Itemization oddities (WoW)

Bizanich · 03-13-2005, 11:51 AM

Is Blizzard intentionally making stupid items/crap items/broken items so that they can improve things in the next Instance/Expansion?

Two items (which I'm "lucky" enough to have) make me irritated. Runeblade of Baron Rivendare and Demon Forged Breastplate.

The Runeblade was broken when I got it (first on Stormreaver, yay), so all it was was a badass looking two handed sword with high dps. Not horrible at all, but the effects?

Increased run (didn't work) and increased heath regeneration (didn't work).

The run is fixed, now....I believe it was hotfixed or something. It now gives a whopping 5% boost to run speed. Not fantastic at all for an epic drop off an instance boss (when compared to things like Deathstriker, anyways), though it did save me some points in Improved Hamstring! People on horses can't get away when hamstrung with that 5% run boost....

Demon Forged Breastplate is even worse. 597 armor, +12 stamina Plate chest piece with a 3% chance to steal 120 life over 4 seconds. Sounds interesting! Maybe for PvE farming or vs Rogues, slap a +100 health on it and have some fun......

Sadly, no. The damn effect requires channeling. If I get hit, it's broken, if I move, it breaks, if I use an ability? It breaks. We won't even go into the fact that since you have no idea when the effect will kick in, most likely you'll break it before it grabs more then 30 health, if that. In other words, it's a goddamn useless breastplate. A waste of materials to even build it.

There are other items just as messed up, I'm sure. I just can't believe some of the items that were designed. For a long time I tried to find reasons to hold off and not get an Arcanite Reaper due to having the purple 2 hander, but the Reaper is just so superior...

.

beepbeepbeep · 03-13-2005, 12:08 PM

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=12775

Check out the model on that 43 DPS two hander. Way to waste a perfectly good model. Assuming that picture is real.

Kolle · 03-13-2005, 12:34 PM

I always figured with a game this huge and so many items in it, that this kinda thing would be incredibly planned from lvl 1-60. That is, a few people in charge know exactly how everything fits in the grand scheme of loot and knows for a fact that useless bullshit isn't going on.

I think they did some things right, but it seems as if there were too many people working on loot that weren't communicating with each other as much as they should have.

Nakilos · 03-13-2005, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Demon Forged Breastplate is even worse. 597 armor, +12 stamina Plate chest piece with a 3% chance to steal 120 life over 4 seconds. Sounds interesting! Maybe for PvE farming or vs Rogues, slap a +100 health on it and have some fun......

Even Truesilver Breastplate is better imo, since I'd rather have a direct heal right now than over 4 seconds. Its still a piece of shit, but more so the Demon Forged BP is a glaring example of what is wrong with armorsmithing, though much to my surprise someone actually bought one from me. I have Invulnerable Mail plans too, was depressed to find out the effect is not even close to what the description alludes to, making it an even bigger waste of materials.

Lots of other itemization oddities, like at high levels weapons in general have *no* stats. No str/agi/sta, usually just a gimpy proc. So odd considering weapons almost always had stats. Makes 2h slightly gimpier too, as the better 2h mostly have no stat gains. MC armor (at least for warriors) is atrocious too. Only piece I'd use is Belt of Might atm for the dodge bonus, and Wrath helm...besides that, the rest is either barely better than Valor or there are better drops from UBRS. Silly really.

FoghornDeadhorn · 03-13-2005, 01:07 PM

Quote:

I have Invulnerable Mail plans too, was depressed to find out the effect is not even close to what the description alludes to, making it an even bigger waste of materials.

What? Elaborate please. I considered that chest to be the perfect dodge stack breastplate (the effacity of which I couldn't comment on as I've never had enough pieces to try it).

Bottom line is that most purps in the game blow. Most of the Carapace/Hide epics don't excite our people all that much, and they are a damned pain to get. If we had gotten a second hide instead of carapce there would have been much... "Um...well let's see...which of those is worth making again?" before awarding it.

Hell, most set items suck. I have a screenshot of some Alliance tool standing outside of spire with a full Valor set on. I wonder if he realizes that the first thought is "damn, a full Valor set," and the second thought is "HAHAHAHA, GIMP!" Same goes for Rogues and Hunters. I would say cloth sets are itemized well but only because they all have similar needs and can mix and match to their hearts desire. The fact that set bonuses for Devout, Magister's, and Dreadmist are hardly discussed, and itemization as a whole does not excite cloth casters period, is probably the cause of this more than anything.

I think probably somewhere out there is a person with a reasonable idea of what would make caster itemization interesting. Too bad no one at Blizzard is listening to them. I sure hope someone at Sigil is.

