I think the way items are designed should be changed.
At the moment 95% of the high level items in the game are not suitable for your specific build because it’s either the wrong damage type, wrong mastery, wrong skills etc. In many cases you will figure that there is at best a single lvl 75 legendary / epic option for certain slots. Some builds have to use lvl 50 items in certain slots because there is nothing else there.
The problem stems from the huge amount of different damage types and multiplies with the various builds.
The real demand for lvl 75 items would be more like 30 different items for every single type (i.e. thirty lvl 75 1handed swords, thirty lvl 75 2handed axes, way more than thirty different boots etc.). However the game doesn’t deliver that and the whole item finding situation would be even worse if it did and you wouldn’t be able to use 99% of them.
So to fix that the following should be done:
Remove damage conversion and specific damage bonuses from items and move them to masteries, components, augments, devotions etc. Your build will define your damage type and not your items. This is about the most important change.
Make granted skills change depending on selected masteries.
Make additional skillpoints change depending on selected masteries.
Only leave basic stats on items, i.e. resistances, attributes, OA, DA, attack speed, health, energy etc.
(Even though it’s obvious: This will require changes to amount of base stats, weapon base damage, masteries, augments etc.)
This way you will make many items available to many different builds, offering a level of choice that is not yet present in the game. At the same time you will be able to cut down on the real demand for high level items, simply because they will adjust much better to any build.
Most of all you will fix the problems of not having items for certain builds and constantly finding stuff you can’t use at all.
This sound interesting, i took a look at gracefuldusk and for example didnt find any interesting legendary rings for my build. It would be good if we could get some more variety or do some changes as sugested here.
On the other hand its kinda funny to adjust your build to the items you find, my battlemage cleared all elite using an infernal brimstone. And im planing to make him a physique-cold batlemage once i find a leviathan. I wouldnt do it if i had some two-hander legendary with elemental damage like the Prismatic Eviscerator, but its cool to think how to get a good build with the options the game offers.
Nope… you would effectively kill the Gear hunt. They actually did a decent job of the gear hunt. Now for a re-roll of say Green’s and Yellows… I could maybe see the ability to reroll a prefix or suffix. Event then i still have mixed fealings on this because of MI’s But on that same not i’ve killed Kazzog on ultimate maybe 200 times and still have yet to get my Subjegators of the Wild ring. So … yes and no.
Getting the right gear for certain builds isn’t that hard anymore given that we can now target legendaries at the smith in tyrants hold.
This game is not like other certain ARPGs where you HAVE to be decked out in legendary set items to even have a chance to complete the hardest content.
My advice would be to try and adjust your mindset to consider epics and rares (greens) as viable endgame gear and you will see that you will be able to have as much gear diversity as you could want.
It’s not just hard to find items for certain builds, but impossible because there are no lvl 75 items to use for quite a few slots.
If anything they should now at least create more lvl 75 legendaries / epics to serve all the weird builds.
That is exactly not what would happen. In fact, it should be the opposite.
Look at it this way:
What is the current gear hunt situation?
There is often not a single lvl 75 item suitable for certain slots for certain builds. Most of the time there is only a single lvl 75 item out of 10 others that could be used. Overall you will always have slots that have no good item with any build.
Why is there not a suitable lvl 75 item for every slot?
Simply because then we would have 3 or more times the amount of current legendaries / epics, which would make finding the item you need incredibly tedious. There are 15 classes and they can each be played with different skills, weapons, damage types, which results in the need to serve 50+ different builds.
With the proposed changes there would be no need to have many more items, since more of them could be used. It still won’t make them perfect and will always leave you with choices or wishes. There is also always going to be 1 item that will be perfect for a certain slot for a certain build. But at least you won’t be crippled if you don’t find that one because you can at least use others.
This will actually increase the amount of items you want, make the gear hunt more rewarding while also prolonging it.
Above all, the changes don’t have to be exactly like they were proposed and require some sense. The main problem here is still the lack of items. That can either be solve by making more items usable and making the build define your character not the items, or be solved by creating more items, increasing the number of useless items for any other build.
That’s all nice from a meta gaming perspective.
However, most people would probably agree that finding legendaries = fun and it would be even more fun if you could actually use them.