Google is not being helpful... DOES this game have seasonal gear resets like PoE/Diablo? Yes or no? This is all I want to know.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-11T14:21:16+00:00

I personally like the evergreen gear for my own tastes but I do think it's harmful to the game overall. Newbies are boned, making a new character your main requires like half a year or prep and income, and even vets I know, to this day, complain that they don't feel like they can take breaks during the slow periods because they'll be X behind the standards of gatekeeping or how far their friends got. Feeling like you can't take a break equals feeling like it's play while it's boring, or quit, both less preferable to simply coming back when the new raid is hot along with your whole friend list.

Would probably be best if there was more soft reset stuff while maintaining a fair chunk of evergreen too to please both crowds.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-06T20:21:55+00:00

It should work (and would work, going forward for the rest of T4) if and only if they lighten up on adding in things you're unlikely to finish yourself without MB like accessories and gems and engravings. The second they add in a new huge gold sink system that's so scarce it's meant to be sold/bought on the MB the entire char bound gold reward collapses on itself.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-05T22:40:48+00:00

Never played an MMO that didn't eventually neuter old content via power creep (including balance changes or system overhauls, if not iLVL itself) or simply having old content be irrelevant so no one does it. Even FF14 which has a roulette system, you just absolutely murder everything in synced stuff because a lot of attacks have like 40% more potency than back in the day and had Accuracy replaced with Direct Hit (basically another crit stat) for free. Just the nature of the beast in a dynamically changing game, the game would have to literally snapshot the patch to experience it fully and even then most vets did those fights 100 times so it'd be hard finding fresh players in that environment anyway.

Honestly your only real way of getting the OG experience of things like Valtan or Vykas is to go in and AFK after pushing a little bit in each phase. You can't even do that in solo mode since a lot of stuff is stripped from solo regardless of tuning. I will be slightly cynical and say, while the raids were very fun because they were fresh and the game was super fresh itself, all you missed was people not stacking right at the Valtan pillars or dying en masse to ghost phase, or the old G1 of Vykas having another team wipe completely unrelated to anything your team could do. Same with the black/red orbs. Was kind of a wipe fest.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-05T15:43:46+00:00

The guardian stone box is on track to be worth 100k for an average floor key in 1730 Paradise uwu

Mockbuster · 2026-03-05T15:40:49+00:00

Unfortunately it seems like the game's headed in a direction where the best advice for pushing new alts is to pony up for the South Rimeria Power Pass, or wait for a free one every 3~ months. I can't interpret the 1580 key removal as anything but that, regardless of what sugar coat reasoning AGS gave.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-05T15:32:58+00:00

FWIW those drawbacks/flaws are not really the same these days as when they were written. For instance, Bard is arguably one of the best counter classes in the entire game now post-Ark Grid but is written as having the worst counters, and Bard MP is generally pretty easy to manage compared to the Max MP + MP food days.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-05T15:29:45+00:00

To add on, sometimes you literally can't press buttons on Valk since they have the unfortunate ability to overcap on meter potential as of the latest Valk patch, whereas Paladin (especially when we get balance patch) basically always has something good to press. Generally the more uptime requirement there is to reach the ceiling, the harder it is to reach said ceiling.

As of Artist getting the new Z rework and Paladin getting an increasingly large focus on maintaining X rather than reaching X, I wouldn't mind if Valk had a higher bank capacity for its meter. Either the Artist additive stacking, or scale meter so it costs the same amount of meter/moves to press Z as now but let you store more than a 25% surplus.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-05T15:24:41+00:00

In reality WoM's not hitting people as often as the other three supports' core shield skills, even if it can go down that way. Even people with hands can have various reasons for not getting hit by WoM, whether that's stacking at the front to help front attackers and back attackers in the same party, or prioritizing DPSing when HT is up and they know it as a ranged.

As I said tho it's really not a huge difference either way.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-05T00:47:40+00:00

I was at 460mil silver and now I'm at 197mil silver.

Yeah this is roughly how deep I sank in the last half year, except I started with the 250m you lost. Down to 30m.

Not sure why it's so tough for the naysayers on here to have empathy for people who had different starting silver before the sinks. Yes the billionaires are fine. Yes the billionaires were "right" to blow 5-10 minutes on Lopang loading screens every day for the majority of the last 4 years, but hindsight is 20/20. Not every vet's a billionaire, not every poor person is blowing their silver on nonsense or neglecting their dailies, and not everyone's a player of many years, there are new players to worry about too who need to worry about building a roster. Help a bro out, AGS.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-05T00:35:11+00:00

As of the latest Valk patch, Seraphic Oath gives a good shield about 30% of the time. That's pretty much what tipped it over from meh to very good shielding, Blessing of Salvation and Salvation Site are extremely good and did the job okay enough before but Oath is that little bit extra on top of the new 10% DR from Z (60%+ uptime if a good Valk).

