Post: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/500537-The-Endgame-Raid-Loot-and-Tomes...

The Endgame, Raid Loot, and Tomes
Hello, all! I’m here today to talk to you about the Endgame. Yes, the big E Endgame. This is going to be a lengthy post, so I’m going to preface it with a quick “tl;dr” (too long, didn’t read) to keep in mind while proceeding:

TL;DR: Raid loot min levels are going down, raid loot stats from older raids are going up. No raid loot stats go down regardless of tiers. Raid runes for all at-cap raids, distinct tiers between those raids, tome drops standardized to Ravenloft levels for each tier of raiding.

TL;DR the longer version:

We’re going to shift all level 28 and 29 raid loot into designated “tiers” for raiding by pushing their minimum levels down, and we’re going to bring their stats up for certain raids to match appropriate values. Players with current legendary raid loot will be able to turn their old raid loot into new versions with a new raiding currency - Legendary Souls. We are also going to implement Raid Runes for each raid at cap that doesn’t have them already. Finally, we are going to clean up which tomes drop from which raid, as well as bring Tome drop rates up to match Ravenloft raid levels. We are doing this to improve previous raids and provide a structure for the future, as well as to provide an incentive to run a variety of endgame content on multiple characters.

So, with that out of the way, let’s start at the beginning.

WHY?

Right now, there are 11 raids at the level cap. This is more than there has ever been! However, it has been a challenge to keep the rewards from older cap-level raids desirable while adding new cap-level raids into the mix. Recently, we’ve been working to update older gear in quests, but tackling raid items is a massive task, so we’re looking at a broader solution for the long run. After a lot of careful deliberation, we are ready to make changes to ensure players who prefer to stay at the level cap have something to explore and work toward with their their high-power and high-level characters.

Currently, if you’d like to gear appropriately for your level in epic level content, there are not a lot of options until level 28, and then level 29 has way too many items to choose from. Frankly, there isn’t enough room at level 29 for gear choices to shine, and we want to fix that sooner rather than later.

We want people to have an incentive to raid at level cap. This is something we haven’t always prioritized, but we want to make sure this design space stays relevant long into the future. Not only have you talked about this a lot on the forums, but we’ve been talking internally about it for quite some time as well.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in to what this overhaul actually entails:

GOALS

This is what we hope to accomplish:
Create a clear and intuitive delineation between Raids at level cap based on several factors, such as:
The Minimum Level of the gear found in those Raids
The Tomes found in those Raids
The power level of the Raid Loot found in those Raids
Establish an easier way to communicate Raid Loot balance in the future
Incentivize a reason to run as many raids at cap as you want
Help support players who want to maintain “alts” at the end game.
Introduce a new legendary raid currency that we can support going forward
Provide design space to move forward in future content without overlapping what we’ve already introduced


WHAT’S HAPPENING?

Well, a lot, but it all fits together. First thing’s first, let’s clean up something that’s relatively independent of the other changes:

All at-cap raids that previously did NOT have Raid Runes will now have Raid Runes as a reward instead of their 20th reward list. This includes the following raids:
The Mark of Death
Temple of the Deathwyrm
Fire on Thunder Peak
Defiler of the Just


Additionally, Temple of the Deathwyrm and Fire on Thunder Peak will include Thunderforged Crafting materials - such as Fire or Shadow Dragon Phlogistons - in addition to their selection of Raid Loot, and The Mark of Death will include appropriate amounts of Masterwork Tapestry Shreds. Killing Time's Raid Rune selection will also now include Schism Shards.

We are splitting up the current 11 raids into 3 “Tiers,” each containing several raids. These Tiers will be distinct from one another in several ways, which we will cover in more detail shortly.

We are going to be boosting the power level of raid loot at cap. Items will either be boosted significantly, drop several minimum levels, or (most commonly) both. Items in Tier 1 will be weaker than items in Tier 2 or 3, but will have a lower minimum level. These higher power, lower level versions of the raid loot will drop where their originals did, at the same rate as before. If you have old versions of these items, you can turn them into their newer, higher power and lower level versions, with a new ingredient called Legendary Souls that we’ll cover further in a bit.

We are going to standardize Tomes and Tome Drops between each of the raids. You can expect Tome rates to increase to Ravenloft raid levels. Furthermore, Tier 3 Raids will drop +1 Racial Action Point Tomes, identical in functionality to the tomes found in the Ultimate Fan Bundle of the Ravenloft expansion.

TIERING THE RAIDS

Raids at cap will now be divided into Tiers. Each Tier will contain gear that is more appropriately scaled to the other raids in that Tier, and each Tier will encompass an entire epic level. Tomes will now drop at Ravenloft raid drop rates according to which Tier the raid is in.



