There's a long-term problem with SKILL-SPECFIC legendary aspects tied to items exclusively. (Solution)

PC General Discussion
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TL;DR -
Remove skill-specific (skill modifying) aspects from legendary items and put them in the skill tree/ paragon boards so that players can respec what is central to their build with skill point refunds.

There are 3 categories of legendary aspects (excluding Uniques):

1) Skill-specific aspects that MODIFY skills, like;

Whirlwind periodically Pulls enemies to you

2) General/buff-related aspects, like;

Deal 58% increased damage while you have Barrier active

3) General skill-related aspects, like;

Thorns damage dealt has a 48% chance to deal damage to all enemies around you

Basic Skills grant 25% damage reduction for 5.0 seconds

Some have complained that power scaling is feeling out of step with enemies scaling to character level, while players scale with skill points and item power spikes.
The problem here is that builds are tightly controlled by aspects you find on Legendaries. This is part of why Kripparrian commented in his D4 beta review last week that he is afraid that D4’s endgame will be just players trying to find the same items over and over, just with higher stats, but same affixes/aspects.
This problem means that players cannot reasonably swop out their build unless they have all all legendaries with all aspects for all builds, which isn’t reasonable, and creating a new character for a new build isn’t everyone’s thing.
This is one of the reasons why players feel like the Skill Tree isn’t advanced enough in D4

Solution (possibly):

1) Remove category 1) SKILL-SPECIFIC aspects from legendary items and put it in the skill tree/ paragon boards.
Keep all the other aspects in the codex, and legendary items where they are currently.
This solution operates like Lost Ark’s Tripod system (skill point allocation) that is attached to a mini tree with 8 options which can freely be respecced.
Lost Ark’s engraving system also is similar to D4’s category 2) and 3) general and general skill-related aspects, which you need to acquire through trade and looting.

2 ) Obviously this will necessitate bonus skill points through Renown, Feats, or baseline skill points must increase… preferably ASPECT POINTS so that the extra points cannot be used to accelerate the skill tree progression balancing, but must be used only on the aspects for skill modification at certain level milestones.

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agreed. This is the biggest issue with the itemization IMO

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It took 4 days of beta for me to trying see if it really was so.
My beta experience has been refunding builds nonstop and time and time again you find that the legendaries (aspects) are entirely central to build planning.
Just tried to investigate the game and see what Blizzard have come up with instead of coming into it with my own preconceptions.

However the solution would see to benefit balancing (long term) as well. This issue that skills being modified is too barebones in the current game experience is primarily down to this problem alone

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Power bump activated.

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Salute.

I forgot to mention that this problem will be compounded greatly when Blizzard add more aspects in later seasons and dilutes the aspect pool to search from (assuming drop rates stay remotely the same).

The game doesn’t have to have D2- levels of item searches, but it doesn’t have to have such a shallow skill tree either (and this is one of the major reasons why).
Currently not even half the advanced skill have category 1 aspects. That might never be added, but we get a picture of where this is heading

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Yes? We’ve known this for a while. Your ideas will literally change nothing about it.

The entire reason we have the ability to rip Aspects off a Legendary and put them on a rare. The entire reason we have the ability to upgrade items a few times. The entire reason the Codex exists at all. There are options.

The reason people feel weak is because they view the passives as ignorable addons to the skills. Those passives are the backbone of your character and the thread that stitches the skills together into a coherent build.

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There’s a small distinction here. I’m not calling for aspects to be removed from items, but for the single skill modifiers to go to the skill tree. Hunting items wont end, but you cannot respec because the category 1 aspect types are so central to builds the way the game is now. So regardless of the stats, affixes and slots, we will be looking for the SAME item, even with the same aspect, and it all goes into item slots. That will hit home really well when you realize that late game you will have 1 character per build when it couldve been on your skill tree (this relatively small portion).
Have you played Lost Ark? This is the Tripod system- the skill modifiers, and they have 8 per skill in 3 tiers

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I didn’t enjoy Lost Ark enough to get very far.

I understand your idea.

Do you understand why the skill passives are the important part, NOT the Legendary Aspects?

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If you’ve tried it, you should’ve checked out all the systems and come away with some ideas before abandoning it. Well, in Lost Ark’s tripod system, only about 3 of the 8 tripods change the skill like these category 1 aspects of D4, but the point remains

They’re both important and for some builds the cat 1 aspect is just the cherry on the cake, in others its absolutely crucial. It’s not accurate to say putting the category 1 aspects on the skill tree won’t change anything- once you see that most of these are not in the codex and more will be added soon, in tandem with the loop drop rate decreasing (by about -300%), then it’s going to hit home. Now you have to be fully decked out to have certain builds, whereas with my suggestion you can make budget version and then loot items, as long as you have sufficiently levelled up.
Locking just 1 step too far in build diversity behind RNG and grinding is going to be just a tad more boring

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I don’t need to dive deep into a game to learn it isn’t for me. Not bashing Lost Ark. I like MMOs. I like ARPGs. Lost Ark wasn’t for me. However, it really sounds like you want to play Lost Ark, not Diablo.

