Really enjoying 1.2. Decided to roll a Witch Hunter to try out the new Pusquill’s tail MI. It made me think that perhaps there is a slight problem with the concept of “you can play to 100 in whatever difficulty you would like” philosophy introduced by 1.2. It’s possible that the devs have already planned a solution for this in FOA - depending on what the affix/item manipulation functionality is introduced - but if this isn’t already planned, it might require consideration.
So what’s the problem? Playing poison execution Witch Hunter is a perfect example!
- Kill Pusquill x 2 (mace weapon)
- Kill Primordian (putrid necklace)
- Kill Viloth (viloth’s ring)
These are normal progression MIs you might want to pick up for this build.
- Continue into A2 levelling up as you go
- Your MIs start to age
- Go back to A1 to grab some new ones! …
… Pusquill, Viloth, and Primordian are still in their teens. You cannot upscale your items to be level appropriate. Execution never gets it’s poison modifier.
This will be a problem for any build that operates around MIs that drop only in A1 (blitz springs to mind with Milton’s Casque and Warden’s Fortress).
The only ways I think you’re going to be able to acquire a higher level MI is either to go into Elite where the A1 level cap doesn’t apply, or go into SR. So the firsts solution is a deviation from the “one difficulty” philosophy, and the other forces players into SR solely to get these sorts of items. This puts the player in a situation where they have to roll the dice enough times to get the item - where other build choices would simply have required one-shot target farms. These are VERY different experiences.
FWIW The community season mod would sidestep this issue with the Essence of Vire potion which pumps the base item up a tier for each application of the essence.
Oh, also, there are not enough devotion shrines currently in normal/elite to allow a “normal only” or “elite only” character to hit the max number of devotion points. Presumably this won’t apply in FOA if new devotion shrines are added in the new act(s). I’d anticipate that this will be the case, but it was just a thought.
=> Edit for the devo shrines thing - confirmed by Z here, so will ultimately be a non-issue in FOA. The single difficulty experience changes - #28 by Zantai