A big problem will still be there, it seems. You say unique rewards from legends, but all i hear is "keep farming ogres/whatever the new best coinmaker is and just buy whatever the reward is on the market for gold later". Gold is simply the be-all, end-all, and there is no reason to actually be out there doing the content.

Would be nice if there was some kind of itemization or progress bound to the participating character, that was untradeable/untransferable and, if possible, uncarriable - in the sense of not just "join a zerg of 50 doing the content" or "hop in a small team of veterans carrying you through it in exchange for gold" without you contributing enough to the reward.

While this very much isn't the direction most open PvX (PvEvP) sandboxes with full player economies go, Fractured is still trying the philosophy of "having a cake and eating it too" with having both a PvE side and a PvP side sharing the same game server, so it'll need to pull some tricks from the themepark side of things. Until this fundamental flaw isn't touched, no matter what rewards you pass around, the most metagaming thing will always be to farm gold on Arboreous.

While you can say "oh well, don't listen to tryharders then", you have to understand that, at the moment, if you're neither farming gold nor progressing your character, any other activity will be done purely for "fun". And I think most of us know the feeling of doing something "for fun" while there is something else more productive we could be doing. Ironic to have such a real-life dread be reproduced on a video game.

Hi everyone, I'm mostly on Discord but would imagine this is a better place for discussion. In game I'm known as Vile (and also by my very harsh anti-mage rhetoric, lol).

Big text coming. There will be a TL;DR.

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Coming fresh off a siege in my town of Felstal (very fun by the way, even if we got outnumbered) it was very clear how strong the Mandrake Elixir is. The worst part is that it is not exclusive to the special conditions on this test. Let's list the Mandrake Elixir's effects:

• Instant 1000 mana
• Magical Debuff removal

Now to my arguments, as I will focus on the mana portion. In my suggestions I will discuss the Debuff removal a little, but it is far from being the most egregious.

The First.

• "Soon, consumables will take an ability slot".

With how the game works right now, with short combos, low cooldowns, and the CC fiesta, it will hardly, if ever, be optimal (or possible) to use your whole ability bar in a fight. Most slots will be situational, like Dispel Magic. Myself, as an assassin, use 7, with two being a Ready and a Stance (which I might just dump for something else for as long as the mana regen bug sticks around) and still have both a slot and a memory point.

To replace a situational skill for an instant consumable that would allow my skill rotations to go forever with no care in the world for my only limiting resource is simply a no brainer, enough that people are skipping mana regen materials, imbues and talents.

The Second.

• "It feels strong right now because we can spawn them in."

The recipe for a Mandrake Elixir is a single mandrake, and every craft from this yields 10 elixirs. Yes, they are rare on Aerhen and abundant on Terra, but wildfolk lands are both a safe planet and also the same place where portcrystals are gathered - 60 at a time if you're patient, worth three trips. And the around 12 nodes on Aerhen are enough to craft 120 elixirs every run.

With all that being said, here are my suggestions.

• Remove the Instant effect.

For a simple and cheap consumable to simply negate any downtime at all is far too powerful a tool. I am also against making it expensive as a balancing act, as this would simply lock the item out from casual players and make it exclusive to sieges, as there will be no price not worth defending your town over, and the problem will just be pushed further down.

• Make it increase Mana regeneration instead.

This would cause the item to still reduce downtimes without cancelling them outright. This also prevents the user from basically instantly recovering from any openings caused by mana draining spells.

• Remove the cleanse of Magical Debuffs.

As discussed previously, the item is far too inexpensive and abundant. There already is a debuff removal item (that also removes a Magical Buff along with it). For the Mandrake Elixir to do this without a downside, worse, giving mana instead, is incompatible with the vision of making consumables into reasonable ability bar choices.

• (Optional) Give the Mana Regen effect a INT scaling.

Just some extra flavor and a bit of a compensation. Would also make it a mirror to the bandages, though we all know those who struggle with mana the most are those without INT. (Yay, I managed to complain about INT)

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TL;DR TL;DR TL;DR TL;DR TL;DR TL;DR TL;DR

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• Mandrake Elixir is so powerful players are skipping mana regen materials, imbues and talents.

• The item is far too easy to acquire for how powerful it is. The solution is reworking the item, not the price.

• The instant effect negates any downtime and circumvents openings made from mana reducing skills and imbues. Trading an ability bar slot for this is barely a choice. It should be made into regeneration instead.

• There already is a Magical Debuff cleanser consumable, and it removes Magical Buffs along with it as a downside. The Mandrake Elixir replaces the Buff cleanser with instant mana. This goes against the vision of making consumables into reasonable ability bar options.

• An (optional) INT scaling to the regeneration effect would make it a mirror to Bandages and also compensate for the huge nerfs. Would also be very easy to just copy-paste the Bandage code and change the pulls.

I agree there is far too much damage going around, not just Shadow Step. I think the game in general needs to differentiate numbers dealt to players and to NPCs. Can't just straight up nerf everything because it's big on PvP. The average PvP player will have about 2.4k health, we could balance spells around that number.
But 2.4k health's nothing in PvE numbers. So you nerf an ability for it being too damaging on PvP and you might just hurt it in PvE.

Also if you really nerf the Crit damage bonus, I think the damage should be redistributed around a little bit. Right now, the 600% crit damage is the only thing going for it, and it only really works because of Shadow Step's stealth bonus - doing a Lethal Strike from stealth, something a LOT more difficult to do and more memory intensive than a single button press teleport, will deal about half of the damage. It doesn't reward the risk.
Were it the other way around, Shadow Dash would have a use for engage and reposition instead of just running away.

Oh and also it replacing Shadow Walk's duration is very annoying. Given how people hate assassins atm I guess it's deserved, but I'd like some words on it.