Legendaries do not have to be statsticks, but neither is putting ability changing effects on them a good idea because it kinda makes this item feel mandatory if you have a build that revolves around a specific ability.
This is one of the reasons for why Ability Changing Effects belong on a Skill-Specific Skill Tree and not on items.
Since you seem to be stalking me you couldnât least bother to read what I have posted before. Iâd rather have legendaries have a small amount of affixes and a legendary. But you just seem to want to troll me at this point
Again, as mentioned to you before, make more per ability, or have rares have more affixes on them so player would have to choose between stats or a useful legendary affix.
Screenshot of my barb trying to equip wand.
https://i.imgur.com/q9BQ8oz.jpg
Can I know which D3 version that you are playing because my Barb canât equip a magic wand? Protips: Donât make an example on something you donât know, mr liar. 
So you acknowledge that rare canât beat legendary item with legendary power? And yes, I do agree with you that legendary item should give something interesting for player B and player C.
Is it? Please do tell what do you mean enhancing build if it is not increasing your main skillâs damage? You donât want Unstable Scepter to determine your Frozen Orb Wizard, but you want an item that will enhance your current Frozen Orb Wizard which means that something like +4 to all Wizard skills, and if you donât have that +4 to wizard skill wand, at least your Frozen Orb wizard still can launch her beloved frozen orb. Am I right here?
I donât know why do you keep bringing other games into the discussion where you disagreed with my claim that D3 itemization is better than D2 itemization.
We are not discussing how FO should work for D4. I have no interest in discussing fiction.
If you are playing solo, then it doesnât matter. But if you are playing public game or party game, you are dragging other down with your underpowered character.
I think you shouldnât speak for everyone. I know that everyone who want to play FO Wizard will pick Unstable Scepter. If they donât, it means that they havenât found it yet, and not because they donât want to use Unstable Scepter.
They did. Everyone is accessing the same content as the top players. It is up to the players on how he decide to tackle the content itself.
As I said before, choice in a video games is an illusion. Also, not all wand gives 800% damage to X skill. They tend to offer 2nd effect/bonus as well.
So they are not as boring as +8 to all wizard skills.
How is that not a good thing? D2 was designed so the solo player will be focusing on 2 elementals to beat the game. Infinity, the ultimate build changing item kick in and now you can break the game rule and dominate everything with one elemental build.
As I said before, Infinity and a few other runewords are what most D2 unique should be in the first place.
And you should know that not every legendary in D3 gives 800% damage either. So I donât know why and where do you keep getting the impression that every D3 legendary give 800% damage.
Engima is just as legendary as Infinity. Another solid build changer build item tier.
Now back to my original question, do you still think that rare boots can compete with legendary boots that give you a free teleport?
Of course I would prefer Energy to be useful too but D2 is a past. I donât care whether those stats should be increased or not, but the point is I would prefer an item with 3 important stats over an item with 7 filler stats and 1 important stat.
I am not asking whether Vengeance should have 100% uptime or not. I am simply pointing out that CDR is just as important stat as CC and CHD for many classes.
It is good that CDR is important to keep the skill uptime 100% or else you will think that CDR is weak and CC and CHD are too prevalent later if DH stop focusing on CDR gear.
It is normal. No reason why should someone with a weaker/fun build should be performing as good as the strong and optimized build. Working as intended.
How exactly am I stalking you in my own thread?
Itemization
Weâre still working through all the feedback that came in regarding itemization and weâre actively discussing ways to add more depth and complexity to base items (including Rares), ways to add greater variety to item affixes to make those powers interesting and your choices meaningful, and ways to give players more freedom to choose how to customize items, so you can have fun exploring a wide range of effective gameplay possibilities instead of just looking up âthe optimal buildâ online.
Good thing the developers already acknowledged the fact that other rarities should be useful.
Interesting affixes that compete with legendary items are a priority.
In theory, yes of course.
You could add +100000% dmg to a rare and it will beat your free teleport.
(not that any item should give you a free teleport, nor that dmg boost, of course).
CDR should be important for some builds, and not others.
But CDR can be important, while also not allowing for full uptime of skills.
Of course not. That would bad for a game that is pretty much all about optimizing.
