Life steal was very useful though.
Huh…maybe it had something to do with wizards at the time, or just that wizard build I was using? I specifically remember asking for help because I kept dying way too much. Someone said I needed Life on Hit to survive the harder Torment levels. Once I got enough, they were right, it was much more manageable and I was able to progress.
Life steal was nerfed and rendered useless at that time for whoever became a level 70.
Sorry I thought you were talking sets b4 ROS (for some reason, like not paying attention)
My main problem with most sets isn’t just that they buff damage by 10,000% or that they are required for end game. My main problem with sets is how boring they are. Most of the sets in the game do not change the way you play. They just increase the difficulty with which you can play that way.
Sets like Might of the Earth are great. Leap causes an Earthquake. Spend Fury so you can Leap faster and get more Earthquakes.
Sets like Unhallowed Essence are boring. Stack Discipline and use basically just this one skill. Have fun. Not. UE provides no mechanic outside of damage really.
2 Likes
I believe Life on Hit at the time was affected by proc coefficients, so depending on your build, it definitely was a godsend, most of my builds at that time however relied on crowd control mostly.
No problem, most sets before RoS (and 2.0.1) were pretty bad, with a few exceptions.
Just make yellows roll 200% of the current base stats. Higher dps weapon, 14% att speed, 48% AD, etc. It almost makes sense that a legendary would be more “fragile” (lower stat range) but offer a powerful offset with a build changing effects. Then add it to LoD…
Well said mate.
The frustrating is, I felt like at some point in early RoS, we actually had a nice mix of builds functioning without sets and are endgame builds. They’re mix of crafted sets, class set and legendaries, and some even use rares with nice affixes, usually on accessories. Of course some class has nicer sets so they can build around 6 piece, but their power isn’t so far beyond other builds that are mix of different types of items.
Then Blizzard keeps double down on sets, and more ways to get items thru Kanai Cube, buff the drop rate, which all sounds good in theory, but it just results in excessive power creep and making all builds revolve around class sets, before LoN stuff kicks in, which is a different beast.
Back when builds consists of mixture of rare, legendaries and sets.
I hope on D4 it will no longer boost skills, or do these insane boosts to damage.
I mean even Dungeon Siege had more interesting set items than this if I remember correctly.
But we will see on Blizzcon of course 
Do you have a source?
I also felt very disappointed when I saw the first patch that added a massive multiplier to one of the skills on one of the sets (I can’t remember which) and I thought to myself: “Hey wait, when you buff this skill/set of skills by such a huge amount, than all other skill and skill combinations will become useless and this set will also become mandatory and make all other items useless”.
In retrospect with all the information we have available now about what has been going on in the background, it seems that the decision to base builds around sets and to inflate the numbers was made because the higher-ups told the devs to work on D4 and only polish RoS, since it is easier for a smaller dev team to just having to balance a few builds and to just inflate numbers.
1 Like
The other possibility is that they made a design decision you disagreed with and you haven’t been able to get over it for years.
Either one of the most successful games of all time is coasting by on a half baked conspiracy. And somehow that continued success is just an illusion.
Or you’re a hack designer pretending to know better than everyone else.
IDK. Hard to say.
1 Like
There are a lot of characters and a lot of different builds which have changed over the seasons, so I don’t know what there is to complain about. Maybe your LoD build doesn’t work as well as you hoped on T16 or something, IDK…
so, what is wrong with set designs? you will always be limited by a best-in-slot mentality. the pixels on the item would just be a different color. I don’t see how that is anymore interesting then the current system?
Yes I’m aware that sets pigeon hole skills into being used because they provide xyz benefit. like shadow power be mandatory for shadow set. or archon for vyrs.
would you prefer if there was a pair of gloves that gave you the bonus of gain all runes for archon instead of that being a 2pc bonus ? you would still be looking for that piece of equiptment with stats somewhere in the ballpark of crit crit cdr. would you not?
I enjoy the d3 sets ideas. the only issue with it is the limit of sets in the game currently being 4 sets per class. and soon to be 5. If there was something like 20 sets and your only looking for 1 with specific stats on them. then you end up with an endless grind. like you might be 4k paragons before you finish your ancient set with 90% of the correct stats.
