The case for greatly buffed Monster Infrequents

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Next patch, about to hit any day, is the Monster Infrequent patch. I’ve been looking forward to this patch for quite a while, since MIs were my favourite part of the loot system in TQ and TQ:IT.

Unfortunately, the patch preview for 1.0.0.4 (http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38544) strongly suggests that top-end MIs themselves will not actually be buffed at all, only the chance to get them will.

According to the patch preview, the following changes will be made:

  • the drop rate of all rares, including MIs, will be increased on elite and ultimate
  • the quality of affixes of MIs will be improved

Based on the context as well as the picture of the Kilrian’s Skullbreaker (an item I will come back to), it seems clear that “affixes” solely refers to the prefixes and suffixes that are randomly assigned, and not the base stats of the MIs themselves.

And that’s a real shame.

In TQ and TQ:IT, MIs were best in slot for many builds in many situations. A couple were straight-up overpowered and would have no place in Grim Dawn: Stonebinder’s Cuffs with +3 all skills, Batrachos Greaves with +140% DA and Homados, which was bugged and gave you capped attack speed, are good examples.

Many more, however, were balanced to the point of being slightly better than the best legendaries if found with the correct stats.

Folg, Rancor, Khthonion Razor, Revenant Plate, Sabertooth, Lar, etc, were all items that could compete with the comparatively more powerful legendaries in Titan Quest if you managed to find them with the right stats.

In comparison, most MIs in GD are only very, very, very slight upgrades over random rares, which in most cases can’t compete with legendaries anyway.

Apart from Dermapteran Slicers which are BiS for certain Nightblade builds, largely because of their unique armor penetration percentage combined with Blades of Nadaan rather than because of their actual stats, almost no MIs are any better than rares.

Kilrian’s Skullbreaker, my favourite item in all of GD, used to ALMOST be the exception to this rule. A few patches ago, it was changed from giving +cunning and +% cunning (low amounts that should have been increased as part of a general push to make MIs more impactful in the game as a whole) to a very bipolar +%fire and physical damage that will generally not even be ideal for the most eccentric Fire Strike Commandos.

So I’m now making the case for a game-wide buff to all Monster Infrequents.

Here’s my arguments for why it would improve the game overall:

  • [li]Build variety:[/li]Buffing Monster Infrequents to potentially match or eclipse BiS legendaries if rolled perfectly will open up more character builds and increase variety, allowing more strong options outside of the three obvious cookiecutters of DW Blademasters, AoE lightning Druids and Dreeg poison dudes to flourish.
    [li]Game longevity:[/li]Monster Infrequents are, by their nature, farmed in different, specific locales. Right now, the best way to gear up a character is figure out which exact spot of the game gives you the highest amount of legendaries per hour and then grind it endlessly. If MIs were buffed across the board, players would have to go to different places to look for different items. As a result, players who chose to defect from the path-of-least-resistance of stacking legendaries, would have the option of investing additional time into their character when it would otherwise be “done”, as an alternative to starting a new character of a different build. I wouldn’t be trying to force the choice on anyone, but the option would be nice to have for those of us who love to endlessly min-max one character and end up getting attached to them.
    [li]Gameplay variation[/li]Slightly related to the above, a global MI buff would force players to get acquainted and reacquainted with parts of the game world, they may have just scratched the surface of while plowing through quests to get to the next boss. Ask the level designer if he would like for Crate to give people a reason to come back to the rarely visited and underappreciated parts of the game and I’m sure he’ll agree :slight_smile:

PS: Kilrian’s Skullbreaker is the single best looking weapon in the game and I am incredibly bummed that it is no longer a viable option for my Blademaster.

2

Yup. Cornucopia agrees with you. We envision bumping up M.I.s that have rolled with complimentary affixes to the point where they are preferable over Legendaries. Part of this is in making those complimentary affixes better themselves, as a lot of them aren’t. But the other half is letting M.I.s shine in ways that regular double-rares don’t.

3

Much agreeing. MI’s add variety and replayability to the game and SHOULD with the right role be best in slot.

4

It seems like an easy conceptual fix - make MIs better all around with high-end MIs being able to compete with Legendaries for BiS gear. I don’t know if I agree they should always be best in slot, but they should certainly allow for the case to be made.

5

If a perfectly rolled MI isn’t BiS for the appropriate class/build, there’s no point to the item type at all. A perfect MI is significantly harder to farm than a legendary because of the monster exclusivity. A full legendary kit can be farmed through whichever Nemesis boss your build has an easy time dealing with or by multiplayer Nemesis farming, whereas MIs can only be farmed one (maybe two, in some cases) at a time, with little other reward to be gained from farming the given area.

This also leads me to a follow-up suggestion: If MI spawn/drop rate doesn’t currently increase linearly with the number of players in a game, it absolutely must. Otherwise you’re penalizing people for playing with their friends, which was one of the things that turned people off of vanilla Diablo 3

6

In their current state, MIs are nothing but a crafting material. The chance to drop one is low (even if increased-still low), and when it finally happen, they are crap 99% of the time. There should be either quantity, or quality, preferably the latter. Nemesis MIs are the worst abusers.

The whole problem is more general and concerns all rare items, MIs included.
Too many combinations of affixes to meet the average expectations of a build. Poor chance for a good roll when the desired combination happens.

Rares got outperformed by legendaries (which also got juicy procs/properties, besides the typically high damage increase). And while it makes sense that a higher tier item is supposed to be better, “common” rares you find on your way are often worse than…the blue items. Which got a high chance to drop. And now this makes no sense.
Double rares could, eventually, be better than the legendaries. Or could be not. What’s for sure - they will be much much harder to obtain, in a difference of most of the legs.
It’s almost impossible to craft a (relatively) good roll double rare, for your build. Not if you don’t back up save files. But even if you do it, better don’t. The useful affixes are so rare, it’ll take you a day or two of gambling to get the proper combination for something you could eventually consider “ok”.

A brief check of the builds on the forum will show that in most of the cases the only rare items people use to keep at high levels, are the jewels. The rest is colored in purple. Rares are a filler to level up, but blues do it better.

IMO the idea of the strong rare items able to outperform all the rest, got compromised.

7

Personally I prefer even yellow rings over green ones. Much, much easier to shop farm a good combination of affixes on those. Just checking every vendor when you sell trash yields decent +skill rings with a useful suffix like the +1 brimstone of alacrity I recently bought. No rare gets close to that, pretty much ever.

8

Great ideas i totally agree with those,i miss times TQIT when u can get MI’s with so powerfull rolls