Let's talk about affixes / itemization [rant + ideas for improvements]

PC General Discussion
1

How is it that someone thought that adding a giant list of “dmg to X” was creative and then others signed off on it? Not trying to be an a$$ but it is just baffling to me :frowning:

In no way does the many affixes that fundamentally do the same thing make the itemization interesting, all you’ve done is arbitrarily make it a lot harder for us to get good gear and gave us a false sense of choice. It lacks creativity but most importantly it lacks interesting decision making for the players when gearing out their characters.

We need more affixes that fundamentally do something different, instead of more of the same stuff but worded differently. Instead of a zillion dmg to X affixes, why not make the amount of them a lot less… something like this:

  • main stat
  • all stats
  • crit chance
  • crit dmg
  • vulnerable
  • dmg to close
  • dmg to distant
    (you can also reduce the amount of defensive affixes too)

You could then put in things that allows the player to sacrifice offense/defense for more fun or utility things such as:

  • 0.1% chance on kill to spawn a random elite / or goblin
  • x% chance to cast [random spell here] on [condition]
  • magic find

You can also take the same approach to the paragon board and glyphs too… get more creative with the rare node effects, don’t just put more of the same stuff we have already got heaps of all over our gear… why not some completely new things even?

  • +1 evade charge
  • do X on evade (different for every class)
  • potions also do X when injured
  • if healthy potions do X

You could even get even more creative and have nodes that do things like:
If movement speed is > 170 - x% chance to knock down an enemy when running into them (for druid/barb)

Don’t even get me started on legendary nodes… some of them are extremely laughable… 3 fury on weapon swap, I don’t even… speaking of legendary nodes though…

ALL Legendary nodes should have bonus effects that have a big stat requirements to unlock. Not necessarily just str/int/dex/willpower either… you could have a requirement be X resource or crit chance > 70% etc etc.

So you would then get the nodes base effect while leveling that you use like normal but then if you meet the requirements later on (would be hard) you get something else of significance (utility or gameplay changing = best… not just more numbers go up plz)

A quick example could be something like this for a barbarian legendary node additional effect:

  • Requires 1400 str / 150 movespeed.
    While moving you have a x% chance to create mini earthquakes (half size of normal ones?).

Thematically I think you can all understand how it makes sense, the barbarian has built up so much power (str/movespeed) and now as he roams his mere steps quake the earth under him!

Please note, this and the other examples I have used are just there to try and convey the idea, not actually saying the examples given are neccesarily a good etc.

Oh also… whoever thought that the “life regen while not damaged recently” was somehow a good idea… like I get it, you thought that people could go low on health and then pop a barrier/shield and then the life regen will kick in and it will be amazinggggg… what??? facepalm

Please actually think about the REASON for something existing! What problem is it solving? what choice does it give the player? We have potions galore and they drop very often… so this sort of stat is not fit for purpose at all >_<

It’s almost 6am so i’ll actually think of some better stuff tomorrow but just wanted to rant a bit, it’s baffling to me how bland stuff is when you break it down. I’ll end this here for the night, hopefully I wake up to some good dicussion!

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DW, Necroing this deliberately cause don’t want to write a 20th thread on the same topic:

1st things 1st - honestly don’t think that the conditional bonuses are bad, it’s that the numbers are low… Would much rather have a Dagger that does 500 dps and 65% bonus damage to close targets than a one that does 800 dps and does 8% bonus to close targets (simply feels less of a Dagger)

Now, the thing I wanna focus on which is - kinda realized why Itemization is boring in D4 - does not “cycle” enough, i.e. tiers don’t change rolls enough overall

First 10 levels roll like exclusively Resistances, Close/Range DPS and +X to main stats
Then 10 to 20 things like CC and CC reduction along with Crit and LH start rolling
Then at around 25 most of the new rolls are on Boots and Pants slots along with +1 to skill X (or +1 to X skills when Amulet is in question), and say + X to maximum Life here and there on a Ring or Helm for ex.
Then at around 30 we get the “chicken pox” stats which are - damage to stunned/slowed/cc-ed/poisoned, e.t.c.

