RP changes incoming -- read BEFORE applying 2xRP!

[nmates]

Go read this before applying any 2xRP this weekend
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neve ... refinement

I'll have more thoughts later, but the quick ones are:
- Don't spend RP on Bonding runestones. BIS is getting nerfed. How much, and whether something else will be BIS, not sure yet
- Don't upgrade anything that needs a matching enchantment (R7-9 upgrades). You can add RP, but don't do the upgrade using the match.

[Tundrra]

I'll have more thoughts later, but the quick ones are:
- Don't spend RP on Bonding runestones. BIS is getting nerfed. How much, and whether something else will be BIS, not sure yet
- Don't upgrade anything that needs a matching enchantment (R7-9 upgrades). You can add RP, but don't do the upgrade using the match.

Thanks Ben!

[Ziek88]

Ha, we posted about the same thing within a minute or two of each other. I deleted mine and will shift my 2 cents here. Read through a lot of this info this morning after Blue informed me it was a thing.

This is the thoughts and opinions I had on reading.

First the carrot. They are doing away with the billion different forms of RP and turning it into a currency that will sit alongside your AD and gold. Think like purple loot and salvage. You get gemstones and then salvage them into RP rather than storing them into your inventory. The catch is RP is not account wide so move gemstones to the correct toon before turning them into RP. Overall this is great as we no longer need to store stones thus freeing up a HUGE amount of bag space. I think making the RP account wide would be nice but this is stilp manageable. Also no more double RP weekend but rather half the cost of refinement at all time. There are a lot of other number changes but values more or less stay the same. Just double RP is basically always a thing.

Another new change is enchants/runestones move to rank 14 as top tier rather than 12. Lets be honest, this was bound to happen soon.

The stick. Bondings are getting nerfed and nerfed pretty hard. 3 rank 14s come to 195% stat boost that proc for 15 seconds and then can't proc for 15 seconds. Other runestones are supposedly seeing a buff but overall this is a substantial stat loss. This could be really bad for completing end game dungeons. Those dungeons really need the top notch bonding stones and without mention of dungeon rebalancing or some other way to bridge the gap here, this could make end game dungeons even harder than they currently are.

I don't think the bonding changes are terrible but maybe a bit poorly thought out. Before bondings there were augments and I could see them becoming the norm. Augments don't fall off cliffs, augments don't steal aggro and cause bosses to spin, augments are always active. Personally I miss them and if they do the runestone buffs right this will still be manageable and a healthier more controllable playstyle. I don't see this really forcing much change in builds, just reallocation of where we get our stats. Dungeons will definitely need some balancing though or this will hurt.

Putting some numbers to it. Currently I have 3 rank 12 bondings, 3 companions at legendary. This breaks down to 16365 defense or roughly 40% damage resistance. Under the new system I would see 11727 defense or roughly 29% Damage Resistance with only 50% uptime. Alternatively I could change bondings out for flat defense runestones and an augment companion and see 8456 defense or roughly 21% Damage Resistance. This is a lot but at the same time this eventually goes live I bet we see new gear with higher stats and our old enchants become worth more. Now when doing the math old to new I forgot to change the defense value of my brutal enchants but that is only a 120 point difference so barely noteable.

[nmates]

Update: the 50% availability on bondings has been rescinded. Source: page #10 of the thread, search for the post by 'noworries' which says

We are going to switch the up time to being able to be 100% (cooldown and up time will match). This will be with the lowered percentages that we presented and seems like the best way to address many of the concerns while still bringing bonding power more in line with where it should be.

(There's more from that developer, I just quoted the most succinct part related to bonding nerfs). Bondings will be nerfed, just not so hard.

[Ziek88]

Update: the 50% availability on bondings has been rescinded. Source: page #10 of the thread, search for the post by 'noworries' which says

We are going to switch the up time to being able to be 100% (cooldown and up time will match). This will be with the lowered percentages that we presented and seems like the best way to address many of the concerns while still bringing bonding power more in line with where it should be.

Bondings will be nerfed, just not so hard.

I can live with that. I feel that is a reasonable nerf.