Codex of Power Revamp

Waldoff

Administrator
Staff member
Pretty much the entire staff feels that the Codex of Power has been a bit of a failed experiment. What was once meant as something for people to slowly accomplish (and that was expected only a few people would do) has become a near-necessity for a new player to get him or herself into a raid guild. Ironically, perception has it that even guilds that are in tiers that were released before CoPower even existed, require at least some time spent into CoPowers.

Even worse, the CoPower is boring as all hell. You just kill massive amounts of things, watch the little thing tick up, and gain uninteresting, base power bit by bit. Of course, this power increase is so big that it needs to be done prior to some AAs, and nearly all other tomes.

So the question is not whether or not we want to keep the CoPower, it is how should it be dismantled, and if something should be put in place for people who want to exp into infinity that is not a tome that is anything near required reading.

Proposal 1:

CoPower goes away. Instead, we have three tomes: (The names do not matter yet.)

Codex of Battle: 20% Melee, Pet Melee and Ranged Damage. Same AA count as 1.6 old CoPowers.

Codex of Healing: 20% Healing increase. Same AA count as 1.6 old CoPowers.

Codex of Evocation: 20% to all damage spells and songs. Same AA count as 1.6 old CoPowers.

When the change goes live, we delete all CoPower and reimburse everyone who has done a CoPower their experience that has gone into it (most likely via a bunch of right click tokens). It is then up to the player to use their previously earned experience on all three new tomes, or to pick one or two new tomes and have some experience left over.

Most classes will only need one or two of these tomes. Even better, new players will be able to tackle the tome of most potency to their class first, instead of having to slog through all 5 old tomes to get their needed 20%. A guild looking for a druid will care first and foremost about the healing tome, and although the druid may want the evocation tome in the future, it is not an automatic prerequisite for high end raiding.


Proposal 2:

Get rid of CoPower altogether, reimburse all experience, and welfare the 20% to something else.

This is currently what I am leaning toward. Right now our best idea is put the 20% increase into specializations, and to make it so those specialization bonuses only kick in at 65. For instance, lets say all specializations are capped at 200 until level 65. We then make every 3 or 4 AAs or X tome exp give 1 specialization point. Each specialization point between 200 and 250 gives ~.4 bonus to all the old CoPower attribute corresponding to the specialization.

This means that you still gain the 20% slowly, but you do it in a way concurrent with normal AAing or Tomeing.

Alternatively, another idea to welfare the 20% is to put it into actually killing things. Utilizing the new "hard event" flag we used to give boss mobs experience bonuses, we have each new boss mob killed increase your overall power by some increment up to 20%. This way, players will get their old CoPower increase slowly as they kill more and more difficult mobs. Perhaps something around .1% per mini, .2% per boss and .5% per zone boss. With this, the power increase is still there, but it is no longer something new players will have to do to get into a new guild. Instead, it is something the new player gets as he experiences more and more raid content.

Proposal 3:

Who the hell knows. Outline it in your post if you have a good proposal to dismantle the CoPower iron raid curtain.



_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Once CoPower is dismantled, we have another question we have to ask. Do we want to try to find a way to satisfy the original point of the CoPower. That is, do we want a place for experience to go no matter how much experience you have already gotten. The answer to this very well may be no - since any incentive that would make the time spent worthwhile would sooner or later make the new system a "must have" just like CoPower became. Further, remember that when we hit 3.0 a bunch of new options open up to us, such as leadership AAs and other things that are not directly power correlated - which may make us want to wait on adding a new system in now.

If the answer is yes we do want a new system - it is safe to say there can not be a raw character improvement benefit from it. So what sort of reward would be doable? Although this is much less important than fixing the CoPower problem, I am happy to hear your thoughts on it as well.


Be constructive!
 
As long as I don't end up losing or having to regain my 20% bonus to my DPS I'm all for these changes.

Personally I like option 1 - I can put some XP into my tome of melee DPS or whatever and have some XP left over to use on other things. Kind of a bonus for suffering through the COP1-5 grind.
 
