Build change after crafted gear rework

With the recent change in crafted gear and artifact balancing, how is your build going? Have you guys changed gear? What gems are you using in each slot? What's your armor and weapon of choice? Did your effectiveness in combat get better or worse?

I didn't start messing around with gear yet, I plan to do some testing next weekend.

Please share your thoughts!

 

Yeah, I kinda suck at theory-crafting; it'll be interesting to see what people come up with. What I'm sorta seeing is I need to figure out if any of the new gems are as good as or better than the attunement you give up to use them, which is a tricksy thing to figure out, given the apples/oranges nature. Or, figure out if using a mix of the new imbued attunement gems and arti gems nets me any gain over straight attunement.

As well as farming froggy rings to lessen the pain Elgarion caused to the Cult of Green Skin.

 

that's what i'm aiming for, but have not mathed it

 

I mean, it should work. I currently get 45 air attunement (10-10-10-5-5-5) from gems and jewels. With the imbued ones, I should be able to get 111 air attunement (25-25-25-12-12-12). So even if I drop the attunement off the chest, and two of the jewelry slots, I'll get 62 air attunement with a gem slot and two jewel slots available. I'd have to figure out if the Ranged Combat gem is better or worse than the Deadly Bandit gem; those seem to be the best candidates for my build. Jewels are where it gets really tricky, there's so many. But I feel that going with imbued attunement will be best in most cases.

And then, there's all the cases where you need to figure out if the artifact with an attunement gem is better than crafted gear with an artifact gem...

 

IF I COULD GET A STUPID THEURGY GEM RECIPE TO DROP, that is.

 

I've gotten a slight boost; the durability on crafted gear made more of a difference than the gems or arti nerfs for me. I'm running dual daggers in Chaos/Tactics spec, relying on Riposte as my primary damage dealer. Artifacts were:

• Boots of the Energetic Tamer: These got a hit to their move speed, which is the primary reason I wore them. I do have some fizzle issues though, so unless I get some fizzle jewels and decide they're worth using in a jewel slot over other choices I still have to sacrifice some set bonus to keep this slot leather or cloth. Likely I'll keep the boots. I value move speed highly, as it lets me get from mob to mob faster, fitting more in while adventuring.
  
• Savage Sash of Swiftness: This belt also took a good sized move speed hit, which was rough. The attack speed hit didn't make much difference to my build since I use glyph attacks at a high enough rate that I rarely fit in auto-attacks between. I will almost certainly be swapping this for a crafted belt of either 46 strength or 36str/17dex, which will be a nice power boost at the cost of some move speed.
• Necklace of Cautious Precision: The move speed penalty was very greatly reduced as I'm running a Rare, and this offsets a lot of the lost movespeed from other items. It's still best in slot dex, so I might keep it and/or upgrade it, unless I find a jewel worth losing 10-14 dex for.
• Ring of the Gambler: Lost some dex, but the crit damage penalty isn't nearly as harsh, so overall no worries. I used to have to take this ring off for some fights, now it's less of an issue.
  
• Ring of the Cuttlekin: The dex loss is a bummer, but honestly I'm more saddened by losing the jump height. No big practical implications, just being able to jump a lot is fun.
• Quiver of Jealous: The draw speed boost helps my build a fair bit, and I only run an uncommon so I was not affected by the nerfs. My opinion on this arty in general is that an epic is incredibly hard to grind out, is only available seasonally, and since you only really get one shot at masterworks and enchants, you're incredibly likely to take a base stats hit compared to a crafted backslot where once can keep trying until a full stat stack comes through. With the soft cap on draw/cast modifiers I don't see why this needed such a harsh change. It doesn't affect my build/loadout, but still seems unnecessary.
  
• Leather Bandit Gloves: A big hit to the poison effectiveness stat, which for a rapid-fire build using lots of corpion poison was still only a fairly minor DPS hit overall. They give extra dex over crafted options, but I will likely go to crafted leather gloves for base damage or crit chance and keep working blanks until I get a full dex and str stack. Again sacrificing set bonus for reduced fizzle.

