Upgrade stats for Shivering FN items

[Royce]

The Shivering items just don't compare to the Brain Freeze, and Iceberg items, and here's why. BF has 7 Int, Iceberg 7 Str, and Shivering 7 Dex, so that's fine. The problem lies in the secondary stat bonuses. All these items have 6 "bonus points". The Brain Freeze items and Iceberg items use all 6 of those points on regen (6 M/s, and 6 H/s respectively). The Shivering items use all 6 points on Crit. 1 point of regen takes at least 50 attribute points to gain, while 1 point of crit takes a bird less than 7 attribute points to gain. The core problem here is really that regen gain from attributes is too slow, but I have posted about that before, and am not going to get into it here. Anyway, the regen on the other items makes them much more desirable than the shivering items. In fact the Snipers items with 3% Crit and 2 H/s seem more desirable to me (only considering stat bonuses). I have 3 suggestions of ways to redistribute the 6 points, to improve the Shivering pinks:

1) 3% Crit, 3 H/s
2) 3% Crit, 2 H/s, 1 M/s
3) 3 H/s, 3 M/s

I think any one of these would be better than the current 6% Crit, but I'm interested to know what others think.

[KingFu]

I think snipers (7 dex 2 crit 3 h/s) is pretty much better than shivering (7 dex 6 crit

Why not 2 crit, 2 h/s, 2 m/s so it's similar to snipers but still better, if not, I prefer 3, even though it lacks crit.

[LIGHTNINGLORD67]

I vote for the second choice Royce ;).

[Royce]

Why not 2 crit, 2 h/s, 2 m/s

I thought about this, and also considered 4 H/s, 2 M/s, but decided to narrow the list down to three. Basically I dropped the 2/2/2 setup out becuase a decent item should provide a bonus of at least 3 to at least one stat. It just looks better, and people don't like to spread their boosts too much ;)

[BeardedBear]

Not sure how I feel about this, it would be overpowered in my opinion. Dex already is the clear winner on the point scale, so that should be considered. If Shivering is altered, I would strongly suggest not giving any mana regen, and very minimal hp regen. Otherwise, that would seriously handicap the str iceberg items, leaving a str based character with no real mana solution(croc gear is not a mana solution at this point), while a dex character will have plenty of regen, and already has the damage advantage before you consider gear.

[Royce]

Not sure how I feel about this, it would be overpowered in my opinion. Dex already is the clear winner on the point scale, so that should be considered. If Shivering is altered, I would strongly suggest not giving any mana regen, and very minimal hp regen. Otherwise, that would seriously handicap the str iceberg items, leaving a str based character with no real mana solution(croc gear is not a mana solution at this point), while a dex character will have plenty of regen, and already has the damage advantage before you consider gear.

I don't think you can take overpowered Dex into consideration. Sure it is one of the fundamental, core flaws in this game, but it is a separate issue. You can't solve it by giving Dex characters lame gear. Int and Str need to be improved in terms of what they do for your stats. Giving Dex items poor boosts is particularly unfair to Dex Hybrids. Also, think about it this way, even if they went the 3 H/s, 3 M/s route, a bird in full Shivering gear would have 12 H/s and 12 M/s good, but not exactly overpowered. A bear in full Iceberg has 24 H/s, and I think that's a pretty big advantage for a class that already has high armor and the best buffs in the game. Even if you think mana regen should not be that high, what's wrong with options 1 and 2?

[BeardedBear]

I don't think you can take overpowered Dex into consideration. Sure it is one of the fundamental, core flaws in this game, but it is a separate issue. You can't solve it by giving Dex characters lame gear. Int and Str need to be improved in terms of what they do for your stats. Giving Dex items poor boosts is particularly unfair to Dex Hybrids. Also, think about it this way, even if they went the 3 H/s, 3 M/s route, a bird in full Shivering gear would have 12 H/s and 12 M/s good, but not exactly overpowered. A bear in full Iceberg has 24 H/s, and I think that's a pretty big advantage for a class that already has high armor and the best buffs in the game. Even if you think mana regen should not be that high, what's wrong with options 1 and 2?

Sure you can, dex is clearly overpowered, and until that is dealt with, you can't expect "equal" gear in this particular situation. I would take a bear with 12ms/12hs any day over 24 hp regen, I'm sure most hybrids would feel the same way. For the extreme players, this gear is going to be used for PVP, and mass hp regen with no mana regen is a fail every time. You can't use buffs or any skills without mana. Even if this is for PvE, the point is to get away from relying on pots and be better balenced. To give dex gear hp and mana regen, and not the equivalent gear in str and int, is just plain nuts to me.

