it does not really takes more than a few hours to get them.
Except its not universally BiS, even if you can afford it, provided the downside (-50%) is big enough. With a downside like that, you can only afford to use the item provided the players you are playing with are also similarly geared (read: the healer can overcompensate for the boots). If you limit your gameplay to only playing within groups where you can get away with it, sure, you will never switch, but if you intend to random queue, or play with other people, the decision becomes more of a case by case basis.
You stated a choice, but you said to afford in both cases, because as the original post deliberately wrote, if you can afford it, then it's universally BiS. Yes, you need to afford a similarly built healer friend or partymember, but we already presupposed that you can afford it. And if we suppose you can afford it, why you think we can't that the healer should?
I wanted to parody the random que part, but... I'll pass.
The only one who is pretending an objectional ground is you. You subjectively think that -25% incoming heal bonus is not a harsh penalty. I say that based off the cost it needs to be offset, it's amongst the harshest penalties you can get in the game. Comparatively, none of the BiS items currently have a penalty, so you are being biased by applying your standards to a single item, while the overall game is yet to share your perception about gear penalties. As I said earlier, you think the game should cater to you by making this item for your ideals.
And the old item, as in itself, had an unrealistic negative attached to it. You weren't be able to make items like these, because no one would wear 4x-50% incoming heal bonus. You were not be able to use gears like this with the same weight of detrimental effects combined as the effort to offset it way too high. You think it was fine because as a single existing item, you personally would be able to build your character around it, because you probably have the capital and care enough to do so.
The fact that we could design more interesting items is true, but not the point. The point is, you can design a set of items that is similar to the current version with cost/benefit/style, but you would be unable to design a vast array of items with similar weights attached to it as the old version. And even if those item would be made, because the brutally offset cost/value of the item, people would work around it or ignore it.
And you just showed exactly how such an item would become far more interesting. Say every item slot had an optional item with a downside like this (not this exact downside, but one of equivalent value). There is no way at all you can build a character that takes advantage of all of them, simply because of how many maluses you would be applying to yourself. As a result, you would pick which of them you want, based on what fits your needs and you are forced to make a choice between many items across multiple gear slots.
Thank you for proving my point.
Well, if your point was that you subjectively would like it better and biased on picking your standards on this single piece of item, you're welcome. I proved it multiple times. But I guess from your wording you do not mean this.
Well, it will be interesting, for you. But, for most of the playerbase, they can't afford to take advantage from any single piece of your suggested gears, so their interest is zero. For players that can afford it, you think it's interesting, I think it's a waste of effort. I stated (and got ignored by you) multiple times that the BiS is a theoretical benefit, so the question is, for what I want to pay extensively and hassle with an item that still would cripple me? I and most people here, only got interested in it when we actually got something to consider using to progress. These "BiS" items are only good after you progressed through almost everything else as their benefit just doesn't match their crippling side effects.
And again, your scope is on a single piece of item. But do you know what's more interesting for the players than having the privilege of affording a single piece of detrimental gear? Well, a lot of gear that you have to combine and build around. Not one, but several.
But yeah, if you cherry-picking the things you liked from my post, this conclusion couldn't reach you.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
You stated a choice, but you said to afford in both cases, because as the original post deliberately wrote, if you can afford it, then it's universally BiS. Yes, you need to afford a similarly built healer friend or partymember, but we already presupposed that you can afford it. And if we suppose you can afford it, why you think we can't that the healer should?
And part of being able to use the item all the time, is limiting your gameplay to situations where the item can work. I think you will also notice I said, "provided the group is good enough I would even use this item in ToMM." There was a condition attached to that, the "provided," part I believe. If an item requires you to change the way you play the game in order to use it, or requires heavy investment into specific items in order to make it work, it is automatically more interesting than every single item we currently have in the game which is just generically good.
Well, it will be interesting, for you. But, for most of the playerbase, they can't afford to take advantage from any single piece of your suggested gears, so their interest is zero. For players that can afford it, you think it's interesting, I think it's a waste of effort. I stated (and got ignored by you) multiple times that the BiS is a theoretical benefit, so the question is, for what I want to pay extensively and hassle with an item that still would cripple me? I and most people here, only got interested in it when we actually got something to consider using to progress. These "BiS" items are only good after you progressed through almost everything else as their benefit just doesn't match their crippling side effects.
And again, your scope is on a single piece of item. But do you know what's more interesting for the players than having the privilege of affording a single piece of detrimental gear? Well, a lot of gear that you have to combine and build around. Not one, but several.
But yeah, if you cherry-picking the things you liked from my post, this conclusion couldn't reach you.
I proposed 8 items in that post as examples. Of them, only a single item (maybe you could argue 2) directly penalizes a stat which you can actively stack, the rest of them would penalize you in a way you could not do anything to mitigate. There is no, "affording to use" those items, either you want to use them, or you don't. Did you even read them? Because I want to see what item reduces the penalty to how far you can see, which apparently someone with more AD can invest into.
Some players are interested in being BiS, others are not. Having 1 set of gear which is BiS in all situations makes for dull itemization. Being forced to change up what you are using if you "want to stay at the top" makes it more of a puzzle to figure out what works best and for players who are interested in being BiS it makes for more engaging gameplay. Being BiS is a waste of effort for you? Cool, then this item is not aimed at you and guess what, not every item needs to be aimed at every single player. If someone is interested in an item, then it becomes something they chase after.
For the sake of the argument I will take the time to define what I mean by "interesting itemization," as itemization where you have non obvious choices as to what is the ideal tool to use and no 1 choice is ideal for every circumstance. At a 25% penalty, I would argue those boots are BiS for every DpS. That makes them non interesting. At 50%, I would argue they are BiS only in a narrow set of cases, both depending on the other gear you use (investment) and on the people you are running with. Therefor, the item is more interesting with a harsher penalty. So what if not everyone can use them, not everyone needs to. In a game with interesting itemization, not every person will use the same item.
Your own post betrays you though, "I am only interested in an item that allows me to progress." You do not want items with interesting bonuses, you want items with safe bonuses, which you know will be BiS and won't cost you anything to invest in. I would rather have an item where you literally have to sink 100's of millions of AD into making it work, using weird things that are otherwise useless to achieve that.
Furthermore, not every item needs to impose a penalty to meet the criteria to be interesting, it could just do something as simple as making deflection give incoming damage and making power give deflection chance and that would be an interesting change in mechanics. That does not however, take away from the fact that one of the ways to create an interesting item is to impose a penalty to the player on the item.
An interesting item is 1 that you must build around to make it work, rather than just throw into your build and say, "alright, I am done," because it is just generically good.
as much fun as it is to read all this, how about we talk about the fact that there was a patch last night with updates to the Test Server and we dont even have any Patch Notes for it yet. its been over 24 hours. its now friday so everyone is gonna bugger off home for the weekend so unless they go up in the next couple of hours, they wont be up till at least monday.
How are we supposed to test things and give feedback when we dont know what to look for....?!!!!!!
This is not my idea of "better Communication" and im really starting to lose any patience i have left. Mod 18 is 10 days away, and since its pretty much 80% recycled content, even the armour is just reskins i would of hoped that at least there would be a heap of bug fixes. So far, its looking like not really no
You stated a choice, but you said to afford in both cases, because as the original post deliberately wrote, if you can afford it, then it's universally BiS. Yes, you need to afford a similarly built healer friend or partymember, but we already presupposed that you can afford it. And if we suppose you can afford it, why you think we can't that the healer should?
And part of being able to use the item all the time, is limiting your gameplay to situations where the item can work. I think you will also notice I said, "provided the group is good enough I would even use this item in ToMM." There was a condition attached to that, the "provided," part I believe. If an item requires you to change the way you play the game in order to use it, or requires heavy investment into specific items in order to make it work, it is automatically more interesting than every single item we currently have in the game which is just generically good.
Except that, as I already said it, you presuppose that you can afford to use it, but you made up a condition that your healer can't afford to balance it off, because they are not built by the same rules as your build. It's an artificial condition on the same level as how it works in the random queue. Players are not "provided", they are built themselves and if you refuse to factor in the cost for your character, you would have to refuse that they might not have the AD to be viable. Unless, you are only making this item to your likings only.
Well, it will be interesting, for you. But, for most of the playerbase, they can't afford to take advantage from any single piece of your suggested gears, so their interest is zero. For players that can afford it, you think it's interesting, I think it's a waste of effort. I stated (and got ignored by you) multiple times that the BiS is a theoretical benefit, so the question is, for what I want to pay extensively and hassle with an item that still would cripple me? I and most people here, only got interested in it when we actually got something to consider using to progress. These "BiS" items are only good after you progressed through almost everything else as their benefit just doesn't match their crippling side effects.
And again, your scope is on a single piece of item. But do you know what's more interesting for the players than having the privilege of affording a single piece of detrimental gear? Well, a lot of gear that you have to combine and build around. Not one, but several.
But yeah, if you cherry-picking the things you liked from my post, this conclusion couldn't reach you.
I proposed 8 items in that post as examples. Of them, only a single item (maybe you could argue 2) directly penalizes a stat which you can actively stack, the rest of them would penalize you in a way you could not do anything to mitigate. There is no, "affording to use" those items, either you want to use them, or you don't. Did you even read them? Because I want to see what item reduces the penalty to how far you can see, which apparently someone with more AD can invest into.
No, you proposed 8 items in a post that was not directed to me, so of course I did not read them as you need to at least refer to the posts that you want me to read, because between 2 of my posts 2 unrelated post happens and I only check if you edited the post I'm referring to.
However, by going through them I fail to see how your "you only can choose 1 of it" is applied, because disregarding the fact that they might take up the same spot, they are concurrently useful, some even synergise. A lot of them probably breaks the game as we know it, but in theorem, I'm interested in some of it.
But they highly differ from the one change you specifically want to make, because as you mention it, they can't be mitigated. And to make my own point in it, they are interesting on their own merit. The change you want to make can be mitigated, even at -50%. You can stack up 5 Tacticals for +30%, get an Ioun stone of Allure to get 2k Power and +10% Incoming heal and you can lose 8k extra power or 4% boss damage for +10% incoming heal. Or, if your healer is similarly geared as you, you can go with -10% incoming heal and not notice it. You have to go out of your way to play differently by refusing to mitigate it's effect. But that's making your own fun, like deslotting your Radiants from the def slot to make ToMM harder to survive.
And after it can be just simply calculated as a risk/benefit, it fails to be interesting. And most people hate to even calculate for things. I found the demogorgon trial armlet more interesting than this as the damage to myself procced my lifesteal and took down my barkshield enchant stack. It had neat interactions that I remember. I won't going to remember fun times with a shoe that just costs a lot and makes harder for the healer.
Some players are interested in being BiS, others are not. Having 1 set of gear which is BiS in all situations makes for dull itemization. Being forced to change up what you are using if you "want to stay at the top" makes it more of a puzzle to figure out what works best and for players who are interested in being BiS it makes for more engaging gameplay. Being BiS is a waste of effort for you? Cool, then this item is not aimed at you and guess what, not every item needs to be aimed at every single player. If someone is interested in an item, then it becomes something they chase after.
For the sake of the argument I will take the time to define what I mean by "interesting itemization," as itemization where you have non obvious choices as to what is the ideal tool to use and no 1 choice is ideal for every circumstance. At a 25% penalty, I would argue those boots are BiS for every DpS. That makes them non interesting. At 50%, I would argue they are BiS only in a narrow set of cases, both depending on the other gear you use (investment) and on the people you are running with. Therefor, the item is more interesting with a harsher penalty. So what if not everyone can use them, not everyone needs to. In a game with interesting itemization, not every person will use the same item.