Not all players care about efficiency. But Blizzard should care deeply about it, in all aspects of the game design. Efficiency is the main goal in an A-RPG for the player (no matter if the individual players care about it or not).
The goal with itemization should be to have a ton of different choices for how to create an efficient build.
Using Frozen Orb should not mean that you always want to pick a specific weapon. Different setups could lead to similar efficiency. Especially by having different aspects of the game each build excels at. Like one FO build might be great in Key dungeons, another might be great at killing bosses.
As long as you cant respec freely all the time, that also creates a balance between builds, even if they perform differently in different tasks.
Which also means that yeah, for one build, a legendary might be best, but for another build a rare item might be best. If that is how you design the game (personally Iâd be just fine with legendaries (or rares + legendary consumable) always being best. The dream of useful rares is a bit overrated tbh. Fine if it happens, but dont accomplish it by making all items bland)
It depends on how you design legendaries.
My point of view is that you should design legendaries in a way so that they are the best items in some equipment slots (like weapon, off-hand and chest armor), while in other slots rare and magic items are best and in most other slots, rare, magic and legendaries should compete for the BiS.
Furthermore it depends on the power of the special affix if a rare or item can beat a legendary.
Letâs say you have a rare amulet with 6 very good affixes VS The Ess of Johan, but it only has 4 affixes + the special effect that allows you to pull enemies together. Or maybe The Ess of Johan has 8 affixes but only at half power, or 3 affixes at full power + 3 affixes on half power etcâŚ
At least the rare would be able to compete (assuming we take the other amulets out of the equation for this example).
It is good that you acknowledge the existance of Type C players.
âEnhancingâ in this context means âevery affix, power or improvement that is not skill specificâ.
If it would be Arcane Orb deals 800% increased damage it would be a skill-specific item and if a set has the bonus Arcane Orb deals xxxx% increased damage against enemies that are in your Slow Time bubble, it would determine your build (the build that it would determine would be Arcane Orb + Slow Time).
Because putting skill-changing effects on items or legendaries is not good for itemization and these effects fit better on a skill-specific skill tree,w hich is what these games have done.
And what would be worse?
If your character would just be 20% weaker, or 800% weaker?
And still a lot of builds that ordinarily should be perfectly viable are not viable because they are several 10 times weaker than the very few best builds, which means that the game does not cater to Type C players.
According from research (with polls and from what I heard from players e.g. here on the forums and on reddit) is that the vast majority of players are Type A and Type C players.
Yes, because it comes with the ridiculously huge bonus to Arcane Orb damage, that is whyâŚ
But if such wands and staves where would be available instead of legendaries with these ridiculously high multipliers, then it wouldnât be so clear that everyone would just tend to one of them:
For the top players, yes, they would consider it an illusion, but not Type C players.
And if choice is an illusion in video games, then we basically can get rid of all the unused and even slightly under-performing builds, skills, items and even classes as well.
Meteor, Blizzard, Seismic Slam, Firebats, Rapid Fire, Shield Bash, Heavenly Fury all not being âthe bestâ? Then letâs remove them! They shouldnât even be here in the first place since they are ânot the bestâ
Yes, and all of these secondary bonuses could fit much better on a skill specific skill tree. Also items with these affixes take away choices (at least for Type C players).
+x to all Wizard Skills and something interesting like e.g. âFor every 30 Fire Resistance you have, gain a 1% chance to cast Meteor Shower on attackâ are not mutually exclusive.
You can even have several of these on the same item.
If instead of immunities there would just be high resistances, lets say an 80% resistance to a specific element on enemies, then you morel ways of dealing with them:
Also, good luck finding two Ber runes in solo⌠that might take a whileâŚ
The point was that you said that rare items in D2 could beat a unique because uniques in D2 didnât have special affixes (for the most part) and I tried to show you that rares could still compete with some of these uniques that had a special affix on them, so it clearly is not just a special affix on legendaries that makes legendaries âbetterâ than rares as you claimed.
It depends.
If the Teleport from the legendary does have no cooldown, then no, rare items likely could not compete with them.
However, if the Teleport on these boots had a 7-10 second cooldown and either less affixes or just less powerful affixes, then a rare item with tri-elemental resistances, Faster Run/Walk, Magic Find and Faster Hit Recovery probably could compete.
