I would like to propose an idea for a new unique small charm named “Sightless Eye” (inspired by Akara) and centered around improving viability of Charged & CtC Items. With required level of 35, this charm starts to drop in Nightmare difficulty. As with all unique charms, characters may possess only one charm in their inventory.
Charm rarity is similar to Gheed’s Fortune with a small chance to drop from higher orders of corrupt rogues, such as Black Rogues in the Barracks and Outer Cloister in Act I and Flesh Hunters in Ruined Temple, Disused Fane and Forgotten Reliquary in Act III. Drop chance improves for corrupt rogue superuniques Blood Raven and Battlemaid Sarina.
Few examples of improving Charged Items is you could pair with Demon Limb for boosting level of Enchant, Corpsemourn for boosting CE, Sureshrill Frost for FO, Gavel Of Pain for recharging Amp, and Spellsteel for recharging Teleport. Also, this improves CtC items as well, such as boosting level and proc % of Amp on Cranium Basher, Static on Schaefer’s Hammer, Volcano on Pompeii’s Wrath and so forth. This would be a huge boon to unique items.
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Sightless Eye
Unique Small Charm
Required Level: 35
+3-5 To Charged Skill Levels
+3-5 To Chance to Cast Skill Levels
+15-30% To Charged Skill Damage
+15-30% To Chance to Cast Skill Damage
Replenishes 1 Charge Every 30 Seconds To All Charged Skills
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As the blue Mephisto Soulstone is used as the model for Annihilus, the developers could use the red Diablo Soulstone (pictured below) as the model for Sightless Eye, which currently exists in the game files…
Very good design (I’m not going to debate the actual values).
The main change I’d make is make it “Multiplies Chance to Cast By 1.5”. The point being that very low chance to cast (below 5%) is meant to be extremely low, so a flat 10% (or any other value) increase would make them trigger way too often.
I did think about that, but the main problem making it a multiplier is that it can balloon very quickly, which I wanted to avoid. For example, BotD has 50% CtC Level 20 Poison Nova Upon Kill. This charm would increase that to a whooping 75%. Too much.
As to your point, I could change the charm to only increase by +5%, small but noticeable? This will keep low chances relatively low while improving the viability of CtC items overall.
The main issue is that the lowest values are 2%. You are more than tripling the chances of the effect happening. There’s not really a good value, unless you put it at “+10% chance, cannot go over doubling base chance”.
If CtC is at 2% and we add a variable +3-5%, it would be hard to notice a difference at 5-7%. That should alleviate the concern of going too high. I’ll update OP with “Increases All Chance To Cast Skills By +3-5%.”
I really REALLY like this, and appreciate that you’re shedding light on this issue.
I bring it up whenever it’s relevant, that the introduction of skill synergies, and bloating of monster HP completely left item based spell effects in the dust, rendering them little more than visual effects.
So many big changes were made to the game, and these item spelleffects were never adjusted to follow suit,
Make CTC and charge items great again.
My only concern is that +3-5 to CTC and charge skills isn’t enough to make any real difference…at least not for the spelleffects that are meant to deal damage.
Maybe a bonus like “+X to procced/charged skills’ synergies” would save them? Maybe even for oskills as well (which are also divided into either one point wonders or unsynergized crap)?
For obvious reasons it should be limited for classes which have that skill available natively, like oskills are.
That’s a good point. We could improve viability of spell damage from both Charged Skills and CtC Skills by adding bonus damage (similar to Death’s Fathom) as shown below?
Sightless Eye
Unique Small Charm
Required Level: 35
+3-5 To Charged Skill Levels
+3-5 To Chance to Cast Skill Levels
+15-30% To Charged Skill Damage
+15-30% To Chance to Cast Skill Damage
Replenishes 1 Charge Every 30 Seconds To All Charged Skills
going to be honest of all the suggestions on these forums, I think this is a well thought out one that certainly has legitimate uses for players and would imo, open up many more items to be more useful to the player.
I have thought for a while, giving Enigma Charges instead of +skill would be better. I thought having X charges and X recharge time, would be a good alternative to how OP Enigma is.
Charm has small chance to drop from higher orders of corrupt rogues, such as Black Rogues in Barracks and Outer Cloister in Act I and Flesh Hunters in Ruined Temple, Disused Fane and Forgotten Reliquary in Act III. Drop chance improves from corrupt rogue superuniques such as Blood Raven and Battlemaid Sarina. This gives us a reason to farm these two superuniques.
This fits really well with the lore, as they are former sisters of the sightless eye.
Gives a reason to visit these areas too. Sure they’re level 85 areas, but you often get ambushed at the entrances, making them higher risk, and not really worth it considering our other options
Still pitiful. Synergies easily add hundreds of percent of damage. Even a pitiful +5% from 2 skills is 5% × 20 (max level) × 2 (number of synergies) = 200% more damage. And most skills have either higher synergy bonuses or more synergies, or even both.
And don’t think about boosting the procced skill damage by so much.
This would mean a MASSIVE power creep on certain items. Level 30 charged Hydra from Hellfire Torch, with unobtainable level 30 synergies? Fully synergized Level 20 Chain Lightning on Lightsabre - imagine that on a Holy Shock Zealot with max attack speed and Conviction. Crescent Moon = hybrid druid summoner (Spirit Wolves) without spending a single point in summons…
Thanks, I wanted new charm to fit within the lore while adding incentive to farm relatively uncommon areas, especially Ruined Temple, Disused Fane and Forgotten Reliquary.
True. The best course is to keep change straightforward and disregard synergy bonuses entirely. A flat bonus should work to improve items without being gamebreaking.
Matron’s Den too? This level is also infested with Corrupt Rogues…
(I guess that if so, we’d need another two charms or other reason to visit Forgotten Sands and Furnace of Pain…)
And what about Act V guest Rogues?
Where do the guest Rogues spawn in Act V? As there are 5 variants: Dark Hunter, Vile Hunter, Dark Stalker, Black Rogue and Flesh Hunter, I only wanted charm to drop from the high order of Black Rogue and Flesh Hunter variants. If Black Rogues and Flesh Hunters can spawn in Act V, they should be included.
I also wanted to avoid Matron’s Den and the Pandemonium Event as drop locations.
What do you think about adding Guest Monsters of Corrupt Rogues, Corrupt Rogue Archers and Corrupt Rogue Spearwoman in Act V to the list. Then this charm could be found in Act 1, 3, and 5.
Agreed, I’ve said this before, but if Engima were changed to charges of teleport per skill level it would be balanced. Flawed gems and ral rune, for the cube recipe, would be made more valuable.
Engima is overpowered because of the teleport skill that it grants, it’s a good addition to the game, makes it more fun, but it’s overpowered. What’s open for debate is how many charges of teleport that Engima ought to have, if it were a higher number say 100, 200, or 300 charges of teleport than the repair or cube recipe wouldn’t be used as often. Having to repair Engima’s teleport charges would also make gold more valuable.