I agree that it being unilaterally BiS is not the point and I don't agree with that. But having a bonus like, "against devils" is not a choice. It has devil type, you use it, it doesn't, you don't, one of the options is just objectively worse. It does not need you to think or tinker around. Just because you had to click to change the gear, it was not a real choice. Like, you can not wear BiS items even if there is an obvious one.
And the same with the prebuffed shoe. If you have the money and the healer, you use it, if you don't, you just can't. It's not your choice to have a healer that can deal with it as in the moment, you can't choose to afford something. You can afford to mitigate it, or not.
You can say that it having +5% damage on -25% incoming heal is bad, because it's universally better than other gears and I agree. I already made my post to lower it to +3% damage. Even my original idea was only 4%, but I kind of forgot that Ioun stone of allure's can go to defensive slots, which skewed my rough math estaminate. But you can point for less than 3% damage. Edit: Or make it do +10% encounter damage or... +15% non-power damage.
Or, if you wouldn't be fixated on this single piece of item, you can say that if more piece of it would exist, maybe you would try to skew your character into -50% incoming heal by multiple pieces. Because the current bonus can be used amongst multiple items, allowing you to build the ultimate glass cannon with -100% incoming heal. It's an actual choice of how far do you want to go with it. The -50% exists in the "you can get away with it once if you are already can afford anything or just don't bother".
And about my "own betrayal": I'm interested in items that are interesting to progress with. Yes, I could go against the optimal build and let myself to be more easily hurt, but because it has that huge cost hurdle and overall, does not do anything that interests me. I was interested how the demogorgon armlet DoT-ed me, but I'm not interested in expecting to get healed properly, but not. It does not change how I play.
And I could be able to offset the -50% incoming heal bonus and probably would be BiS for me. But does it interests me? Not really. It's benefit is a flat damage bonus and the drawback is full compensated or the only "choice" is in the hands of the healer. Because if someone else does not heal your negative out, you are determined to die. I would say it's more interesting when the tank can't aggro Trobriand after I used my daily and I have to tank it now. That is some gameplay difference that's interesting and I did not need to shot myself in the leg to get it.
I play a cleric healer (which no one allows in their groups anymore because paladin is a better healer) and I see this gear with negative incoming healing as directly hurtful to me. I spend all that zen on upgrade tokens to get my companions to legendary for outgoing healing and then you give out gear that negates it. It's like a giant f u to the healers
Some people are wanting it to be -25% incoming healing for 5% damage where others want to keep it at -50% incoming healing for 5% damage. Lets look at from both sides:
-25% incoming healing for 5% damage: some people want this so that it would be viable to use. You can negate 24% using 4 Rank 15 Tactical enchantments. You also have your off hand weapon that can have 2.5% incoming healing. You also have 4% from boons. And you also have various Companions that offer incoming healing as well and one more utility slot. So all in all, not too hard to off-set ( yes I know its expensive but this is end game). Now lets look at the other side. The 5% damage. Anyone want to guess how many Rank 15 Radiant enchantments you need for 5% damage boost? Well it depends on you base power but most people will need anywhere from 5-8 rank 15 Radiants to get 5%. (rough estimates from quick math puts people around 20K-22K item level to need 5 maybe 6 rank 15 Radiants where 23K to 26K would need 7 or 8, maybe more to get 5% damage increase. Again this is all based on your current power level... give or take).
Now, we need to remember that MOD 18 is the newest content meaning it should be the toughest content in the game (zone wise NOT trial). The recommend item level to enter MOD 18 is 20K. Now I can tell you for a fact that many, and I mean many, players that meet that requirement are going to have a tough time in there. I changed my build of my paladin from my DPS loadout (If you can call it that) to a sort of tank/off-DPS build to have a more reasonable time in MOD 18 (takes even longer to kill anything but safer). End game players are having a bit of a rough go in the zone so you can only imagine what its going to be like for those that just meet the recommend item level. Now, to the reason I brought this up. MOD 18 is not for people with a few rare companions, a few rare insignias and rank 8 enchantments. You are going to need to level up your enchantments, insignias and companions to hit certain caps. Its the only way to survive in there unless you bring a party. Now you could say "These are all the reasons why it should only be -25% reduction" but once again this is an end game zone with end game gear. But more importantly, as others have stated, we need to have options/choices. If I pick this item for a 5% damage increase with a -50% incoming healing I would need to offset that to the best of my abilities. What will I sacrifice for a 5% damage increase? Or will I say no to it and grab another pair of boots with 5K power bonus (about 2-2.5% damage depending on your base power) with no negative effects? Options matter. weight the pros and cons. Figure out what works for you and your current party. Also what happens if in MOD 19 we get arms with the same bonus? Can I run with both? What will I need to do to make it viable? Is it even viable? Options matter.
As for any healers out there. (I play one as well). This might look really scary. It might make you feel like all that hard work boosting up your outgoing healing was for nothing. Its not as bad as you might think. And if someone is wearing the boots and their incoming healing is so bad that you can't heal them, ask them to take off the boots. Every character should have backup gear just incase. (Well I do and so does many of my guild). Most people have 2 loadouts with 2 paths to pick from. should have spare pieces from the other path.
FYI I really like some of those ideas you had @thefabricant . Although I would hate to be the one to try and program them
Just my 2 cents. Maybe I have a point or maybe I am way out to lunch. Probably the latter.
I am disappointed that you caved in to people and lowered the penalty for Rusted Iron Leggings. They were 1 of my favorite item designs, as they imposed a harsh penalty, but were situationally very good and are in my mind an example of the direction item design should take. Item design is poor if 1 item is always best in slot in all circumstances. For the same reason, items that give bonuses against specific enemies are more interesting than items that give damage against everything, for the precise reason that it does force you to use many items if you want to be optimal.
I consider caving in to people in this thread to be a step backwards in item design.
The crux of the disagreement from we "people" is the extent of this penalty, not the concept of gear penalties per se. A massive -50% to this expensive, important, and widely-underutilised-among-everyday-players stat is an extreme way to introduce this new system of gearing to the general playerbase; I'm surprised anyone would go in so hard to bat for it.
edit: and for context, as a soulweaver I have nowhere near the mags of a DC, yet I'd be satisfied with this new version at -25%. (I do think the damage should also be lowered.) 50%? with our current healer scaling? with healer paragons that still rely on 400 mag group heals? that's not clever or ambitious game design: that's a painful lack of subtlety.
I wouldn't mind items that are situationally better than others IFF ...the cost to swap enchantments was reduced or removed AND it didn't cost so damn much to upgrade artifacts and artifact gear.
Not everyone is rich enough to afford multiple loadouts for each dungeon and possibly an entire set of enchantments for each. OR have thousands of gold laying around and a group willing to wait for you to swap enchants.
As for artifact sets like the new one coming out, it's not just RP's we have to spend, but also stones, marks, and wards. Can cost multiple million ad, and remember, us plebeians live off 100k/day. It's like needing to rank up new weapons each mod, not many people can afford that, and even less people like it.
Without these roadblocks I'm all for situationally bis items.
Ideally, I would like enchantments to be part of loadouts, so that we can switch loadouts at a campfire and our enchantments get swapped out too. How they handle the gold cost is up to them I suppose, but something reasonable. As for situationally bis artifact sets, IFF they are going to make something only good in very specific situations, like just against demons and devils, then the bonus better be damn good, why else would I drop a couple mil for it?
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Except that, as I already said it, you presuppose that you can afford to use it, but you made up a condition that your healer can't afford to balance it off, because they are not built by the same rules as your build. It's an artificial condition on the same level as how it works in the random queue. Players are not "provided", they are built themselves and if you refuse to factor in the cost for your character, you would have to refuse that they might not have the AD to be viable. Unless, you are only making this item to your likings only.
I think its fairly obvious what I mean. Let us assume I am in a group with Lightbringer. Lightbringer's OP is completely BiS and overheals me by a large margin. In a group with his OP, I would be able to use these boots. In a group with an OP who has less gear and does not overheal me, I would not be able to use them.
However, by going through them I fail to see how your "you only can choose 1 of it" is applied, because disregarding the fact that they might take up the same spot, they are concurrently useful, some even synergise. A lot of them probably breaks the game as we know it, but in theorem, I'm interested in some of it.
But they highly differ from the one change you specifically want to make, because as you mention it, they can't be mitigated. And to make my own point in it, they are interesting on their own merit. The change you want to make can be mitigated, even at -50%. You can stack up 5 Tacticals for +30%, get an Ioun stone of Allure to get 2k Power and +10% Incoming heal and you can lose 8k extra power or 4% boss damage for +10% incoming heal. Or, if your healer is similarly geared as you, you can go with -10% incoming heal and not notice it. You have to go out of your way to play differently by refusing to mitigate it's effect. But that's making your own fun, like deslotting your Radiants from the def slot to make ToMM harder to survive.
And after it can be just simply calculated as a risk/benefit, it fails to be interesting. And most people hate to even calculate for things. I found the demogorgon trial armlet more interesting than this as the damage to myself procced my lifesteal and took down my barkshield enchant stack. It had neat interactions that I remember. I won't going to remember fun times with a shoe that just costs a lot and makes harder for the healer.
Did it ever occur to you that there is more than 1 way to make an item interesting and you do not need to apply 1 set of rules to all items to make them interesting? The examples I gave there, are for the most part interesting on their own and they are also much more interesting than the choice we have presented here. That does not take away from the fact that this item design is still more interesting than items which are universally BiS.
Even if you can afford to do it, many people won't do it, because it means having to swap between many items in order to always be at the top. Due to this, many people will run with items which are generally very good, even if they aren't the best. The choice does exist and people will take it. Even if you can mitigate this 1 item, it takes a very heavy stat investment. If you had multiple items with large downsides like this, do you think people would have the spare stats to mitigate all of them. I don't.
Yes, it can be calculated as a risk vs benefit. So what? What is the risk vs benefit of Enduring Boots. That automatically makes it more interesting than anything we currently have. Yes, survivors wraps are more interesting than it, so what? So long as we are not changing the mechanic of the boots, they are a more interesting item at -50% than the universally BiS boots at -25%.
I agree that it being unilaterally BiS is not the point and I don't agree with that. But having a bonus like, "against devils" is not a choice. It has devil type, you use it, it doesn't, you don't, one of the options is just objectively worse. It does not need you to think or tinker around. Just because you had to click to change the gear, it was not a real choice. Like, you can not wear BiS items even if there is an obvious one.
And the same with the prebuffed shoe. If you have the money and the healer, you use it, if you don't, you just can't. It's not your choice to have a healer that can deal with it as in the moment, you can't choose to afford something. You can afford to mitigate it, or not.
Different items have different stat distributions, finding a way to balance your stats around all these different items takes a lot of effort and not many people are going to be putting in that effort in order to be at the top. It IS a choice, because most people will choose not to do it, even though it is BiS to do it. It adds room to min max which, whilst not necessary for all content, some people would like to do.
It is like saying that in the current M17 meta, there is no real choice between running with multiple wizards in ToMM and running with other classes, because clearly the Wizard is the better option. The choice does exist and some people will make it, even if running with Wizards is clearly the more optimal way.
Or, if you wouldn't be fixated on this single piece of item, you can say that if more piece of it would exist, maybe you would try to skew your character into -50% incoming heal by multiple pieces. Because the current bonus can be used amongst multiple items, allowing you to build the ultimate glass cannon with -100% incoming heal. It's an actual choice of how far do you want to go with it. The -50% exists in the "you can get away with it once if you are already can afford anything or just don't bother".
And how will we ever get to a state where multiple items like this exist and its difficult to build around them if the moment a piece like this is added people whine about it and the item gets buffed to the point where you would always want to use it?
