T. Reich
Arcane
I've finally unlocked all the crafting bench mods, which prompted me to look back and compare the old master daily + master-crafting system against the new one.
Background: Ever since the masters got introduced into the game, there hasn't been a league where I haven't leveled them all to at least lvl8 (usually all of them to lvl8, but some leagues were shit so I wouldn't bother; plus, I barely ever meta-craft, so the old lvl8 mods were useless to me).
My stance on leveling masters and master-crafting has always been the following: master leveling is rather easy and unintrusive even solo for the effect they provide, and it's also well-designed in a way that allows people who want to power-farm them to actually do that. Master mods themselves are extremely useful for all levels of play, and are rather well-distributed in terms of ease of acquisition.
The bulk of mods would had been locked at masters lvl 5, 6 and 7.
These were the following average times to unlock these master levels (for ALL masters to get to that level, except Leo. Time is cumulative for lvl1->X):
lvl5 - 2-3 days group play, 4-5 days solo.
lvl6 - 4-5 days in rotas, 7-8 days solo.
lvl7 - 7-8 days in rotas, up to 2 weeks solo.
Lvl1->8 would take about 2-3 weeks, plus an extra week for zana, if doing rotations, and about a months solo.
What I liked about the old master syste is that it took really small amount of time to run solo, and spending a bit of extra time running a rota would also provide a greater reward if you wanted to get there sooner. In addition, if you had extra currency to burn, you could always binge on the master prophecies and force-farm a master to max lvl in a matter of hours.
The new system.
Master dailies now spawn as atlas objectives, on maps only.
Whether it's possible (or feasible) to do "rotations" in the old sense of the word, is debatable.
Master progress is not directly tied to unlocking master mods; rather the new unlocks are tied to target-farming specific master content.
Crafting mod unlocking is no longer deterministic (where the only factor was master rep grind), but rather heavily RNG-based.
It's still possible to force-farm master progress.
The new master mods are MUCH more powerful than before.
They also usually cost less than before, too.
The new tiers of master mods also allow for extremely powerful endgame-crafting with minimal investment into preparing the base.
Not all cafting mods are tied to masters now.
Comparatively speaking, the new master leveling is rather disconnected from the crafting bench unlocking.
In the old system you would know exactly when you would unlock specific mods (since they would be tied to a specific master at specific reputation level).
In the new system, you do not.
Currently, there are no mods tied to master progress for Zana, Einhar, or Jun.
For Niko and Alva, the progress is sort of tied - you can't get to those unlockable mods without leveling up a corresponding master.
However, a master progress is in no way guarantee that you will unlock some mods.
You must do a specific piece of content to find the recipe unlock. If you're repeatedly screwed by RNG - too bad. You can, however, piggyback on other players to get to that specific area, but a recipe unlock is basically an item that can only be taken by 1 person - no group unlocks here.
All of this kills master rotations, because now there is no real benefit to doing them.
Essentially, GGG removed one of the 3 modes of master leveling.
In addition, master missions now take way longer to complete than before.
The old master dailies had been standalone, where you'd hop in for a minute, do the thing and be done with it.
Currently, you're forced to run a map to get to a master daily. And then you can get in all sorts of nasty situations, like when you get your master daily on a map you don't own, or you get it somewhere in the WRONG place of your current elder/shaper influence, or on a map you really dislike.
Ok, you got a decent map to spawn your master daily. Now you'd usually want to complete this map and not just run it for the daily - it's especially true for high-tier master dailies. And that takes time. Especially if you're a slower player, like me.
I do not really like the new master daily system. It's too much of a chore. But at the same time, the rewards are too good to skip the dailies.
While a lot of the mods still have a fixed place/condition to get them. However, a majority of the new mods are veiled mods, and are only unlockable via unveiling the special syndicate rare drops via Jun.
This is a pure RNG territory.
Currently, there are 718 bench mods (that counts all the possble mods, at each level).
