I’ll start a conversation by saying that this system have very insane potential and looks fun on paper.
HOWEVER…
First part: Ascended affixes on white/yellow items.
I m very confused there - I don’t understand developer intention with how this system works.
What do i mean by that?
1)Power level. Beyond a few exceptions of mods that add something another items could not provide(and those are very cool,+3 proj for familiar,+1 proj for devastation) they look VERY weak. You sacrifice a lot by going for the route of creating an item that can easily be replaceable. My friend suggested that maybe they should allow us to ascend yellow item twice(1 rare affix,1 blue affix) to make this option more appealing or entirely rebalance whole system and try to focus more on unique stats that another items in the game cannot provide.
2)“Crafting”
After someone told me i can’t craft +2 proj on devastation on my green two-hander i decided to make cold devastation with 5 projectiles(2 proj conduit, 2 proj from off hand +main hand)
I had some resources left over from pervious two characters i played - enough for…40 rerolls.
I did not hit this mod ONCE. I would be fine with that if power level of those items was WAY higher, but once again - right now i m trying to treat ascending yellow items as “make your own MI for your build”. But MI are WAAAAAAAAAAAAY easier to obtain(and arguably they are way stronger in most cases)
I honestly think that entire part of “ascend yellow item to get a cool item for your build” is not working, or maybe i m misunderstanding developer intention here. It’s not fun, not strong enough and very RNG-heavy(i know it’s ARPG, but still.)
Conclusion of first part:
If Ascension of yellow items is supposed to be “make your OWN MI for your specific build”
then either reroll price must be brought down to make it more comparable to MI in terms of how hard to obtain those items.
If Ascension of yellow items is supposed to be “uber-endgame chase items and this is why that RNG is justified” - power level of those mods in MOST cases(not all) should be brought up.
Part two:
Ascension of Legendary and green items.
Those items can easily be Ascended without any issues - plenty of mods can be useable and make your character tiny bit stronger.
But most of those mods are not fun - because all fun options went to yellow / white items.
And this is why i can’t say that i had any strong negative/positive emotions towards this part of the system. It’s there, i can use it, but i find that state very bland.
My expectation for this part of the Ascension was a fair bit of power creep if i invested enough time to roll perfect ascension modifiers(maybe even new build possibilities) but there are so few(honestly i don’t know any options besides 100% WPS that it enables, if i m being honest.
My suggestion is to make ascension more unique - maybe yoink primordial item system from LE - allow only 1 strong ascended modifier on any items and rest is supposed to be blue. Then you are allowed to create really crazy modifiers for yellow items without holding back.
TLDR: I think there is something wrong with Ascension system on fundamental level, i either don’t understand developer intention, or it just doesn’t work.
These improvements are for optimizing your endgame build once your character is already fully geared. Use the altar to efficiently farm the resources you need.
It’s not.At least yellow item exclusive mods are not fit to fill this purpose.
You are not making your character stornger in most cases,you making yourself weaker,as long as game provides item for same archetype.
(example - 50% weapon damage for amarasta as ascended affix as only yellow mod is way weaker than new green swords for star pact/amarasta in FoA,though only for 1 specific damage type,but my point still stands.)
Like I said, this is for the endgame—once you’ve already got all your core gear and are looking to min-max your build to the absolute limit.
Exactly. Ascension affixes are not intended to powercreep the game so much that they start to feel mandatory, so they’re small bonuses on already good items and larger bonuses on yellow items which are generally worse (though some builds would do just fine with an Aggressive/of Vitality armor piece).
And once again - i m saying that just isn’t true,
Yellow items affixes do not work as end game min maxing feature at all.
Maybe they are supposed to, but they are not.
I did level up 5 characters in FoA so far and i always found better options in MI/Legendary section,excluding situations where game was not supporting my current build(Two-handed chaos devastation as example)