That is what legendary a legendary. The notion that weaker items will outperform or equal with legendary is just laughable…at least for me.
I wish the legendary that I am looking at is raining for the sky. This is like going to be soon 3rd week of the S20 and I still looking for BiS Ancient for my Necromancer.
That is the point of the gearing. Your character sucks if you gear wrongly. If anything, your character can wear anything without a thought and still stomping, then it made the whole gearing so bland.
Then it is a sign that your character is underpowered and you should come back later once your character is stronger.
How? They work exactly like how +X Skill from D2. The only difference is some legendary not only increased X skill but they also offer a secondary benefit, for e.g. Gyrfalcon’s Foote.
I am not talking about monster immunity. I am talking that some powerful build needs a specific powerful item such as Infinity to work, and I am fine with that approach.
Except that I am not talking about that. I am simply saying that the item tier served their role perfectly as a progression for your character to rise in power.
Not really useful if your resistance is already maxed before you found this item.
Not true when you want to keep your transformation and buff uptime 90% or 100%.
But you can’t. So in the end, you still have to make the decision on which stat to pick.
Not a problem for me because choice in the video game is an illusion of choice.
Your item suggestion is bloated as usual. And instead of choosing your D3 legendary example and your “item”, I prefer something concise like: Gyrfalcon’s Foote where it offers damage for X skill and actually useful affix that doesn’t rely on chances.
D3 main stat is extremely universally useful in D3 as it offers damage and 2nd defensive stats for your character.
Pretty sure that D4 is doing something similar like that, I think. So you don’t have to worry much about it.
I don’t read all his posts in this thread but the posts that I read indicated he wants D2 HD, not D4, and that is what triggered the argument between him and others in this thread.
Make it so you cant have those buff effects up anywhere near 90-100% of the time.
Just a matter of balancing cooldown reduction itemization.
Also a matter of balancing the skills. Some buffs should be like mantras; passive and active components. That way the part you want to have on all the time, will automatically be on all the time. While the active component can only be on some of the time. Making the value of CDR smaller.
Some skills should only start their cooldown after the active effect has run out, to further make it impossible to get 100% uptime.
It means you might be able to replace another of your items that also had the same resistance.
Yeah, D4 should most definitely go for monster resistances, but no monster immuneties.
Personnaly I would like diablo to stay a pure hack and slash with deeper features and mechanic improvements every patches… the feeling of playing with infinite progression with an hardcore itemisation / theory crafting system… not a role play game.
Well, I would consider the definition of legendary not to be “the best and strongest items ever”, but rather that the definition is “this item is special for some reason”, hence the name legendary.
It doesn’t mean that they are by default better, although they definitely can be in some cases, but special, aka having something unique about them.
The thing is that with a more D2 like itemization system, you also could go for the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th best option and still be viable. But if you miss out on e.g. a Gavel of Judgement on your HotA Barb in D3, it is basically not viable.
The gap between the #1 best item and the #2 best item should not be so big that your build becomes totally non-viable. It also reduces choice and customization options if the best choice is significantly stronger.
Not necessarily. Some people may prefer the slower pace and other player do not care too much about playing the game to win or to dominate others or to be the best.
Also lets say that the #1 best item allows you to clear that content 20 seconds faster compared to the 2nd best item and it still would be viable and does by no means mean that you should go to another place just because you are not wearing or having the BiS gear.
Don’t you see that?
In this specific case of “+x to All Skills VS 800% increased damage to Skill X” there is a severe and kinda obvious difference between these two.
“+x to All Skill” gives a bonus to All Skills.
“800% increased damage to Arcane Orb” only benefits Arcane Orb.
If there would be a wand with “+4 to All Skills” or “+4 to all Wizard Skills”, you could use it on every single Wizard build, but a wand with “xxx% increased Arcane Orb damage” is only useful for an Arcane Orb build.
You mean like Lightning Sorc or Javazon?!
Yes, these were very powerful builds and they needed Infinity to break monster immunity since they were only specialized in one Element.
If they wouldn’t have an Infinity on their merc, they either had to go dual element, had to use the cheesy lower resistance wand method or let the merc deal with every immune monster. All of these alternatives were kinda annoying at least.