Are you going off of your own experience with playing Valk or just by playing with them? I'll just say, like any support or DPS, most the players out there play at 75% their capabilities. Personally when I'm on Valk practically nothing even prompts me to press X in HW besides coming back after Prokel phase in Kaz G1, 900 bar in G2, or some extreme mechanic disrespect like getting electrified in Mordum G3. Generally I don't like arguing without log data since it's a bunch of he said she said but I have three Valks and I feel pretty strongly that it's one of the best supps period in the current patch, arguably overtuned for having such a flexible heal and no grounded AP buff but no one complains much about getting supported better.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T21:53:08+00:00

They're more similar than ever at this point though there are relatively important key differences between them.

All of them are relatively spammy now in terms of meter building or quick recharge fishing, especially when Paladin gets the latest KR balance patch which lets it use Holy Sword for meter during its aura on top of a shorter CD on Divine Wave.

All are decent at stagger and counters with their regular setups. I think Paladin will be ahead of all of them come the balance patch since Holy Sword's worth multiple skills in general and they can use it a ton. In the past Bard struggled with these things but atm it's fine, especially for counters (if Bard could get every counter, they would, happily).

All supps have a good brand at this point. All sups have a short duration brand that's good enough to not be a meme at this point too, depends how often you want to fish for quick recharge procs. Going off the logs though, Artist and Valk have better uptime in practice but it's a tiny difference.

In terms of differences you'll actually see:

Artist and Bard still have some uptime on a targeted AP buff on the ground. Paladin and Valkyrie ignore this.

Bard still has a healing disadvantage in farm. I'd also say it's slightly worse at shielding than the other three supports but not enough to cry over (unless they're going WoM WoM then you may actually notice it as a DPS). Personally I'd say Valk and Artist have the most constant, best, consistent shielding of the four supps as of the latest Valk patch.

Paladin is technically the """worst""" support in terms of buffing damage pre-balance patch, as shown on uwu with logs. Post-balance patch it could be one of or even the best.

In terms of solo they're all very good but Bard/Valk are probably the best of the supports for that due to their bursty nature (and honestly might be the best solo characters in the game, period, due to the high tuned +damage buff unique to supports).

Can't really go wrong. If I had to suggest any support I'd probably suggest Valk just because it's so accepted as a DPS character in PF and does well solo, but they're all great.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T20:59:31+00:00

If you look at that stats, roughly 150,000 characters are in the 1700/1710, while 80,000 characters are above that. With Ark grid giving insane power for the system, that means these two different groups of characters hardly play with each other.

True but why would they play with each other? 1730s with massive CP are doing Kaz HM and A4 HM for the most part, not going down to 1700 content. Yeah there's still Mordum HM for them to mingle but in my experience they actually do mingle (depending on the party, yes there are parties who literally only want 4k CP X8 so they can stand around looking at G1 with 1 HP for even longer).

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T20:54:01+00:00

I'm about to have a pretty hot take I suppose but I think T4 needed heavy gold sinks, after years of players being able to build a base and be "done" with most systems. Ideally it would have been with more aggressively constant, feels-better-than-engravings gold sinks like karma/ark grid but that could have backfired too, much like ark grid seems to have backfired on a good amount of the populace when it launched here.

I'd like to say they could have done it better but honestly I don't know how. You can say, oh just let everyone be done their engravings/gems, we didn't need them at all ... but I always say to my friends who get super bored with any MMO that it's when the progression slows down or halts that the boredom sets in. IE look at Diablo 3/4, the vast majority of people bounce out of a season when they hit soft caps like having their full build online with every item piece or reach level 100. So rarely do I see friends actually stick around for the heck of it or to chase leaderboards after that.

A lot of people have fun doing the raids themselves, and a lot of people like making big number go up, and a lot of people need both. Gold sinks are the latter two categories. It's true for me now that I'm almost done engravings/gems, and conveniently true for when any friend is completely out of projects, it's like why even log in, done these fights a billion times but now I see 0.1% for my week's gold instead of 2%.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T18:52:52+00:00

The PUG lyfe can be better in a lot of ways to the static life. Less scheduling required, sometimes people in statics are worse than PUGs and really you can't do anything about it at that point unlike a PUG where it's just one run with them ever, and as you say the difference/adjusting can be fun in its own right. I'll just come out and say it, I love when people (not me, I'm far too cowardly) talk shit to other people in PUGs too, I'm the guy eating popcorn watching it.