I suppose option 1 I would agree with most if I had to choose.

Also consider this. (off the top of my head things i thought of)

- Iceberg gear is great but leaves str based lacking on the mana side of things. Hybirds birds could rely on meditation and maybe get away with this. Of course Pallys would lack the mana regen they need.


- Brain-freeze is is great, which balances int mages pretty well, because they can already heal themselves, but are lacking evade and survivability. If you are a hybrid, you have restore to rely on, but also have evade and/or iron blood for much better survivability then an int mage.


- Shivering gear is made to exploit the already strong dex characters to hit even harder, using there skills or not, just straight up blow for blow is going to be better then any other gear. A dex bird would benefit most by this, while this would hurt hybrids the most out of any one of 3 gear setups. While the top two gear sets give you regen, you are typically handicapped on the other side of things, or survivability. That's all thrown out the door with Shivering gear, it's just focusing on make you hit harder, so exploiting dex even more, but not giving you any regen.


With the stat conversion update, not everything is going to be balanced. I'm sure when the devs make this gear, they consider pure builds first, then work backwards to attempt to suit the other classes. I think they did a pretty good job on this gear.

[bmc85uk]

I agree with Royce, realistically it should change.

Though personally, I think any effort on such a small scale is peeing into oncoming wind in terms of exacting balance. Start at the root with health/mana and attribute rework, the rest will fall into place.

But thats another kettle of fish, and something I consider to be more important than anything, so apologies for going on a tangent in your thread Royce. What you've suggested seems a perfect quick-fix, I'd go with option 2, or a 2/2/2 split; though it may seem low at first, 8/8/8 from a potential 4 piece set would be juicy.

[Royce]

I think it has always been the devs intention that warriors should get very little regen, birds very little mana regen, and elves lots of regen. Just look at the early gear (majority of existing gear). Warriors only had the usual non-rare 1 H/s and 1 M/s gear, and 1 pink type, Legend, with 2 H/s. Birds had two pink varieties with 2 H/s, and purp with the same. Mages had 1 pink with both types of regen, 1 with health regen, and 1 purp with 3 H/s. I also very much doubt that the devs were even considering overpowered Dex (which I have never heard them acknowledge that they believe is an issue) when they created this gear. FN was built in a day (voting for which theme ended, and the campaign was released pn the same day). I think they just decided on a number of points to put into boosts, and somewhat haphazardly assigned them. I would find it very hard to believe that, if the devs even agree that Dex is overpowered, their solution was to start making lame Dex gear. Obviously, the attributes and their effects are what needs tweaking. Even above the low level pinks, look at the swamp gear. Warriors get health regen gear, mages get all kinds of regen gear, and birds get a little of both (mamboza and sniper/jewel thief/eagle). The gear got really screwed up with AO, particularly AO1 when regen was so imbalanced Int mages essentially disappeared. AO2 sort of fixed that by making all kinds of gear available to all classes, and I honesly don't like that. Anyway, the point is, you can't solve a fundamental attribute imbalance through gear (especially since gear already exists that defies your explanation), and level 30 archers in FN will need some regen. Finally, the fact is you are admitting you think the Shivering gear is inferior, and simply that it is okay because Dex is an overpowered attribute, so that's fine. You agree with me. We just disagree on what an appropriate solution would be ;)
Anyway, since we have entered the attribute imbalance discussion I will shamelessly plug my thread. Check this out if you want to see Int and Str improved: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?5515-Fixing-the-Attribute-Imbalance-How-to-make-Int-and-Str-worthwhile-investments-D

[KingFu]

Long posts O.o

[Nightarcher]

1. I would like to see a few points of regen put on shivering items. It makes sense.

2. In terms of the DEX-overpowered issue, there is one easy fix. Make STR and/or INT an attractive and useful stat for archers. Bears use DEX because it ups their hit and crit, so just give other stats useful applications for archers. Then, pure DEX won't destroy every other combination an archer could have.

[Royce]

2. In terms of the DEX-overpowered issue, there is one easy fix. Make STR and/or INT an attractive and useful stat for archers.

Yes, please post in the other thread I linked at the bottom of my previous post ;)