Magical Bracers - Feedback

[A1RMAN]

I have to start with saying that overall addition of bracers to forging is positive. They are strong enough, need expensive materials to make, but not overpowered when comparing to magical bracers that can be found via loot.

After making lots of bracers and comparing them I came to conclusion that their stats need some balancing. Some of the bracers are better and some are worse in comparison.

Hopefully other players will share their experience and how things work for them. I'll post some of my thoughts, although it's not a full list of available changes. The main concern for me is skill bonus and type of spell.

Adamantine Bracer of Avoidance

Damage Reduction: 5/+3
Enhancement Bonus: +2 Dexterity
Skill Bonus: +6 Parry
4 use/day Shield(5)

Skills: Only one and relatively useless skill.

Spell: Good spell. Will be used often by many different characters.

Adamantine Bracer of Preservation

Damage Reduction: 5/+3
Enhancement Bonus: +2 Wisdom
Skill Bonus: +6 Heal
4 use/day Lesser Restoration

Skills: Amazing skill bonus, used by all characters

Spell: Very useful spell, will be used by majority of characters.

In my mind this is the best bracer from current selection. Great skill/spell combination and can be runed by just Greater Rune. I've been seriously thinking about runing it and using on STR based character, for Heal bonus and somewhat useful +1 Will. It's kinda extreme, but I think it's a good example how good this one is.

Adamantine Bracer of Aggression

Damage Reduction: 5/+3
Enhancement Bonus: +2 Strength
Skill Bonus: +5 Intimidate
Skill Bonus: +5 Taunt
4 use/day Expeditious Retreat(5)

Skills: Let's face it, nobody uses "social" skill rolls. Maybe it will change in the future, but right now it's just wasted property. Taunt is useful, but only for a small part of characters. So, both skills are useless for the majority of players. Unlike previous bracer, it requires Masterwork Rune.

Spell: The spell is good, but duration of 5 rounds completely kills it. You can't really get far, even using all 4 charges. I suggest changing it to Level 15, or replacing with Haste (5).

Adamantine Bracer of Knowing

Damage Reduction: 5/+3
Enhancement Bonus: +2 Intelligence
Skill Bonus: +6 Lore
Skill Bonus: +6 Search
4 use/day Identify(3)

Skills: Very good skills, useful for most characters.

Spell: Good spell, but it may be kind of overkill having INT based character, Lore skill bonus AND Identify. Please, if you're using this bracer, leave your feedback.

Adamantine Bracer of Persuasion

Damage Reduction: 5/+3
Enhancement Bonus: +2 Charisma
Skill Bonus: +6 Bluff
Skill Bonus: +6 Perform
Skill Bonus: +6 Persuade
3 use/day Charm Person(10)

Skills: Perform is somewhat useful, Persuade and Bluff completely useless now.

Spell: Need player feedback here. Did you find this spell useful in practice?

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Overall I think that putting one useful skill, instead of three useless, would be welcomed by most players. It will also create opportunity to use Greater Rune instead of Masterwork, which is a big deal, of course.

[TimeAdept]

The dex one is probably the best one, parry is not useless and 4x shield a day is amazing.

the wis one is decent, heal and lesser resto is helpful.

str one is only decent for the +2 str. much rather have str/con/skill/skill/uni.

int one is pointless.

cha is probably best in slot for a bard, and worth carrying for anyone else who uses bluff, which is abolutely not useless, by the way.

[Aodh Lazuli]

Skills: Let's face it, nobody uses "social" skill rolls. Maybe it will change in the future, but right now it's just wasted property. Taunt is useful, but only for a small part of characters. So, both skills are useless for the majority of players. Unlike previous bracer, it requires Masterwork Rune.

Spell: The spell is good, but duration of 5 rounds completely kills it. You can't really get far, even using all 4 charges. I suggest changing it to Level 15, or replacing with Haste (5).

I mean... in fairness the addy bracer of aggression is excellent on specific builds. PDK in particular loves the intimidate, and Barbarian likewise. There are some good builds which make use of both skills.

