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A post to the developers about the Stalwart changes
arinathos
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 75 Arc User
Hello Developers!
I'm writing to express my displeasure at the upcoming changes to the Stalwart Bulwark Armor Set.
First off, I am your target audience. I've played both previous Neverwinter iterations, and have been a fan of Dungeons and Dragons for over 30 years. I've purchased a Guardian of the North pack, and preordered the Feywild pack, and I've also spent real world money for Zen (a big chunk of that went towards a Stalwart Set).
I purchased the Stalwart Set for the particular benefits that it would bring. Unfortunately, the new changes make the set substantially different and inferior. An analogy would be if you bought a car for a certain amount, and the manufacturer decided to make you return that car for one that had a less powerful engine, worse gas mileage, and had no air conditioning.
My initial thought was to try to obtain or purchase enough Zen to get a Timeless set, but I am unsure whether Cryptic will, at some time, decide that the Timeless set is too powerful and change it. If one looks at most of the Build posts on the forum, there is some debate on whether Timeless or Stalwart is more powerful, so the Timeless set could certainly be on the chopping block at some time. It makes me far more leery of spending real world dollars if the items I get can be so drastically altered without warning.
Here are two other alternatives to the changes you've suggested.
1) Make the Stalwart Set a T2 set on par with Timeless, and change the dropzones for those items to dungeons that are more difficult. This would allow new players to obtain a set while allowing "early adopter" GFs who have been with NWO since the start a 'thank you' in the form of obtaining the Stalwart set a bit easier.
2) Change the Stalwart set to allow for 3 stacks of power rather than 5. This would still allow for the significant power generation that GF conquerers can take advantage of, while decreasing how powerful the armor is.
Please reconsider the changes you plan on making to the Stalwart Set. You will make a lot of players in NWO much happier if you do this.
Sincerely,
Evan (Arinathos)
I'm writing to express my displeasure at the upcoming changes to the Stalwart Bulwark Armor Set.
First off, I am your target audience. I've played both previous Neverwinter iterations, and have been a fan of Dungeons and Dragons for over 30 years. I've purchased a Guardian of the North pack, and preordered the Feywild pack, and I've also spent real world money for Zen (a big chunk of that went towards a Stalwart Set).
I purchased the Stalwart Set for the particular benefits that it would bring. Unfortunately, the new changes make the set substantially different and inferior. An analogy would be if you bought a car for a certain amount, and the manufacturer decided to make you return that car for one that had a less powerful engine, worse gas mileage, and had no air conditioning.
My initial thought was to try to obtain or purchase enough Zen to get a Timeless set, but I am unsure whether Cryptic will, at some time, decide that the Timeless set is too powerful and change it. If one looks at most of the Build posts on the forum, there is some debate on whether Timeless or Stalwart is more powerful, so the Timeless set could certainly be on the chopping block at some time. It makes me far more leery of spending real world dollars if the items I get can be so drastically altered without warning.
Here are two other alternatives to the changes you've suggested.
1) Make the Stalwart Set a T2 set on par with Timeless, and change the dropzones for those items to dungeons that are more difficult. This would allow new players to obtain a set while allowing "early adopter" GFs who have been with NWO since the start a 'thank you' in the form of obtaining the Stalwart set a bit easier.
2) Change the Stalwart set to allow for 3 stacks of power rather than 5. This would still allow for the significant power generation that GF conquerers can take advantage of, while decreasing how powerful the armor is.
Please reconsider the changes you plan on making to the Stalwart Set. You will make a lot of players in NWO much happier if you do this.
Sincerely,
Evan (Arinathos)
Post edited by arinathos on
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Comments
Hopefully you rethink your decision, if you want to make it a T2 set that would be fine.....those of us who already have it get a thank you from the developers. I have been happy with your game, in fact I have been getting my friends from other games to come try it out. As I write this I guess I have some questions of my own, maybe this game is still in development and should be revisited at a later date....too many game changing alterations in its 1 month of open play??
This would be a good short-term solution, but the problem is that it would set a precedent for the next OP set or item.
Of course, as I said in a similar thread, as it was so clearly OP the Devs should have changed this quickly rather than wait for so long that many people assumed it was working as intended.
Ironically enough, I think the fastest car produced by Volkswagen is faster than the fastest car produced by Ferrari:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Bugatti_vs_Ferrari
Yes, I know off-topic but amusing none the less.......
I could change my character to timeless no problem, but I won't pay for it.
If you play a Guardian Fighter and you want to max out your PvE DPS the nerf to the Stalwart Set would require you to delete your current character (most likely Tiefling) and start a new one (most likely Half-Orc) and then roll the stats that now are superior to CON (STR/DEX). The effect of this of course is that you have to spent around 1.5 million AD if you want to get yourself a Timeless Set, you have to spent 0.8m for the Ioun Stone, you have to get yourself another CN weapon set and get a new Greater Plaguefire enchant for it, as the other is of course bound on your old character. Talking about enchants, you need a whole new set of enchants (hopefully you didnt have rank 9 or 10s)... and of course rings, neck, waist...
