Legacy items are bullshit

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mark1030 wrote:

I've heard an RMT argument from a couple people here. Are you guys trying to say that if somebody was willing to pay real money for a legacy shavronne's, they somehow wouldn't be willing to pay for a shavronne's if there was no legacy version? It doesn't seem like RMT use would increase or decrease either way. The only thing that would change is the relative amount of money somebody would pay for a better version of something.

More to the point, the botting operations which supply RMT are almost exclusively currency-based, since the medium has more compact storage. It's naive to believe RMTers store stacks of legacy uniques. They just store stacks of Exalts and Eternals, which their buyers can then trade for legacy uniques the old fashioned way. Since there is no such thing as a legacy Exalt it is a little humorous watching the tinfoils try to tie RMT to legacy items.

Thankfully for my side of the debate, there are other good reasons to dislike legacies.

No there is only 1 logical argument: effecting the only competition that exists in standard, PVP. Easily remedied with red flagging legacy user. All others "reasons" are negative emotional arguments such as envy.

Wow, Scrotie. Normally when I read your posts, even the hypothetical what-if ones, I'm blown away by how well thought out they are. This is not one of those posts.

To compare the legacy item debate to... that other thing you did... I'll paraphrase one of my favorite movies:

It ain't the same fuckin ballpark. Hell, it ain't even the same fuckin sport.

If it's a technical issue, and ONLY a technical issue, fine, it's bullshit. I feel it's more than that. Legacy items are a really cool reason to play in standard! In an economy that is deathless, it's vitally important that there be a much longer road to travel if you're the collecting type. Legacy items fill that role perfectly.

A better analogy would be that of an MTG card collector. There are legacy MTG cards, yet, there isn't an MTG representative knocking on peoples' doors to collect the outdated, overpowered cards.

Yeah, you pay with real money to get those real cards. We pay with digital money to get our digital items. However, the anger you might feel if your Black Lotus card was passed over a belt sander is just as valid as if your Crown of Eyes was snipped in half.

So, who has the most justifiable anger? One who earned something that was taken, or one who has yet to earn and envies those who have?

I know exactly how I would react to some piss-ant in real life who wanted to beltsand my Black Lotus, because they don't have one. Why that mentality is so highly revered here is beyond my understanding.

Not really convinced by this since legacy items have had their foundation already in Standard to give that "OP feel" every time you actually invest in it. If you want the best balance PoE has to offer, play the leagues. GGG had the chance to leave unique and high tier affixes (like resplendent on shields) alone but the effort to avoid a stale meta went far beyond paranoia. Unnecessary items got nerfed - Kaom's Heart, Shavronne's Wrappings, Bringer of Rain(ESPECIALLY THIS) hell, even the ever popular Cloak of Defiance got the hammer then they have announced that EB is may be drastically changed.. like wtf? Same goes for Kaom's Heart, HP% nodes got murdered to oblivion putting the iconic armor to what, 5-6ex?


I'm against this specific crusade against legacy items because considering the ever changing passive-tree and usually the ridiculous decisions made to "balance" changes. The items you call OP before, feels like a necessity every patch to reach that standard of a "good build". The major balance changes I've witnessed so far never match their choice of what items to go legacy in the long run.

There is one more argument, though it might be tinfoil-hatty:
GGG seems to balance new content around incredibly well equipped characters. I often feel they have legacy items in mind when deciding on a boss' damage.

But maybe that's nonsense, maybe they just start all new bosses off as being too hard, so a nerf later will not cause an outcry a la "ah, now I cannot farm this boss anymore, people that were here earlier had this unfair advantage! QQ", which would be caused if the boss were to have been too easy and got a buff.

@RogueMage

Still, the block nerf didn't make block builds unviable or uncompetitive.
It just made them non-cookie-cutter.

If an item enables a low cost build with above-average effectiveness, then definitely there's something wrong with it.

And whether it's true or not, I definitely don't like the mentality you described - not focusing on balance but on build diversity, and thus allowing OP items to remain in the game (Legacy).

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Aim_Deep wrote:

All others "reasons" are negative emotional arguments such as envy.

You're not playing an offline game.
Legacy items make the game easier for their users.
Make their users survive better, kill faster, etc.
And thus they affect economy, which in turn affects other players.

If Legacy items are unbalanced, they should be gone.

Maybe you like them particularly because you think they cause envy.

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Treffnix wrote:

GGG seems to balance new content around incredibly well equipped characters.

They use to do this, it's not a secret.
Then mathematically adjusting the changes to apply "properly" to the lower tier characters, often not taking into account gear, builds' and gameplay specifics, along with some exceptions out of the straight line and mechanics which affect the different builds in a different way.

