Theories of Next League's "Mini-Expansion?"

As the title says, what changes to the game do you think will come? I do not mean the topics of the next temp leagues, but the actual new content released. Skill tree changes are almost certain, but if you have a theory as to what will change, feel free to share :)


My current top theories are:
a new trade system, which would be nice

or new endgame content, specifically mechanical based fights such as Atziri, not like the fights of Core or other 80+ maps that require very specific builds, not solely player skill.

Your theories?

I'll bet that both of you are wrong (?).

---

Seriously talking, I expect most expansions to go in the direction of FM. The numbers back me, that expansion was the most popular one. That doesn't exclude end game bosses, though. They can be added in parallel (think of Abaxoth).

I hope they will add something end game that will make running Purity of Ice not a joke.

Get your 5 anti freeze flasks ready boys, chilly Atziri incoming!

I am very curious about skill tree changes they would make. For the first time it feels complete. Sure it gives us much more power than before, but we also have opponents that are much stronger as well.

What I always hope for and never seem to get... balance with the older content. Power creep in this game has almost ruined it.

We have not had a fishing update in awhile. Probably affects a very small group but don't forget about us!

Masters are cool, but I don't like how they were implemented.

Seeing Haku standing in the middle of a bunch of zombies just twiddling his thumbs while you murder them all just seems weird.

I'd like to see something that interacts specifically with your environment, but similar to the masters idea where you can level them up. Maybe events where you chance upon a rogue exile who is fighting off a hoard enemies and you save them (or they can die), and they give you a random unique item in return based on the zone level. That would be neato.

What I hope we get is rebalancing of the game at lower levels. Get rid of Cruel or shift some things around, but doing 4 acts on normal, cruel and merciless after 12 times is not fun anymore. Similar to FM or even Vaal zones, they could add side content while levelling to justify removing an entire difficulty while still levelling at a decent rate.

I would also love a rebalancing of the power creep but I don't think that's going to happen. I used to hit 3-4k dps in Act 2-3 of Merciless and it was fine. Now I hit 6k dps in Cruel and Act 4 (mainly bosses) were still horrible to do with far too many large unavoidable hits.

Also based on the 1 month league, I would love that they keep this constant "lots of past league mods on steroids". I'm levelling super slowly because I hit Beyond rares every pack, but I'm loving it and it's a nice challenge once in a while (when you get an Ambush box that spawns a rogue exile + Beyond monsters because of numbers of kills and you get a random Warband pack chasing you, it's awesome!)

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

What I always hope for and never seem to get... balance with the older content. Power creep in this game has almost ruined it.

Meh, hyperbole. I mean, it's a good concern to have, but it hasn't ruined it (yet). You should research the crap that happens in other games.

"

Nasreth wrote:

Seeing Haku standing in the middle of a bunch of zombies just twiddling his thumbs while you murder them all just seems weird.

Yep. I'd like to see them fight for once when monsters are near.

"

Namcap wrote:

What I hope we get is rebalancing of the game at lower levels. Get rid of Cruel or shift some things around, but doing 4 acts on normal, cruel and merciless after 12 times is not fun anymore. Similar to FM or even Vaal zones, they could add side content while levelling to justify removing an entire difficulty while still levelling at a decent rate.

I would also love a rebalancing of the power creep but I don't think that's going to happen. I used to hit 3-4k dps in Act 2-3 of Merciless and it was fine. Now I hit 6k dps in Cruel and Act 4 (mainly bosses) were still horrible to do with far too many large unavoidable hits.

I think the same about removing difficulties, but I don't expect it to happen until the next act. It's a lot of effort to test. I dislike repetition.

I'll play devil's advocate, and say that act 4 is somewhat higher in level and that you should spend less on DPS and more on defenses...

"

NeroNoah wrote:

I'll play devil's advocate, and say that act 4 is somewhat higher in level and that you should spend less on DPS and more on defenses...

Act 4 is similar to the second part of Act 3 (whole Dominus part). When it came out, we found monsters challenging and "too hard" (brackets for emphasis that they are not really but it's how you feel initially) and eventually you get used to the new difficulty levels. And while levelling, even though I play softcore, I usually go for all defensive passives until Merc, at which point I'll go for offense to see character progression.

But before I used to do Merciless Piety with 3k dps and the fight wasn't bad, would last like a reasonable 30-45seconds. I would farm Piety with 8k dps and it was a cakewalk. (hmmm... cake).
Now I do Cruel Malachai with 8k dps and 3k life and the fight takes 3 minutes and if I'm not careful I'll die. This is partly due to me liking evasion based characters that are excessively weak in the new physical based content, but still I find the power creep a bit too much and a bit too unforgiving on defenses.

I'm all for challenging fights like those, but not the repetitiveness of them. And especially not the huge gap in challenge once you're over that speed bump (because really, you can sleep through Merciless Act 1, 2 and 3 once you've done Act 4 Cruel).

"

Namcap wrote:

But before I used to do Merciless Piety with 3k dps and the fight wasn't bad, would last like a reasonable 30-45seconds. I would farm Piety with 8k dps and it was a cakewalk. (hmmm... cake).
Now I do Cruel Malachai with 8k dps and 3k life and the fight takes 3 minutes and if I'm not careful I'll die. This is partly due to me liking evasion based characters that are excessively weak in the new physical based content, but still I find the power creep a bit too much and a bit too unforgiving on defenses.

I'm all for challenging fights like those, but not the repetitiveness of them. And especially not the huge gap in challenge once you're over that speed bump (because really, you can sleep through Merciless Act 1, 2 and 3 once you've done Act 4 Cruel).

Well, it seems more like Evasion (and ES) was screwed again after being so dominant. I think it's a problem of defense diversity in addition to physical damage powercreep.

That being said, yeah, repeating and then having those gaps where nothing special happens just sucks.