Nation War Supply Token Costs

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973

BerserkBeast - Sanctuary wrote: »

And you completely avoid any selective response to my post,you just throw in a stereotype/generalization on me. Nice way to look smart without having an argument.

I already said why I think NV is a bad instance. The other instances only seem bad when people compare it to aps NV spam sillyness.

AEU limited to 6 runs a week

Oh no! People would have to know how to do more than 1 instance.

TT = dead

Plenty of gold mats in there are valuable. If nirv were easier to obtain for everone it would drive demand for TT/lunar

Trials - Only if you're in a very dedicated faction

An instance that encourages massively multiplayer gameplay in an MMO? Ya that's bad.

Still though it's too early to say what effect there will be so the discussion effort could all be wasted.

BerserkBeast - Sanctuary

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Plenty of gold mats in there are valuable. If nirv were easier to obtain for everone it would drive demand for TT/lunar

An instance that encourages massively multiplayer gameplay in an MMO? Ya that's bad.

Still though it's too early to say what effect there will be so the discussion effort could all be wasted.

Right,because everyone can solo farm in 3-2/3 to get gold mats yes?

And you should quote my whole point if you want to quote me, I saw "dedicated" faction as opposed to a more generalized faction with random people that aren't particularly dedicated to an instance that otherwise require a LARGE group of dedicated players to be farmed efficiently.
That being said,I'll repeat with different words, if you're in a faction that you like, with people you like, why would you move to a faction dedicated to trials?, you known there aren't that many in the first place, so basically you're not considering the vast majority of factions (faction = people) , just to pick a "money efficient" one, this doesn't exactly sound very social to me, or not?

And TT its dead, the only reason why the gold mats price aren't hitting the floor its because the aps nerds are still farming in Nirvana. Kill Nirvana = move all the farmers to TT > overflood market = kill the TT.
Why the same thing doesn't apply with Nirvana too? ,because its a lot harder to "overflow" Nirvana mats ('causing a drastic drop in prices), firstly because of the abundant amount of cannies/raps required for each piece of equip, secondly because unlike TT Nirvana has limited entries(keys), so isn't as spam-able as TT.

I thought really you had better arguments,considering its you.

Akan - Momaganon

A lot of people (on the EU server) seem to be happy about this change - making cannies and raptures easier to get. It breaks the monopoly of hardcore players and aps classes on progressing beyond r8 and gives the casual players (which there is a lot of) a chance to catch up and improve their gear without cash-shopping too much.

The supply tokens opens up gear progression paths that was closed for many, the step beyond R8 or TT99. Everyone now gets a source of gear and income in the supply tokens. Players can choose to either use it on improving their own gear with r8 recast or nirvana, or sell the rewards to other players.

Larger supply leads to lower prices but also bigger demand as more players now are able to afford upgrading their gear. The heavy cashshoppers will still be buying cannies/raps to make r9 recast and the other rewards, providing a stream of gold into the economy. It might even turn out that gold prices drop as more people are charging smaller amounts to buy coins.

The casual players and small time cash-shoppers are all gaining from this. The loosing groups are the hardcore farmers and heavy cash-shoppers. The farmers are no longer able to keep a monopoly on the market as everyone can get supply tokens by attending the nation wars. The heavy CS players loose their huge advantage in being the only ones with the best gears.

Over all I think it is a good change, especially on the EU servers where the majority of people are casual players that has been stuck at the r8/tt99 level for a long time, with no real way of progressing.

BerserkBeast - Sanctuary

Now that's a way better explained concept.

Nowitsawn - Heavens Tear

If supply tokens somehow end up getting as cheap as possible, I'd just get 3 R8R weapons. One with Purify, one with Infinite and one with def levels b:chuckle

tubosking

BerserkBeast - Sanctuary wrote: »

There's an HUGE gap between lv.99 and lv.100 in this game, no mid-equips, the gap in difficulty on instances its just immense, new players that can't afford to buy directly anything close to Nirvana/R8/9 are screwed,and they keep increasing the difficulty of the lv.100+ stuff to make the gap even more impossible to compensate.

Nirvana was an EASY instance because it was SUPPOSED to give mid-bad geared people a chance to farm money and equips to take on harder instances. If you kill Nirvana, you destroy the bridge that leads mid-bad geared players to harder instances that actually requires a bit more of gear.

