Using my same structure as A D4 Blog Line-by-Line Evaluation, here is my feedback:
: Continuing with more frequent communication. Ultimately the game itself when it’s released is what matters, so all these s and 
s are not endorsements or condemnations of the product, but I’m marking this as a positive sign for now.
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First, item affixes should be a meaningful part of character power.
This is fine. It’s nothing groundbreaking, and almost shouldn’t even need to be said. They were a meaningful part of power in D2. They were the defining part in D3. I’m good with them playing a meaningful role as long as they aren’t the defining component of all characters.
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Second, [items] should create interesting choices when deciding which items to equip.
This is actually a good value, but until we see what that really means in practice, I can’t give this .
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We’re increasing the total number of affixes on items, including Magic (Blue), Rare (Yellow), and Legendary (Orange). This should raise the overall importance of non-Legendary affixes on your character’s overall level of power.
This is good generally, although I think Magic (Blue) items should stick with 1-2 affixes so that the mix-and-match naming structure of D1, D2 and D3 can be carried forward (e.g. “Shimmering Small Charm of Vita”).
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We are also introducing three new stats:
- Angelic Power , which increases the duration of all beneficial effects (like self-buffs or healing)
- Demonic Power , which increases the duration of all negative effects (like debuffs or damage over time)
- Ancestral Power , which increases the chance of on-hit effects (aka increased proc chance)
I’m cautiously curious on this. On the one hand, I wonder if the components (e.g. buff durations, healing, debuff durations) should be separate affixes or have two versions - separate affixes with higher values and affixes that group them together like the “Powers” described above that have lower values. I am also cautiously curious about what this means in terms of the story that D4 is telling.
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In addition to providing the above-stated benefit, we want these new stats to also act as pre-requisites for empowering certain other affixes.
I’m again cautiously curious here. Until we see more, it’s not clear if this will actually help or harm character customization.
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Crushing Blow
This note is more for others who have reacted to this. Until we actually know what effect this term would have in D4, there’s no real sense reacting to this being mentioned.
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Legendary powers should no longer completely dwarf the strength of your affixes, and the affixes themselves provide more interesting choices because their strength depends on how much of the relevant Powers you’ve accumulated on the rest of your gear.
Again I think whether or not they “provide more interesting choices” may be their aim, but until we see implementation, it’s not clear if it actually fulfills that goal.
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Based on your feedback, we’ve changed Attack to only be found on weapons, Defense to being only on armor, and we’ve removed both Attack and Defense from jewelry entirely.
This is good. This was a very loud and clear ask from what we saw in the initial demo and communications.
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Solely picking your items based on Attack and Defense will almost never be the optimal way to play
This is also good, as it suggests we are moving toward a more nuanced itemization that cares more about your specific skill choices and goals than just “increase main stat / DPS.”
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items are just one part of a character’s overall power
This is around the fourth time they’ve said something like this. Even though I still think this should be a given, we’ll pretend that several s add up to one .
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Our goal is to spread out power across different sources, including skill ranks, your character’s level, talent trees, items, and the endgame character progression system
Now we’re back to though because you don’t get unlimited s for rearticulating the same point repeatedly.
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We are going to remove Ancient Legendaries from the game in their current form entirely.
Again, this was loud and clear feedback, and they’ve listened.
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[The new consumable being planned] would have one random Legendary affix on it, drops only in the late endgame, and can be used to apply that affix to any non-Legendary item.
I am giving this a because they aren’t clear yet if Legendary items will function more like D2 (fixed affixes) or D3 (random affixes). If it’s the latter, this is still just power creep, like Ancients. If it’s the former (like D2), then a rare won’t always be superior, but there will be several cases where it could be, which is the ideal. I.e. if rares and legendaries share the same random affix pool and number of random affixes, it will always be superior in the endgame to have gear that is all rares with the legendary powers you want over legendaries that have their powers restricted to specific slots (e.g. torso). I strongly believe legendaries should not be random affix sticks and that there should be cases where the unique combination of affixes on legendaries should be desirable in some cases (but not strictly superior in all cases).
: 6
: 0
: 8
Outlook: “I shall take your position into consideration.” There’s still a lot here that is just too early to evaluate. That said, there are some signs of improvement on areas that were plainly lacking before, so that’s good. From my last review, most of the large issues went beyond itemization, so it will be interesting in the next blog if those are addressed.
