Why Unique Weapons are too Strong in PoE

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sidtherat wrote:

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

I think that's a good observation. I don't claim my feedback would fix everything in the game that I think needs fixing. Only that it would be a step in the light direction :)

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Zaanus wrote:

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.

You speak from the bottom of my heart. I only loot rares for chaos recipe. And why for gods there are items with lvl requirement 10 and below dropping in t10+ maps is beyond my comprehension

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Frankenberry wrote:

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.

It's easy to scale only on some weapon types (ones, that have very high APS and greatly support crit).
And even if player wants to scale elemental damage, he often might choose rare weapon, just with elemental mods. Do you really think that such weapons shouldnt be viable?

Elemental damage from gems or elemental mods isnt a problem, and never was. You just have TOO LOW chances to get T1-T2-T3 physical mods (1/5000 for T1, 1/2000 for T2, etc), and without them, physical weapon will be junk. On body armours, desirable mods (T1 life, resists, hybrid life, etc) dont have such a penalty. That's why we see an abundance of well-rolled rare chests, but well-rolled rare physical weapons are almost non-existant.

Uniques chests are so popular, because unlike most gear pieces, uniques chests have incredibly POWERFUL bonuses, while rare chests roll the same amount of resists as other gear pieces, just a bit higher HP, and armour/evasion is irrelevent because those defences are junk. And no, not only Belly, Kaom and QotF. Those are so popular because their core bonuses are LIFE and Movespeed. But there are tons of other unique chests with incredible bonuses - Death's Oath, Cherrubim's Maleficence, Lioneye's Vision, and so on.

But if we take unique physical weapons, situation is different. Well-rolled rare weapons are absolute bonkers, even Staforge is significantly weaker, than 6xT1 2-h sword. But uniques still dominate the game, because those well-rolled rare are SO HARD to obtain (because of penalty to physical mod's spawn rate), that the majority of players cant afford anything but uniques. Furthemore, a lot of players dont even pick up most rare weapons, because odds to get something useful arent even worth the time they spend to pick them up and identify!!! That's NOT a healthy situation at all! Something should be done about all that crap!

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kovarda wrote:

You speak from the bottom of my heart. I only loot rares for chaos recipe. And why for gods there are items with lvl requirement 10 and below dropping in t10+ maps is beyond my comprehension

You might laugh, but some of them are actualy USEABLE! For example, Crude Bow with high Ilvl can be use to craft a nice SRS weapon. And because of its low stat requirement, you'll be able to colour its sockets very easily, and you dont need excess dexterity to equip it.

And such items dont drop often in high-level areas. They are VERY infrequent actually. And can be filtered out easily.
but identified rares that contain junk stats inside, cant be filtered out. You have to pick them up, identify and drop/vendor. It spens your precious time. And if the odds to get someting useful are too low, picking up some kinds of loots becames a noob trap, a time waste, etc.

glad you are not part of any Dev team ... ya sure lower unique droprates even more so it becomes even more Trade of exile ..and no Unique Weapons are not to strong .. for the usual casual maybe because they don't take the time to craft but for everyone who wants to get more out of his character they craft weapons if anything Unique Chests are a problem these days but not to that extend i would say *hey GGG despite never found Shav's 1 Kaoms why u don't lower the droprates even more* and why the fuck do u even care if others out there run around with these Unique weapons? its not like they make the game any different for u

would love to see them doing something along this lines:


reduced rare droping by 90%
droped item mods will have both a min and a max posible roll based on item level
bosses item level +5

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Icoblablubb wrote:

glad you are not part of any Dev team ... ya sure lower unique droprates even more so it becomes even more Trade of exile ..and no Unique Weapons are not to strong .. for the usual casual maybe because they don't take the time to craft but for everyone who wants to get more out of his character they craft weapons if anything Unique Chests are a problem these days but not to that extend i would say *hey GGG despite never found Shav's 1 Kaoms why u don't lower the droprates even more* and why the fuck do u even care if others out there run around with these Unique weapons? its not like they make the game any different for u

show us your crafts then

and you do not really NEED to 'get more ouf of the character' when a 100c build kills shaper. sure, you can make the kills faster with better gear but there is no point - money is elsewhere, endgame is the worst place to farm anyway atm

while overkilling T10 thrash with 2m dps is technicaly better than with 100k dps - there is no practical difference whatsoever

POE problems is in developers psychological need of copy-pasting diablo 2.

The easy way to make rares great again and even uniques great again is superbly simple.
Just remove uniques as they are now and make upgraded mod rolling system, where you got grades of rolls of mods. For that you need:

1)Remake current tiering of mods - you no longer roll mods as now, tier 1 to tier 9 or so. In future you will roll mods of tier 1-3 normal, tier 4-6 magic, tier 7-9 rare and tier 10 unique.