I assume they gonna kill nirvana by giveing cheap and easy obtainable mats for crapy geared ppl and yet, I don`t think thats gonna happen. So if u can get nirvana gear easy then u can go farm coins to refine it. Maybe they gonna implement something else later...another instance with new mats and gear just like nirvana is.

_Skai_ - Raging Tide

A concise version of the spreadsheet that a factionmate of mine did for just farming costs is here, but your spreadsheet contains many more details that I like.

The SoW market value will play a huge role, but there's one factor you've overlooked when calculating the market value for them. They can be NPC'd for 100k coins each, so that'll play a huge role in its market price.

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973

_Skai_ - Raging Tide wrote: »

A concise version of the spreadsheet that a factionmate of mine did for just farming costs is here, but your spreadsheet contains many more details that I like.

The SoW market value will play a huge role, but there's one factor you've overlooked when calculating the market value for them. They can be NPC'd for 100k coins each, so that'll play a huge role in its market price.

SoW costs 1.3m to manufacture though so no one would ever NPC it for 100k. The Supply Token NPC value is 9,999 which puts the market value price floor at 10k (the left column in my sheet).

_Skai_ - Raging Tide

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

SoW costs 1.3m to manufacture though so no one would ever NPC it for 100k. The Supply Token NPC value is 9,999 which puts the market value price floor at 10k (the left column in my sheet).

Makes sense now. Thanks for the clarification!

WangZi - Dreamweaver

Thank you for posting this b:thanks

MiniST - Sanctuary

expect maybe cannies' price to drop slightly depending on the number of supply tokens u can get. At the moment i'm guessing 1 for participating and 5 for winning or somewhere along that line. Nirvana is not really gonna be touched by this. If Nirvana dies, the game dies and the people managing PWI knows this.

Transcend - Lost City

MiniST - Sanctuary wrote: »

.. the people managing PWI knows this.

troll

Paulrogers - Harshlands

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Our version of the expansion has a surprisingly different set of forges than what we saw in PWCN. While we don't get their R9 third cast set we do get a lot of good upgrade options for other gear.

Everything is made either directly or indirectly from Supply Tokens which are awarded through Nation Wars.
Supply Tokens can't be traded but 50 can be used to make a Seal of War which is tradeable and needed for all the upgrade options.

Nation War Supply Token Costs

You can see the total Supply Token / Coin costs in the blue column. I've also included the total coin costs for a wide range of possible Supply Token market values in the purple column. It's a little hard to say what the actual market value of Supply Tokens will be at the moment but the costs assuming a market value of 1m per Supply Token seem likely.

Over all I'm pretty happy with our forges as they seem much more well suited to our version of the game. If you worked out this math on the PWCN forges the manufacturing fees were all in the 10s of billions of coin.

Why don't people like you and nowitsawn who clearly help people on the forums get made into mods where as someone like KawaiiJen who basically comments on every thread to tell people they're wrong and do nothing more than push their opinions on people get chosen b:surrender

Longknife - Harshlands

Paulrogers - Harshlands wrote: »

and do nothing more than push their opinions on people get chosen b:surrender

Cool, I can be a mod if I wanna be. b:cool

Paulrogers - Harshlands

Longknife - Harshlands wrote: »

Cool, I can be a mod if I wanna be. b:cool

No no you're wrong I am a 105 r9 sage archer on a pve server so I know everything about PVP and the game mechanics and the forums and how mods get picked and hydro nuclear physics so you're wrong.

Toomaga - Heavens Tear

Paulrogers - Harshlands wrote: »

Why don't people like you and nowitsawn who clearly help people on the forums get made into mods where as someone like KawaiiJen who basically comments on every thread to tell people they're wrong and do nothing more than push their opinions on people get chosen b:surrender

That is because sadly a lot of the people who are chosen for positions sometimes are due to popularity vote versus what a forum actually needs. On top of that, sometimes the people who appear to be clearly qualified have no desire to be in this kind of position.

Also based on your other post you seem to be somewhat annoyed by the staff's choice of Jen as a Mod.But I could be wrong .

SashaGray - Heavens Tear

Paulrogers - Harshlands wrote: »

Why don't people like you and nowitsawn who clearly help people on the forums get made into mods where as someone like KawaiiJen who basically comments on every thread to tell people they're wrong and do nothing more than push their opinions on people get chosen b:surrender

Because the pay sucks.