*edit- just was going to toss out that getting a perfect set no matter how many sets are in the game could be worked around with just doing endless bounties (or have a buddy account farming them)
1 Like
You are kinda stuck in the idea that players will always use the best in slot item and always play the best available build, but that is not necessarily a 100% correct. Yes, there are players who play game like this for competition and to win and therefore will always use the BiS items, but not everyone is such a kind of player.
There are also other kinds of players who for example play games like this for self-expression, aka coming up with their own builds or playing the builds with the skills and items they personally enjoy the most, even if these builds/skills/items are not the best ones, as long as they are not significantly less powerful than the best builds/skills/items.
In my opinion it would be much better if legendaries would be more generic (aka not buffing a single skill or a predetermined set of skills, but rahter be more univerally useful to various builds nd skills) instead of specifically buffing one skill by several hundred percentage.
For example: if you play a Hammer of the Ancient Barbarin, would you rather want have…
- the choice between Gavel of Judgement (a 2h weapon that increases HotA damage by 800%), Fury of the Vanished Peak (2 weapon that increases the damage of Seismic Slam by 500%) and the Bul Katho Swords (increase attack speed of Whirlwind)
or
- the choice between one of these weapons:
https://imgur.com/jhYruyE
https://imgur.com/l9laH0X
https://imgur.com/VdcXh9B
https://imgur.com/JrrPyIx
In Situation 1) the choice is clear, you would without a doubt want to pick the legendary that gives you a massive buff to HotA, but in Situation 2) the choice is not so clear. Yes, one of these items might be the best in slot for this build, but maybe you prefer the playstyle of one of the legendaries that is slightly suboptimal to the best in slot item, or you enjoy the proc effects that come with one of the legendaries, etc…
… and furthermore, even if you choose one of the suboptimal legendaries, your build still would be viable, while with the current legendaries we have in D3 your build would basically automatically suck if you don’t use the best in slot item (aka “Skill X deals 800% increased damage”).
This here is just my personal preference, but in my opinion legendaries should have fixed/predetermined affixes (like in Diablo 2), instead of completely random ones, so that only he range of the affix is variable, but not the affix itself.
Again, just a matter of personal preference.
The best possible design would be that if even if you don’t find or have the best possible items, your build still should be viable.
For example, in D2 you (theoretically) could increae the power of your build with items in incremental steps over a longer period of time, while in D3, there are almost no or just little incremental steps, since in D3 you either find the item that increases the damage of your main skill by xxx hundred percent, or your build sucks and after you have found that item, the power of your build skyrockets.
I made a sketch to approximately illustrate the difference in power-progression in D2 vs D3.
https://imgur.com/flFJux3
https://imgur.com/FtOv8uD
2 Likes
This is completely incorrect. A full set + supporting legendaries covers only a small portion of the damage scale of the game. There are a number of mechanisms that increase your power by orders of magnitude past the initial load out.
This is extremely obvious to anyone that has ever pushed.
This is also incorrect. There are plenty of builds that eschew supporting legendaries in torment and speed run level GRs. For example, TR can drop at least one Meteor damage buffing legendary to add speed and utility to a viable build.
I’m not asking for a complete overhaul. .I’m stating that it’s too late for any changes to be made because it would require a complete overhaul, which I know will not happen. 
1 Like
Look if the difference in buffs to skill damage wasn’t some 50k+%, for some builds, then you would see some alternative to BiS that would still be able to get the job done.
What we would love to see in a game like this one, probably more likely for D4. Is to have alternatives to BiS gear that would still be strong enough to handle the content. Where the difference in power is a lot smaller than the 50k+%, more like 1-5% difference. Then it wouldn’t matter whether we are in BiS gear or not. Then the BiS gear could have a much smaller drop rate as long as the alternatives are easier to obtain.
3 Likes
They’re actually still making money off Chinese version of D3 where they have mtx store. D3 is a done deal. I hope they do something that would better support D4 in long term like a cosmetic mtx store or something to bring in revenue and thus better long term support. Make it f2p like PoE or buy2play with cosmetic (no pay2win stuff) mtx store.