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Stalwart Bulwark and the Sith Warrior
altarboom
Member Posts: 13 Arc User
The Story of the Sith Assassin and the Stalwart Bulwark
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away there lived a sith assassin and his followers. The sith assassin and his followers were so elite they often killed the most difficult enemies before anyone in their realm. Waiting months and months without new challenges the sith assassin decided to venture out to a new world far far away to find new exciting challenges.
He soon discovered the realm of Neverwinter. The land of Neverwinter had great promise. He decided to change from his sith ways and become a Devoted Cleric and heal the evils of this new great land. Before long he found a Vanguard of the Dragon which praised him on his great ability to lay down circles quickly and with little time between circles. Some circles were so large that they filed entire rooms. But the cleric soon found that the circles created too much attention from the angry hoards that plagued the land of Neverwinter.
The devoted cleric asked the Vanguard of the Dragon, "Why do we not bring in a Guardian Fighter to help keep the hatred off of me so I may lay my tranquil circles?"
The Vanguard replied, "Because Guardian Fighters can not make the jumps to skip all the angry hoards and they can not benefit us in exploiting the terrain to our advantage."
The young cleric at that moment decided he would prove that a guardian fighter could excel in fighting the angry mobs and become a great benefit to the Neverwinter realm.
After weeks of training the young cleric became a Guardian Fighter to protect the realm. In his time of training he also convinced many others from the galaxy far far away to join him in his journey to fight the evil in Neverwinter with out exploiting the terrain. Together they would become an elite guild fighting the evil forces together.
When they delved into their first dungeon they soon discovered that the Guardian Fighter did not generate enough hate to keep the evil mobs away from the mage, the rogue and the great weapon fighter.
Until one day a mysterious cryptic wizard came to the guardian fighter and said, "for a mere 10,000 zen you can have any set of armour your heart desires and you will be able to equip it with mediocre enchantments." With a sly smile the cryptic wizard added, "I would recommend the Stalwart Bulwark Set of armour. With this set you will never loose the attention of the angry mobs and you will be all powerful. Whenever you get hit you will grow stronger. When you don't use your shield you will grow more powerful." Then the Cryptic wizard cackled like a mad hatter.
The naive Guardian Fighter jumped at the opportunity to forever save his friends from the most dire threats with the best gear money could buy and quickly gave the cryptic wizard the 10,000 zen for the Stalwart Bulwark Armor.
A few weeks passed and the cryptic wizard happened across the Guardian Fighter wearing nothing but rags. The cryptic wizard inquired as to what happened to the shiny all powerful Stalwart Bulwark Armor he had sold the Guardian Fighter. The Guardian Fighter responded, "The armor you sold me was all powerful, my foes wouldn't take their sights off my blazing glory and my foes trembled in fear. I enjoyed my power for a few short weeks and in that time I realized the armor was far too powerful for a mere mortal."
The cryptic wizard agreed, "Yes the armor was far too powerful. It was the most powerful out of any set of armor I carried at the time which was why it was twice as expensive. I decided it was too powerful for anyone to have so I made it weaker than the rest of the armor I sell. Instead of getting stronger when you get hit I made it so you will do more damage with your powers when you block with your shield. But this power will be consumed upon using an encounter, when the power used to sustain despite you using an encounter. Not only will the armor's strength be consumed upon you using an encounter but every time you block you will now be weaker than you were before."
The Guardian Fighter argued, "But this isn't the set I bought. The powers aren't what I was promised. I agree they were too powerful but could you not just reduce the strength the armor used to give me? Could it only give 3 stacks instead of 5? Could it not give 3% more power for each stack instead of 5? Why must I use my shield and expend my strength to get such a small benefit?"
The Cryptic wizard took a deep breath and said, "I'm not sure. Those are great ideas I might take them into consideration in the future. For now though I have a few sets of armor that are now double what I charged you for the Stalwart Bulwark set and they aren't nearly as good as that set used to be. Can I interest you in one of these lesser sets of armor at twice the price?"
The Guardian Fighter sighed, "Can you at least show me to a vendor that would allow me to trade this old armor for some of the other armor you had at the time I purchased the Stalwart Bulwark set? Maybe refund me my 10,000 zen? Some sort of compensation for the money I spent on this set of armor you sold me? I would understand if the set was too powerful to take it down a notch but this is not the set I purchased, this is not the set bonus I bought! Did you make this armor useless just so I would give you even more zen?"
The cryptic wizard sat deep in thought on the issue. Taking money for a product then switching the product a month after the customer purchased it was deceitful. But not doing anything could result in more demand for the other sets of armor the cryptic wizard had in stock, meaning even more profit!
