rare and magic items can drop without sockets
why would you even want to have a single affix on one of these items if only sockets make them viable?
âŚRunewords, gems (if theyâre on Diablo 4), and potentially any other item that can be socketed in items. And if an item drops without a socket, thatâs not really a problem. Itâs not like youâre supposed to find that perfect item on the first drop.
thatâs not the point
the point is that every single magic and rare item that isnât 2/5 sockets wouldnât be a BiS item and thatâs simply stupid
Eh, weâll just agree to disagree, because I donât think thatâs stupid since itâll give runewords and sockets purpose, while also bridging the gap.
4 Likes
the thing is that with that band aid fix you are creating a new balance problem that automatically makes only 1 single roll for a rare or magic item potentially viable which is with the max amount of sockets and nothing else, hence making 99% of dropped rare and magic items useless
1 Like
I like the paragon system in concept, but only if it is finite and not infinite. If it is infinite you are a hamster on a wheel (treadmill). You want to have an end goal to chase for (an achievement to strive for), if it is infinite you will never be done because there is always the next level. I hope that you cannot unlock every single node on every board. There need to be choices to make in this system so you cannot get everything.
I feel that the itemization needs some work. I would like it if D4 could have the D2 itemization system because I feel that D2:s itemization is more interesting than the current D4 Itemization. Everything with D2 Itemization is so good because every rarity has its own use case and the stats harmonize with each other so well.
White/Grey items - Made to make runewords - class items have 1 - 3(I believe it is 3) class-specific affixes
Blue Items - High rolls - 2 affixes max - 1 prefix and 1 suffix
Yellow Items - Medium rolls - 6 affixes max - 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes
Unique items - Have unique fixed affixes - the only change is the ranges on the stats (affixes)
With the current D4 Itemization, I feel that the damage numbers are too big, I like to see damage ranges, but the number is too big.
So if an LVL 1 weapon has a 3 - 15 damage range and a lvl 44 has a 2352 - 3528 damage range, it will lead to obsoleting the previous level weapons. I think it is better to go with lower numbers to make the gap lower. If a level 20 weapon has 6 affixes that benefit you very well and then you found an LVL 36 weapon and its affixes are not as good but the damage range is like + 1000 to your damage you need to change the weapon because the damage number is so much bigger than yours.
You showed a rare item (with only 4 affixes!) that just straight up gets upgraded into a legendary item. If rare items are only used for being a vessel for legendary items then I think it is a mistake, because that will lead to making rare items to be completely obsolete. So I hope the essences can only be used for legendary items if they stay in the game.
Something that I would like to see is a monster-level area, the same as D2 and not that monsters scale with you.
9 Likes
Which is a lesser evil in comparison to buffing magic and rare items even further so that they equal legendary and unique items without sockets, which would mean that they donât get as much benefits from sockets as that would make them better than legendary items.
So as a result we wonât see much that would be done with sockets, because if too much is done with sockets it would cause magic, rare, and legendary items to gain a bigger bonus than most unique items, since they wonât be able to benefit much from sockets (if they donât have them that is).
I kinda like being able to take a rare and side-grade it into a legendary. Offering multiple different usages for rares is not bad.
But yeah, it must be balanced one way or the other, so neither the original Legendaries, nor the crafted Legendaries, are better than actual Rares (on average of course).
The Rare side-grade into legendary could just remove 2 of the rare affixes (or remove 1, and have another crafting recipe that can add 1 affix to a rare item; so the total difference remains at 2 affixes).
Could also be an option. Both Rare side-grading and white upgrading could be a thing. Magic too.
Hence why sockets should never be part of the affix system, and something you craft unto items 
I agree they can help somewhat. But not on their own. Rares still need more affixes than legendaries too.
Like:
Magic and Rare items: max 4 sockets.
Legendaries: max 2-3 sockets (depending on item slot)
Uniques: max 1-2 sockets
Yes, extremely important tidbit we need to know about the system.
Endless is horrible.
Make sockets something you craft to items. All socket problems solved. Forever after.
2 Likes
I like your idea. It looks like what last epoch did in their version 0.84 where you can upgrade a unique item to legendary one : https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/legendary-items-and-eternity-cache/45738
That would give too much importance to the item with sockets. it would reproduce the same problem as D3âŚ
you dont have to buff them and you dont need any evil
you simply need to reduce the amount of normal affixes on legendary items
I have a few thoughts on the Paragon Board, and it also leaves me with a few questions.
Question 1: The Paragon Board unlocks at Level 50, so is Level 50 the new Maximum Level? That would mean that the Paragon Board also unlocks first at Max Level.
Question 2: Is if the Paragon Board intended to be a replacement for the Passive Skill System?
=============================================
My overall impressions of the Paragon Board is that I do not like it, primarily due it being (unnecessarily) bloated with Normal / Common Tiles.
You gave the example of a +10 Strength Common Tile in the Blog, and I assume there will be many of these on a single board (or a single Barbarian-specific board, and +10 INT for Sorcerers on their boards, etc) and probably also Common Tiles like +x to Life, +x to Armor, 1% increased Attack Speed, etc, am I right with that assumption?
If so, it would imo just inflate the various boards with a ton of these minor upgrades. I donât know if it is just me, but to me this seems too much and it also seems unnecessary.
