The main problem I see with D3 is that you have the same chances of getting an upgrade to your gear by doing a GR90 as you have when you do a GR130.
proposed solution: Taper down the loot table when you go above GR 90. As you get closer to 150 remove more and more of the non-class/character-specific items.
If you are above GR90 you do not want a blackthorns cross or the ess of Johan.
This would achieve two things. It would provide more incentive to push yourself to the highest GR you are able to do and It would help with the “Red Beam Of Disappointment”. I would dare say that 95% of the primals I get are worthless. When I get a primal im lucky if my follower can use it as an upgrade
Ultimately, the real solution would be to change the “garbage” legendaries to something that gives them a potential role in the game and a reason to actually want to use them. I actually have less of an issue with Ess of Johan because it can be useful for melee characters (Barbs use WW-hurricane, monks use Cyclone Strike, and Saders have Condemn-Vacuum all for this reason).
Regardless, Blackthorne’s is a totally useless set from the second you hit 70. Many of the classic legendaries “legendary affix” was that they had guaranteed damage rolls like AS or CHD which just doesn’t cut it in a game where you now need 4- or even 5-figure % multipliers. And even many legendaries with multipliers are on skills that are never used and still too low to provide such an incentive. Try playing a GoD6 DH, for example, with any generator other than Hungering Arrow-Devouring. There just isn’t enough legendary support for any other option to be viable.
These are opportunities. Get a list of all of the “garbage” legendaries and start looking for niches that might be fun builds and start creating the legendary support for them.
The pants, that now roll with elemental damage, can now be used i an LoD build, as far as I know, (and I also know that the Ess of Johan has or has had a useful role).
This kind of argument is honestly frustrating because it ignores the point that was being made and presumes to refute it because some minuscule exception might exist.
Yes, the Blackthorne pants can be used. I have a Captain America build (LOD Blessed Shield Crusader) that I made to play around with that uses it for the %elemental damage. That’s not really a counterargument to what I said about the set, though. LOD specifically means I can’t equip the set bonuses. Further, if it didn’t exist, I’d be using the traditional Swampland Waders (the WD pants) that can roll +%elemental damage. This one niche use of a single item (for which there is an alternative) for a C-tier “messing around” build isn’t an argument that Blackthorne’s is properly designed. The fact is that in D3’s set-driven end game, there is no reason to ever use this set, ever. Even the lowest tier class-specific sets are better.
The set needs a redesign, and so do many of the legendaries in the game. They’re opportunities to add actual build diversity back into the game.
Disagreeing with this in general.
All loot should be available at higher and lower end-game difficulties. Only the chance should change. A core pillar of A-RPGs imo.
And the fact that a bunch of items are undesirable speaks mostly to how broken the itemization is. Not to funneling drops even further toward the disastrous “Smart loot” system.
Also, if anything, the higher GRift lvls are already way too rewarding.
I loved that one on followers, though these days there is only room for 1 amulet on followers.
That would be a nightmare with our limited stash space and also very time consuming because every drop could potentially be an upgrade and we could end up spending more time comparing stuff in our inventory and stash than actually playing the game.
First: Option to salvage primals to primal dust as new material
Second new recipe: change a legend of your choice with it’s actuall stats up to primal for materials like for example:
5 primal dust, 30 of each bounty mats, 1.000 of each normal mats, 20 of each hellfire mats and 50 grift keys
You don’t have to do that anymore as Blackthorne pants has elemental damage now. No idea if you were joking or not. Here’s a link to the page that you can read;
In any RPG, regardless of style or who made it, you have to make choices about what to keep and what to throw away. I’m a packrat, naturally, so this is always a pain and I prefer a large, generous stash so I can store items that I might use later. Regardless, my preference to be able to store everything is not a justification for making useless items, or for failing to make useless items useful.
The second part - that it takes time to evaluate items - is not a “problem”. It’s a feature of playing an RPG. You’re constantly evaluating items’ value and you should be. D3’s been broken for a long time in this respect. Absolutely useless items exist. We, as players, have learned to completely ignore them. Entire classes of items: white, blue, yellow are all useless. Blackthorne’s set is useless. Any legendary without an affix is useless and many which have “weak” affixes are deemed “useless.” Over time, we’ve learned to very quickly recognize those things and not even look at them before we hand them to Haedrig to make shards out of. Well over 99% of all drops in the game are totally and completely useless once you hit 70. That’s broken as hell. You’re ok with it because you’ve adapted to it by learning to think of all of those things as crafting mats in another form.