And about my "own betrayal": I'm interested in items that are interesting to progress with. Yes, I could go against the optimal build and let myself to be more easily hurt, but because it has that huge cost hurdle and overall, does not do anything that interests me. I was interested how the demogorgon armlet DoT-ed me, but I'm not interested in expecting to get healed properly, but not. It does not change how I play.
And I could be able to offset the -50% incoming heal bonus and probably would be BiS for me. But does it interests me? Not really. It's benefit is a flat damage bonus and the drawback is full compensated or the only "choice" is in the hands of the healer. Because if someone else does not heal your negative out, you are determined to die. I would say it's more interesting when the tank can't aggro Trobriand after I used my daily and I have to tank it now. That is some gameplay difference that's interesting and I did not need to shot myself in the leg to get it.
Really? I can think of obvious examples where it changes the way I play. In ToMM for example I will often facetank the fire runes in order to get in some extra DpS. With these boots on, its probably not a good idea to facetank them, because you will firstly have a lower shield value if there is an OP, since they cannot buffer you up as high and secondly it will take them longer to restore your HP to full after, making it more likely something does kill you.
The result is, you play less recklessly in order to use them.
I wouldn't mind items that are situationally better than others IFF ...the cost to swap enchantments was reduced or removed AND it didn't cost so damn much to upgrade artifacts and artifact gear.
Not everyone is rich enough to afford multiple loadouts for each dungeon and possibly an entire set of enchantments for each. OR have thousands of gold laying around and a group willing to wait for you to swap enchants.
As for artifact sets like the new one coming out, it's not just RP's we have to spend, but also stones, marks, and wards. Can cost multiple million ad, and remember, us plebeians live off 100k/day. It's like needing to rank up new weapons each mod, not many people can afford that, and even less people like it.
Without these roadblocks I'm all for situationally bis items.
Ideally, I would like enchantments to be part of loadouts, so that we can switch loadouts at a campfire and our enchantments get swapped out too. How they handle the gold cost is up to them I suppose, but something reasonable. As for situationally bis artifact sets, IFF they are going to make something only good in very specific situations, like just against demons and devils, then the bonus better be damn good, why else would I drop a couple mil for it?
"I cannot afford it therefor it should not exist" is not a good argument.
It is viable to use at -50%. At -25%, its unilaterally BiS.
Both these statements are entirely true. And absolutely we should always want content designed with the expectation of coordinated, tactical communication that allows for "interesting" gear like this.
The social reality of Neverwinter is that Incoming Healing is, for too many players, an obscure stat; high-IL items come equipped with "Recommended" tags regardless of whether they have detrimental effects or not; this item is almost entirely an anomaly (except maybe Hell Crackers from MOD16); and healers are often blamed for player deaths irrespective of what is actually the case (a feature of MMOs forever.) So, for example, I would accept this as a piece of clever and ambitious game design ifit was, by design, exempt from the "Recommended" tag, and belonged to a category of dangerous items also exempted from this tag, and if the game provided training and tutorial mechanics to make players aware that Incoming Healing is an extremely powerful stat, and that 50% is an extremely large amount (tantamount to expecting no healing in a PUG of average 18k IL players.) If Neverwinter was that robust, well-explained game, I would agree with you, and would enjoy instructing alliance DPS on when and how best to use these items.
But if you don't feel a touch of dread when you look at the original design, perhaps you've never solo-pugged Demogorgon and been stuck as the only healer---and that's part of the social reality of Neverwinter, too. I don't advocate balancing around confused, disorganised play. I do advocate against beginning this method of itemisation with, as you put it, "harsh" penalties. That will only translate to "hostile" in the current state of play.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
It is viable to use at -50%. At -25%, its unilaterally BiS.
Both these statements are entirely true. And absolutely we should always want content designed with the expectation of coordinated, tactical communication that allows for "interesting" gear like this.
The social reality of Neverwinter is that Incoming Healing is, for too many players, an obscure stat; high-IL items come equipped with "Recommended" tags regardless of whether they have detrimental effects or not; this item is almost entirely an anomaly (except maybe Hell Crackers from MOD16); and healers are often blamed for player deaths irrespective of what is actually the case (a feature of MMOs forever.) So, for example, I would accept this as a piece of clever and ambitious game design ifit was, by design, exempt from the "Recommended" tag, and belonged to a category of dangerous items also exempted from this tag, and if the game provided training and tutorial mechanics to make players aware that Incoming Healing is an extremely powerful stat, and that 50% is an extremely large amount (tantamount to expecting no healing in a PUG of average 18k IL players.) If Neverwinter was that robust, well-explained game, I would agree with you, and would enjoy instructing alliance DPS on when and how best to use these items.
But if you don't feel a touch of dread when you look at the original design, perhaps you've never solo-pugged Demogorgon and been stuck as the only healer---and that's part of the social reality of Neverwinter, too. I don't advocate balancing around confused, disorganised play. I do advocate against beginning this method of itemisation with, as you put it, "harsh" penalties. That will only translate to "hostile" in the current state of play.
If someone is using this item, they lose any right to complain about being healed. If they fail to read the item tooltip properly, it is their own fault. If someone uses it despite having read the item description and dies as a result of it, it is their own fault. None of this has anything to do with the healer and the healer can quite easily point to the item, tell them its their fault and then move on. Seriously, we do not need to hand hold people this much. People can and should use their brains and if they make a poor choice, guess what, consequences!
If someone is using this item, they lose any right to complain about being healed. If they fail to read the item tooltip properly, it is their own fault. If someone uses it despite having read the item description and dies as a result of it, it is their own fault. None of this has anything to do with the healer and the healer can quite easily point to the item, tell them its their fault and then move on. Seriously, we do not need to hand hold people this much. People can and should use their brains and if they make a poor choice, guess what, consequences!
Say that the copy-paste build guide this DPS relies upon includes those boots, with the caveat that it "requires an exceptional healer." The DPS believes the healer is therefore at fault, because better healers would not let them die. The two fight in group chat. Maybe the group agrees to kick the DPS. Maybe the group instead agrees kick the healer and see if reinforcements bring the potential "exceptional" one. Consequences, yes: but not falling where they ought.
And then there's knock-on effects to consider. Keep the -50% boots, because they're interesting (and I agree, they're interesting... hateful, but interesting!) But this hits Soulweavers harder than DCs, because overhealing is much harder for them, so word spreads that Soulweavers are not good healers. Of course high-end players still understand that the job of a Soulweaver is to provide incomparable healing to a tank, who is never going to run these boots. But in the rest of the game, Soulweavers are now getting kicked on sight, as they were in MOD16 when groupthink falsely held that they couldn't heal LoMM. Consequences, again, but not falling where they ought.
It's not even that I don't like the item or agree in principle. I just don't think the game is ready for it, one, and I'd rather healing not be the first sacrifice, second, as healing has only *just* gotten to a good place. And I don't think survivability for damage is even especially creative: glass cannon builds for ToMM are already a thing, and this is just doubling-down (and authorising) that concept.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
If someone is using this item, they lose any right to complain about being healed. If they fail to read the item tooltip properly, it is their own fault. If someone uses it despite having read the item description and dies as a result of it, it is their own fault. None of this has anything to do with the healer and the healer can quite easily point to the item, tell them its their fault and then move on. Seriously, we do not need to hand hold people this much. People can and should use their brains and if they make a poor choice, guess what, consequences!
Say that the copy-paste build guide this DPS relies upon includes those boots, with the caveat that it "requires an exceptional healer." The DPS believes the healer is therefore at fault, because better healers would not let them die. The two fight in group chat. Maybe the group agrees to kick the DPS. Maybe the group instead agrees kick the healer and see if reinforcements bring the potential "exceptional" one. Consequences, yes: but not falling where they ought.
And then there's knock-on effects to consider. Keep the -50% boots, because they're interesting (and I agree, they're interesting... hateful, but interesting!) But this hits Soulweavers harder than DCs, because overhealing is much harder for them, so word spreads that Soulweavers are not good healers. Of course high-end players still understand that the job of a Soulweaver is to provide incomparable healing to a tank, who is never going to run these boots. But in the rest of the game, Soulweavers are now getting kicked on sight, as they were in MOD16 when groupthink falsely held that they couldn't heal LoMM. Consequences, again, but not falling where they ought.
It's not even that I don't like the item or agree in principle. I just don't think the game is ready for it, one, and I'd rather healing not be the first sacrifice, second, as healing has only *just* gotten to a good place. And I don't think survivability for damage is even especially creative: glass cannon builds for ToMM are already a thing, and this is just doubling-down (and authorising) that concept.
You are trying to argue a slippery slope here, when in reality you cannot show that the existence of these boots will lead to one. The fact of the matter is, anyone reading a guide in this game is already a step up from pugs and will probably understand that, "you can only use this item if these conditions are met," means that if these conditions aren't met, they cannot use them. Some will not, sure, but they are also a minority.
Furthermore, the player who is NOT reading a guide (and this composes most players who random queue) is unlikely to have equipped this item and if they have, they aren't going to have a guide to point to saying they should be wearing it, to which the healer's admonishment of, "you are reducing my ability to heal you, it is your fault" will probably work just fine.
In reality, it is a very small fraction of the game who will fight over these boots and that very small fraction is probably fighting already, just for different reasons.
I think its fairly obvious what I mean. Let us assume I am in a group with Lightbringer. Lightbringer's OP is completely BiS and overheals me by a large margin. In a group with his OP, I would be able to use these boots. In a group with an OP who has less gear and does not overheal me, I would not be able to use them.
Agreed, but then, it's not a choice of yours. And, if the costs should be ignored for you, well... the costs for the healer should be ignored as well. If you can't afford to use it or if your group can't afford to use it is basically the same point. The "choice" of having a well or worse built healer in the group is the same of using the best gear or not. There is an objectively and universally better option, if you can afford it.
Did it ever occur to you that there is more than 1 way to make an item interesting and you do not need to apply 1 set of rules to all items to make them interesting? The examples I gave there, are for the most part interesting on their own and they are also much more interesting than the choice we have presented here. That does not take away from the fact that this item design is still more interesting than items which are universally BiS.
As I said, it's universally BiS regardless of the -%, so it's the same as other universally BiS items. And I don't find any interest in an effect that detriments a thing I cannot control. I won't be healing myself, I'm passively affected by the -50% incoming heal.
Even if you can afford to do it, many people won't do it, because it means having to swap between many items in order to always be at the top. Due to this, many people will run with items which are generally very good, even if they aren't the best. The choice does exist and people will take it. Even if you can mitigate this 1 item, it takes a very heavy stat investment. If you had multiple items with large downsides like this, do you think people would have the spare stats to mitigate all of them. I don't.
Yes, it can be calculated as a risk vs benefit. So what? What is the risk vs benefit of Enduring Boots. That automatically makes it more interesting than anything we currently have. Yes, survivors wraps are more interesting than it, so what? So long as we are not changing the mechanic of the boots, they are a more interesting item at -50% than the universally BiS boots at -25%.
Back to the last point, it is universally better, so I wouldn't need to swap. I will be forced to change into a worse, because the healer wasn't able to afford better gear. I don't "choose to die" if my healer can't heal me.
"If you had multiple items with large downsides like this, do you think people would have the spare stats to mitigate all of them. " <- You do understand that it's true, even now? Just, in the current version, the question is how much you can mitigate, in your version, that's a 0 or 1.
And as said, way too much time for you to not get the point: If you have problem with the universally better designed items, you have a problem with this. It gives the most generic bonus possible and it's universally BiS damage. But, because your bias, you refuse to consider making other items into something more risk/reward, because you only care if this single item is catered to you. There's a dozen hunt item that won't be realistically used or gives bland, uninteresting bonuses and there would be no opposition to change them into something interesting. Just, you don't want items in general to be changed, you want this single piece of item to be reverted. Because you only apply your rules into the balance of this gear, not the gears of this mod or gears in general.