2)Each higher tier unlock new mods that lower tier mods cannot have. In example 5 magic will have +80% physical damage where tier 10 unique will roll +50% physical damage added as fire +50 fire damage and - 50% cold damage.

3)Each weapon can have any number of any mods types, you can even have weapon with 6 x unique tier mods, but it will be as winning a lottery or even worse.
Basicaly saying, if you roll at least 1 magic tier your weapon is magic grade, if you roll on it at least one rare tier its already rare grade weapon. Getting even few rare grades in item will be hard. Getting combination of mods you want will be super hard.

This system remove uniques as "static" objects and RNG the system to maximum giving you basicaly infinite chase item possiblities. You will always have chance to get something better since there will be millions of different combinations on each item.

4)Each grade of items (magic, rare, unique) roll randomly the appreance and flawor text on the item aswell. Linked a bit to the roll of the item. They can even make system where if you roll 3x unique mod (superb rare item) it will give super rare apperance of the item where you cannot get it in other way.

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sidtherat wrote:

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Icoblablubb wrote:

glad you are not part of any Dev team ... ya sure lower unique droprates even more so it becomes even more Trade of exile ..and no Unique Weapons are not to strong .. for the usual casual maybe because they don't take the time to craft but for everyone who wants to get more out of his character they craft weapons if anything Unique Chests are a problem these days but not to that extend i would say *hey GGG despite never found Shav's 1 Kaoms why u don't lower the droprates even more* and why the fuck do u even care if others out there run around with these Unique weapons? its not like they make the game any different for u

show us your crafts then

Why?

Give back nerfed crafting conditions of master league then people will craft. But with this lottery gambling 1 to 100k chance, nerfed occurence of good mods and pollution of mod pool with trash mods you gotta be a jobless nolifer to try craft your own weapon. Oh right lets double boss life on top of it in the sake of balance - lol.

Im also very pleased you are not part of any dev or business team. It would simply mean their end.

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Frankenberry wrote:

An example:

The league before Prophecy I ended up with this rare bow. I had a lot of fun. Kept me going all the way to lvl 100. It wasn’t the best bow on the server but I crafted it myself and it felt good.

The next league I got this bow after 3-4 days. Basically I was handed a mirror-worthy bow on a silver platter and it felt bad. There was no chase. End of the line. I quit the league a few days after. I completely lost interest in the league and the game.

This is an example of why - in my opinion - rare items are much healthier for the game. It gives leagues some much needed longevity.

Well, speak for yourself.
I got mine after about a week in the league and holy shit:

I never had that much fun in all my POE time. I hate "crafting" in poe with a passion because it's no real crafting it's fucking gambling. Later that league I added a 6L QotF and became a KotF build and the fun was almost unreal. Crafting for me is the single biggest bullshit poe has to offer. Ever tried chroming a 6 offcolor chest? It is so horrible it can seriously damage your brain. Fuck crafting all hail the great uniques this game has to offer!

A lot of people bring up crafting being totally unreliable and compare it with gambling. It's not a safe thing for sure and as such it can definitely be compared with gambling. However it's not so unsafe that it's unlikely to have a good result. Alterations -> Merciless -> augmentation (or regal) -> regal + lvl 8 elreon enchant can grant a fairly decent weapon. It takes a bit of effort but it's really not that hard. I have done many times myself.

Also gambling has RNG. However I few leagues back I remember there was a certain bow-crafter that had the best bow on the server several leagues in a row. Sadly I cannot remember his name. He crafted a lot of bows and even though his absolutely best rolls weren't that cheap there were plenty of opportunities to buy a 360-380 harbinger from him.

Yes. Crafting involves the elemental of chance. That doesn't mean you can't - to some degree - stack the odds in your favor. This league I did a lot of quiver / belt / boot / ring crafting myself with great results.

So yes. Crafting involves chance but it's not completely random. Now some people might hate the element of chance. Such as 6-linking a weapon or a chest and wants a guaranteed success. I don't mind the element of chance.

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Icoblablubb wrote:

and why the fuck do u even care if others out there run around with these Unique weapons? its not like they make the game any different for u

It's not really about what other people do. It's about how the game is structured and how the current systems encourages players to skip out on the crafting part of the game. When GGG originally made this game they stated that rares as a rule of thumb would be - and should be - stronger than unique weapons. This is - for the most part - no longer the case. I say it shouldn't be this way anymore.

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666lol666 wrote:

Crafting for me is the single biggest bullshit poe has to offer. Ever tried chroming a 6 offcolor chest? It is so horrible it can seriously damage your brain. Fuck crafting all hail the great uniques this game has to offer!

I don't know why you bring up off-colouring since it has very little to do with crafting a weapon.
6 off-colours is an extreme example and should be next to impossible through normal means. You can fairly easily do 5 off-colours with the jeweler method (if you don't about look it up. If you need a lot of off-colours it's much cheaper than Vorici chromatic rolls or normal chromatic rolls).