Yes, but for the wrong reasons.
These two items are rather infamous than famous/legendary.
Still, what you consider filler stats are not by default useless and in fact can also be very, very useful and powerful and if they are not, then just crank up their numbers.
Also, you could have an item (e.g. a legendary) with 4+ major stats and"4+ âfillerâ stats as well. That also isnât bad.
Yes, I understand, but what I am saying is that CDR is so important because it allows you to have 100% uptime on certain skills. If wouldnât be abe to have 100% uptime on certain skills, CDR would be a less prevalent affix.
And the crit chance and crit damage should get nefed as well.
The whole point was to highlight some issues in which D2âs itemization is better than D3âs, or at least where D3âs itemization is really flawed, and crit chance and crit damage is such a thing, as well as being able to have 100% uptime on certain skills and therefore by proxy CDR is also problematic.
Currently in D3 CDR is not just important, but rather mandatory for many builds, aka less option , less choice.
If 100% uptimes would not be a thing, you could chose if you wanna have x% increased damage on your gear or if you would rather take cooldown reduction to have your offensive and defensive skills active more often.
================
If I could, here is how I would fix the Crit Chance + Crit Damage combo problematic.
Now the Crit Damage affix would be mostly useless (although crit chance wouldnât be), however if you add a specific legendary that lets say doubles the power of your critical hit damage, you could still make viable builds around it, but not every build would use crit damage + crit chance almost by default.
I am not saying that players that suboptimal builds or even just fun builds should be as powerful as players that use top builds, I am however talking about the how large the gap between the top build and other builds should be.
And this gap in efficiency should not be like 800% like in D3, but rather ~30% between the top builds and âaverage but still viable suboptimal buildsâ.
Yes, but legendary affixes do not have to be skill-specific for them to be useful, that is what I was trying to say.
But then you run into the problem you described with them being boring. Or my problem with your non specific, being so OP they are must haves anyway.
I believe it was lolli42s idea of blues having a few but larger affixes, yellows having more but smaller affixes, and legendaries having the least but one powerful legendary affix would be best. I can even compromise and add affixes not tied to skills like increased attack/cast speed on kill for a legendary glove, for a quick example.
I just think your examples are way too much.
Just because special affixes are non-skill specific does not mean that they are boring by default. I mean I am sure even you can come up with some interesting non-skill-specific special affixes.
My idea was basically something that I copied from Diablo 2 LoD and Median XL.
In these two games uniques in the weapon, off-hand and chest armor slots were extremely âbeefyâ so to speak and no rare or magic item could compete with them.
However in most other slots, rare and magic items could compete with uniques.
Maybe the pictures you have seen were just the weapons, but I have aa whole album with concepts for legendaries other than weapons. Here is the whole album:
https://imgur.com/a/Z5NswCo
As you can see, legendary amulets, boots, helms and gloves have much less affixes, which gives rare and magic items a way to compete with legendaries in these slots.
One advantage of making Legendaries really beefy in some slots is that you get really excited when you finally find such a big item. Not every legendary weapon would be like that, but some of them would be like them and when you finally find one of them, it feels awesome.
In Diablo 2 rare and magic items already were like that, but uniques in general had more affixes than just 1 legendary affix + 1 normal affix.
On average uniques in D2 had between 5-7 affixes and only in the chest armor, weapon and off-hand slot uniques could have up to 12 affixes.
The interesting thing is that rare items could still compete with uniques in lots of slots for many builds, although uniques also having 5-7 affixes on average.
Man that sounds awfully familiar. Now that I think about it, yeah thereâs already a game that did something very similar to this.
I think itâs called Lord of Destruction
Ah, I can see youâre a man of culture as well.
Yea sure, I just straight copied that from Mr. Llama who explained the itemization of D2
Donât talk of something doesnât exist yet such as if only rare has 59 affixes or legendary item has 2 affixes at best. The original discussion is you think D2 itemization is better than D3 itemization is because you think rare has its place and I simply correcting you that rare has its place in D2 because most of the D2 uniques are just a glorified stat stick without super power. The moment Infinity and Enigma made their debut, they already secured their designed slot for most classes where rare canât even dream to compete against it.