Different items have different stat distributions, finding a way to balance your stats around all these different items takes a lot of effort and not many people are going to be putting in that effort in order to be at the top. It IS a choice, because most people will choose not to do it, even though it is BiS to do it. It adds room to min max which, whilst not necessary for all content, some people would like to do.
It is like saying that in the current M17 meta, there is no real choice between running with multiple wizards in ToMM and running with other classes, because clearly the Wizard is the better option. The choice does exist and some people will make it, even if running with Wizards is clearly the more optimal way.
Edit: I'm working to fix the quotation here, so at the moment this is the line between the quote and my answer.
It's just a false comparison and have very little to do with the thing. If we say that you can deliberately go and make a worse option is a choice, then we say that there is no "best", unless we say that those who chose other are objectively wrong in doing so. And BiS becomes an obsolete, relative term.
And how will we ever get to a state where multiple items like this exist and its difficult to build around them if the moment a piece like this is added people whine about it and the item gets buffed to the point where you would always want to use it?
Well, maybe, if you would have cared to state your opinion before the buff and your opinion wasn't asking to get people just ignored, you could have got your opinions about it represented.
People unilaterally hated the -50% incoming heal here and I was the only single person to say that the damage should be lowered as well, so the developers did what they should do, they took every feedback represented by the players and acted on it.
So, my first advice that maybe you shouldn't whine that it got buffed and does not cater to you if you weren't be bothered with the discussion before it got buffed. They can't read and consider feedback that does not exist.
I'm saying this with the 100% agreement that now it being unilaterally BiS is not good. But +5% damage is universally BiS.
And it would be still difficult to build around multiple of these items. Because now you are actually can be able to build around multiple of these items. In the old version, the choice of using multiples and weighing it's draws do not exist as you just can't. And because you don't want to change other, just bad items, there just won't be multiples.
Really? I can think of obvious examples where it changes the way I play. In ToMM for example I will often facetank the fire runes in order to get in some extra DpS. With these boots on, its probably not a good idea to facetank them, because you will firstly have a lower shield value if there is an OP, since they cannot buffer you up as high and secondly it will take them longer to restore your HP to full after, making it more likely something does kill you.
The result is, you play less recklessly in order to use them.
Or, you are forced to switch this item off, if you want to play how you want to play. It's not your choice whether your can be healed enough, because you are not the one that heals you. And as you said, that "choice" just vanishes with a good enough healer, making it just a thing that gives you +5% damage. And maybe, you can try to consider it having +5% damage is the problem that makes it universally BiS.
You are trying to argue a slippery slope here, when in reality you cannot show that the existence of these boots will lead to one.
I'd prefer to say that I'm trying to speculate, which is not the same as making slippery slope arguments. I think it's quite reasonable to propose that there will be a shifted preference towards healers that can drastically over-heal if optimal DPS now requires overhealing. And I think it not only reasonable but empirical to observe that this would affect healer balance (in the same way ToMM changed healer balance to favour Paladin overshields, as you must surely well know.) The narrative version I gave was was little slippery-slope fantastical, I'll grant you, but it's no more irrational than us discussing this particular item, at this particular number, somehow being the golden standard for risk-reward itemisation---especially when nobody, actually, in this thread is contesting that such mechanics might be an excellent feature in the game going forward.
We could reverse the trend and ask instead: at what point is a penalty too harsh? Is "viable" really just a shorthand for "can be done", or should we make the term do a little more work than that---more subtlety, as I was suggesting earlier? Because I think, frankly, you are treating these boots as a cleverer device than they really are. The idea of risk-reward is promising: let's do it. This one specific sore-thumb item that is impossible to measure against any other, because it's the only meaningful member of its kind, and because its number is so extreme as to defy comparison or balancing: the community ought be expected to question and debate it.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
As I said, it's universally BiS regardless of the -%, so it's the same as other universally BiS items. And I don't find any interest in an effect that detriments a thing I cannot control. I won't be healing myself, I'm passively affected by the -50% incoming heal.
Except it is not. "In these circumstances item X is better than item Y" shows that it is not always ideal. Changing your items around what other people have is part of optimization. Could the boots in theory be better for someone if they had a better healer in their group? Yes. Does that take away from the fact that in the current group setup, they should use something else? No. Unless you want them to make the choice between kicking their healer and changing their boots.
Back to the last point, it is universally better, so I wouldn't need to swap. I will be forced to change into a worse, because the healer wasn't able to afford better gear. I don't "choose to die" if my healer can't heal me.
This is still a choice. The fact that you don't recognize it as 1 doesn't take away from the fact that a choice does exist.
"If you had multiple items with large downsides like this, do you think people would have the spare stats to mitigate all of them. "
Actually, I could mitigate multiple items with downsides like this. Not many, sure, but more than 1. Just because YOU can't, doesn't mean other people aren't able to do so. It isn't binary and the only way to justify having a larger bonus is by having a larger downside. 25% is not enough for the 5% bonus imo to make it a meaningful choice.
And as said, way too much time for you to not get the point: If you have problem with the universally better designed items, you have a problem with this. It gives the most generic bonus possible and it's universally BiS damage. But, because your bias, you refuse to consider making other items into something more risk/reward, because you only care if this single item is catered to you. There's a dozen hunt item that won't be realistically used or gives bland, uninteresting bonuses and there would be no opposition to change them into something interesting. Just, you don't want items in general to be changed, you want this single piece of item to be reverted. Because you only apply your rules into the balance of this gear, not the gears of this mod or gears in general.
Knowing when you can vs when you cannot use an item is part of what makes this more interesting than most of the items in the game. It is entirely possible to misjudge and then end up dying because you use these. For someone who probably would not be able to use these at -50%, I find it amusing that you spend so much time arguing that it is universally the best. If you die because you are wearing them, you lose 10% damage. Suddenly, any other pair of boots are better than this.
It's just a false comparison and have very little to do with the thing. If we say that you can deliberately go and make a worse option is a choice, then we say that there is no "best", unless we say that those who chose other are objectively wrong in doing so. And BiS becomes an obsolete, relative term.
Convenience vs Absolute BiS is a choice and many people make that choice in NW every single day. Do you know how many people use overload slots? Inspect them and answer me. Or how about using potions of speed on trash? Or how about switching to chultan tiger in some circumstances for the movement speed? These are all optimal gameplay considerations, but very few people make them because it is not convenient. This is an item that won't always be the ideal item to use, it will be the ideal item to use assuming you can overcome the downside of it and most people will not bother.
Are these technically "bad" choices? Yes they are, but it is the ability to make bad choices that helps to define the good ones.
Well, maybe, if you would have cared to state your opinion before the buff and your opinion wasn't asking to get people just ignored, you could have got your opinions about it represented.
People unilaterally hated the -50% incoming heal here and I was the only single person to say that the damage should be lowered as well, so the developers did what they should do, they took every feedback represented by the players and acted on it.
So, my first advice that maybe you shouldn't whine that it got buffed and does not cater to you if you weren't be bothered with the discussion before it got buffed. They can't read and consider feedback that does not exist.
I'm saying this with the 100% agreement that now it being unilaterally BiS is not good. But +5% damage is universally BiS.
And it would be still difficult to build around multiple of these items. Because now you are actually can be able to build around multiple of these items. In the old version, the choice of using multiples and weighing it's draws do not exist as you just can't. And because you don't want to change other, just bad items, there just won't be multiples.
Really? I can think of obvious examples where it changes the way I play. In ToMM for example I will often facetank the fire runes in order to get in some extra DpS. With these boots on, its probably not a good idea to facetank them, because you will firstly have a lower shield value if there is an OP, since they cannot buffer you up as high and secondly it will take them longer to restore your HP to full after, making it more likely something does kill you.
The result is, you play less recklessly in order to use them.
Or, you are forced to switch this item off, if you want to play how you want to play. It's not your choice whether your can be healed enough, because you are not the one that heals you. And as you said, that "choice" just vanishes with a good enough healer, making it just a thing that gives you +5% damage. And maybe, you can try to consider it having +5% damage is the problem that makes it universally BiS.
Actually, I gave my opinion on these items months before you did. During the closed beta in fact. So did many other people during the beta and the opinion wasn't, "this item sucks."
You are trying to argue a slippery slope here, when in reality you cannot show that the existence of these boots will lead to one.
I'd prefer to say that I'm trying to speculate, which is not the same as making slippery slope arguments. I think it's quite reasonable to propose that there will be a shifted preference towards healers that can drastically over-heal if optimal DPS now requires overhealing. And I think it not only reasonable but empirical to observe that this would affect healer balance (in the same way ToMM changed healer balance to favour Paladin overshields, as you must surely well know.) The narrative version I gave was was little slippery-slope fantastical, I'll grant you, but it's no more irrational than us discussing this particular item, at this particular number, somehow being the golden standard for risk-reward itemisation---especially when nobody, actually, in this thread is contesting that such mechanics might be an excellent feature in the game going forward.
We could reverse the trend and ask instead: at what point is a penalty too harsh? Is "viable" really just a shorthand for "can be done", or should we make the term do a little more work than that---more subtlety, as I was suggesting earlier? Because I think, frankly, you are treating these boots as a cleverer device than they really are. The idea of risk-reward is promising: let's do it. This one specific sore-thumb item that is impossible to measure against any other, because it's the only meaningful member of its kind, and because its number is so extreme as to defy comparison or balancing: the community ought be expected to question and debate it.
There is not a single person in this thread saying it is the golden standard for risk vs reward. Nobody. Please read my comments again, if you dispute this. I have said multiple times, that it is better than much of what we have now and by lowering the number so that you would always choose to use this item, the item is worse than it was before. Is it possible to design better items? Sure. I believe I gave 8 examples of items with bonuses which are much more interesting than this and @theraxin#5169 gave the example of the survivor's wraps as an item which is more interesting.
My point was, reducing the penalty to 25% is a step back in the design of this item. Does the value have to be -50%? No, but it should certainly be higher than 25%. I personally was fine with -50%. And no, I am not treating this item as far cleverer than it actually is, I acknowledge that its not much of an improvement over current gear, but it is an improvement. You are reading too much into what I am saying and not reading what I am actually writing.
You are trying to argue a slippery slope here, when in reality you cannot show that the existence of these boots will lead to one.
I'd prefer to say that I'm trying to speculate, which is not the same as making slippery slope arguments. I think it's quite reasonable to propose that there will be a shifted preference towards healers that can drastically over-heal if optimal DPS now requires overhealing. And I think it not only reasonable but empirical to observe that this would affect healer balance (in the same way ToMM changed healer balance to favour Paladin overshields, as you must surely well know.) The narrative version I gave was was little slippery-slope fantastical, I'll grant you, but it's no more irrational than us discussing this particular item, at this particular number, somehow being the golden standard for risk-reward itemisation---especially when nobody, actually, in this thread is contesting that such mechanics might be an excellent feature in the game going forward.
We could reverse the trend and ask instead: at what point is a penalty too harsh? Is "viable" really just a shorthand for "can be done", or should we make the term do a little more work than that---more subtlety, as I was suggesting earlier? Because I think, frankly, you are treating these boots as a cleverer device than they really are. The idea of risk-reward is promising: let's do it. This one specific sore-thumb item that is impossible to measure against any other, because it's the only meaningful member of its kind, and because its number is so extreme as to defy comparison or balancing: the community ought be expected to question and debate it.