The problem of the Nerf of the Stalwart Set as it is planned is the change to the mechanic. Cryptic should NEVER change the benefit you gain from ability score points, when there is no way to change your initial roll and race choice. The only option players have to change these is to delete the character and start the new one and as all equipment items are bound on equip you would have to reobtain everything. Many players see equipment as a form of achievement, thus making players have to reobtain their equipment equals losing these achievements.
Also, this nerf is being done in what is called a "Live" game, not in a beta phase. Not only will your achievements be lost, but you cannot be certain about what will come next. 90% of the GF's I know of will switch to Timeless Hero set. Besides feeling bad about having the wrong race and the wrong initial ability score roll to max DPS with the Timeless set, you also need to fear Cryptic nerfing the Timeless set. If sets get nerfed to dead in a live game how can you be sure that in a month or so there won't be the next nerf news ("As 90% of the Guardian Fighter's were using the Timeless hero set we reworked the four pierce bonus: You now get +10% Running Speed for 4 seconds when your Guard Meter runs out!")
What many people suggested in this thread was changing the Stalwart Bulwark to a T2 Set and decreasing it's bonus while keeping the mechanic. The argument ambisinisterr hold in favor of the decision was the fact that an increase in power equal to 25% of your HP is simply to much. GF's with a Max HP of 28k (should be an average number) get 7000 power from the set bonus, which is too much. I agree with that, but the math you did, that the set bonus would have to be 5% max to be balanced is incorrect. As a Guardian Fighter with the Conqueror last feat stacking Power is very easy. An increase of 7000 power DOES NOT equal 7000 power points on gear, but an increase of 3500 equipment power points (as the Conqueror feat does not increase the power you get from the set bonus).
What do other classes get from their T2 set bonusses? Trickster Rogues get 1023 Power and Recovery from Swashbuckling Captain. The Great Weapon Fighters get 1260 Power and Recovery from Avatar of War. Thats 2046 and 2520 stat points compared to the 3500 stat points the Conqueror Guardian Fighters get. Additionally Swashbuckling and Avatar of War offer an offensive 2 piece bonus that Stalwart was lacking of course. Still it is not too far from balanced and I will explain why.
Many theorycrafters say that Power suffers no Diminishing Returns. But that is not fully correct. Just like you need more and more CRIT to increase your CRIT chance by 1% you also DO NEED MORE AND MORE POWER to increase your damage by 1%. That being said a boost to a single stat like the Stalwart's 4-piece bonus did offer ON A CLASS THAT ALREADY HAS A VERY HIGH AMOUNT OF THAT STAT (like Conqueror GF's do!) will suffer very hard from Dimishing Returns. Also there will be many occasions where the set bonus will not be even up with 5 stacks, most notably pvp.
In my opinion the suggestion of making the set a T2 (switching it with Grand Regent) and reducing it's set bonus is fine. For example the set bonus could be "Adds 1.5% of your Maximum HP in power. Stacks 6 times. This bonus is affected by Reckless Attacker." The set bonus would then add 9% of Max HP when it reaches maximum stacks. If you have 28k Life this would equal 2520 Power, which is fair compared to the 2460 points Avatar of War gives concerning you suffer way more Diminishing Returns, as its a bonus to a single stat rather than two stats and that you have no offensive 2 piece bonus. Also the Defense and Deflection stats on Stalwart should be reduced by ~10-20% to reduce its defensive effectiveness. I very much agree with the point that a set should not be the best defensive and offensive set at the same time, but decreasing the bonus to 9%, while also increasing the stack number making it a bit harder to maintain the bonus and while lowering the defensive attributes of the set a little bit, making the maintaining of the bonus (getting hit by mobs or players) harder (as you lose more HP) seems fine to me. Also making the bonus stack with the Conqueror feat would make the Set still a good choice for Conqueror GF's, while not being OP on Defensive GF's. The real problem of the Stalwart Set: Offering the BEST on the offensive AND defensive side would be gone. You can no longer make a defensive feated GF and get the full offensive out of the set. Also the set would not offer a better bonus than the other melee classes T2 sets, making it not only balanced within the class itself but also balanced compared to other classes.
Edit: What I want to add is that there is no valid reason why a T1 Set should not be changed to a T2. The argument that T2 is harder to obtain is simply invalid. From open beta on the T2 instances had all kinds of glitches that were farmed by so many people getting the T2 equipment into the Auction House at very cheap prices. Before the Mad Dragon's big spawn was changed recently the Tier 1 Helm was the hardest item to obtain, thus making collecting the full T1 set harder than completing the full T2.
I have seen a Stalwart GF, with less gear and enchants than Me double my damage in CN as a 13.4K pure DPS specced GWF. He blew me and the CW's out of the water. SO I have to say even as a T2 set this bonus is too powerful. It has to go. And I hate saying this about any nerf to either fighter class.
Fighters Needs buff's not nerfs. We just need the buffs to our base abilities and not be completely dependent on any single set of gear for us to be useful.