To Whoever is Designing the Unique & Legendary Aspects

PC General Discussion
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Dear Designer(s) of Unique and Legendary Aspects

For many of the Legendary and Unique Aspects it feels like you are very begrudging about letting the players feel powerful and have fun. I can’t tell if it’s because whoever is designing these actually believes their job is to prevent players from feeling too powerful or having too much fun (like, maybe you misunderstood the mission?) or if you mistakenly believe that the only way to balance power/fun is by limiting it with Randomness, Long Arbitrary Cooldowns, or Clunky Use-Case Triggers.

It’s not fun when something happens out of the players control, “Randomly does something mediocre.”

It’s not fun when something happens on a long cooldown, “This mediocre thing can only happen once every 30-40 seconds.” Especially when this is in addition to an existing skill cooldown.

And it’s not fun when something only happens after doing something clunky/fiddly, “Attack no more and no less then 15 times, on your 16th attack something mediocre happens.”

Additionally, it doesn’t matter if the thing that happens is bad, mediocre, or great; if it’s random, clunky/fiddly, or on a long arbitrary cooldown then it’s just not fun.

Please just stop doing this with Unique and Legendary aspects.

Don’t do an Aspect if it’s dependent on randomness, long cooldowns, or is clunky to trigger to be “balanced”. Just have it do a thing all the time or have the trigger be very simple/direct. If it needs to be limited by a cooldown then just link the triggering effect to a skill/ability with a cooldown - don’t also saddle it with some additional arbitrary cooldown.

Not to harp on it, but it bears repeating, if an Aspect requires randomness, a long arbitrary cooldown, or clunky use-case triggers by the player to be “balanced” then it’s not a good Aspect, “being balanced” doesn’t matter if it’s ultimately not fun.

I’d much rather have a less powerful ability that is reliable and easy to trigger with no arbitrary cooldown , then a more powerful ability that is unreliable, annoying to trigger, and saddled with an arbitrary cooldown.

Thanks for your time.

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Its not entirely true. Fist of fate for example is a good one because everything is rng. When the stars align its a super fun unique.

But uniques in general missed the mark in D4. I mean look at the occy, who ever designed it needs a history lesson in why people used it in D2. The random tele with dmg nerf and a capped tele cooldown isnt fun.

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Was this just a giant rant about the Occulus? Because I feel it’s about the Occulus.

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Yeah, it’s a completely different thing when an Aspect/Item’s theme is built around it.

Having an item/aspect which is the, “Randomly Powerful” item is fine and even fun, but using Randomness as a recurring balance tool just takes control away from the players.

Even long cooldowns can be fine if the triggers are clear and the power justifies the cooldown, but again this should be built into the identify of the item/aspect and not employed as an awkward balancing “quick-fix” that they slap across any ability that they feel is too powerful and they don’t want to take the time to balance in a way that is actually enjoyable for the player lol.

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I think D4 has a way to go on balancing and figuring out what it wants to be but its positive in the aspects of resisting the D3 way of power creep.

It doesnt feel good when some of these changes happen but long term it can be extremely healthy.

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Haven’t even rolled a Sorc yet XD

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Agreed, OP. And I have to say it, again, for the billionth time; these are lessons they’ve learned in the past, but for some reason, don’t get applied to current development until the game loses 99% of the player base and Blizz is forced to look at feedback.

I really don’t understand how they can go from D1: a great game that created an entire genre with solid itemization, straight to D2: a huge improvement with incredible itemization, to D3: a failed game that eventually became fun (albeit, a shell of previous games in the title), to D4: a game that carries absolutely none of the improvements the previous titles included, and foregoes all of the features of the past.

Unfortunately, Blizz knows they only need great cinematics and effective marketing, because consumers are extremely naive.

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i’m currently playing with an occy, though i’m having fun… it’s not nearly as great as it is in D2

and yes, i agree. most uniques are pretty useless now (not sure how good they are in S2 but i don’t see them changing much about occy)

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The funny thing is that occy would be amazing in PVP, but no one plays PVP, because they put no effort into it and almost no one is playing D4 in any capacity.

