Why Unique Weapons are too Strong in PoE

I think difavour and starforge should stay the same. They are chase items in themselves.
Here is another solution to this problem:
-Shaper's realm and alluring abyss have the zana's "don't die or leave the map mod."
-Shaper and Uber atziri have you cannot leech life and mana mod.
-Getting hit by shaper and uber atziri you get a debuff that disables non potion regen.

Problem solved.

lol

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sucrecandie wrote:

I'm glad that strong uniques are available, because it allow "casual" players to have access to at least yellow tier in endgame.

Casual is not the same as "bad".

You can do red tier maps with a white weapon, all you need is knowledge and practice.

Content outside of uber atziri and shaper isn't a gear check, good gear just makes you go faster/safer.

I don't think its the unique items that are too good. It is just that rare items, while they could theoretically be great, suck in practice. I cannot remember ever finding a bow that gave me half the DPS that a perfectly rolled bow would give me. Heck, I cannot even remember one that gave me a third. 25%... yes, maybe.

It is not the unique items that keep me from crafting rares, but the fact that crafting is way too expensive, and that the chances of getting something decent are very low because of the weighting of the affixes. At this point in the league I have accumulated maybe 25 exalt worth of currency. What are the chances of crafting something decent with that amount of currency? Very low.

Unique items somewhat compensate for the problem that rares suck. Not in a great way, but they do.

So, no to your suggestions, yes to making crafting a better option (make exalts more common), yes to re-balancing the affix spawn rates on rares.

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Frankenberry wrote:

(TLDR: Too strong Unique weapons and flat elemental gems discourage crafting of rare items. This leads to a lack of chase items in PoE. Rare items are worse than easily accessible unique weapons. This leads to lack of longevity in leagues. Unique weapons are often little more than "stat-sticks" which feels odd.)

There is a simple answer to "why good physical/caster rare weapons are so infrequent" (= why unique weapons dominate the game).

The answer is simple - because GGG drastically nerfed chances for essential high-tier mods - %increased physical damage, flat physical damage, %increased physical damage and accuracy, %increased spell damage, etc.
All those mods have only ~1/5000 chance to spawn as T1, and 1/2000 as T2. While most mods have ~1/100-1/150 chance to spawn as T1 (including mods for flat elemental damage, btw). Obviously, since those mods are ESSENTIAL for good physical weapon (and for really powerful one, you need 2 of them), and odds to spawn them are so ridiculously LOW, we dont see many good rare weapons. Most players even filter out all 2-handed weapons and most one-handed weapons, just because odds to get something useful are too low.

GGG did that nerf when Eternal Orbs could drop still, to prevent too easy endgame crafting utilizing them. But Eternal Orbs drop no more, and in current environment, that nerf is just ridiculous! It leaves no chance for rare weapons, because good ones will be far too infrequent to compete with uniques. The best you can reliably obtain (aside from unique) - is to roll T1 increased physical damage, and then blast Elreon's "can have multiple mods" on it, and add flat damage, AS and crit chance. Everything better than that will be incredibly hard to obtain.

As many have already said, well rolled rares are simply far too rare to make some of your suggestions feasible.

It'd be one thing if GGG adjusted drop rates on guardians/shaper/uber atziri where they drop identified and can't roll under t3 affixes, but I doubt we'd see that happening.

There's also the fact that some unique weapons simply have very strong effects.

Take for example Kongor's Undying Rage. It has a built in Resolute Technique that still allows Elemental Overload and throws in onslaught on crit. It's far from the highest dps weapon, but it simplifies the passive tree around it and is fully capable of scaling phys->ele damage extremely well. Right now, I'd have to pick up a 600 dps or so 2h weapon for it to be worthwhile, but again, not likely to ever find one or afford one.

I think crafting wise, the bad RNG does feel terrible, but it serves a necessary purpose as a currency sink (except this is completely moot in SSF).

If anything, they can make it so map bosses always drop identified gear that cannot roll below a certain tier of affix. for example, Shaper drops identified magic/rares that cannot roll below a t2-t3 affix. However, attempting to craft on those items will allow the full pool of affixes to be added.

It wouldn't be the best system, but it'd certainly lend a sense of progression if balanced along the map bosses of every tier and provide greater regularity while still allowing a currency sink if attempting to improve an item.

