Entry gear at 70

[Otaliema]

Had a random idea. I know the devs want to see the non meta sets getting used, hence the buffing in the last patch.
All the classes have two sets that are pretty much useless, apprentice and scholar for mages.
What if they were turned into low cost leveling gear and fresh 70 gear?
Reduce the costs and materials required by at least 50%, remove the mark of titan requirement.
Change the 4 piece bonus to +Eg/Exp say %25 factored the same as the item buff, stacks with item buff.
Combine the current 4 piece with the 2 piece on them.
I feel this would make them worth while to make and use the duration your leveling up and right after hitting 70, possibly even become a permanent item set for farming for players.

Redo the 2 piece to have one set to be a base crit launch and the other to be a fire Lilly base, crit rate and crit damage, Power and haste.

And poof two sets that could see some actual usage in ANB’s (and new players) from players that don’t want to dump 2k gems right off the bat.

I personally would’ve loved to have been able to make a decent set of gear right after I hit 70 the first time and didn’t have the large stash of materials and cash yet, and I feel that way in every ANB for a bit unless I buy a couple of crates.

[Ozymandius]

I know the devs want to see the non meta sets getting used, hence the buffing in the last patch.

Actually, they were just responding to repeated requests from long term players. Once you hit "end game" level, playing the same old gear sets gets rather boring, so players were wanting to shake things up a bit. In the history of the game, those "useless" sets were not always so. In fact, the Apprentice set for Mage used to be the meta build before it was nerfed into its current lowly state. This time instead of nerfing the metas, the devs did it right and buffed some of the other gear sets to make them more relevant. Hopefully, that trend will continue to make older gear sets relevant again.

Completing the normal level of story mode already gives new players a full set of gear. Experienced players can easily level up a hero in less than 30 minutes of game time during an ANB, and the information on how to do that is readily available on YouTube videos, so an XP gear set bonus would not be of much value. Plus, there really is no need to buy the Legendary Crafter's Crate, you can get all of the materials that you need by collecting salvage gear from trials. You can easily build a decent XG farmer set just from dropped gear during a single ANB event and craft XP/XG jewelry with minimal gem investment. If you are buying multiple crates, you probably need to step back and tweak your game strategy as experienced players generally spend far less gems for the entire event.

[Ozymandius]

I would not go with XP/XG since you can easily buff those using boosters and lower level gear. If you really wanted to help out new players, create a 6 piece bonus on a new gear set that mimics the Fire Lily effect. The 100 Glory to purchase the Fire Lily trinket is a pretty steep entry fee for a new player, so a gear set that would mimic that effect would be most helpful. Adventurer, which now has a separate name for each class [Scholar, Scout, Battlemaster], wouldn't work since that is a CR/CD build, so you would pretty much need to create a new gear set with a 2-piece bonus for Haste/Movement Speed, a 4 piece bonus for Power, and a 6 piece bonus for increased power/haste but no critical hits [similar to Fire Lily but not quite as powerful to entice players to still make the Fire Lily purchase]. You could even make the effects stack with the Fire Lily trinket, so that a newbie could continue to use that gear set even after they purchase the Fire Lily. I can imagine a number of experienced players trying to see how high they could push a new build that synergizes with Fire Lily, and it could even become a competitive build within ANBs where a lot of experienced players use Fire Lily builds for farming XP.

I would not remove the Mark of Titan requirement for crafting, but instead make this gear the full set that new players receive from Alarion for completing milestones on the normal level Story Map [instead of the current Adventurers set].

[Otaliema]

That would work pretty well, on the same line of thinking, add a crit dmg to apprentice set for the 6 piece bonus to make it a bit more appealing to use. Allow to it stack with TOS. Maybe boost the 2 and 4 set bonuses a bit on both sets?

[Ozymandius]

I played Apprentice Mage for about a year before it was nerfed. I haven't really played Mage that much sense then. I think that I finally got rid of my Apprentice gear set; the max was only level 70 gear back then. If they bring it back, I would want to start over with a fresh set anyhow.