Proposal of New Augmenting System

Basically it's similar to the Evolith system only it addresses the bane and blessing of a mages exsistance the elemental staves. The idea is to allow a new unheralded amount of flexibility with weapons while giving us the kind of customization we always wanted and to a degree keep us from always having to be married too and constantly gear swapping those bloody staves.

As an additional effect if it pans out and SE does actually implement something to this effect, it might give Synergy a much needed boost in popularity.

I want any ideas and suggestions you folks might have to help improve this. I think I covered balance issues and whatnot pretty well so hopefully you all won't find much wrong with it.

Swords wrote:

FF11 “Materia” system (Name is a work in progress I'm up for suggestions)

Premise: Socket weapons/shields with elemental ores/beads with Synergy to reap the benefits of the staves without relying on staves themselves. Additionally it gives players a desired amount of flexibility creating items that they have been striving for since the Evolith system had fallen short of it’s promise.

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 ores 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 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, which also directly affects the High-Quality rate. 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+ or perhaps going one step further and have the maximum allowable sockets on a weapon based on the weapons level.


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