Runes of Magic US / AU

Well since your talking about Crafted gears....

I want to inform everyone that blending 2 set pieces from 80, 82, 85 crafted dps gears ( Leather/Chain...Tailoring for Mage ) will grant a better stat bonus than the equivalent lvl Hard Mode gear, and in some cases the Crafted gear for certain slots has more desirable ghost stats than the hard mode....

About the only thing that makes Hard Mode/PoM gear better is these are the only suits that offer damage. But if you pay attention the
Physical and Magical Defense ratings of any mode of same level are the Same( not positive about PoM gear but can always compare it to the Shell gear since the vendors are right next to each other). Ghost Stats and Set bonuses are the differences.

So yes now crafted gear can be very viable to get yourself geared to run any mode instances, I think what they have done with crafting is excellent to this point, is about time that crafting other than Alch n Cooking are viable crafts. Not to mention you can get stats even thou for some odd reason they made all the crafted gear pretty much only with Mage/healer stats...which sucks for anyone that is not a Mage or healer.

If they really want to bridge the gap between hard mode and easy mode players then they need to rework how one can obtain weapons, since weapons only drop out of Hard Mode and you cannot get weapons for PoMs. Yes you can use mementos to obtain the last instances hard mode weapons which can work just fine.

And I get the impression that they are trying to make it a bit easier for players to get geared well enough to run any content they have available in game, but it does seem that the price of stuff just keeps escalating.

And as to why since we got level 80 crafted gear, i have been saying and shouting to use the crafted gear!!! Funny how on Reni most Endgamers whisper me and the other gear crafters for the gloves/pants/belts level 85, because they are the best beside POM'S and not too far behind the POM's. Disturbed has a lot of players wearing the said gear and can rock instances with them, ya not top top engame gear, but heck i make it free for them to enjoy the game, why pay 200M for a chest piece when you can have one with about 5% less on Pdef/Mdef and other stats on it for 10M to 20M for OD gear.

I think that Gameforge or Runewaker finally listened to the players/crafters, to give us viable gear for the game, for the amount of time we spent over the years leveling our crafting skills ;-). Level 80/82/85 gear combined is some of the best you can get, won't be burning bosses in 15 seconds, but you will be able to kill it and enjoy yourself.

Next time you see an endgamer, look at his gear, if they didn't swap it loll, and you will find crafted gear on them for sure.

So talk to your local crafters and see what they got in stock for you and how they can help you.

BTW this is a great discussion and ful of great ideas, keep it up

@Borella "You can claim curiosity, but nobody plays those other classes because they are useless. They are branded as DPS classes yet don't do dps, and if they're support, they don't provide enough support to justify how low their dps is. Maybe a 36% fire damage increase is useful, IF you have a full party of mages, which nobody except apparently Indigo does. Maybe some more attack power is useful, or more damage is useful, but not if you can bring another R/M or a Warden that will just do the 15M damage that buff would've added to the rest of the party."


Sort of off topic, however I'd just like to point out that those W/M's that most endgame guilds run with, Also benefit for a 36% fire dmg increase. I know everyone thinks Indigo is a joke cause we have players who chose to use classes they enjoy over classes that simply perform more dps, however to go along with the point Xamd is making, that is the reason we have so much fun with it and aren't always complaining that the developers are at fault.


But yes, 36% more dmg to half of W/M's dps is still a substantial amount, not to mention wl/m can out dmg many classes on long fights.
/end off topic

sure, they can make more gear more viable, it doesn't change the cost to enhance the gear. if I am gonna spend a couple hundred dollars for a set of gear, I'm gonna be darn well sure its the best I can get. not "almost best" or "only marginally worse". it's gonna be the best in slot that I can get. that's the problem I see ATM. sure, making easy mode gear viable may help those people going from nothing to geared, but then they will just have to pay for another set of gear afterwards.

at the current cost of the game, it's not really cost effective to upgrade gear from easy to norm to crafted to HM. might as well go straight to HM and skip paying for 2 sets of gear.

