Honest Question on the Tempering Debate

PC General Discussion
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From the few threads I have read there seems to be a group of people who rabidly defend the current RNG system especially that of tempering. This is fine, RNG is a part of the game and a fun part (at times). I was simply curious as to why a subset of players hate the idea of allowing a more forgiving tempering system. Is it the rush of chasing near impossible odds? Is it fear that the game will become too easy or watered down? Do you build around the items that drop rather than farming specific items for a build? It’s an honest question.

For me this game is about incremental progression. Farm, get a slightly higher roll, tweak gear, push the next pit level, repeat. I just want to understand the other side of the fence.

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I’m not a fan of tempering haven’t been since the PTR, but I don’t think it should be changed just because it may “brick items”. There needs to be strong limits on how easy it is to get desired affixes. If it weren’t for the bad rolls tempering would make gearing up trivial, may as well just give us an order form to give to the blacksmith for whatever we want. That said I am reallly, no Really getting tired of duplicate rolls.

Adding cost is not the answer, for many that is easily gotten around and the same people complaining now would complain it’s too expensive. Adding hold on a roll isn’t good either, if it’s good enough to hold that’s where you stop or else take your chances. I just don’t feel a game should just hand out stuff like candy, which D4 already is pretty dang close too.

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That is one of the more reasonable takes I have seen. I do agree that getting good gear should be difficult, but to me the super good gear is that double or triple greater affix that happens to drop with the stats you want. As it stands, I have only had two triples drop this season neither of which had relevant stats, which is fine. I think picking the affix and rolling the stat with a fixed number of rolls is the best answer that will appeal to both crowds. Maybe you roll a 35 on a stat that is 20-45 and have one roll left, do you get greedy and go for a higher roll or hold what you got? This adds both agency for the player and that aspect of risk vs reward and RNG that so many players enjoy.

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There is an assumption being made by some that if they complain enough they’ll get it so they can have more rerolls or resets or some other means of taking their current item and rolling until it’s perfect.

This is very much not likely to happen. Just as masterworking in the PTR wasn’t really about “failing” (it was cost obfuscation), tempering isn’t a crafting system, it’s part of the drop system. Tempering is the compromise that drastically improves the odds for the player from needing to drop 5 affixes from very big pools to 3 affixes from relatively small pools, and 2 affixes from very small player chosen pools.

When they “fixed” masterworking, did they just drop the idea of high costs? No, they just made them more transparent. It’s quite possible the player was better off “failing” in the system we saw in PTR, than the costs we see now with masterworking.

Tempering is the same way, it’s not likely to become the perfect item paradise it’s detractors think. The devs have a vision for the economy of this game, and that includes very rare, borderline impossible to obtain gear. While they’ve ceded ground here and there, particularly with uber uniques, they’ve remained steadfast, even in the new itemization system, that some gear have the potential to be very, very strong but exceedingly rare.

The problem is, the players disagree. They may say they want such gear in the game, but when they see the possibility of a perfect 3 greater affix drop, they assume they’re entitled to it becoming a perfect 5 affix tempered item. That’s simply not how this is designed, and unless the devs radically change course, any change to tempering is not likely to result in that.

I fully expect, at some point, a change to tempering because the feedback against the current idea has been so large. It shouldn’t be, as every player here has dealt with nearly perfect items dropping before, and that’s all this really is. But there’s admittedly a psychological effect here in the player playing a bigger role in the final outcome that just doesn’t seem to allow many players to accept this system. So while I think it will change, I warn everyone that you may like the new system even less.

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I actually liked pure RNG drops better than the current tempering system. It just feels like a bait and switch now.

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Well, I prefer by far the tempering

Where you’ll easily get 4/5 pieces , or 5/5 pieces , depending on what temper recipes you are going for

Of course, hitting those very specific tempering recipe is that is 1/5 chances to get what u want will always be hard

I’m up to pit 45 now, and i havent bricked a single item yet
I mean, are they perfect items, with perfect tempers, of course not , but they are useable/fine for me

I need to run more pits, to get all Masterwork to 8/12, then i’m pretty confident i wont have much problem doing Pit 61 , and honestly, thats all i need really, for what I’m doing :slight_smile:

Oh Btw, I’m still level 98, playing minionnova ( completely off meta )

Still a bunch of Glyph to level up as well

I only have 1 item with 2 Greater Affixes, So lots of room for improvment there

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I dont like the idea of a WAY more forgiving system because you never get an exciting roll on tempering. Ive ruined gear it sucks. But if the suggestion is to make it reset then there is no point to the system at all. Why not get blank gear and you can affix whatever you want and just create perfect gear? Thats what it amounts to. This is a better way than getting rando drops with 5 affixes and having no way to improve them or having any control on the outcome of the affixes. What people are mad about is having a multi greater affix piece not turning into a piece of godly gear because of bad rng in tempering… Its not minmaxed… Oh well. The fact that you have a 3 MA piece is already top tier. Remember when you would get a drop with 3 good affixes 2 bad. Enchant one off and it was really good? This is that. People cant cope with not getting perfect affixes because the possibility is now there instead of the random bloated chaos it was before. And when that doesnt shake out they are mad. What if it hit? Think they’d come on here to tell us all how insane it felt to hit a perfect 2/2 temper on a 3 GA piece? Nnnnnn I dont think so

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It atleast gives you a chance to somewhat narrow down 2 of the affixes. Before getting a 4/5 strictly from drop was like looking for a specific needle in a stack of needles. Suspecting the whole time that it might not even be in there.

