Feldon 
I think these days, most players don’t consider their characters complete, competitive, or at least capable until they have upgraded a significant number of their combat arts or spells to Master level. It was not always so…
Are We Entitled to Masters?
It may be hard to remember, but there was a time before the Research tab and before Research Assistants when the only way to get Master spells was to defeat enemies. At launch, Masters were unbelievably rare and only dropped from Epic names. Over the years, they have trickled down to Epic trash, then to Heroic bosses. At some point, a global loot table was added to any slain non-trivial enemy with something like a 1 in 10,000 chance to drop a level-appropriate Master. Every year, Masters seem to become more widely available.
Fast forward to Friday, and players stumbled upon the news that their beloved (or loathed) Research Assistant Tab for upgrading spells to Master underwent some extreme inflation, with pricing increased by nearly 150%. When every researched Master now costs the price of an All Access monthly subscription, players are understandably freaked out.
Are Masters Required to Solo/Group/Raid?
Over the years, and again at this year’s SOE Live, players were reassured that solo and group content is not and will not be balanced around players having Master or Grandmaster spells. Expert spells are more than enough. Raiding is certainly improved by the acquisition of Master spells, but I don’t know that it’s been absolutely imperative except as a recruiting requirement.
But still, people want to make their characters as awesome as possible, and that raises a question. With the ability to take all spells to Grandmaster, and a select few to Ancient (basically Master III), what’s it going to cost us either through in-game platinum mithril and/or StationCash for us to keep up with the Joneses?
Everything Worth Having Takes Effort
EQ2 Lead Designer Kander has an answer to at least part of that question…
Components for crafting grandmaster scrolls will not be locked behind raids, they will be available to all play styles, same as master spells are available to all adventure play styles [Solo/Heroic/Raid].
They will definitely not be as easy to make as expert spells or as readily available. But definitely available via in-game means to all who desire them.
We will talk more about them during the EQ2 Insider coming soon.
Header image is Ancient Tome by theincredibleandy.
The ingredients to craft Grandmaster scrolls will presumably include the new rare harvestables that have been discussed already.
We don’t know much of anything about the recipes themselves, however. I wonder if we’ll see a return of the single-spell Ancient Teachings recipes from DoF, or if they’ll be linked to tradeskill apprentices.
kono
Masters became rarer from Skyshrine onwards (coincidentally the time they started selling research reducers, followed by the immediate-finish button in the research tab), so your comment of them becoming ‘more widely available’ is false.
It is interesting, and almost contradictory, that they say experts are all that is needed (and presumably are used as the balance point of zones), at the same time they introduce two additional spell ranks above a rank that is supposedly already overpowered for the content. If that’s true, why grandmaster and ancient spells? 🙄
I usually farm Fabled Clefts Of Rujark and Skyshrine every week. I get a lot of masters drops from those zones. They are more frequent in number then most instances mostly because how fast things burn.
Is it everyone, or primarily the raiders who feel compelled to buy the research out? I do research all the way up to Master – but I research it. I don’t buy the research completion. Usually I’ll make journeyman, or go buy up some adepts, before I start since I do think the game assumes journeyman at a minimum.
For the key ones I might make the expert and research the masters but mostly I don’t bother — my channeler made experts of everything mostly because I couldn’t even find journeyman or adept on the broker but she’s the exception, the rest generally opt for time. For the most part I’ve found that the higher ranks give an edge in the solo instances but aren’t required. As someone who primarily duos I’ve not been running the heroics yet so i don’t know if spell rank will matter there.
As a crafter and harvester I’m actually excited that the Grandmasters will likely use the new harvest to craft as it will be great to have something desirable to make beyond consumables w/o the components being raid-locked. They’ve implied that the recipes will be drops, but Kander’s quote suggests they’ll be acquirable by standard adventuring at least (perhaps questing? I’d love that!)
I don’t know why they are adding new ranks – the ancients are clearly carrots for subscribing, so perhaps those are aimed at people like me and my husband, who subscribe, but primarily duo and don’t raid. They would likely make it easier for us to tackle heroic content.