While the Cryptic Wizard battles this moral dilemma the Guardian fighter wonders whether the cryptic wizard will do the right thing and stand buy the product he sells or if he should take his band of followers to another galaxy far far away from exploits and untrustworthy wizards? Only the cryptic wizard has the answer to how this story will end.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away there lived a sith assassin and his followers. The sith assassin and his followers were so elite they often killed the most difficult enemies before anyone in their realm. Waiting months and months without new challenges the sith assassin decided to venture out to a new world far far away to find new exciting challenges.
He soon discovered the realm of Neverwinter. The land of Neverwinter had great promise. He decided to change from his sith ways and become a Devoted Cleric and heal the evils of this new great land. Before long he found a Vanguard of the Dragon which praised him on his great ability to lay down circles quickly and with little time between circles. Some circles were so large that they filed entire rooms. But the cleric soon found that the circles created too much attention from the angry hoards that plagued the land of Neverwinter.
The devoted cleric asked the Vanguard of the Dragon, "Why do we not bring in a Guardian Fighter to help keep the hatred off of me so I may lay my tranquil circles?"
The Vanguard replied, "Because Guardian Fighters can not make the jumps to skip all the angry hoards and they can not benefit us in exploiting the terrain to our advantage."
The young cleric at that moment decided he would prove that a guardian fighter could excel in fighting the angry mobs and become a great benefit to the Neverwinter realm.
After weeks of training the young cleric became a Guardian Fighter to protect the realm. In his time of training he also convinced many others from the galaxy far far away to join him in his journey to fight the evil in Neverwinter with out exploiting the terrain. Together they would become an elite guild fighting the evil forces together.
When they delved into their first dungeon they soon discovered that the Guardian Fighter did not generate enough hate to keep the evil mobs away from the mage, the rogue and the great weapon fighter.
Until one day a mysterious cryptic wizard came to the guardian fighter and said, "for a mere 10,000 zen you can have any set of armour your heart desires and you will be able to equip it with mediocre enchantments." With a sly smile the cryptic wizard added, "I would recommend the Stalwart Bulwark Set of armour. With this set you will never loose the attention of the angry mobs and you will be all powerful. Whenever you get hit you will grow stronger. When you don't use your shield you will grow more powerful." Then the Cryptic wizard cackled like a mad hatter.
The naive Guardian Fighter jumped at the opportunity to forever save his friends from the most dire threats with the best gear money could buy and quickly gave the cryptic wizard the 10,000 zen for the Stalwart Bulwark Armor.
A few weeks passed and the cryptic wizard happened across the Guardian Fighter wearing nothing but rags. The cryptic wizard inquired as to what happened to the shiny all powerful Stalwart Bulwark Armor he had sold the Guardian Fighter. The Guardian Fighter responded, "The armor you sold me was all powerful, my foes wouldn't take their sights off my blazing glory and my foes trembled in fear. I enjoyed my power for a few short weeks and in that time I realized the armor was far too powerful for a mere mortal."
The cryptic wizard agreed, "Yes the armor was far too powerful. It was the most powerful out of any set of armor I carried at the time which was why it was twice as expensive. I decided it was too powerful for anyone to have so I made it weaker than the rest of the armor I sell. Instead of getting stronger when you get hit I made it so you will do more damage with your powers when you block with your shield. But this power will be consumed upon using an encounter, when the power used to sustain despite you using an encounter. Not only will the armor's strength be consumed upon you using an encounter but every time you block you will now be weaker than you were before."
The Guardian Fighter argued, "But this isn't the set I bought. The powers aren't what I was promised. I agree they were too powerful but could you not just reduce the strength the armor used to give me? Could it only give 3 stacks instead of 5? Could it not give 3% more power for each stack instead of 5? Why must I use my shield and expend my strength to get such a small benefit?"
The Cryptic wizard took a deep breath and said, "I'm not sure. Those are great ideas I might take them into consideration in the future. For now though I have a few sets of armor that are now double what I charged you for the Stalwart Bulwark set and they aren't nearly as good as that set used to be. Can I interest you in one of these lesser sets of armor at twice the price?"
The Guardian Fighter sighed, "Can you at least show me to a vendor that would allow me to trade this old armor for some of the other armor you had at the time I purchased the Stalwart Bulwark set? Maybe refund me my 10,000 zen? Some sort of compensation for the money I spent on this set of armor you sold me? I would understand if the set was too powerful to take it down a notch but this is not the set I purchased, this is not the set bonus I bought! Did you make this armor useless just so I would give you even more zen?"
