How to fix enchantments - and why this is necessary

We all know - or should know by now - that enchantments are almost useless now.
Here I explain why this is so, suggest how this can be fixed and explain, why a fix seems necessary in the long run.


What do enchantments do generally - in the past and now?

- Enchantments are a long-term investment.
- They allow us to "customize" our character, by prioritizing certain stats over others.
- r15 (highest rank) enchants require considerable resources to build (wards, enchantment stones, marks)
- regular average manufacturing cost for an r15 enchantment is ~2 mio AD (this reflects the average cost of r15 on the AH, at least in the past)

As such, upgrading enchantments is a major driver for ward sales. In fact, the average number of wards required to build an r15 enchantment are the major contributor to the total cost of ~2 mio AD


What do enchantments do - after the recent combat changes?

1. Enchants give a small increase to IL (r15 gives +200 IL)
- Note that the IL increase is *only relevant in non-scaled content* - almost all (EDIT: group) content except the newest mods are scaled
- the IL increase (in non-scaled content) gives roughly 0.5% more damage and HP for a 40k IL character, at a cost of 2 mio AD

2. Enchants allow us to "customize" our character's stat *percentages* by a super super tiny, almost negligible amount.
- essentially enchants reshuffle the stat percentage ratings, by subtracting a tiny amount from all stat percentages, moving the subtracted amount into 1-3 stats
- Note that for a scaled down character only the stat percentages are relevant, there is no IL gain
- Regarding the stat *percentages* - there is *no net gain in overall (total) stat percentages* - at least that is true for single stat enchants, for dual and triple enchants there is a tiny net gain.
- The amount of stat percentage shuffled around is tiny: For an r15 single enchantment 0.2% is subtracted from *all* 15 stats and the same amount (15 times 0.2% = 3%) is transferred to a single stat, thereby increasing this stat percentage by 2.8% (at the cost of decreasing all other stats percentages).

Again, note if you are scaled down, the tiny reshuffling of stat percentages is the only benefit of enchantments in scaled content. If you are already above the IL of the scaled content (which every 40k IL character will be), the IL increase of your enchantments are wasted.
The reshuffling of your stat percentages is tiny. At best, with ten offensive r15 enchants of the same time type you can increase a single stat by 28%, by decreasing all of your other stats by 2%.


Why is the current implementation of enchantments problematic?

- except for non-scaled endgame content, most content is scaled.
- scaled content is the most run content, but here enchants are almost useless: No net benefit, neglible effects
- once people realize, they will not upgrade the enchantments to max level, because they give so much less benefit for the AD cost
- this, in turn, will decrease ZEN sales of Wards (and other refinement items) in the long run, hurting the economy


How to fix it?

I suggest to modify how enchantments work, putting them more in line with other sources of character improvements, that cost the same amount of AD. Tthe general idea is, that enchantments have always been and should continue to be a tool, that allows us to customize our character's stat percentage ratings. This means:

- same as stat percentage increases from companions, enchantments should actually increase our stat percentages (it should not be a zero sum reshuffling game)
- the increase in stat percentage of an r15 enchantment should be comparable to the increase by other sources, that cost the same amount of AD (~2 mio AD)

For comparison, upgrading a (cheap) epic companion to mythic costs between 2-3 Mio AD and gives a net increase in stat percentage of 7.5%.
This means the baseline cost for increasing a single stat percentage by 2.5% percent should be roughly 1 Mio AD.
Considering, that an r15 enchantment costs around 2 Mio AD to manufacture, it should give a net increase of 5% (for a single stat)


A specific proposal:

- leave the 200 IL increase for an r15 enchantment as is
- in order to provide noticeable benefits scaled content, modify how enchantments work as follows:

1. enchantments should give an increase in stat percentage, same as companions
2. enchantments should never decrease the percentage ratings of our (other) stats, meaning their combined rating should be equal to their IL
3. In addition, for every rank of a single stat enchantment, we get a percentage increase of 0.3% per rank (for a single stat)

With this system, enchantments would still be relevant and useful in scaled content.
Also, they would allow us to easily and transparently customize our character's stat percentages, because the calculation is easy:
For a single r15 enchantment, we would increase the percentage of a single stat by 15*0.3% = 4.5% percent, at a cost of ~2 Mio AD
This in turn would benefit ZEN sales of Wards and refinement items in the long run, because people will only buy the ingredients to rank up their enchantments, if it is worthwhile to do so, e.g. if the benefits are similar to other improvements (such as companions, mounts etc.) that cost roughly the same amount of AD.

Sorry for the long post. I hope I got my message through.
Generally I think that the combat changes are well thought through and will help the game to thrive in the long run.
But enchantments have really got messed up. They are virtually worthless now. Hopefully we can restore them to their old glory, by following my suggestion or otherwise.