Donât get it wrong. As long as legendary item is dominating the rare in gear slot because it has legendary power, I am fine with it.
So your enhancing is just a pure number increment in the end? If that is the case, I prefer an item that determines your build over the boring item that enhancing your build.
I rather you stick on what we discussing or arguing instead of keep off-topic (should have follow game A or C). Never forget that Frozen Orb is just one of the rune branch of the Arcane Orb. This is how D3 was designed.
Weaker mean weaker in both games. 20% or 800% is just a number. If you want to go off-track or donât play the game as it intended, then you better go to play solo so you donât have to drag your entire team with your selfishness.
Yes, Type C player made his choice, so he can always play at lower difficulty with other Type C player.
It is good to know that most of them are at least trying to play to win then.
Working as intended. Unstable Scepter is designed what it meant to do.
Donât talk about something that doesnât exist. I donât care how it should be work. You and I know that none of these are going to make it into D3. It is waste of time to even discuss any of them.
Or maybe Type C should learn that they should stop trying to beat the best build with their not-optimized build.
How about you just admit that you are wrong (all wands give 800% damage) instead of moving the goalpost again?
Donât talk about something doesnât exist. The reality is D3 wands are more interesting than a simple wand that grants +8 to all wizard skills.
We are not talking about whether monster immunity should be in the game or not. Monster immunity is a part of D2 features and denying it is just silly at this point.
How about you just stop trying to deny the awesomeness of Infinity?
You should aware that even without 800% bonus, D3 legendary with legendary power will still easily beat the rare. If every D2 unique has D3 legendary power, there is no way D2 rare can compete. And yes, I am talking about D2 rare, not your fictional rare that is at the borderline legendary tier.
That is what I want to hear. And yes, The boots will work like Enigma teleport and offer as many affixes as Enigma did. Because this is what legendary/runeword should look like.
I donât care whether it is infamous or famous, it is the most sought gear from many players. It lives up to its power and hype.
Why donât you just admit that filler stats in D2 item is just bad instead of âif only we crank it upâ because you know it wonât be happening unless there is Remake version of it in the future.
Hence that Blizzard is not going to do that because Blizzard wants CDR is just as competitive as CC and CHD and they succeeded or else later you will complain that everyone is back to stacking CC and CHD.
It is a healthy design. Not every build will go for CDR and not every build will go for hard CC/CHD due to CDR.
Why would the player that went for suboptimal build care about the gap difference again? If you are enjoying your build that clear GR50 at 14 minutes, just keep doing it or lower the GR tier.
Yes.
Hence, legendary consumable for rare in D4.
The d4 developers know it better.
Instead of insulting me for not able to put 2 and together, how about you just stop living in the past?
Ermmm, will try ignore the âbeefâ you guys seem to have ATM for one another and will post my stance on things from sort-of, info posted in topics like this⌠
CD should be avoided whenever possible but not at the cost of spam. One such solution could be:
Itâs better than BOTH (in general) IMO, better than potion-spam as well as CD
Example/s:
Legendary Item 1
- [12-20]% chance to gain shield when stunning (or rooting) an opponent
- While having a shield active your projectile damage and pierce-attack (javelins/spears) damage is increased by [40-80]%
Legendary Item 2
- Dealing lightning damage to nearby enemies has a [10-20]% percent chance to root them for [3-5] seconds
- Lightning damage and bludgeon attacks (maces, hammers) deal [50-80]% more damage to rooted enemies
OR even not entirely item working on itâs own but could enforce some synergy (combined with the item 1:
Legendary Item 3
- Cleave and AoE attacks apply poison/burn effect for [3-5] seconds
- 50% chance to root to poisoned/burned enemies
Legendary Item 4
- Your critical and crushing blow become chain lightning procs to nearby opponents
- Lightning attacks have a [25-50]% chance to create a shield of % damage done for [3-5] seconds
Things like that. We get the point, the important thing is not create skill-specific modifier so can have multiple uses but still: a thing that empowers the Hydra has a good synergy with a thing like âChance to cast a Hydra on attackâ type things
Even if, bad design cause usable for 1 class and 1 build only. May sound attractive at first (especially for those that loot/find it), but often that âone usage onlyâ ends up âabsurd damage amountsâ in order to âcompensateâ for itâs particular usage, and THEN everything goes to hell with it, and everything else instead there could be
Totally agreed, but dealing 40-50-80% at an âinsert type of situationâ is the aim. Make the build FEEL RIGHT but still keep alternatives âaliveâ⌠NOT 800% damage multiplier ffs. WHAT ELSE would compete for such a spot on such a build, a 1500% that happens less often or something ? :P. if so, WHY ?, whatâs the point on shutting down everything else that doesnât those bonuses ?
