So, I am not sure whether to respond here or in the cobalt post, so I'll just say a few things here that kind of cover both:
-- Also to preface, all of my responses are always specific to 1-alt only ---
I don't play multi anymore; I have played 1-alt since it came out. The Christmas shop where you bought Sleigh Bells was in Market Square for a few weeks around Christmastime and the bracelets were extremely cheap; I bought a few.
The Cobalt Staff of the Winds was originally created as a way to get gold out of the game, to have this "high end weapon" that you could shop buy. But in my opinion, I don't find the addition of the Cobalt to have been thinking about the future of the game at all; it was a cool idea and fun item at the time, but it has limited a lot of creation for staff going forward.
The Cobalt still wrecks our ability to create new, fun items for the game. Because we run into situations, such as this, where we try to make new items for game, and people are upset that their Cobalt has lost value.
It's the same problem we have for quest items. I can't make new boss drops that are better than questies in the past because people who have the questies get upset that their quest item is no longer as special.
I will say in the case of the Cobalt though, the years have changed a lot of things. Back in the day when Manda got first Cobalt on 1-alt, it took her months and months and months of grinding. Getting 10m gold back then was a crazy feat. These days, if I really, really wanted to, I could get a cobalt in a month or two if I had to.
As the game has evolved and more areas have been created; as drop rates have been increased on leveling items, and those leveling items are now shop sellable; as people are getting stronger with higher levels; as people are getting better gear; and as modded training weapons have been added, getting gold is much easier and faster now than it used to be in the past. Not to mention the fact that 1-alt no longer pks and kills each other, making training/golding much more sustainable.
As far as the strength bracelet from Claus this year, this was the first year we had so many bracelets, something not previously in game. My intent was to start introducing items to the game that we hadn't seen before. Ideally, I'd like to find ways to add them back into the game later for people who were unable to get them/because I feel questies get overvalued in this game because of rarity and I'd like to see them get added back in later, but I think we'd need to have an open discussion as a community about things like that.
Ideally, I'd like to see less vamp being used, and more people using modded weapons, at least on 1-alt; I don't play Multi, so I have no thoughts on what they need. I would like to see weapons stronger than Cobalt come out that you can craft and work towards. I personally don't like having a weapon that I have to work around and can't "make anything better than."
I'm open to ideas on what people think would be cool or neat, but it needs to be reasonable. I think the vamp on the Cobalt is fine where it is at. Many items in 1-alt that have vamp near it are either questies (so no longer obtainable) or crafted through a means of bossing and tons of collection (Cobalt Bow). The Cobalt is a way to get a nice vamp weapon without relying on boss drops or what have you, it's a "solo" weapon that's achievable through gold grinding.
To be honest, a good number of people prefer the training weapons to the Cobalts in 1-alt these days. I know at least one person sold their Cobalt to buy training weapons. I think you are just coming from a place of not having played in so long, you want to hold onto the dream of Cobalt being the number one weapon in the game. I'd like to evolve past this as best we can and find more fun weapons to use because let's be honest, running around for years just using Cobalt on every char you ever train with gets quite boring.