There is not a single person in this thread saying it is the golden standard for risk vs reward. Nobody. Please read my comments again, if you dispute this. I have said multiple times, that it is better than much of what we have now and by lowering the number so that you would always choose to use this item, the item is worse than it was before. Is it possible to design better items? Sure. I believe I gave 8 examples of items with bonuses which are much more interesting than this and @theraxin#5169 gave the example of the survivor's wraps as an item which is more interesting.
My point was, reducing the penalty to 25% is a step back in the design of this item. Does the value have to be -50%? No, but it should certainly be higher than 25%. I personally was fine with -50%. And no, I am not treating this item as far cleverer than it actually is, I acknowledge that its not much of an improvement over current gear, but it is an improvement. You are reading too much into what I am saying and not reading what I am actually writing.
Well, the thing is, I don't say either that it should be -25%. Neither of us thinks that 5% for -25% is good. But you only proposed people in this thread to be ignored and reverting back to -50%. You are refusing to propose any other change, because for you it makes it interesting. But giving damage to everything is not interesting, I think we can say that objectively, and negative incoming does not interests people here, only the healers, who are just afraid.
So, maybe instead of wall-of-texting each other about that we should consider non-BiS healers for our own BiS purposes as interesting, maybe you should suggest a thing that interests other players.
Or, as I suggested, just gang on the +10% incoming damage armor for 5k power to be changed for +15% of damage for -60% incoming heal. Or something like that, because I still have to wait for someone who tries to defend that piece of garbage.
Lol. I guess there will always be one in the bunch. Never in all my years of playing table top DnD or MMO's have I or anyone else I played with thought that an item that has penalties attached to it are considered "interesting" or fun. The point of having BIS gear is to have as much of an advantage with as little of a disadvantage as possible. How anybody can think using gear that gimps you would be fun or interesting is beyond me. But hey. Everybody has their thing, huh? I know I would never use that set if it still was at -50%. The devs in ESO tried to do the same thing when they did an overhaul of some of the profession abilities last year. They called it a kiss-curse. Want to know how that went? The players hated it and didn't hold back in letting the devs know how bad of an idea it was. I seriously hope this is not the direction the devs are going with future items or abilities.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Lol. I guess there will always be one in the bunch. Never in all my years of playing table top DnD or MMO's have I or anyone else I played with thought that an item that has penalties attached to it are considered "interesting" or fun. The point of having BIS gear is to have as much of an advantage with as little of a disadvantage as possible. How anybody can think using gear that gimps you would be fun or interesting is beyond me. But hey. Everybody has their thing, huh? I know I would never use that set if it still was at -50%. The devs in ESO tried to do the same thing when they did an overhaul of some of the profession abilities last year. They called it a kiss-curse. Want to know how that went? The players hated it and didn't hold back in letting the devs know how bad of an idea it was. I seriously hope this is not the direction the devs are going with future items or abilities.
Furthermore, I can give examples of items/feats from other games which are hugely popular that have downsides. Easy example, Path of Exile, "Chaos Innoculation." It makes you immune to chaos damage (1 of the damage types) but sets your maximum life to 1 (there are different types of "life" in PoE, so someone using this would build into the other type, but it is still a large penalty). Just because you are not familiar with good item design with regards to maluses on items, doesn't mean it does not exist.
Lol. I guess there will always be one in the bunch. Never in all my years of playing table top DnD or MMO's have I or anyone else I played with thought that an item that has penalties attached to it are considered "interesting" or fun. The point of having BIS gear is to have as much of an advantage with as little of a disadvantage as possible. How anybody can think using gear that gimps you would be fun or interesting is beyond me. But hey. Everybody has their thing, huh? I know I would never use that set if it still was at -50%. The devs in ESO tried to do the same thing when they did an overhaul of some of the profession abilities last year. They called it a kiss-curse. Want to know how that went? The players hated it and didn't hold back in letting the devs know how bad of an idea it was. I seriously hope this is not the direction the devs are going with future items or abilities.
So, no one in your party used Deck of Many things? No demonic tiefling? No person used Fireball, while risking 1 person in your party to get hurt? Never rolled on anything that they had disadvantage for? Or a thing that had too high difficulty level to surely do?
Saying that things with possible penalties are not fun, eliminates risks and just decreases challenge overall. But your party goes into a dragon lair to get more challenged, not less, otherwise they would go salt mining. People want to be challenged, otherwise no one would play hard things, only RTQ and REDQ.
My problem is not that it had a huge penalty, but how it was implemented and balanced. Throwing fat stacks of money for a problem to disappear or just pushing the burden to your healer, who might cannot or just refusing to comply with it, is not fun or interesting for me. It also not really mentally challenging as you basically rely on the healer to tell you, whether you can be healed and to which extent.
You are trying to argue a slippery slope here, when in reality you cannot show that the existence of these boots will lead to one.
I'd prefer to say that I'm trying to speculate, which is not the same as making slippery slope arguments. I think it's quite reasonable to propose that there will be a shifted preference towards healers that can drastically over-heal if optimal DPS now requires overhealing. And I think it not only reasonable but empirical to observe that this would affect healer balance (in the same way ToMM changed healer balance to favour Paladin overshields, as you must surely well know.) The narrative version I gave was was little slippery-slope fantastical, I'll grant you, but it's no more irrational than us discussing this particular item, at this particular number, somehow being the golden standard for risk-reward itemisation---especially when nobody, actually, in this thread is contesting that such mechanics might be an excellent feature in the game going forward.
We could reverse the trend and ask instead: at what point is a penalty too harsh? Is "viable" really just a shorthand for "can be done", or should we make the term do a little more work than that---more subtlety, as I was suggesting earlier? Because I think, frankly, you are treating these boots as a cleverer device than they really are. The idea of risk-reward is promising: let's do it. This one specific sore-thumb item that is impossible to measure against any other, because it's the only meaningful member of its kind, and because its number is so extreme as to defy comparison or balancing: the community ought be expected to question and debate it.
There is not a single person in this thread saying it is the golden standard for risk vs reward. Nobody. Please read my comments again, if you dispute this. I have said multiple times, that it is better than much of what we have now and by lowering the number so that you would always choose to use this item, the item is worse than it was before. Is it possible to design better items? Sure. I believe I gave 8 examples of items with bonuses which are much more interesting than this and @theraxin#5169 gave the example of the survivor's wraps as an item which is more interesting.
My point was, reducing the penalty to 25% is a step back in the design of this item. Does the value have to be -50%? No, but it should certainly be higher than 25%. I personally was fine with -50%. And no, I am not treating this item as far cleverer than it actually is, I acknowledge that its not much of an improvement over current gear, but it is an improvement. You are reading too much into what I am saying and not reading what I am actually writing.
Well, the thing is, I don't say either that it should be -25%. Neither of us thinks that 5% for -25% is good. But you only proposed people in this thread to be ignored and reverting back to -50%. You are refusing to propose any other change, because for you it makes it interesting. But giving damage to everything is not interesting, I think we can say that objectively, and negative incoming does not interests people here, only the healers, who are just afraid.
So, maybe instead of wall-of-texting each other about that we should consider non-BiS healers for our own BiS purposes as interesting, maybe you should suggest a thing that interests other players.
Or, as I suggested, just gang on the +10% incoming damage armor for 5k power to be changed for +15% of damage for -60% incoming heal. Or something like that, because I still have to wait for someone who tries to defend that piece of garbage.
Honestly this item sounds great for paladins in PVE content. To make this viable for group content one would have to have max rank tactical enchants, and a full compliment of companions with the +% incoming healing bonus.
People want meaningful choices as in complexity in builds and their choices to reflect ANYTHING in their build. A 5% dmg buff on idiotic costs is not a meaningful choice.
A choice between 5% damage and -50% incoming healing is a meaningful choice, compared to, "3% damage with at wills" and btw, I would use this item in that state in some circumstances, so much for it being "idiotic." There is a clear trade off and a player needs to decide for themselves if it is worthwhile. Is this choice as meaningful as choices that exist in other games? No. Here are some examples of items I would like to see in the game: (...)
Fine. I won't call it idiotic if you stop acting as if whether or not you use something instantly determines the value of an item to the whole playerbase. Your examples of items (bonuses) however I can agree on. NW can learn a lot from other games (yeah, also POE) when it comes to gear. Thank you for writing them, I think I will edit them back in, I am confused with all the quoting atm.
People want balance as in their characters not suddenly being less than what it was before. If the situation was reversed and SW would suddenly be on top of the dps charts next mod, they would fight hard if anybody talked about nerfs too. Which is probably not understandable if the standard argument is "But you know you CAN run tomm with it!!"
Sometimes balance means nerfing things. Wizard gets nerfed in M18, do you see me complaining? Content is expected to have a certain level of difficulty and take a certain amount of time to clear. If a class is beating those expectations, you have 3 options. (...)
No. I don't see you complaining. Probably for the same reason I have not complained about Warden nerfs or have not complained much about all that BS about "but those sucky HRs with their super 2x dailys BIS" whatnot. Because I still have all the options ingame. Especially considering how important things like paingiver is for real in a good group: not at all. Except that other nerfs have hurt other classes (not only, but for this discussion) in a way they are not able to experience or enjoy it to their liking (in a similar fashion to others), which is unfortunate and should be considered in the simpliest of ways: unhappy customers = unhappy shareholders.
Furthermore, I said nothing about anyone's opinion being invalid, so please don't put words into my mouth. However since you brought it up, I will comment on it. Not all opinions have equal merit. You wouldn't trust an investigative journalist to perform heart surgery on you, since his field of specialization is journalism, not heart surgery. Someone who has a better understanding of the underlying systems is likely more qualified to give advice than someone with little to no understanding at all and yes, that includes knowing what the other person wants better than that other person does, since in reality, that other person doesn't know what they want. If you are terribly sick and you are not a medical specialist, you do not know what treatment should be used, but you know to trust the expert to know what you need to solve it.
Oh please c'mon now, this is wrong on so many areas that I wonder how you were actually able to type that out, and this is the most fundamental problem I have with most of your posts, in bold, because I really feel like an old grandma shaking her head at this. You cannot speak for me or for anybody else, even if you were more qualified. I won't wonder anymore why you are seemingly so above everybody else, but for real: Do you see the bold part in a more global way? Are you generally agreeing to everything somebody above you in a hierarchy standing says just because somebody put them there? Can everybody on a lower step suddenly turn their brains off and be dictated what to do because it doesn't make any sense at all anyway?
Are you the heart surgeon in this analogy? Oh my god, I'm glad I'm just got home from work so I can't get too worked up over this. Gimme a few hours. While you have indeed put a lot into this game, its easy to see, you won't get me to agree that our opinions don't have equal merit. Where are we? The devs can determine if they consider your opinions differently than others (and they might, I don't care) but: We are all players here. Everybody invested SOMETHING in this game. Everybodys opinion matters. If you don't agree with it, thats fine. I don't agree with you. I know it will still be done and implemented completetly different from what I would desire. Thats fine, too. It's hard for anybody to find an equal ground and not HAMSTER onto somebodys electric fence. But I won't start thinking that other people's experience has to suffer because I like my own so much. No matter yours or anybodies understanding of underlying systems...
I'm tired of it, but I can't help to answer. I don't know why exactly this bothers me, so it probably got to do with my own issues I have with the current game. You are throwing around "meaningful choices" and "balance" as if there is either of those in the game atm, because obviously, people just don't get it like you do? I don't see it.
You are right, we don't. Which is why when something is a slight improvement of the current status quo, people should put more effort into asking for more items like that, with more novel designs, then into destroying the only parts of the items which make them more interesting than what we have now.
