A Proposal for A New Type of Synergy Augment

We all know the Elemental staves are great, but we also know they’re very limiting in both mage and martial aspects. Mages suffer due to excessive inventory issues, melee jobs suffer due to low Staff damage and lackluster WS's, and both suffer from having to use the staff itself as the only option of a weapon.

My proposal/s uses a method similar to the Evolith system utilizing Synergy to socket weapons and shields with Elemental Ores/Beads. Each weapon/shield that uses this method would be granted the effects and benefits of the elemental staves without the restrictions and conditions that plagued the Evolith system to its demise. Depending on the method used, it might allow a truly customizable weapon/shield to fit a person’s taste and play style.


Idea 1: Attach an elemental ore/bead to a weapon which grants the weapon full benefits of the equivalent elemental stave.

Example 1: Using a Fire Ore/Bead with a Sword would grant the Sword, +1 Fire Affinity, STR+ 4, +15 Ice Resistance, +10 Attack, +10 Ranged Attack, Additional Effect: Fire Damage.

If the crafter manages to successfully Synergize a High-Quality version the attributes would rise by +1 Affinity, +1 Attribute, +5 Resistance, +5 stats/skill bonus, and +5 for additional bonuses (where applicable), in accordance with the example above.


Idea 2: Weapons will be multi-socketed (max 3) to allow multiple elemental ores/beads to be attached to a weapon. Each ore will allow one to attach stats in a way similar to idea 1, however this option allows people to stack bonuses and affinities from attaching multiple ores of the same type, or allows you to have multiple bonuses and affinities from different ores attached to a weapon.

Example 2: Dagger: Slot 1: Fire, Slot 2: Fire, Slot 3: Fire Ore/Bead
+3 Fire Affinity, +12STR, +45 Ice Resist, +30 Attack, +30 R. Attack, Additional Effect: Fire Damage.

Example 3: Dagger: Slot 1: Thunder, Slot 2: Fire, Slot 3: Earth
+1 Thunder/Fire/Earth Affinity, +4 DEX/STR/VIT, +15 Water/Ice/Thunder Resistance, +15% Critical Hit Rate*, +10 Attack, +10 Ranged Attack, -20% Physical Damage Taken, Additional Effect: Thunder, Fire, or Earth Damage.

There is no option for High Quality for Idea 2, additionally due to the overpowering nature of this idea I would expect the possibilities of each ore/bead giving reduced stats or having a hard cap per weapon for each particular stat.

For example instead of Example 2 receiving +10 Attack and Ranged Attack per Fire Ore attached it would only give +5 Attack and Ranged Attack instead similar to the following example.

Example 4: Dagger: Slot 1: Fire, Slot 2: Fire, Slot 3: Fire Ore/Bead
+3 Fire Affinity, +6STR, +15 Ice Resist, +15 Attack, +15 R. Attack, Additional Effect: Fire Damage.

It would still maintain the full benefits for an affinity bonus, but receive smaller benefits stat bonuses.

The other way to diminish overpowering returns for Idea 2 is imposing a hard cap on stats. Such as taking Example 2 and doing the following.

Example 5: Dagger: Slot 1: Fire, Slot 2: Fire, Slot 3: Fire Ore/Bead
+3 Fire Affinity, +10STR, +30 Ice Resist, +20 Attack, +20 R. Attack, Additional Effect: Fire Damage.

Comparing Example 2 and Example 5 you can see that while they still receive the full benefits of the +1 Affinity per ore, it stops giving benefits to other stats after the second ore. The idea for the imposed hard cap is +3 Affinity, +10Attributes, +30 Resist, +20 stat/skill bonuses.


Idea 3: Idea 3 takes a slightly different tone from the previous ideas. This time we take a multi socketed weapon and depending on the placement of the socket you receive a different bonus based on the ore/bead attached.

Sockets:
[1]: +1 Affinity
[2]: +4 Attribute
[3]: +15 Resistance
[4]: + 10 Stat/Skill Bonus (Set to 10 for balance)
[5]: + 10 Stat/Skill Bonus (Can stack with slot 4 and push past +10 of a stat)

Example 6: Shield: Slot 1: Fire, Slot 2: Earth, Slot 3: Water, Slot 4: Earth, Slot 5: Earth
+1 Fire Affinity, +4 VIT, +15 Fire Resistance, -20% Physical Damage Taken

If a High Quality item is produced through Synergy each stat will rise accordingly with +1 Affinity, +1 Attribute, +5 Resistance, +5 Stats/Skill Bonuses per slot 4 and 5, however stats cannot rise beyond +/- 20 for balance and to give players more considerations into how they balance their stats. For Examples 7 and 8 we’ll get a quick view of how a HQ would look with slots 4 and 5 with and without similar ores/beads inserted in each slot.

Example 7: Shield: Slot 1: Fire, Slot 2: Earth, Slot 3: Water, Slot 4: Earth, Slot 5: Earth
+2 Fire Affinity, +5 VIT, +20 Fire Resistance, -20% Physical Damage Taken

Example 8: Shield: Slot 1: Fire, Slot 2: Earth, Slot 3: Water, Slot 4: Earth, Slot 5: Fire
+2 Fire Affinity, +4 VIT, +15 Fire Resistance, -15% Physical Damage Taken , +15 Attack, +15 Ranged Attack


Related Ideas:
I’ll leave ideas of implementation up to SE, if they chose to take on my proposal. However since the proposed idea uses Synergy I was thinking the level of the weapon/shield to be socketed for ores/beads should be the cap a player can skill up Synergy with, this will also directly affect the High-Quality rate when producing items. For example a level 80 Sword would allow a player to receive skill ups till their Synergy level reaches 80.

Additionally, to prevent overpowering at early levels I suggest perhaps limiting this crafting to weapons/shields that are 40-50+ in level, or perhaps going one step further and have the maximum allowable sockets on a weapon (for the multi-socket ideas) based on the weapons level. For example, a level 40-50 weapon/shield can have 1 socket, level 51-60 can have 2 sockets, and 61+ can have 3+ sockets.


That pretty much covers the basis of my idea. I’m up for any suggestions, concerns (that I hopefully already thought of), or support for the idea. But I wanted to get the input on fellow crafters on what they think of this.


Note *: Critical Hit Rate would only apply for the weapon/shield itself.