Bahram's item balance change plz

[ByFstugan]

At the moment the Bahram gears are very ill balanced and due to the insane amount it costs to get just one of this items the less good items should get some extra love. As it is today my view is that two items are good enough, one is a bit after and the last one is just about useless. In short I'd say it's pretty much like this, and now I put them in order of quality as I see them:

1) Bahram's Brisk Boots (Soldier Gear):
- The best item by far and the most suitable to set the level of the quality all Bahram's items should have.
- I'd argue it's likelly most would take at least 3-5 of these before even concider any other item.

2) Bahram's Best Battle Armor (Light Armor):
- For civs like Egypt and Babylon this could be an early pick, but any player would also want the boots to match this item and would likelly take boot first even if the Battle armor would be their 2nd pick.
- Since the extra bonus speed was added here it got a quality that's fair enough to stay as they are, so no big buff needed as I see it.
*Possible change due to "Donar" &"destroyerarcher" & "Atlas008" input: Give it at least about 7% or even 10% speed instead of just 2%, it's to close to Ashoka's armor and should have more clear bling than it does
Proof: https://unitstats.projectceleste.com/?build=e9520bb25ff15b3e72159bc72e957eb53c1481c68309c8843c73de93

3) Bahram's Branded Arm Guard (Soldier Gear):
- This item is hardly even intresting for archers, though one may argue they are BIS for them, but just 3.6% extra damage will unlikelly even change the number of volleys it takes to get a kill and therefor likelly just add something extra to the wasted overkill damage stats.
- Instead of extra health bonus as the Boots has this item has NOTHING; so I'd suggest this item get's a 3rd bonus to make it intresting and maybe even a pickle to decide if one will go for the Boots or the Arm Guard first. Whatever the bonus is it should NOT be aimed at tanky units.
*Possible change on attribute there is: Add even more damage (21-25%)? Remove penalty Cost? (Cost far less intresting)
*Possible often used, but boring bonuses: Cavalry/Infantry bonus damage, Conversion Resistance, Train Time (negative stat), Line-of-sight
*Possible suggestions that doesn't exist: Critical Hit Chance? Bonus damage to Buildings?
*Possible change due to "Atlas008" input: Ignore armor (~8% suggested)

4) Bahram's Beloved Bow (bow):
- This item I wouldn't use even if I was offered it for free, that's how unintresting I think it is. So this item needs more love than any other.
- The cost bonus is for sure most intresting for TC's (and maybe Fortresses), but since the save is only about 30w/30s times usally 3x extra TC's it only saved less than 90w/90s per regular map, and usally the last TC's comes when the economy is so good you don't even notice the difference.
- First to do is to concider what it should be a bonus for, units/buildings or just TC's?
*Possible suggestion, TC: I'd say this bow should outmatch the Finnbar's Forgotten Bow that has Train/Research Rate +1.9% and Line-of-sight +2.5%, so perhaps at least the Train/Research bonus but in higher value is an idea. To have 4 bonuses on this item wouldn't be to much though since it's so far behind as it is imho.
*Possible suggestion, units: Decent range bonus (~20%?). If so maybe also Line-of-sight bonus or a small Movement speed bonus to make it more unique.
*Health could also be a possible bonus anywhere, but I find that less intresting no matter if it's on TC or any other place.

If anyone in the comments has other good/better suggestions I'll edit them into my main post.

EDIT:
Since both destroyerarcher & purpleganja was touching the subject I want to add one thing about potential changes that I didn't type at first to try to keep the amount of text down somewhat. But when it comes to change the items we must concider the items already brought into players bound gear arsenal, and likelly they were picked for a reason (to get the bonuses there at given time). Hence the items boost/modification shouldn't change their original characteristics to much, so for example the Armed Guard that atm has most focus on damage should also stay just an item with that main focus.
*I would however assume that anyone of the very few(?) that got the bow wouldn't mind whatever it change to since it likelly would go from very "meh" to "oh mama". Yes, that's a thing
[/EDIT]

If some Developer reads this it would be intresting to hear the statistics of how many of each of this gears has been cashed out of each kind - I'm a bit curious to see if reality match my predictions.

 

[Donar]

For Bahram's Branded Arm Guard i go with a simple buff for more cost (more attack and more cost).
For Bahram's Beloved Bow i go with a better Finnbar's Bow.
Other two i agree. A minimal buff on Bahram's Best Battle Armor would be nice thought, it is almost the same as Ashoka's.

