Is Anet biased against casters?

Just a little observation, when you get your amulet of the mists, you can trade it for cool looking ceremonal daggers, Shiro's sword, and of course for the casters you also have the wonderful wayward wand and a straw stick figure.

Likewise for The Deep you have wonderful glowing GREEN Zodiac hammers and swords and axes, but none for the casters. The zodiac skins for the staffs and wands do exist in game mind you, but unless you have the ability to fork out the 100K and 300 ectos to own one of these Kanaxai greens, it is unlikely you will EVER get a good usable zodiac staff/wand.

Why is there this bias? Maybe all the casters in Cantha should file a petition to have Anet introduce new Kanaxai wands and starves!

Don't forget the focii.

In Tombs, most of the green drops are wands, staves, focii, and one of the 2 bows. Getting Victor's Maul is common, the Axe and Sword a little less so, and the shield even more rare.

Maybe The Deep is a balance of that. The Zodiac skins are rare now, but in a couple of months, they'll be just like Tombs items, I imagine.

I've got a Zodiac Staff for the Rit I think, somewhere in storage anyway, it's gold obviously, but well they're there.

The reason Kanaxai would only drop melee weapons is because he doesn't use the other stuff like wands, etc.

I personally think it's fine, now if there wasn't any zodiac caster weapons at all, I'd have to go get a plank and throw it at some heads,

Yes, but let's not forget most of the ToPK focii are worthless.

As in, really worthless.

I'd take a collector's anyday over those items that aren't even worth the 35g the merchant pays out. They are pretty much that bad.

C'mon is this the best complaint that you can come up with? They give you an option at the to pick from a perfect wand or perfect focii for each profession at the end of the game. ANET is doing just fine. Find a valid argument.

When I did the Deep, 1/3 of my chest drops were Zodiac Staffs.

I've noticed the emphasis on warrior and ranger items in GW and GW:F. For example there are many different bow, axe, hammer and sword skins in the game but how many skins are there for staves? I guess its easier to model these weapons because there are real life swords and axes etc yet the caster items were fabricated from the designers' imaginations.

It is still annoiyng that casters have the choice of the wayward wand or the <fugly> straw effigy where as the non-casters get a nice variety for their amulet.

yeah kinda cheap i think well for ele the wands where all the same it could have been diffrent for water air etc...and all the wand where hte same for all classes and those skins arent even uniq to the end-game thingy since you can get most of those skins in ''The Deep''

my amulet of mists is still in storage... thinkin of selling it as is.

I have 3 they're getting rusty.

If they gave the bosses in the elite missions caster stuff, I could see it now... "Ah nuts, stupid wand! Anybody wanna trade?"

Zodiac wands and staffs are very common and the reaction from most people after opening a chest and finding one is usually dissapointment... followed by even more moaning after IDing. Majority of the warrior, ranger, and assassin stuff is usually worth less than what was paid for the key as well, so it's not just casters that have trouble finding the perfect zodiac weapon. Sometimes you will get something good, sometimes you won't, it's just a risk you take with any chest.

So what if those bosses don't drop caster stuff! If you get a green, sell it and go buy a perfect zodiac staff or wand from a player if that's what you really want!

As for the straw effigy, I kinda like it. I guess it could be my mood lately, but I like carrying around something that resembles a voodoo doll... especially with a fire wand in the other hand.

*coughs* And um... sell the amulet as quickly as possible if you're not wanting anything, the prices are getting lower and lower.

I think something else to factor in is the fact the randomness of weapons doesnt apply so heavily towards the non-caster weapons.

Staves, Wands and Focii have MUCH MUCH more crazy possibilities with attributes and requirements that swords, axes, bows, hammers, shields, daggers ever will.

If you get a sword, it will always require swordsmanship. Theres very few sword mods that are un-usable, even if not maxed.

Staves can require ANY attribute, and could have modifiers from something else (Like triple and quad attribute staves)

What use is a staff req Fire, giving a +1 to curses, and 10% recharge on divine prayers?

Warriors, Rangers, and Sins only have to deal with the possible 20>50 or -10 while attacking mods.

I think I actually GOT that staff one night!

OKay okay, not exactly... but I get alot that are mixed like that, which are useless.

I don't think they're biased against casters at all. If you think about it, a caster's ability to prove useful revolves around the caster himself/herself. This is pretty common in fantasy books and movies (though not the rule), whereas for a warrior (fantasy or sci-fi) it has more to do with his weapon (excalibur, krull, kull's axe). Warriors identify themselves with their big badass weapon (dirty harry's big-assed gun, rambo's guns-out-of-the-arse, arnold's mini-gun).

The most powerful class (opinion, but shared amongst others as well) in the game (pve-wise) currently is the Spiteful/Shivers/MM/Touch-Kill necromancer (not all of the above, but from the above). There's not much they can't do. In the recent past tanks have been used as book carriers, torch bearers, keg poppers, etc. Cut them some slack and at least let them have something in their favor (a badass looking weapon and/or shield of some sort).

Disclaimer: this post doesn't say that there aren't other 'good' combinations of classes or that 'you' have a problem with your class in particular (as some people will read into that).

I agree that casters get shafted in certain areas, but I expect some imbalance since Warriors are a heavy equipment based class. Still though, Anet can do much better by us caster folk.

...and as for you Straw Effigy haters out there - that end game green is actually dyeable (I guess anet made an exception/mistake there?) Either way, it takes to colors really well. I dyed mine silver and it looks awesome.

What i don't get is why they didn't introduce a decent skin for a staff. Shadow Staffs? Who the hell wants that decrepid thing. Why not give us a Chaos Staff/Scepter or something, you know, it glows bright red of something. Something that will actually look 'pretty' as oppose to that lump of dead wood.

And yeah caster items are utterly retarded for bonus'. It would be nice if they actually limited bonus' to something that might be useful. I mean keep it the damn bonus' within the same profession. Who the hell wants a Req Earth, Skill Recharge Death, Cast Time Domination focus?

^ I always think it's funny when I get a staff with more than one Primary attribute!

I seriously got a staff which req Divine Favor, and had Fast Cast and Spawning mods on it.

Gotta love multi-Primary stat items

Although i think it could've used a 'Soul Reaping +1 while using skills' mod.

I think that the Zodiac staffs are almost the new Raven staffs. Going to the deep only a total of 4 times, 3/4 of the GOOD things i got where zodiac staffs, whether that be from chests or drops. They were gold mostly but they had mods ranging from spawning to water magic to soulreaping. They have all differnt types of mods, just like raven staffs and they also have the totaly random mods such as req fire magic, halves casting time of healing prayers.

It's nigh-impossible to get a good caster item to drop, so even though there are some nice skins in the game now they aren't something people can realistically use unless you write off stats completely. This is largely because these items have two mods each, and draw from a huge pool of mods - many of which are entirely useless.

Warrior and ranger items on the other hand have only one mod, and that mod has a very good chance of being a good one. If you see a zodiac sword drop, for instance, it likely has around 1:10 odds of being a perfect 15>50 or 15/-5 weapon. On the other hand, if you see a zodiac staff drop you're looking at maybe 1:10,000 odds - at best - of it being something comparable to a collector or crafted item.

Warriors and rangers also get a better selection of green items to use. Again this comes down to there being less mods for them so there are less combinations to sort through. Of course, the fact that almost all the green staves are junked up by +energy mods doesn't help.

Basically golds are easy enough to get for physicals that they get to look through the different models for what they want to customize their looks, while casters can't reasonably find any gold drops for themselves and end up looking over collector and crafter lists as a result.

Peace,
-CxE