After seeing all of the complaints about tempering, I came up with an idea to solve it.
Before getting to that, I wanted to see how bad the tempering system really is (assuming no weighting), to better explain why it’s a problem (if it is indeed a problem), and how to fix it.
So, I wrote an application that rolls up to 100 million items, until it gets an item with the correct 2 tempers both with the maximum value (assuming 10 steps on the values. i.e., 2/4/6/8/10/12/14/16/18/20).
So, here’s some results from the application:
Results
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Total Rolls: 2
First item with 1 correct temper: 1
First item with both correct tempers: 2
First item with 1 perfect temper value: 2
First item with 1 perfect and 1 correct temper: 2
Item with both perfect temper values: 2
Results
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Total Rolls: 5
First item with 1 correct temper: 1
First item with both correct tempers: 2
First item with 1 perfect temper value: 5
First item with 1 perfect and 1 correct temper: 5
Item with both perfect temper values: 5
Results
====================
Total Rolls: 64
First item with 1 correct temper: 1
First item with both correct tempers: 27
First item with 1 perfect temper value: 17
First item with 1 perfect and 1 correct temper: 52
Item with both perfect temper values: 64
Results
====================
Total Rolls: 31
First item with 1 correct temper: 1
First item with both correct tempers: 1
First item with 1 perfect temper value: 3
First item with 1 perfect and 1 correct temper: 3
Item with both perfect temper values: 31
Results
====================
Total Rolls: 78
First item with 1 correct temper: 1
First item with both correct tempers: 5
First item with 1 perfect temper value: 1
First item with 1 perfect and 1 correct temper: 10
Item with both perfect temper values: 78
Honestly, after seeing these results I actually don’t think there’s that much of a problem.
For clarification, the application does the 2 free rolls first, and then only rolls on a temper if it’s not “perfect”, and it does it alternatively between the 1st and 2nd temper. Read into that what you will.
It also chooses a random item with 0 to 3 GA, which increases the number of roll attempts per item up to 3 additional rolls.
In all tests I’m assuming that both temper recipes have 4 options, and that there are 10 values from worst to best for each. Granted some only have 3, some have 5 and a few (although the ones that you less likely care about which option you get) have 6; 4 seems like a good middle ground for testing.
I’m not sure how many steps actually exist in the game, it could be 5, 10, or 20 for all I know - I’m sure someone does know this information and I can re-run with the value easily once I know the number of steps.
You can see from the above results that getting both ‘correct’ tempers on an item, even when trying to reroll for a perfect stat each time you normally get it within 5 items. 27 is an outlier, but I would need to run this thousands of times and collate and average the data to give better stats (which I’ve not yet yet).
Now, assuming that people think based on this data that tempering is still a problem, because I mean who want to reroll 78 items in order to get both tempers with perfect stat rolls (especially on 3GA items), there’s a potential solution for this. Of course, bricking an item should still be a thing, but increasing your chances of getting what you want should also be a thing, and doing it efficiently is kind of the goal here.
The Solution
When visiting the Blacksmith, you should be able to place your item in and choose “both” of the temper recipes that you want.
Then when you roll, you roll both tempers with a single charge, effectively doubling the number of temper rolls you have, and instantly halving the number of times you have to roll to get a perfect temper.
In addition, when you get one of the tempers you want (even if the roll isn’t good), you can “lock” that temper, and it will still reroll it (to try and get a better value) but it will not replace it with an alternative temper.
This will give you a massively increased chance at getting a perfect or even good roll on each temper and allow you to use ALL of your temper charges without risking bricking the item once you’ve got the right temper affix.
The last change would be that the blacksmith REMEMBERS your temper choices for the item. You can obviously change your mind if you want, but once you’ve made your choices, you can just hit “Temper item” or whatever the button may be, to reroll it. No separate popup/animation, no having to go into each temper option and select the recipe, just simply hit the button to try again.
This will likely mean that you can get the perfect tempers on any gear in a dozen items or so and will almost certainly allow you to get both of your tempers to be the ‘correct’ one in 1 to 3 items.
The benefit here is that your 3GA items will more than likely get the ‘correct’ tempers, they just might not necessarily be perfect. You can then use that item and go farming for another one in hopes to improve the rolls.
If the Scroll of Re-Tempering just increases the number of rerolls on the item to 5 + number of GAs, without wiping the existing temper choices/values etc… Then you’re even more likely to get what you want.
I don’t think this is “necessary”, I don’t think Tempering is broken, but enough people have a problem with it that I think this solution will generally make people happy, without making it so easy that the perfect rolls are guaranteed, and that bricking no longer happens.