The only rationale I can see for Grandmasters, if they aren’t used for zone balance, is to return to the old Master paradigm — something for raiders to give them an edge, that’s hard to get, not a station cash item. And by not making them raid-locked everyone gets that goal for a bit of an edge. Of course, that all implies that they *will* balance content against Masters…..
Sorry to say but a lot of content is built around dps checks. I have grouped with to many who are not mastered out and you just groan when you are carrying the group through a zone. So yea, if you don’t care about any of the higher zones or have way more time than I do to play, then masters as well as proper aa specs and gear for your class are required. Just my 2 cents as a raider, grouper, crafter. And no, you don’t need masters for crafting, but I bet you would be paying in a heartbeat if there were master abilities for your crafting that gave you higher progress, etc. 🙂
As I said, it sounds rather as though they are aimed at giving an edge to raiders, and *maybe* to heroics. I’ve been doing the advanced solos — in my experience the right AA build, gear, and adornments is a huge factor in DPS. I’ve not found the spell upgrades to be nearly as significant.
As to the crafting — I have 9 crafters, and stacks of progress potions. I use them for the boringly long weekly combine. I can’t think of anything I would pay for to advance my crafting, certainly not progress nor durability! It’s been years since I’ve failed a combine, it’s just not that hard.
lol, you must not do experimentation. 🙂
Of course I do. Every time I make mastercrafted gear. I’ve never failed that, either. Keep in mind – I have been playing since launch, I have nine crafters, and there have been times where I’ve spent more time crafting than adventuring.
I’ll admit though that experimentation is the first time in years I’ve worried that I might fail. I wouldn’t turn down a researchable skill to help it, but I still wouldn’t pay to complete the research!
at launch, crafting could kill you! It can still kill you in a few special combines (and yes, I’ve been killed a handful of times on those) but in general I find crafting very zen. So long as I’m not distracted nor laggy it’s hard to outright fail at 95. I am *very* focused when doing experimentation, and I paid close attention during the final step of the shawl quest, but since missing a reaction rarely results in death these days I just can’t think of any research I’d pay to complete.
As Kruzzen said there are several fights in Heroic and Raid zones that are totally DPS checks. Without Master spells, good armor and AAs you might as well stay home. Then SOE is making 2 spells higher than Masters?!?!
Yea raise the price of research right before a new expansion comes out that will probably require you to have those new masters for the DPS checks in the new zones. I have played EQ2 since Jan 2005 but SOE may have just priced me out of the game. With DPS checks and costs going through the roof for spells………..Expert spells just do not seem to hack it in those DPS check fights.
You’ve been playing since ’05, but you seem to have forgotten how things were back then, when you actually had to play the game and track down your top rank of spells. All they’re really doing is bringing us back to that time. You’re not being priced out of the game, you’re being encouraged to actually play it.
I’ve never bought a master through SC. If I want one I usually just research it. So this won’t really impact me anyway. Would still like to know if they are even researchable.
I’m pretty sure they’ve said we could also research up to GM. Ancients are the only restricted rank, being drop-only.
That is a quote from the ZAM recap of the Mechanics panel. Not sure where they say that in the hour long video.
Unfortunately, that’s a misquote. Here’s the forum post quoted for this article, Kander talking about crafting the scrolls: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/is-the-price-rise-to-spell-research-reduction-reasonable.550916/page-7#post-6098883
I agree with the assessment that even if i zones are not balanced around master spells they end up being geared to need them because so much relies on doing the most amount of damage possible in the shortest period of time. Since master spells are one of the shortest paths to doing that you pretty much automatically end up “needing” all masters.
I’ve been doing some testing though. Seems to me the AA builds are a bigger impact (and frankly faster than the spells). Gear and adorns matter more than spells too. I’ll admit though — because I’d been doing the crafting quests for etyma, and I have a maxed adorner, I was able to completely adorn our gear in the basic crit chance purple runes as fast as we finished the quests in the signature line. For someone who had started in the expansion at release that wouldn’t have been true.