Quoted from "Rougetopriest"

@Borella "You can claim curiosity, but nobody plays those other classes because they are useless. They are branded as DPS classes yet don't do dps, and if they're support, they don't provide enough support to justify how low their dps is. Maybe a 36% fire damage increase is useful, IF you have a full party of mages, which nobody except apparently Indigo does. Maybe some more attack power is useful, or more damage is useful, but not if you can bring another R/M or a Warden that will just do the 15M damage that buff would've added to the rest of the party."


Sort of off topic, however I'd just like to point out that those W/M's that most endgame guilds run with, Also benefit for a 36% fire dmg increase. I know everyone thinks Indigo is a joke cause we have players who chose to use classes they enjoy over classes that simply perform more dps, however to go along with the point Xamd is making, that is the reason we have so much fun with it and aren't always complaining that the developers are at fault.


But yes, 36% more dmg to half of W/M's dps is still a substantial amount, not to mention wl/m can out dmg many classes on long fights.
/end off topic

What are these long fights you speak of? Because everything in Grotto dies in 30 seconds or less. As does everything in Beth.

Regardless, if using all of the best dps class in the game makes the instance too easy, that is poor game design. It IS the developers fault. The developers balanced poorly. All dps classes should do roughly comparable damage, and support classes should actually provide worthwhile support. There should not be such a huge gap between R/M and everyone else. Furthermore, once damage and support are balanced, then bosses SHOULD be made more challenging or less challenging depending on how the dps were balanced.

If you choose to take a bunch of oddball lower dps classes, and have fun with that, that's fine. But it shouldn't be a requirement in order for the instance to be challenging. An instance should be challenging no matter what setup you take into it. If you choose to take 9 R/M's, cool, that instance should still be challenging. It's not up to the players to choose oddball classes or tailor their class choice to make things harder; it is the job of the developer to make sure that instances are created and classes are balanced in such a way that anyone can find a challenge, no matter what classes they play.

Quoted from "Cike"

at the current cost of the game, it's not really cost effective to upgrade gear from easy to norm to crafted to HM. might as well go straight to HM and skip paying for 2 sets of gear.

Or they can try to go straight to HM, never get there in time for the next instance because it's not cost effective, and then either quit or whine incessantly about how expensive endgame gear is and how the elitist endgamers are ruining the game. This is what I see happen all too often. People try to go straight to the top end, best gear in the game, and either get discouraged or mad that they can't achieve it cheaply or quickly.

That or sell 5K dollars worth of dias to buy everything, but I doubt that's a viable option for most of the playerbase.

Quoted from "Borella"

What are these long fights you speak of? Because everything in Grotto dies in 30 seconds or less. As does everything in Beth.

Regardless, if using all of the best dps class in the game makes the instance too easy, that is poor game design. It IS the developers fault. The developers balanced poorly. All dps classes should do roughly comparable damage, and support classes should actually provide worthwhile support. There should not be such a huge gap between R/M and everyone else. Furthermore, once damage and support are balanced, then bosses SHOULD be made more challenging or less challenging depending on how the dps were balanced.

If you choose to take a bunch of oddball lower dps classes, and have fun with that, that's fine. But it shouldn't be a requirement in order for the instance to be challenging. An instance should be challenging no matter what setup you take into it. If you choose to take 9 R/M's, cool, that instance should still be challenging. It's not up to the players to choose oddball classes or tailor their class choice to make things harder; it is the job of the developer to make sure that instances are created and classes are balanced in such a way that anyone can find a challenge, no matter what classes they play.

Mandara HM took our 12 man group back then (few months ago) 40 mins to kill. Wish there was a Wl/M around lol.

But yeah, agreed with some of the points in your post. I can understand if support classes do a bit less damage, but it shouldn't be to the point where its no longer increasing overall party damage.

Would be interesting if a boss casted an AoE that dealt damage equal to say, 1% of the total damage being dealt to it. Forces you to burn slowly and do strats...