The skills are far from useless, just a little niche, perhaps.

[Nitro]

Skills: Perform is somewhat useful, Persuade and Bluff completely useless now.

I disagree, +6 bluff is amazing for disguise based characters. But yes, the persuade is useless.

[Emotionaloverload]

I am not sure where this notion that the skills are useless or not being used in rp/skill rolls has come from but alright.

The only real complaint I have is with the DEX one for parry. There are plenty of great DEX skills that open the bracers up to more build types than parry does.


-S

[Iceborn]

I want to love these bracers, but I don't like how they behave with the current runic system.
For example, look at the dex bracers! Those count as 3 properties, so you can rune them with a greater rune. It sucks if you are not a parry character (which is one in 300 characters, parry is not my favorite skill either), but you still get +2 dex, and 4 uses of shield per day, which is a very important spell to have if you don't use adamantine helmets.

Compare it to say, the Bracers of Persuasion, and this is biased since I'm playing a bard:

Adamantine Bracer of Persuasion

Damage Reduction: 5/+3
Enhancement Bonus: +2 Charisma
Skill Bonus: +6 Bluff
Skill Bonus: +6 Perform
Skill Bonus: +6 Persuade
3 use/day Charm Person(10)

5 properties. Completely impossible to rune.
5/+3 is nice.
+2 Charisma is great.
+6 perform is amazing.
+6 bluff is good, if you are a character that uses Disguise (I'm playing a kobold, so disguise is practically worthless in my character right now)
+6 Persuade is... meh? Persuade only has a very few NPC uses and more gold turning heads.
3 uses/day Charm Person is only remotely usable as a RP tool.

I'd love these would just come as default runic, so you can add whatever you need in them, since the current runic system tends to favor more power instead of more skill diversity, and I don't... like that, purely from a matter of roleplay and principle.

[Cortex]

The CHA bracer is the worst because you can already max out CHA in many different ways, I think it's the easiest ability to hit the soft cap with.

DEX is a niche pick, the parry is really good for parry users, and takes only a medium rune last I checked. Easily a BiS for parry DEXers.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I mean, every one of them gives damage reduction against the most common weapons. So there is that. None of them are perfect save for niche builds, but that seems alright considering. Exped Retreat is pretty decent for catching that guy who keeps running away for example to out run your buffs (divine Wrath comes to mind in particular), especially now that everyone is maxed out at 150%, but I suppose you are more then likely to have haste for that anyways. If I were to change anything I would make that ten rounds instead of 5 so its more useful then a potion of haste but not as useful as a wand (since the wand takes a round to use).

[Skarain]

I want to love these bracers, but I don't like how they behave with the current runic system.
For example, look at the dex bracers! Those count as 3 properties, so you can rune them with a greater rune. It sucks if you are not a parry character (which is one in 300 characters, parry is not my favorite skill either), but you still get +2 dex, and 4 uses of shield per day, which is a very important spell to have if you don't use adamantine helmets.

Compare it to say, the Bracers of Persuasion, and this is biased since I'm playing a bard:

Adamantine Bracer of Persuasion

Damage Reduction: 5/+3
Enhancement Bonus: +2 Charisma
Skill Bonus: +6 Bluff
Skill Bonus: +6 Perform
Skill Bonus: +6 Persuade
3 use/day Charm Person(10)

5 properties. Completely impossible to rune.
5/+3 is nice.
+2 Charisma is great.
+6 perform is amazing.
+6 bluff is good, if you are a character that uses Disguise (I'm playing a kobold, so disguise is practically worthless in my character right now)
+6 Persuade is... meh? Persuade only has a very few NPC uses and more gold turning heads.
3 uses/day Charm Person is only remotely usable as a RP tool.

I'd love these would just come as default runic, so you can add whatever you need in them, since the current runic system tends to favor more power instead of more skill diversity, and I don't... like that, purely from a matter of roleplay and principle.

As a Sorcerer player, equally biased, I do have to agree upon points about the CHA bracers. Finding out that you were unable to Rune the thing was disheartening.

