A 3.1.0 Wishlist

Hey folks, this is a long post (you've been warned...).

It's an idea of what I'd like to see in 3.1.0. It details both the changes I'd be interested in seeing, plus rationales for some of the ones I expect to be controversial.

These are the opinions of one player with moderate endgame experience (multiple level 90 characters, no level 100s).

Core Design Goals:

- Take the questing upgrade that accompanied 3.0, and extend it beyond Act 10.
- Introduce more chase items into endgame and near endgame
- Offer loot and XP incentives that reward careful, methodical running of difficult content as an alternative to speed clears of trivial content.
- Provide incentives to kill map bosses that are commensurate with the time and risk involved.
- Make appropriate nerfs to avoid any largescale additions to power creep or item creation speed. Minor power creep is OK, medium and major power creep or item creation speed creep are not. (The only intentional power increase in this wishlist is a single additional charge for all characters, awarded early in their mapping career).
- A new league that has a low to moderate impact on the levelling process, becoming more impactful at higher level, and that aims for the same overall difficulty as the core game (so rewards and dangers of league specific content are roughly balanced). I do not detail any suggestions for this league.
- Keep the good parts of Harbinger league and get rid of the bad.


Revisiting Energy Shield:

- The 3.0 nerfs were necessary, but went too far. ES has gone from too good to too weak, and these changes should be partially reverted.
- Revert the changes to ES on items to 2.6 values. Allow divine orbs to fix items generated in 3.0 to bring them into line with new values.
- Partially restore the nodes behind CI, but at lower values than they had in 2.6. Change the 15% more ES node to a 15% increased ES node.
- Reduce the effectiveness of ES nodes on the tree in general. 6% nodes should become 5%, and so on.
- Change ES's scaling with intelligence, so that instead of adding %ES, Int adds flat ES, just as Str adds flat life. (This is intended to strengthen ES at low gear levels and low character levels, and weaken it at higher gear levels or character levels)
- Revert Discipline to 2.6 stats. Without Int scaling, it will need this buff.


The Nerfs:

- Smash Bisco's Collar so hard with the nerfbat that its creator is sad (sorry). This is the most important balance change proposed here. The collar should provide only a minor IIQ boost, although it is fine to have it provide a substantial IIR boost. Currently, outside niche cases (farming 70 or 80 Atziri, or 75 Lab), using any necklace other than Bisco's undermines your currency and item acquisition to the point that you cannot compete in trading with the people that do use Bisco's Collar.
- Reduce the power of the helm enchants that are so good that they single handedly make a skill top tier. Barrage, Tornado Shot, etc. Helm enchants that are just good (RF +40% damage, etc) should stay untouched. The base skills can gain some of this power, if needed.
- Reduce the power of the 'must have' threshold jewels, then assess whether the base skill needs a buff. For example, reduce Rolling Flames from +2 proj to +1, then roll in +1 proj to Fireball at skill gem levels 8 and 16 (maybe also at 24).
- Nerf Occultist's +ES slightly (this is to allow for buffs to ES overall; the intention is that Occultists will come out a smidgen ahead of 3.0 and non-Occultist ES builds will be much better). Potentially nerf mana guardians – someone with specialist knowledge should review this.
- Reduce the rewards for 68 and 75 labyrinth, to make them commensurate with the risks and time involved.
- There's a sextant nerf and an atlas shaping nerf, although they are in a larger overhaul that should be net positive for most players. These are detailed lower.
- Remove instant leech entirely, except on Atziri's Acuity. Replace all other sources of instant leech with major bonuses to leech speed.



Maps:

- Map unique monster (boss) XP has been increased considerably. While in 3.0 people kill bosses for the loot, in 3.1.0 the primary motivation for killing them will be XP.
- Remove the hard link between pack size and effects that directly impact players. Then rebalance all map affix IIQ, IIR and pack size numbers according to how impactful the affix is on players.
For example, 'Players Have Elemental Equilibrium' has only a modest effect on players and so should offer little or no pack size, and a small amount of IIR/IIQ.
On the flip side, 'Players Cannot Regenerate Life or Mana' and 'Monsters move/attack X% faster” make maps considerably more difficult, and so they will now increase pack size, IIR and IIQ considerably.
- Map modifiers which augment unique bosses or add new bosses (examples: “Area contains two unique bosses”; “Area contains 4 Rogue Exiles”; “Unique boss has +100% AoE and +40% life”) add only a small amount of IIR and IIQ, and add no pack size. Instead, they add a new bonus: “Unique bosses provide X% more XP”, with X being quite large.
- Map mods that make both bosses and trash more dangerous, such as “Monsters deal an additional 108% damage as fire”, also add XP to bosses. Difficult and long boss encounters, such as a twinned Phoenix with added fire damage and +boss life, should provide as much XP as running an entire white map.
- Remove the 10% chance to have a breach in maps (but see the next point).
- Add implicit mods to maps (rerollable with Blessed Orbs) which call back to previous leagues in a thematically appropriate fashion. For example, Colosseum has a 10-50% chance to contain an Uul-Netol breach. Vaal Temple has a 100% chance to include a Chayula breach and additionally contains 2 corrupted Essence packs. Vault contains 3 Perandus chests and has a 20% chance to spawn Cardiro. Oasis contains 1-2 essence packs.
- Better implicits (breaches etc), will be given to maps that have historically been unpopular, such as Excavation and Torture Chamber, and less impressive implicits (such as '20-50% chance to contain a Harbinger encounter') to maps that are already popular. Shaped maps have the same implicits as their unshaped versions.
- Perandus Manor can drop in any zone of appropriate level as a Tier 2 rarity unique map (ie quite rare; expect to see 1 of them for each 4 Coward's Trials that drop).


