Infused Mantis armor.

[Wrangeline]

Mantis armor drops from Mantises in Mantis Hive at Smugglers Den. They drop in ql 80-125ish and all the pieces has +8ish to energy and projectile damage and +8ish to First aid. As well as + to one more different stat depending on what piece it is. Sleeves is ranged init, body is +hp and so on. (See list of mantis armor here for full details: http://auno.org/ao/db.php?cmd=search&name=mantis)

Now, I'm simply suggesting to let us upgrade it. I'm thinking of using the armor upgrade thingies that drops off DB2 boss and MW-prisoners and such.

When you combined the armor upgrade item with any Mantis armor piece, that piece gets upgraded to QL 200 (with wear-reqs to match) and the stats change a bit. It will also change color from the original green to RED. We got enough blue armor in this game and we don't have enough red armor so I want it to become RED! (Edit: It will become nodrop when you upgrade it I think)

I suggest the stats for infused mantis armor be kinda like this:

General stats that are in common for all pieces of the infused mantis armor set:

+to all AC's
+25 to ALL damage types.
+15 to first aid.

Stats that are unique to each piece of the set:

Helmet: +450 max nano.
Body: +600 max HP.
Gloves: +140 swimming.
Sleeves: +60 ranged init (per sleeve)
Pants: +40 to ALL evades.
Boots: +80 Runspeed.

[Bloodhoundje]

yeah lets make the armor so powerfull that its better then most of the Expansion armorset.... Mods should be way lower, scale them to something normal, +25dmg an armor piece oO. make it +10 maximum.

[Grayfox211]

i dont think there really is anything wrong with that. ai armor should have good competing armor, or better. the advantage of ai armor is that it is tradable, yet extremely powerful. the only reason FC hasnt come out with more powerful armors yet is because it was so fricking hard to farm that it would piss everyone off if they did.

[Wrangeline]

Alien armor is way better than this though. No one will give up all those evades and attackrating to gain this kind of +damage at tl5. No point having a full set of mantis armor if you will die to everyone from lack of evades while not having enough attackrating to hit people.

As for PvM, it's basically the same thing. You will do good damage if you wear a full set but there's nothing inherently wrong with that if you went through the trouble of creating a full set for yourself just for leveling. Just a sidenote, this armor will become nodrop when you create it so you need to make a new set for every alt that you level if you want it for PvM DPS.

Having that said though, +25 is up for debate. I do however think +10 is not enough. I think 15 is absolute minimum and 20 is fine and 25 is great. It has to be good enough for people to bother making it rather than slapping on something else instead.

[ragerayden]

Why buffing every dmg type ? Why making it an all-around armor ?

[Wrangeline]

Why buffing every dmg type ? Why making it an all-around armor ?

So everyone can get some use out of it. I don't really see a need to exclude anyone from this boost if they wish to make some pieces or even a full set to use for one of their chars.

The way I see it, there are many ways to prevent armor from being "all round" armor like CSS and CS for example can be. By not having evades on all armor pieces or such stats, you have to choose between mantis that gives good +damage or other armor sets that gives good evades/defenses or good weapon skills or good nano skills or good -nanocost or good HP and such. +damage hasn't really been represented well in this context and so infused mantis would fill that gap a bit. It would become "the damage set" in the same way that other sets are "defense set" or "-nanocost set". The more pieces of infused mantis armor you choose to wear, the more of other stats you have to give up in the process.

This is just my personal way of looking at it though. It's not something I have spent a lot of time thinking about. I'm pretty much just making up stuff as I go, rooted in the basic fact that upgradable mantis armor would be neat. I am open to being persuaded that the stats I suggested are perhaps not a good idea. I think it's interesting to discuss it back and forth though. So for now I can try and play "devils advocate" a bit here and see where that takes the discussion. For example, so far I do have this nagging feeling that perhaps you are right in that it being universally very good for anyone that deals any form of direct damage would be a bit.. obvious. So I am already open to the idea that giving + to ALL damage types could be a bad idea. I'm not sure yet but you have made me think about it for sure

Edit: One more reason for having + to all damage types is because mantis armor atm gives + to energy and projectile. That's basically all the mortiig weapons and the perennium weapons. I personally feel that those that use these weapons already have a leg up on most other people so excluding those other people from the +damage on this set would only make that worse.

[-Klod-]

Just leave it as it is. We have enough armor types already. :shrug:

[Ayria]

Perhaps move away from the "Infused" and do something more relative like "Chitinous Mantis Armour" and have it upgraded by something the Queen drops (and maybe some of the bigger mantis' with lower drop rate)

[Wrangeline]

Perhaps move away from the "Infused" and do something more relative like "Chitinous Mantis Armour" and have it upgraded by something the Queen drops (and maybe some of the bigger mantis' with lower drop rate)

Hm yeah, that would be more suitable.

[Johnnykay]

I agree with Klod. Grinding the same exact armor the exact same way from the exact same places for all of your toons without any type of diversity is what makes AO the exciting game with an ever-growing population.

:P

[Wrangeline]

I agree with Klod. Grinding the same exact armor the exact same way from the exact same places for all of your toons without any type of diversity is what makes AO the exciting game with an ever-growing population.

:P

Ye, this suggestion is born out of the need for diversity, not necessity. So if people feel the NEED to get this armor for their chars, then it's too powerful and should be toned down.

Having that said, basic mantis armor doesn't have to be farmed if you don't want to. It's very common and is easy to buy from other players.

[Sidana]

/signed to do something with Mantis. Love'em!

BTW it drops up to high 130's, maybe even low 140's.

[Essessceeaych]

"all round" armor like CSS and CS for example can be

I think CC would have been a better example of this...

[Galilei]

/signed to do something with Mantis. Love'em!

BTW it drops up to high 130's, maybe even low 140's.

Weren't ql200 pieces dropping in The Collector now?

Anyway, there should be more upgrades to old RK armors and I think Means said in one of his posts that they would be updating old RK encounters... hopefully that includes Mantis Queen in some way too.

If you compare Metallic Mantis set and Dustbrigade set you'll see that the upgraded Mantis armor damage modifiers should be in par with Dustbrigade's +30 damage + 5% crit chance. Given that Dustbrigade has so much more modifiers, the modifiers on the new mantis armor should be pretty high to make it at least somewhat useful... Though if the new armor is aimed for level <200 chars (froobs too?) then of course dustbrigade should be a lot better choice and in this case the new mantis armor would be compared to Goddess armor set by those who can't afford AI armor set.

But then again players always mix armors on their chars to get the maximum beneficial effects that improve their char's toolset... and the difficulty of obtaining any particular armors is one factor that should be considered when adding new improvements to existing armor sets - it shouldn't be too easy to get (like Dustbrigade armor set already is as it drops in every new instance). So if Mantis Queen would drop an upgrade tradeskill item once in a while it would take lots of time to get enough of them to upgrade a full mantis set - the upgrade could of course drop in some other RK encounter, like in Mercs, Biodomes or the old Dustbrigade generals...

[Sidana]

I dunno about Collector. The normal ones dropping should be something like (mob lvl +15%) ql tops, meaning a lvl 124 Mantis can drop about 142 or so. I might be wrong with the % tho'.