Farming for an endgame viable caster-off-hand is subjected to multi-layered RNG, making it extremely hard to find an acceptable single rare, with fitting damage types.
After the update rare caster off-hands can spawn with only 5 magic prefixes.
Aggressive, Stalwart, Mystic, Subjugator’s and Wanderer’s.
Out of those, for non-pet-builds, 3 are useless.
7% Spirit does next to nothing, the 2 pet affixes are actually blanks.
Stalwart has marginal utility.
Aggressive the best of the lot, but still below average for magic affixes.
So I did a bunch of farming to get some numbers:
50 Coerced Wraiths:
- 37 double magic affix
- 7 rare suffix
- 6 rare prefix
12 with pet affixes (not counting the bunch that dropped before the session, causing me to think they had pet-bias)
Out of those, the double magic MIs can be instantly discarded.
Most of them have practically no affixes at all: Stalwart, Mystic or pet prefix, mismatching damage type (fire, pierce, bleed):
Only one has “Aggressive / of Thunder” and would be usable.
The rare suffix ones can also be discarded, unless they spawn with “Aggressive” specifically, or Stalwart with a high-roll suffix. Out of all 50 drops, that is one more usable.
This is amplified for MIs, for which you ideally want a specific rare suffix, like Rolderathis’ Tome of Fallen Skies, as it means you won’t have a prefix (or a marginal one) or get lucky with a double rare.
The rare prefix MIs are the only ones who have any real potential.
The rare prefixes are largely superior to the suffixes and you can actually get useful magic suffixes, like “of Celerity” or “of Thunder” (in this case).
But then it has to be a matching damage type, which complicates things. Out of the 6 with rare prefixes, 3 have matching lightning damage type prefix and suffix.
Onto the next layer of RNG, the conversion roll: In short, if you want an average roll, 48% or better, another 1/3 of drops is eliminated. (Although not all off-hands care about this)
And then finally and most importantly, the CDR roll. If you want at least 17%+, another 2/3 is straight out.
I used Coerced Wraith as an example, but it also applies to a lot of other MIs, particularly the ones not specific to bosses.
The math will vary with each individual MI, but it took me almost all 50 drops to find one suitable one here.
My suggestion would be to bring the magic prefixes up to the level of magic suffixes (of Celerity or +120% dmg are way better than 4% OA or 7% spirit). I think they can easily be on the level of the ring/amulet variant without breaking any builds.
The Pet affixes are more complicated, maybe they could have a neutral non-pet stat, like 40% all damage on Subjugator’s or a small amount of player HP on Wanderer’s.
Or maybe there just need to be a 6th affix in the pool, I don’t really know.
The CDR is an ongoing issue, it is the most important stat on any build that cares and the way it is calculated makes is very punishing to miss even 1-2 percentage points.
My actual suggestion would be, to change the CDR formula from
Recharge duration = CD*(1-CDR)
to
Recharge duration = CD /(1+CDR)
and then adjust cooldowns and CDR values accordingly.
This would mean bad rolls on CDR values would be less punishing.
It would also make it, so investing into CDR no longer yields exponential benefits.
Apologies for a long post.