If Monster Immunites wouldn’t exist, then Lower Resist and Conviction could be scaled much lower and there would be less of a need for Infinity for many builds.
In D3, yes, but that does not mean that it was always like that, nor that it does has to stay that way.
Rare and magic items in some slots being on par or even batter than legendaries makes them much more interesting, which imo is a good thing.
Maybe your resistances have been already maxed out by you having various sources of single resistances on items…
You wouldn’t be able to have that ultimate buff active a 100% if their cooldown would start first after their effects have expired, even if you had 95% effective CDR.
You probably wouldn’t be able to have the buff active for even 80% of the time, even when you had maxed out all sources of CDR from gear, attributes, passives, etc.
So even if you wanted to, you couldn’t, regardless of how much CDR you had.
For you, sure, but not everyone is like you or plays there game for the same reasons as you.
It is right the pro-players will always and only for the single best option available, because they play to win and only to win, but not everyone is like that.
There are also players who e.g. are okay with playing suboptimal builds because some of these builds are more fun for them, as long as these builds are not significantly weaker.
And D4 has to cater to various kinds of players, not just the ones who only play to win.
Okay, then let’s take this example:
Would you rather play a game where the legendaries you can choose from (in this example again for a HotA Barb) are like these:
Gavel of Judgement (800% increased damage to Hammer of the Ancients)
Fury of the Vanished Peak (500% increased damage to Seismic Slam)
Bul-Katho’s Sword Set (massive damage bonus to Whirlwind)
Or B with more universally useful legendary affixes:
a weapon that increases your damage based on your life per kill.
a weapon that reduces the cooldown of your health potion by x seconds everytime you hit or kill an enemy.
a weapon that has a small chance to summon a random demon lord to fight for you for xx seconds.
a weapon that has a chance to cast a screen-wide Meteor Shower on attack.
a weapon that adds +x armor to your character based on its weapon damage.
a weapon that gives you the base effect of the Necromancer’s ‘Command Skeletons’ skill when you wear the item.
a weapon which gives you an Endurance Aura that increases movement speed for you and allies.
a weapon that gives you the ability to move unhindered through enemies
a weapon that deals splash damage around the first enemy you hit with an attack.
*etc
^^ assuming these are all fairly well balanced, then there is no clear right option with B, but with D3’s legendaries you had to pick the one that gives you HotA damage.
That is irrelevant because the initial reason for why I brought up crit chance + crit damage was to show that D3’s itemization system also has issues and one of these reasons for that is these affixes being way to prevalent, which they are and just because CDR is also an important and prevalent stat does not take away from that.
Furthermore, most builds in D3 would rather sacrifice vit or mainstat for CDR instead of sacrificing crit damage or crit chance.
That is not entirely correct.
Mainstat offers damage for some very specific classes, but not for all.
An attribute like e.g. ‘Power’ increases damage for all all classes, so even if you would find it on an item, the item would not be useless as if you would find it on a Wizard and it had Strength on it.
The problem is there aren’t enough legendaries per ability. Now maybe they could have had more items that are shared between classes like that one amulet that has a specific affix depending on class. If say HotA had 3 legendary weapons all with different affixes it would be different. But even though there are hundreds, there probably needed to be 1000s.
Or take that sorcerer staff from the demo what if it had the chance to proc fireball casts three, casts one large doing 240% increased damage, or casts three in quick succession for 80% damage each?
Suddenly that legendary has more potential. Then you could have a rare chance for it to drop with 2 of the affixes.
I would rather have something like that than a wall of stats, affixes, and sockets. I actually want sockets and gems to play a lesser roll be more unique, and for cosmetic or slight character customization.
I think I said it somewhere else but maybe be like weapon glows with very minor buffs, like a green gem can give 1% atk/cast speed on a weapon and give the weapon a green glow of swirling wind. Instead of giving like a 25% damage increase and an absolute required item.
Now that being said, I could see multisockets(more than 2) being used to chain runes, which could be fun.
Can’t believe there are actual discussions taking place in this thread.
Almost brings a tear to my eye.
