Just because you type the words out…doesn’t make them true. fireball enchant literally explodes entire packs of mobs on its own. Firewall exponentially ramps up damage on single target and on AoE packs. They inherit the skill and legendary passives. It’s not even on the same planet as 5% crit. It’s not even worth having this convo with you.
It’s 5% crit and +15 essence (or other choices) and if you’re going to do it, you’ll also spend the points to make it 8% crit and 24 essence.
Corpse explosion already does that. Dealing 42% weapon damage as an explosion when you kill something is good. But 8% crit works on bosses and 24 extra essence can trigger a cascade of damage bonuses from high essence across the skill tree.
No it doesn’t. It adds a 5% chance of 75% more damage. Pretty easy to get more than that from 8% crit.
Most of the enchants don’t inherit anything from legendaries unless legendaries is designed for the enchant version and there could just as easily be legendaries for sacrifices. Does the fireball explosion actually inherit fireball aspects and skill passives?
Crit chance and essence benefit enable other abilities too, though. And combined they are a big buff. Big enough that getting 3% crit and 9 max essence from 3 points of a passive node would be a great passive node.
The vast majority of Sorc enchants are clearly worse than the buffed sacrifice. If one or two are better (and I’m not convinced firewall is better), that just means those ones are unbalanced (since they are also therefore way better than the other Sorc ones).
And the minions are often going to be better than having 8% crit and +24 essence, even though they take up a slot on the bar.
Ok BUT
the sorc passives require at least 1 skill point to function, more to be powerful
The Necro ones do not
There won’t be any class sets in D4. The devs said they’re moving away from sets.
Complexity isn’t everything
Like it just the way it is, they can add later a couple or few more mechanics late game to make it more “spicy”, as for now it’s cooked just the right amount 
Correct me if I am wrong…
But I thought the codex aspects were the minimum power that aspect can be, and in order to max out the potential you still need to find that aspect from drops since it will be a better roll?
So technically you are going to want to find a world drop to replace all the aspects that you are using from the codex no?
the last I heard was that they are not including sets at launch until they get them right
which would mean that we are in fact going to see sets again?
The livestream I watched basically said sets were a bad system for gearing and restricted playing your way because you had to have the set to compete and that’s what they want to get away from so no sets in Diablo 4
ok, my info was from game director Joe Shely on a roundtable interview back in Feb…i think?
But clearly said they are simply not having them at launch, but will eventually. Im sure part of that was eliminating class sets as they exist in D3.
I kinda hope that means we may see Sigons set again or others like it!
Smaller sets like 3-piece would be totally ok if balanced properly and not being mandatory. We need more different and diverse ways of gearing up other than unique and legendary items. So hopefully runes will come soon as well.
Set items are a bad idea as it pigeonholes playstyle. Generally Set Items fall into 1 of 2 categories: Absolutely mandatory and build defining - or - worthless. Having flexibility in how you gear and build is very important.
It should not ever be obvious which Aspects to take. There should always be more options available than you can conceivably build for. It is pretty smart that the way the Aspects work, certain Aspect types can only appear on certain gear slots also. Having categories of Aspects also you can pick between more Offensive, Defensive, Utility, or Mobility. Some builds will have all the power they need from Skills and Paragon and desperately be lacking Resource managaement or Defense.
Personally, I think they can introduce a Rune System in a couple of different ways also. The 1st being creating a Gear Slot specifically for a Rune, very similar to Grim Dawn. For those unfamiliar, it adds a Movement Skill that has stats, +Skill, +Stats, Lucky Hit, and Abilities. The Movement Skills are classified differently as Charge, Engage, Disengage, AoE etc. This effectively gives you an additional Aspect Slot, which the most obvious choice being the choice between Movement, Utility, and Defensive Aspects only. There would be unique specific Aspects that can only roll on the Rune.
The second method would be to basically introduce a modified Gem system from Lost Ark. Instead of Gems, they are Runes. You would be given a certain amount of Slots and from there, you can build different Runewords. Some Runewords may require perhaps only 2 Runes, where others may require more or even the max slots. The Runes by themselves would provide different bonuses unique to the Rune. This basically replicates the Runeword system from D2, just not on Gear requiring Sockets and transforming your gear.