And honestly, I think Scout DPS should be the "viable standard" that most classes should be doing...

Jeeze.....if everyone thinks instances are a mass burn with 9 r/m's...should try 9 wd/w's or w/wd's....then you'll have something to complain about.
Also read somewhere up that wd/s wasn't worth taking into a party over another 'r/m'.. have to disagree with that. A lvl 85 Raise Morale gives a ridiculous damage increase to all in party, and wd/s dps itself isn't that bad.
If there is no wd/s in party our tank prefers to go wd/s over wd/w, not because he himself does more dps but because over all the party as a whole does more.

Quoted from "CammoXD"

Jeeze.....if everyone thinks instances are a mass burn with 9 r/m's...should try 9 wd/w's or w/wd's....then you'll have something to complain about.
Also read somewhere up that wd/s wasn't worth taking into a party over another 'r/m'.. have to disagree with that. A lvl 85 Raise Morale gives a ridiculous damage increase to all in party, and wd/s dps itself isn't that bad.
If there is no wd/s in party our tank prefers to go wd/s over wd/w, not because he himself does more dps but because over all the party as a whole does more.

IDK who said that, must have missed it. Wd/s is a huge dps boost. So are classes like m/wl, but none of those exists on reni. So a wd/s in each party is nice. Yeah ive heard good things about wd/w and w/wd does well on runs as well. But the point is, there are classes designed for burns. There are a few support based classes that are nice to have along. But the problem is not classes, its the fact that instances are designed for burns.

It's funny how some people say spend hundred of dollars on gear on the game, when they never spent a dime, never ran an instance pass HOS/ZS/DL and still come to the forums to denigrate the game.

With people using crafted gear that is available for cheap and run instances or wait like Borella said to get the full hardmode gear, stat it, plus it and then the newer instance will have come out and begin the process again and never running the previous ones. You wanna play the game and have fun, play with what is available to you and affordable.

I wish the GM's would give some people that never have anything positive to say about the game to get a long vacation from the forums. Funny how WE = REAL PLAYERS can have an awesome conversation about this thread, you have one individual that tries to drive more people away from scaring them with the costs of it. Try getting a toon past level 50 or 55.

Borella don't forget we are not all in Heretic ;-) loll Our fights take longer when we run the hardmode hahaha but i get what you are saying.

Quoted from "zidlef"

Make it challenging and make it so that if you can't run it, you can't move forward. Maybe then people will learn to play their classes, gear up and learn strats for it.

Make it challenging, YES; the next part.. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

I, like many others, know how to play my classes, have geared up and know the strats for most of the instances.

Do I come to rom for the instances? NO.

RoM is not JUST about the instances and many players come here for reasons other than going into those pits of Hell. If you enjoy running them, more power (or in the case of this thread - more strats) to you, but please, stop trying to force your view of entertainment on everyone else.

@Xamd, I vote for option 2 (make the strats hard) with a decent scoop of option 1 (make the bosses hard enough that gear makes a difference). Why? Because this is a gear mod game, and if there's no reason to upgrade to new gear, why bother gearing? And that's where GF makes the money.

That pretty much sums up GCH and ToSH at level.

We didn't need epic German-standard gear to clear either- but we were all upgrading everything we could because it did help. And it took the crazy Germans a few months (!) to clear both instances on hard because the strats were hard.

@Zid, Ziddy Ziddy, Ziddy.

There is a difference between complaining because you want to complain and pointing out the things that are legitimately broken, and that's what Bo is doing. Support classes should bring meaningful support, and dps classes should be balanced to bring about the same amount of dps. That's really not asking a whole lot. We know not every guild is Heretic, and no one would want it that way- different people have different experiences in game, and we all add something. But we can all also only speak to our own experiences. He wasn't aiming that at you- stop jumping in front of bullets. He wasn't aiming it at GameForge, either, it's RuneWaker causing these problems. If the whole forums can't get behind a little RW bashing... sheesh.

