All gear in World Tier 2 and higher will have all three base stats – Firearms, Stamina, Electronics – on them, one of these stats will be higher than the others.
I like this. It will be nice that we basically continue to level our stats as we "level" our character beyond lvl 30 with increased GS.
Gear will lose their skill bonuses, but backpacks, holsters and knee pads will gain new performance mod slots, making them easier to customize to fit your build.
I like the new mod slots, but I'm concerned that the added mods won't compensate for the lost skill bonuses due to how they explained the changes to mods.
Scavenging has been removed from the game.
Time to ditch the couple pieces of Nomad I've collected recently. I had hoped that these might become useful with 1.4, but the survey says I thought wrong. However, I'm curious to see what they replace the scavenging bonus with on Nomad.
New DPS formula on weapons has been introduced, but is a work in progress and will change over the course of the PTS.
Glad to see they're addressing this and removing some of the crap that incorrectly inflated these numbers. With EVERYTHING changing in the game, though, it will take a bit to determine what a good DPS number really will be.
Weapon mods will now come with one major bonus and an amount of smaller bonuses, depending on the quality of the mod.
This should be interesting, I'm not sure whether or not I'll like this.
Weapon talents have been rebalanced; some have been buffed, others have seen their numbers reduced.
Same as with the weapon mods, I'm not sure whether or not I'll like this.
Stamina will be the main source of toughness.
Armor value will have different results of damage mitigation depending on the World Tier you are in.
I'm glad that Stamina will be the bulk of toughness, that just seems to make sense. It seems to bring the game more in line with how other MMOs work. However, it's going to be a pain in the ass to have to keep reworking your gear to increase your armor to maintain max mitigation for the tier level you're at.
I don't know what I think of the gear set rebalancing. While I don't tend to run the meta, I have a feeling that my builds will be affected in a way that I won't like. I don't know why, I just have a feeling. It will be interesting to see for the sets that lose their 5 pc bonus if they rework the 2, 3, & 4 pc bonuses or if they just cut the 5 pc bonus and leave what remains.
I have a feeling that the skill rebalancing (excluding the signature skills) is just going to completely piss people off. Yes, some of the skills are underpowered and some are overpowered, but some of the skills just aren't as useful and probably won't be no matter what they do. I think the signature skill changes should be fine, based on what they claim they'll do.
I think the thing I like the most is the changes to the stats: firearms, stamina, and electronics. They will get buffed with each higher GS lvl you get to, based on the increased buffs from your gear as you get higher GS items. I also like that players that want to boost their DPS will have to focus on firearms, that players that want to tank will need to work stamina to increase toughness and that players who want to run support will have to pump points into electronics to boost their skill points.
The metas and gameplay sound like they're going to completely change with this update, so I completely agree with this:
Time to stock up on Pheonix Credits, Normal credits & just collect everything being dropped! lol
Either that or just stop playing the game until after 1.4 drops and then come back in to clean up the wreckage. I mean, there's no point to continue to min-max my toons when everything will change and I'll have to start all over again. Also, I'd like to keep all the crap I have now and see what it ends up looking like after its all rerolled, maybe I'll have some gold and maybe all my hard earned equipped gear won't be completely turned to crap.
