So I have been playing with Grim Tools theorycrafting builds and one thing has become apparent to me atleast, end game loot needs a few tuning passes in my opinion.
For me Legendary items should be the pinnacle of power items, with the odd Green MI being as good if not better but lacking the nice worn or set effects that Legendary or Epic items have.
While there is a hell of a lot of Legendary items there are many holes in the loot when trying to come up with new builds, and you pretty much end up almost forced into cookie cutter builds due to not having suitable optional items.
Say I want a 2H ranged build, there’s limited items of this type, so you are then already limited in what you can build from them. Ontop of this I want to have pets (Wow hunter, ranger etc) so I’m going to look for items that support this type of build, right here I have to dilute my damage because I want to buff my pets damage, I’m cool with that so I pick items and devotions that allow me to this, but even still I have to make sure all my resists are in good shape, my hp is safely high enough and I have enough DA and OA.
Ok I’m fine with the above, so I get to work looking what I can use and it’s very quickly apparent that this type of build is probably never going to make it through all of Ultimate as it will be lacking in many areas even though I take druid and soldier.
But if I want to be a dual wielder or a sword and shield user or some form of 1h + focus type caster there’s multitude’s of builds that can achieve end game ultimate.
So it boils down mainly to poor itemization, I feel Crate need to definitely do a pass before the expansion to flesh out a bit more some of the end game gear, maybe change some of the lesser used gear sets or add some more. Right now from reading this forum, Reddit and discord most people say 2h melee and Ranged 2h builds are under par, under performing and underwhelming.
Any chance of this getting some love in the future?
Trying to run a hybrid pet build tends to be hard because there are items for either pet builds or (in your case) 2H ranged builds.
As to your first point: the green MI’s that can be better than a legendary have really low droprates, because of the abysmal chance that both the affix and suffix have the correct roll. The Stonehide Exalted Treads of Kings are another example, an item that nearly every build wants, and I’ve put in a lot (and I mean A LOT) of crafting and farming and still have yet to find one. Item variety is in a good place I’d say.
Hybrid pet builds are tricky, yes. You may wish to consider the Winter King helm granted skill, that’s using a melee weapon, but it’s ranged, and synergizes with a few hybrid gear pieces, namely Heart Of The Mountain.
But yes, more Hybrid gear is needed. Maybe for Necromancer. You could do a Pierce build with Unknown Soldier. Revenant constellation as well, in a different build.
Pet stats being separate from player stats is something that’s drawn criticism for a long time since it makes hybrid builds very hard to pull off.
And you’re also right that 2h melee, and ranged weapons in general, are getting the short end of the stick.
To be honest if you start looking at the equipment in depth even more you’ll see a multitude of small problems in itemisation that contribute to some builds one would expect to see not existing.
Hopefully the expansion will fix some or all of this, but there’s definitely work that could be done before its release.
Thanks for the replies guys, what worries me most is this is a fantastic game but it’s being held back from its full potential by things like poor itemization, and if this gets overlooked now I hope when they do the itemization and tuning for the expansion they revisit the existing stuff and make some changes.
The games brilliant but it’s a few things short of bing truly epic I feel, and bad itemization that limits character progression and character build options, in a game that Arguably leans on its flexible character class customisation, could potentially hurt it’s growth and dissuade potential customers.