Why not just lump all of the Common Tiles that have the same effect together into one single âTileâ in which you can spend several Points into, up to a maximum of e.g. 10 Points, instead of 10 different single Tiles which all do the same, but are spread out all over the board?
This would be so much more overseeable.
Rare Tiles could be unlocked e.g. once you have spend a total of xx Points into the board, and Legendary Tiles could cost several Points at once to unlock, maybe also with the requirement of having spend X points into a board before you can unlock them.
But please do not bloat the board (or the boards) with a ton of minor individual Common Tiles in which you can just spend one single point into each of them.
The same may also apply to Magic Tiles.
=============================================
To illustrate, this is what I mean when I suggest to lump all Common Tiles together into a single one in which you can spend up to x Points into and let (Rare and) Legendary Tiles be unlocked by spending several Points into them at once:
https://imgur.com/p4et6JS
https://imgur.com/4ukD7Kn
Or eventually something like this, which is more reminiscent of a Passive Skill Tree:
https://imgur.com/Ts89IfP
https://imgur.com/00SSez2
Now, I am not saying that you should do it like this or implement the specific Affixes or Passive Skills from this illustration. I understand and respect that it is your game and that you want to bring your vision into reality.
The images I shared here are just to illustrate how a Paragon Board or Passive Skill System could look / could work without filling it with a bunch of single, individual Common Tiles that all do the same and inflate the board.
I understand that the idea of sockets in the Paragon Board System is appealing, but that also comes with the side effect of having a lot of these individual Common Tiles on the board, which for reason explained above makes it much less overseeable and unnecessarily complex, and for me personally less appealing.
EDIT
To end with some positive stuff: What I like from the update are the Elemental Enchantments for Weapons, the Energy Shield Overlay on the Health Orb when the Druid activates his Defensive Skill, the Raven Flock skill animations and some other skills which look really cool.
1 Like
Hmm, so the Paragon board expands forever or is there some form of limit on it?
Will it be linked to a specific character or will progress be attached to your account like Paragon levels are in D3?
Agreed. My main point is that magic and rares should be set up, so that they gain the most bonus from sockets.
The idea is that sockets would be important for magic and rare items, that isnât repeating the same problem for Diablo 3.
Then that makes legendary items far worse than uniques. At least with how it is now (and even last yearâs update), legendary items were close to unique items with some freedom.
1 Like
unique items also still require a huge overhaul which was also discussed in the previous months
What you can do with paragon is the following:
- Make the paragon boards AI-generated per account or randomly chosen from a set of say 10k boards per class: This guarantees each player will have their own unique paragon-boards to choose from, connect and go through
- Set a cap to say 10 boards per character, but make these endless to hunt: This guarantees the D3 paragon lovers can always aim to improve their character, but they wonât have more boards than the casuals, just better adapted boards
- Obviously many other more minor mechanics like connecting tiles/nodes or sacrificing the magic/rare/legendary tiles for other benefits
Overall i liked the update, VFX are amazeing, love what you did whit the dmg areas. And i think i saw a lady Druid? Boy she THICK! Love it. But for the paragon⌠Get that over complicated nonsense out of my face. Pls keep it simple. Itemization is eeeeeehhh⌠ok i guess. +to skills comeing back is great. But that paragon⌠thatâs just awful.
Well until that happens (which I doubt as nothing was even hinted at it, and I donât find it appealing), I rather have sockets help magic and rares instead of having to reduce legendaries affixes just to bring them down closer to magic and rare items which in turn would effectively make most of them useless in comparison to unique items.
this goes back to the âbuff everything, nerf nothingâ-philosophy
ofcourse you could also simply increase the amount or power of affixes on magic and rare items
it doesnât really matter, its about a balance between all the different item affixes and considering legendary affixes wield the power of about 3 normal affixes, itâs pretty easy to do the math here
you are simply stuck to an idea that would create even more problems to deal with
Just like my fellow forum members, I have concerns on several points :
- rares are rolled back to just legendaries without a legendary power, negating last decemberâs blog that aimed to make them useful.
- huge damage numbers again, why do you keep pushing those⌠?
- the glyphs look like D3âs legendary gemsâŚ
- and the return of the dreaded DPS stat, which is also very ugly UI-wise. Hope itâs just name changing and not a deeper regressionâŚ
Fortunately, most of these new changes feel great !
- the paragon board is very significant indeed, I especially like the gate system. Complex but looks like fun !
- the return of +skills of course ! Thanks a lot for that !
- the essence system is very good, will help reducing RNG and legendary droping too often.
- Max level 50⌠doesnât change much but who can say no to 10 more levels ?
A bit disappointed not to get an peek of how the skill tree looks like now but itâs a nice update overall.
Just donât forget some of your design goals pleaseâŚ
3 Likes
Not really. My philosophy is pretty much give each rarity (except common items) a chance to be viable in end game by some means.
For Unique items, itâd be their combination of unique affixes and special ability.
For Legendary items, itâd be their legendary affix and non legendary affixes
For Rare items, itâd be their large number of affixes + sockets.
For Magic items, itâd be their large affix rolls + sockets.
Thatâs not saying that a magic axe is going to be as strong as a legendary axe or unique axe. But if it drops with the right rolls, and sockets, then it has the chance to be just as useful as the legendary and unique axe.
2 Likes