The twist to the Runeword system is that the Runes would provide Unique benefits NOT available in current itemization typically rather than it be basically a replica extra layer to Aspects. This can be anywhere from granting an Extra Skill slot for Runeword Abitilities, to Magic Find, Gold Find, Vendor Prices, Gamble Chance, Highlighting Enemies through walls, Weak Point exposure, Stagger Build, Stagger Damage multiplier, Passive Resource Regeneration, Skill Procs, etc. There is a lot of potential in a system like this.
perhaps do a search on the interview the game director had when he talked about what they are doing with sets and draw your own conclusions.
But it really seems like they are returning to D4 sometime after launch.
Personally I feel that many people dont quite grasp how the paragon boards are going to work, there is going to be a lot of importance on how you choose progress in them. From the nodes you are after, to the order in which you take certain boards and if you rotate them or not , to which nodes you upgrade and why etc
I really reaaally hope a fun and interesting rune system returns!
most people don’t get OP’s point. The skill tree should play equal role 50:50 vs item rather than 10:90. “If that item wasn’t dropped then the build is pffff”.
When you design something that entirely depends on rng it’s a flawed design plain and simple.
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That’s just your experience with diablo.
As long as they don’t cover your whole character but only 2-4 pieces per set, they are just another item type and "completely mandatory or worthless comes down to balance just like any other item type like unique, legendary or magic items (which are currently worthless)
Every single game that has sets, not even Diablo Set Items suck. You are having to itemize how a Developer has planned for you to itemize. Splitting sets is no different. Grim Dawn is no different. Lost Ark is nothing BUT set items. The concept of tying it particularly to gear is a really bad idea. You can break it from gear like a Rune system and it is a little less sucky, but at that point what is your Set Bonus? It is basically another Aspect or Paragon Glyph. If you have Runewords (Sets) the bonuses need to be Unique.
Even then, it will ultimately just mean everyone who has a Bleed Build has either “A” 6-piece set, “B” 4-piece and “C” 2-piece etc. This is exactly what happened with the Card system in Lost Ark. It is a Set system not part of gear and has different qty of card sets. What happens however is DPS basically all uses (1) Awakening 6-Card set and Support uses another 6-Card set. Nevermind the like 40 Card sets that go completely unused because they are outclassed.
It’s not 10:90. Many aspects you need can be reliably acquired. Building around RNG aspects is a choice you can make, but you can still control that RNG in many ways.
I agree with most of what you said, but it’s not at all necessary for sets to be build defining in order to be useful. One example would be to have sets that give bonuses to specific types of affixes or aspects or skills as set rewards and that can be imprinted with whatever aspects but otherwise roll just like rares.
This is correct. The codex aspects are just a quick and easy way to get legendaries and they are all at the minimum power for that aspect. They all are available as drops too and have the potential to be much stronger.
A set bonus can be anything tho.
I understand, but if we take a closer look, you will see most of aspects from dungeon are mediocre, can not be compared with random drop (rng). You don’t get that particular item? your build is meh, like the game shapes your playstyle, when it should be you. Also those tiny +3% make the tree feel bored and meaningless.
I honestly don’t think this should be a mandatory case
You have a gear and a skill tree, combine them both for max outcome, don’t see the problem
Every skill level increases damage output by 10% (not sure about how the Defensive or CD-based skills work though), BUT
The difference between having a good weapon and, having a good weapon and also having skills is 10% power per level… Perhaps not that noticeable at start grows up and it’s NOT insignificant either…
Just a quick example - having a 500DPS weapon and a lvl1 Hydra will do like 70 per hit ?, and having a 500DPS weapon and a lvl7 Hydra will do about 130 (or if you want to compare - a lvl7 Hydra will do the same damage with around a 300DPS weapon as opposed to a 500DPS one)
I mean sure, they could reduce the starting damage of skills by say some 10% and then increase damage per level upgrade to 12% instead of 10% (make the level upgrades more noticeable early on, and eventually eat-up a greater total % of the whole pie), but don’t think it’s a “design-level” problem/issue as it obviously WORKS tbh