(my post mostly copied from another thread: http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...Forms&p=292443 )
It is kinda sad that t6, adamantium, endgame scales are only approximately equal to t5 armor scales.. definitely not superior. At least, it feels that way when using them, and I have noticed you die faster.
Let's do an actual comparison, full t5 vs full t6.
t5 typical melee set, 2 sockets on head + Razor Teeth, 3 sockets on each foreleg, dragon chest techs on chest, I get (self buffed plus some biped buffs):
5% chance Primal Vengeance
5% chance stun
10% chance Vital Defiance
3425 Health
2288 Armor
320 Ethereal Armor
1389 Strength
1054 Dexterity
1079 Power
1114 Focus
1156 Evasion
1079 Magic Evasion
500 Blight Resistance
40 Flame Resistance
1298 Primal
1249 Dragon Breath
1716 Tooth&Claw
Switching to the t6 adamantium set I get
5% chance Primal Vengeance
3475 Health
1903 Armor
250 Ethereal Armor
1444 Strength
1109 Dexterity
1184 Power
1149 Focus
1161 Evasion
1006 Magic Evasion
40 Flame Resistance
1420 Primal
1372 Dragon Breath
1729 Tooth&Claw
Piercing Winds was on all 4 wing scales used in the comparison. The same buffs were on in both sets of readings. The Saris Stone of Friendship was moved into the t6 set to take the reading. Priceless forelegs were socketed, health xtal in one, saris stone of friendship in the other. Priceless Head had Razor Teeth tech.
So the differences when the t6 set is equipped are:
no Eminence Tech (no chance to stun)
no Vital Defiance Tech
+50 Health (+1.4%)
-385 Armor (-16.8%)
-70 Ethereal Armor (-21.9%)
+55 Strength (+4.0%)
+55 Dexterity (+5.2%)
+105 Power (+9.7%)
+35 Focus (+3.0%)
+5 evasion (must come from the dexterity)
-73 magic evasion (-6.3%)
-500 Blight Resistance (no crest of the blackhammer clan tech available)
+122 Primal (+9.4%)
+123 Dragon Breath (+9.8%)
+13 Tooth&claw (0.76%)
So, looking at the numbers, it looks like Primal, Dragon Breath, and Power get about 10% boost. Nice if you are a caster, except losing 17% of your armor means you will still die faster.
Tooth&claw is so close its basically no improvement. 5% for Strength and Dexterity would help, so maybe 5% damage increase there. But you lose 17% armor, still a big deal. Also lose some magic evasion, since there aren't enough sockets to use the darkstaff armor crystals.
The armor loss is really too much. Armor plays a big deal in survivability. Losing 2 of the dragon chest techs means you take even more damage (They are all defensive in nature)... So what could be done to improve these, and make people actually want them?
Allow 3 tech slots on the scales which can take sockets: Chest, Head, Forelegs. Then the dragon techs can all be used, as well as many of these newer xtals we get from quest rewards, such as the darkstaff crystals and Battlemaster's Stone.
Add about 600 more armor across the sets, which is only a net increase of 215 armor, about 9.3%.
Add 350 Health across the sets, which is about 10% increase.
Maybe the gains should be larger yet. Tiers in the game are basically 20% difference between each other (20 levels out of 100). An expected 20% improvement over the prior tier wouldn't be out a line. But at the very minimum, we shouldn't lose stats. The argument that "well there should be a tradeoff" ignores the fact that these should be t6, endgame, the best you can get gear. But really they make you die faster, especially fighting mobs with a lot of health.
******
Thinking more about the apparent buffs to Primal/power/focus... the only reason it appears to be an increase, is because my current scales have none of those techs... If I had a t5 set all teched out for primal, there would likely be the same difference I see now when looking at t&c/str/dex... Therefore, those stats as well should not get overlooked for improvement.
In any case, having same t&c, +5% strength, -17% armor... there's nothing "Epic" or even "T6" about these adamantium scales.
Dev's, can we get some improvements to these?
If you want to make them more rare as a result, that's fair. Give these pieces the same chance to drop that the speed cogs have... (where it takes days to finally get just ONE).