The Celestial Justicar drop rate......Oops??

Looks like these things are dropping out of control compared to normal 6-link drop rates. If you search Rare 6L Astral Plates on PoeTrade there are over 99 results for Warbands league. And massive number of The Justicar cards up for sale.

Theoretically - one would expect that the drop rate of these cards should be approximately 6 times the drop rate of a normal 6-linked item (you would generally want the dropping of 6 cards aka 1 set to equal the drop rate of a 6-linked vanilla item). I would guess that, instead, the drop rate of a card is 10,000x the drop rate of a 6L item...

Furthermore, the Astral is already a wonderful, top of the line base stat (+12 all res on a high armor item is basically OP to begin with) - making the number of these things further absurd.

Yikes.

Have you considered the fact that people are actually utilizing the cards for there intended purpose?

Aka : targeted zone farming.

Is there a targeted zone for farming 6-links?(without the cards obviously)

Further more, the new end-game seems to require an easier facilitation of 6-links due to it's increased difficulty.

Nothing inherently bad with many 6-links appearing, if anything i would prefer some additional bases to appear.

Another thing to note is that it can only perform at "rare" tier levels, unique 6-links are still a major business.

To put it differently, what exactly is your issue with many 6-link astrals appearing on the market?

I personally don't see any issue with this in light of other changes.

Peace,

-Boem-

Well I find that really cool, It's what divination cards are about, having the chance to get something exotic or nearly impossible to have :)

I agree with your points Boem but overall I am questioning if this is really what was intended...to flood the market with a ridiculous amount of these items. It's not that I am personally offended, I was just pointing out that the drop rate seems kind of silly.

And diablofdb...think about your reply statement "have the chance to get something exotic or nearly impossible to have" - when there are 1000 6L Astral Plates within 2 months of a league - they become neither exotic nor impossible to have. :)

Dunno, just seems a little Oprah to me.

"And YOU get a 6L Astral" "And YOU! get a 6L Astral"

"Everyone gets a 6L Astral!!!"

Well, keep in mind that outright drops are NOT the main source of higher-end base items having 6 linked sockets, by a long shot; that would be people using fusings on 'em... Which gets a bit easier for a plain white item due to the more plausible option of doing a +q roll with cheap scraps every time it has a low roll.

So in terms of balance, the card merely need compare to the outright VALUE of a 6L Astral Plate, which currently (on Warbands) appears to be about 7ex. This suggests that it hasn't had a HUGE impact on the overall prices, as a Glorious Plate 6L is 6ex, but for Vaal Regalia and Zodiac Leather? Around 9ex, and their values shouldn't have been seriously impacted.

Further, in terms of actual circulation, yes, it's increased it; going on the buyout-only options, the norm for 6L top-defense chest pieces is to have around a dozen or so for sale, vs. 91 for Astral Plate.

Thus, I don't think it's in a bad shape right now: it's certainly allowing people to FOCUS their farming. For one, it's not a guaranteed Best-in-Slot: the iLVl of 80 is insufficient for the following affixes:

• "Impregnable" (121-132% increased armour, iLvl 84)
• "Rapturous" (+110-119 Life, iLvl 81)
• "Of The Gods" (+51-55 Strength, iLvl 82)
• "Of Tzteosh" (+46-48% fire resist, iLvl 84)
• "Of Haast" (+46-48% cold resist, iLvl 84)
• "Of Ephij" (+46-58% lightning resist, iLvl 84)
• "Of Bameth" (+31-35 chaos resist, iLvl 81)

So barring the flat armour bonus... None of the T1s popularly used on a chestpiece are going to be available.

Finally, keeping all that in mind... "The Celestial Justicar" card is worth slightly under 1ex. So as long as the drop rate is close to in line with what one would expect for items worth that range... It's pretty balanced.

"

Pie_Guy wrote:

Dunno, just seems a little Oprah to me.

"And YOU get a 6L Astral" "And YOU! get a 6L carnal armour "And YOU! get a 6L vaal regalia"

"Everyone gets a 6L chest!!!"

This has a much better ring to it right?

Your notion of 6-links being required to be "hard to achieve" is losing ground since high-end content ultimately requires them now.

In the old game-state this was not the case.

To put it more bluntly, perfect stat-wise 6-linked chest's should be hard to achieve and so should 6-link unique pieces(since they usually offer a niche defensive option to boot)

But raw 6-links with medium/good rolls on it no longer should.

It has always been one of the design flaws in this game to have such potential freedom in skill-design while locking it away on an item configuration.

From what i have read the average time to farm for these is a week to complete a set (few hours a day) so there is nothing wrong with that time-frame to achieve a 6-link.

Obviously once people achieved them, the left-overs will start piling up and they will reduce in value, which again is good for the part of the community that is no rush(not competing) to get one.

Like i said, i hope they add more cards for different base-types. It's a bit of a shame to have only the astral plate like this, while a fine base, it is only build enabling to X amount of base builds. Covering all angles should be an aim.(excluding unique's obviously)

Don't forget, eternal exalting is out of the game now, so you cant craft it up to a perfect astral now. (unless extremely lucky)

So the 6-link acts like a skill template more now and a "better tabula" secondary, while having socket coloring limitations.