Nakilos · 03-13-2005, 01:13 PM

Quote:

What? Elaborate please. I considered that chest to be the perfect dodge stack breastplate (the effacity of which I couldn't comment on as I've never had enough pieces to try it).

Apparently it procs a DA effect like the paladin spell that cancels as soon as you melee and removes your agro in the process. So for a tank, its 100% garbage.

Kolle · 03-13-2005, 01:19 PM

I've harped on items for a long time now. I tried real hard to hit on it during beta up until now along with other things like forcing classes into a role when it isn't necessary.

The major source of dissapointment in loot rewards is that usually it's just more stats. Some have effects, like +dodge, but does that really matter? Yeah, you might dodge an extra time every now and then, but are you excited about that?

It seems their idea for epic raid loot was to let people have some resists and stats at the same time. Of course a lot of people might be forced to wear green resist gear anyway with epics sitting in their bags.

I think that was a bad idea.

We obviously don't want items with 5,000 stamina or 250 resists. That will make some classes useless in pvp and overpowered in pve.

What we need is special and unique effects that you don't see anywhere else. If you have to, hire an extra guy. His only job will be to sit at a desk, look at items, and come up with creative and cool effects or other things to do to them. That's all he does.

Make it clear that he needs to break outa the box and do something interesting.

We see this in some items. For example the Blackblade of Shahram.

http://www.thottbot.com/?i=25672

I haven't seen it in action, but from what ppl say who have it, it summons an elemental that will do 1 of 6 things:

Curse of Shahram : AE Slow Enemies
Might of Shahram : AE Stun Enemies (~5 sec)
Fist of Shahram : Group Haste - 25% (~8 sec)
Blessing of Shahram : Group restore life/mana (20 sec)
Will of Shahram : Self +50 all stats (20 sec)
Flames of Shahram : Flamestrike enemies (~100-150 damage)

Now, whoever created this weapon was being a little creative. We need this creativity and More to be applied to raid loot and upper PvP rewards.

Samus Aran · 03-13-2005, 02:19 PM

Blacksmithing with exception of a handful of weapons is a complete waste of time. I pity the poor bastard who specialized in armor and thinks he will ever sell anything. Nobody buys 99% of the stuff we can make becuase yard trash drops much superior items randomly and ends up in AH for peanuts. I use the Demonforged bp and it could be a potentially great BP, the effect and stats are decent, but becuase of the channelling it makes actually using it a real pain in the ass. Maybe if they changed the proc so it instantly fires off but leaves an icon for 4 seconds and this way wont be overpowering than what it was intended to be.

Im not even going into what it takes just to make a high end piece of gar, arcanite reaper is 20 arcanite bars. hah good luck trying to put that amount together in a short time. Dark iron based items, even worse. It takes 8 dark iron ores just to make 1 dark iron bar and some recipes require 20-30 dark iron bars. all that for a lv 53 piece of trash. You can buy a better blue from AH of the same level req with a better proc or stats for 40-50gold. Putting together a dark iron based recipe is probably a 100-200g effort and it will never sell.

Blacksmithing is so fucked right now, if any of you are looking into it as a possible money maker. you can fucking forget it. not that many people want mithril spurs and almost nobody wants your crapass player-crafted weapons/armor. Try enchanting, there youll be rich.

FoghornDeadhorn · 03-13-2005, 04:06 PM

And here I thought I was a better tank because of being an armorsmith because of all the BoP FR gear. Silly me!

Tripamang · 03-13-2005, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by The Sinister Urge
Blacksmithing with exception of a handful of weapons is a complete waste of time. I pity the poor bastard who specialized in armor and thinks he will ever sell anything. Nobody buys 99% of the stuff we can make becuase yard trash drops much superior items randomly and ends up in AH for peanuts. I use the Demonforged bp and it could be a potentially great BP, the effect and stats are decent, but becuase of the channelling it makes actually using it a real pain in the ass. Maybe if they changed the proc so it instantly fires off but leaves an icon for 4 seconds and this way wont be overpowering than what it was intended to be.

Im not even going into what it takes just to make a high end piece of gar, arcanite reaper is 20 arcanite bars. hah good luck trying to put that amount together in a short time. Dark iron based items, even worse. It takes 8 dark iron ores just to make 1 dark iron bar and some recipes require 20-30 dark iron bars. all that for a lv 53 piece of trash. You can buy a better blue from AH of the same level req with a better proc or stats for 40-50gold. Putting together a dark iron based recipe is probably a 100-200g effort and it will never sell.

Blacksmithing is so fucked right now, if any of you are looking into it as a possible money maker. you can fucking forget it. not that many people want mithril spurs and almost nobody wants your crapass player-crafted weapons/armor. Try enchanting, there youll be rich.

