The title already said it - I suggest to remove blacksmith bonuses from crafted epic and legendary items.
I guess people will hate me for even bringing this up, but I feel that it is not a good thing that aquiring uniques by the usual grinding results in items that are inherently inferior to items that are just crafted; especially when it comes to legendaries.
An alternative would be to give randomly dropped uniques one additional stat that is randomly chosen out of the pool of stats that blacksmiths can apply; or even out of some other pool specifically made for this.
Blacksmith bonuses are really small and require more then just random chance in acquiring them. Crafting Legendary items takes a lot when it comes to resources - Tyrant’s Hold Blacksmith it takes a ton of ancient hearts/tainted brains/blood of ch’thon for a random chance in getting a legendary item.
“Inferior” slightly to items that are crafted with a tiny bonus that a player crafted via tons of grinding for resources in order to get the small chance in acquiring the item that they want with the bonus that they would deem to be best for their build.
Don’t see what’s the problem? People spent crafting mats to get these legendaries with crafting bonuses… it’s not like they can just blow their Iron and choose which legendary they want…
“B…b…but people can exploit the game for infinite crafting!!!”
Well, yeah… this is not a game with a focus on multiplayer, and t’s their game, so they play it how thy want to.
TL DR: Don’t use it, if you feel it’s unfair. And sorry in advance, if I sounded like a dick by putting it like that.
The inferiority you speak of is so so minor outside of a select few individuals cheat crafting all their legendaries and picking our their bonuses it makes 0 difference. A lot of the bonuses are so negligible it makes no difference that in the real world if I craft all my gear and you don’t that you could never even tell the difference
Those aren’t good arguments for having the bonuses an uniques though.
If these bonuses are too small to really matter (as you imply) then surely they are no compensation for this hassle that, as you say, is aquiring the crafting materials.
On top of that the element of choice (or “more then just random chance” as you put it), which is given by the ability to choose the blacksmith with the bonuses that you are aiming for, is completely absent when it comes to legendaries; as they can only be crafted by Ethram Fald.
It’s not about exploitability at all. If people wanna exploit the game it is their decision.
I guess we all agree that the crafting bonuses given by blacksmiths are not substantial.
They are, however, big enough to be taken into consideration, or else they would have no meaning at all and players would likely have annoyed the shit out of Crate.
I don’t recall any such uproar though, so I must assume that the majority of the player base considers blacksmith bonuses to be significant enough.
With this being the case the ability to have such bonuses on uniques that you can aquire otherwise simply adds a layer of disappointment.
However good the stats of a unique that you found are rolled, it never has the potential that it’s crafted version has.
With crafting bonuses on uniques gone as compensation the costs of crafting could be lowered.
This would also appease those that find those costs to be bordering on “too high”, especially when it comes to those that consider these crafting bonuses to be negligible anyway.
And likewise if you and others consider the bonuses to not be substantial but you still rest your hopes on some silent majority possibly being close lipped on the matter, that still renders the matter as lacking any substantial substance in favor of scrapping said bonuses.
If it doesn’t matter shrugs then it doesn’t really matter which way they go with it and in that case why bother removing it. It’s already there and since it doesn’t matter… Zzzzzz
(I’m sure you can see how the snake eats its tail here, quite the trick that)
They are too small by themselves but if you manage to have multiple items crafted by Ethram Fald then the bonus to OA, DA, or % Health Regeneration will be more noticeable and therefore helpful.
However the fact that you still need to farm for the components, iron and continually make your way to Tyrant’s Hold to try and get the item that you want with the bonus that you want all the while hoping for high stat rolls - I think it’s understandable why going through that hassle in order to get a slight bonus (that can get bigger with more crafted items) reasonable as opposed to just farming for items via bosses/enemies/heroes/nemesis/crucible which may have their own challenges but in the end is a bit easier with less rng and less time needed to acquire said items.
Legendary blueprint items can be crafted by any blacksmith so the number of bonuses available is greater for better versatility.
Myself I have no problem with people getting a better item via crafting as I understand that there is a bit more of a sacrifice in getting that item as opposed to usual farming.
I guess that discussions like this are the way we find out about how people think and feel about a topic.
Still I gotta start with some assumptions.
Actually I do generally like crafting and the options it gives you when it comes to choosing the blacksmith.
In this respect it would perhaps even be good to have the opportunity to craft-gamble for legendaries at all the blacksmiths, so that you could choose to go with different possible crafting bonuses.
Still I generally feel disappointed when I find a unique that I already have a crafting recipe for.
Another option to mitigate this would be, as written, to give one random stat for all dropped items.
In this case the benefit of crafting versus finding the item would be to narrow down the kind of stat you would get on the item; plus the usual benefit of being able to choose to build the item repeatedly, of course.
Disappointed in finding an item for free compared to a crafting recipe that would take more time/effort to make for a slight possible advantage? How can you be disappointed?
I believe Legendary blueprint items can’t or have a very small chance in dropping in the actual game.
You seem to be overly focused on the bonus stat that is only acquired via crafting which does take more then just finding the item. So sure they may be “better” but that “better” is achieve with a cost - so having dropped items gaining the same bonus stat as crafted items doesn’t make sense to me at all.
@DeMasked: I see that this is not only a rather minor issue, it seems to be a matter of personal preference too.
I would have liked to see some more opinions here but this issue doesn’t seem to be very interesting for many.
Regarding that bonus stat on found uniques though - I’ve read some people’s complaints about how in the end uniques were all the same and how cool it would be to have e.g. legendaries with varying stats.
Offering a random bonus stat on uniques could be a good compromise here, as suddenly uniques wouldn’t be so “unique” anymore, not so fixed in their stats anymore, and finding the same unique over and over again would offer you the chance to get one with a really nice bonus stat that sets it appart from others.
I must admit though that this isn’t truly consistent with my original proposal and would go beyond the scope of what I’ve had in mind when opening this thread.
This. I am in the process of swapping my existing legendaries to the one’s etram crafts to get slight better OA. The grind is real. Especially for Tainted Brain Matter
I hate that idea. When I find a unique now, I can get a bad roll, but at least I get all stats. When a unique would drop with a ‘bad’ bonus stat it would be a disappointment however. It would be similar to getting a relic with a bad completion bonus.
I do not have an issue with the smith granting a small bonus though, the bonus he grants is so minimal to not matter all that much.
If the choice were either a bonus stat each time a unique drops or none from crafting, I rather have none.
Well, I knew that people wouldn’t be going to love this, still I wanted to suggest it to get an impression of how people actually felt.
Seems my intuition was right in the first place.
Who knows, maybe we’ll get a more solid crafting system in a second expansion, or so? People have asked for it quite often and I can’t remember anyone objecting to it. If this would come chances are that this issue, as perceived by me, would be dealt with too, resulting in a satisfying solution for all.