I get where your getting from though, but the game is evolving constantly and i cannot say that i somehow disagree with this direction. I always felt the linking system was problematic to overall balance since an extra link provides in most cases "MORE" dps to a skill.

If everybody can comfortably run around with 6-link set-ups, it provides a better standard to balance
top-end content around. Which in return should provide the player-base with a pleasant experience.

Peace,

-Boem-

Edit : to clarify, if you implement different 6-link base armor types on cards, people will move away from the astral farming, reducing there total count. People are farming it for the craftable 6-link option foremost, not because it is an astral plate.

Give them options that align more with there core build and they will opt to go farm those.

Overall more 6-links will appear, but it will be spread out over the different base types, reducing economic impact overall.(<-- if that should be a concern)

Fantastic replies ACGFIT and Boem, I certainly understand your arguments. However I still think there are problems, economic and otherwise, in picking Astral base for this card and the high drop rate. The league is still rather young, but you could eventually have a situation where ALL "pre-Astral" (Crusader, Golden, Majestic plates etc.) armors are seriously de-valued. Why would anyone want to trade for a no-implicit resistance, 400 armor 6L when they have 100s of crazy astrals floating around with insane res and armor.

It just seems weird to me that the armor base they would pick to FLOOD the market with happens to be the best pure armor base in the game (my opinion of course, but I certainly think it beats Glorious Plate).

I think it would have been more fitting and strategic to use a Sun Plate for the card, for instance (would have even retained the interesting Celestial theme). Then farming would be an option to easily retrieve a 6L, but leaving the highly powerful Astral base as a higher top-tier option.

Usually, you would want the rarity and power of items to follow a sort of pyramid structure. Best at the top of the pyramid, and down you go....getting more common and weaker. Having hundreds of 6L astrals kind of distorts that pyramid, imo.

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Pie_Guy wrote:

Fantastic replies ACGFIT and Boem, I certainly understand your arguments. However I still think there are problems, economic and otherwise, in picking Astral base for this card and the high drop rate. The league is still rather young, but you could eventually have a situation where ALL "pre-Astral" (Crusader, Golden, Majestic plates etc.) armors are seriously de-valued. Why would anyone want to trade for a no-implicit resistance, 400 armor 6L when they have 100s of crazy astrals floating around with insane res and armor.

It just seems weird to me that the armor base they would pick to FLOOD the market with happens to be the best pure armor base in the game (my opinion of course, but I certainly think it beats Glorious Plate).

I think it would have been more fitting and strategic to use a Sun Plate for the card, for instance (would have even retained the interesting Celestial theme). Then farming would be an option to easily retrieve a 6L, but leaving the highly powerful Astral base as a higher top-tier option.

Usually, you would want the rarity and power of items to follow a sort of pyramid structure. Best at the top of the pyramid, and down you go....getting more common and weaker. Having hundreds of 6L astrals kind of distorts that pyramid, imo.

Celestial Justicar is probably the most well designed card. It grants access to an end game piece of equipment that is fairly hard to farm, however it's not like the 6L grants you that much. You still need to roll it decently.

"

Pie_Guy wrote:

It just seems weird to me that the armor base they would pick to FLOOD the market with happens to be the best pure armor base in the game (my opinion of course, but I certainly think it beats Glorious Plate).

It's a matter of preference; one thing that Glorious Plate has going for it that's "hidden" is that it's the only STR-based chest armor without a movement speed penalty.

"

Pie_Guy wrote:

I think it would have been more fitting and strategic to use a Sun Plate for the card, for instance (would have even retained the interesting Celestial theme). Then farming would be an option to easily retrieve a 6L, but leaving the highly powerful Astral base as a higher top-tier option.

If it was Sun Plate then it'd have been considered a "troll item."

Remember that if stats don't matter there is already a farmable option to get a 6L. That's getting Humility Cards out of the Aqueducts for a Tabula.

"

Pie_Guy wrote:

Usually, you would want the rarity and power of items to follow a sort of pyramid structure. Best at the top of the pyramid, and down you go....getting more common and weaker. Having hundreds of 6L astrals kind of distorts that pyramid, imo.

I wouldn't say it distorts it TOO much; my comparisons show it's only around 7-8 times as common as other top-tiers as a result... And that would make it less common than many lower-tier items.

And again, I MUST stress how important it is that for 2 of the 3 desired prefixes, and ALL of the suffixes, T1 isn't possible with Justicar armor. So sure, there could be a plentiful number of T2 Astrals, but none with T1 life, STR, or resists... And similarly, they WILL have lower armour in the end: Cap (assuming a life prefix) on a Justicar Astral is 1,834-2,177 armour, (depending on roll) compared to 2,000-2,286 for a base from a map.

I think this card is WAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY to common, its pretty absurd how many 6 link astrals are going around. Vaal Regs and Zodiac are 9ex, ok so the armours for the really unpopular builds right now are really low, and then the market for the really popular armour base is... even lower... k. I feel like the market being flooded with possibly the most desired rare chest in the current meta is probably forcing the price of 6 links down across the board.

Its insanity, I fully expect this card to be nerfed by gigantic amounts after these leagues end, and rightly so, same with the tabula card.