Being a mod wont help any of the knowledgeable people be more knowledgeable, get them any more respect than they have already earned, or help them enjoy doing what they enjoy doing any more. All it will do is put unwanted resposibility of being a manners and necro monitor on people that dont want to do it.

Decus - Dreamweaver

Paulrogers - Harshlands wrote: »

Why don't people like you and nowitsawn who clearly help people on the forums get made into mods where as someone like KawaiiJen who basically comments on every thread to tell people they're wrong and do nothing more than push their opinions on people get chosen b:surrender

I wish I knew. I mean, they made Grim a mod too... and the one that I shan't name who's still a mod... b:sweat

Argenesis - Raging Tide

I love all this QQing about destroying nirv because the f2p player woun't be able to farm refines...

On my server it's t3+10 5 aps demon HF/sage subsea or gtfo nobody likes you, get your refines elsewhere then come back noob ******

So if it's destroyed, the f2p player feels no difference...

Saethos - Raging Tide

Argenesis sums it up well XD

Jaabg - Sanctuary

BerserkBeast - You are negating some facts.

Current fast vana squads on our server, +10~+12, 5 aps, demon hf, demon/sage amp. You can drop a few with lower refines, or non demon hf, or non sage/demon amp, but point remains, good squads already have 2~6 OP people in them doing the work. Last night i did 99 keys with a friend. We had 2 BM (g16+10, deicide+6), 1 sin (g13+5), 1 veno (r8+5), 1 wizzy (r8+7), friend kept on bringing different alts, psy, barb, archer, bm, sin (some characters had +10 weapons others had +2). We finished the run in 5~10 minutes each. The issue people keep on crying about vana that i always fail to understand is not aps. It's about working together, using the class debuffs, timings your skills. To give you an idea of the speed, first boss always died before first seal on all 10 runs.

Vana has never been a farming instance for me. Vana was a place where i spent money to acquire gear, i never made money from it. I made probably 5~7 armour pieces, that is 1250 canny~1 750 canny, made 4 g15 weapons that is 1k raps. Had I "Farmed" vana i would never have acquired my gear in less than a year's time. Sure for a casual player vana is fun, easy, quick money, but it is never a money making instance, nirvana on a net will break even, make slightly more or have a loss for most players.

Getting back to the main point. You can get orbs 1~5 in the NW now, +5 refine is super easy now (depending on the tokens we get). The thing that you are negating, NW starts from 60+. If people don't go the hyper FCC baby route until 85~90. That will give them 2~5 months to farm the NW for all their gear that they will get when 101 and have it refined it at +5 (depending on token payout).

Your "average" player already goes around in 3~7 refine, is raising the lower bar to +5 really such a bad thing?

Someone who has 0 coins can take part in the NW and they can acquire the same endgame that other people have, refine it +5. At that point, they can take part in any instance they want and have fun.

You are also negating another fact, that makes my arguments useless for most people, "friends". I play this game with friends, regardless of their gear. Some friends have +11~+12 weapons, others have +2, 2 aps. We still do lunar, warsong, vana, aba, seat, delta together, because we have fun together. If a person has 0 friends like that while they have played PWI, that is a sad life in a MMO. This game is not about "Look at me i got 6 alts, i can solo everything, i don't need friends, faction", that is what a single player game is, this is not a single player game. You can play it like one, but have to accept the consequences to. If you do make friends, go out and have fun with them. We just learnt that we don't need a barb (other than buffs, but my lvl 71 does the job) for any pulling in any instance. Because none of our friends have a good OP barb due to gear issues or know how to play one b:chuckle. We have fun playing with our "flex squad" makeup, everyone gets a chance to do their bh on which ever character they want and we have fun doing it. Sure we get killed at time, we get squad wipes, but at the end of the day, we all have fun, we enjoy pwi, regardless of class, gear, refine levels. This update will only improve make players stronger so they die less and feel they contribute more.

Yes, some markets will crash, but that is because players like you that Asterelle probably didn't mention, only live in two, three instances in this game. FCC, TT and Vana. If the vana market crashes with this update, it will force people to finally start doing other instances or quit the game. This game has so many fun instances to farm to do, people don't do them, because they can simply charge/acquire money and buy things over time. Once they reach a comfortable stage, the complaining begins. My aim is to +12 all my gear and have the best g16 gear combo possible, i am working towards that. Most people now will have to make the choice, are they happy with their +10 gear, or do they want to go and explore new things.

