As it currently stands the armor and weapon socket cube recipes only allow for regular quality items to be socketed. The only option for superior items is Larzuk quest.
As the developers continue to place greater restrictions on rushing characters and the shared stash doesn’t even allow the transfer of certain items like the cube, the prospects of rushing through to Act 5 for a socket quest on Alts is becoming ever burdensome. This is especially true for offline and online console play.
Since this game is highly fixated on runewords and sets/uniques aren’t very powerful in comparison, one of these options(or all) should be considered to allow greater flexibility of gear:
Allow cube recipe to socket superior armor/weapons (maybe have a slightly more expensive alternative recipe for this)
Add a recipe to socket unique and set pieces
Have set and Unique upgrade recipes also add sockets
Switch Larzuk and Charsi quest rewards
Runewords socket types also need to be addressed, it makes absolutely no sense that every useful low and mid level runewords are in bases that can’t drop in their respective level zones. Unbending Will is case in point, they want act 5 mercs to be more useful so let’s require a mid tier runes which can all be farmed off NM countess and 6 socket weapons that only drop in Hell. Insight bases drop in NM and all the runes can be found in Normal:
Often times they are. Take for example a 15% Ed Grand Matron Bow with 4 sockets and +3 Bow skills.
If all it takes to get a base like this to just find 6 plain superior 15% ones with the +3 skills and trying your luck with this recipe, it would significantly increase the odds of getting such a rare and sought after base.
I’m not at all saying what should or shouldn’t be, I’m saying what is currently in the game right now for some runewords (a lot of bow runewords are like this).
The cube recipe should account for these things, so we know that the rolling of random sockets on superior items should be more expensive than non-superior items. This is to prevent a sudden flooding of superior socketed items into the trading economy.
The player could just find non-superior versions and use the existing cheaper recipe, so this is designed for players that are optimising their already expensive builds.
So the new recipe could be Lem + Mal + gem + item base for example.
Why does the “flood” of superior items have a negative impact on the ladder?
Superior items are rarer than regular items, and getting 15% ED in an Elite base is already difficult without the sockets. If someone is making an expensive runeword that has a massive ED roll range(50%) and/or other potential variable attributes, it is in their best interest to build it in the best base possible.
Why should it be exponentially easier to get a perfect ED base for BOTD but not for Faith or Myst?
You do realize that Enhanced Damage and Enhance Defense bases are only relevant to physical damage builds and melee respectively right? And that Melee already the most gear depend builds in the game and cannot match even remotely to casters in terms of raw power. But you insist that such builds should continue to pay a higher price for equipment to still be subpar compared to casters. No one cares about ED in a hoto or spirit.
This Disparity only slices one way. Greater availability of better bases is a boon to the community. 15 Ed bases aren’t all that expensive to begin with especially considering how poorly physical damage classes are represented in the Meta. I suppose it will impact merc gear for meta builds
I doubt anyone would use this considering rushing to act 5 hell socket quest takes as little as 2-3 hours to do and gives you 3 socket quests.
@Slomo4shO I’m not really understanding your line of questioning, as I already agreed an extra cube recipe would be good. I was just adding some context around balance and end-game.
The recipe of:
Lem rune
Mal rune
pgem
item base
I think is a fair one under the circumstances. The probability of finding a 15% +3 4s GMB is in the 1 in 240,000,000 range in players 7 cows with 99% MF, where as a non-socketed/plain version of that is 18 times more frequent than that.
By contrast, the chance of finding a Zod rune is 1 in 1,120,000. Lem and Mal runes are 1 in 40,300 and 78,000 respectively.
So if you do find yourself 6x plain 15% +3 GMB and 6x Lem and 6x Mal runes, and cube yourself a 4 socket one, you’re still coming way out on top than having to get a 4 socket one drop.
The game is not just for ladder, but also for non-ladder and PvP. We shouldn’t diminish the strive for end-game gear just to accommodate for ladder, and even then, we’re talking about a difference between 0% ed vs 15% ed, which is not a game changing difference for ladder players. In practice, this difference only translates to a 2% to 4% DPS difference on the final weapon.
I’m well aware of variable rolls on items, that’s why I’m stocking up on Jah and Ohm runes for my next faith once I find my superior 4s +3 bow matri/GMB base.
BotD despite requiring a Zod is no where near on par with Faith in fire power. BotD crusader barely makes it in the top 5 of bows for multishot/strafe. You could make a 1/12 +1-3 GMB faith and it will still be better (and easier to find/make) than a perfect roll BotD crusader bow in a superior base.
And the Mist bow sadly falls short for how rare the runes (mainly Cham) are, but the base is not that hard to come by in comparison to Faith: just find a 15% shadow bow, 15% +3 matriarchal bow or GMB and Larzuk it.
This… is something I’ve voiced my concerns about separately, see the link below and read the list of dot points. The idea in summary: make good drops for magic and rares as well as crafting of good items more attainable and potentially best in slot.
I also wish casters had more end game gear options to strive for other than crafted caster ammys and +45 life skillers (which even then is small in comparison to melee classes) but I’d rather see melee/bowa item availability boosted first.
It was just a thought on a way to put the useless manald heals and nagelrings we all find to use, as well as offer a quick way to add a socket without having to rerun characters just to get the Larzuk quest… Perhaps the rune can be brought down a bit?
I’ve always been a fan of something that can replicate Larzuk being put in, in the form of a cube recipe or something.
I’m a fan of making Charsi’s hammer farmable on hell difficulty, and just requiring the hammer, plus a perfect skull or something in the cube to add a socket or max sockets to an item (unique/set for the former and regular items for the latter).
Literally all this does is make it so you don’t have to leave an open character spot for rushing/using Larzuk. It’s just a time saver addition.
Um is high for a socket quest. It’s low level sets and uniques that usually benefit from sockets. End game socket slots are typically runewords.
@Onadroig, I was just using the bow runewords as an example to illustrate the ease of which certain runewords can obtain perfect bases compared to others.
Also, you can’t trade in offline mode. It’s an annoyance to grind to A5 just for a socket. It’s also figuratively impossible to find public games on Console. It also doesn’t help that the developers continue to shun any form of rushing.