This is exactly what I’m asking for… Role playing also includes systems that engage the player in decision making. “Itemization and theory crafting” are rpg elements.
Immersion would add depth and meaning to those systems.
That’s something a fanboy does when they can’t argue the facts.
Even if it was released with modern graphics but game design copied exactly - it would be a flop.
ESPECIALLY if it doesn’t ride on the back of a loud name of a Diablo series. If such game was released as a nameless title - barely anyone would notice it. People and critics will play it, get frustrated with game design and mechanics - and not in a good way like in Dark Souls where they are deliberate - and quit. And the reviews will be low.
What you don’t hear in my words, is that D2 is bad not because of graphics or other technical limitations. It’s bad on a design level.
It is.
The thing is, Diablo 3 was not the costliest game to make. And it sold well.
The other thing is, if a game sells 40 million and still can’t cover the investment cost - this means it was a pure management mistake. Not the game’s shortcomings as such.
It would be the same thing as with the original Shenmue. It was a critical success. People loved it. It was groundbreaking. It was best seller… and it still was deep in the red zone financially, simply because of how much money they SPENT.
Diablo 3 is not that case though. Financially, from a corporation’s viewpoint, it is a huge success.
People were laid off because it made sense finantically.
D3 expansion was cancelled because it made sense financially. Not because it wouldn’t have sold! But because D4 would sell BETTER per one dollar of investment.
This doesn’t make D3 a bad game, just because a better investment option exists. And you are telling ME that I don’t know a thing about business after saying short-sighted things like you do.
What is so funny and it has to do with fanboyism when Clueso is doubting my claim that Lolli42 has Lv23 monk. I am simply backing up my claim with “evidence”.
Item is not special if your generic yellow can outclass it easily.
If my character doesn’t have the crucial item, I will just farm at the appropriate level until I found it. No reason for me to force myself pushing the content that I can’t clear.
Also, I am not going to intentionally leave my weapon slot empty because I don’t have the desired weapon. I will use the 2nd available weapon until I found the desired weapon.
From my perspective, if the #1 can be easily replaced by #2 or #96 item, I see no reason why should I care about #1 item anymore.
If some people chose to play the game inefficiently, that is their choice.
I wouldn’t consider 20 seconds difference as “slower”. I am talking something like if you need 13 minutes to clear GR50, maybe you should play at GR45 until you get better gear.
Working as intended. I rather have every different wizard build using a different weapon than every wizard build using the same weapon.
And that is what made Infinity a build changer legendary item. Every legendary item in arpg should strive for something like this.
There is no way rare can outperform legendary items with legendary power. The only time that rare can outperform is either the slot doesn’t have a legendary item available or the legendary item doesn’t have legendary power.
And thus another single resistance from the item is unnecessary. If I can roll it away, I will.
I am pretty sure that you can keep DH’s vengeance uptime at 90%~100%. The same goes for Archon, Akkhan and Berserker. Only escape skill or the skill that offers a short invincibility for players cooldown will start after the skill expired is for obvious balance reason.
Then I see no problem with this. This is what we called a self-imposed challenge.
If you don’t like how you can max everything in the paragon, you can always come out with your own rule such as I can only spend 150 points each paragon tab.
If my goal is to clear high GR, of course I will pick Option A because Option B doesn’t help me to clear GR. If D3 doesn’t have GR and the difficulty was capped at Master, the extra DPS boost will be a big waste if your character can kill anything in 1 hit, and in that case, option B will be favorable as it will speed up my progress when it comes to speed Bounty/Rift.
Of course they will do that but in reality, it is not easy to find such perfect roll jewelry for you to sacrifice the main stat or vit. So in the end, you still have to choose on which stat to sacrifice for most of the time whether you like it or not.
I am simply telling you that the main stat does not only increase your character damage as it also provides secondary defense (e.g. Int for resistance) for your character. I starting to think that you are a fan of one item that should rule all.
Special does not have to be “more powerful than others”, but special just means… special, different, unique.
But with a more D2-like itemization design, there would not be a “crucial” item that just need, just to make the build work.
That is what people mean when they say that “Items should ENHANCE builds, but not determine them”.
