This would be awesome. It’s the first really good idea for the continued viability of this game. It’s also the first really cool league mechanic.
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If it’s incorporated in all game modes, then does it not lose that aspect of encouragement you’re pointing out?
I wish people would focus less on screaming every Season that its theme needs to be made permanent and more on coming with suggestions for Seasonal themes that provide the same kind of potential.
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Yes, it will eventually lose. When all the players exhaust all the possibilities of different item interactions for all builds in all classes and LoD variants.
Bliz will never change all the builds-sets-supporting items in any reasonable time frame, if ever, to make up for the added benefit of the 4th cube slot.
It’s just offers so much to the game and build variations it is worth keeping.
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What is interesting about this discussion is that most are in favor of making it permanent since you can’t go beyond 150 and it allows a lot of useless builds become relevant again for T16 and speed GRs which is where most people spend their time instead of pushing.
Then there are the spreadsheet maniacs who rarely play the game and don’t understand the reality of actual game mechanics who insist on a mythical unicorn called “game balance”.
The power creep argument was valid when they had an army of developers and you wanted creative solutions to game issues rather than just lazy increase of numbers.
It is 2021 and there is only a skeleton crew left working on D3. We need value for the buck solutions like 4th cube slot. Good luck with that balance thing…
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I’m one of those who threw his hat in the ring for a permanent extension of this seasonal effect, however, I also agree with others who have concerns about how it will affect game balance. When we were given the LoN buff for free, ages ago and lifetimes away, people went nuts over it. The support for that was almost universal, if I remember correctly. Now…Blizzard didn’t give that to us permanently; instead, they gave us a gem to achieve a similar effect.
Legacy of Dreams fills a hole not covered by Legacy of Nightmares. It gives us early-game options, for when we don’t yet have access to Ancient Legendary items, and it makes us power up a gem, which gives us a sense of progression and achievement. It also takes up a gem slot in trade for two ring slots. That’s not an outright imbalance of power: It’s a tradeoff.
I feel like a similar solution could be reached here. There is no doubt that there are some builds which would benefit more from a fourth slot than others if that slot is just arbitrarily given to us. But…what about if there was a cost associated with it? What would that cost be? How would it be balanced across multiple builds per class?
Asking for a season buff to just arbitrarily remain permanent, for both season and nonseason…probably isn’t going to happen. If they think it will cost us something in return…maybe that will get them thinking.
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“Most” is an accurate qualifier. My count is 15 for, 8 against. It is not lopsided. Excluding you or maybe someone I missed, no one has discussed their support for the 4th cube slot due to the max GR being 150.
Moreover, the opinions of 20-some people are not necessarily representative of the majority viewpoint of either the forum or players as a whole. On these forums alone, roughly 40,00 unique accounts have visited.
According to Blizzard’s metrics, the top thread of all time with 735 likes is this one:
Does it make sense to you to have a seasonal theme with 9 Kanai cube slots? Does it make sense to have this theme become permanent?
Lets follow up on the high GR tier argument. We know that groups clear high GRs more easily than solo players. The addition of the fourth cube slot will further trivialize groups to clear GR 150 in non-seasons by making DPS as well as zDPS builds even stronger.
Yes. Does a 4th cube slot preferentially strengthen weak builds? If not, the top builds will still be proportionally stronger. Currently monks and wizarss are the classes with the weakest top build in non-seasons. Does adding a 4th cube slot now make monk or wizards more competitive option versus other classes?
Still people will gravitate towards the top builds, leading to little changes in the builds that are selected for speed runs and T16.
If you were to survey a representative population of D3 players with the question: Would you prefer better game balance between and within classes or a 4th cube slot, I venture to guess that the overwhelming majority would support better game balance.
I prefer seeing the data to draw conclusions. This thread is missing a key thing. What are the new builds that have now been created to increase build diversity. To my knowledge, the 4th cube slots has modified a build’s power but has not opened up new play styles as far as I can tell, with the exception potentially of classes where supporting legendaries give more DPS and alternate gearing choices (e.g. necromancer).
Do you honestly think that balance will improve with the addition of a 4th cube slot? Perfect balance is impossible. Getting better balance is doable. The fourth slot likely increases imbalance.
P.S. Name calling does not strengthen your case. Some of us have played the game thousands of hours and use data to inform our opinions. Claiming that another rarely plays the game (or as some other have done with comparing paragon levels) does not make a view more or less valid/invalid. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but facts are objective. Also, inspection of my profile will highlight the irony of your view.
https://diablo3.blizzard.com/en-us/profile/MicroRNA-1507/career
The power creep argument is still valid. Hypothetically speaking, doubling all DPS by 2 fold will make it easier for weaker builds to run T16 but at the same time make stronger builds also proportionally stronger.
if our devs double the values on all items everything is “viable” for t16… till players scream for more torments and realize why movementspeed is important… that said what is “viable” anyways?
that decision is a nobrainer…
You can make that case for a lot of the themes. Need to realize they’re just themes. Think of other interesting stuff they can do; don’t get hooked on clamoring for every theme to be made permanent.
1 extra slot suddenly allows a useless build to become capable of blitzing T16 and speed running GRs? Color me skeptical.