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Just wanted to agree with the OP. I read the patch notes about the unique items and they are so boring. Oh once every 40 seconds something cool might happen if something else has happened randomly. Yaaaaaawwwwnnn

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Yeah, even watching the stream on what they concider “fun” isnt actually fun. They just tweek a % but miss the overall mark.

Just like when they were talking about averaging out the barb ability and removing the ability to do extra dmg with position of attack. Idk why they would do something like this unless they are aiming for that 1 click brainless build philosophy.

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I love this :)))

Or the “ULTIMATE”!! WOW!! When in fact it just dust and smoke and no real damage …

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like you said

why didn’t they just made the occy more like the old one (and make it actualy unique)

give it damage to close enemies (most people use daggers anyways)
give it +3 to defensive skills
rework the unique power. all the while i used D4 occy i hardly used evade because i would more often then not be worse of where i ended up teleporting. and now i’m back using my trusty dagger and boots (wich give me more evade charges, + to other skills that are more usefull then adding up to a 2 second cooldown on teleport and better stats)

so yeah, they pretty much missed the point on why people don’t like the uniques

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Everyone that is in charge of class and item balance needs to be changed, yesterday.

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I find the disparity between core skill aspects to be the most annoying. You’ve got some core skills that have aspects which significantly buff their damage and/or radius consistently on every single use (hota, pulv), and then other core skills that get aspects that have a small chance on a small chance to do a mediocre effect, like necros empowered reaper aspect. Some consistency with these would go a long way in making more builds feel viable/fun.

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Agreed. It really feels like whoever is responsible for designing and revamping these items is just operating on a completely different metric then the players.

Its like they’re not even considering or playtesting what feels fun or even realize what actual fun is.

Feels like the Devs are that parent who’s so worried about their kid getting hurt that they suit them up in full padded gear and a helmet every time they go to Chess Club and they have absolutely no idea that their kid is miserable.

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Design by committee, multi team sign offs = mundane outcome.

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Totally! There is an entire conversation that needs to happen about how inconsistent they are with the power level and scaling of one Aspect compared to another.

You have one Aspect for a Core Skill that does something cool with damage that will scale into the late game and then you have another Aspect for a different Core Skill that does something mediocre with absolutely no built in scaling.

It really feels like they had different teams/team members design Aspects based on completely different philosophies/metrics:

One person is designing for people to have fun and the other is designing for people to not have too much fun.

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They want the game to feel slow which just makes it that much more painful because loot drops in one 1 of 10 enemies. And then you can’t even compare it without picking it up.

Just look at the “Increased Health” and “Damage Reduction Aura” enemy modifiers. These aren’t even elite enemies, just some trash in there to slow you down even further.

And then we have Holdout Rooms, I’m sure you’re familiar with them. You get locked in this room with more monsters than are in the entire dungeon and none of them give loot, exp or gold. Just there to slow you down some more.

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Not to mention the fact that every single legendary aspect strongly pushes the character toward a specific build.

With the rogue (the class I know), all legendary aspects buff either imbuements or traps. The physical only build (no imbuements or traps) only functioned off vulnerability and crit, both of which have been nerfed into the dirt twice.

Now, they’ve added boots that reduce ultimate cooldown, buffed Shadow Grasp (gauntlets that buff the Shadow Clone ultimate), and massively buffed the unique amulet that puts skills into all imbuements.

Welp, the meta build just switched from poison imbue to poison imbue + shadow clone. They eliminated the physical only rogue and replaced it with with a slight variation of the poison build.

WoW, sO mUcH BuIlD vArIeTy…

D4’s itemization is its most glaring flaw, and they don’t seem interested in even addressing it.

What happened to design philosophies revolving around buffs that are generally good for almost every class?
Examples (mostly for the non-caster classes):

  • 50% of your character’s movement speed is added to your attack damage.
  • Your character’s attack damage is reduced to 0, but all of your movement speed is added to your attack speed, your character has no attack speed cap, and XX percentage of your physical damage is dealt per strike as divine damage (a form of damage that can not be resisted or buffed)
  • Your character’s non physical damage is reduce by 100%, but their physical damage is increased by 100%
  • Inverse of the above
  • Whenever you evade, teleport, or leap, gain CC immunity until your next attack
  • Evading increased your attack damage by 10% for 3 seconds, stacking indefinitely

There are endless possibilities.

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