Oh, you can clear it, you just would be a bit slower.
I think you still would if the #1 Item is (for simplicites sake) ~10% more powerful that the #2 Item, ~20% more powerful than the #3 Item and ~30% more powerful than the #4 Item…
But it wouldn’t be like 800% more powerful like in D3.
Yes, and the game has to cater to all kinds of players, because the ones that only play to win are not the only ones that play these kinds of games.
And I am talking about something like Chaos Sanctuary runs.
Furthermore, the difficulty of something can also be increased by other means than to just increase enemies health and damage, like:
enemy CC resistance
more elites that spawn
elites having more modifiers
Molten Explosions triggering faster
enemies have a higher movement speed
improved AI
enemies using their heavy attacks more often
…
Just increasing damage and life will lead to killing enemies just being a grind.
But you have no problem with every Arcane Orb Wizard using the same weapon, every Disintegrate Wizard using the same weapon, every Meteor Wizard using the same weapon, etc…
I would rather have every build various weapons to choose from and non of them have to be “800% increased damage to Skill X”.
The thing is that there was no choice (or at least not a reasonable one).
I guess you could say that Infinity was one of these items that determined a build, rather then enhanced it.
If Infinity would just have given elemental based builds a larger damage boost, it would be fine, but since it was almost mandatory to have this item on your merc to play reasonably, because otherwise you had a much harder time dealing with immunes, this is not a good design, since it also limits choice and makes builds first reasonably viable when you have it.
In D2 rare and magic items were often better than legendaries, like with Diadems (with lots of +x skills, faster cast), boots (tri-elemental resistances, magic find, faster run walk, faster hit recovery), rings (dual leech, strength, etc).
Now, if you had a legendary which had a chance to cast Sprint when you get hit and only a few other affixes, then a rare or magic item actually could compete with it.
Yes, but the point was that what you call “filler stats” (aka a bonus to attributes, single resistances, a bonus to resource, etc) are useless as you have impliedd, which they are not.
Yes, only skills that make you invulnerable currently have the feature of first starting their cooldown after their effects expired, but the point was that other skills like WotB, Vengeance, Ignore Pain, etc., etc. should have it as well, al least in D4.
Again, I am not talking about how it currently is, but how it could/should be.
The affix on the Dawn crossbow that reduces the cooldown on Vengeance by 65%.
What I mean is that some players might prefer the 2nd best or 3rd best item over the #1 best item, because it has something on them that they like and enjoy more than the #1 best item. Maybe it is a proc that they like or fulfilling the fantasy of e.g. being a thundergod.
Now, let’s make this really, really simple. There are various kinds of players who play games like these for various reasons and motivations. Let’s take these three to illustrate what I am getting at. There are certainly many more different kinds of players, but these are irrelevant for the point I am trying to make.
So there is the Type A Player and he plays to win. He only uses the best items, regardless of what it is, as long as it helps him to be the best, to win and to be efficient. For them Efficiency is the most important thing.
Then there is the Type B Player. These primarily care about self expression, like making fun builds that they enjoy. They don’t care about challenge or being efficient and they probably would even play a build or use an item that is considered bottom tier by Type A users, if they like the build/item or a fantasy that it fulfills.
Then there is the Type C Player. These fall in the middle of Type A and Type B. They wanna play and use a lot of various builds, skills and items that they like (for example because the like the fantasy of something like being a thundergod), and have no problem with playing suboptimal builds or using suboptimal items as long as these builds/items are not significantly weaker than the best ones. Efficiency is not the most important thing for them, but it also is not as unimportant for them as it is for a Type B player.
Now if you have an itemization system like in D3 where the #1 item is like 800% stronger than the rest, then the game only caters to the Type A and the Type B player, but not for the Type C player, which makes up a not insignificantly large amount of the playerbase that will not be dissatisfied.
Yes, for you, because you are apparently a player that only or primarily cares about efficiency, but again, not everyone is like that and there are also many other people who are playing the game for various other reasons than just to win.
That is right, but that is irrelevant to the point I was making.
Ability-specific legendaries should not even exist in the first place, but rather there should be legendaries that could be utilized by various builds, skills and meaybe even classes.