Other gear:

• Dual Sylvan Daggers with Elven Hilt: I use Thrust Damage/Doubleshlash Damage/Riposte Damage/Crit Damage on the masterworks side for these, and as much STR or DEX as I have durability left for on the enchant side. The extra durability and not having to rely on an exceptional for full dur makes a ton of difference here. They're rough mats to get and I basically get more useful blanks to be able to push harder. Giaism gems here to support Strength of Earth, soon to change to something more powerful. Perhaps a bandit gem?
  
• Constantan Chain Chest: Full STR stack and a Giaism gem for Strength of Earth Power enchant. The same thing with an Imbued Giaism Gem would be a nice boost, but would cost too much to be worth it, the full STR stack + 40 Dur enchant takes a lot of tries, so I won't be spending the mats for an extra 15 attunement.
• Constant Chain Legs: High STR and a bit of DEX. Constantan in these slots is giving me weapon damage and the focus I need to spam glyphs.
• Constantan Plate Helm: Should switch to a chain helm or even dragon headdress for better fizzle, but this one is has a full STR stack plus a little DEX, so it might be a while before I'm willing to spend the mats on an upgrade.

Going forward I'll be testing gems to better fit my weapons, if nothing else imbued gems will give a bit more help than the normal ones. Will also be doing a lot of testing to see if a crafted ring/neck with jewels gives better stats than anything I have on. I'll have to see how fireflies scales past 100%, if at all, with the jewels. The changes have also opened up a lot of chance for niche decks and optimizations.

I'll likely duplicate my buff deck, which used to be tied to gear with lower fizzle and higher move speed, and have a version for quick swapping with no gear tie, and a version that changes more gear than before to give better move speed and jump bonus. I'll add back-stab damage to my lich daggers as well, using the new gems. They don't have riposte since the liches I fight (casters) get bodyslammed, and don't proc parry. This will speed up that specific fight, and there are a lot of similar places where I can make niche improvements. These are somewhat aside from my main gear set, so while I'm roughly as powerful as I was before in 80% of situations, there will be another 20% or so where my power does get a decent boost.

My build took a slight power hit this release, but it's a lot smaller than the gain it made last release. In the end I might even be getting a little boost, given the power of the gems and jewels; I just have to find the combo that works for my build.

 

I hit up Chris to see if maybe the combat speed nerf could be reviewed and potentially lessened a bit. If that nerf was considered adequate, then I feel another round of speed nerfs after the fact is maybe too much. All the hits to movement speed have been disheartening, and they keep coming.

Same. That one felt unnecessary, since there's a hard cap in place, and it's not really a stat that affects combat. "Just get two epics and you'll be back to where you were..." Uh... yeah. I'll get right on that.

 

Yeah, I'm feelin' that. I used to be able to jump up to my top stack of large planting beds. Not any more; had to cobble some "stairs" out of stone blocks to harvest tonight.

 

We will rise again, my friend, and visit our revenge upon Elgarion, our mortal enemy. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu F'taghn!

 

Ruh roh!

 

If this insight can help you chose : Ranged combat gem only affects auto/charged attacks, not your skill's damage, meanwhile weapon damage gem affects everything (although for your auto/charged attacks the impact will be lessened).

As for Jewels, Rapid Fire seems like the go to, Rapid fire is already a strong skill, and +30% rapid fire will probably make a huge impact.

In my case, I'll speak for my favorite set-up, the Bard.

For the gear, nothing's had to change in most cases. As a bard, I already had 0 artifacts of choice (the song duration from the ringmaster vest isn't useful for my gameplay).

I use Meteoric Iron full plate armor, with (currently) a Gaiaism Gem to get the Strength of Earth power enchantment, so I will be looking into trying with a Wicked Caster Gem to speed up my song cast time, and an Imbued Gem to get an extra 15 attunement.