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when I first saw the temper mods I thought they were like the suffixes in d3 - useful stuff like resist element but not ultra powerful. Well then we get all the op ones and they become the most important stat on an item and then run the risk of bricking said item so…

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There are too many build specific stats from tempering. For example, if you are playing a shadow summoner necro and you are tempering an offensive stat, you rolls are:
Damage to cursed
Macabre damage
Iron maiden damage
Corpse tendrils damage

Damage to cursed is the best stat for the item, while the others do nothing at all. The other skills aren’t even on your bar except corpse tendril, but who thought damage to corpse tendrils would be something anyone picks for any build at any stage of the game???

The variance is way too big, the other stats don’t need to be BIS, but it shouldn’t be a 100 or 0 roll.

Maybe they could let you pick 4 stats from the category you are rolling from and make your own buckets, so if you don’t get your best stat at least you can get something else you can use

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Personally speaking I couldn’t care less either way if it gets changed to allow more rerolls or a resetting option. If it happens, it happens, won’t take away my enjoyment of the game.

However I have noticed some people advocating for no changes, are like you said thinking the game would go down the wrong path and make it easier in the long run. Scenarios of potentially picking your own stats whenever you wanted, which just seems absurd, but people love to over exaggerate.

That leap in logic is just dangerous in general. You get people insinuating the game might as well play itself at that point, over a simple choice players can make. While hilarious, it’s completely unfounded. I don’t know of any Diabloish ARPGs that let you do this in any fashion.

When taken from the perspective of game design you do need some give and take though. There need to be consequences to actions within any video game. Now I’m not saying there can’t be tweaks or alterations, but you have to look at both sides.

Regardless of what they do, or don’t do with tempering, they’ll never please everybody. They just have to hope enough people agree with their decision or don’t care enough and just keep playing the game.

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All in all it’s just another brick in the wall…hehe

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at the end of the day, you end up with a piece of gear that has 4 great stat and 1 useless stat

quite similar to the experience we had previously

the only difference is how they toyed with my emotion

previously, if i dont get a perfect gg item, well that is it right? i got a A- item, not bad, i am pretty happy, 7/10 would farm again.

now you got a seemingly perfect god tier gg item, only for it to brick it and turn it into a freaking A- item, same quality as before except now i was happy then get curb stomped back into reality.

that pissed off a lot of people

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getting bad tempers is only terrible when you literally lose a build enabling mod. ie. you dont hit Heart seeker repeat. in any other cases your weapon is still functional minus 2-5% of your min maxed ideal. In any case, bricking items should not be removed. Unless you want an item editor and trivialize the game. POE current league did it and died faster then ever, item editors are always bad ideas, besides unbeatable mechanics lmao.

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  1. I find some keyboard jockeys are just here to debate but don’t really have first hand experience on the matter. I recall one discussion where they were completely adamant that a part of sorc unique boots were BIS for a barb…but I think they were unaware that item could not be equiped by the other classes.

  2. Maybe they have BIS 3 GA rolls and dont want anyone else to have good gear too. :rofl:

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I find the tempering system to be very vanilla. There are clear winners and losers among the stats you have to choose when adding them to your gear and most of them are flat damage numbers.

The new system has made legendary items the most important items in the game and rendered all but a handful of uniques mostly obsolete. The chase items are now master working materials.

I’ve had fun with my shadow freeze summon Necro and also the DS twister Barb, mostly because of changes made to the game and how certain affixes interact with one another which I enjoy far more than upgrading or adding affixes to my gear.

It’s a start at least, but I hope they bring more transformative options to the table or at least let us customize the uniques a bit. Those feel the worst to masterwork if you use them because getting a masterwork roll on a throw away stat feels dow right awful. Its happened to me 2x now taking a unique item to level 8.

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I’ve noted Tempering is more critical to some classes than others.

For instance a Bash Barb could go without their 3rd Bash damage on already 3,000%+. A Sorc getting double cast however is critical to them doing damage.

As a Sorc you’re better off with a normal item that rolled double cast than you are with a 3 BS (Ancient) roll item that didn’t manage to roll double cast. Because it’s a total damage multiplier.

The temper roll value itself is likely what creates the gap in opinions.

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Here is the thing. Diablo 4 has a lot of problem/issues. There are many solutions but not every solution is actualy making the game better.

Making it hard to get the right “Temper” is good. But why do we need another RNG system. You already have the RnG factor in finding the item. It`s like you buy a scratch car, win and then befoere you get your money you need to make another scratch card and win again to get the money from the original card. This is bollocks.

There are other better solutions. Like making the player do some risk reward fights. Other games have done that. In Nioh you can upgrade an Item at a shrine, you offer it, you need to win a mission then and if you do the item gets upgraded and if not the item is lost forever.

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The point is that being able to pick your own stats sucks the fun out of the game, and making a big mini game out of it doesn’t solve the problem. For example, if they just put tempering affixes in the normal drop pool and had drops with 5 affixes, but then allowed you to enchant every affix slot and let enchants crit as GAs, the game would be about farming gold/mats to earn enough to reroll each slot into the perfect item, then spending time doing hundreds or thousands of rolls at the enchanter.

Putting a hard limit on tempering means that you have to get back out into the game and find another drop. This is a ton of fun until you reach the stage where the only drops that could possibly matter are multiple-GA versions of the exact items you already have. At that point, farming items isn’t any more interesting than farming mats, because you are just farming for the exact same item every time. It’s actually more annoying, because you have to keep checking the stats of the drops.

So I think they need some evolution of the loot system at that stage that makes sense for the tail end of progression. Like maybe allow you to smash one item into another, and if they share any affixes, the receiving item has a chance to get the roll value of that affix from the donating item. Other affixes are lost.

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“more forgiving” system is only on paper.
When those systems have reset option - they become 100% timegating system. Either it should be free choice what stat do you want or full rng all other options are timegating.