Armorsmiths have stronghold gauntlets (best PvP warrior gauntlets in game) and the 2% chance to hit/crit hat (Lionheart Helm). We have by far the most epic recipes... if anybody got screwed it's the weapons people.

Also the invulnerable mail chestplate is probably one of the best items a pvp shaman can wear =p Shield goes up, people switch from the shaman to someone else in group pvp, and the shaman keeps on raping people.

Yes the demon forged breastplate is a joke, but yet I still manage to sell about 1-2 of them a week.

Blacksmithing in general is full of outdated recipes that noone will ever use. Then again if they implement high end raiding/pvp recipes that can be attined by something other than pure luck, it wouldn't be that bad.

MinionOfCthulhu · 03-13-2005, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by beepbeepbeep
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=12775

Check out the model on that 43 DPS two hander. Way to waste a perfectly good model. Assuming that picture is real.

It's real; a guildmate was showing it off the other day in Ironforge. Pop a Fire enchant on it and you could give Rallos Zek a run for his money!

Nakilos · 03-13-2005, 06:00 PM

nm double post

unregisteredperson · 03-13-2005, 09:45 PM

Numerous crappier daggers look better than the heartseeker and deathstriker. And I don't know how prevalent the bug is, but the guy in our raid a while back picked up his set of rend weps, and the set bonus wasn't showing. Could have been a graphics bug though.

TheCutlery · 03-14-2005, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Blacksmithing in general is full of outdated recipes that noone will ever use.

This is mostly a component attainability issue as well.

Iridiscent Hammer is a great example...requires iridescent pearls to make. Well that's fantastic, except you don't get those pearls until you're past your mid 20's, and it makes a whopping 14.4 dps hammer. Uhhh, outlaw sabre from easy ass BFD quest anyone?

Blacksmithing wouldn't be so bad if the components to make this shit dropped at the levels that they would be useful at. It's fantastic for twinks on rare occasions tho.

Camo · 03-14-2005, 09:51 AM

How bout the quest that requires you to clear live side twice and dead side once to get a staff that's worse than the one that drops off overlord in lbrs?

How about devout legs off baron being worse than the cloth legs that drop in temple?

How about 17 fucking druid bps the general has dropped in 40'ish kills?

How about the new and improved choker of enlightenment, yeah, the one from MC, now instead of having a usefull effect has +11 to healing and damage spells?!?!

Blizzard obviously dropped the ball with itemization. The likes of which we haven't seen since NToV way back when.

03-13-2005, 11:51 AM	#1 (permalink)
Bizanich Registered User Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 2,598 +0 Internets	Itemization oddities (WoW) Is Blizzard intentionally making stupid items/crap items/broken items so that they can improve things in the next Instance/Expansion? Two items (which I'm "lucky" enough to have) make me irritated. Runeblade of Baron Rivendare and Demon Forged Breastplate. The Runeblade was broken when I got it (first on Stormreaver, yay), so all it was was a badass looking two handed sword with high dps. Not horrible at all, but the effects? Increased run (didn't work) and increased heath regeneration (didn't work). The run is fixed, now....I believe it was hotfixed or something. It now gives a whopping 5% boost to run speed. Not fantastic at all for an epic drop off an instance boss (when compared to things like Deathstriker, anyways), though it did save me some points in Improved Hamstring! People on horses can't get away when hamstrung with that 5% run boost.... Demon Forged Breastplate is even worse. 597 armor, +12 stamina Plate chest piece with a 3% chance to steal 120 life over 4 seconds. Sounds interesting! Maybe for PvE farming or vs Rogues, slap a +100 health on it and have some fun...... Sadly, no. The damn effect requires channeling. If I get hit, it's broken, if I move, it breaks, if I use an ability? It breaks. We won't even go into the fact that since you have no idea when the effect will kick in, most likely you'll break it before it grabs more then 30 health, if that. In other words, it's a goddamn useless breastplate. A waste of materials to even build it. There are other items just as messed up, I'm sure. I just can't believe some of the items that were designed. For a long time I tried to find reasons to hold off and not get an Arcanite Reaper due to having the purple 2 hander, but the Reaper is just so superior....