Or

Leave those of us who have it done alone, we have our 20% to everything so it's fine. Take COPs out of the game in the future and implement the other 3 tomes for anyone approaching that phase. If someone's active on CoPs (like 40% done with COP 4) reimburse them their XP and let them start over.

I think this is a really good idea, the people who have the original CoP done should be left alone. The new ones could be put onto vendors and be coded so that if you have the original, you cant do the new tomes or benefit from the other bonuses etc
 
why not basically leave them, just shorten the amount of xp it takes to complete? I definately do not like the idea of using minis and bosses to lvl it up.
 
Inquiry:

As proposal #2 revolves around specialization bonus, does this mean that those of us who for one reason or another do not have a 20% deity specialization bonus will be given the short end of the stick? How would this proposal affect the current bonus system already in place with alignment/religion?
 
proposal number 1 is pretty nice.

I think pet dmg need to be added to evocation for pure int casters tho....

and why not just have a system like adventure band that sends 100% of the exp a character get to another... that sounds like a solution to ur infinite exp question.
 
I'm a fan of the option #2 myself.. being only into the first CoPower I can definitely say I'm far more of a fan of doing tomes, etc then I am of doing those everlovin' Codex'..
 
I definately do not like the idea of using minis and bosses to lvl it up.

I agree. I think this harms players that may not do a lot of 'boss' encounters, but are doing xp stuff.

Honestly, I see option 1 as the same thing as CoP with the only change being you can target your 20%. It allows players to get what they 'need' more quickly, but it is not going to change the boring as hell part. I much prefer this to option 2.

I have no constructive ideas at the moment other than my above opinions.
 
I agree. I think this harms players that may not do a lot of 'boss' encounters, but are doing xp stuff.

By the time you are past all of your AAs, and in to your tomes, you will be doing some sort of 6, 12 or 18 man content. I do not think there are many (if any) people who just play to increase their EXP on regular exp mobs without trying for no drop gear.

The fact that it divorces the power from exp is part of the appeal. You still have to work towards it, but you can work towards it through normal raid play instead of ever-grind.
 
Inquiry:

As proposal #2 revolves around specialization bonus, does this mean that those of us who for one reason or another do not have a 20% deity specialization bonus will be given the short end of the stick? How would this proposal affect the current bonus system already in place with alignment/religion?

Would be balanced to not effect deity/alignment bonus at all. The 20% would be entirely extraneous to the current specialization scheme.
 
By the time you are past all of your AAs, and in to your tomes, you will be doing some sort of 6, 12 or 18 man content. I do not think there are many (if any) people who just play to increase their EXP on regular exp mobs without trying for no drop gear.

The fact that it divorces the power from exp is part of the appeal. You still have to work towards it, but you can work towards it through normal raid play instead of ever-grind.

Agreed 100%.

I absolutely hate grinding exp, yet I love raiding / 6mans. ANYTHING that would cut down on the exp grind would in my eyes be an amazing change.

Also, I'd like to agree with an earlier post about those of us who already slogged through the 5 codex's should simply retain those bonuses without having to complete whatever system is implemented.
 
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I am making this post because i was told to make a great post, so buckle yourselves in and prepare as a wave of words washes over you.

Personally I think that CoP should stay the same but require less exp. Perhaps the amount of exp to fill a class tome, and could be split into more ranks. Option #1 of this change is slightly complicated and may cause issues with some classes having to do more tomes if the above idea isnt considered. Making CoP shorter for more is pretty cool and really helps more people. Some classes get the short end of the stick though, mainly hybrids, because they do split dps between spell/melee. Beastlords, rangers, monks, bards, mages(for pet), necros(for pet), are just some of the classes that would want to do 2 books to gain the benefit something like a rogue or wizard would gain from 1.

Perhaps this is an intended design, where the pure dps classes have a slight advantage in terms of exp needed for their lesser utility, but thats not my decision to make.