The cryptic wizard sat deep in thought on the issue. Taking money for a product then switching the product a month after the customer purchased it was deceitful. But not doing anything could result in more demand for the other sets of armor the cryptic wizard had in stock, meaning even more profit!
While the Cryptic Wizard battles this moral dilemma the Guardian fighter wonders whether the cryptic wizard will do the right thing and stand buy the product he sells or if he should take his band of followers to another galaxy far far away from exploits and untrustworthy wizards? Only the cryptic wizard has the answer to how this story will end.
Post edited by altarboom on
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Comments
I don't mind changes in price, or small adjustments to stats, but changing the fundamentals on something that is being sold for not a small amount of cash..
Way to attract potential customers Cryptic!
We all know nobody is going to refund anything, but it's important to make sure people are aware of their business practices
You know what I am afraid of? That the development of the game was already paid, so they now can care even less..
And even if the whole current playerbase quits, there will still be few people dropping in some cash and even though this game will pretty soon die (if it still goes the same way) it won't matter to Cryptic.
Basically there is no way to teach them a lesson anymore ;(
You do know by the way eventually the level cap will go up and then your gear is virtual <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>? Just to let you know before you get disappointed again.
P.S. Its just a game enjoy it as such, its a hobby and does cost money. Don't see it as an investment because value seldom goes up.
That's what people do not understand...
A decrease in price is expected, or a small change to a behavior, but not changing the fundamentals.
Let me put it this way.. You buy a car with 200 HP
- next month they discount the car for half the price.. That is ok right?
- another month they update the firmware in the car so the car has only 180 HP (because of safety), That is still ok right?
- the third month, they come and take your car and give you a chair, and you are like wtf? I paid for car, why I am having now a chair?
Do you understand now? Changing price, or stats are ok, but changing the whole item for something else IS NOT OK!
Wear whatever you find, because then you have the least effort invested in your stuff, and nerfs won't hurt you. Much.
Blue/green sets here we come!
FTFY.
While I feel sorry for the people who invested lots of AD in this, the Stalwart set WAS totally OP for a Tier 1, and bound to be nerfed eventually.
If you read the post you would realize this isn't a QQ my gear became obsolete post. This set was over powered for a Tier 1 set. It was likely at a good place for a tier 2 set. Cryptic had many options available to them. They could have left this set as is and swapped it with a tier 2 set. They could have reduced the number of stacks this set gave to reduce its power. They could have reduced how much power each stack gave. Any of these wouldn't have pissed off the community.
Instead they changed a set so it no longer works with the build people bought it for and it now works counter intuitive to the build. The set might as well say, "You deal 5% more damage with a bow and arrow."
People spend real money on this game. In 8 years of playing MMOs I have never seen a company change a set to go from the best set available to the worst set available. And most MMOs if they change a set it is for class balancing. This seems to have nothing to do with anything besides making people spend more money on getting a new set of gear and getting all new enchantments. I'm not saying gear should never become obsolete but it shouldn't become obsolete in the same tier of gear.
Changing stats is ok. Changing the set is not OK. Every Guardian Fighter who bought this set should receive some sort of compensation from Cryptic/PWE.
I wholeheartedly agree the set was OP. It's why I bought the pieces ahead of time at the best prices I could find. I wouldn't be so disappointed if they reduced the benefits to bring the gear in line with tier 1 pieces. Cryptic instead changed the gear to be detrimental to my Conqueror build's Reckless Attacker bonus. They took it even further going against the Tactician's Martial Mastery bonus, leaving Protector as the only viable build for this set. So much for choices.
Altarboom, I'm sorry you sought and found a solution to help your teammates succeed without exploits, only to have that evil wizard take it all away. I came to the wizard too late, and he is just laughing at me now. Hopefully, he will hear our plea and find a solution that will at least marginally satisfy GF players.
Listen this game or any F2P game doesnt care about customers. Say you spent bunch of cash on the game but now your stuff got nerfed and its pretty much <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> now. They dont care they already got your money. Some other person will come along and replace you they will give the money to them and they inturn will nerf that persons stuff and the cycle continues. A F2P game doesnt count on long term players its only the short term people that are willing to give them money that they care about.
I must have missed something. What on Earth do exploiters have to do with the stalwart set being nerfed?
I think he was saying that simply using and slotting the set was an exploitation of its OPness. It's an interesting point and not entirely without merit, though I find it ironic in light of the actual events of the original post.
the original poster wanted to play the dungeons properly without exploitation, and found that tanking appears to be woefully inadequate without the armor that was ridiculously OP. so it's kinda darned if you do, darned if you don't, IF one considers this an exploit.
personally, I agree entirely with the original poster's sentiments. yes, everyone knew how overpowered this set was, and yes, it needed to be nerfed, but in all my years of gaming, I've never seen a nerf handled THIS horribly, though some have come close. virtually any studio that makes games like this has stated ad nauseum that when they do have to buff or nerf stuff, they try to do it in little steps, like the OP suggested, until it gets balanced properly.