Of them:
8 are given on default
140 are unlocked in story mode
67 are unlocked by running specific atlas maps
15 are unlocked in specific Apex of Atzoatl t3 rooms
8 are unlocked in various tiers of Labyrinth
28 are unlocked in Delve
5 are unlocked via the Pale Court prophecy chains
447(!) are veiled mods
2/3 of mods are now RNG-based. In my opinion, it's a big middle finger to SSF players.
While a lot of the basic mods can be rather quickly unlocked, some of the rare ones require a LOT of syndicate farming, with copious RNG layers:
1) specific item type
2) specific item level (only for some raree mods, thankfully)
3) specific affix (prefix/suffix)
4) specific syndicate member (thankfully, also a hadful of veiled mods are tied to a specific member)
5) now you need for that veiled item to drop, and they don't exactly drop like candy
6) you get to choose 1 of 3 mods out of a pretty damn large possible pool of mods.
Let's just say that if you want to unlock all the mods or if you want to unlock some of the rarer mods, it's going to take a LOT of tries with a LOT of duds until you get what you want.
And you CAN'T buy your way in - not really. Sure, you can start buying up those specific item bases of requisite level with a velied suffix/prefix of a specific master - the current trading API allows for that. But unveiling is still RNG - it may take dozens of tries to get what you want.
It took me 1.5 months and a few exalts in buying veiled gear to unlock all the veiled mods (save 1, because the way to get it requires utter, absolute degree of sperginess).
Compared to the old cafting bench system, it's like pulling nails.
On the flip side, a lot of the old mods have been strongly buffed, with weaker tiers made both stronger and cheaper, and with some new higher tiers added, which are sometimes only marginally worse that what you can get on an item normally.
And then there are some mods that can only be gotten via crafting bench, and some of them are utterly insane.
Overall, I'm conflicted.
The new crafting bench system is much stronger than the old one. But it's also much harder to unlock overall, with heavy RNG layers added.
The new master daily system is much more rewarding. But it's also much more of a hassle, because it's now directly integrated into the mapping experience.
The fact that master leveling and bench crafting are now made much less interdependent is... interesting. Masters are now pretty much their own thing, and bench crafting is its own thing as well. There is some overlapping, but it's insignificant overall.
Background: Ever since the masters got introduced into the game, there hasn't been a league where I haven't leveled them all to at least lvl8 (usually all of them to lvl8, but some leagues were shit so I wouldn't bother; plus, I barely ever meta-craft, so the old lvl8 mods were useless to me).
My stance on leveling masters and master-crafting has always been the following: master leveling is rather easy and unintrusive even solo for the effect they provide, and it's also well-designed in a way that allows people who want to power-farm them to actually do that. Master mods themselves are extremely useful for all levels of play, and are rather well-distributed in terms of ease of acquisition.
The bulk of mods would had been locked at masters lvl 5, 6 and 7.
These were the following average times to unlock these master levels (for ALL masters to get to that level, except Leo. Time is cumulative for lvl1->X):
lvl5 - 2-3 days group play, 4-5 days solo.
lvl6 - 4-5 days in rotas, 7-8 days solo.
lvl7 - 7-8 days in rotas, up to 2 weeks solo.
Lvl1->8 would take about 2-3 weeks, plus an extra week for zana, if doing rotations, and about a months solo.
What I liked about the old master syste is that it took really small amount of time to run solo, and spending a bit of extra time running a rota would also provide a greater reward if you wanted to get there sooner. In addition, if you had extra currency to burn, you could always binge on the master prophecies and force-farm a master to max lvl in a matter of hours.
The new system.
Master dailies now spawn as atlas objectives, on maps only.
Whether it's possible (or feasible) to do "rotations" in the old sense of the word, is debatable.
Master progress is not directly tied to unlocking master mods; rather the new unlocks are tied to target-farming specific master content.
Crafting mod unlocking is no longer deterministic (where the only factor was master rep grind), but rather heavily RNG-based.
It's still possible to force-farm master progress.
The new master mods are MUCH more powerful than before.
They also usually cost less than before, too.
The new tiers of master mods also allow for extremely powerful endgame-crafting with minimal investment into preparing the base.
