[Nearly Complete] List of changes for affixes on items (and a bit extra background thought)

PC General Discussion
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Title :slight_smile:

Well, kinda (was thinking on making a complete video but realized would take too long). Perhaps if interested in my background thought process could take a look at the TLDR/intro section right below, but if interested explicitly about itemization upgrade/update suggestions - you can continue reading from right below under :slight_smile:

D4 S2 thoughts

1 - Game in activity feels less repetitive yes but in combat and progression still is “flat”. Namely a lvl25 knight fights the same as a lvl100 one

2 - Why D4 should not be drawing designs much from other games. D4’s most “indigenous” mechanic are the conditionals, i.e. conditional damage, or more specifically - game was originally done to work through “timing windows” for dealing efficient damage

That was all ok, however the problem is somehow/someway later in game it became obvious that there was no scarcity of reliance - whole screens could be rendered vulnerable with about 1/5 of skills in game. Additionally Crit & Vuln. multiplied and we all know how that whole story ended

That being said - the game still has those “hallmarks” of being a “doom-eternal”-esque or soul-esque game. Perfectly timed windows for damage went away however loot albeit not as drastic - still has them

The other design phylosophy of D4 is simple skills, a dagger is a dagger, not 150 daggers thrown in a cone at every cast. I must admit I personally like that, thank God one game is not obsessed with making your character “vomit” damage at all times and everywhere

However with that decision of doing things slightly differently comes the price to pay - cannot use things from other games, or at least can’t quite afford making D4 into another LE or PoE, or even D3-like game. Conditionals are a big part from D4 as is, and yes although memed to all death would be a shame for D4 to lose that part of itself

3 - Considering that part of the equation that D4 is different - how do we approach to make it better. I’d say just use what already is in there, use the very assets that D4 has in both conditionals and aspects, expand on them even further. Yes loot would need to change in some ways doing this but it will be the better option to embrace that part of the design and equation of D4 and try optimize the rest of the affixes to feel less of a problem

One additional note that we should mention here is that games like LE and PoE can afford to “shower” loot and have bad rolls often and then use filters. D4 though can implement loot filters - should rather go the other route into not making loot rain and be a loot pinata, but rather having that different/soul-esque character to it - the appropriate move would be to either completely - or occasionally like shown just below to “raise the floor” instead

Speaking of which we came to the “fix this game already” section that we’re about talk in bit more length

So - here’s the section you’d need to focus on. The following suggestions are based on X% of the time to roll something better than an already bad affix in game

It’s ok to have those “bad” affixes like “shrine buff duration” - I’m repeating myself obviously again and again that should’ve been removed, whatever - BUT here’s the catch - X% of the time when such an obviously bad affix should’ve been rolled - roll something better/higher-ranked intended to replace it specifically (such as “all” buff durations increased for ex.)

Namely - good a/RPG games have that one that’s not so obvious trait but it goes to distance when it comes to loot and that is - having a “secondary/better affix pool” as a backup that can “override” a more “conventional” roll at some occasion

This affix pool usually rolls better ranked rolls (not higher numbers necessarily but better ranked affixes instead)

This will be clearer in a moment if we take a look at the following examples of secondary affixes (along with their primary one), and the chances for it to be replaced by a secondary/better affix for a second:

Buffs & Barriers rolls: (ocasionally replacing “Shrine Buff duration” as a rare upgrade)

  • [x5% of the time replace with] Buff duration [20-30]%
  • [x5% of the time replace with] Overpower extends buff durations by [2-3] seconds
  • [x5% of the time replace with] Expiring Buffs under Barriers and expiring barriers under buffs have their durations extended until both expire

Overtime rolls: (ocasionally replacing “Overtime by Poison/Fire/Physical” as an rare upgrade)

  • [x15% of the time replace with] Overtime damage generates 0.0020-0.0035 barrier per tick from damage
  • [x10% of the time replace with] Overtime damage applies [15-25]% faster
  • [x5% of the time replace with] Overtime damage increased by [3-4]% for each kill done by Overtime for up to 3-5 sec. (stackable)

Overpower rolls (these would occur instead of “Overpower damage %” at an occasion instead)

  • [x10%] Overpower also applies additional damage based on %(Int*Barrier)
  • [x10%] Overpower also applies additional damage based on %(Armor*Str)
  • [x10%] Ultimate skills proc. Overpower on cast
  • [x5%] Melee skills proc. Overpower twice in succession