Most of the social skills are wasted. +6 Perform is trash to anyone except Bard. Only uses for it are Disguise (which Bluff also covers). You can not even use -Mimic to make use of those skill points to conceal your stats as it needs to be HARD ranks in the skill, so you end up with two relatively useless stats that - again, for playing a monstrous race (Kobold) reasons, are even more useless as Disguise does not conceal your Monstrous features.

[Kenji]

The perform ranks are fairly useful compared to bluff. Bluff is the one that doesn’t have as many crafts that provides a hefty bonus to fulfill almost a full set of equipment for disguise use.

[Iceborn]

I'd honestly love of Both Bluff and Persuade were dropped from the Bracers of Persuasion, to that would make them possible to rune with a medium rune. Or a variant - I can very biased-ly say that +6 Perform is a godsend for bards, since it is really, REALLY annoying to have to hit the mark of Perform 50 at bard 20.

[Lady Astray]

I can confirm that CHA is really easy to hit the soft cap with. So easy that when I'm sitting here looking at possible future gear options for my Sorc, I'm more concerned with hitting the cap for CON and DEX. I even plan to skip on Armor of Immolation in favor of the Padded Vestment of the Holy Squire because right now with Maximized Eagle's Splendor I only get +2 CHA. With Adamantine Bracers of Knowing and a Dungeon Delver's Cloak I can get a whopping +10 search along with damage reduction and a slight bonus to DEX and CON. I'm not even using a sorc staff, I'm dual wielding enchanted daggers for another +2 DEX. With a Dungeon Delver's Cloak, Padded Vestment of the Holy Squire, those daggers, and Maximized Cat's Grace, I can easily hit the DEX cap for an extra +6 AC. I'd really love to see some +2 CON bracers, and maybe some end-game +4 STR bracers for warriors that need something like mithril dust or a star sapphire to craft.

[Nitro]

I'd honestly love of Both Bluff and Persuade were dropped from the Bracers of Persuasion, to that would make them possible to rune with a medium rune. Or a variant - I can very biased-ly say that +6 Perform is a godsend for bards, since it is really, REALLY annoying to have to hit the mark of Perform 50 at bard 20.

I'd be fine with dropping the persuade too, but the bluff is very good since it's one of the few pieces of gear that a non-perform disguiser can get to help match the spot scores that dedicated spotters can reach these days. The CHA is nice on a non-bard character too, since it means you can drop the ruby necklace in favour of another neck slot item (Like +2 CON necklace).

[magistrasa]

There's almost no craftable gear that gives Bluff bonuses. I think there's two armors, and maybe one other piece that I can't recall. And there's nothing in the loot matrix at all, as far as I'm aware. If bards want a wrist piece that grants perform and can be modified in different ways, you should get the Gloves of Performance, which comes with a +3 and nothing else - basin fodder, basically. With that being the case, I'm more in favor of Perform being dropped, rather than Bluff . But of course, that's only if something absolutely had to go in addition to the Persuade.

[Jagel]

I think the bracers are a cool edition but it makes me a sad panda that the first craftable item type that offers a bit if DR is in the glove slot. Shifters could really benefit from a bit of DR to help out some of the weaker shapes and gloves don’t merge :’ (

[A1RMAN]

I mean... in fairness the addy bracer of aggression is excellent on specific builds. PDK in particular loves the intimidate, and Barbarian likewise. There are some good builds which make use of both skills.

The skills are far from useless, just a little niche, perhaps.

My intention was to start discussion. I'm happy people come with more views on the subject. But I think overall statement that bracers could use some tuning can be proved here. If some skills are somewhat useful, it's interesting to know for what percent of population? Heal is useful for 99%, Perform is useful for... 5%?

[Richørd]

The Bracers of Aggression are definitely the Best in Slot for any Vanguard PDK build. These are totally not "social skills".

[Aodh Lazuli]

The Bracers of Aggression are definitely the Best in Slot for any Vanguard PDK build. These are totally not "social skills".

I'd widen that to any PDK. The fear is extremely useful on non-vanguards.