Now, the conspiracy theory angle that some have suggested, where this was done to make more people spend more money on diamonds or whatnot, that's the thing that more and more people are wondering about every day. I hate to say that there is not much evidence to refute such a claim.
This was a such a horrible example and might be close to the actual argument if:
1. Your video card came with 1GB GDDR5 and magically had slots for another 5 GB of memory... then all of a sudden the manufacture changes it so that it only could use 128MB.
2. The above mentioned manufacturer didn't offer a refund
3. The entire world new what happened to the video card and so you couldn't even sell it on ebay for .99 cents
4. The 5GB of additional memory which cost you another $150 is irremovable from the video card unless you pay another $300 extra.
These type of arguments make me wonder about the state of humanity. Cryptic has full control over the world and everything in it. They control a virtual environment that they can make EASY changes to. The company is simply neglectful and performs bad (even shady) business practices....
Ask yourself if you would give money to a con artist over and over again? If so I have some emails with Nigerian delegates looking for someone to help out with a wire transfer....
Stalwart has not been nerfed for a very very long time, so it wasnt that obvious its going to get crushed in its existence really.
At least not for me.
I dont find it right to do it this late, having players who have invested so much ad/money into it and now they have to wait couple of days to even get out the enchants again with 24k ad/day lol.
People in these types of games do research on gear sets, that's why the term BiS was created. He knew it was OP, then spent money to slot that OP set to make it uber OP. All the PVP GF's did it (knew it was coming down the pipe, rotted in my T2 PVE gear until I spent $100 real money to get my Timeless set). So this is a good example of slapping the hands of exploiters.
Its nature (Scaling with HP, a defensive stat) also made it have a great sinergy with another problematic item that is currently in game, the Tenebrous Enchantment (and that's going to be nerfed too, hopefully you won't have a similar reaction when that happens, I suggest you don't depend too much on them).
It's only an item set, and it's not like they destroyed 99% of its stats, they only nerfed one of his two set boni. You can move on easily if you wish to. I know I did when I salvaged it straight away as soon as I got the chance.
When in a MMO you get something that is just "too good to be true" (I knew when I watched my power skyrocket from 1500 to 10000), you realize it's going to be nerfed sooner or later, it's just the nature of the beast.
It Actually worked great in PVE. The damage output combined with fighter's recovery gave you great survivablity in PVE. A large part of the problems with tanking in this game is that you can't tank all that well when your shield is broken. The extra dps meant that many of the adds would die with out being much of a problem. This gave a lot of extra survivability in PVE. Did these things help in pvp? Maybe, I wouldn't know as I only pvp to get the daily AD. It burns when i PVP.
Arggh, okay - I was taking the 'exploiters' bit too literally.
I do have a lot of sympathy for people who bought this and enchanted it since while it was clearly OP, especially for a Tier 1 set, it was left unchanged for so long.
Still, it had to be nerfed, just that this should have been done much sooner....
so my mustang is to good to be true and i expect to have it nerfed so they are going to change it overnight for a focus and they are not going to give me back what i paid for.
if you can read the future then let us know what else we should expect to be change it in the near future, probably following this logic we can say that we can expect all BiS for all characters to be changed cause cryptic logic said so.
My only question is Why cryptic did not mention about the idea to change it earlier? like just after the Beta, or when the lv requirement were adjusted (that also a lot of people were afected and the had to look out for a lot of the pieces again). they decided to not mention that the set would be changed.
if that were the case then all people were using a set on their own risk cause at some point it would be changed.
so for cryptic, "all GF players should go to hell, we want to change what we want and you should just adjust to survive or die, we do not even care what you think, keep crying in the forum we are not going to even read the things there and made no response or apology, so deal with it"
"Insert a cryptic meme here with Deal with it" "Insert a cryptic meme here with scumbag"
Yep, deal with it. You are an idiot to think that performance stats like that from a T1 set were 'legit' in the 1st place. I had the Grand Regent set and was stunned when it sucked donkey nads compared to the Stalwart.
This exactly. Who decided this set was 'obviously' OP all of a sudden? It's been around since beta, and I would expect that everything is more or less set when beta is finished and the game is live. Of course there are fixes, but at least the 'working as intended' part is clear.
That the game is 'free to play' doesn't mean it's a charity. It's run by a company that expects to make money from the game, and that's fine. Basically it all comes down to the trust the players/clients have in the company to not screw them over while making a decent profit. And right now, it looks like they are <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> us over.