LH rolls: (Ocasionally replacing “LH: chance to Slow” as an rarer upgrade)

  • [x25%] LH up to [20-30]% chance to reduce target’s damage by [25-33]% for 3 sec
  • [x25%] LH up to [20-30]% chance to daze/stun target 3 sec

LH rolls: (ocasionally replacing “LH% under Barrier” as an rarer upgrade)

  • [x25%] Basic/Core/Mastery skills have their LH% increased by [6-10]%
  • [x10%] Equipped LH effects have their baseline chances increased by [3-5]%

vs Injured rolls: (ocasionally replacing “Damage vs Injured and CHC% vs Injured” as an rarer upgrade)

  • [x20%] LH up to [40-60]% chance to apply injury on hit
  • [x20%] [40-60]% damage vs Isolated (another conditional instead of “injured” namely if only 3 or less mobs nearby take this more damage)
  • [x10%] Gain 2.5%-4% all resistances per injured target nearby
  • [x5%] 0.3-0.55 life per hit against injured
  • [x5%] Gain 1.75%-2.5% damage reduction per injured target nearby

Suffering/Affliction rolls: (ocasionally replacing “Damage vs/from Poisoned/Bleeding/Burning” as an rarer upgrade)

  • [x10%] X% damage vs Suffering (vs Chilled, Poisoned, Burning, Bleeding = all of that is “Suffering”)
  • [x10%] Damage taken reduced from Suffering by X%
  • [x10%] Damage taken reduced by X% per type of Suffering

And to “top it off” the following affixes will be WT4-only material (i.e. exclusive late-game rare upgrades) adding even more generic options to the table at the end:

  • Additive chaos damage (damage component added on top of what damage output is but is unaffected by target’s defenses - all skills can apply but obviously best used for empowering Basic skills and Overtime)
  • Crushing blow (damage component added equal to a specific amount of target’s HP%, say 1-2% max HP, overtime skills can not apply this)
  • Edgemaster’s aspect (up to % damage based on Resource amount)
  • Elementalist’s aspect (% bonus damage when full on Resource or at least above certain threshold)

Direct damage (Melee or Single Target ranged) and Thorns rolls:

  • Thorns damage increased by total damage of Basic skills equipped
  • Direct damage pierces [2-4]% of target’s Armor (meaning each new physical hit would do 2-4% more damage than previous - ramp up component)
  • Direct damage pierces [2-4]% of target’s Resistances (meaning each new elemental hit would do 2-4% more damage than previous - ramp up component)

NOTE: These last could also go into Subversions for vs Closed/Ranged specific rolls as well. In case vs Closed variant they roll [6-9]% instead, and in case vs Distant they roll a value of [4-6]%

Sure, continue doing what you’re doing guys in terms of “increasing ceiling” of loot, but please consider these to increase the floor

It IS IMPORTANT that we don’t get bombarded ALL THE TIME by all these bad rolls/affixes. Consider them being rolled by a substitute of “upgraded version” from those lists

Heck I even put the % of times that would be appropriate to second-roll them (the parenthesis value in [x%] on the left) over the original ones which let’s be frank - are just plain bad

It’s fine to roll bad affixes at times but not be constant with it, consider these upgrades, we’d certainly be grateful :slight_smile:

EDIT (x4 now ?), Whaddya think folks ? :person_shrugging:, tbh I really thought this thread would gain some interest/traction

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It’s probably a bit long of an opening post for these forums, but I think overall the idea is good.

In a general sense, this fits into something I’m hoping they look at as they balance and add to the game: layered progression.

TL;DR: you start with the challenge of how to deal damage, which leads to either a problem of resource generation, CDR, or both. Then you get the problem of how to stay alive while still dealing damage. Then you get the problem of how to move quickly while staying alive and dealing damage. This would all be more interesting if you progressed within each stage from clunky general-purpose solutions to smoother coordinated solutions to synergies that let you exploit some power that kills other builds.

That is, a character goes through stages and their general concept of capped progression is that those stages are like an annealing process, where you are making smaller and smaller kinds of changes. I think that’s a reasonable general idea.