Like I said below going from expert to master will likely result in a less than 20% boost to your DPS.
Getting your Cast Speed to 100% (cast time reduced by half), Reuse Speed to 100% (cooldown reduced by half) and Recovery Speed to 100% (reduce the time between casts) will automatically yield a 100% improvement in your DPS for every spell not just that one.
Add in a proper AA build that optimizes your DPS if you’re a DPS class and working on optimizing your cast rotation and you’ll see a much bigger improvement than just going from expert to master.
And if your guild was requiring people to have all masters and forcing the to pay to complete I wouldn’t have been part of it even before the price changes. I don’t see the benefit of going from expert to master worth even a dime of real money, sorry.
“At launch, Masters were unbelievably rare and only dropped from Epic names. Over the years, they have trickled down to Epic trash, then to Heroic bosses. ”
That’s incorrect. I remember getting two masters prior to DoF launching from heroic trash. If the change happened, it happened very early on. By DoF, they became a hell of a lot more common. And anything below level 40 was more probably to drop a masters.
Personally I think that AA’s and gear have a much bigger impact on your overall DPS than just going from expert to master would.
Just a quick look at Solar Flare IX for the wizard shows that you’ll get a roughly 12.5% DPS improvement going from expert to master. Noticeable but not really game changing.
However, with the right AA’s and gear you can get an over 100% improvement in the expert alone. Sure, the master is still going to be 12.5% better but if, as they’ve stated repeatedly, the encounters are balanced around experts then having the master will make things slightly easier but it won’t be the difference between success and failure.
I’ll agree that on the DPS check fights if you don’t have the right gear and AA’s – or lets be honest here and say if you really don’t understand your character and their abilities – then you might as well stay home. But if you can’t beat an encounter without having 12% more DPS than the encounter was balanced for then you have other issues you need to figure out.
Your base argument is sound but lacking, to see the bigger picture I would however look at how dps compounds. Where we are now, what appears to be small can be rather large for example, in your idea, you say a 12% increase. well on a spell that hits for 100 that is really quite small, but when you have spells that are hitting for a million we are talking the difference for 12 extra damage to 120,000. That is not taking into effect the new critical system which boosts it even more, nor the point that you need to compound that over all the spells you use, nor the fact that your aa works on those numbers too.
I have seen where a person who has masters and others who do not can have a marked increase in the overall dps. you are right, when you say 1 spell, but if you take the toon as a whole, the difference between masters and experts becomes pretty pronounced, and even more so when you go to grandmaster. Now if they are truly going to balance around experts, then this becomes a non issue, but if they do that then the encounters will become trival for those who are mastered out.
All in all, you will see they will balance encounters towards the upper end like they always have and you will see a new call to get all grandmasters.
In the overall scheme this is nothing more than a way to up the dps cap without having to add more levels and rewrite even more code. It also adds some nice money to the pocket book because they know that the raiders and higher end players will all clamor to get the spells grand mastered.
For those that are not worried about it, you are not the target audience on this change.
I think we’ve circled back to, and are in agreement with, my original comment 🙂 The spell tiers matter most to the raiders. They might be worth paying for to those who do nothing but heroics, but I honestly still doubt that. For those of us who solo or duo — they are likely the difference between whether or not we can take a chance on the heroics, but don’t impact the Advanced Solo zones.
If you’re a raider – yes, you want every edge you can get, especially when first tackling a zone, and you’ll want everyone grandmastered even if the zone is (as they insist) balanced on Expert. For you – yep, it’s a pain because while you can make the expert you either need 30 days per master; pay for it; or get lucky on drops. Grandmaster will be craftable though – so the question is how hard is it going to be to craft them? For a raiding guild I’d guess it won’t be *that* hard, but who knows?
For those who mostly do heroics I personally think it’s less of an issue — make the expert, research the master, wait for the grandmaster or ancient. DPS check or not – it’s a matter of an edge so long as you’re geared and AA’d appropriately. Though an edge helps when learning the zone, so does a willingness to die trying!