Not all cafting mods are tied to masters now.
Comparatively speaking, the new master leveling is rather disconnected from the crafting bench unlocking.
In the old system you would know exactly when you would unlock specific mods (since they would be tied to a specific master at specific reputation level).
In the new system, you do not.
Currently, there are no mods tied to master progress for Zana, Einhar, or Jun.
For Niko and Alva, the progress is sort of tied - you can't get to those unlockable mods without leveling up a corresponding master.
However, a master progress is in no way guarantee that you will unlock some mods.
You must do a specific piece of content to find the recipe unlock. If you're repeatedly screwed by RNG - too bad. You can, however, piggyback on other players to get to that specific area, but a recipe unlock is basically an item that can only be taken by 1 person - no group unlocks here.
All of this kills master rotations, because now there is no real benefit to doing them.
Essentially, GGG removed one of the 3 modes of master leveling.
In addition, master missions now take way longer to complete than before.
The old master dailies had been standalone, where you'd hop in for a minute, do the thing and be done with it.
Currently, you're forced to run a map to get to a master daily. And then you can get in all sorts of nasty situations, like when you get your master daily on a map you don't own, or you get it somewhere in the WRONG place of your current elder/shaper influence, or on a map you really dislike.
Ok, you got a decent map to spawn your master daily. Now you'd usually want to complete this map and not just run it for the daily - it's especially true for high-tier master dailies. And that takes time. Especially if you're a slower player, like me.
I do not really like the new master daily system. It's too much of a chore. But at the same time, the rewards are too good to skip the dailies.
While a lot of the mods still have a fixed place/condition to get them. However, a majority of the new mods are veiled mods, and are only unlockable via unveiling the special syndicate rare drops via Jun.
This is a pure RNG territory.
Currently, there are 718 bench mods (that counts all the possble mods, at each level).
Of them:
8 are given on default
140 are unlocked in story mode
67 are unlocked by running specific atlas maps
15 are unlocked in specific Apex of Atzoatl t3 rooms
8 are unlocked in various tiers of Labyrinth
28 are unlocked in Delve
5 are unlocked via the Pale Court prophecy chains
447(!) are veiled mods
2/3 of mods are now RNG-based. In my opinion, it's a big middle finger to SSF players.
While a lot of the basic mods can be rather quickly unlocked, some of the rare ones require a LOT of syndicate farming, with copious RNG layers:
1) specific item type
2) specific item level (only for some raree mods, thankfully)
3) specific affix (prefix/suffix)
4) specific syndicate member (thankfully, also a hadful of veiled mods are tied to a specific member)
5) now you need for that veiled item to drop, and they don't exactly drop like candy
6) you get to choose 1 of 3 mods out of a pretty damn large possible pool of mods.
Let's just say that if you want to unlock all the mods or if you want to unlock some of the rarer mods, it's going to take a LOT of tries with a LOT of duds until you get what you want.
And you CAN'T buy your way in - not really. Sure, you can start buying up those specific item bases of requisite level with a velied suffix/prefix of a specific master - the current trading API allows for that. But unveiling is still RNG - it may take dozens of tries to get what you want.
It took me 1.5 months and a few exalts in buying veiled gear to unlock all the veiled mods (save 1, because the way to get it requires utter, absolute degree of sperginess).
Compared to the old cafting bench system, it's like pulling nails.
On the flip side, a lot of the old mods have been strongly buffed, with weaker tiers made both stronger and cheaper, and with some new higher tiers added, which are sometimes only marginally worse that what you can get on an item normally.
And then there are some mods that can only be gotten via crafting bench, and some of them are utterly insane.
Overall, I'm conflicted.
The new crafting bench system is much stronger than the old one. But it's also much harder to unlock overall, with heavy RNG layers added.
The new master daily system is much more rewarding. But it's also much more of a hassle, because it's now directly integrated into the mapping experience.
The fact that master leveling and bench crafting are now made much less interdependent is... interesting. Masters are now pretty much their own thing, and bench crafting is its own thing as well. There is some overlapping, but it's insignificant overall.