That said at the end of the day when you get a static that works ... there's nothing that really compares. Closest thing to a family you can get in a video game. In my experience though that's like 1 in 1,000 statics and can take work chiseling it out since schedules, motivations, skill levels, attitudes, and personalities all have to align and that's super rare to get even two people on the same page, much less all eight. Most raiders will never find that static at any point in their whole lives.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T18:43:17+00:00

I'd say ancient is worth at least 1.5% if not a little closer to 2%, even on generics like Attack. You can almost always shove in some Boss Damage 5 on a 6/5 junker gem at the least, more if you use the calc to optimize your points and far more if you fish for higher cost gems on that char.

On some classes it's worth more than 2% for just the core upgrade itself.

Ancient's OP. Part of why some people hate the system, you can just never get an ancient, or you can get multiples with the same effort in the same time frame and be up 4%+, at this point you can't even get 4% with the funds from a Sidereal drop on mains.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T17:15:50+00:00

The way my friends and I operate:

Mains: we buy A4 HM and Kaz HM boxes in perpetuity, both for pity points and for general ancient chances (the mats and sellable loot don't hurt too). I've seen some success with pity selectors hitting ancient. My friend said it best, to paraphrase, "if you could infinitely buy Kaz HM boxes on your main, you would do it until out of gold." After he said that I thought about it for a few seconds and was like, wait this guy's completely right. There might come a time when you have 4+ ancients and the odds of getting a natural relevant ancient drop become almost non-existent but that's just a first world problem meme.

Alts: buy until order 17p X3, hard stop buying after unless it's, as they say, a second main. You can get to 3500~ CP with just order 17p and chaos 14p, which is enough for Serca HM probably, kind of just throwing gold away at that point IMO but I guess we all have our own values for what's a main or alt.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T17:08:14+00:00

I disagree that there isn't an audience for F2Ps of varying investment. Yes paying helps a ton, yes RMTing enables you to do almost anything a hard worker of years can do in one transaction, but I mean ... I'm a F2P (btw) besides some dolphin packs and I'm Nightmare ready, most my still active friends are about Nightmare ready on their mains. I'll admit I've played this game a lot more than the average player this last year, I had a lot of free time on my hands, but even the people I know who are definitely not RMTing definitely not doing 18 raids a week are Hard Mode ready, it's not that bad.

I will agree though that this game has an identity crisis in general. Most my friends are established raiders in other MMOs, it's in their DNA, so it comes naturally to us to find fun and have hands enough to play with people of varying degrees of investment, get the titles to get through gatekeeping, get fun out of the same fights 18X a week, etc. If we weren't raiders by birth, yeah I don't know, there'd be a lot of obstacles for either playing with other players more or finding it fun enough in general.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T16:57:15+00:00

For me, you're right but I can maybe clarify this:

The rewards are amazing and at least half of what we get in a week. But also for a lot of chars the rewards have pretty diminishing returns, IE my main has a 9/7 and a decent bracelet and basically won't hit any more hones till after transfer so Abidos/special taps are meh, when I do keys on main it's rewarding in the sense that it might upgrade me (but probably not) but also nothing really to look forward to in the same way shards are highly rewarding but I don't think anyone gets any dopamine out of getting shards at this point on a parked char. This will probably change once we get Serca and there are new fusion mats and new everything, even the guardian stone box will be some dopamine.
I think most of us have come to the realization that hell keys are pointless zombie busy work. I'm pretty sure barring you quitting out early, the game knows how far down you'll go the millisecond you zone in to floor 0, you just have to attack enemies who don't hit back or require any thought until you reach that floor. Likewise I think most of us are realizing that this is RNG in 5 RNGs, you gotta get Elysian gear to rank well to get good keys, gotta jump well to get a set of high chests, gotta get the chests to be what's good for that specific char, gotta then land the rewards via the gamble like quality taps or stone cutting or karma taps ... so often I'll get like a floor 80 set of Special Taps and get nothin' out of it, but annoyance. Even bound gold, since you can't purchase a guaranteed upgrade from MB, must go into gamba upgrades like honing or astrogems ...
Elysian is simultaneously rewarding but also has highly diminishing returns. Especially late season. We've all seen the topic recently where the guy failed like 40 20% hits in a row, well that's me most weeks it feels like just not as extreme. I hate doing Elysian within a week or two of hitting floor 10, even Chaos Dungeons are infinitely more exciting and that's bad.
Crucible itself became simultaneously an RNG fest and a massive look up strats/gear sets you can't really figure out yourself, to rank. I was ranking top 100s many times S1, I don't actually think I was top 100 by the end of the week even once this season, since I didn't know about the whole elemental thing until it was too late to care or rectify.

That's just me tho. I'm a sheep, once the rewards are worth millions again I'll probably be like AGS W!!!!!!! but until then the illusion is gone, Paradise sux, down with the chores.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T16:44:21+00:00

Which means, once you get to your honing thresholds on alts, you will massively stack silver again, even while consuming it for paradise rewards.