This chart looks a little complex, so...


The Dirty Details:

Legendary Greensteel is not changing as part of this. LGS items are currently level 26, and will remain level 26. In fact, none of Legendary Shroud is changing, except for the tome drops, and those tome drop rates being brought up to Ravenloft standards. We are not pushing the raid down to Tier 1 because it uses Legendary Raid Bypass Timers rather than Raid Bypass Timers, and we’d like to keep a clear distinction between the two tiers.

Thunderforged Crafting will remain entirely unchanged as part of this overhaul. The Named Raid Loot that drops out of the Thunderforged Raids - Fire on Thunder Peak and The Temple of the Deathwyrm - are what’s being changed.

Legendary Tempest’s Spine and Legendary Hound of Xoriat will not have their Tome Drops adjusted.

Tier 1

Tier 1 contains the at-cap non-Legendary Raids that do not use Legendary Raid Timer Bypasses, and as part of this overhaul, these raids will have their named Raid Loot significantly boosted to compete with other Raids’ gear. Our intention is to bring these raid items close or equal to the power level of gear from Against the Slave Lords at level 26. These overhauled items will drop where the old items did, at the same rate that they did before. If you have old versions of these Raid Items, you will be able to exchange them for new ones with Legendary Souls. These Legendary Souls will drop from all at-cap raids, and I’ll go into more detail on those later in this post.

Tier 1 will contain +6 Ability Tomes and +5 to +6 Upgrade Tomes at the frequency that the current Ravenloft raids drop tomes.

Tier 2

Tier 2 contains the pre-Ravenloft Legendary Raids. You can expect the Raid Loot in this tier to be the approximately midway in stats between Slavers and Ravenloft, only available at level 27. Items in this Tier will be boosted to compete with each other, be better than the previous tier, and drop where the old items did at the same rate they did before. If you have old versions of these Raid Items, you will be able to exchange them for new ones with Legendary Souls.

Tier 2 will contain +7 Ability Tomes and +6 to +7 Upgrade Tomes at the frequency the current Ravenloft raids drop tomes.

TIER 3

Tier 3 contains the Ravenloft Raids - The Curse of Strahd and Old Baba’s Hut - as well as Killing Time, the raid that debuted in Update 40. These items are not changing in stats or effects, but will be available one level earlier than they were before, at level 28. Level 28 versions of these items will now drop where the old ones did at the same rate that they did before. If you have old versions of these Raid Items that are still level 29, you will be able to exchange them for new ones with Legendary Souls.

Tier 3 will contain +8 Ability Tomes and +7 to +8 Upgrade Tomes at their current rates, as well the +1 Racial Action Point tome.

LEGENDARY SOULS

Similar to Commendations of Heroism and Greater Tokens of the Twelve, we’re introducing a new Endgame Raid Currency in the form of Legendary Souls. Right now, their main use is to turn old at-cap raid gear into new and improved versions. In the future, they will be used for a variety of things, such as upgrading future raid gear or acquiring raid-level items.

You can find Legendary Souls in the end chests of at-cap raids, regardless of Tier. You can also transmute them out of Raid Runes, the ratio of which will be determined by the relative difficulty and the tier of the raid.

We see Legendary Souls as a good and clean jumping off point for future Legendary content, and we hope to incentivize players to run a variety of raids at cap rather than just the few they specifically want gear from. If a player does not need gear from a specific raid, being able to get something regardless is a good step to encourage raiders at cap to run a variety of content.

We recognize that right now the rewards for enfranchised at-cap players might not completely satisfy their wishes for something to work towards, but once the framework is in place we can add more uses for Souls to encourage endgame raiders to try and collect this currency, which in turn incentivizes raid diversity at cap. Legendary Souls will be Bound to Account on Acquire.

SUMMARY

We hope this overhaul improves the gameplay environment at level cap, and encourages players to raid as often as they would like and with a wide number of raids. We also hope this provides further reasons to maintain your alts and gear them up. We know this is a lot of change in a short amount of time, so we’re hopeful that you join us as we preview this new system on Lamannia in addition to providing your feedback in this thread.

We hope these changes set the stage for long-term enjoyment of the endgame. It’s a tough task to make sure the loot in older raids remain competitive as new raids are introduced, but it’s one we think is made easier through these clear changes in this update. DDO thrives on letting its players run what they want, and we think these changes allow us to fill out new content at cap, regardless of tier, without pushing players away from older raids.

Thank you for reading, and we look forward to your feedback!

The funny thing is, this sounds like a fairly good idea and change by SSG on the surface. 