Yeah, perhaps. I thought there would be more thought put into it, is all. Like I said sometime earlier and many healers have also brought up is, that it still will be used by a wide margin of people as soon as it is attainable, no matter their incoming healing and whether they run group content or not. Just because you, or others equally far progressed in the game, can and are willing to only use it in a correct/possible/ "interesting" setting, doesn't mean others want. Yeah, yeah, that makes it interesting or whatever, but: Incoming healing is not something many players that haven't been around much understand or care about. (Rather care about...) And of course they blame it on the healers. Of course they won't want to give their 5% chance on a better paingiver chart away when they can just "get a better healer". Just because this is not your reality doesn't mean it won't be true. Healer-blaming is the first and coolest way to go, seemingly. I do not (and hope it didn't come across like it) consider the idea of multiple items for several possibilities the problem, I can personally also stomach switching it or dividing it across loadouts on my main. BUT I agree to several reasons stated between your response and this answer, so I won't type it out again. It doesn't matter anyway, since I know what I write doesn't touch you. Thats alright. I don't have a problem with "BIS" or "Tomm-people". But I do have a problem with so many people acting as if the game is only about them, when it should be about all of us. I'm not competitive enough to understand what moves you. I'm not casual enough to be satisfied with just the story either. I still like the game. If I can't share my opinion about gear just because I'm not in the top how-much% I will have even less to care about in NW than there already is.
- bye bye -
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Oh please c'mon now, this is wrong on so many areas that I wonder how you were actually able to type that out, and this is the most fundamental problem I have with most of your posts, in bold, because I really feel like an old grandma shaking her head at this. You cannot speak for me or for anybody else, even if you were more qualified. I won't wonder anymore why you are seemingly so above everybody else, but for real: Do you see the bold part in a more global way? Are you generally agreeing to everything somebody above you in a hierarchy standing says just because somebody put them there? Can everybody on a lower step suddenly turn their brains off and be dictated what to do because it doesn't make any sense at all anyway?
Are you the heart surgeon in this analogy? Oh my god, I'm glad I'm just got home from work so I can't get too worked up over this. Gimme a few hours. While you have indeed put a lot into this game, its easy to see, you won't get me to agree that our opinions don't have equal merit. Where are we? The devs can determine if they consider your opinions differently than others (and they might, I don't care) but: We are all players here. Everybody invested SOMETHING in this game. Everybodys opinion matters. If you don't agree with it, thats fine. I don't agree with you. I know it will still be done and implemented completetly different from what I would desire. Thats fine, too. It's hard for anybody to find an equal ground and not HAMSTER onto somebodys electric fence.
The point I was making, was not that you should completely dismiss someone's idea, but that some ideas have more value than others. If 1 idea earns someone 1000$ per hour and another idea earns someone 2000$ per hour, its fairly obvious on a value comparison 1 idea is worth more than the other. That is the general gist here. Someone with more experience with the system, is probably more invested into getting things right and probably also has a better idea of how to do so. Furthermore, at no point did I make reference to a general hierarchy, but rather specialist knowledge.
And no, it doesn't mean they can't also make mistakes, but it also means that perhaps people should listen when they talk and if they don't agree with something, instead of just saying, "that is wrong" ask why, because maybe, just maybe, there is a good reason for it, even if you don't agree with it.
I admit, I took the analogy too far, but will you get me to agree that my opinion and yours have equal merit? Absolutely not, simply because I invested more time into understanding how things work. Just because everyone's opinion matters, doesn't mean all opinions are equal. Note, I was not saying that I know what you want better than you do, but I was saying that in some extreme cases, 1 person can know what another needs better than them.
But I won't start thinking that other people's experience has to suffer because I like my own so much. No matter yours or anybodies understanding of underlying systems...
And at no point did I say anything like that. People are saying, "I won't like this," without even having tried it. Its a hypothetical situation right now. They might find, they actually do like it and it isn't as bad as what they are making up, if they gave it a chance. Just like every time there is a nerf to a class and histrionics begins, when in reality, the world is not ending and their class can still (most likely) be played.
There is not a single person in this thread saying it is the golden standard for risk vs reward. Nobody. Please read my comments again, if you dispute this. I have said multiple times, that it is better than much of what we have now and by lowering the number so that you would always choose to use this item, the item is worse than it was before.
The impression is that you are treating it as the golden standard. In your initial post, you only expressed regret that thsee boots have gone from -50% to -25%; furthermore you say that game design is going backwards and that the community has given bad, ill-informed feedback. But the community has responded to you, and responded initially, with nuance. You have been very consistent and thorough about defending your views on this item, but not about acknowledging those nuances: concerns about balance between healer paragons if optimal DPS reqiures overhealing, concerns about the choice of this stat in particular (in a mod with no positive itemisation specifically for healers!), or the merits of compromises between 5%-50% and 5%-25%. Instead you keep repeating that the item is viable, that you could use it, and that the community should try it before it complains. Instead you say that you expressed your views already in closed beta. All of this, I repeat, gives the impression that these boots are somehow unimpeachable in their current form.
How hard is it to recognise that healers may regret that optimal DPS in MOD18 would require a "harsh" penalty to incoming healing? This is not an especially fun game for healers: scaling for us is awful, our crit ratio is esoteric and requires us to fiddle even more with our gear when scaled, there is very little % healing gear to covet (as opposed to the endless suite of % DPS gear, this item included), and so on. You say that I'm not reading what you're writing, and maybe I am not doing your argument complete justice: this is a hard medium for discussion. But I also feel that none of these social observations around healing, the culture of being a healer, the choice of incoming healing as the sacrificial stat, etc. are being received by you. I repeat: healer balance in Neverwinter has just gotten to a relatively good place. I would be fine with introducing a pair of 3% damage, -25% incoming healing boots: see how it goes.
When I say you treat these boots as too clever, I mean this: your own example of how you might use them strategically was ToMM, in which you currently facetank certain reds. But that example itself cements how ToMM is trivial for you, andyYour usage of the boots here only provides the illusion of character development by accelerating the completion of already-trivial content. I'm quite sure you already run with the minimal-necessary health and have made many other concessions to achieve greater burn speed. These boots aren't Path of Exile design mentality; they're Diablo 3.
All being said, I'm happy to concede you certainly must have a more nuanced view that I am not seeing clearly conveyed, because there is so much now to read, because your views are in closed beta, and because we tend to paraphrase and quote one another. So hopefully there is some sort of consensus here.
Comments
This also highlights the fact that it is just as important to post on the forums about the things you do like, do want to stay as they are, along with the things you don't like and want to see changed. It is very common for forums to be places where only the negatives are discussed as people don't feel as much need to have conversation on what they do like/what is working.
Rewards/itemization tends to be the most contentious issue in game design, due to the fact that there are many different views on what makes that part of a game interesting/fun as this discussion is currently highlighting and several of you have directly pointed out. Hopefully you will all find these types of discussions/debates both interesting and enlightening to how other players view game design.
The only one who is pretending an objectional ground is you. You subjectively think that -25% incoming heal bonus is not a harsh penalty. I say that based off the cost it needs to be offset, it's amongst the harshest penalties you can get in the game. Comparatively, none of the BiS items currently have a penalty, so you are being biased by applying your standards to a single item, while the overall game is yet to share your perception about gear penalties. As I said earlier, you think the game should cater to you by making this item for your ideals.
And the old item, as in itself, had an unrealistic negative attached to it. You weren't be able to make items like these, because no one would wear 4x-50% incoming heal bonus. You were not be able to use gears like this with the same weight of detrimental effects combined as the effort to offset it way too high. You think it was fine because as a single existing item, you personally would be able to build your character around it, because you probably have the capital and care enough to do so.
The fact that we could design more interesting items is true, but not the point. The point is, you can design a set of items that is similar to the current version with cost/benefit/style, but you would be unable to design a vast array of items with similar weights attached to it as the old version. And even if those item would be made, because the brutally offset cost/value of the item, people would work around it or ignore it.
Thank you for proving my point.
About that, I was wondering I guess a page ago that what is the point of the hunt items, or more specifically, the new ones. The tl;dr version is that they are free item that are "sort of easy" to get, but also they consists most of the prize pool from this mod and just have the better end of the items as well. So, in a sense, I can look them as "okay to be bad", but also that players don't want to use the same old gear over the years, so the mod looks hollow if they are not things to be desired. But disregarding the item of the current debate, even if you want to get them, they are "sort of easy" and painless to get (even if you are low IL, you can get into a group). So I don't see how they incentivise player investment as it does not really takes more than a few hours to get them.
I wanted to parody the random que part, but... I'll pass. Well, if your point was that you subjectively would like it better and biased on picking your standards on this single piece of item, you're welcome. I proved it multiple times. But I guess from your wording you do not mean this.
Well, it will be interesting, for you. But, for most of the playerbase, they can't afford to take advantage from any single piece of your suggested gears, so their interest is zero. For players that can afford it, you think it's interesting, I think it's a waste of effort. I stated (and got ignored by you) multiple times that the BiS is a theoretical benefit, so the question is, for what I want to pay extensively and hassle with an item that still would cripple me? I and most people here, only got interested in it when we actually got something to consider using to progress. These "BiS" items are only good after you progressed through almost everything else as their benefit just doesn't match their crippling side effects.
And again, your scope is on a single piece of item. But do you know what's more interesting for the players than having the privilege of affording a single piece of detrimental gear? Well, a lot of gear that you have to combine and build around. Not one, but several.
But yeah, if you cherry-picking the things you liked from my post, this conclusion couldn't reach you.
Some players are interested in being BiS, others are not. Having 1 set of gear which is BiS in all situations makes for dull itemization. Being forced to change up what you are using if you "want to stay at the top" makes it more of a puzzle to figure out what works best and for players who are interested in being BiS it makes for more engaging gameplay. Being BiS is a waste of effort for you? Cool, then this item is not aimed at you and guess what, not every item needs to be aimed at every single player. If someone is interested in an item, then it becomes something they chase after.
For the sake of the argument I will take the time to define what I mean by "interesting itemization," as itemization where you have non obvious choices as to what is the ideal tool to use and no 1 choice is ideal for every circumstance. At a 25% penalty, I would argue those boots are BiS for every DpS. That makes them non interesting. At 50%, I would argue they are BiS only in a narrow set of cases, both depending on the other gear you use (investment) and on the people you are running with. Therefor, the item is more interesting with a harsher penalty. So what if not everyone can use them, not everyone needs to. In a game with interesting itemization, not every person will use the same item.
Your own post betrays you though, "I am only interested in an item that allows me to progress." You do not want items with interesting bonuses, you want items with safe bonuses, which you know will be BiS and won't cost you anything to invest in. I would rather have an item where you literally have to sink 100's of millions of AD into making it work, using weird things that are otherwise useless to achieve that.
Furthermore, not every item needs to impose a penalty to meet the criteria to be interesting, it could just do something as simple as making deflection give incoming damage and making power give deflection chance and that would be an interesting change in mechanics. That does not however, take away from the fact that one of the ways to create an interesting item is to impose a penalty to the player on the item.
An interesting item is 1 that you must build around to make it work, rather than just throw into your build and say, "alright, I am done," because it is just generically good.
How are we supposed to test things and give feedback when we dont know what to look for....?!!!!!!
This is not my idea of "better Communication" and im really starting to lose any patience i have left.
Mod 18 is 10 days away, and since its pretty much 80% recycled content, even the armour is just reskins i would of hoped that at least there would be a heap of bug fixes. So far, its looking like not really no
No, you proposed 8 items in a post that was not directed to me, so of course I did not read them as you need to at least refer to the posts that you want me to read, because between 2 of my posts 2 unrelated post happens and I only check if you edited the post I'm referring to.
However, by going through them I fail to see how your "you only can choose 1 of it" is applied, because disregarding the fact that they might take up the same spot, they are concurrently useful, some even synergise. A lot of them probably breaks the game as we know it, but in theorem, I'm interested in some of it.