In Diablo 2, we had builds that revolved around items. In Diablo 3 we had builds that revolved around items. The idea that you need specific items to create a build is not a new idea in Diablo. However, in Diablo 4, they’ve added some build protection in the form of Codex, Aspect swapping, and item upgrading.

Yes, the Codex doesn’t have all the affixes. That was one of the things we already knew going in. The codex is meant to bridge gaps, the same way aspect swapping and item leveling are.

However, the passives are mandatory. It doesn’t matter if you have every aspect in the game available in the codex and unlocked to freely use. It doesn’t even matter if they become a Lost Ark clone by adding these aspects to the skill tree. The passives are critical to every build.

It’s why some people struggled and some people did not. Are there build defining Legendary Aspects? Absolutely. There are build defining uniques too, which are even more difficult to find. However, they won’t mean much without the correct passives.

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Diablo is all about finding build enabler legendaries. By removing skill modifier aspect from legs, the loot hunt will just become more boring. IMO that’s why they added dungeons with predefined aspects, to serve as a tutorial for class and build discovery.

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Whenever someone starts by saying that “X franchise has always been about y, z”, you start to wonder if they are not evaluating the particular installment by its merits. This is why companies hire fresh blood- to avoid stagnation of ideas.
We have the exact same argument being leveled at the skill tree now with players saying it’s not interesting.
The suggestion is a way to redistribute novelty and power among items and and the skill tree nodes.
It can still be exciting to find the other 2 types of aspects in your items.
Category 1 aspects can DEFINE your build, Category 2,3 aspects can ENABLE your build.
This also then avoids some of the problems discussed which is really going to hit home mid-late game

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Your ideas are good, good at making the game more boring! I did get far enough into Lost Ark to know what you are talking about…once I realised this was what they deemed as progressions I dropped the game. It’s boring as all hell!

Nothing you say has merit because in Diablo if we ran with your ideas there would be nothing to work towards once you fleshed out your skill tree. Except perhaps a lame invented currency like Lost Ark and immortal.

It’s a grind game to grind items that are upgrades to how you play.

It’s not a grind game to grind time gated currency to upgrade current boring mostly vendor bought loot like Lost Ark.

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It’s not that I want it more like Lost ark, but in referring to the tripod system is to make it clear what nature of skill-modifiers we’re talking about.

The other comparisons in relation to LAO are void from then on. LAO doesn’t have a skill tree, and doesnt have much derived from looting gear (if you ignore gems and engravings as gear). Strange that you throw in “invented currency” trepidation- some players mentioned that they were worried that the aspects, type 1, 2, or 3 might by sold, or dangled as season bait, or even put into the battlepass.
With my suggestion that is solved.

So whatever scenarios you’re imagining, I can’t answer to them all. I can say that loot will still have it’s place, in much the same way, we’re just strengthening the skill tree, and allow more effective mid-late game class respecs without having to find all the same items over and over and over again to match the ideal stats, affixes and aspects, should RNG only let us imprint 1 and we upgrade constantly.

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The Codex solves this issue, you’ll have infinite access to weaker versions of all legendary affixes, account wide. Just from completing a dungeon.

You can get any build you want going with the Codex, then you’ll slowly acquire upgrades by finding the actual items to replace the Codex affix.

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The type/category 1 aspects that are mentioned in the classification scheme (modifying 1 specific skill) aren’t in the codex.
And it still doesnt entirely solve the build respec problem mentioned even if they were

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I understand the change you say you want to make, but I don’t adequately understand what you think is the exact problem and how you think this solves it.

Is the problem that you think this makes it incredibly difficult or completely impractical to respec a character once you get into the endgame gear loop?

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I’m pretty sure they are, wowhead has been building a Codex list and class/skill specific affixes are on that list.

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It takes a while to get to the build defining, or cornerstone aspects. They are only found in legendary items (so a fair bit later on) and if Blizzard decides to make them a dungeon reward.
You can debate over what a build enabler is and if there’s any overlap, but those are easily the type 2 and 3 aspects which are more divers at present, but many of them in the codex.
The other component will be the raw stats from the items we apply them to (and gem socks, which causes us problems further down the line for lack of resources mid season and build swopping).
Trying to swop between builds is going to be a major hassle, not because of the respec gold cost that may or may not become prohibitive as Rod Ferguson said, but because you will now be stuck in a loop looking for the same items, and that’s not even considering that you will need the same kind of items as you level up and leave the range of usefulness of the previous tier of items you already grinded for.

A lot of this is solved if the build can partly be kickstarted from the skill tree by specializing in these skill-modifying nodes that, say, will only be available at later levels, and a parallel arrangement, so that you can still think about making the choice whether to divert points to it to really define your build (ie. Whirlwind periodically pulls enemies in).
I respeced a lot in the beta and realized this towards the end when things were getting more and more specialized.
This only slightly alleviates the need for godrolling gear in terms of combination you’re looking for and alleviates the chore of endgame becoming looking for the same items over and over again (yes I know you can imprint multiple times, but you’re not going back)

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But like, isn’t the point to guide you into a build that’s going to be hard to change once you really enter the endgame loop?