Oh, it’s still valid and still stupid.
Balance in any real sense will never happen… but that doesn’t have much to do with a Seasonal theme being a Seasonal theme and nothing more.
Uh huh. And when was the last time you saw anyone who had the slightest clue what they were doing using the ring set?
It’s been a while since I saw the set in use, but I can say that for more than just LoN. To be fair, the only time I would use it is if I simply didn’t need the extra ring slots. None of the builds I currently use are in that position.
… Which is never, because rings are powerful slots.
While it is possible that I will not change my mind about LoN, I will not misrepresent my opinion as fact. I prefer LoD. Most people I talk to also prefer it. I’m not going to use words like “optimal”, “best”, “worst”, etc, because it’s not possible to conclusively prove it in every possible situation.
I feel that way about a lot of things in the game. While I don’t use them (potentially never will), that doesn’t automatically make them useless.
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Well, yeah, it kind of is possible. The math has been done. People prefer LoD because it’s better.
I will accept it as a fact when a complete comparison of every item, skill, rune, build, and team composition has been thoroughly tested through every rift map, at every GR, with every enemy type, and with every pylon type, with every Rift Guardian, and at every stage of character leveling from 1-70, including the gear-gathering process.
…how many millions of combinations is that? That’s going to take some time.
Which is why I don’t call it a fact. I call it an opinion which is very frequently shared between a lot of players…even myself. Still not a fact until every condition has been tested. I’m sorry, but I’m not budging on this.
Also…we’re kind of off-topic now. This specific argument could be taken into a new thread.
Except it is not “a million of combinations”. Simply stated:
- Utilization of a level 99 LoD gem permits 2 open ring slots and 2 other legendary gems
- LoN use allow 3 legendary gems but locks in both rings
The only thing to access is the relative worth of the “third” legendary gem versus flexibility in ring choice.
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The only point I want to make is that I’m leaving my mind open to the possibility that there might be a combination which benefits from one more than the other. No amount of “but it’s better!” is going to change that position. I’m sorry that others are having such a hard time accepting that. If I had that attitude, I would never try anything new.
“Best” does not exist to me until I have enough irrefutable evidence to remove all doubt. All the arguing in the world will not change that position. If you disagree, then that’s perfectly fine as well.
I remember having this argument in another game, actually. They all showed me all kinds of napkin math “proving” how terrible my strategy was. Fast-forward to today and have a look at the leaderboard. I’m a little shy of 20,000 IP. The second place player? 575. One of those numbers is a little higher than the other.
Turns out that in-game experience is sometimes a little different than a few calculations. Raw numbers might say Option A is stronger, but Option B might win out anyway.
If I allowed myself to believe that it is impossible to find a combination somebody missed, that would never have happened. All I’m saying is that maybe we should be a little more careful about automatically rejecting all possibilities.
I know that I won’t change your minds -either of you- but that’s fine with me. I’ve made my position known. Not much else to say about it.
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Pretty much this open an amazing amount of viable builds
Some say this will make builds mega-powerful.
There are already builds that are easily doing 140+ Chantodos/Vyrs was nerfed for doing much the same.
So if someone wants to throw the balance argument… it’s a long way away yet.
I am glad they have stopped nerfing - for now.
The overpowered aspects come more into to play with seasonal player’s non-season characters that have amassed 5K-11K paragons through playing over ten seasons or more. In normal season mode, most full-time clan players who are not botting get around 3500-4000 paragons max and solo players 1500-3000max. Part-time players much less.
Overpowered? Maybe on some builds but there are builds that are underpowered and that is more of the problem in my opinion,
The idea is good. It adds another dimension to the game.
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It’s not that simple. Not every class has access to alternative offensive jewelry. To them, the loss of a legendary gem is a bigger deal. People seem to forget that more than a few of the offensive jewelry options are SET items and cannot be combined with LoD. For example, Saders and DH have no offensive jewelry of any kind or spare traits (via hellfire necklace) that even come close to compensating for the loss of a legendary gem. IF there was a glut of offensive jewelry from which to choose, this would be an open-and-shut debate: LoD hands down. But that’s not what the game has. The only REAL winner in the jewelry contest is Necro, with multiple major buffs from their rings/amulets and spares from which to choose as well.
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We are comparing the relative power of LoD versus LoN builds.
Nor can the LoN rings be combined with ANY other set bonus. You do know that to get the LoN bonus from the ring set that it has to be your only set bonus.
See:
https://us.diablo3.com/en-us/item/litany-of-the-undaunted-Unique_Ring_015_x1
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Legacy of Nightmares
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The Wailing Host
(2) Set:
While this is your only Item Set bonus every Ancient item you have equipped increases your damage dealt by 750% and reduces your damage taken by 4%.
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[/eyeroll]
Really? Really? You want to go down the “No duh?” hole?
Of course you can’t use LoN with other jewelry sets. But it doesn’t matter because LoN can’t be combined with any other jewelry sets regardless. It is mechanically impossible. LoN already takes up both rings, and there are no ‘just the amulet’ sets. So, why don’t you go prattle about irrelevant minutiae some place else.
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