E.g. instead of a legendary that gives Fireball a chance to cast three Fireballs at once, give that legendary a chance to proc Fireball on attack / on kill / when you get hit, regardless of with what skill you are attacking, killing or get hit by.
So you could basically attack with Chain Lightning and then proc a Fireball.
That is much more universally useful that just being useful for Fireball.
I understand, but the reason for why I posted this was to illustrate the difference between legendaries with more universally useful powers VS legendaries with more skill-specific powers.
imo things like these do not belong on legendaries, but rather on a skill-specific skill tree that allows you to customize the skill.
Different, special or unique doesn’t mean a thing in the loot game if it got outclassed by common item. The fact is rare can’t surpass legendary items with legendary power.
By enhancing, you mean more flat dps to the main skill of your build. So boring.
While you may be the fan of using +3 Frozen Orb wand, I would prefer a wand that allows my Frozen Orb to explode twice on the enemy.
Thus, inefficient.
800% is just a number here. You need to know that 800% powerful wasn’t exactly powerful when your foe is ridiculously powerful in D3 as well. Different game has a different rule.
And D3 succeeded to cater all kind of players here. All the content that top players are playing at, casual was able to play and experience it. It is not like casual will find themselves stuck at Mathael or anything because they don’t have uber gears.
I never understand why people like to gate this kind of thing behind difficulty when you can make these things a baseline. Never underestimate the players’ adaptability here. Once the players get used/familiar to these things and built their character around it, these things are as good as don’t exist anymore. In the end, it is still a monster stat that the players will watch it out.
Yes, I would prefer every arcane orb wizard is using the Unstable Scepter than having every fireball sorc, iceball sorc, thunder sorc, hydra sorc and etc using the same +8 to all sorc weapon.
Exactly. That is was made Infinity a memorable item.
That is given that D2 rare can easily better than most D2 unique because it doesn’t have the D3 legendary power tier. If the D2 unique boots allow you to teleport for free, do you think rare boot can compete with that?
I can live without most of them, especially +10 to Energy Stat.
I thought we are talking about D3 here. The point is CDR is just as competitive as CHD and CC for many classes in D3 at this moment. For example, DH would prefer to pick CDR over CC if it allows DH to keep his vengeance uptime for 100% because we know that keeping Vengeance up is more important than the mere extra 6% CC, especially when your DH has 45% CC already without the 6% CC.
You still need a certain amount of CDR to make it 100% uptime.
Simple. He can be a thundergod at the lower difficulty. No one stopping him from doing that.
Not everyone but I am pretty sure most people would prefer to play the best build/route if possible.
This happens in every game out there especially in PVP game.
If there were skill tags, legendary and also normal powers could be more versatile.
You know the idea.
Fireball: fire, projectile, explosion, burning
Blizzard: ice, aoe, chilling, ground attack
Etc.
Knew it was just a matter of time when things “exploded” out of control lol
Luckily the devs are locked away home and working relatively motivated for the next update without listening idiotic discussions that brought everything seemingly reasonable down
Powerfully ability modify is not a stat stick. If you’ve bothered to pay attention to anything in this thread you could have easily understood the difference between an item with a modifier and o e with 12 affixes and 6 sockets.
It means they are different special and/or unique.
In a loot game it means that legendaries in these slots can for example give something very interesting for the Type B and Type C players that I talked about earlier, because again, not everyone just plays to win.
No, not at all and I thought I was very clear about that.
It almost baffles me that you have not understood that by now.
You can have your Frozen Orb explode twice, but that would fit better on a skill-specific skill tree as Last Epoch or Wolcen has it, than on a legendary (because it severely limits choice): https://imgur.com/KBx5akF https://imgur.com/bAqZlGj
Now, when I play a Frozen Orb Sorc I would much rather have some of these option available instead of just “Frozen Orb explodes twice”:
chance to cast Blizzard on kill
all 10 seconds summon an Ice Elemental that fights for you for 30 seconds or until he dies
Frost Skills have a chance to cast Frost Nova when you kill a frozen enemy
for every xx Frost Resistances you have gain an x% chance to cast a Frost Nova when you get hit
while above 30% maximum life, everytime you cast a spell you now also drain 10% of your maximum life and your spells deal xx% more damage
when you fall below 35% maximum health, Frost Comets fall onto the whole screen and damage and chill/freeze enemies. Can only trigger once all x seconds.
while above 85% life your skills cost 20% less resource.
etc
Why? Because 1) there is not a clear best one and even if there is a best one, the other ones are not unviable, and 2) because these items could be used by various Sorc builds and not just a Frozen Orb Sorc.