@Roguetwopriest, I don't think Indigo qualifies as a joke. You've certainly earned my respect. You may be low-pop, but I sure as hell know hard that is, I spent the vast majority of my game life on the PvE server with the lowest population. It makes things harder, for sure, but my whole point to this is that harder makes it sweeter.

@thread, burning = bad, strat = good, within reason. It's all about balance. Belathis tried to be a good instance, but RW seems to have problems with actually making that happen while still making it fun. 6 mans, or in this case, 6 mans and Bel, which should be a 6 man- the instances that come out between chapters, they've been badly designed too, but at least they made lipservice to non-burn. But it's misplaced- it's like they don't think about player needs at all. If I have said this once, I have said it a million times: I feel like RW has no idea how to play their own game.

Bel is annoying because escort mission instances are annoying, and the last boss strat, as has been pointed out, has a difficulty level suited to a hardmode chapter instance, not a mid-chapter instance. So they got the difficulty right- but they forgot and put him in the wrong instance. If he was the last boss in Grotto, people would be ok with it- heck, I would be happy.

Instance design, you would think anyway, isn't rocket science.

You have to balance difficulty with the level of reward you get, or people get cranky. Look at Annelia- she is easily the best boss in this game, hands down. She is hard as hell, and still worth doing, because she drops stuff people still need- set skills, and at the time, the best shield and best talisman for a good two expansions. That's good design. Hard as hell- great reward.

It seems simple to me, but maybe I'm a moron. The formula for happy endgamers and motivated midgamers looks like this to me:

Chapter instances (12-mans hm) need a mix of unburnable strat and burnable strat like ToSH or GCH. You want it hard because the 12 mans drop the main set everyone needs. It should require good gear but not insane gear, and it should require people working together to get the strat done so that it can't be beast-moded by people with German gear. That way, people with marginal gear will want to upgrade so they can do the instance, and the people already doing it will want to upgrade to make farming easier.

In-between chapter instances (6-mans, pre-Bel anyway) should be easier in general, because they are mostly stat-farms. You want the mix to be about the opposite of the 12-mans, mostly burn with a decent side of strat, so no one gets bored, but it's not too challenging to farm. People who weren't able to get into the last 12-man can use these instances to farm their stats and gear up for the next 12-man. So it motivates the already-geared (lets go get some stats to sell!) and it motivates the midgame (let's go get some stats, I need to stat my helm!).

But RW doesn't seem to pay much attention to what endgamers or midgamers need, or to player motivation at all. They chuck hard-mode bosses in stat farms and stat-farm burn bosses in hard mode. So the imbalance makes it less fun for everyone, and it makes it hard for me to motivate myself to run much of anything. Beth is too easy, Bel is too annoying, and Grotto is too boring. I will run it, cause I need stats from Grotto, but I don't run it because it's fun. ToSH was fun. GCH was fun.

I freaking miss fun.

Meanwhile, 95% of the guilds will wipe if the first boss in Grotto HM as much as sneezes...

Sooo much QQ. The best gear is Instance and PoM gear with only one exception, the level 85 crafted gloves. The level 85 crafted cape/boots are an excellent #2, if you can't afford Instance/PoM prices. PoM rings are #1 but the EoJ ring is an easy and practical #2.

Only problem I see with going all crafted/shell/PoM gear and nothing from instances is the lack of Damage from the 4 piece set bonus and Chest combo.

I only use crafted gloves now.

Quoted from "ruisen2000"

Meanwhile, 95% of the guilds will wipe if the first boss in Grotto HM as much as sneezes...

95% of guilds aren't ready for hardmode instances, Ruisen. I am not saying this is a good thing, because in some MMO's, there's instance progression, where you go from easy mode to normal to hard, and it's expected that only 5% of guilds can run hard. But that doesn't work with RoM's gearing model, because no one could afford to spend to upgrade three sets of gear per expansion. Because of that, while we have easy, normal and hard, the only instance that matters is hard. Only progression in RoM is gear progression, and instance progression is "clear hard mode."