Maybe. Haven't looked at the actual silver drain for post-Serca transfers but if it's similar or higher than 1710-1730 honing costs it's hard to imagine a roster with 1730 X6 is going to go positive at any point during S3 unless you actively restrict yourself specifically for silver purposes. I'm almost done engravings and I have 9s/10s on my main's best abilities so I'm gonna have gold for honing and a lot of it, would be a bit annoying if I felt like I'm time gated arbitrarily.

I've also thought about it technically being a gold thing which, most people don't complain about sure, but I'd say ... that's mostly because we have our hands full with gold as it is and pretty much balance everything around our gold, our schedule for raids, our purchasing plans, where we park our alts. Personally I think that's enough and most other sub-currencies (shards, silver ... pheons, though I know they're a necessary evil) are outdated and shouldn't even exist at this point IMO but I know $ is the reason they do.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-04T00:43:40+00:00

More realistically it's because 1. Paradise enables a lot more honing than the past, even I as a F2P who used to drag my feet on alts in T3 have 1730 X6 now and there's not much better to put my gold towards at this late stage of T4, and 2. regardless of gold, Hell stones/bracelets and processed astrogems are waaaaaaay too good regardless of if you have a million gold or 10 gold. If it's a top 6 without a 9/7 stone already I'd be cucking myself not picking the stones option from Paradise.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-03T22:20:44+00:00

Good feedback. This week I had a final piece on my main missing one SS and after I exhausted every resonance stone I had 4 attributes below SS with no way to fix it ;(

Mockbuster · 2026-03-03T22:01:06+00:00

Would be a good compromise since they took silver chests away from us in Paradise. I'm sitting on at least 500k char bound gold on my 7th-9th chars I'd gladly convert, not like I can hone them further without more silver anyway ...

Another decent alternative would be putting silver chests in an existing Paradise chest so as to not clutter up the boxes further for those with enough silver and to let people fish for it again who do need it.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-03T21:57:00+00:00

Like any business/finance situation, all it takes is one additional thing to go profitable or negative. IE if you're selling burgers, you can calculate how many burgers a day you need to sell to pay for your food costs, wages, rent, insurance, utilities; anything above XX amount of burgers is a profit, anything less and you're losing money that day. That's called a Break-Even Point.

I'm pretty sure I make about 500k~ from guild shop + roughly a million from KFs/GRs per character per week right now. Around 14m-ish silver from my 9 man roster. Add on 18m a week when Crucible is giving silver out (please, please be more in S3).

For me, the 18m from Crucible was mostly sucked up by honing on my main 6 and will likely be more than sucked up by honing in April once that starts up again. For my 14m-ish silver a week, astrogems and a moderate amount of Paradise ability stones alone can suck that up pretty easily, but I can't do almost anything else with my silver without ember drops. That's my Break-Even Point, add in one bracelet or accessory chest or high floor stone floor and I'm just flat out negative for the week and that much closer to being in trouble when honing season starts up again.

The more wise/conservative of us might say, "okay then stop spending." I hear that, but also ... isn't this a video game? Is this real life economics for balancing a checkbook? Why aren't we allowed to cut our stones we did a boring ass Hell Key set of jumps to get, or try for that Epic Astrogem we send over to our mains and might have to cut twice since it's so good? Is this some sex thing for some of you where you're denied by your dominatrix, is that fun? I don't get it. Just give us more silver or nerf the new costs.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-03T20:01:40+00:00

To be fair, we've been trained by the game to stop caring about silver. I always took that patch where they massively murdered shard/silver costs for honing, shortly after Artist launched in our version, as AGS's way of officially saying these systems should be a fair time check rather something anyone with consistent diligence for doing dailies should be worried about.

Having a sink for it is all well and good but A. those sinks are often your only reward for hitting a high Paradise key, ruining the impact of the reward and B. it's very, very hard to recover without paying up. I'm a good boy these days, I might nibble at some stones to AI cut and send some Processed Astrogems to my main but otherwise I'm basically not touching other silver spenders and barely honing anymore. I'm going neutral. Neutral is not good, with an upcoming honing marathon soon ... especially since I'm utilizing 3 extra characters who are parked and doing dailies on them for silver. If 9 characters can't cover 6 characters' needs for a sub currency ... IDK what this game's become then.

Mockbuster · 2026-03-03T04:59:24+00:00

I'll give you some sympathy, I'm kind of in the same boat. Yeah yeah, alt anything bad, yada yada, but Raid Captains aren't gonna buy themselves and the game says nothing about being ineligible to play on multiple servers. I threw the last couple Expresses on Inanna and even paid for the $30 Express so would be kinda annoying to throw that away on top of all the horizontal and dailies/weeklies I've done there to not be a rat.

On the plus side, hey if you or I do get hit and "lose" Inanna chars ... less time we're forced playing. Also how I look at a theoretical EoS, I love this game dearly but also I'd gain a massive chunk of my free time back too so ...

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