Feldon So, you’ve heard all the hullabaloo about Itemization changes. Well ‘big deal’ you think to yourself. There will always be adjustments and shuffling around of things missed in Beta. The last 2 years have seen big changes to itemization after the expansion comes out. Why is this news?
Well never mind the confusion and inconvenience for players, but there’s the feeling that players have wasted their time defeating a much more difficult mob only to receive an item that is only a minor upgrade or in many cases with Velious, a downgrade in quality. Quite a few players have told me that they now bank ALL of their gear for the first 60 days after an expansion, just in case we see sweeping changes.
However, with Velious’ astounding dependence upon Adornments to provide any uniqueness whatsoever to gear from the Othmir quest gear all the way up to Hardmode Raid gear, Adornments matter now more than ever.
With as incredibly generic as the gear has become, adornments are often the only way we have to specialize our gear and distinguish it from all the other players of our archetype. Easy and Hard Raids now offer just 1 upgrade for each slot for each archetype. This means dirges, rangers, and brigands are all wearing the same rings, bracelets, etc. and can only tailor items to their class with adornments.
And at least for player-made Adornments (the White slots), you need materials to make them. Usually those materials come from transmuting Fabled gear. With the dearth of easy-to-get disposable Fabled gear (Public Quests used to offer Fabled transmutables), more and more players are ending up taking their chances and melting down last year’s raid gear to make this year’s adornments.
With the itemization changes this week, and with Crystallized Manas clocking in at 55 platinum for starters, many players are waking up to the realization that they may have made some very expensive mistakes by choosing to melt down certain gear.
So… How much are itemization changes costing you?
It’s not just the melting down of old gear … it’s taking the resulting adornment and placing it on an awesome piece of gear that turns into a piece of crap the next day. 🙁
What makes me angry is that while I leveing up my alts, I’m getting all this crap gear for my class.
These are class specific gear items for whatever class I’m leveling at the time, and it hasted a ton of wasted stats. Why would I want strength and wisdom on a piece of scout gear? Yes, there are scout set pieces at lower levels that still have strength and wisdom on it.
SOE needs to do their f’n job and fix this crap now.
And over on EQ2X, every time they change items around potentially ‘forces’ a lot of silver account players to buy more equipment unlockers as they find their previous gear choices are no longer good ones.
If they get their gear stat “rules engine” (for lack of a better term) right, they MAY be able to correct many of the gear issues on old content. I can see their desire to get it right.