Yes, but that does not matter to everyone or at least not to the degree that it matters to you.
It sure matters for the itemization.
There is a huge difference if the #1 item is either 800% more efficient or just only 10-15% more efficient than the #2 item.
It may not matter to you since you are only playing to win or to be efficient, but not everyone is like that.
Are you willfully ignoring all the essential stuff that I am saying here?
Top players and casuals are not the only kind of players that exist, so no, D3 does not cater all these important kinds of players.
But that is the point I am trying to make here. If there is choice, there is no clear best item.
And if all the wands are just giving you 800% increased damage to Skill X, they are all the same item, just with a different skin and for different skills. That is what is boring.
And again, things like ‘the orb explodes twice’ can also be put on a skill-specific skill three.
Which by default is not a good thing, especially when you consider that it came to that status by having a mechanic in the game that made the game a lot more unnecessarily frustrating.
It is like the devs would introduce a mechanic in the game that all 30 seconds an almost invulnerable demon lord with huge damage output would spawn next to you and the only way to reasonably deal with this would be with an item that has a feature on it that allows you annihilate the demon in a few seconds, but nothing else.
It would make the item memorable, but that does not mean that the whole situation itself is good.
Ravenfrost gave you the special ability to not be able to be frozen, but a rare dual leech ring could still compete with it.
You know, not every legendary affix has to be Skill X deals 800% increased damage.
They had that on Enigma and it was by far one of the worst runewords ever introduced in the game (the worst in regards to balance and item diversity for the chest armor slot), because the Teleport was so overly powerful.
If the Teleport on Enigma had a e.g.7-10 second cooldown, it would by far not be as overpowered as it is currently.
sure, Eenrgy was useless in D2, but what if every character had its own individual resource and there also would be generators and spenders in D2 and Energy would give x% reduced resource costs and stuff like that?
Then it would be a lot more useful and interesting.
But it still does not mean that what you call filler stats are useless. And if they are, their numbers can be increased to a reasonable amount.
Yes, and my point is that Vengeance should not be able to have a 100% uptime regardless of how much CDR you have.
This can be achieved by letting Vengeance cooldown start first when its effects expired.
A regulation like this would make cooldown reduction a lot less mandatory and it also would make Vengeance a lot less mandatory since you couldn’t have it up all the time.
Also, you probably should not even be able to reach ~50%+ cooldown reduction even when you have CDR on every equipment slot that can have it.
And the Dawn crossbow wouldn’t need to exist in this case either.
yes, but you shouldn’t even be able to reach 100% uptime on skills like Vengeance in the first place, because it makes both Vengeance and the CDR affix too mandatory, aka it removes choice.
If he is a Type B Player who does not care about efficiency, then yes, but if he is a Type C player then for him it is a severe difference if he is just 15% weaker than the top build or 800% weaker than the top build.
Type A and Type C players probably make up up the majority of the playerbase, so yes, efficiency is important for both.
For Type A Players, efficiency it the most important thing and for Type C Players efficiency is also very important, although less than for a Type A Player, but still a lot more than for a Type B Player.
Type A: plays to win and only uses the best.
Type B only wants to play for self-expression (aka enjoying the fantasy of a thundergod) or to see flashy colors and explosions, even if the build totally sucks.
Type C sort of falls between Type A and Type B. These players want to have a huge amount of builds/skills/items to play (to express themself) and they are okay with playing sub-optimal builds/skills/items as long as they are not too significantly weaker than the top builds. These players can tolerate it if a build is up to ~30% weaker than a top build, but everything that goes beyond that is hard to tolerate for them.