Personally the PVE gear boost is immense. I am sad about not getting -int on r9 new chest, but now i can get -int on my boots and chest for my r8. Trials may be dead in your eyes, but trials is a fun thing to do as a faction. I used the word fun b:shocked. Now you have two free sources to get your trial mats, and if you reach 2nd set of trials, basically you can recast your gear 1~8 times a week (depending on those blasted tokens). To me that is an immense increase in the odds of getting -int. Most of us have played this game for a year or more. 52 rerolls on a chest, bound to get it sometime right? And maybe with luck on shoes to.

At present there are 2 options. 1) Vana market does not crash (due to mess up with tokens payed out) and the game goes on as before. 2) Vana market crashes, and forces the vana goers to re-evaluate why they play this game.

If it is the first case, let me tell you that the number of OP farmers will increase dramatically. You will see lots of R9 3rd cast +12 people around in your regular tw. If it is the 2nd case, there will be lots of farmers with many different builds compared to previously.

If the player is lazy and does not know how to farm all instances in this game, they will loose out big time, that is what it comes down to for me. I am sorry if this update causes you to quit the game, but do look at the possibilities this will bring to your game play. Finally you can play what ever class you want, have the gear you want, and not have to roll, gear, refine an APS toon to do it. Isn't that worth the cost if vana market crashes?

Note: Above post is optimistic in nature, after NW my opinion might change and be like BerserkBeast b:cute.




Quick change Asterelle, you have G16 PQ2 Ring, it is a PQ 3 ring. For those interested, the refine rate on the new r9 ring is the same as g16 pq 3 rings on the chinese versions, so i guess ours is similar.

HideYoHubby - Archosaur

Jaabg - Sanctuary wrote: »

Getting back to the main point. You can get orbs 1~5 in the NW now, +5 refine is super easy now (depending on the tokens we get). The thing that you are negating, NW starts from 60+. If people don't go the hyper FCC baby route until 85~90. That will give them 2~5 months to farm the NW for all their gear that they will get when 101 and have it refined it at +5 (depending on token payout).

Your "average" player already goes around in 3~7 refine, is raising the lower bar to +5 really such a bad thing?

Where is this option to craft orbs? I tried to find it but didnt see any on north forges, am I blind or is it somewhere else?

Massad - Harshlands

So did I read that spreadsheet right??? 300k total to make a rapture crystal that is currently 1.7kk on my server???

Nahktuul - Archosaur

http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=18105241&postcount=85

People are reporting that they get uncannies/raptures for 10-20k a piece.

Nowitsawn - Heavens Tear

Now there's the question of what we can value these tokens at (for now, value will decrease over time as supply increases).

If we even put the price at 50k then some people would be making over 29mil per war...

Nariin - Dreamweaver

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

There are tons of other farmable instances besides Nirv: AEU, Lunar, Warsong, TT, Trials.
Nirv is honestly a very poorly designed instance. No mobs at all, takes 4 minutes to finish, no difficulty, and is dominated by 1 or 2 classes.
People aren't even taking clerics or barbs into it. It's awful, boring, and unbalanced. It should have been replaced long ago.

I really do hope it becomes obsolete because it dominates other end game content way too much.

It doesn't generally takes 4min to finish. And it doesn't have generally no difficulty, as it can be easly impossible to finish. I don't think there's the problem in the instance, but rather too many 5 aps +10 (or more) "certain classes". Those people could easly replace it with farming other instances if nirvana dies, but it's easier to be lazy. Point and poke and thing eventually dies, besides you don't need to walk far as old man does all the "moving" work. And yes no mobs... one target vs. many.

(How about just making it non-spammable? Like can enter once per hour.)

Certain part of people, yes. It must get boring if you run it a lot in point and poke way I'm sure. I like nirvana and to me is fun and challenging, maybe because I do it rarely and I'm not 5 aps +10.
It is unbalanced yes, but not the instance itself, but in relationship with other things... easy obtainable aps (many 5 aps), orb sales and enent cards (many high refines) and large amout of players willing to spend real money on game.

BerserkBeast - Sanctuary wrote: »

And you completely avoid any selective response to my post,you just throw in a stereotype/generalization on me. Nice way to sound smart without having an argument.