Example of a 3.1.0 map:

Dank Cavern
Underground Sea map (Tier 11)
Implicit: 13% chance to contain an Uul-Netol Breach.
Stasis: Players cannot regenerate life, ES or mana. +33% IIQ, +16% IIR, +25% packsize, no boss XP modification
Twinned: Contains two unique bosses. +6% IIQ, no packsize/rarity, +300% boss XP
Otherworldly: Slaying enemies close together can attract monsters from Beyond. +15% IIQ, +7% IIR, +5% packsize, no boss XP
Fecund: Monsters have +47% hp. +20% IIQ, +10% IIR, +50% boss XP.


Atlas Mechanics:

- Also see 'The Worlds Beyond' below.
- Change the existing 'Atlas Exploration' bonus from 1% per map in which the special objective has been completed, to instead be the following:
10% IIQ and 30% chance for a map tier upgrade if you have completed all maps of the current tier (for example, if you have completed a white Excavation, and a corrupted rare of every other Tier 11 map, every time you do a Tier 11 map you get +10% IIQ, and if a Tier 8 map would drop in a Tier 11, it has a 30% chance to instead drop as a Tier 9.
If you have completed the bonus objective for all Tier 11s, the 30% map upgrade chance increases to 100%.
- This is intended to incentivise running a diverse selection of maps. While it leaves open the option of focusing on one or two maps of a specific tier, doing so now comes at a considerable cost.
- Adjust sextants so that white sextants only affect tier 1-5 maps in their range, yellow sextants only affect tier 1-10 maps in their range, and red sextants affect any map.
- Increase sextant drop rate 50%.
- Decrease the cost of the sextant upgrade recipe from 3 of a kind, to 2 of a kind. (So vendoring 4 white sextants now provides 2 yellow ones).
- Vaal Temple has increased to Tier 17 and is now acquired by corrupting T16 or T17 maps.


Labyrinth:

- Reduce the number of drops from the Gemcutter's chests and the corrupted chests in the 68 and 75 Labyrinths by 60%. This is to prevent these chests from mass producing so many Divine Orbs, GCPs and high quality gems that these gem/orbs' values (in trading-enabled leagues) are no longer commensurate with their rarity.
- Reduce the chance of getting Offerings and Treasure Keys in lab chests.
- Add a chance to encounter a league mechanic in certain dead-end rooms. For example, on one day a dead end might always contain a room with three Harbingers. The next day, a similar room might contain three Invasion bosses guarding a bonus chest, or six rare monsters with Nemesis mods all guarding a chest. A different dead end room might contain a Tempest, with all of the IIQ/IIR bonuses and additional dangers that entails.
- Allow access to the 75 lab with any five out of six trials, instead of requiring all six. (This is to reduce the impact of variance on labyrinth access).


Harbinger in the Core Game:

- Harbinger encounters have been added to the core game, but with some changes.
- Upon completion, Harbinger encounters now drop a more limited selection of shards, but can drop one or more complete orbs.
Harbingers drop the following:
Bogey prizes: Transmutation Orb, Alchemy Shard (1-5, modified by any area effect on IIQ), Alteration Orb, Engineer's Orb, Horizon Orb (level 68+ zones only)
Minor prizes: Alchemy Orb, Binding Orb (level 1-67 zones only), Chaos Orb, Regal Orb
Moderate Prizes: Exalted Shard (1-3, modified by area IIQ), Annulment Orb, Harbinger Orb (level 70+ zones only)
Jackpot Prizes: Divine Orb, Ancient Orb, Exalted Orb, Mirror Shard
- Expect to get an average of 2 bogey prizes, 0.5 minor prizes, 0.1 moderate prizes and 0.01 jackpot prizes per Harbinger encounter completed.
- A typical 'unlucky' drop from a Harbinger encounter in a map with +25% IIQ might be 1 Binding Orb and 3 Alchemy Shards
- A typical 'good' drop from the same map might be 1 Annulment Orb and 1 Alteration Orb
- A 'great' drop might be an Ancient Orb and 2 Exalt shards.
Harbingers can appear at all levels and default to 1 Harbinger per 150 packs. Map implicits can add additional Harbingers.
- The various shards that no longer drop will continue to exist in Standard league and Permanent Hardcore league, and can still be combined into complete Orbs.
- The Harbinger league orbs can also drop, with a low drop rate, from 'normal' monsters in the world, but defeating Harbinger encounters will be the primary way they are acquired.
- Horizon, Binding, Engineers and Harbinger Orbs will drop from normal monsters with the same drop rate as Regal Orbs.
- Annulment Orbs will drop from non-Harbinger mobs with the same drop rate as Exalted Orbs
- Ancient Orbs will be five times rarer than Exalted Orbs.


The Worlds Beyond (new content):

- New maps, often based upon Act 5 tilesets and/or containing bosses introduced in 3.0, have been introduced.
- These include three new Tier 17 maps.
- Plane of Innocence, based upon the Act 5 zone 'The Chamber of Innocence', and featuring Embodiment of Perfection, a map boss based upon the Avarius/Innocence encounter.
- The Abbatoir, based upon the Act 10 Feeding Trough and featuring the Maw of Consumption, based upon A10 Kitava
- The Entropic Heart, based upon the Act 9 zone The Black Heart and featuring the Unholy Trinity based upon the A9 bosses.
- There are also tier 10 through 16 maps, including one for each minor or major God.
- These maps do not fit onto the existing Atlas. Instead, they form a second page of the Atlas.
- Completing new quests bestowed by Zana in the Templar Laboratory in the Epilogue, also available by talking to her in your hideout, opens the Worlds Beyond up to exploration.
- The new quests use the regular quest interface and are as follows:
- Explore the Atlas: Complete any ten different maps on the regular Atlas. Reward: Select a Screaming Essence of your choice.
- The Art of Shaping: Acquire and use any three Shaper's Orbs. Reward: Permanently gain a charge of your choice (Power, Endurance or Frenzy). Characters may instead select +1 passive point.
- The Hunt for Perfection: Complete a 20 quality corrupted rare map. Reward: Ten Cartographer's Chisels. This quest is intended as a tutorial in rolling maps.
- Peer Beyond The Veil: Zana tells you “There are vile monsters trying to invade our reality. Seek them out and destroy them, but prepare for anything.” To complete this, either complete a tier 8+ map with the Otherworldly affix, or find and complete a Beachhead map or Breachlord's Domain.
- Mirror of Eternal Evil: Find a way to enter the Apex of Sacrifice and encounter Atziri, Queen of the Vaal
- The Eternal Labyrinth: Complete five of the six Trials of Eternity, then enter the Eternal Labyrinth and defeat Izaro
- Completing the Peer Beyond The Veil quest opens the second, much smaller new atlas, which 'starts' at a portal in one corner and consists of tier 10-17 maps.
- This atlas contains all the Breachlord's Domains, plus the three Beachhead maps, plus all the new maps. No maps on the Worlds Beyond atlas connect to maps on the Atlas of Worlds.
- The Worlds Beyond atlas contains a tier 11 Shaper's Orb.
- Each Atlas base item (Opal Ring, etc) can drop from the boss of any Tier 17 map, at a low drop frequency. This includes the Shaper, who will sometimes drop a random Atlas base in place of his unique gloves (with no modification to the drop rates of the sword or flask – if the gloves are rolled sometimes you won't get them and you'll get an ilvl 86 atlas base instead).


Unique Item Changes

- For each potentially build-enabling or build-defining unique that has combat stats too low to consider using, give thought to either adding a Fated version, or raising the item's minimum level and combat stats to make it good enough to use in at least tier 10 maps.
- For Tier 1 rarity uniques that are deemed worthless by the playerbase, upgrade their combat stats to try to make them at least marginal. This is not required for items that are bad overall but that have a dedicated niche in which they are best in slot.
- Nerf Bisco's Collar, as justified above. A good starting point would be 20-40% IIQ from blue mobs, and 180-225% IIR from white mobs.


Economic Changes

The first three changes are intended to give Regal orbs value commensurate with their rarity and usefulness.

