Tier 4 ranged damage gap.

In the current game build there is a gap in the crafting progression for tier 4 ranged damage.

My melee and magic stats have progressed smoothly with ores/ingots found across the realm tiers offering 6, 8 and 10 percent attributes in a way that felt natural as i advanced through the game.

This isn't the case with ranged damage - the tier 4, or the 10 percent attribute ore/ingot, is basically not in the game at the point when the player needs it.

The player can enter the ascended realms with titanium and gold based melee/magic builds, having sourced them from the tier 3 realms they've been visiting, but at this point in the game they haven't yet had the chance to get any tier 4 ranged metal.

What i have found is i'm actually getting access to tier 5 ranged metal before i've even seen any tier 4 stuff.

In theory i should be able to get tier 4 ranged metal from bound drops of tier 4 bombardier and kyrosiphon ingots - but these drops are so rare they might as well not exist, AND the player still has to go to an ascended realm to get access to them.

I think if you look at what the players are doing you will see 99 percent of them will go straight from magnesium/tier 3 bound metals to einaidia - missing out tier 4 completely. I'd put money on that.

That's not good - it's a gap in the "progression curve" and results in ranged builds suffering a mid game stall and arriving in the ascended realms under powered, or jumping straight to an end game build too soon, and having no further progression to look forward to.

I suggest you either add a tier 4 ranged ore to be available in tier 3 realms like titanium and gold are - or implement tier 4 ranged metal drops from the more dangerous bound in tier 3 realms.