Nooot quite. The problem of CDR and CD-based design are the following 2 things:
However SOME SKILLS should have CD (most of them escape/mobility, for ex. Teleport or Leap or Dash, Vault, e.t.c.
Though (in general), as others pointed out before:
Should probably stay away from âultsâ as a âdesign goalâ and make them some tier 3.5 style short/rechargeable in order to achieve a goal everything to be relatively reasonable with less than 30 sec CD and have itâs âplaceâ other than in boss fights (or totally broken CDR-based wonât say them builds cause âanomaliesâ is the right way to describe)
For example:
The âConduitâ ability could be made to last 2-3 seconds with a powerful blind effect of affected targets on a 30 sec CD instead of 10 second duration on 120 and focused purely around damage
Summary/Verdict:
There are ways for everything to get solved. You just need to:
Shocker I like something from a game I enjoyed playing but donât remember exact details from it because it has been 16 years since I paid it any real attention.
Idk man, forgetting an item or two is one thing but the entire itemization? Makes me wonder whether you actually played the game for any longer period.
Living in the past? Iâll be the first to recognize that the ARPG genre needs fresh ideas. But the genre still has key elements that need to be respected and done well. When deciding which systems to move on with and build on it is inevtiable to compare with past work. In this particular case we were comparing itemization in D3 with D2, you yourself did this when making the absurd claim that D3 has a superior one. Itâs not my problem you donât know what youâre writing. Comparisons with D4 itemization is premature as we can only speculate what the end result will be. But from what they announced so far it still has a lot of work to do and is not even close to rivalling that of D2. Looks more interesting than the D3 one though, but thatâs not saying much.
Worry not. I am completely aware of what am I writing. Not my fault it isnât aligned with your interest. You should continue do what you did the best here by stand at side and calling others three stooges in your every post.
Thatâs nice and all but your reply before this one makes little sense.
Itâs reserved for you and the two other D3 whiteknights. When you canât even recognize the main problems with D3 (itemization, and character progression) and instead praise those systems itâs pointless to discuss the direction of D4 with you.
Min maxing and delving into the systems were not my concern. Was in college and working full time. D2 was a nice little diversion before I graduated. I may have had 300 total hours across my Paladin and Barbarian. Only cared about killing and finding upgrades to make that a bit easier. Never focused on how many affixes each rarity had nor really cared. If it had an affix and stat I liked and was higher than my current ger it got equipped.
Rares should indeed have their place, but where did you have to correct me? I didnât know I was suggesting something about D2 that was incorrectâŚ
Let me repeat the question you directed at me:
âSo you acknowledge that rare canât beat legendary item with legendary power?â
^^ this is what you asked me and I answered it.
It depends on various factors on whether a rare can beat a legendary that also has a special affix. One of these reasons is the power of the special affix and the other normal affixes on the legendary. Another reason can be that if legendaries have fixed stats, the other normal affixes on a legendary might not be too useful for your build and so you might prefer a rare. Etc.
Enigma and Infinity are weapon and chest armor runewords.
Weapon and chest armor (and off-hand) where the places in D2 where rare and magic items could not compete against uniques and RWâs at all, but they still could do that in other slots.
They should, ⌠in some slots.
Enhaning can mean anything non-skill-specific in this context.
It can be e.g.
You see, that is not all flat numbers and it is rather ironic that you prefer a âSkill X deals 800% increased damage and costs xx% less resourceâ over that, which all is numbers.
I did not even brought up Wolcen and Last Epoch to make it a huge thing, but rather just for references.
The only reason for why I brought up Wolcen and Last Epoch was because you claimed that skill-specific special affixes are better than more universally useful special affixes and then I said that skill-specific things are better put on the skill system and casually mentioned Wolcen and Last Epoch (for references).