For my shield, I currently have a basic meteoric Iron shield with no gems, but I will be socketing a wicked caster gem for sure into that, that one was an easy one to chose for me.

For my main hand, considering I don't fight much outside of my bard songs, I was running around with a Gaiaism wand to strengthen up my buffs, but with the new Wicked caster gem, I am considering a hammer with the gem, and that will allow me to lay down some nice Crowd Control!

For my jewelry slots, I currently had some old water attuned rings and necklace that I just decided to keep on using. I am considering 2 options here right now : 1. New jewelry with Stone Fist +15% jewels in them, considering I'm heavily invested in Earth attunement, my Stone fist would be a top contender for the choices I have. Otherwise, I might re-consider getting myself a pet to carry around to simply get some "free" dps increase, without taming spec, and then just use 2 ringmaster rings, but that isn't decided yet. If I do go the hammer route, the +15% bludgeon stun effectiveness might also be a very good choice. Ohh, and now that I think about it, the -5% fizzle chance jewels seem very tempting, since I am in full plate, but considering how rare and hard those are gonna be to get, that is a very long term goal!

As for power loss, I didn't get hit, since I didn't rely on artifacts at all, and the Atonal Aria balance that happened during R89 was more than deserved in my opinion. Savage Sonata taking so long to cast simply means people now want me to tag along and sing that for them, and being bard spec, its even better for them, so that was finally a nice change for one who plays something that is supposed to be a dedicated support class!

 

Kinda where I'm leaning. Also, the others are a little harder to come by. For example, it'll be a very long time before I'm farming Xen Penetrators.

Also liking the dodge jewel, though Acara drops are sorta off limits to me too. If I find some boots on vendors I may give it a go.

...and very interested in the confusion resistance jewel. Especially as it's situational; I wouldn't feel I'm giving up better effects by making a set of confusion jewelry, since I'd only wear the confusion stuff when I needed it.

 

And the craft stuff will be pretty awesome. Though, I wish rings of Chrysopoeia were a bit easier to come by through dailies.

(Yes, I know you can get them from a daily at LB's castle, but unless I've just had bad RNG, you only seem to get them from turning in key #3, and I can't get far enough to reliably get one every day without it turning into a chore. They also drop from kobold engineers, but I've farmed them for hours without getting one. I wish the ecology researcher daily gave one; it feels like a better fit than frogkin, given that the reward giver is always an alchemist. But I won't say no to a daily froggy ring, either. The Cult of Green Skin has many machinations in progress.)

 

Don't play much these days, but I still use a death/chaos spec with a lot of air, so I'll be taking a pretty huge attunement hit between lich ring and thunder branches. The straight death decks are probably still okay, and the loss of huge pet bonus on death staff isn't really a big deal, but even those will still take a decent hit due to lich ring. Death magic is a little weird because you cross these thresholds where you go from just being dead vs. something to being able to survive forever because of a little bit more damage and a little bit less resist.

I'll probably play some sort of melee for a while. I've always liked melee, and it's cool that we'll be able to have gems that make melee itself better instead of just adding a little bit of str via earth attunement or healing via life or whatever. I'll probably play bludgeon, but I do also still have an unused meteoric 2h sword with both legacy and revised rend masterworks...

One thing I'm definitely not going to do is just race to whatever thing they mess up that's obviously OP and then get mad when it gets nerfed.

 

Completely agree on that. You can only get the Common ring only from turning in a the #4 key?. Which is not exactly an easy task....(Do you know how difficult that is??) that's a bit odd. Not sure what suggestion to add what quest to add this too though. I get that they want to make this daily a better reward for this specific scene. But even the #1 (which is fairly easy to obtain) is only the Common Ring of Jones.... Which can be found from sacks?

You can get them from Kobold Grenadiers, which I noticed from using a kill counter in a LUA Mod, you don't really find that many to kill. So that may seem low possibly (since you aren't actually killing that many). But I did find one of them from the Kobold Grenadiers in Graff Gem Mines.