The problem is that affixes and aspects congeal too quickly because only a few useful affixes are locked to the higher tiers and no aspects are, meaning only uniques, item level, and those few extra affixes introduce anything new to progress to.

The early game is about filling in your power slots: putting an item in every slot, getting a skill in every slot, putting a rare in every item slot, filling out your skill tree, put an aspect in every slot, filling in your starter board and adding a glyph. That initial setup is about supporting your main skill(s) with ways to generate resources and/or supplement damage or defense while resources are low / cooldowns are going.

The next stage should be optimizing so that you can remove those supports (stop using a basic skill, shift off of a resource aspect or two, remove a defensive skill or a cooldown-based damage source, shift off of a defensive aspect or two). Doing this should specialize you further as each piece works in tandem with the others. There is some of this in D4 but there could be more.

Then the third stage is optimizing to perfect items and finalize the character, and in D4 it’s like a pure numbers game. Only the top tier uniques provide a qualitative upgrade path (if they suit your build), but the rest is just pushing the affix rolls and item power up the scale and pushing glyph levels to their max. But this stage could be much more if there were a layer of trade offs you could exploit.

For example, a lot of aspects or uniques say something that boils down to, “this hits more enemies but does less damage to each.” You can’t really do much to exploit that. If these items said, “it hits more enemies but costs more resource,” you could work to mitigate the downside.

Even better, if the downside was like, “but you can’t generate barrier,” or “but adds 2 seconds to one of your active cooldowns when cast,” you could have builds that strongly exploit it by mitigating the downside.

And then even better, if the upside was also more generic (not “fireball bounces” but “your projectiles bounce”), then you could find ways to exploit the upside while you also mitigate the downside. That would make the optimization phase really fun because it gets you qualitatively different combat not just quantitatively stronger attacks an defense and movement.

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The thing about D4 is starts with the 3rd option first. You need movement for leveling phase, and that’s fine IMO

We just probably need an affix that gives MS early on, or something like Crit increases movement speed by 3% for 3-5 seconds (Stackable)

You get the idea, less of a mess while still not changing other aspects to the game too too much. Then this one could be slowly but surely phased out for a proper MS stat like we start having at ~lvl15-20 now

The other thing I agree with, resource management/retention in D4 is level-gated. Perhaps jewelry could roll if not regularly then as an inherent roll something for resource retention. But yeah, having level gated as on:

  • Cannot get max resource cap before lvl20-25
  • Cannot get RCR before lvl35-40
  • Cannot get Resource Gen before lvl60
  • Cannot get Resource Gen LH before lvl70

Like, THAT, should probably be taken a look at

In general I agree with your statement but was trying to give a set (well, flock :slight_smile: ) of concrete upgrade examples. Sorry for the wall of text though, thanks

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I like some of these ideas for more powerful affixes (<3 crushing blow for melee), but I’m not sold on them just having a chance at replacing an existing bad roll.

I think it would be cool if these “bonus affix pools” only were possible to drop during certain in game conditions. For example, maybe some only appear on items that drop from goblins, or only from the world boss, or only from helltides.

You could also have affix pools that are tied to certain regions of the gameworld, so maybe some cold damage affixes in the snow region or whatever as a super basic example. They could have all sorts of other lore related connections.

Would be cool to have events where the player can pick a side (kill the bandits or help them raid the caravan), and they would get rewards with different affix pools depending on those choices and factions being killed.

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Here’s the thing - you’re thinking on making whole loot target-farmed. I guess that’s something but I prefer to be surprised, don’t want to know every single drop and where to find it in game

Perhaps my suggestion could get “old” really quickly, don’t know that, but until that’s done we can hardly move the finger even a bit

It’s kinda obvious that pros & devs are obviously focused on “increase the ceiling” - the 0.00001% of loot becoming better and more interesting and introduce a Dolmen Stone every 3 months or whatever - BUT the following is obvious and hence the thread I made:

Baseline pool of affixes needs more love

If we get that I’ll be totally happy, everything else is a bonus tbh but again - prefer to be surprised at an occasion and not knowing where to “farm” exactly

What I suggested kinda doesn’t require much effort and a design overhaul (I mean it’s a wall of text sure but has like 10-12 concrete suggestions that aren’t that hard to implement I’d imagine)

Yours would require rethinking the whole system and then classify/intend specific loot for regions, events, e.t.c.