Five new unique rings are being added, but these don’t do much for the continued problem of shallow itemization, due to their class restriction. It’s 1 ring for each class, instead of 4+ rings for 5 classes.
Most of these abilities have no reason to be restricted to a specific class, and more options would improve itemization depth.
Here are the effects:
Rogue Ring Effect: Casting a Subterfuge Skill leaves behind a Decoy Trap that continuously taunts and lures enemies. The Decoy Trap explodes after 3 seconds dealing XXXX Shadow damage. Can only occur every 12 seconds.
Commentary: This is clearly a defensive effect and has 0 reason to be restricted to Rogue. It even has a 12 second cooldown. Just make this available to every class and change Subterfuge to something like Subterfuge, Macabre, and Defensive.
Sorcerer Ring Effect: For each type of Elemental damage you deal, gain xXX% increased damage for 4 seconds. Dealing Elemental damage refreshes all bonuses.
Commentary: There’s no reason for this to be restricted to Sorcerer. Sorcerer has the most access to elemental damage types, but it could easily lead to some weird builds on other classes in the future if they get ways to get all 3 elements.
Barbarian Ring Effect: After spending 100 Fure within 3 seconds, your next cast of Hammer of the Ancients, Upheaval, or Death Blow is a guaranteed Critic Strike and deals xXX% bonus Critic Strike Damage.
Commentary: I also don’t see why this effect needs to be limited to Barb. Barb already is the best class at lining up 1 big burst hit, so the effect benefits them the most already. Change the ring to “Core Skills” and have the resource be generic (we already have a generic resource spent thing with Banished Lord’s Talisman). If you really need Death Blow, have a separate ring that has a skill type list including Weapon Mastery, or if there’s a balance concern with some skill on some other class in the category that is analagous to Weapon Mastery (or in Weapon Mastery itself) then just make a class-specific version of this ring for each class with a few skills on it.
Druid Ring Effect: When casting an Ultimate Skill and again 5 seconds after, you Pull in Distant enemies and deal XXXX Physical damage to them. This damage is increased by 1% per 1 point of Willpower you have.
Commentary: Again, no reason for this to be restricted to Druid. It’s a utility pull and burst effect that’s limited by Ultimate usage. Make it work for every class, and change Willpower to mainstat. If there’s any balance concern with a specific build being able to use it too much because they can Ult very often, just add a hard cooldown to the effect.
Necromancer Ring Effect: You automatically activate the following equupped skills on Corpses around you… (Raise Skeleton/Corpse Explosion/Corpse tendrils with different cooldowns).
Commentary: This is the only one that I think can only be used by Necromancer. Necromancer is the only class that interacts with the resource of corpses and has skills with no cooldown that use an extra resource like this…
However I do think that it would be certainly possible to give other classes a few auto-activate skills. Notably on the auto-corpse ring for Necro, Corpse Tendrils has a much longer duration between activations compared to the other two skills, so you could easily put some auto-activations on there for other classes for certain archetypes and just balance it by making the activation timer longer.
- Auto activate Summon skills for Sorc
- Auto activate Companion skills for Druid
- Auto activate Trap skills for Rogue
- Auto activate Shout skills for Barbarian
Conclusion: Stop restricting things to classes that have no need to be restricted to classes, it’s part of the reason itemization is so bad.