 

Er, yeah, my mistake. I meant Grenadiers, but for some reason the word "Engineers" popped out. You can find a reasonable amount of them in K'rul, and they're pretty common in Spectral Peaks. When I'm trying to get a hills wolf encounter, I'll often pop into Spectral and kill all the engineers, then pop back out and see if a wolf spawned on the hill. Plus, the Spectral ones are the higher level ones that in theory have a better drop rate. K'rul has some of the higher level ones, but probably only on for every two or three of the mid-level ones.

As for quests... I think the Ecology Researcher and South Boundless Runebag are maybe the best fit, though only because the reward is handed out by an alchemist in both cases. I definitely think turning in the third key should be get you maybe one of the more powerful artis, given how tough it is to get. Maybe the Vex wand, since LB's castle seems to have some sort of fire motif going on. (It's also where the Sorcery Shrine and Imbued Sorcery Gem recipes drop.)

 

Actually... hm. Looking at the R88 notes, the ring is one of four artifacts given for the "four dailies in LB's Castle." What is the fourth daily? There's the three keys, but I'm blanking on what the fourth quest is there.

 

Oh, NVM. I figured it out. You get one reward for each of the keys, and you can also turn in a set of the encoded keycards. Not sure if you get the Ring of Chrysopoeia for the third key or the set of keycards. Either way, I think you have to get nearly to the end of the castle to get either the third key or a full set of keycards.

 

I went hunting in Skrekk today and got one, I think it came from a Kobold Grenadier.

 

My entire build got nuked. My items/gear went from tops (spending time and money on things when persistent was a promise) to terrible. I lost a ton of attunement (again I think my definition of persistent differs ……) and got nothing in return.

I went back to ashen wands from thunder branches because I needed way for focus because air shield got tanked hard, as did my air rings, Thunder branches and sage’s sash. And warlock chain. Persistence………

How can literally everything from my air shield, my dex bonus from air’s embrace, my air rings and my thunder branches get killed (including a nice f you Robert with adding spell focus costs to thunder branches - after lowering their power too lol) be taken away and in return I get……….. mobs that take down my shield and my stun getting reduced to almost powerless on anything powerful?

I was even having fun recasting my air shield. But I understand more nerfs are coming for my air build, which during my 1 hour with Chris was promised love because it was a underused, underpowered tree. Air AOE was discussed - never happened.

I used to be paranoid and think original backers were being pushed out to remove the last claiming parties to backing promises. But the actions make sense only when viewed through this optical vantage point.

Air was never a popular mage tree (archers aside). Now my gear got tanked, my air shield tanked (I understand it will get worse too) and my rares subject to unrarification by reselling of coto store copies. Waiting for a blood fountain to be offered again ……..

Bitter? Me? No. Just disappointed. I would think persistent would mean what the Oxford English Dictionary says it means - “firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.” Does that sound like how it is being defined here?

And the usual suspects who like to launch vituperative, and not particularly clever, responses about leaving please save your words. That we helped fund this game with our money and time gives us expeditions that promises would be kept. In a moral sense at least. Because this game was supported by fan base loyal to a legacy and history. We can be disappointed when that is being set aside.

It should not be surprising when the game’s economic decline can be tracked with the game’s abandoning of its original mission. The US economy was not as healthy when the game began. And no pandemic made games more playable (eg less social alternatives now for many compete with game time). But as the deviation from the original intent grows greater the player base and funding both evaporated. Coincidence? No. Just the Laws of economics at work.

No reach out from the devs since massive chances. For those who think large backers get any kind of favoritism, let me assure you we get nothing of the sort.

But the good news is ashen wands are now viable for air mages………… as is fustian………….. time to nerf both those………….. I am off to hunt a boar, we know how that ends. Jamie look after my wife and kids for me, Kingslayer