Eye of Dominion falls into the classic trap of mind control in ARPGs - the enemy health to damage ratio is way, way off. They barely tickle enemies.
Perhaps mind controlled targets should gain benefits from the players +pet bonuses?
I was thinking the same thing. Either that or make the enemy invulnerable while mind controlled so that it at least acts as a good meat shield
Can’t believe no one has yet mentioned Spellfire Wand and to a lesser extent Empowered Spellfire Wand
The unempowered version especially is so bad it hurts to look at. Lowish dot bonuses to two damage types which don’t synergize well at all and not a whole lot else going for it…
I think the list of well designed epics is a far smaller list so I think it would be more constructive for the dev’s to ask/focus on which ones do work versus relying on us to remember the epics which we don’t use and hence can’t remember.
For me, the one epic which feels the most “epic” at its level is Crushing Will and I wish more epics were designed like it. Most feel very underwhelming at their level and have stats which are worse than a good single affix green or yellow, i.e. “of Heroism” buries most low level epics in stats not even including a possible prefix. I think attaching a passive or active skill to most epics, no matter how boring, would also go a long way to differentiating them from the same-level greens/yellows.
Listing more prefixes and suffixes that you find blow epics out of the water would be very helpful for devs and I to figure out how to buff epics to be better than magic items.
Most late game epics lack resistances I feel. Just found a Spidersilk armor (an epic I had never found in 700 hours of play which seems odd) that is very nice but there are no resists on it. All the legendaries have them and usually a lot of them. In ultimate you can’t really afford not to get at least some resists from the chest slot in my opinion. That’s just one example of course but there are many more.
Another thing regarding jewelry, I find that a good resistant ring of attack usually beats all the epic rings. Most legendary rings too for that matter. This feels wrong when you can shop farm these rings by the bucketload if you spend an hour on it. And you can get lucky and find an incorruptible one, a prefix so strong that even without a suffix it beats most epics. I recently shopped an incorruptible ring of potency and it will stay glued to my character for eternity, legendaries be damned.
Finally, I know you said legendaries are covered but recent experience forces me to comment on a particular one, Earthsplitter.
I’m leveling a forcewave commando with the justicar set and this weapon is the perfect one for that build, at least it seems designed to be. But the proc is … strange. It’s a wave type skill but it doesn’t pierce. The times you see the graphic of it can be counted on one hand during a session. It makes forcewave look good and that is difficult. To me it feels like someone forgot to add the pierce chance, every single skill that is similar pierces.
This. 80 OA usually will do more for the actual damageoutput than 50% increased x-dmg, and the resistances simply are needed for survivability. On top of that capped resistances will allow you to use better augments and components, indirectly strengthening all aspects of your build.
Honestly, i have no idea what to do with highlevel epics. There just doesn’t seem to be a place for a lot of them, because either you use a BIS- Legendary or a magic or rare item or a faction piece, wich at least comes with the required stats.
Of course you could simply slap OA, resistances and hp on all of them and basically turn them into legendaries statwise, but this would be crazy powercreep imo.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit, and I don’t think that buffing epics will cause a power creep. Since most players replace epics by endgame, the only result of buffing epics would be to make them more valuable before the player is able to accumulate mass amounts of legendaries. Stronger epics could result in veteran/elite becoming a bit easier, but I think this is a worthwhile trade for making more Epics viable. Furthermore, I assume that most players are only concerned about power creep in ultimate difficulty rather than normal and elite. Stronger epics also means that players will be able to acquire and farm for legendaries with less frustration.
Another solution would be to make some epic items BiS for extremely niche builds. Since Epics cannot (and should not) compete with legendaries, they can fill in the gaps and support niche builds that current legendary itemization does not.
Part of me - and, I believe, part of doom - wants to make a lot of the higher-level epics straight into Legendaries with comparable stats. But that runs the problem of removing a lot of existing content and adding a lot of new content, which isn’t something we really want to do (yet). Plus we’d have to edit a ton of droptables, which would be a nightmare.
The approach we’re presently taking seems to be minor stat gains to make them usable in higher difficulties without being ‘good’, if that makes any sense.
Keep the feedback coming, though. If there’s any particular shortcomings of any particular epics yet unmentioned, we’d love to hear of them.