So I see a lot of good observations and arguments. Too many to go over them all.

Several people mention how crafting a rare that can compete with uniques are way to hard. As mentioned previously by _Saranghaeyo_ if GGG reintroduced the hybrid damage prefix it would really help a lot.

About flat damage gems and jewelry.
One possibility could be that a weapon could only roll 1 type of flat elemental damage. For instance instead of rolling T1 lightning, T1 cold and T1 fire it would be 3 different rolls all granting lightning damage. GGG could fiddle around with the numbers so the damage wouldn't become completely bunkers but overall possibly higher than it is now.

They could then reduce the flat damage from jewels and gems. Currently the total amount of base flat elemental damage you gain from your weapon is quite low.

An example: lvl 20 wrath, lvl 20 herald of thunder, lvl 20 added lighting and an amulet with t2 flat lightning + 2 rings with t3 flat lightning grants you a total of flat lightning damage around 70-890.

Does it really matter it you can gain another 1-100 from Windripper or your weapon when the flat damage from other sources are that high? No. Not really, no. What if weapon was maybe typically .... 40% or something of your flat damage ? Then there would be a real opportunity cost if selected a "stat-stick" weapon.

Result: People would have to work a bit more to build up their character. In my humble opinion it's currently way to easy to scale damage of flat elemental gems / jewelry.

About other item slots:
Someone mentions that this is not a particular problem for uniques. In general people prefer Kaom's Heart / Belly of the Beast (or QotF for speedbuilds) compared to even fantastically well rolled rares. True. I agree but I didn't want to include it since my post was already all over the place.

So instead of 100% chance to drop a 1c unique, you think Shaper should only have a 25% chance to drop 1c? Great end game rewards right there.

rare items.. you mean this stuff we (i suppose majority) filter out and do not even pick up? guys who think that they are the only ones running 'uber strict' filters might realise that it is pretty much the 'go to' setting right now

if you are not picking items because it is a bad idea, others are not picking them up too. thats why there are like 8 600+ pdps 2handers. because picking up 2*4 items is something people like me stopped doing in 2015. there is simply no point.

there are always at least two unique options: starter (like Primacy, Doomsower or Terminus Est) and end-game like Starforge, Atziri, 6L Kitava's or Bloodlust

so why bother picking up rares? uniques being too strong and easily obtainable (excluding T0 ones like totem shield etc) is just half of the problem

second half is: ggg made us think that looting in this game is the worst way of playing this game. uber strict filters, zoom-zoom-zoom-leave-stuff-on-the-ground, picking currency and buying from peons

but peons are wising up - not that many left. and when there are no rares to use - you are left with uniques, whatever they are. and you can kill shaper with Doomsower or Primacy so who cares in the long run?

itemization is the strongest and weakest part of POE. keeping absurd mechanics in the game makes all this itemization options pointless when there are always 'cheats' available (why use flat ele weapons when you can pick phys weapon and convert it in full into elemental?) attack speed + flat added from gems make actuall ele rolls on weapons meaningless

this problem has more layers than just 'some uniques are too strong'. they are but it is just the first layer

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sidtherat wrote:

second half is: ggg made us think that looting in this game is the worst way of playing this game. uber strict filters, zoom-zoom-zoom-leave-stuff-on-the-ground, picking currency and buying from peons

It's not like we have a misunderstanding. I used to be a peon. I would ID tons of rares, often use 5 or 6 portals per map. It would easily take me 15-20 minutes a map with literally 50% of the time spent in town vendoring crap.

You know what I ever found? Mostly jack shit. Not only that, I was basically not having fun because I wasn't killing mobs much as a % of my game time.

Then you realize that drop rates are 100% balanced around 2 minute map clears. You realize if you aren't playing the meta, you are truly in the wrong game.

GGG affix tier spawn rate is the #1 reason for this problem. It's not uniques, filters, or anything else. It's that to get a usable rare weapon a combination of 4 correct T1/T2/T3 affixes is a once every couple league occurrence even if you loot basically every rare item? So why even bother doing it.

Some base items are even more hopeless than others. Why in gods name arent wands/staves/scepters separated into different weapon classes by base.