That’s a symptom of a problem. When a legendary item drops, it should be exciting to look at and evaluate it. We should have potential uses for those items. We should want to at least spend 2 seconds comparing it to one we have in the stash or what we already have equipped, rather than mindlessly disenchanting an entire inventory of legendaries as fast as we can click. The core problem is that these items are useless and they shouldn’t be. They need to be redesigned.
Honestly, the most obvious option for Blackthorne’s (the name being an homage to the here of one of Blizzard’s first games), is to make the set into a magic find set. We have sets for GR keys, for death’s breath. Blackthorne’s could be the general magic find one. Given that the only item in the game currently that offers the stat is the Nagelring (which I refuse to use even on a follower because of the unending stream of annoying noises from the goblins), there’s an unfilled niche.
For that to be in any way viable they would need to redesign “find magic”. As you only get 10% of its value towards legendaries it’s more or less useless.
Even more so since the most efficient way to get said legendaries is speedrunning grifts, which the vast majority of us already can do at the dropcap, further reducing any potential value magic find has.
Just the tip of the iceberg really. Then you got Primals, bad ranges, bad items, bad stats. Really that’s why this season is so good because Ethereals fixes a lot of this so that’s why it really doesn’t matter what they come up with next, if it doesn’t have to do with loot it’s going back to disappointing loot / upgrade problem.
What? Sorting loot in a loot hunting game is playing the game. The reason this game becomes so drab a week or two in the season is because there is no loot hunt, and the game devolves into Rift-Runner Pro. Grinding paragon endlessly may be fun for you, but it is not for a lot of people. Grinding +5 more main-stat as the only end game option is terrible design.
Absolutely right, and something I probably should’ve thought about. They effectively removed magic find as a mechanic in D3, even though it’s still there in name. And I honestly agree with the design choice to encourage players to simply build the build they want rather than a pre-defined MF set/build like you’d use in D2.
I kept thinking of how you would design a set that would appeal to all classes. Loot farming seemed the obvious choice, but really, even then the class-specific sets are better because they let you play the way you want.
I’m not sure if I could come up with an idea for a set of bonuses that would appeal to all 7 classes to give Blackthorne’s a purpose.
I’m not asking for major changes. I think doing a basic pass over these clearly outdated items and then changing some of the affixes to give them more power is a simple project. Testing naturally takes time and they could roll out new ones with the seasons as they’re ready.
I do occasionally post broader statements because I know D4’s still very much in development and could be changed. Some of these key ideas could be addressed by that team, even if D3’s on auto-pilot now.
And there I was thinking who cares about Paragon I’m here for the killing and apparantly being here for the killing is the wrong reason to play and should only play for Paragons
I’m still on the lookout for good ancient versions of rings and amulets for the two classes I play this season and there could be upgrades in other areas too. So the loot hunt is still there for me.
Actually this season show very nicely what could better loot table and legendary drop rate do to the game. We can compare to ethereals.
Even after many weeks of season, I haven’t grown tired to check ethereals. Reason being much greater than 1% change of getting item being at least worth comparing to my current ones.
When with regular and ancient legendaries, change is super low.
Need to be correct item. Maybe about 5% of items are.
Need to be ancient. 10%.
Need to be correct rolls, based on items 0.1-20% have. Late in the season only those lower probability items are interesting anymore.
All in all, if playing a lot I need to look a little too many items.
And how to solve it: Tune all rng levels a little to be more friendly and rewarding. Closer to same feeling as ethereals have now (but also more rewarding at higher level):
More rewarding: Extend better loot changes at least to GR 130 instead of 90. Do it so that only starting from 130 we get same amount of items than current 90. Or maybe even at 150.
Better change to get ancient at higher level. Not by too much.
Tune loot table so that we get usable ancient items about the same amount as currently, but other items (blackthorne etc) less (considering less loot after steps 1 and 2)
Tune those rolls. Make higher % of drops to be usable by always having sockets etc. But again without power creep so that total amount of dropping items is less.
Less loot means less crafting materials, make them drop some other way.
Would need of course much more consideration on details, but current trash item amount is just too much.
