Off-colour sockets: What's the deal?

I'm having a really hard time understanding off-colour sockets. Why are they hard to get? Ihe possibility of customisation lures me to PoE, but off-colour sockets always end up being the limiting gameplay factor.

Case in point: I've got this lv86 Caustic Arrow scion I enjoy playing. Ideally, she needs evasion pieces with RRBB and RRB for a faster casting wither spell totem (+flame golem) and a CWDT knockback spell. My options are to use subpar gear that's more R/B friendly, or spend a huge amount of chromatics. Neither choice is satisfying.

When I can't equip a skill I need, it's frustrating. I don't want to play another 50 hours for a small chance I can equip the skill gem - I want to play using those skills. This is why off-colour sockets don't make any sense. When I spend alcs/chaos/divines, etc., I often improve my gear. When I link, it's a long-term goal to improve a skill. But when I try for off-colours, I just want to use a skill at all! Why is that so difficult?

Barring people from using a skill at all, is self-defeating. I know, since I was still running arctic armour instead of grace on that scion at T10, just because I couldn't buy the bloody gem! Yes, I play self-found; trading is another game, and somewhat arcane.

TL;DR: Love this game, but off-colours are a major barrier since they're required to use a skill at all and are ridiculously expensive to obtain.

well this is another complexity layer when making a build, that's great, I wouldnt make it easier. By the way, if all color had same probability, I would be a lot harder to get the color you want on some build using the proper base armor, which make no sense.

It is absolutely archaic and actually hampers diversity when it becomes nearly impossible to make a life based coil caster or an attack based shav user.

The socket color preference needs to be greatly lessened.

This is non-sense. Tt makes a lot more sense for a caster to be more difficult to wear an armor rather than clothes.

Vorici. With him leveled to at least 5 and smart choices during crafting you can save yourself a lot of chromes I think.

It's a game, off colour is a difficulty when you build smth. What's wrong with that?

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are ridiculously expensive to obtain.

Well change your build? You know you can play LL without Shavronne/Lorica? Play a Armour/ES ER/ES to get your colours?

I'd love to see some mechanics introduced that would help with this issue. Granted, Vorici helps already, just not enough in some cases.
Something that's been suggested before: make it so that we can use gems (socketing them) to avoid sockets to be rerolled with chromes, this way the orb will only roll only those sockets that are not of the desired color.

GGG has just changed how scraps/stones work with jews/fuses, so hopefully they read and think about it. Many times I've found gear upgrades that I couldn't wear because they were of the wrong type/colors and I know how painful it can be to roll a few offcolors in high req items...

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Wazz72 wrote:

Something that's been suggested before: make it so that we can use gems (socketing them) to avoid sockets to be rerolled with chromes, this way the orb will only roll only those sockets that are not of the desired color.

That's an interesting idea but I think GGG might consider it too much of an "easy button". What Vorici is missing is further options, like 2/3, 2/4, 3/3, etc.

The one area I think Vorici falls down at is that it costs the same regardless of the color bias of the item. I think the cost should depend on the intrinsic color bias instead of being a fixed cost regardless. But maybe that's hard to implement.

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Nephalim wrote:

It is absolutely archaic and actually hampers diversity when it becomes nearly impossible to make a life based coil caster or an attack based shav user.

The socket color preference needs to be greatly lessened.

Difficulty also happer diversity, we should remove hard content. LOL

The color of sockets are in your favor on 95% of the gear. If you're a caster, you'll more than likely be rocking lots of blues. If they made every color of equal probability, it would be crazy worse. Just to appease the 10% of player base that wants to use off-color? No system is perfect. Str, Dex and Int assignment on gear is actually beneficial.