This kind of strictly numerical "balancing" often reproduces in specific builds not working, along with heavily affecting the lower-to-mid tier chars.

Nothing new here, dude.

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Nurvus wrote:

@RogueMage
Still, the block nerf didn't make block builds unviable or uncompetitive.
It just made them non-cookie-cutter.

I had two melee block builds dating from Open Beta that were pulverized by the block nerf. Neither of these were cookie-cutter builds. With the dual-wielder, I had to give up on block completely and switch to an evasion/dodge build. I was unable to come up with any viable dual-wield block build that did not require underpowered Unique weapons.

The other melee build I scrapped entirely, and switched to a Facebreaker build. Facebreaker's huge damage multiplier allowed me to take most of the 1-2% shield block nodes without mortally gimping my damage. I was able to retain about 15K dps with around 60% chance to block, and that's with an 850% Legacy Facebreaker. Based on my experience, I'd say Facebreaker is one of the very few melee builds to survive the block nerf.

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RogueMage wrote:

In retrospect, it's quite obvious what motivated GGG to nerf long-standing block chances on the Skill Tree as well as on shields. GGG came up with a new melee tactic they wanted to try out involving counter-attack skill gems that are triggered on block. Problem was, many melee players were running builds with up to 75% block, and GGG felt this would trigger counter-attacks too frequently. Hence, they pre-emptively nerfed block rates across the board to make way for counter-attack builds.

This information is simply false, GGG did not nerf block chance across the tree, gear and not make it work fully with acro simply because of the new gem they did it because it was too powerful for the cost. Acquire a few pieces of gear, grab some nodes on the tree and you have the best defensive mechanic in the game. Block was the most broken thing GGG ever decided to allow in the game, it took way to long for players to figure that out, but when they discovered it was as powerful as it was literally everyone was using it, people would stack attack block to benefit from the converted % to spell block, which was the primary OPness.

Block was more powerful then CWDT+EC+IC+ID, especially for its cost, plus it worked together with everything. It also worked with acro\phase without any penalty, which means you could stack multiple forms of the best defenses for very little investment, how exactly was that not broken?

Counter attack was added only after they nerfed block and IIRC was added to make investing into block have some return to help with the lost damage you now had because you had to invest much more into gear\tree to get full block.

So please next time you think about spreading information like this that GGG nerfed block across the board to add these new gems, don't it simply isn't true, block was extremely OP on its own and that nerf was 100% justified. The only item(s) that IMO shouldn't have been touched by it were the 2nd version BoR, anvil and Wings, everything else should have and were justified nerfed.


and @aim is the only one here to address any circumstance to where legacy items are unfair for new players and that is PvP, people have tried to address solutions to this, however I don't think there is much to be done. You can't say you can't use those items because everyone can't have them, how is the fair to them for finding or buying the item, what if it has a rare corruption?

I think GGG could maybe take some of what they know about races and add it into a PvP type event with chest, gems and allow for you to use PvP only characters to spec into the build you want. But events like this should be paired with regular events.

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Antnee wrote:

A better analogy would be that of an MTG card collector. There are legacy MTG cards, yet, there isn't an MTG representative knocking on peoples' doors to collect the outdated, overpowered cards.

Yeah, you pay with real money to get those real cards. We pay with digital money to get our digital items. However, the anger you might feel if your Black Lotus card was passed over a belt sander is just as valid as if your Crown of Eyes was snipped in half.

So, who has the most justifiable anger? One who earned something that was taken, or one who has yet to earn and envies those who have?

I know exactly how I would react to some piss-ant in real life who wanted to beltsand my Black Lotus, because they don't have one. Why that mentality is so highly revered here is beyond my understanding.

If you're trying to defend Black Lotus from a balance perspective... well, that's a losing battle. It's hideous OP, arguably the second most OP card ever printed, and you know it. Crown of Eyes isn't an appropriate analogue. And if by "beltsander" you meant "tranform into a Lotus Petal"...

But I feel the Lotus is an extreme example. I harbor no particular grudge against cards which are off of the (ironically titled, given the subject) Legacy format banned list. I have deep respect for MTG's Legacy format. On the other hand, I view the Vintage restricted list as essentially the same form of nerf half-measure as legacies in PoE; Vintage is a garbage format as a result.

I don't have a problem with limited-availability items in either ARPG or CCG. Headhunter belts and Gull masks don't bother me. What I do have a problem with is policies which acknowledge that a particular collectible is beyond the pale in terms of fitting into the format, yet fail to eliminate the trouble. Or a policy where it is the overpowered, and only the overpowered, which get removed from distribution, rather than a predetermined begin and end of distribution (in other words, league-specific items are okay, having 2 different versions of the same item isn't).