Feed back to Diablo IV itemization

[SaFiO-2440]

Greetings Everyone,

I do want to start by thanking the development team for keeping us on loop and wanting us ‘‘fans’’ to be a part of the development of the game. That said I will start with what I think about the early itemization for the game.

1- Crit Change/damage: Having crit chance and crit hit damage create a huge power gap with the other affixes, eg: In Diablo 3 if an amulet or rings don’t have Crit hc/hc for most DPS it would be not good, I haven’t had a different color gem in my weapons from the release of D3. The more you stack it the better.
Suggestions for it: I wouldn’t suggest removing as in D2, but it is possible to:

• Set a maximum for them, and a maximum that lets other affixes compete with them mathematically like let’s say 10-15 Crit hit chance and a maximum of 100% Crit Hit damage.
• Make them only mythic item affixes, as you can only equip one of those, this will make getting a mythic item makes you relatively stronger, thus holding up to the ‘‘Mythic item’’.

2- Ancestral, Angelic and Demonic Powers: I think this a very good addition to the game which will give more depth and variety to the Game-play, I would suggest adding:

• Special buff for stacking one of the powers, let’s say the maximum power you would get from all sources is 120, hybrid builds will have 40 of each or 80 of one and 40 of another. However getting only of these power and stacking to reach 120 would give you a buff different from what having it does, eg:

• Ancestral power gives more proc on hit chance, at 120 Ancestral power you get +20% magic find buff.

• Angelic power gives postive buffs, at 120 Angelic powers you get a 5% increased damage.
  -Demonic power gives negative buffs, at 120 Demonic power you get +20 to all resistances.

• Having hybrid builds of Powers won’t necessarily be less strong as it would be a more flexible build.

3- Gems: I know you haven’t shared any information about this feature, but being a Diablo game am just gonna assume it’s in the game. I think the sound of a Gem dropping in D2 was one of the most stratifying that could happen while playing, said that i think Gems dropped very often in D3, probably lowering the drop chance for them a bit would feel more rewarding. Again we haven’t seen any of it yet but I would like to suggest the following:

Bring back the elements: different elements on gems brings more diversity on Game-play, eg:
- Sapphire: (Wep) +XX% to Chill target and adds X-X cold damage to your attacks/ (Helm) +% Resources Regen/ (Armor) +XX cold resistance/ (Misc) +X% Cold damage.
note: Chilled targets take more damage.
- Topaz: (Wep) +X% Stun chance and adds 1-XX Lightning damage to your attacks/ (Helm) +XX Angelic Power/(Armor) +XX Lightning resistance/ (Misc) +X% Lightning damage.
- Ruby: (Wep) +% chance on kill to burn One close target and adds X-XX Fire damage/(Helm) +XX Demonic Power/(Armor) +XX Fire resistance/ (Misc) +X% Fire damage.
- Amethyst: (Wep) +X% chance on hit to apply a debuff on target for +X% damage taken, stackable 5 times/ (Helm) +% Health/ (Armor) +XX Defense/ (Misc) +% Physical damage.
- Diamond: (Wep) +XX% reduce All resistance to target/ (Helm) +X% Cooldown time reduction/ (Armor) +XX All resistance/ (Misc) +XXX% damage to Undead.
- Emerald: (Wep) +XX poison damage over X.0 seconds and +% to spread to close target/ (Helm) %Fear attackers/ (Armor) +XX Poison resistance/ (Misc) +% Poison damage
- Skull: (Wep) +XX to Life and Resource Leech/ (Helm) +XX Ancestral Power/ (Armor) +XX to Life Regen and +X to Resource Regen/ (Misc): +XX Thorn Damage.

I do think bringing back elements gives more choice to the players and balance out the different gems and it could synergy with the legendary powers or skills.

4- Runes: I think the model that was shown at Blizzcon is good, though I think there could be a compromise to have the Runewords too and I suggest the following.

• You could Bring back Socketed common items as rare drops or craftable items with them being the only Items eligible for Runewords, which will have determined Affixes on each runewords, making them rival good rare/legendary items. This Will provide more depth to gameplay and more control to the player as he can work towards an item that would be good for his build with less RNG.