I recently levelled a veno to 100,went to a BH Metal squad who was *surprise* not geared well enough DD wise to kill the boss fast enough,needless to say,we were wiped.

My Veno had Demon Purge,reduced cooldown,spammed it,bosses rebuffed after like 3-4 seconds, completely useless. There's no real tactic to take down some bosses in this game other than "brute force" aka kill it in 30 seconds before he can even fight back,works wonders on your awesome +10/12 weapons, but doesn't help a **** for the lower people.

There is no strategies, no tactics, just brute force, or maybe you have a brillant way to take down Adv. bosses in Warsong/Lunar with a crappy G12 squad?

I agree with that, exept that there are no strategies and tactics, which although, only matter if you have "force".

ruz91

Akan - Momaganon wrote: »

A lot of people (on the EU server) seem to be happy about this change - making cannies and raptures easier to get. It breaks the monopoly of hardcore players and aps classes on progressing beyond r8 and gives the casual players (which there is a lot of) a chance to catch up and improve their gear without cash-shopping too much.

The supply tokens opens up gear progression paths that was closed for many, the step beyond R8 or TT99. Everyone now gets a source of gear and income in the supply tokens. Players can choose to either use it on improving their own gear with r8 recast or nirvana, or sell the rewards to other players.

Larger supply leads to lower prices but also bigger demand as more players now are able to afford upgrading their gear. The heavy cashshoppers will still be buying cannies/raps to make r9 recast and the other rewards, providing a stream of gold into the economy. It might even turn out that gold prices drop as more people are charging smaller amounts to buy coins.

The casual players and small time cash-shoppers are all gaining from this. The loosing groups are the hardcore farmers and heavy cash-shoppers. The farmers are no longer able to keep a monopoly on the market as everyone can get supply tokens by attending the nation wars. The heavy CS players loose their huge advantage in being the only ones with the best gears.

Over all I think it is a good change, especially on the EU servers where the majority of people are casual players that has been stuck at the r8/tt99 level for a long time, with no real way of progressing.

This. I totally agree with Akan. They're basically opening the door for the more casual/non-cs/lowbies to get into more competitive pvp/pk/TW. Gear gaps will be smaller, and I hope to see a more balanced pvp environment. b:victoryb:pleased

Jaabg - Sanctuary

HideYoHubby - Archosaur wrote: »

Where is this option to craft orbs? I tried to find it but didnt see any on north forges, am I blind or is it somewhere else?

Whoops, sorry missed your reply and this thread. Too many threads floating around. The new options are available at the jewelcratsman. I will leave it up to you to decide what price is fair and what is not.

BerserkBeast - Sanctuary

@Jaabg

The good thing about Nirvana isn't the fact that you can run it within 5 minutes with OP squads,its the fact that you could run it with TT90/99 people because the instance was designed for those who weren't yet even R8(which become the new standard soon after the RT expansion and reputation sale).

You said that Vana was never a farming instance for you,well it was for me,I FARMED enough pieces of G15 for my Sin+Cleric+BM that I could get a single full G15 set if I had made all the pieces for a single character. And I made about 500M+ on non-used drops in the last year from Nirvana, I really can't understand how you can say Nirvana isn't a farming instance. I would like to known, if its not a farming instance, what the heck is?

I don't get what fact Im negating, speaking of "friends" which I never mentioned, I don't see how/where the said friends fit in any of the arguments I stated.

Then you say that some player live on only 1-2 instances,tell me when WHICH are the other instances we have?.
As stated before,TT its dead,and it will be even more dead if 50% of people running Nirvana will flood the already over-flooded TT.
Warsong e Lunar may be nice, but what's the point now if everyone can get easy Nirvana gear and do farm the G16 molds by themselves? there's not gonna but a market spike for manufacturing services,simply because people will get themselves.

Im ALREADY playing any class I want, I've already been farming warsong for mold on my Cleric instead of my 5 aps Sin,I didn't need a major **** up like this to play a class I like. As I stated before, Nirvana was an easy instance that ANY class even bad geared could run,so I don't where's your argument about this,you seem like to imply I said that you have to be a 5 aps +10 Sin/BM to farm Vana,and I don't recall to ever said anything like that.

