Instead of balancing an entire tier of items and allowing their affixes to drop they could separate the two concepts entirely.
I just think that’s more beneficial to character building.
exactly my opinion 
they should eighter just remove the idea, or remove the legendary items, as they are now and only keep the consumables
i would suggest, just bringing back the uniques from D2 with unique stats and affixes and just keep the legendary powers in the consumables
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if they do that, realize they can no longer tailor item sets and have to assume in all cases that an item will be abused.
what i mean by this, is look at how many items have their power bound into rings. this is because you can only choose 3. so those powers can be really powerful with the idea you can only ever use 3. if you unlink the affix, suddenly you can use 16… and thus the item power needs to drop significantly. (or, the affix needs to be ring slot only, in which case, what is the point really?)
you can still limit the use of those consumables to 3 or what ever
someone also suggested, to not bind them to items but just straight to your character/skilltree
A simple remedy is baking requirements into legendary powers like the cube in Diablo III.
Weapons, armor, jewelry.
The point is as I stated. Freedom to choose what items to imbue without competition from existing legendary items.
how many legendary items could you equip in D3? only 3?
i mean you could drop legendary items, no? could you not just equip them all?
In that post I’m suggesting to actually make use of the point allocation in skills and talent tree to make builds possible instead of having “legendary powers or sets” like in D3 that make builds.
And leave gear for attack/defense/procs/etc… much more flexible.
Totally agree with this sentiment. I would rather see unique items with interesting affix combinations then balance endgame around legendary consumables.
DII’s approach worked relatively well with runewords.
I liked that items were imbued with character skills that anyone could use.
Both systems have merit imo.
They can keep the droprate lower for the consumables than the items. Something very late-game where you try to create interesting Rare items with legendary affixes. While the “premade” legendaries is what your build will primarily consist of.
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but it still gives this uncomfortable feeling that…the legendary is just a placeholder
thats my main concern about it
legendaries/uniques should not be a placeholder
they should have their own very unique special thing
and if its not that legendary power anymore, give them something else
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I definitely understand that, but the direction Diablo III took with legendary/set items makes me a bit skeptical with balancing.
Even DII struggled with endgame runeword variety.
The idea of legendary power is awesome I just don’t want them tied to items directly.
Unique items with fixed stats and special affix combinations feels grounded and would be easier to balance around other tiers.
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I hope they won’t make another PoE from D4. Item hunting > item crafting, imo.
The best would be hunting = crafting = others activities. So you can choose your favorite and dont feel penalised, every options are relatively equivalent
Maybe not equal exactly but there should definitely be endgame variety that promotes longevity.
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if they increase the power of angelic, demonic and ancestral unlocks on legendary items the legendary affix becomes a part of your total power… then just roll low amount or none of angelic, demonic and ancestral stats on it and each tier has pro/con…
What if, instead of dropping the consumables that contain legendary affixes, end game will drop a very-hard-to-find legendary crafting material. Then players can use crafting to extract legendary affixes from legendary items. In the process, both the legendary crafting material and the legendary item are consumed, to produce a one-time-only consumable.
This way, you still have to find legendary items first, and you need to think hard if your rare item equipped is BiS enough to sacrifice a legendary item for it.
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If I’m following you correctly you’re suggesting higher requirements for legendary items and no requirements for consumables?
Given the recent changes I would say that’s the direction developers are currently taking.
Interested to see how angelic, demonic and ancestral affixes will work exactly.
I had a similar thought exactly. It would make a lot more sense for power to be extracted.
If legendary items are indeed rare players will have tougher choices to make.
Sacrifices for power is a balanced approach in my opinion.
in which direction it could go is kinda open… one simple example would be…
-yellow item rolls 20 angelic stat and at 60 total angelic power unlocks 1 additional projectile
-legendary item rolls 0-5 angelic stat and at 60 total angelic power unlocks 2-4 additional projectiles
the thing is if you adjust the legendary powers without adding pro’s and Con’s either yellow or legendary items become useless… with this you have to use yellow items in combination with legendary items… it should also be possible to gain angelic stat by tree or jewel or gem…
that said no matter how they do it each affix fights other affixes and atm it would be legendary power vs angelic power…
or you just make unique items, who are different in the first place and you dont have to differ them with the power stats lol
sounds complicated but it really is not…
in d3 vanilla you had to get a certain amount of attackspeed for WW to hit breakpoints… you can do this with almost all affixes and link them for more synergy… just deny some item tiers certain rolls…