5- Jewels & Charms: Also we don’t know even if this 2 features would be in the game, but in case they do make it, I suggest the following:

• Jewels: Should provide 2 affixes with different effects making them more hybrid.
• Charms: As I’ve seen pointed by some streamers that there could a different space for Charms as there is for gear and mats. I think the best way is to introduce as the Kanai’s Cube with only having 3 slots for the beginning and unlocking more with future expansions.

6- Overall Damage: Again we don’t have much detail on this yet, but from what we have seen from the demo, Level 20 Items had XXXX of Attack and defense, and as the level 40 being where the endgame this numbers will go high significantly. People Don’t like big numbers and in the same time they don’t like getting nerfed, and as you are planing for future expansions hopefully, the number will keep going up. So i Suggested to squish the number to X-1XX in leveling to 1XX-XXXX on endgame.

Thank you for your work, and I hope this would be helpful.

[Dunstan-1721]

@SaFiO-2440

Crit Change/damage:

I think they could bring back accuracy. Accuracy impact the chance of hit (miss, deal reduced damage, full damage and crit). The bigger the accuracy, the bigger the chance to do full damage and crit damage. But like you suggested, the crit should be capped.

Lets go to reality. A crit, i think, would be when we hit an unarmored part of the body and deal full damage (this ofc is different than deal full damage over an armored part of the body).

So, to deal a critical hit, we need to hit a vulnerable part, and if we are fighting a full plate enemy (for example) then this chance won’t be too high.

In some games like borderlands, this is hit a specific part of the body of an enemy. But for Diablo it could be done that different enemies have different chance to be hit: this will also depend on our dexterety/accuracy to hit those parts.

Apart from that, something they could do is to use the stagger bar as a way to allow critical hits. When the enemy is stunned, then we can critical hit them easier than if they arn’t.

And when they have lower hp it could be easier to crit them too.

In the oposite side, if we hare injured, our accuracy could go down and we would crit less often.

As for critical damage, yes, i think it should be capped at maybe 200% - 300% or be fixed at 2x - 3x damage.

@SaFiO-2440

Skull:

Yes! skulls!

@SaFiO-2440

Runes:

I think that bring the words as some kind of crafting recipe with white items would be the easiest way to bring it back. Unless they are planning to make items with more sockets than the 2 we saw.

Also this, some ways to use rune words in creative ways: for example, open a dungeon door.

@ShoRim-1802

Also, some hidden things should be almost imposible to find, something in the lines of open a door with a specific rune world or something like that.

A quest starts with a rumour in a different town about the way moonlight shines on mountain side to show a door that no one knows how to enter.
On that, this can add another way to use Runes.
Without the right Runes used on a nearby shrine on that Moonlit Night you cannot open the door.

[SaFiO-2440]

Thank you for taking the time to read through this, and add more things to it. Yes I think this is a good idea to have critical hits when the mob is staggered, It could work, as for Accuracy rating, I avoided talking about it because 1st most games don’t have it now, and technically if it was, you shouldn’t be able to miss Big adds that are slow or heavy, we should be missing slick fast adds with the ability to dodge or adds that can block (like in D3). They certainly have a good physics engine for this game they could work on that and add it, it would fall on the ‘‘Easy to Learn, difficult to master’’, as support builds with life on hit should have more of it to not miss and stay alive. Though you shouldn’t sacrifice a lot of affixes to have it, there should be a threshold.

As for socketed Items I forgot to make sure they know that we players like more sockets, People are happy with 4 sockets and 6 sockets lol. I agree on the other points

[Dunstan-1721]

@SaFiO-2440

as for Accuracy rating, I avoided talking about it because 1st most games don’t have it now, and technically if it was, you shouldn’t be able to miss Big adds that are slow or heavy, we should be missing slick fast adds with the ability to dodge or adds that can block (like in D3).

Agree with that. Big enemies can be easy to hit but could be hardder to crit. And agile enemies could be hard to hit but easier to crit.

The armor could have a way to reduce the critical chance. That way the enemies with more armor also get a lower % chance to get a critical damage.