The end game armor sets in WAR ( Sovereign ) have never been very popular. In the upcoming 1.3.6 patch, Mythic hopes to change that. Yesterday, they posted a draft of what they had in mind for the new tank armor sets. Go ahead and take a look, I'll wait...
As a sword (Axe) and board Ironbreaker, the survivability set looks pretty awesome to me. The set bonus skills look like a lot of fun. I especially like the 5% increase to all of my defensive/avoidance stats. If it has a 25% proc chance it should be up most of the time. As for the stats, they look fine to me but I am not a min/maxer, so I am less concerned with every detail.
Not everyone shares my view, which the thread clearly shows. Some Swordmasters and Chosen are not very happy with the set options. A lot of the complaints seem to center around the inclusion of Weapon Skill stats. Weapon Skill primarily increases your armor penetration when using physical damage attacks. It also has a secondary effect which increases your chance of parrying.
The Chosen and SM classes have a number of Spirit damage attacks, which does not use Weapon Skill. They end up feeling this stat is wasted on them. It should be noted that the fact they use Spirit damage is an advantage in itself. The resist cap for Spirit is only 40% while armor caps at 75%. WS won't help those attacks, but they already have the advantage of Spirit damage.
Weapon Skill is useful for all tanks, even Chosen and SM. Auto-Attack and physical damage skills all use it to increase their damage. Every tank has a physical Auto-Attack and they all get more parry from WS too. I wouldn't mind Weapon Skill on my Engineer gear even though I focus on corporeal damage. It is a good thing to have if you deal any physical damage and like to not be hit.
Other players are disappointed that Mythic has taken the generalization road instead of designing specific armor sets for each class. I can certainly understand this one but let's think about it. Mythic would have to make 48 new armor sets (two for each career) and their accompanying bonus skills. That just does not seem feasible to me and imagine trying to balance them.
Nothing Mythic does will ever be universally loved. It is a side effect of giving players options, someone may not get what they consider best for their style of play. The alternative is to reduce the amount of stats in the game (like some other game has). It's a good thing to keep in mind when flying off the handle about the inclusion of a stat on an armor set.
In other news.... http://kotaku.com/5580080/korean-gamers-are-faster-than-a-speeding-bullet
Thursday, July 8, 2010
You can't please everyone