- Instead of Zana's mods using solely chaos orbs, as is presently the case, most will use chaos orbs but some will use Regal orbs instead.
- Increase the minimum level of the Regal recipe from ilvl 75 to ilvl 80.
- Decrease the frequency characters of level 80 and higher are offered the “A Regal Death” prophecy.
- As mentioned in the nerfs section, decrease the rate GCPs and divine orbs are produced by lab runners, by reducing item quantity on Labyrinth corrupted chests and gemcutter's chests in both the 68 and 75 labyrinths.
- Add an inefficient vendor recipe to create Blessed Orbs from other orbs, perhaps from Regal Orbs.
- Zana mods:
Level 2: Bloodlines (2 Chaos orbs)
Level 3: Perandus (2 Regal orbs)
Level 4: Nemesis (2 Chaos orbs)
Level 5: Warbands And Essence (4 Chaos orbs. This is a combination of two league effects. It turns on both Warbands and Essence specific drops, and adds 1-4 Warband packs, and 1-4 Essence packs. The first Essence pack will have at least a triple essence.)
Level 6: Breach (2 Regal orbs. Breach is now less effective, adding only one breach).
Level 7: Torment And Anarchy (8 Chaos orbs. This is a combination of two league effects. It turns on both Torment and Anarchy specific drops, and adds 6 Rogue Exiles that are each possessed by a ghost.)
Level 8: Legacy (6 Regal orbs. Legacy applies three random Leaguestone effects, of which exactly one will be a magic Leaguestone, and allows Ancient Reliquary Keys to drop from the map boss with a base rate of 1.5%, modified by the map's IIQ bonuses.)

Where you get this? whose wishes this are?

"

Where you get this? whose wishes this are?

These are mine, not anything official or semi-official.

Just the desires of a player with moderate endgame experience.

You've put way too much effort into something you have too little control over. Play the game for what it is... not what you wish it were.

Some great ideas here, but many are simply pipe dreams.

"

sirgog wrote:

- Offer loot and XP incentives that reward careful, methodical running of difficult content as an alternative to speed clears of trivial content.

THAT. Sometimes I miss my D2 days when high-level characters would normally farm Hell Baal, or Pindleskin, or at least the Cow Level instead of disgracing themselves by speedrunning low-level crap...

I just wish to add one thing to the core design: let the player choose difficulty. I really don't understand why we can't do this.

Fix the bug where when you are surrounded by items on the ground and have a full inventory, that you cannot drop the item you just picked up...nor can you move in order to drop it in a different area.

This is especially stupid in maps where you have only one portal access or Zana's one chance to be in the map.


And restore at least SOME of ES!! It costs quite a bit to get ES, and it sucks quite a bit now compared to life. It went from one extreme to the other

 

"

sirgog wrote:

- Introduce more chase items into endgame and near endgame

No. Chase items are wealth items, that negatively impact the economy for all but the top 1-2% of the player base. I don't like the concept, and are happy that there are less and less super-rare OP uniques in the game.

"

sirgog wrote:

- Offer loot and XP incentives that reward careful, methodical running of difficult content as an alternative to speed clears of trivial content.
- Provide incentives to kill map bosses that are commensurate with the time and risk involved.

Definitely. But don't make access to content RNG/wealth-based again.

"

sirgog wrote:

- Remove instant leech entirely, except on Atziri's Acuity. Replace all other sources of instant leech with major bonuses to leech speed.

Remove instant leach entirely. Full stop. It is a bad mechanic, and having it available for a small percentage of the player base but not the rest is even worse.

"

sirgog wrote:

- Remove the hard link between pack size and effects that directly impact players. Then rebalance all map affix IIQ, IIR and pack size numbers according to how impactful the affix is on players.
For example, 'Players Have Elemental Equilibrium' has only a modest effect on players and so should offer little or no pack size, and a small amount of IIR/IIQ.
On the flip side, 'Players Cannot Regenerate Life or Mana' and 'Monsters move/attack X% faster” make maps considerably more difficult, and so they will now increase pack size, IIR and IIQ considerably.

For my current build, EE significantly reduces my damage output. On the other hand, no regen has absolutely zero effect. How do you want to balance that?

Apart from that, I really like the idea of map implicits.

"

sirgog wrote:

Level 8: Legacy (6 Regal orbs. Legacy applies three random Leaguestone effects, of which exactly one will be a magic Leaguestone, and allows Ancient Reliquary Keys to drop from the map boss with a base rate of 1.5%, modified by the map's IIQ bonuses.)

Oh please, no. Legacy items are legacy for a reason, and should stay legacy. Actually, they should all be removed from the game, but that is not going to happen, I know. I'd be happy to give up my three legacy Vinktar's if all legacy items were removed, because I think that would be better for the game.

Return clearspeed values to 2.6. Now game is too slow. (Probably because XBOX cannot handle old Discharge Cospri's or Vaal builds, so never happen.)

Buff more endgame-viable builds like Dark Pact in 3.0.

Introduce new interesting league mechanics (Perandus, Breach, Legacy, like this ones).

That's enough to make next league good.