New Unique Facet: +1 Teleport: allows for greater gear diversity. Doesn’t give Tele for “nothing” (taking a socket is prettty meaningful). Doesn’t require enigma. Make it about the same drop rarity to facets as SOJ is to rings (or higher) but also high enough level to not cheese farm it from NM Andy.
Werewolf: Allow teleport while transformed. Allow certain non combat skills (from Druid And Barb) while transformed. (Spirits, pets, BO, BC, etc)
Allow indestructible weapons to drop Ethereal. Melee needs some help. Indestructible ethereals are quick ways to boost a players GG armory for different builds. An eth Grandfather would dope, an Eth Doombringer or even an Eth butchers pupil mid game can do work. Eth Tyreal’s? (Give it some Melee PVP value?) (also pairs well with the above mentioned Tele Facet)
Allow ethereal rerolls and crafting. Also melee focused. I don’t play with Grief if I can help it. My favorite finds are rare eth (or even Magic eth) with cruel mod. Crafting is another avenue that could be tapped to achieve this because let’s face it, good melee weapons are Power Ball ticket rare. This goes for Armor as well
Rework SOJ recipes. SOJs aren’t mass duped anymore, we don’t need the recipes that reduced their supply anymore. Maybe instead use rune combos similar to upgrading.
Make Horadric Imbue Malice a droppable item. I shouldn’t have to make a new character to do another imbue. Also adds another form of currency to the economy.
If the goal is diversity, I’d rather tack the +1 Teleport on a bunch of different items so that players have a variety of solutions to use it, but do need to choose one if they want Teleport, rather than have all non-sorceress builds use that new one-size-fits-all facet (or all use Enigma).
I am really not a fan of the Ethereal modifier. It’s an extra layer of lottery to an already lottery-heavy game. It should especially not be used as a balance fix, as (as I just said) it’s an extra layer of lottery, and will thus help very few players.
Please, no extra layers of lottery, there are already lots of items that we will never ever get.
Its ez lazy bandaid solution so probably all we can get.
Ofc the best solution is buffed ed/ar on weapons, buffed base dmg on excp/elite weapons, 10ar per 1dex and dr removal/decrease from monsters, but WASD bli$$ dont like real solutions.
I love it, and think it’s a beautiful mechanic. It’s supposed to be a temporary boost (with a visual marker) and is intended to break. What it does in reality (beyond the play through) is give a chase item to MF for.
during the playthrough I’m picking up every item, and using most because most are upgrades. I’ll use eth’s even if they’ll break.
End game, I pick it up, if it’s a weapon and not ethereal, I know it’s not going to be better than what I have so I don’t waste my time.
What I do NOT want is EVery item buffed in base damage (significantly at least). That’s power creep, so my suggestions are how to get current players to not have to win the lottery. More chances to roll. Using things you find in game to craft or reroll or more imbues.
I honestly think the affix pool is cluttered and needs a large reduction. A lot of the chance to cast and charges affixes don’t ever see play, they were built to mirror Diablo 1 play throughs, where a level 1 charged bolt could clear multiple levels.
It is, but it should exclude the auto-repair/replenish and indestructible modifiers. As is, it’s a lottery ticket for a more powerful version of an indestructible (or auto-repairing) item.
That’s just a different way of implementing power creep, though. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a good way of fixing melee at this point in the life of the game.
I agree there. Though how to remove clutter is tricky. You want to significantly reduce the amount of affixes for item types that have a ton of them without touching the item types that already don’t have many.
Oh I’m not sure if melee needs buffs in endgame (fully BiS geared characters), I’d say maybe those top p8 soloers builds need nerf instead.
But for leveling part I would definitely like some buffs. After normal difficulty I feel forced to switch to caster build. Difference in power is just too big. As Barb yelling at monsters becomes more effective than attacking them with weapons and shapeshifter Druid is an angry chihuahua from very 1 level.
Some builds will choose to use it some won’t. That’s what diversity is. I would put it into my Wolfhowl in about 2.5 seconds and swap my enigma for fort. (Or a GFace on other builds.) Opening up the armor slot which opens up the other slots in a way. Put it into storm shield, or CoA, or Shaftstop, or Black Hades (leaving two more sockets), Tyreal’s, Duriel’s shell (opens ring slot), any of the class sets that require the full set to be good.. so on and so on.
Many would love Runewords not being the only BiS.
There are more reasons to do it than not.
And to address the Enigma in helms and shields comment.. no we don’t need characters wearing three enigmas
Enigma concept was to open OP mobility for all chars, instead for irony nigma just limit builds and armor slot to nigma only.
There is dual OP Spirit so who cares if some1 would waste slot for multi nigmas and lack of bp’s/res… instead of pick better options like Forty/CoH/Viper/Griff/Spirit and etc.
I think earlier in this thread Spirit was specifically cited as being the source of some problems because it’s dual wieldable lol. Enigma is far better than spirit. So we could essentially just be looking at max vita singer barbs with dual spirit and/or dual/triple enigma. No thank you lol.
So look the only point of the facet Idea was to provide teleport in other methods that doesn’t mean 99/100 of my characters are only wearing enigma (the 1 leftover being a meme build sorceress). I like uniques I think they are interesting l also like non rune word options. So I was just stating ways to make them applicable outside of melee PVP
OP RWs are how we ended up with “Sh1tasic” in the first place, so piling on more OP RW isn’t likely to fix things, IMO.
