I guess if nothing else, making casters horrible at low levels IS close to how it is in P&P. But that's kind of a silly rationale (which I doubt they'd ever use) given how many other deviations DDO takes from P&P.
noamineo wrote on Aug 23
rd, 2022 at 7:30pm:
There are 500 different crafting blanks on the TOEE loot tables.
500.
Let that sink in. That this system ever made it as far as being scribbled on the back of napkin is testament to how retarded SSG is. That it made it into production, well... I don't think there's a metric for how stupid that is.
There are many problems with the system, which should've been obvious to anyone who actually plays the game. They should've been visible from a mile away.
First off, EVERY melee weapon type has a caster variant. Which is retarded. Over 100 blanks do not need to exist. If you want caster blanks, then just make 8: 4 elemental scepter, 4 elemental quarterstaves. There's no reason we should have caster greatclubs or greataxes for fucks sake. This is the biggest problem: between heroic and epic weapons, simply removing these "caster variants" would eliminate
over 200 of the items right there.
Secondly, ranged weapons are steaming piles of shit. Both in heroics and in epics. They are not worth upgrading now, they weren't worth upgrading 5 years ago, they weren't worth upgrading in 2015 when the pack first came out. Not to mention, some of them are powercrept by the named items from ToEE. In particular: why the fuck would I want a craftable longbow when Sapphire Sting exists? Why would I want a craftable Great Crossbow when Leverage exists? Ratcatcher from Threnal makes elemental light xbows pointless. So counting all the heroic/epic ranged blanks, that's
48 blanks that shouldn't exist.
Thirdly, on that note, certain other named items invalidate the need for ToEE blanks. Elemental Bloom is a better qstaff than any of those blanks. Same with Spinal Tap. And possible Assassins Kiss.
So that's 12 blanks that don't need to exist.Fourthly, all of the heroic armors are bad. 75% fort is not that good. Dusk is not that good. Resistance 2 is bad. 10% elemental absorption is "lol who cares." None of these armors needed to exist in the first place, especially since none of them have a set bonus in heroic. So that's what:
20 blanks right there.
TLDR: Congratulations, SSG: I just cut out over 280 blanks from your system of 500, effectively halving the amount of blanks you should have. And I'm just some nobody who thought about this for all of 15 minutes. If I can do it, then there's absolutely no excuse that SSG/Turbine couldn't. Pure laziness and neglect, plain and simple.