A quick look at the available crystal types reveal some potentially useful crystals that are completely ignored for a combination of the following:

1. The effect is too weak
2. Made obsolete by another crystal that does the same thing better
3. Too specific or unreliable


To illustrate one glaring string of examples, here is one armor type endgame crystal which is considered vendor trash:

Soothing Crux
10% chance to provide HP Regeneration VI when knocked down by a normal monster. Cannot stack with other Soothing crystals.

Note that this is an uncommon crystal. This crystal is useless because of reasons 1 and 3. 10% chance to activate on a knockdown from normal mobs for a mere 3000 or so HP gain over time. Then the existence of the following crystal makes it even more worthless due to reason 2, where a completely better crystal supersedes its purpose.

Fine Inspiring Crux
50% chance to provide HP Regeneration VI when knocked down. Cannot stack with other Inspiring crystals

This uncommon crystal provides the same buff at a higher chance at less restrictive conditions and is obtainable in the same manner as the Soothing crystal.

However, the HP regen effect is still hilariously low. You're better off with a Vigorous crystal.

Furthermore there's still reason #2 making this uncommon crystal a waste. You can get a Specialty shop version at your desire and it does the exact same thing.

Pristine Inspiring Crux
50% chance to provide HP Regeneration VI when knocked down. Cannot stack with other Inspiring crystals

So this common crystal has absolutely no difference from the uncommon crystal. What's the point?

Might as well use this crystal. But wait! There's an even cheaper that does the same thing too.

Inspiring Crux
50% chance to provide HP Regeneration VI when knocked down. Cannot stack with other Inspiring crystals.

The mere existence of this one shop renders a pristine equivalent and two uncommon ones obsolete. Stacking them doesn't work either since the HP regen buff overwrites if more than one crystal activates, not to mention being a tremendous waste of crystal slots.



Lets take another example of armor crystals with this trend. Ones that provide shielding upon being knocked down.

Dauntless Crux
15% chance to provide Shield VI when attacked by bosses and knocked down. Cannot stack with other Dauntless crystals

Dauntless is completely, totally and absolutely rendered useless by Warding.

Fine Warding Crux
50% chance to provide Shield VI when knocked down. Cannot stack with other Warding crystals.

Arguably also made obsolete by Empyrean crystals since every single mob and their mothers will auto-enrage past a percentage HP lost. Even if you've knocked them down and hit them past that trigger point!

Fine Empyrean Crux
Activates Shield VI when knocked down or stunned by enraged monsters. Cannot stack with other Empyrean crystals.

Unfortunately, there's a cheaper one that does the same thing:

Pristine Empyrean Crux
Activates Shield VI when knocked down by enraged monsters. Cannot stack with other Empyrean crystals.

This is also rendered obsolete in turn by:

Empyrean Crux
Activates Shield VI when knocked down or stunned by enraged monsters. Cannot stack with other Empyrean crystals.

These shielding crystals cannot be stacked either since the same buff overwrites.

Also, Shield VI is about 3500 or so damage absorption... a paltry amount at lvl 58 or higher. Which makes the entire point of such crystals useless with the huge damages being thrown around at high levels.



As for weapon crystals, there are so many that are simply too weak in their effect for conditions to use them.

Even though minion types can be dangerous, the bonus from Domineering and Squelching crystals are never enough to consider using, even with hotswapping with shortcuts.

The knock-down type crystals of Brutal, Cruel, Infused and Virulent are not strong enough for such a uncommon condition. A Slayer or Berserker glyphed to bring out maximum knockdowns would still do better with popular crystals that work with less restrictive conditions.



I think crystal build variety and potential for new combinations would benefit if the vendor trash crystals received improvements that would make them worth using.

It would also indirectly improve the crystal market since there would be far more useful crystals being obtained and demanded for.



P.S. Still mad at Resolutes being made useless for PvE due to PvP silliness.

Quote: Squishington on 07/12/2012, 01:52 AM - view

Yeah, why is it that there is three crystals of varying "quality" but they all give the same effect?


As for the mostly useless crystals, I'm thinking that maybe the devs had originally planned to allow crystal swapping on the fly so that you could switch up your build depending on the conditions of the fight, but then they realized that their death penalty, your crystals breaking, wouldn't hold up since you could swap out all your crystals before getting KO'd if you were fast enough.

What you've said is true: a lot of the useless crystals do not meet up with the efficiency of some of the more desired crystals.

I think it would be hella fun to have a bunch of different crystal builds for the condition of the fight (ie. mob is knocked down, mob is enraged, mob is... etc...) and I already use the quick swap builds just to change out my crystals. I have a build for downtime (HP + MP regen), and the remaining four are for when I'm fighting normal mobs or boss mobs, both solo and when in a party.

What gets me in the first place is that there are uncommon fine cruxes with vastly worse stats than the common ones I can pick up from any vendor.

Why the hell would anyone want a 10% chance of a crystal activating when you can get the same benefit from a store bought crystal that activates either 50% of the time or all the time.

These crystals are absolutely useless and just plain shouldn't exist.

Giving them uncommon status is ridiculous when they don't equate to common crystals of the same level.

God yes.
However Soothing and Dauntless might be fixed by removing the "knockdown" requirement. Simply getting hit by a mob of that type has a % chance to proc the effect?

As for the "bonus effect on knockdown weapon crystals". I'm thinking those might find some fans if the new Lancer skill is as knockdown friendly as I think it will be.

Honestly though, anything in the "minion" category should just be removed from the game. No one is ever going to use those and they take up space.

Agreed on the non-upgrade crystals. Again, remove them from the drop tables.

I think with the 3 varied crystals the effects appear the same in text but the numbers are different. Like maybe the buff last longer or something. I don't use them.