Hi there.
Legendary powers were introduced in D3/RoS.
They brought a lot of espectacularity but also made the whole character building revolve exclusively around them, making the magic and rare items absolutely trash. Only worth picking if you are in need of salvage materials otherwise just skip them.
This added to the fact that finding legendaries was far more common than the original iterations, rendering them quite common, and thus not exactly legendary.
My concern is that D4 will revolve exclusively around them again, even with the consumable that can add a legendary power to a rare item. They will be a necessity again. Which is bad in my opinion.
How can we solve the necessity of legendary powers in every gear slot?
I think it is good to find a legendary, a feat, and legendary powers are fantastic, but the necessity of having them everywhere… isn’t.
I also think that if affixes on items were more important than the legendary power itself, one should at least think twice before going legendary powers on every slot at any cost.
Another solution that comes to my mind is moving them to the talent tree / character development. I’m talking mostly about legendary powers that modify skills.
I.E. D3 - Sacred Harness
Judgement gains the debilitate rune and it is cast at the landing location of your falling sword.
If this was built in the talent tree… I think it would make more sense, you get to choose between various options of course, everyone past an exp lvl will have it too, that or another choice comparable in terms of power. (so the necessity is solved)
So if you invest at least 1 skill point in Falling sword, you get to unlock the branch of the talent tree with Falling Sword related talents, being the effect of the Sacred Harness a talent hanging from that branch. Or maybe it requires at least 5 points in Falling Sword.
So, in this particular D3 hammerdin scenario, the legendary powers of the following items would be talent points specced in talents affecting blessed hammer and falling sword mostly:
- Johanna’s Argument -> Blessed hammer talent
- Guard of Johanna -> Blessed hammer talent
- Gabriel’s Vambraces -> Blessed hammer talent
- Hammer Jammers -> Blessed hammer talent
- Sacred Harness -> Falling sword talent
- Faithful memory -> Falling sword talent
- Seeker of the light 2pc -> Blessed hammer talent
- Seeker of the light 4pc -> Falling sword talent
Would that make sense to you? That items only empower your character attack/defense/procs/etc and that those legendary powers doesn’t belong exactly in gear but mostly in the character development sheet (which doesn’t exist in D3 ofc) ?
In this case the consumable can be directly scrapped as this kind of “legendary powers” would be meaningful talent choices in the character build. This goes along well with the philosophy of diverting power from gear, that not only the items make your character build.
TL;DR: Shift the legendary affixes or powers that make builds in D3 to the talent trees. Investing enough in a skill unlocks talents for it with synergies with others which might opt to spend in too or not. Items should focus on attack/defense/procs chance only and be flexible to not determine a build entirely. We would be wanting a set of affixes in our gear, magic, rare or legendary while mantaining the build for the gameplay choices in the talent tree.