Maybe it’s my age, or the fact that I can usually only play a couple days a week anyway – but I do feel like I pay enough for EQ2 that I’m not going to toss money at it to complete something I can get with time instead.
lol, I understand exactly where you are coming from on this one. Most of my masters have come from patience and luck drops. I reserve judgement on the crafting side, guessing it will be crazy expensive at first. I still prefer having the top end stuff for all content, but then, I don’t have a lot of time to go through the zones slow. lol
Math is math though and a 12% boost is a 12% boost. A spell that only does 100 damage better not be used against a mob where you need to be doing a base of 100,000 or a million.
Yes, that adds up and if you had a 10% boost across all your spells you’d see a boost in your DPS. The problem I have is that if you require people to have masters and the only reasonable way you can expect them to get them is to pay SC to complete the research why not just cut out the middle man and let them pay SC to buy the masters.
That is in essence what you’re saying here. People were buying their masters for real money and they raised the cost of doing that. Isn’t that pay to win that everyone always complains about? Is the next step just to put raid gear out for $50 a piece?
I think more to the point is that they raised the price right as they added them basically milking the people who want to play at the higher level.
Raised the price as they added what?
Masters have been in since launch. Grandmaster has been in but you could only get 1 spell to that level every 5 levels or whatever it is.
The change they announced at SoE Live is that now you’ll be able to get every spell to Grandmaster and a select few to Ancient. So in essence Grandmaster becomes the new master and Ancient is the new Grandmaster. Except that Ancient is only going to be available as a very rare drop. Grandmaster is supposed to be available as a drop, as crafted and from research.
So really you’ll come out ahead. Right now the only way to get a master is to either get lucky and get a rare drop or to research it. If you go the research option you have to spend either time or money. Once these changes go live you’ll have a third choice, get the components (probably the new rares so yeah, more time there or in game plat) and have it crafted.
So really they’re giving those that want to play at the highest level more options of how to get there. It’s just if you want it right now it’s going to cost you more but aren’t those that play at that level always the ones saying that there should be a cost associated with getting the best stuff?
you must have missed the whole research cost increase.
I love the misconception that charging me for convenience is milking the player base.
1. If the convenience items and services are too cheap they become the norm. That’s closer to milking the Everyman.
2. With high prices only the lazy and/or cashed up will be milked for cash. The typical player can’t drop $30 on an instant master.
Micro transactions are the true f2p staple, but eq2 seems a happier place with subs and a few big spenders carrying the costs.
Fyi I’m a raider and would be fine if they sold to raid gear to slackers at $500 per set of armour. It won’t make them awesome, few will do it and thanks for the money! 🙂
Its just a fancy way of adding
1) More grind for all, everyone who WAS mastered is now not
2) it reintroduces the fact taht you have to sub to get the highest tier of spells, as it was previously.
Also, will this change anything about masters? I think thats a better question really, because today, the ToV overland zones – and Obol as well – have zero trash loot besides weapons adorns in treasured chests. Raise your hand if you have EVER seen trash in zones drop anything besides that, heck they dont even drop adepts 🙂
And we will now have a spell progression that is goes
Adept (dropped)
Expert (crafted)
Master (Dropped)
Grandmaster (Crafted)
Ancient (Drops)
Does make it … interesting for research upgrades right?
Today you can get experts, realtively inexpesively, then go for master and yoru ALMOST there… new progression your like … 3rd grade with “Just” experts, because no matter what raids/content is tuned FOR .. perception is reality.
Will the grandmaster thing and ancient apply retroactively? I am thinking about the level 50-60 spells from DoF that continues to be relevant like Tsunami for monks or the level 80 TSO/ROK specials like Thieves Guild.
Because if so that will be fantastic and I will be farming the hell out of DOF for the ancients for those spells.
And as someone who has raided and played casual, I found mastering out fairly easy, even without research or spending xash
cash. However if they lower master drop rates could be an issue. And it is kinda nice to see my crafters become relevant again.
And another thing you guys are forgetting about Masters is that potency is a thing. The higher the spell the better the potenct agains and crit bonus.