But they highly differ from the one change you specifically want to make, because as you mention it, they can't be mitigated. And to make my own point in it, they are interesting on their own merit. The change you want to make can be mitigated, even at -50%. You can stack up 5 Tacticals for +30%, get an Ioun stone of Allure to get 2k Power and +10% Incoming heal and you can lose 8k extra power or 4% boss damage for +10% incoming heal. Or, if your healer is similarly geared as you, you can go with -10% incoming heal and not notice it. You have to go out of your way to play differently by refusing to mitigate it's effect. But that's making your own fun, like deslotting your Radiants from the def slot to make ToMM harder to survive.
And after it can be just simply calculated as a risk/benefit, it fails to be interesting. And most people hate to even calculate for things. I found the demogorgon trial armlet more interesting than this as the damage to myself procced my lifesteal and took down my barkshield enchant stack. It had neat interactions that I remember. I won't going to remember fun times with a shoe that just costs a lot and makes harder for the healer. I agree that it being unilaterally BiS is not the point and I don't agree with that. But having a bonus like, "against devils" is not a choice. It has devil type, you use it, it doesn't, you don't, one of the options is just objectively worse. It does not need you to think or tinker around. Just because you had to click to change the gear, it was not a real choice. Like, you can not wear BiS items even if there is an obvious one.
And the same with the prebuffed shoe. If you have the money and the healer, you use it, if you don't, you just can't. It's not your choice to have a healer that can deal with it as in the moment, you can't choose to afford something. You can afford to mitigate it, or not.
You can say that it having +5% damage on -25% incoming heal is bad, because it's universally better than other gears and I agree. I already made my post to lower it to +3% damage. Even my original idea was only 4%, but I kind of forgot that Ioun stone of allure's can go to defensive slots, which skewed my rough math estaminate. But you can point for less than 3% damage. Edit: Or make it do +10% encounter damage or... +15% non-power damage.
Or, if you wouldn't be fixated on this single piece of item, you can say that if more piece of it would exist, maybe you would try to skew your character into -50% incoming heal by multiple pieces. Because the current bonus can be used amongst multiple items, allowing you to build the ultimate glass cannon with -100% incoming heal. It's an actual choice of how far do you want to go with it. The -50% exists in the "you can get away with it once if you are already can afford anything or just don't bother".
And about my "own betrayal": I'm interested in items that are interesting to progress with. Yes, I could go against the optimal build and let myself to be more easily hurt, but because it has that huge cost hurdle and overall, does not do anything that interests me. I was interested how the demogorgon armlet DoT-ed me, but I'm not interested in expecting to get healed properly, but not. It does not change how I play.
And I could be able to offset the -50% incoming heal bonus and probably would be BiS for me. But does it interests me? Not really. It's benefit is a flat damage bonus and the drawback is full compensated or the only "choice" is in the hands of the healer. Because if someone else does not heal your negative out, you are determined to die. I would say it's more interesting when the tank can't aggro Trobriand after I used my daily and I have to tank it now. That is some gameplay difference that's interesting and I did not need to shot myself in the leg to get it.
Some people are wanting it to be -25% incoming healing for 5% damage where others want to keep it at -50% incoming healing for 5% damage. Lets look at from both sides:
-25% incoming healing for 5% damage: some people want this so that it would be viable to use. You can negate 24% using 4 Rank 15 Tactical enchantments. You also have your off hand weapon that can have 2.5% incoming healing. You also have 4% from boons. And you also have various Companions that offer incoming healing as well and one more utility slot. So all in all, not too hard to off-set ( yes I know its expensive but this is end game). Now lets look at the other side. The 5% damage. Anyone want to guess how many Rank 15 Radiant enchantments you need for 5% damage boost? Well it depends on you base power but most people will need anywhere from 5-8 rank 15 Radiants to get 5%. (rough estimates from quick math puts people around 20K-22K item level to need 5 maybe 6 rank 15 Radiants where 23K to 26K would need 7 or 8, maybe more to get 5% damage increase. Again this is all based on your current power level... give or take).
Now, we need to remember that MOD 18 is the newest content meaning it should be the toughest content in the game (zone wise NOT trial). The recommend item level to enter MOD 18 is 20K. Now I can tell you for a fact that many, and I mean many, players that meet that requirement are going to have a tough time in there. I changed my build of my paladin from my DPS loadout (If you can call it that) to a sort of tank/off-DPS build to have a more reasonable time in MOD 18 (takes even longer to kill anything but safer). End game players are having a bit of a rough go in the zone so you can only imagine what its going to be like for those that just meet the recommend item level. Now, to the reason I brought this up. MOD 18 is not for people with a few rare companions, a few rare insignias and rank 8 enchantments. You are going to need to level up your enchantments, insignias and companions to hit certain caps. Its the only way to survive in there unless you bring a party. Now you could say "These are all the reasons why it should only be -25% reduction" but once again this is an end game zone with end game gear. But more importantly, as others have stated, we need to have options/choices. If I pick this item for a 5% damage increase with a -50% incoming healing I would need to offset that to the best of my abilities. What will I sacrifice for a 5% damage increase? Or will I say no to it and grab another pair of boots with 5K power bonus (about 2-2.5% damage depending on your base power) with no negative effects? Options matter. weight the pros and cons. Figure out what works for you and your current party. Also what happens if in MOD 19 we get arms with the same bonus? Can I run with both? What will I need to do to make it viable? Is it even viable? Options matter.
As for any healers out there. (I play one as well). This might look really scary. It might make you feel like all that hard work boosting up your outgoing healing was for nothing. Its not as bad as you might think. And if someone is wearing the boots and their incoming healing is so bad that you can't heal them, ask them to take off the boots. Every character should have backup gear just incase. (Well I do and so does many of my guild). Most people have 2 loadouts with 2 paths to pick from. should have spare pieces from the other path.
FYI I really like some of those ideas you had @thefabricant . Although I would hate to be the one to try and program them
Just my 2 cents. Maybe I have a point or maybe I am way out to lunch. Probably the latter.
All the best,
OPTank_
edit: and for context, as a soulweaver I have nowhere near the mags of a DC, yet I'd be satisfied with this new version at -25%. (I do think the damage should also be lowered.) 50%? with our current healer scaling? with healer paragons that still rely on 400 mag group heals? that's not clever or ambitious game design: that's a painful lack of subtlety.
...the cost to swap enchantments was reduced or removed AND it didn't cost so damn much to upgrade artifacts and artifact gear.
Not everyone is rich enough to afford multiple loadouts for each dungeon and possibly an entire set of enchantments for each. OR have thousands of gold laying around and a group willing to wait for you to swap enchants.
As for artifact sets like the new one coming out, it's not just RP's we have to spend, but also stones, marks, and wards. Can cost multiple million ad, and remember, us plebeians live off 100k/day. It's like needing to rank up new weapons each mod, not many people can afford that, and even less people like it.
Without these roadblocks I'm all for situationally bis items.
Ideally, I would like enchantments to be part of loadouts, so that we can switch loadouts at a campfire and our enchantments get swapped out too. How they handle the gold cost is up to them I suppose, but something reasonable.
As for situationally bis artifact sets, IFF they are going to make something only good in very specific situations, like just against demons and devils, then the bonus better be damn good, why else would I drop a couple mil for it?
Even if you can afford to do it, many people won't do it, because it means having to swap between many items in order to always be at the top. Due to this, many people will run with items which are generally very good, even if they aren't the best. The choice does exist and people will take it. Even if you can mitigate this 1 item, it takes a very heavy stat investment. If you had multiple items with large downsides like this, do you think people would have the spare stats to mitigate all of them. I don't.
Yes, it can be calculated as a risk vs benefit. So what? What is the risk vs benefit of Enduring Boots. That automatically makes it more interesting than anything we currently have. Yes, survivors wraps are more interesting than it, so what? So long as we are not changing the mechanic of the boots, they are a more interesting item at -50% than the universally BiS boots at -25%. Different items have different stat distributions, finding a way to balance your stats around all these different items takes a lot of effort and not many people are going to be putting in that effort in order to be at the top. It IS a choice, because most people will choose not to do it, even though it is BiS to do it. It adds room to min max which, whilst not necessary for all content, some people would like to do.
It is like saying that in the current M17 meta, there is no real choice between running with multiple wizards in ToMM and running with other classes, because clearly the Wizard is the better option. The choice does exist and some people will make it, even if running with Wizards is clearly the more optimal way. And how will we ever get to a state where multiple items like this exist and its difficult to build around them if the moment a piece like this is added people whine about it and the item gets buffed to the point where you would always want to use it? Really? I can think of obvious examples where it changes the way I play. In ToMM for example I will often facetank the fire runes in order to get in some extra DpS. With these boots on, its probably not a good idea to facetank them, because you will firstly have a lower shield value if there is an OP, since they cannot buffer you up as high and secondly it will take them longer to restore your HP to full after, making it more likely something does kill you.
The result is, you play less recklessly in order to use them. "I cannot afford it therefor it should not exist" is not a good argument. It is viable to use at -50%. At -25%, its unilaterally BiS.
The social reality of Neverwinter is that Incoming Healing is, for too many players, an obscure stat; high-IL items come equipped with "Recommended" tags regardless of whether they have detrimental effects or not; this item is almost entirely an anomaly (except maybe Hell Crackers from MOD16); and healers are often blamed for player deaths irrespective of what is actually the case (a feature of MMOs forever.) So, for example, I would accept this as a piece of clever and ambitious game design ifit was, by design, exempt from the "Recommended" tag, and belonged to a category of dangerous items also exempted from this tag, and if the game provided training and tutorial mechanics to make players aware that Incoming Healing is an extremely powerful stat, and that 50% is an extremely large amount (tantamount to expecting no healing in a PUG of average 18k IL players.) If Neverwinter was that robust, well-explained game, I would agree with you, and would enjoy instructing alliance DPS on when and how best to use these items.
But if you don't feel a touch of dread when you look at the original design, perhaps you've never solo-pugged Demogorgon and been stuck as the only healer---and that's part of the social reality of Neverwinter, too. I don't advocate balancing around confused, disorganised play. I do advocate against beginning this method of itemisation with, as you put it, "harsh" penalties. That will only translate to "hostile" in the current state of play.
And then there's knock-on effects to consider. Keep the -50% boots, because they're interesting (and I agree, they're interesting... hateful, but interesting!) But this hits Soulweavers harder than DCs, because overhealing is much harder for them, so word spreads that Soulweavers are not good healers. Of course high-end players still understand that the job of a Soulweaver is to provide incomparable healing to a tank, who is never going to run these boots. But in the rest of the game, Soulweavers are now getting kicked on sight, as they were in MOD16 when groupthink falsely held that they couldn't heal LoMM. Consequences, again, but not falling where they ought.
It's not even that I don't like the item or agree in principle. I just don't think the game is ready for it, one, and I'd rather healing not be the first sacrifice, second, as healing has only *just* gotten to a good place. And I don't think survivability for damage is even especially creative: glass cannon builds for ToMM are already a thing, and this is just doubling-down (and authorising) that concept.
Furthermore, the player who is NOT reading a guide (and this composes most players who random queue) is unlikely to have equipped this item and if they have, they aren't going to have a guide to point to saying they should be wearing it, to which the healer's admonishment of, "you are reducing my ability to heal you, it is your fault" will probably work just fine.
In reality, it is a very small fraction of the game who will fight over these boots and that very small fraction is probably fighting already, just for different reasons.
"If you had multiple items with large downsides like this, do you think people would have the spare stats to mitigate all of them. " <- You do understand that it's true, even now? Just, in the current version, the question is how much you can mitigate, in your version, that's a 0 or 1.