So far so good, that’s ok

The problem is the following:

lvl50 doesn’t add anything new except secondary defense and damage to the “chicken pox” rolls (less damage taken from poisoned/slowed/electrified/shocked/burning/whatever)
And on offense start getting the “OP” rolls of + Crit and + Vulnerability damage

AND, that’s all folks, that’s where it all ends, the items rolled at lvl75 have the EXACT SAME STATS rolled with an item on lvl60 or whatever… Sure, can be higher roll on numbers but again - same exact stats, there’s nothing new

Now, here’s a simple idea I’d think they could do:

1 - Rework and remove Edgemaster’s/Condescending Aspects from Aspects and put them on regular item rolls, those are:

  • Damage done by amount of Resource
  • Damage done while a Barrier is active

Then add a few new ones, and these are all cool:

  • Thorns damage added to basic skills
  • Resource gives X% spellpower per point of extra resource over 70/60/50/e.t.c.
  • Minimal Resource amount increased (yes, minimal, mana cannot go below 10 or fury cannot go below 5 for ex.)
  • Overpower executes non-elites if activated under a Barrier
  • Bonus damage per target hit
  • Bonus damage to Isolated targets

e.t.c.

Same with defensive ones:

Have boots late game roll things like:

  • Evade is on 10 sec CD but grants unstoppable for 2 seconds
    or
  • Evade charges through opponents knocking to the side and dazing for 2 sec.

or even things like:

  • Defensive skills have reduced CD by 3 seconds
  • Ultimate skill CDs reduced by 10 seconds
  • 2 seconds increased buff duration
  • Overpower reduces your CDs by 2 sec.

e.t.c.

i.e., we need like ANOTHER REFRESH of affix pool that can roll on items at like 75 or so, and then “run it back” if you want at 80-90, whatever, like, thing is - when an item on lvl80 rolls “+10 Maximum Fury” and “+5% bonus damage per Fury above initial Maximum” kinda sounds more exciting than having yet another of those “22% vulnerable damage” (but this time rolled as 25% or whatever)

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bumpity bump bump … <_>

4

Except that gearing and choosing skills are not separate activities, they are interwoven. So choosing skills that can benefit from good affixes and affixes that optimize your build is an interplay.

Conditional damage affixes are only on a few pieces of gear. They compete for space on that gear with other powerful affixes. For the most part, they are the chaff affixes that have to exist in order to make finding powerful affixes fun. I’d much rather have chaff affixes that actually do something useful (damage or defense) vs provide useless or annoying utility (like light radius, health globe radius, +stamina).

The first and third of these are bad affixes for gear because trading off between loot and power just means that players will have two sets of equipment. The second kind of affix is covered by aspects.

Are you talking about paragon nodes now or aspects?

There are already items that do stuff like this without the requirements. Adding extra stat breakpoints of interest might be fun, but you need a really powerful affix for anyone to bend their stats around being able to afford it.

Being able to heal between battles is really helpful if you are actually needing to use potions to keep yourself alive. Having the healing also work when you can use a barrier or immune or a wall of minions or a lot of dodging to avoid damage gives it a lot of additional value.

These are all aspect type abilities, rather than affixes, because they don’t really stack reasonably. I mean, I guess you could let people stack min resource but it would seem a lot better as just a single bigger rolls

I think the issue with the first one is that scaling flat damage bonuses is difficult. Does it scale with skill damage %? Lucky hit? Damage to / with / while? Or does this mean something like, “+5% damage dealt for each target hit, to a maximum of 25%”? The last of those is also more like an aspect than an affix because it isn’t clear how it stacks if you have it on multiple items.

I’m not sure what you mean with the last suggestion: is this “you deal X% more damage when a skill hits only 1 target?” I think that could be cool, and could have a counterpart of “you deal X% more damage when you a skill hits at least 4 targets” (or something similar). I don’t think this provides any choices that are more interesting than the other conditionals, but I do think it provides an interesting choice.

The overpower one is more of an aspect again, but the other seem like interesting narrow CDR options. They would have to be % based, I think, not flat numbers.

Yeah they just need to add more sacred+ and ancestral+ affixes. They have a few, it just isn’t enough to make the new chase exciting.