The idea of gaining specializations while doing AAs/tomes and getting the benefits of CoP is really cool and I actually really like it. If the people who already have CoP done get the corresponding benefit and reimbursed exp I think that this would be the best change. Doing the CoPs is really long and pretty boring as a tome because of how slow they go, but if they are just a part of regular exp grinding and earned while doing other things, I think it would be a much better system.

As for making something that you can exp forever and ever, I suggest an easy to acquire Ear/Ring item similar to the seed of energy that caps at a much higher amount of exp, and much higher stats. You could pick up the item at T1 or T2 stats, and through 2805 million exp (the original rohk book amount, 78 codex of exp) to max it out at roughly t12/13 stats. Example of item at start and finish.

Trinket of Devoured Souls
AC: 2
Magic DMG: 2
Effect: Lifetap (Must wear clicky, 2.3)
STR: +5 DEX: +5 STA: +5 CHA: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +5 AGI: +5 HP: +25 MANA: +25
SV FIRE: +1 SV DISEASE: +1 SV COLD: +1 SV MAGIC: +1 SV POISON: +1
WT: 0.5 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL
Slot 1 type 3: empty

That could be the starting neverending exp sink item in SoD, and the final stats could finish at about this

Trinket of Devoured Souls
AC: 25
Magic DMG: 25
Effect: Lifetap (Must wear clicky, 2.3)
STR: +50 DEX: +50 STA: +50 CHA: +50 WIS: +50 INT: +50 AGI: +50 HP: +250 MANA: +250
SV FIRE: +15 SV DISEASE: +15 SV COLD: +15 SV MAGIC: +15 SV POISON: +15
WT: 0.5 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL
Slot 1 type 3: empty

An item thats pretty good for all classes, can go in multiple slots, and takes truck loads of exp to max out.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and I appreciate the work of the devs to make the game more fun
 
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By the time you are past all of your AAs, and in to your tomes, you will be doing some sort of 6, 12 or 18 man content. I do not think there are many (if any) people who just play to increase their EXP on regular exp mobs without trying for no drop gear.

The fact that it divorces the power from exp is part of the appeal. You still have to work towards it, but you can work towards it through normal raid play instead of ever-grind.

Kinda depends on how it would be implemented. Unless it was retroactive, which I'd guess it wouldn't be as far as kill flags go, a lot of folks are way past most of those kills. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, or maybe you'd just get credit for your existing 20% and this would only apply towards new chars? I don't know. Personally, with my guild in a lull right now, I pretty much only grind xp, farm, and do an occasional 6 man mob. I don't plan on things staying that way, but I don't plan on doing a whole hell of a lot of sub-T11 content on my main or second char. either. How would that work?

(I could see warming up to the second version of 2 if it was done a certain way, but for now I'm on team 1 or team 2.1 out of worry that my characters might be broken.)
 
It would have to be retroactive. I am sorry that was somehow not clear. Would cause a run on content otherwise.
 
Hybrids requiring more exp has been a thing even in AAs, As a bard i have 567AA while many people run out of useful ones around 400. Hybrids also need more tomes, striking one and evo 1 ect vs just magic or just melee, it is the way of hybrids and it cant really be fixed. Also I think melee would lose some dmg from procs so the really bored people will still do them for 20% more powerful wep procs. People that need all 3 are the ones that get kinda shafted but I bet a ranger would rather do melee/spell then move on to other tomes for a long time before caring about healing enough to do them.

I like idea #1, it lets people get the codex they need done quickly and after just finishing 3cop in the last month I absolutely do not want to have to do any more shit to reearn my 20% bonus so if option #2 does go in are people done with CoPs going to keep the bonus?(Everyone raiding ~t10+ will suddenly lose 20% dmg and healing and will not even be close to being able to kill what they do now) If not it is a horrible idea and I don't want to quest for what I already have.