Yet, it makes me significantly nervous given all their other recent, grandmaster level corrupt-a-wish changes.  Going to file this under the "what could possibly go wrong" category for now and see what sort of train wreck actually makes it to live.

If they manage to not SSGs this up, it'll be one of the best changes in years.

Reviving stuff like DoJ, MoD, and Thunderholme is fantastic for the game's health, there might actually be an endgame other than Endlessly grinding Baba/Strahd/Killing Time and high skull / easy completion quests (amber, memoirs).

I can't help but notice that some of the DoJ and MoD items have 5 effects. I wonder if they will be Crystal Coved.

This is very exciting news. Hopefully, it will rekindle interest in the older legacy raids and even possibly bring more hard-core players back into those raids from the reaper hamster-wheel (full disclosure, I'm not a huge reaper fan). 

It could also offset the loss the Thunderholm raids suffered in player numbers. The limited material duplicating that took place the month it premiered really hollowed out the long-term numbers for players who played clean or came into the game in the years that followed. I have to say that if this is done even passably well, it will be great for the game as well as end-game.      

I'm hopeful on this one, it could be a great thing.

That being said; please for the love of god don't further fuck up my Dethek Runestone than it already is/has been since the start.

You've got all these stupid fucks cheering this on, when they don't understand that the impact of the change will be practically ZERO.

Give me one item you'll actually farm.

WonderfulFoppyBint wrote on Oct 25^th, 2018 at 10:18am:


I’d say I’m semi-excited. But it’s not because of better loot. Nobody is taking off the Silent Avenger set for anything else on any of the light melee builds. Molten Silver is still strong as hell.

But I’d say I’m more excited because it shows that maybe, possibly, with a very minute chance that the devs are finally coming to the realization that over half of the “cap” raids are an absolute joke and only ran because there’s one or two decent BiS items (mainly for casters) or useful swap gears that people may want.

Lynn is hilariously deceiving the mobos if anyone actually believes that there’s 11 raids in the “Big E”. I’d say at most there’s what? 5 that are actually worth guilds’ and players’ time to schedule into a weekly rotation. The rest are more along the lines of “well shit we got 5 people online and x wants a Draconic Invigeration weapon, let’s knock out 3 runs of FoTP and everyone pass the phlogs”.

Hopefully, maybe, improbably, cross my fingers that the devs may wake up and realize that while this is a step in the right direction, more needs to be done.

ISeeSockPuppets wrote on Oct 25^th, 2018 at 11:11am:


I understand the loot system, and apparently you don't. Let me explain it to you, since you're just the average kind of stupid. Maybe you can read? 

EXAMPLE

DOJ is a tier 3 raid, so its stats will be updated to match that of Slavelords. This follows how their universal loot system sheets now work.

BEFORE:
Sightless (Helmet): True Seeing, Deathblock VII, Ranged Power +6, Melee Power +6, Sheltering +35, Constitution +12, Empty Green Augment Slot , Empty Blue Augment Slot

AFTER:
Sightless (Helmet): True Seeing, Deathblock VII, Ranged Power +8, Melee Power +8, Sheltering +42, Constitution +17, Empty Green Augment Slot , Empty Blue Augment Slot

~~

And this is a a best case item, since it was BIS for awhile. Let's look at another former BIS item,

~~

BEFORE:
Dumathoin's Bracers (Bracers): Natural Armor +10, Elemental Resistance +45, Sheltering +30, Empty Blue Augment Slot , Dexterity +11

AFTER:
Dumathoin's Bracers (Bracers): Natural Armor +15, Elemental Resistance +60, Sheltering +42, Empty Blue Augment Slot , Dexterity +17

~~

Oh look, another item that is worse than quest loot. Go look at the tier2 raids. There's nothing there to update. RSO loot is already slightly better than Slavelords and the Armors all compete with Ravenloft sets.

What about the DoJ Wisdom/Ki goggles.  Those at ML 26 with better stats might be nice.   

I fed most of my Deathwrym, DoJ, MoD and FoTP gear to my sentient weapons weapons though since I didn't want to move it from my TR cache and I never thought they'd do something like this.   

Dragon Masque if they change Deception to old school improved deception potentially? Though I think its more likely they will change it to the scaling deception so will be meh as we are all using shadowhail

WonderfulFoppyBint wrote on Oct 25^th, 2018 at 10:18am:

Who gives a shit about the old items?

It's the Legendary Souls you can get in those old raids as well as the new raids that will allow you to either "freshen up" any older items you might use when TRing or for brand new (more useful) items in newer raids. Hell, you might even be able to turn in the Legendary Souls for things like Tomes or maybe stuff from the DDO Store.

Technomage wrote on Oct 25^th, 2018 at 1:03pm: