Cestus stats are silly

• Invertex wrote on 2012-02-02 04:38
  They got released today if you didn't notice.
  
  http://vindictusdb.com/item-comparer?i=blaster_chiulin;blaster_glasgavelen;blaster_titan;blaster_stoneblow;blaster_bloodfist
  
  Chiulin > All, and by a fairly large margin.
  
  Is Devcat even trying with stats now?
• Kollin wrote on 2012-02-02 04:42
  Nope.
• Oizen wrote on 2012-02-02 05:03
  Eh.
  
  At least theres nothing else they can throw at us before 9.5
  
  but I imagne they'll consider this all the new content they need until summer.
• foreignreign wrote on 2012-02-02 14:11
  To be fair, Longsword has a clear cut winner (DWLS), Twin Spears have one (Piasras), Pillar is a toss-up between two although it leans heavily in favor of Dream Follower imo, and Staff has a clear winner (Raider's). The only reason why Twin Swords are up for discussion is because sword Lann has to find a balance between how he's going to juggle ATT/Crit/BAL (which is something Spears don't since they have Fury Infusion and can hit the crit cap with) and Scythe Evie has to decide if she wants to go for max speed or not. Hell, if you're not going for more than 4 Fast scrolls I would say Scythe Evie's only option is Braid.
• Invertex wrote on 2012-02-02 15:17
  I agree with that, I just really don't like how Devcat is going with the stats on most weapons. It's just easiest to use Cestus as an example right now, since there are now established Karoks (removing the cost issues) and they all came out at the same time (removing time issues). That and the numerical differences are a lot easier to work with.
  
  Lanns and Scythe Evies are a bit of a pain to compare weapons with. Since Lanns need to take into account Critical on top of Balance/Attack/Speed and Scythe requires a much different view on the value of attack speed. The Piasraspears for example, comparing with the BTTS. You need to start looking at the Balance/Crit compared to the Attack/Speed (instead of Attack vs Speed). It's not immediately evident that it's superior.
  
  But lets use Hammers. There are 2/3 main options. Damage with BH or speed with Chiulin or Shining Clap. Going to a simple Attack/Attack Speed comparison (as Hammers do have fairly straight fowards stats), it's about 600 Attack/-6 Speed from a speed to an attack Hammer. The ratio here is about 100 Attack per 1 speed point.
  
  The two "usable" Cestuses have a very similar ratio (though, the supporting stats all fall in favour of the Chiulin, you get 5 balance that isn't there with the Hammer comparison). But this ratio (which is honestly what seems to be a good balance for Karok/Fiona) is completely broken for the majority of the weapons. Who would use a weapon with -7 attack, -3 crit, -8 speed, and -21 Will just for 1 Str and 7 Agi (Chiulin vs Braid Tassel)?
  
  Armor balancing is actually decent, with Ingkells, Raider's, Black Hammer, Swift, Wonderland, and Colru sets all being very usable. But it's sort of sad only seeing a fraction of all the Lv. 61 weapons (some of which look pretty nice) ever get used.
• foreignreign wrote on 2012-02-02 15:41
  The problem with weapon balancing is that you can't really say x amount of ATT is equal to y amount of BAL, or f amount of ATT is equal to g amount of crit. Those are for the most part, arbitrary for all we know.
  
  I mean, yeah there's a clear trade-off for Black Hammer vs. Chiulin/Shining Clap, but is it worth it? Does the 1 more attack speed per 100 ATT let you do more damage/survive more than that 100 ATT would without the speed? You can certainly notice it if you stack a lot of it, but there's also character height you have to take into account, the varying amounts of windows you get and what your timing is, etc, that the difference in attack speed might just be a placebo effect and might not even really amount to anything.
  
  There's also other things to consider when it comes to these weapons: Braids kinda suck, but they're cheap to make, and when word of Cestus came out, you could've easily have stockpiled at least 2 Braid Cestus worth of ingredients by doing Titan on a daily basis. If you're the kind to go and break things, then a +12 Braid is most certainly better than a +10/11 Chiulin. And Bloody Thorn farming isn't so forgiving, and hell, who would actually willingly farm those for days on end?
• Invertex wrote on 2012-02-02 15:57
  I somehow don't think Devcat thinks of prices when making these. I mean Blood Fist requires Heavy Warrior Fragments, and that's completely useless statwise. But that's just me. With how random the economy in these games seem to act, it'd be pretty hard to adjust for pricing. But even comparing items of equal annoyance (Heavy Warrior Hammer Fragments, Glas Pants), the stats don't actually seem to relate at times.
  
  Still, I know that they can't make all the weapons equal, and there's a lot of subjective things. But some weapons are just useless, despite how subjective you are about them. I mean is losing attack, speed, critical, and everything else for a bit of agility even reasonable at all? It just seems silly for weapons, which are all available at the same time and require similar effort to obtain, to be so inequal.
• foreignreign wrote on 2012-02-02 16:03
  Losing those stats for AGI actually kinda works for Lanns.
  
  But Karok's not a Lann, yes yes.
  
  In the end, it's just random variety. I don't think there are many MMOs/RPGs in general that have a complete arsenal of useful weapons.
• Invertex wrote on 2012-02-02 16:05
  Yep, it's sort of sad.
  But I guess it is impossible to make a fully balanced game.