Still think charms are a bigger problem as I finished CoP5 and am still 60k away from eternal, supreme is beyond thinking about. If you delete CoPs and i have to suddenly buy 5 codex worth of exp in tomes and bind them it will cost a ton of money and I will be even farther from eternal and that is not at all preferable to farming CoP and something you should think about. CoPs are super cheep and last a long time, while people whine about how much exp it takes it is a good thing vs farming money. 5k for class tome 1 and another 1k to bind it to me is pretty shitty. The sudden influx of people needing tomes will drive the prices up as well.

You should make AA faster and option #1, new people finishing their AA are good enough to raid up to t9+ and can then join a guild and get groups that farm content that gets good tome exp. Farming 1.6 of a CoP is not hard when you get the full 20% bonus you desire out of it.

If option #2 gives people CoP5 power by t5 it will make that content pretty trivial. A lower tier zone similar to cmal with good no drop gear for the tier you can actually attain it on that has a bonus to AA exp would go a long way to help new players catch up and keep high tier people looking for money and tome exp out.
 
Of walds options i like 2.1 best followed by 1.

But i think an easier solution is just changing the exp per cop:

Currently:
Cop1-110aa
Cop2-110aa
Cop3-110aa
Cop4-110aa
Cop5-110aa
Sum-550aa

New:
Cop1-50aa
Cop2-80aa
Cop3-110aa
Cop4-140aa
Cop5-170aa
Sum-550aa

This ez change frontloads the first two cops which is great for weak toons early in the game. The latter cops are so expensive people may consider doing some iki tomes first which makes things interesting. Anyone who has started old style cops would need to finish on old cops.
 
Hmm, as a lowly mage I will just give my thoughts on it.

Proposal 1:

As a mage, who likes to solo, I would need to do all 3 eventually. Though, the healing one is obviously last. Having COP5 complete this change would benefit me by returning 5 - (3)*1.6 = 0.2 of a CoP to put towards a general tome. (If I understand it right)

So, to me it would be little change, but I could see it helping any alt I may make.

My only negative comment is this. The problem is that the codex has turned into a wall for new people. This will alleviate the problem, by lowering the exp required to surmount this wall, but a shorter wall is still a wall. It may end up being more of a transient step.

Proposal 2:
This one I like. It attempts to solve the problem with the specialization points that people naturally occur when they gain AAs. I think this is the best solution for the problem, but it does create some questions.

question 1: My character is already specialized 250 in all the skill sets, and has 524 unspent specialization points. So, what happens there.

question 2: What to do with the experience glut? Cop1-Cop5 is quick a large amount of experience. I keep a strategic reserve of tomes, but that much experience would easily deplete it, or nearly so. Any tome I buy and bind takes away from my charm fund. I have been unlucky in getting EF tomes, so I cannot do those until I get them. At present I do not have a way to gain any type of opus tome, to do.

What I am trying to say, the dire situation where people wonder if they will run out of tomes to do, will come much sooner just because of the refunded exp.

Last position, which does not involve me, but maybe Galsan or Glorax. They have 80+ and 90+ tomes done. They may not be able to spend the refunded exp. This case will only happen to a select group of very intense gamers, which I am not.

Proposal 2A:

Similar problems from the exp refund, would happen.

This is interesting, because it negatively impacts people who skip tiers. You have stated the flags are retroactive, but when you're an alt you don't necessarily have to do some of the earlier tiers, you can just scummed into t6. I don't know how that impact would happen. Though if you did enough mobs from then and beyond, you'd already have reached the max and it would work it self out.

It would also allow that cap to be arbitrarily be raised in the future if people thought it was necessary, to allow room to grow.

Proposal 3: TBA, I will try to think of an idea to propose, please stay tuned.

@Tevinter's item, that sounds awesome. Though, doesn't the experience that goes to items not detract from experience for tomes and AAs?


I did not intent this post to come off as negative, I just wanted to give the initial thoughts I considered upon hearing the options.

Lastly, what all can SoD 3.0 do? What are these Leadership AAs?
 
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