Dropped Item Power Should Increase With Difficulty and Player Level (WT4 Endgame) is

PC General Discussion
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As far as I understand it, dropped Item Power range is random, and based on world tier only.

Here’s a quote from a Blizzard rep.

The actual quote:

Monsters that are level 90 and above cannot drop any higher gear for you. So basically, the highest level item you can get is basically a level 90 item in Diablo IV. Everything you fight after that doesn’t account for in terms of power scaling. And again, those are Ancestral Items, you could get that power level 90 item effectively, as soon as you hit level 70.

I think item power drops should follow a normal distribution (a bell curve) with the mean centered at your player level. Difficulty should skew this curve based on monster level.

If I’m level 70 in WT 4, the mean should be centered around 725 item power. If I’m level 100, The mean should center at 820, maybe 800 so there’s still some variation (the hard cap is 820 as far as I know [barring special rares from special elites]). If I’m fightning level 120 monsters in a Nightmare dugneon, the curve should skew higher, the most skew for the highest difficulty content and highest level monsters.

I’m currently building a dataset comparing normal dungeon loot to the same dungeon level 55+ NM dungeon loot. It’s dead even so far. Mean item level, drop rate, ancestral and sacred drop rate are eerily similar.

The way it works now, there’s no reward for doing high difficulty Nightmare dungeons. Random item power drops make it so doing the easiest content possible to kill and loot faster is the best way to get higher item power weapons, and even armor with the specific rolls we are looking for.

There should be an incentive to playing the game at higher difficulties. There should be an incentive to continue playing the game at level 100, besides trying to beat NM tier 100 or uber Lillith. In order to find the items we would need to even attempt 90+ NM dungeons or think it’s even possible to beat Lillith, we need higher item power weapons, which currently are equally likely to drop at level 70 doing normal dungeons. According to Blizzard.

This doesn’t make sense, and it’s not good game design.

Lets also discuss Special Elite monster items that drop above the 820 cap.

These items drop up to 845 item power. This is incredibly valuable for weapons. Not all weapon types are available from these monsters. 2 handed maces, axes, 1 handed axes all do not drop from any of these monsters. So there is a huge imbalance in the base damage certain classes and builds can acquire. A Best In Slot weapon at Item Power 820 is better than an 845 special rare item because they drop 3 stat and with pretty bad rolls.

Are there plans to expand the available special elite item drops to include all weapon types? This would at least give all builds a viable stat stick weapon to acquire if they choose to do so, until a high item power weapon (810-820) from the normal pool drops. And if you fix the way item power drops work, we could have a reliable way to see higher item power weapons that are much better than these special items.

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Didn’t get to see your response before it was deleted

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The game is not based around leveling though, this isn’t D3 it’s closer to D2 or PoE

Most people will likely finish the seasons between 85 and 95.

in poe I have completed the season challenge, killed the ubers and finished the seasonal content in many seasons and generally don’t even hit 90

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Every single ARPG is about leveling. If you don’t play the game past a certain point that’s fine, but that’s not how the game is designed.

They put Nightmare dungeons up to tier 100 in the game for people to have something to continue striving for. They put Uber Lillith in the game for the same reason. Gear progression based on items power is the road to attempting these challenges. Try to think outside of this box you’ve created and look at the whole game.

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No, they aren’t, they’re about gear and completing goals. You could likely clear uber lilith before 100

Leveling is secondary to completing those goals.

Doing the seasonal challenges, completing the season, and kill the ubers in PoE IS the game

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Have you tried uber lillith? I’m 97, and know people at 100 that don’t come close to beating her.

So if leveling is secondary, why put any paragon points in your board? Because leveling enables you to beat the challenges. Try getting 40/40 challenges in POE at level 60 with no passives allocated. I’ll just agree to disagree about leveling being fundamental to every ARPG its not really on topic for this post.

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Leveling is a product of doing the content, not a requirement to do the content, it does make it EASIER, but you don’t need to be 100 with a full passive board to complete the season, and you likely don’t need to be 100 to kill uber lilith, but it’s new and people haven’t gotten it down to brass tacks yet.

Just like you don’t need to be 70 for wt4 or 50 for wt3

You are in end game at WT4 and the fact that you can get the best gear starting at 60 shows that is exactly what the devs intend

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I think higher item power gear on average should drop when you do harder content and are higher level. Looks like you disagree.

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TBF, you have a higher RATE of higher ilvl as you do harder content.

level 73 dungeons barely drop ancestral gear (1-5 pieces) but a lvl 85 nm dungeon drops a lot more (15-20)

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Yeh as a HoTA player there is NO 2h mace. But my rogue friend has 2h Xbow with perfect rolls, daggers and swords from rare elites at his disposal.

What gives?

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Lol stop talking about things you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Uber Lilith is not beatable under level 100, a bunch of level 100s have struggled and failed, the level disadvantage is crazy. Sure you might get lucky at level 95 but that is going to be a small census of players lucky enough to do it under level 100

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It’s early on, people don’t know everything about it yet and we don’t have whatever is going to happen during the season that will likely change the way it’s played.

Most people will likely never even hit 100 or try uber lilith they’ll just completely the seasonal stuff and move on til next season

Uber lilith/leveling to 100 is generally something only the hardcore of hardcore do in games like this, like hitting 99 on D2

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This is not true. I’ve tested it. I actually did another test just now.

Level 55 NM dungeon
9 ancestral pieces
6 sacred pieces
1 legendary sacred

same dungeon but normal, not NM

7 ancestral pieces
1 unique ancestral (mad wolf’s glee) item power 809!
5 sacred pieces

The elites dropped veiled crystals more often in the normal dungeon instead of rares due to chance, so a few less rares overall.

There is no difference in the loot drop rate. There is no difference in ancestral drop rate. There is no difference in item power distribution. This is problem I’m talking about.

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That’s not my experience, i barely get any ancestral in my normal dungeons but get rained on in my NM.

It’s also how the devs said it should be, so you probably just got unlucky in your NM or lucky in your normal, RNG is fickle

Fact is though, their design intention is for you to be able to get the best gear starting at 60

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What level are you? Because I’ve tested this a lot and the loot is the same regardless of difficulty, NM of any tier 21-69, or normal dungeon. One test isn’t a large enough sample size, I get it, but I’ve been testing this since I got to world tier 4, and so have a lot of high level people in my clan and we all have the same experience.

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The character i’ve been running lately is 70, so normal dungeons are 73 level mobs and nm dungeons are 85-90 lvl mobs

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Do some testing and take some data. The mean item power from my normal dungeon run was 735. The mean item power from the level 55 NM dungeon was 725. Even if it’s a small sample, that seems crazy to me. level 95 monsters in the normal dungeon, 109 in the level 55 nightmare.

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If I play my rogue later I will, it’s barb leveling day today, unfortunately leveling to 50 still matters :stuck_out_tongue:

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D2 was based off leveling you could get the same item at 2 different levels and the higher level item will be better, so getting the highest level of that item would be the goal

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D2’s drops were based on monster level, not character level, same with poe