[Snake]

It's a multi-factor problem. It doesn't have anything to do with transformations, or the lackthereof, it's an issue with the ease of access people have to the same builds, and how easily people can hot-swap around to the best 'Meta-builds'. New item drops? Ten people are rolling it at the arena. New class drops? Double that number. People tend to steer towards what's strong, because after what, four years of the stat system, most veterans are exhausted on options left to explore despite the vast toybox before them.

To give an example: Before the volcanic nerf, the majority of the casual PvP-scene was dominated by anchor edges, because it was grossly good, leading to many matches that were effectively mirrored. Before the Tarnada stopped being the most oppressive weapon in the game, you couldn't go an hour without seeing a tornado somewhere, and the same issue was present in Sogensora when it was released.

From my perspective, it's less that we don't have cool things to do, and more that players tend to conform to what's strong at any given time, because all it takes is 5 bucks, or a day of suffering through the leveling process.

I agree with this.

But I don't see a solution beyond making everything not be viable, because the definition of viable is defined by how much you can trash your opponent's chances of fighting back, or how busted your one or two pieces of equipment are in regards to your stats spread and classes.

Both of these are horrible.

Because let's be real, there are so, so many skills in SL2 nobody considers picking because there's no real reason to use them. How many use Obscure from VA? Oh, an even more recent. How many even used Steal or Pocket Sand before they were pulled up to the 'standard' through the addition of Trickery? (And even then... A RNG chance to make them be more 'up to pace'? Still not the best solution, but it was a fine bandaid.)

That thing done to Rogue was honestly a step to the right direction, but still didn't feel like it earned the class a specific "role" in combat, or got the class up to the spotlight enough to be considered to pull people away from what's the meta nowadays. "Hey cool, I can steal and stab someone.", as the meta dude goes "haha 450 lightning damage on custom tome goes brrhhhl, also btw I have 55% PDR/MDR and 1200 HP!" The next step in my opinion is to do that to everything else nobody uses because it's insignificant in their gameplay. If a list is needed of underperforming things I believe that could get an 'up', I can make a short compilation and discuss with everyone in another thread.

Alas.

It's disheartening not only for newplayers as Kpec said, but even veterans. I miss when SL2's cheese made more sense than what it is now. So, so many things need to be nerfed, and so, so many underperforming things need to be amped. I remember your snarky joke about "Everything is too strong and nothing is viable", but holy shit. That's true, Dev.

If you take a week off with a cup of joe's just to observe people in SL2 or the Arena you'll see what we're talking about. Or hell, observe tournaments! It will give you the most data about what you're after.

"When it comes down to it, creativity is stifled by the fact I can look at the item list for the game and heavily rule out half, if not most of the weapons and items for any sort of build meant to go up against somebody at some point, except in rather niche situations. It's okay to have niche weapons, it's not okay for most weapons to be niche or nigh unusable."

Also. Yes. So much yes. And y'all know the reason for that? Weapons don't have a baseline scaling, like for example. If only all fists religiously scaled to 105%, or all swords, spears, bows to 100%, or all tomes and axes to 120% to compensate for their lack of weapon parts or being solely basic hitting weapons, or all daggers and guns to 90% to compensate their high crit damage or range.

And their base statistics such as Power, Accuracy, Critical and Weight too, instead of putting them into a random number generator they could be more standardized to what an 'axe' should always be, or a 'spear' should always be. Anchor Edge for example, can reach 120% Accuracy while being an Axe. What the hell? Not even precise weapons like Bows or Polearms can scratch that. And guess what? It's 120% Accuracy, and 120% SWA, and also 30% Critical, and also over 30 Power.

??????????????????????

I'd also vouch for quirky scalings to be removed or changed to be minor compared to STR/WIL. CEL, LUC, VIT, DEF and RES shouldn't be increasing people's damage, since those stats in particular are defensive or utility stats, and by god more important than WIL or STR.

I personally take whatever gives me the biggest scaling number, or allows me to be superior to someone else's scalings. Like on Tarnada's previous example. I can just dump strength and invest all my points in celerity, thus making me able to fully use the sword for allowing me to gain damage by investing in dodge. Or a more obvious example of why no other dagger is better than Seiryuu Tessens, where the scaling allows me to build for Hit, Dodge AND Crit while doing nuclear damage on top of it.

The whole deal of "This weapon has an effect, therefore it shouldn't do damage" isn't quite the way to go. Scaling -must- be equal to all weapons, and their effects should have drawbacks to compensate, rather than making them weaker, power wise. If "lol you do no damage" is the drawback, they go to the trash can in a blink since the game's all about power scaling and finishing fights before you die.

And let's be real.

These effects aren't even that significant. Dagger of Bleeding? STR scaling, lower scaling, heehoo 10% of damage is a tiny baby heal. Epic. It doesn't compare to doing up to 1650 damage on a Prinny on a full triple-hit combo with Twin Dance. And please god before you go nerfing that, make sure everything else that is busted also gets nerfed. I don't think people will be happy when only a few problems are fixed then it's called a day.

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TL;DR, in this old man's opinion:

- Equipment needs a massive overhaul and standardization to make everything be worth having eyes on, complete with benefits and drawbacks for using each of them.

- Health and Focus points need to be more tied to your character level and classes than your equipment and stat distribution.

- Damage should only belong to the people who invest in damage, rather than people who invest in hitting, dodging, more damage reduction or more health.

- Unused skills should be addressed to be made more charming so it promotes variety rather than everyone always using the same thing over and over because it's good, or they have no other sensitive choice.

- There should be better methods of counter-playing certain things, like for example, the prime reason everyone is playing Glykin is because Poison is too powerful, if Poison had more passive methods of being countered, through equipment, talents or traits, people wouldn't have that much a reason to streamline to Glykin GS/Priest.