Not sure if anyone mentioned this one, but I’d like to add the Empowered Tremor to the list.
It’s stat bonuses are pretty ok, but the reason I’m bringing it up is the fact that it grants +3 to Rending Force, despite the fact it grants a skill that is already pretty similar to Forcewave, which makes it a rather awkward bonus, unless you’re planning to use both Forcewave and Ground Ripper at once for whatever reason… Maybe using Forcewave with the Tremor transmuter as your LMB attack?
Anyways, I think it would make be better if it added + 3 to Upheaval, since it already adds + 3 to Brute Force, so it would be a good combo of skill bonuses for a 2H Warder.
Recently I’ve noticed that I find the Legendary boots selection very weak.
Out of the 10 available, there are 2 that are “good”:
Golemborn Greaves: high armor, HP, Physical res and has a useful proc -> best allround boots
Boneshatter Treads: 2 Resists to less common types and high OA
The rest are either meh or could easily be replaced by a green.
Some comments:
Wyrmscale Footguards: overall low bonuses and the proc, like most of the damage shields, vanishes instantly when you need it
Wraithwalkers: the Physical res is useful, but the other stats seem kinda random. The proc is powerful but the uptime isn’t the best, I’d rather see lower dodge bonuses with a better uptime, so it doesn’t get accidentally wasted as much
Windshear Greaves: Niche resists and almost all affixes are undesirable or low, the proc is powerful but has even lower uptime than the above item
Stormtitan Treads: big HP bonus and reduced stun length which are good, but the other stats aren’t that useful. There is no reason to use this over Golemborn boots if you’re looking to tank
Footpads of Gray Magi: Similar defensive affixes to Windshear boots, has decent other resists though. The other stats aren’t useful, and the proc is bad because of the run speed cap as mentioned before.
A better “oh shit!” defensive proc would be to petrify in aoe or a large aoe slow for a couple seconds.
Earthshatter Treads: it’s just worse than Golemborn ones again, the reduced petrify duration is useful but niche. The skill on it is all but useless.
Comparing them to some of the faction items, I’d rather use Elite Harvest Footpads (lots of resists), Rhowari Footpads (Bleed res is hard to get, +HP) or Rhowari Greaves (HP, highest OA of all unique boots).
Or just a random green that happened to spawn some decent mods (resists, HP, OA, etc.) beats most of the Legendaries handily.
Some suggestions to improve them:
-Higher MS on some of them to set them apart from greens and others, this also closes the gap somewhat between characters with no Shadow Strike/Blitz and those that do have it.
~12-16% sounds reasonable to me. This is lower than the Unseeing Swiftness boots (which are blue and have a big drawback) but still a sizable increase.
Comparatively, the low level Explorer boots are extremely good, they have 12% MS (more than any Legendary!) and the 8% total speed 2 set bonus, which you can easily get together with the helm.
-Improved damage absorption shields— these really need better numbers IMO, otherwise they have close to no added value
-Some of the weaker stats increased (look at the Venomspine boots) or replaced with more useful ones (OA/DA, resists, HP, etc.)
-The “Survival Instincts” type of proc just has no place in the game with the low speed caps in place
-Sprinkling some of the less common affixes here and there:
*Bleed res (fairly hard to get)
*Reduced Freeze/Petrify/Stun length (some of the more dangerous encounters late-game)
*Dodge % (to simulate increased mobility)
*Increased max res (in very limited quantities as it’s really powerful)
So I’ve finished editing all epics I wanted to except for 2handers, daggers and scepters.
So uh, what epic daggers and scepters suck, and why? And don’t worry I have a fun idea for spellfire wand since it’s craftable :].
I just had a quick look into the itemdatabase, in order to figure out, if i could contribute any useful suggestions regarding daggers/sceptres, but it turned out, that i am not so sure about them. The weapon and the offhand slots are more or less pure dps slots imo, and thus i think its more about finetuning the values on the epic “casterweapons”. Most of them are unexciting, but will do the job until you can lay hands on the BIS legendary (or rare for that matter).
A small amount of castspeed here, a littlebit of OA there, and i think most of them will be perfectly fine for leveling and early farming runs. Maybe the procs could be a littlebit better on the highlevel ones. Not sure if that helps, but i can’t come up with anything more concrete atm :undecided:.