That's why we have mems and poms and eoj's and shells and crafted stuff. And unbindable BoP gear.

Any of those 95% could get into Grotto, since it's all burn. All you have to do to clear Grotto is reroll to "viable" classes and gear enough to bring the deeps. I know that's easier said than done, but it can be done. Do I think it's fun, or good, or well-designed? Nope. But it is doable.

Quoted from "Soulcalibur"

Sooo much QQ. The best gear is Instance and PoM gear with only one exception, the level 85 crafted gloves. The level 85 crafted cape/boots are an excellent #2, if you can't afford Instance/PoM prices. PoM rings are #1 but the EoJ ring is an easy and practical #2.

Only problem I see with going all crafted/shell/PoM gear and nothing from instances is the lack of Damage from the 4 piece set bonus and Chest combo.

I only use crafted gloves now.

It dosent matter if its the best. Crafted is more than viable for endgame dungeons for a dps. Tanks are a different issue. You're right, you do lose a bit of damage from the chest and set bonus, but you can use a Rogue hardmode chest instead of the crit damage chest. Those sell for significantly cheaper and are much better when used outside of the set bonus. Even without that chest, you make up for the loss of damage with crit, which in grotto is much more important. Essentially you make up for a los of +damage set bonuses with overwhelming crit.

Fann ;-) i wasn't disagreeing with Borella ;-) i get what he says don't get me wrong loll. As i told Borella before, he can discuss his opinions and make his point, altough i don't always agree with him, he makes me think outside the box and makes me realize that he has good points ;-).

At least he doesn't come here just to denigrate the game, the players and bad trolling. He stands by what he believes as i do, we are not always right, but we ain't always wrong either ;-) lol. But this thread is an awesome discussion of players who play the game, run instances and share their experiences. Not only complaining of the costs, the questing, the stuff they should have free etc. Nice to see people that can agree that you can mismatch gear and it works fine to enjoy the game without being all endgame gear and doing 2M flames loll.

keep it up people

Who on earth were you cranking at then, Zid? Did the mods toss a post that I missed?

Anyway, it is a good thread. Kudos for good threads! This place has been too much useless QQ lately. I don't mind qq, but at least mix some info in or something. Which we have. Hah.

Quoted from "Darwec"

It dosent matter if its the best. Crafted is more than viable for endgame dungeons for a dps. Tanks are a different issue. You're right, you do lose a bit of damage from the chest and set bonus, but you can use a Rogue hardmode chest instead of the crit damage chest. Those sell for significantly cheaper and are much better when used outside of the set bonus. Even without that chest, you make up for the loss of damage with crit, which in grotto is much more important. Essentially you make up for a los of +damage set bonuses with overwhelming crit.

I understand that, but hey I'm not the type that likes #2 type gear. At least, not anymore.



Dmg is king. Crit is important to an extent, A) don't have the necessary gear to have a good crit rate B) you dont know how to buff. Diminishing returns are never fun. Of course all this doesn't matter unless you have enough PA for Grotto.

Rogues of Magic
RoM
R/M

It's a conspiracy!

Fan's point of rerolling to run 12 man HM instances is a bit extreme but also partially necessary. If your guild is like mine, then you have F2P, cheap P2P, and high rollers playing this game. What you need to look at is party composition. Clearing HM in this game currently is fairly easy with the right parties. Now I would not tell everyone in the guild to reroll r/m/. Look at what you have and who can efficiently swap classes quickly and skillfully. That deadbeat in your guild that has never learned to play the class he has, should not be one you have reroll.

I recommend full magic or full physical or 6/6. YOU MUST LEARN TO BUFF WITH OTHER CLASSES. - this is the #1 thing imo that guilds should do that don't. General thinking is oh cool a D/Wd is in party, ill get my damage buff now. But you should have an alt for every class that gives you a 15 min or more buff. and if no player of that class joins the raid. Log that alt and help yourself.

Quoted from "Mrpushpop"

and if no player of that class joins the raid. Log that alt and help yourself

imo too much effort