 

[destroyerarcher]

Bahram's Best Battle Armor - Unless you want two ashoka's gorgets, this item is pointless to buy. 2% speed, 1% extra damage, and 3% extra hp is not noticeable in an actual quest. Upping the speed from 2% to 7% would make it a substantial speed upgrade over ashoka, and the speed could be even higher if devs want to make it even more enticing.

Bahram's Arm Guard - I would buff the damage from 16.7% to 21% at MINIMUM. The extra HP from boots is more useful because it helps units survive splash damage, and only getting 3.5% extra damage (even less if you think relative) really shows the personality of whoever made that item. I think Arm Guard could be 25% and still not be overpowered (compared to boots), even on deathballs.

Bahram's Beloved Bow - With this item you can go absolutely wild with how you rework it. I think if it was changed to be 38.6% damage, 27.4% range, and the same -9.9% cost, it would be a very strong bow for guard towers, since they are cheaper and have lots of range. It could also be a better finnbar's bow, but overall spending 10 million on a bow is a huge ask when a lot of awesome bows already exist for far cheaper.

While I personally do not like Bahram gear because of how much powercreep boots give, it seems they are here to stay, and removing them would likely anger more players than help. So I decided to give my own suggestions on how to improve the three other options.

 

[purpleganja]

I find the bow interesting for castellums and egyptian forts since we can't have 2 finbars. I actually bought one and not armor and gloves and would definitely take another one if they were free lol.

I agree that the brisk boots set the bar really high in term of how much more it gives compared to the next similar item bellow.

Maybe just a little bit more of the same is all it would take to make all other 3 match the boots.
It would probably not outrage people who already have bought items to get more of the same, but a total change of purpose is much more prone to do that.

 

[Atlas008]

If stats alterations are possible then it may be a good idea to give the arm guard some ignore armor, if the purpose of the gear is to be the best ultimate choice for ranged units then a small amount of ignore armor (mayby 8%) will go a long way, we have already seen how good it can be because of winter arrow. This will not only make it unique and a good enough boost for ranged units that they will consider it over bahrams boots, but is also a safer option when it comes to power creep because that amount of ignore armor is too low for it to be a decent choice on melee units at the cost of all that hp loss.

As for the armor, like already stated on here it costs 10m but is in practice just the same as ashoka which is much much easier and quicker to get. I think it should give more movespeed (mayby 10%) so it at least feels worthwhile to invest in. Right now it is just a waste

 

[ByFstugan]

Devs - I hope you can find someone in the team that can look into this!

Even if it today concerns few players this will likelly always be the end-game goal for most players that gives this game that little extra to fine-tune their civs into perfection - hence it's of value for many to come also if there is more than just one really good item, one decent and two pretty useless.

It seems as all who has engaged in this topic both here and in Discord are on the exact same page about this evaluation, even if the sollutions might have some differences, most (if not all) seems to agree where the inbalance exist and need to change.

So - plz plz PLZZZZ find someone that can give this some evenings thought and do some changes, must be a real simple thing when you know what that changes would be

 

[destroyerarcher]

Me and Atlas were discussing how no one uses the Bahram Bow primarily because of its high cost. This gave me an idea. I noticed that people also complain about Bahram being too expensive. What if Bahram's Lotto had a new bracket of items that would have its separate winner selection, and would be cheaper? The bow would be moved to this new bracket, and all items in this bracket would cost 2,000 Bahram Tokens instead of 10,000.

A new item bracket would feel fairly empty without items to accompany it, so I decided to think of a few potential gear suggestions:

Torc: +15% speed, 45% crit.
Fills speed while still sticking to dps, and also would help make C bowman more popular.

Belly Bow: 35% dmg, 20% range, 25% movement speed.
While technically a sidegrade to BBow of the Master Hunter, the speed bump is substantial enough to make Gastraphetes hit and run more satisfying.

Engineering Accessory: +8% movement speed, +28.7% damage.
Direct upgrade to Delian Archon's Wheels.

In addition, another item bracket could be added that effectively would set the price of the Big Three legendaries, to prevent them from being too inaccessible. This bracket would include Walls of the Architect, Master Assassin's Gauntlets, and Athenian Training Manual, and would cost 250 tokens each for an average stat rolled item.