ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I can see using this set on a necro lich or another undead something (although the head piece clearly pushes it towards liches imo) - maybe - if the bindings weren't so bad.

Right now they are:

The wearer is treated as undead.

This is the thing - because the undead thing disables infusions etc. only undead will ever use it, making this a niche item. I am not against a niche item, but its power level must be examined in that context.

Armour +7

Not a bad armour rating, but not really that good. T2 artifact light armor usually has better armor than this, but if the set is meant for casters then it's not really relevant. If it's meant for other light armor users, then it lacks defense.

Damage when the wearer is hit: 10 blight - Whatever.

Change resistances: -20% fire/-20% light/+30% darkness/+30% blight

This evens itself out. Darkness and blight resists are quite good - don't get me wrong - but both fire and light penalties means that this becomes an even bigger niche - something you would wear in Rak'Shor, but not something you would comfortably wear all the time. I don't want to be switching my armor every time I run into a pack of luminous horrors or...anything really, considering how common fire damage is in the game (it's essentially the problem with all mummy wrappings).

Poison Immunity: 100%
Disease Immunity: 100%

You would think that this is relevant, but it's not.

Ghouls are poison resistant, Skeletons and Liches are poison immune (liches are also disease resistant). Ancient Elven Ruins come after dark crypt where diseases are most relevant. I suppose you could use it in the mark of the spellblaze...except it has a fire resistance penalty and you are expecting fire elementals and fearscape.

Life Regen: +0.3
Light Radius: -1

Life regen is ok I suppose and light radius penalty is annoying.

All in all, niche in a niche. The biggest draw would be to use it with that headpiece which is absolutely amazing, but even so...By the time you get to the ancient ruins t4 is close, and something like robe of the archmage beats it ten times over, retch on headpiece or not (not that it drops often at all).

Suggestions:

Increase it to t4.
Reduce light and fire penalties to -10%
Remove blight damage on hit (it's just clutter mostly)
Make it +12 defense +12 armor
+20% darkness damage
Bonus category: +0.1 stealth


That would make it an item you would actually want to use on undead necros, shadowblades, rogues, anorithils. If you are lucky enough that you complete the entire set (or use the item vault to do so), you will have some hard choices to make when t5 items come. Light armor needs some love anyway.

I agree with those buffs, personally.

Here's a bonus suggestion;

With Stone Warden, the ability to apply a kind of Armor to spells as a general statistic was added("flat_damage_armor"), but it is almost always utterly overpowered to have as a non-temporary form, unless you use very tiny amounts, at which point it's hard to notice.

However, this piece of equipment is a very notable spot it could be used-while the impact is powerful, the downsides of the equipment are too. I suggest giving it or the crown 20 flat_damage_armor on set completion. This provides it with a totally unique bonus, that's not really synergistic with the rest of it, but not out of place, and totally impossible to reproduce on higher armors.

(Alternatively, this could just be given to the Crown in general. The fact that it does nothing is cute, but it does make it a wasted artifact drop most of the time as it stands, unless you get the Bindings...)

Now the T5 choice if you have the full set is even more interesting.