And as said, way too much time for you to not get the point: If you have problem with the universally better designed items, you have a problem with this. It gives the most generic bonus possible and it's universally BiS damage. But, because your bias, you refuse to consider making other items into something more risk/reward, because you only care if this single item is catered to you. There's a dozen hunt item that won't be realistically used or gives bland, uninteresting bonuses and there would be no opposition to change them into something interesting. Just, you don't want items in general to be changed, you want this single piece of item to be reverted. Because you only apply your rules into the balance of this gear, not the gears of this mod or gears in general.
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Different items have different stat distributions, finding a way to balance your stats around all these different items takes a lot of effort and not many people are going to be putting in that effort in order to be at the top. It IS a choice, because most people will choose not to do it, even though it is BiS to do it. It adds room to min max which, whilst not necessary for all content, some people would like to do.
It is like saying that in the current M17 meta, there is no real choice between running with multiple wizards in ToMM and running with other classes, because clearly the Wizard is the better option. The choice does exist and some people will make it, even if running with Wizards is clearly the more optimal way.
Edit: I'm working to fix the quotation here, so at the moment this is the line between the quote and my answer.
It's just a false comparison and have very little to do with the thing. If we say that you can deliberately go and make a worse option is a choice, then we say that there is no "best", unless we say that those who chose other are objectively wrong in doing so. And BiS becomes an obsolete, relative term. Well, maybe, if you would have cared to state your opinion before the buff and your opinion wasn't asking to get people just ignored, you could have got your opinions about it represented.
People unilaterally hated the -50% incoming heal here and I was the only single person to say that the damage should be lowered as well, so the developers did what they should do, they took every feedback represented by the players and acted on it.
So, my first advice that maybe you shouldn't whine that it got buffed and does not cater to you if you weren't be bothered with the discussion before it got buffed. They can't read and consider feedback that does not exist.
I'm saying this with the 100% agreement that now it being unilaterally BiS is not good. But +5% damage is universally BiS.
And it would be still difficult to build around multiple of these items. Because now you are actually can be able to build around multiple of these items. In the old version, the choice of using multiples and weighing it's draws do not exist as you just can't. And because you don't want to change other, just bad items, there just won't be multiples. Or, you are forced to switch this item off, if you want to play how you want to play. It's not your choice whether your can be healed enough, because you are not the one that heals you. And as you said, that "choice" just vanishes with a good enough healer, making it just a thing that gives you +5% damage. And maybe, you can try to consider it having +5% damage is the problem that makes it universally BiS.
We could reverse the trend and ask instead: at what point is a penalty too harsh? Is "viable" really just a shorthand for "can be done", or should we make the term do a little more work than that---more subtlety, as I was suggesting earlier? Because I think, frankly, you are treating these boots as a cleverer device than they really are. The idea of risk-reward is promising: let's do it. This one specific sore-thumb item that is impossible to measure against any other, because it's the only meaningful member of its kind, and because its number is so extreme as to defy comparison or balancing: the community ought be expected to question and debate it.
This is still a choice. The fact that you don't recognize it as 1 doesn't take away from the fact that a choice does exist. Actually, I could mitigate multiple items with downsides like this. Not many, sure, but more than 1. Just because YOU can't, doesn't mean other people aren't able to do so. It isn't binary and the only way to justify having a larger bonus is by having a larger downside. 25% is not enough for the 5% bonus imo to make it a meaningful choice. Knowing when you can vs when you cannot use an item is part of what makes this more interesting than most of the items in the game. It is entirely possible to misjudge and then end up dying because you use these. For someone who probably would not be able to use these at -50%, I find it amusing that you spend so much time arguing that it is universally the best. If you die because you are wearing them, you lose 10% damage. Suddenly, any other pair of boots are better than this. Convenience vs Absolute BiS is a choice and many people make that choice in NW every single day. Do you know how many people use overload slots? Inspect them and answer me. Or how about using potions of speed on trash? Or how about switching to chultan tiger in some circumstances for the movement speed? These are all optimal gameplay considerations, but very few people make them because it is not convenient. This is an item that won't always be the ideal item to use, it will be the ideal item to use assuming you can overcome the downside of it and most people will not bother.
Are these technically "bad" choices? Yes they are, but it is the ability to make bad choices that helps to define the good ones. Actually, I gave my opinion on these items months before you did. During the closed beta in fact. So did many other people during the beta and the opinion wasn't, "this item sucks."
My point was, reducing the penalty to 25% is a step back in the design of this item. Does the value have to be -50%? No, but it should certainly be higher than 25%. I personally was fine with -50%. And no, I am not treating this item as far cleverer than it actually is, I acknowledge that its not much of an improvement over current gear, but it is an improvement. You are reading too much into what I am saying and not reading what I am actually writing.
So, maybe instead of wall-of-texting each other about that we should consider non-BiS healers for our own BiS purposes as interesting, maybe you should suggest a thing that interests other players.
Or, as I suggested, just gang on the +10% incoming damage armor for 5k power to be changed for +15% of damage for -60% incoming heal. Or something like that, because I still have to wait for someone who tries to defend that piece of garbage.
There are plenty of people who think items with penalties are interesting. Google it, its easy to find. Here is an example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/26041r/what_is_your_favorite_cursed_item/
Furthermore, I can give examples of items/feats from other games which are hugely popular that have downsides. Easy example, Path of Exile, "Chaos Innoculation." It makes you immune to chaos damage (1 of the damage types) but sets your maximum life to 1 (there are different types of "life" in PoE, so someone using this would build into the other type, but it is still a large penalty). Just because you are not familiar with good item design with regards to maluses on items, doesn't mean it does not exist.
Saying that things with possible penalties are not fun, eliminates risks and just decreases challenge overall. But your party goes into a dragon lair to get more challenged, not less, otherwise they would go salt mining. People want to be challenged, otherwise no one would play hard things, only RTQ and REDQ.
My problem is not that it had a huge penalty, but how it was implemented and balanced. Throwing fat stacks of money for a problem to disappear or just pushing the burden to your healer, who might cannot or just refusing to comply with it, is not fun or interesting for me. It also not really mentally challenging as you basically rely on the healer to tell you, whether you can be healed and to which extent.
Your examples of items (bonuses) however I can agree on. NW can learn a lot from other games (yeah, also POE) when it comes to gear. Thank you for writing them, I think I will edit them back in, I am confused with all the quoting atm. No. I don't see you complaining. Probably for the same reason I have not complained about Warden nerfs or have not complained much about all that BS about "but those sucky HRs with their super 2x dailys BIS" whatnot. Because I still have all the options ingame.
Especially considering how important things like paingiver is for real in a good group: not at all.
Except that other nerfs have hurt other classes (not only, but for this discussion) in a way they are not able to experience or enjoy it to their liking (in a similar fashion to others), which is unfortunate and should be considered in the simpliest of ways: unhappy customers = unhappy shareholders.
Oh please c'mon now, this is wrong on so many areas that I wonder how you were actually able to type that out, and this is the most fundamental problem I have with most of your posts, in bold, because I really feel like an old grandma shaking her head at this.
You cannot speak for me or for anybody else, even if you were more qualified. I won't wonder anymore why you are seemingly so above everybody else, but for real:
Do you see the bold part in a more global way? Are you generally agreeing to everything somebody above you in a hierarchy standing says just because somebody put them there? Can everybody on a lower step suddenly turn their brains off and be dictated what to do because it doesn't make any sense at all anyway?
Are you the heart surgeon in this analogy?
Oh my god, I'm glad I'm just got home from work so I can't get too worked up over this. Gimme a few hours.
While you have indeed put a lot into this game, its easy to see, you won't get me to agree that our opinions don't have equal merit. Where are we? The devs can determine if they consider your opinions differently than others (and they might, I don't care) but: We are all players here. Everybody invested SOMETHING in this game. Everybodys opinion matters. If you don't agree with it, thats fine. I don't agree with you. I know it will still be done and implemented completetly different from what I would desire. Thats fine, too. It's hard for anybody to find an equal ground and not HAMSTER onto somebodys electric fence.
But I won't start thinking that other people's experience has to suffer because I like my own so much. No matter yours or anybodies understanding of underlying systems...
Yeah, perhaps.
I thought there would be more thought put into it, is all. Like I said sometime earlier and many healers have also brought up is, that it still will be used by a wide margin of people as soon as it is attainable, no matter their incoming healing and whether they run group content or not. Just because you, or others equally far progressed in the game, can and are willing to only use it in a correct/possible/ "interesting" setting, doesn't mean others want. Yeah, yeah, that makes it interesting or whatever, but: Incoming healing is not something many players that haven't been around much understand or care about. (Rather care about...) And of course they blame it on the healers. Of course they won't want to give their 5% chance on a better paingiver chart away when they can just "get a better healer". Just because this is not your reality doesn't mean it won't be true. Healer-blaming is the first and coolest way to go, seemingly.
I do not (and hope it didn't come across like it) consider the idea of multiple items for several possibilities the problem, I can personally also stomach switching it or dividing it across loadouts on my main. BUT I agree to several reasons stated between your response and this answer, so I won't type it out again. It doesn't matter anyway, since I know what I write doesn't touch you. Thats alright. I don't have a problem with "BIS" or "Tomm-people". But I do have a problem with so many people acting as if the game is only about them, when it should be about all of us.
I'm not competitive enough to understand what moves you. I'm not casual enough to be satisfied with just the story either. I still like the game. If I can't share my opinion about gear just because I'm not in the top how-much% I will have even less to care about in NW than there already is.
And no, it doesn't mean they can't also make mistakes, but it also means that perhaps people should listen when they talk and if they don't agree with something, instead of just saying, "that is wrong" ask why, because maybe, just maybe, there is a good reason for it, even if you don't agree with it.
I admit, I took the analogy too far, but will you get me to agree that my opinion and yours have equal merit? Absolutely not, simply because I invested more time into understanding how things work. Just because everyone's opinion matters, doesn't mean all opinions are equal. Note, I was not saying that I know what you want better than you do, but I was saying that in some extreme cases, 1 person can know what another needs better than them. And at no point did I say anything like that. People are saying, "I won't like this," without even having tried it. Its a hypothetical situation right now. They might find, they actually do like it and it isn't as bad as what they are making up, if they gave it a chance. Just like every time there is a nerf to a class and histrionics begins, when in reality, the world is not ending and their class can still (most likely) be played.
How hard is it to recognise that healers may regret that optimal DPS in MOD18 would require a "harsh" penalty to incoming healing? This is not an especially fun game for healers: scaling for us is awful, our crit ratio is esoteric and requires us to fiddle even more with our gear when scaled, there is very little % healing gear to covet (as opposed to the endless suite of % DPS gear, this item included), and so on. You say that I'm not reading what you're writing, and maybe I am not doing your argument complete justice: this is a hard medium for discussion. But I also feel that none of these social observations around healing, the culture of being a healer, the choice of incoming healing as the sacrificial stat, etc. are being received by you. I repeat: healer balance in Neverwinter has just gotten to a relatively good place. I would be fine with introducing a pair of 3% damage, -25% incoming healing boots: see how it goes.
When I say you treat these boots as too clever, I mean this: your own example of how you might use them strategically was ToMM, in which you currently facetank certain reds. But that example itself cements how ToMM is trivial for you, andyYour usage of the boots here only provides the illusion of character development by accelerating the completion of already-trivial content. I'm quite sure you already run with the minimal-necessary health and have made many other concessions to achieve greater burn speed. These boots aren't Path of Exile design mentality; they're Diablo 3.
All being said, I'm happy to concede you certainly must have a more nuanced view that I am not seeing clearly conveyed, because there is so much now to read, because your views are in closed beta, and because we tend to paraphrase and quote one another. So hopefully there is some sort of consensus here.