And you're not mentioning once the key term:Money.
Now,if you needed a fun event to do,we had already a lot of PvE events and the main PvP event (The TW), so I don't really see why this NvN was welcomed like something amazing new, its just a slightly different TW, if you say you wanted to have fun outside doing the same instance (vana), then you could already do it before this update: You just had to partecipated to the said PvE/PvP events to get your "fun".

Without a real farming instance,there won't be any *solid* money making possibilities aside from Merchanting and cash shopping, this will result that your "cool" player with his shiny and cheap as hell G15/16 + 5/7 vana set will be STILL destroyed by the all the R9 Cash shoppers that now have easily access to R9 third recast and they can refine their gear to +10/12 unlike we free players.
How you gonna have "fun" like this, I don't really see how the situation has changed, CS still have a major advantage over free to play players,with the difference now,that I can't farm money as efficiently as a free to play player, and that means no +10 my gear = no chance to be any competitive.

You're happy about everyone getting their almost free G15/G16 while you seem not to grasp the gap between a G16 Nirvana vs R9r3, its a way WIDER gap in terms of power than the average "normal" R9 and the "average" R8 (which was honestly kinda mainstream even among free to play players). So the actual difference,as already stated, between CS and Free to play players (That doesn't heavily merchant), has only gotten worse.

You speak about having fun in "advanced" instances like Warsong/Lunar, well, I'll tell you what, people used to run Warsong / Lunar before having a full G15 set, heck, having R8 already was considering OP already considered those instances were designed at the "Age of Spirits" expansion(When R8 was the top). Now you're "complaining" that without G15/16 you can't play Warsong/Lunar?, give me a break, that argument its simple non-existent.

They simply removed the #1 farming instance in the game, that's the truth, why you think Raging Tides and Nirvana are flooded during 2x? because most people are stupid? ,or because Nirvana WAS a farming instance that was actually the only solid mean for free to play players to get "close" to Cash Shoppers R9?

Jaabg - Sanctuary

BerserkBeast - I'll keep it short, i promise, people will stop reading our posts otherwise b:chuckle.

Money - I am a merchant in this game, that is my main source of income. My gear, refine, shards is my coin sink of this game. When i made my first pair of g15 claws, i farmed 100 raps in 2 weeks. The amount of runs i had to do to get that many raps was insane. I seriously got tired of vana. I sold some things off, and set up a shop, and withing 6 hours i had the other 150 raps. When i got my claws, i went off with my friends trying out different instances seeing what bosses we could tank and which ones we could not.

That led to us farming all tt's up to tt 2-3.

G16 came out, i actually enjoyed farming warsong for the first 20 runs. By the time i got my claw drop mold, i have 6 rows of molds sitting in my bank. Anything that becomes too repetitive, i tend to shy away from. I have to do about 200~300 more full runs to get badges for my gear now. That will take 2~5 months to acquire.

Pesronally i just log on to play for 1~3 hours with friends. Help them out with what they need, do the trial, bh, tw, and log back out, leaving my shops open to trade. That is why nirvana is not a farming instance for me, it takes away my playing time and coins.

Nation war help take away my problems and give me a good solution.

The gear i farmed/merchanted before nation war came out, is about 1.5 billion coins in value. I have almost gotten to the point of acquiring a full r9 set as well. Previously there were gear pieces that were costing me in the 1 billion range, now i can get them for fraction of a cost. My final cost of bm build will be in the 10~18 billion range, now cheaper due to r9 recast being cheaper. As you pointed out, merchanting is my source of income, so having vana removed is not affecting me.

I do have friends who relied on vana, especially caster vana to get simple gear in the game. I feel really bad for them, because now they have no avenue of income. The can not farm other instances, they don't have pocket money to spend around. They really have to re-evaluate their options.

I know lunar, warsong can be done in "lower" gear, but having "better" gear does not hurt.

The difference between cash shoppers and f2p has increased dramatically, but it also provides me an illusion that i can chase after it and close that gap.

I am guessing by next year april~september, the next tier of gear will be released (from a new instance i hope), making the current gear look obsolete.

There is a stumbling block for most r9 though. They have +10~+12 gear pieces with vit stones or josd. Getting it to 3rd cast will require a significant amount of chienkun stones. Losing the refines and stones will require major cash inflow to reach previous levels. Not everyone is making the switch quickly, i think, i could be wrong.