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OK - whatever you did makes the shadow spells just about impossible as the shadow pips rarely, if ever pop. I am going at times with literally 10 plus normal pips with nadda - hard enough being a balance wizard (130) but now you have made that school useless. Lets be real, no good having higher HP if you have nothing to hit with. At the higher levels, unless you are a storm wizard, this game is terrible now- sorry. One more thing, it is becoming way too convoluted as well - too many mechanics, not enough fun.
Patrick
Balance Wizard 11 years (2009)

Shadow Pips for both my main wizards are so erratic now it is almost impossible to use a Shadow enhanced spell. Before the update, I got at least one Shadow pip within 3-5 rounds. Now I am lucky to see one during the course of a battle on either of my main wizards.

Please KI, restore the Shadow Pips to what they were BEFORE the update.

I agree with everyone so far that's posted here. Shadow pip gain is abysmal. Before this change it was always a long running joke for years, since shadow pips were introduced, that shadow pips were often problematic for ever showing for when you needed them and finally so after you could have used them. However, you'd always at least know that whether solo or in groups that you could get your shadow pip(s) in a relatively reasonable amount of turns and made combat feel well paced which made you feel powerful and effective despite the previous.

Now game play feels like you took off a normal flow faucet aerator and installed a very restrictive hyper-low flow aerator and it's gutterally and painfully frustrating to where you can feel a real physical response in that frustration and makes game play so utterly slow and miserable and like we're horribly ineffective and powerless, like being a noob again. As many years as we have had shadow pips/spells why NOW in 2020 is it suddenly a problem? Was this a reaction to PvP?

It is forcing players to have to revert to lower level type of extensive buff building and having to use under 7 pip spells to even just push through regular multi mob fights for questing. Soloing for boss fights, nope not anymore... at least not in any sense of being an efficient and high level performing powerful player. It's like being literally thrust back to being under level 50 struggling all over again and having to spam the SAME handful of spells we had to use ad nauseam for most of our leveling journey until we got to shadow spells(which we now spam those as well but at least we were powerful feeling and relatively very effective).

There is SO MUCH farming(in addition to just normal questing) that's a core foundation to the game for so many things we need and want and now we have to go back to using a highly buffed scarecrow, for example, just to do what could be done with a blade or two and an enchanted lulu. It's going to vary for each school as not all schools have the big aoe capabilities and/or the power in the damage behind them even with enchants without building like you're in a boss fight for just elite or regular mobs that call for using an aoe.

Everyone looked forward to their shadow spells because it was the payoff for all that leveling and effort to get there, you're shadow now...you made it, it was exciting and the game really opens up for you at that point. Getting our shadow spells was an important milestone as we are finally getting our truly powerful spells and begin the journey of being more powerful and effective wizards. I think it's great that we now have a visible meter that we can see when we will gain a shadow pip and that's priceless and that's a great addition, however, the gain is the problem. It's too aggressively restrictive for a max level in gear, and if it's this aggressive for a max, it's going to be utterly worthless and pointless and practically impossible to even have shadow spells let alone use them at the level we acquire them. What a terrible and awful and painful experience everyone coming of level getting shadow spells now has ahead of them going to current max level. This needs to be fixed. You guys broke the game & experience immensely.

Starting at around 100 up to current max level 130, especially at max with gear, we started feeling more powerful and effective and efficient in PvE combat. If this was a change made because of PvP please the community begs and implores you at KI to explore the possibilities to make shadow pips gain at whatever slower rate you think is necessary for improving PvP exclusively in those PvP environments. We HAVE to have them as they were to do the PvE content and they worked well as it was and felt like it was balanced and correlated well with the PvE content that we needed to use them within. You can alter player side character stats temporarily it in the PvP environments or requiring new meaningful PvP gear for playing PvP that will do the things you are forcing game-wide that's hurting players in the PvE environments severely. If you want to make PvP more balanced, you will get ZERO argument from me on doing so, you guys HAVE to start finally addressing making PvP specific gear requirements to swap into that you can flesh out with meaningful stats for going into PvP.

There is an entirely new avenue of possibilities in new lines of gear, accessories, weapons, etc. that can be created for PvP exclusively. Gear that actually matters and has great stats and utility and benefits. PvP always should have been it's own entity with it's own fully supported meaningful PvP gear system and character stats for that environment. The current gear is weird and out of place, it always was, and just isn't desirable, like an afterthought. I think in the spirit of all the wonderful improvements and updating and upgrading of the game, PvP needs to finally become its own system. Imagine the possibilities for new PvP focused packs(though I don't care for rng packs myself and advocate for direct buying items) and new gear skins and wand/weapon introductions and even PvP related/specific spellements etc. They can even make their way into Scrolls of Fortunes as well. There are so many possibilities and so much that can be done. Effectively destroying the PvE content that everyone has to do and we need to farm for various purposes for the sake of PvP players is senseless, frustrating, demoralizing, depressing, and a major setback for the players.

At the very least in the short term the simpler solution for right now is to just make character stats temporarily altered in whatever way necessary for when inside arenas to satisfy the needs for what's causing issues in PvP with all these aggressive over 7pip spells and shadow pip changes and then players return to PvE stats when outside of PvP back in the PvE content. This is something observably able to be done in this game and can be done as similar things already exists for changing a character's stats dynamically and situationally.

Gabriel Jadeheart