That is not me derailing the conversation, that is you blowing things out of proportion that were not even an issue in the first place.
Not for Type C players. They very much care about if it is just 20% or 800%.
As far as I know, the game was designed and intended to focus on players self-expression and hive its focus on viable builds, rather than optimal builds:
Source (starting at 52:14 mark, lasting about 1 minute):
Quote: âIt is totally fine for there to be best builds as long as they donât shut down viable ones.â
No, that is not the correct takeaway from that.
The correct takeaway from this is that for the vast majority of players efficiency is important.
That is different from just playing to win.
Type A only plays to win, but Type C does not, but rather for self-expression while also not wanting to fall behind too much.
That is a huge difference.
Intended? Yes.
Good design? No.
The point was to show how bad D3âs itemization and its underlying design philosophy is. That is why I brought them upâŚ
Didnât you just say earlier that it doesnât matter if you are 15% more powerful or 800% more powerful?
So I think you will be fine if you are just 15% more powerful than other builds, rather than 800% or more.
The point is not whether or not all wands give a xxx% damage bonus to Skill X or not or if there are also other items that do that, but rather that the xxx% increased damage to Skill X effect is taking away choices because it is s ridiculously more powerful than anything else.
In your opinion.
I very much disagree.
You know, I was always of the opinion that D3 should improve upon D2âs itemization and that D2âs itemization obviously had flaws, but instead of doing that, D3 made itemization worse.
And D3 could have made itemization better by having more universally useful special affixes like for example âFor every 30 Fire Resistance you have, gain a 1% chance to cast Meteor Shower on attackâ, that is why I brought up that example.
A wand withâŚ
° for every 30 Fire Resistance you have, gain a 1% chance to cast Meteor Shower on attack
° +5 to Wizard Skills
° and a few other affixes
⌠is much more interesting than âSkill X deals 800% increased damageâ.
That was what I was trying to show hereâŚ
Monster immunity has a massive impact on builds and itemization. That is why it is being brought up here.
I am not denying that it is awesome, I am just saying that it is awesome for the wrong reasons.
Yes, and my opinion is that a lot of these special affixes like 'Aracne Orb explodes twice should not be on an item, but rather on a skill system.
Furthermore, D3 legendaries have by default a larger affix range than rare and magic items (e.g. when a rare rolls with a max of 400 Intelligence, a Legendary can roll with e.g. 550 Intelligence or whatever), so yes, just with this fact alone they would beat rares.
Again, that would depend on how powerful the special affix is, because as I have show to you already, there are items like the unique Ravenfrost ring in D2 that had a special affix on it (you can not be frozen), and still rare rings could compete against it.
So just having a special power does not by default make a unique or legendary better than a rare.
In your opinion.
My opinion is that they shouldnât (at least not always / not in every slot).
Now, counter question:
Do you acknowledge that a rare can beat a legendary/unique that has a special affix, but this special affix not being by far as powerful as giving you unlimited Teleport?
The question is âcanâ, not âshouldâ?
So you wouldnât care if you are famous for brutally killing a lot of people or for being famous because you have created a beloved piece of art?
Anyway, letâs go back to an example I brought up earlier:
Letâs say that starting at one of the higher difficultiy setting, all 30 second the game spawns a powerful, almost invulnerable demon lord that attack you (which is significantly slowing down your process), and the only way to reasonable deal with that would be a rare legendary item that somehow lets you almost instantly obliterate that thing (and only this thing, nothing else) and only this specific legendary has the ability to do so in an efficient way.
Now, this legendary would definitely be memorable, but it does not mean that the reasons for why it is that way (aka bad game design in this specific instance) are good.
Because we are talking about the idea and concept of âfiller statsâ rather than how it was executed.
Your opinion is that filler stats are bad in general, while I say that they have their place if balanced correctly.
But they should or should have.
I already told you how I would get rid of the prevalence of the CHD+CHC combo.
Because they also care about efficiency, that is why.
Efficiency plays a lower role for them than for players that just want to win, but it still is important for them.
They may not play to win, but they still wanna play viable builds (referring back to the idea of âviable over optimalâ).