Take the other T1 set for instance, Knights Captain. If a big bonus to power from the late Stalwart is making 1 character OP, does that mean a 60% bonus to power to all characters will also be considered OP? Is this 'obvious' and am I somewhat exploiting when I put this on my GF and stack it with enchants? Or am I right to assume that since this passed beta and has been in the game since start, I can TRUST the company to not suddenly change it into something else which ultimately ends up in profit for them and a loss for me?
They're setting precedents with actions like this and Fury of the Bugfest. And for me anyway, that's what all the rage is about. Not about BiS gear, FOTM builds or the cost of fluff, but about how players feel when they think they can no longer trust the company with the game they love.
This right here sums up a lot of the things that are troubling me with this game and company in recent times. It's not the first time I've seen moves like this from Cryptic, and I'm sure it won't be the last, but at least for past issues and broken promises, they've eventually managed to make up for it in some form. Based on the response from them so far, I'm not so sure that will be the case with everything here. Some of it, maybe. For now, I'm barely playing NW now, though I admit to still playing their other games.
As a player, how do I know what's acceptably powerful and what's not?
Regarding the OP, what you bought from the wizard wasn't the armour set, it's a pile of diamonds that your fellow adventurers accept as payment, and it's your fellow adventurers who sold the armour to you. And you didn't have to pay real money for it, you could have farmed it or gotten your diamonds some other way. So technically, Cryptic didn't scam you in this case. Not saying they did a good or right thing here, just that it's technically not a scam.
He didn't say he felt they were legit. he said the following:
You are just being argumentative and obtuse.
"Suckage" is not proof that something else is 'obviously' OP. The devs decided that this set was OP and you just happen to agree with it
But this is not about something OP being nerfed. Stalwart tied in perfectly with the Conqueror build, gaining power by not blocking. Now Stalwart only gains power through blocking. The issue is not even by the amount of it, it's that it suddenly completely defeats the purpose for which it was intended and people are forced into a do-over.
PinkSugar, lvl 60 CW.
Baby Cakes, lvl 60 GWF.
*******, lvl 60 TR.
Premium Juicebox, lvl 60 CW.
Pink Exxxtacy, Ranger
There is NO pvp in Neverwinter.
It doesn't take a lot of research to do the math on 25% of 30,000. Someone in grade 2 with a calculator can do it.
Last time I checked equipping a 4pc set bonus wasn't considered exploiting.
This is about a right and a wrong way to go about implementing a change.
Rogues were over powered. They changed their skills and gave them a free respec.
The set was overpowered and needed a nerf. I never denied that. It was the best set in the game and 100% of all the GF that can divide 30k by four bought this set instead of the Timeless set. This means a very large % of the player base had this set, and had it fully enchanted.
The last patch didn't nerf the set, it completely overhauled it. The set went from being on par or better than the tier 2 sets to being the worst tier one set by far. There are right and wrong ways to go about doing a nerf. My rogue example showed the right way. They made a balance change and their was little impact on the player's previous effort. Here are some examples of right ways to nerf the Stalwart Bulwark Set
1. When you are hit you gain 5% of your HP in power lasting 6 sec. This stacks up to 3x (Down from 5)
2. When you are hit you gain 2% (Down from 5%) of your HP in power lasting 6 sec. This stacks up to 5x.
3. When you are hit you gain 200 power lasting 6 seconds. This stacks up to 5x
4. We reworked the set bonus so it now blows flowers at the enemy when you use your shield. As this was the best set and we have rebalanced it to be worse than all other tier one sets we have put in a vendor for the next week that will allow you to trade in Bound Stalwart Bulwark pieces into any other tier one or tier two sets that were available before this patch.
5. We reworked the set bonus to tickle enemies when they get in range. Tickling an enemy has no effect. You may want to buy new gear. As a result all Existing pieces of the Stalwart Bulwark set can now be salvaged for 400k astral diamonds to help purchase a new gear set and enchant your gear. These astral diamonds will already be refined and not count towards your daily refining limit.
6. Being that we screwed up and didn't do any of the above here is 10,000 zen to help you become a positive productive member of our Neverwinter community.
There are right and wrong ways to do these nerfs. I am not a developer but I just came up with 6 options that wouldn't <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off the guardian fighter community. I am not saying the nerf wasn't needed. I am saying this wasn't the right way to go about it and there should be some compensation to the players effected so they can continue enjoying the game like they did the day before the fey wild patch.
Bravo, they really should offer you guys something to offset the cost of this set, nerfing the set itself was a bad idea, they should have worked other ways to fix their issue.