03-13-2005, 01:19 PM	#7 (permalink)
Kolle Registered User Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 4,879 -25 Internets	I've harped on items for a long time now. I tried real hard to hit on it during beta up until now along with other things like forcing classes into a role when it isn't necessary. The major source of dissapointment in loot rewards is that usually it's just more stats. Some have effects, like +dodge, but does that really matter? Yeah, you might dodge an extra time every now and then, but are you excited about that? It seems their idea for epic raid loot was to let people have some resists and stats at the same time. Of course a lot of people might be forced to wear green resist gear anyway with epics sitting in their bags. I think that was a bad idea. We obviously don't want items with 5,000 stamina or 250 resists. That will make some classes useless in pvp and overpowered in pve. What we need is special and unique effects that you don't see anywhere else. If you have to, hire an extra guy. His only job will be to sit at a desk, look at items, and come up with creative and cool effects or other things to do to them. That's all he does. Make it clear that he needs to break outa the box and do something interesting. We see this in some items. For example the Blackblade of Shahram. http://www.thottbot.com/?i=25672 I haven't seen it in action, but from what ppl say who have it, it summons an elemental that will do 1 of 6 things: Curse of Shahram : AE Slow Enemies Might of Shahram : AE Stun Enemies (~5 sec) Fist of Shahram : Group Haste - 25% (~8 sec) Blessing of Shahram : Group restore life/mana (20 sec) Will of Shahram : Self +50 all stats (20 sec) Flames of Shahram : Flamestrike enemies (~100-150 damage) Now, whoever created this weapon was being a little creative. We need this creativity and More to be applied to raid loot and upper PvP rewards. Last edited by Kolle : 03-13-2005 at 01:22 PM.

03-13-2005, 04:06 PM	#9 (permalink)
FoghornDeadhorn Avarice Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun Posts: 3,687 +14 Internets	And here I thought I was a better tank because of being an armorsmith because of all the BoP FR gear. Silly me! __________________

03-13-2005, 06:00 PM	#12 (permalink)
Nakilos Registered User Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1,591 +0 Internets	nm double post Last edited by Nakilos : 03-13-2005 at 06:02 PM.

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03-13-2005, 12:08 PM	#2 (permalink)
beepbeepbeep is an honorable man Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 1,020 -1 Internets	http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=12775 Check out the model on that 43 DPS two hander. Way to waste a perfectly good model. Assuming that picture is real.

03-13-2005, 12:34 PM	#3 (permalink)
Kolle Registered User Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 4,879 -25 Internets	I always figured with a game this huge and so many items in it, that this kinda thing would be incredibly planned from lvl 1-60. That is, a few people in charge know exactly how everything fits in the grand scheme of loot and knows for a fact that useless bullshit isn't going on. I think they did some things right, but it seems as if there were too many people working on loot that weren't communicating with each other as much as they should have.

03-13-2005, 02:19 PM	#8 (permalink)
Samus Aran Sons of the Storm Heal Bitch Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 771 +1 Internets	Blacksmithing with exception of a handful of weapons is a complete waste of time. I pity the poor bastard who specialized in armor and thinks he will ever sell anything. Nobody buys 99% of the stuff we can make becuase yard trash drops much superior items randomly and ends up in AH for peanuts. I use the Demonforged bp and it could be a potentially great BP, the effect and stats are decent, but becuase of the channelling it makes actually using it a real pain in the ass. Maybe if they changed the proc so it instantly fires off but leaves an icon for 4 seconds and this way wont be overpowering than what it was intended to be. Im not even going into what it takes just to make a high end piece of gar, arcanite reaper is 20 arcanite bars. hah good luck trying to put that amount together in a short time. Dark iron based items, even worse. It takes 8 dark iron ores just to make 1 dark iron bar and some recipes require 20-30 dark iron bars. all that for a lv 53 piece of trash. You can buy a better blue from AH of the same level req with a better proc or stats for 40-50gold. Putting together a dark iron based recipe is probably a 100-200g effort and it will never sell. Blacksmithing is so fucked right now, if any of you are looking into it as a possible money maker. you can fucking forget it. not that many people want mithril spurs and almost nobody wants your crapass player-crafted weapons/armor. Try enchanting, there youll be rich.

03-13-2005, 09:45 PM	#13 (permalink)
unregisteredperson Registered User Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 379 -2 Internets	Numerous crappier daggers look better than the heartseeker and deathstriker. And I don't know how prevalent the bug is, but the guy in our raid a while back picked up his set of rend weps, and the set bonus wasn't showing. Could have been a graphics bug though.

03-14-2005, 09:51 AM	#15 (permalink)
Camo Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 151 -1 Internets	How bout the quest that requires you to clear live side twice and dead side once to get a staff that's worse than the one that drops off overlord in lbrs? How about devout legs off baron being worse than the cloth legs that drop in temple? How about 17 fucking druid bps the general has dropped in 40'ish kills? How about the new and improved choker of enlightenment, yeah, the one from MC, now instead of having a usefull effect has +11 to healing and damage spells?!?! Blizzard obviously dropped the ball with itemization. The likes of which we haven't seen since NToV way back when.