Adding sockets is an interesting idea, but then means physical melee needs to now grind for things to put in the sockets, when they already have more stringent equipment requirements, so I’d rather balance be achieved via other methods, such as global (with some targeting) increase in weapon base damage, and/or adding some “integer” damage and AR per level to skills to give the current % multipliers more to scale off of.
I haven’t really paid attention to PVP in this game since 1.09, outside loosely following some of the GM melee groups, is there a PVP reason why wolf would be OP with tele? Making a shifter Druid the only class that can’t tele (without annoying/risky micro of shifting) seems overly punitive if so. Or is your opposition just a situation where it’s nice to have an option where Enigma isn’t BiS since you can’t tele while shifted?
I can see both sides of this one. Ethereal on some of the existing Indestructible Unique/Set items like Grandfather, Doombringer, IK Maul, etc. would be a nice boost, but as you say, it then increases the RNG layers in an annoying way. You finally find the item you want, but it’s not eth so it’s still meh. Reminds me a bit too much of D3 progression where you keep finding the same set and legendary items over and over but hoping the stats roll such that you are able to get all the desirable stats for your build, and then repeat with ancient/primal versions.
Maybe a compromise would be those Elite Unique and set items that roll Indestructible always roll ethereal? Like Ethereal Edge. Then we still have the current RNG of the currently variable rolls (where applicable), but don’t introduce anymore, while also achieving a decent buff for those items.
This is honestly a fair point, but on a change by change basis I’d often prefer no change from “ez lazy bandaid solutions” we get stuck with. See: Mosaic.
Is it power creep though? In a world where Mosaic Assassins, Nova Sorcs, Lightning Fury JavaZons, Hammerdins, etc. can all nearly instantly obliterate entire screens, is it really power creep in the overall macro level game to have physical melee being able to kill individual monsters faster in higher player count games? Most physical melee skills are already limited to only a few targets anyway, so even if you were 1 hit killing everything on P8, you’re still not clearing faster than some of the current S-Tier builds.
If you play only solo / SP then I can see how it would make certain builds faster/easier and you’d not have the obvious comparison by playing in groups seeing how much faster the S-tier builds roll, so I could see the case that it’s power-creep in a more micro-focused look.
I’m against power creep as well, but I think of it more as an overall look that takes into account all the classes/builds, and in this case there is room to boost physical melee without making them eclipse the current S-tier meta builds, IMO.
You mention not wanting players to have to win the lottery, but adding ethereal IS an extra “roll” that has to happen, adding to more RNG layers. Amazon Basin claims 5% chance for an item to spawn ethereal, so now instead of finding a Grandfather 1 time, you have to find it enough times to be ethereal too. I can kind of see this being a “progression” idea, like you get the Grandfather and you now have the option to get a bit stronger by finding an ethereal version (that hopefully has a good enough damage roll to still be a clear upgrade), but I personally don’t like the extra RNG layer nature here, and honestly you’d likely upgrade to a different item or runeword all together rather than try to wait for an eth Grandfather. Especially given how rare Grandfather or Doombringer are to find anyway. Just my opinion.
Definitely agree here. Some of those ctc even pre-1.10 were more reasonable, since monster HP/resistance wasn’t as large as now so you didn’t need synergies to make the spells damaging, so a lot of them would be more noticeable in terms of damage output.
The first item I read this I thought it was responding to tele while shifted, but I guess it’s the other skills like BO that were suggested that you take issue with?
Between Wolf and Lycanthropy I feel like wolves usually have enough HP to not really need BO. You can even take Oak Sage, but I think most choose HoW for the damage since wolf has enough. I’ve only done a few wolf play throughs though so far from an expert, but I would think you could still justify a non-CTA swap even if you were able to cast BO.
On my WW Hork barb I respec’d to lower HP from 4600 to around 3k and got about 1000 more sheet damage per hit out of it, and find 3K HP is plenty. I feel like wolves can hit high 2k to 3k pretty easily w/o BO, which should be enough, is that not the case?
I think often a distinction between melee and physical melee needs to be made. I personally don’t consider Mosaic melee since the melee attacks are really just building charges and unleashing spells, but some people do. Charged Strike is a super strong attack that is by definition melee, but again, it is strong due to the lightning damage that comes with the skill.
So I’d say melee can be very strong, but physical melee is generally a lot less smooth of a progression due to item dependence, and a lot less strong, even with BiS gear, with the one exception being Uber Trist where melee can be a vehicle for Crushing Blow applications…Crushing Blow doesn’t scale that great with higher player counts so in a lot of situations outside Uber Trist, the overwhelming higher elemental damage ends up being faster to kill anyway.
Yeah I mean even with 2x Grief, Fort, etc. physical melee runs out of steam in higher player games - honestly though, as you say, that might just be a “good” thing, and some of the builds that can solo clear entire screens in 1 attack on P8 should be nerfed instead. No one like their shiny builds taken away though and we have had them for 25 years at this point so sometimes it just seems simpler to try to boost up physical a little bit.
Agreed that leveling progression could be smoothed out for some of those physical builds, but now that we have 3 free respecs, and builds like throw barb and IAS changes for wolf have been enabled, it’s better than it was. 2H damage from the get go makes shifter wolf pretty fun to play - no masteries like Barb means you can easily swap between polearms, axes and maces, and there’s some decent progression options. I have yet to do a throw-barb playthrough but it’s on my list and apparently with gambling/shopping/imuing javs/harpoons can be pretty smooth.
thx to 1.10 m3chanics