Magian Staves, non-Empyrean magian equipment

[Jubehnka]

As with many other equipment that was deprecated by the introduction of ilevel gear, mages have seen the staves that we spent so many hours working on become useless in newer content, in part because the magic accuracy of said pieces can no longer keep up with higher level content.

While many other weapon were introduced during the Trials of the Magians height, the mage's staves held a very distinctive position because of their tactical usage, and they introduced game-changing parameters (affinity) that have gone to disuse after the introduction of ilevel weapons.

While I understand that not every single piece of equipment that has ever held a special place in adventurer's hearts can be continually upgraded as the item level continues to increase, I believe there is a solution to keep these old, useful relics of equipment relevant as item level increase.

Especifically as a suggestion for the named/numbered magian staves that introduced affinity for magic damage, magic accuracy, magic casting/recasting time, avatar perpetuation, and blood pact delay, there should be a possibility, maybe through a further magian trial at the cost of the fully upgraded named staff, maybe some sort of synthesis material, and a set number of cost in beitetsu/riftborn boulder/ or plutons, to transform these staves into grips that carry the stave's augments so that they can be used in conjuntion with ilevel equipment.

Since the enhancements that are provided by non-ilevel accessories has remained fairly steady (the best grips, for example, currently only add 10 accuracy or so as opposed to the massive increases in attributes in ilevel gear), this would allow the stats on magian equipment to be used further without risk of being deprecated by further raising item level.

For single handed magian trial weapons, possibly they could be turned into a final ammo or earring accessories, which, again, isn't subject to item level deprecation.

I hope you take this into consideration.

-A black mage in lakshmi

[Dragomair]

I doubt they're going to do this.
They've already stated that Magian Trials won't go over level 99 and it doesn't make much sense to turn them into grips or earrings.

[Demonjustin]

It would be great for a few reasons, and terrible for a few reasons. These would be great to allow them to live on and allow us to get great gear from it, the problem is that the gear would be completely OP especially depending on the potency of which they would keep from the originals. For instance would my STR Swords become 11 STR 22 Atk Earrings? If so that's insanely OP, how about my PDT Swords? 11 VIT & 11 PDT on my Earrings would stop my attempts for a DRing in it's tracks since that's basically a Dring on my ear. What about Nuking Earrings? Now I have 10 MAB on my Earring but with this I would have like +30% Earth DMG on just one of them, let alone if you can double up on them.

This is all just going by the elemental trials too, what if we expanded this to OAT/DA? Duplus Grip? Psh, I have my Occasionally Attacks 2~4 Times Grip, my SAM WSs every attack round no matter what, 3% Double Attack means nothing to me now.



I like the idea to keep these weapons alive to some extent but at the same time I don't want to, and in the end while I like this idea it would have a very difficult time finding a proper balance.

[dasva]

Geez imagine 35% whatever element dmg in several slots at once while still using ilvl staff... you'd have like 3k dmg stone 1s lol.

Or for melees get a couple of tp bonus ones and a whole bunch of +ws dmg ones to get an extra 200 tp and tons more ws dmg in slots that generally offer little.

Full capped -87.5% pet pdt woot (actually they could really use this and tons more acc)

And it brings up the question how would you handle the jobs that can do it? Will it just turn them into an every job thing? Then everyone will be using the 2hd weapons to make it since they have higher stats generally.

[Ang]

Just put Magic accuracy skill on the staves and be done with it, dont need to turn em into earrings or grips lol

[Stompa]

I still hope my Magian fists with pet PDT, pet MDB, pet Str/R.Attk /Attk, pet MAB, would like to see these given new Trials to lvl 119. These were awesome items on my PUP, for years.
Also my pdt gaxe was useful for cleaving and emergency tanking. Would like to use that at 119. Its fun though, looking at over 25 completed magians in my Mog Locker. Makes me feel nostalgic and remember those many hours spent waiting for the weather to change, or spamming thousands of WS's. Maybe I can take those 25 weapons and build a plough out of them, to grow potatoes.

[Kimjongil]

They could up hese to 113, 115 or 117. They don't have to be 119.

For staves year Macc would be nice and +1-3 on stats.
For 2-4x weapons make then 6x attack. 5=100, 6 = 110. Can keep base dmg low
TP +100 weapons give them + 20% weapon skill acc
for stats elemental path weapons, double them.

SE will get around, its MMO culture to recycle content. It just won't happen as soon as we like. Not always what we like as well.

SE could make a High tier battlefield like they did with Tezzen. Trade the weapon, plus XYZ item and wow you now have "new weapon."

[Jubehnka]

I singled out Magian staves simply because, as staves, the grips these yield could be used only in a single slot.
When you say they're overpowered, I hear echoes of when 117 iLvl gear was introduced. While they might feel overpowered, I think SE would balance either the item or the game in some way. For example, magian staff/grips could get downgraded to Affinity+3. Still an upgrade to what we currently have now without going too much into 6K Stones.
As for the rest of the elemental paths, I did leave those out exactly because of the issue of having multiple copies of them. Obviously they can't be all grips, because it ignores jobs that use single handed weapons, and they could be ammo, but this would disallow their use to jobs that both use ranged weapons and single-handed weapons.
Earrings or rings became an obvious choice. Possibly the change could make these rare/ex, although, wouldn't you want in your party instead a melee with "Accuracy+11 DEX+11" on both ears in your DMII group?
Back to the issue of being overpowered, and in order to include the mentioned DA/OAxTimes (and I guess weaponskill paths already since we're apparently all missing magian gear), the obtainment cost/effort of these should reflect their contribution.
It's easy to dismiss it as "oh, everybody will be suddenly overpowered", but, in reality, many stopped making these or threw them away eventually because of space shortages caused by all those WKR items.
Whatever the case, obtainment/reobtainment is tedious and time consuming. I forsee it being expensive too because of people jacking up prices for geodes and -ites. As such, these changes would make the items harder to get and, as such, the items themselves would be the appropriate reward for the effort.

Lastly, as item level continues to increase, the perceived massive bonuses these items provide will start delivering diminishing returns. Disassociating them from their weapon and making them future-proof is what this really is all about.

[dasva]

The problme with your idea of balancing them is things have already balanced sorta. So introducing even the limited +20% dmg onto a grip is still huge

[Demonjustin]

The problme with your idea of balancing them is things have already balanced sorta. So introducing even the limited +20% dmg onto a grip is still huge

Not only that but doing this with Grips for staves for instance would literally make every grip ever made for nuking completely irrelevant, the same thing goes for any in the future. Affinity was a terrible thing for magic because it made staves that were unbeatable, even with today's stats affinity would be on top if not for the lack of magic acc on them. I think even the Mythic for BLM would lose out on T5s vs a Magian Staff in pure DMG numbers if you can ignore resists. So to put that on a grip would be basically saying that no grip ever will need be gotten for BLMs ever again, since this one(or eight) grip(s) would be so game breaking that nothing could beat them without insanely stupid numbers, or simply a higher %.