New Shaper/Elder mods are actually great for game's economy/health

So, I don't quite see a thread discussing this in detail, so I'll create one. :V
Some people may think that my negative opinions about what GGG does comes from my hate to them. I'm gonna prove you wrong here. :P

I actually think that these new rare items and mods are one of the best things that happened to PoE itemization in a long time. Let me explain why.

The most common reaction to these mods is, of course, power creep. While some of you may have seen these omfg GG rares on your reddits and whatnot, there is one thing that people seem to be forgetting - reddit was always full of omfg GG rares. They simply had different mods.
What I'm trying to say here is that while such items are now possible to be made, they are EXTREMELY hard to make. This means you either have to invest tons of currency (which makes a great currency sink), buy one (again, rare therefore expensive) or be extremely lucky (nice RNG reward).
Adding these new mods means that it is actually well worth to invest into crafting those instead of simply buying BiS unique for 1c.

In my honest opinion, rares should always be the go-to items, mainly because they allow for natural progression.

What is the main problem nowadays are uniques which take place of well rolled rares that are FAR too common. They break the progression by offering 1c (or similar) cost items that are commonly BiS for many builds.
Ahn's Might is a good recent example of how unique weapons can break the economy of certain items.
It is a 320 pDPS weapon that is common, meaning it will most likely be 1c. Getting a 320 pDPS rare weapon like this costs way more than 1c to make, and they are far less common. Because of existence and rarity of this weapon, you can't quite expect to get anything for rare rolled like that.

There are dozens of items like these which absolutely break the economy of certain rares.
If anything, I'd say that items that have stats as good as these should be way less common.
And I'm not saying here that Disfavor shouldn't have as much DPS as it does. It can because it is rare and expensive. Getting a rare axe like this means that you still make a good bank, because there is no 1c equivalent to ruin its worth.

Discuss. :-v

Who would win?
A new unique item centered around not using your offhand:

Or a broken offhand?

By the way using a second one of the unique that wants you to not use an offhand is also better than no offhand.

The balance guys have no idea what they are doing.
Fix your shit GGG.

Seriously? People had so much to say about how insane those mods are and all people had to say was... this? :D

power creep feeds on people who like power. mostly for free because effort is for loosers

so any change like that will make a certain group of people happy - they got 'better' while doing nothing. sweet deal isnt it?



it is true that there are BiS uniques - but most of the offenders will remain BiS. what GGG tries to do is to fight the fire with gasoline.

problem with these uniques wasnt that they were BiS. problem is WHY these were BiS: these were just TOO strong, gave too much, trivialized/bypassed certain foundation mechanics.

guess what - it seems that their desingners think otherwise and like to build on rotten foundation instead of doing a checkup and fixing them

the mods themselves are interesting but with few issues:
- some mods are absolute joke. extra phys as element. GLOBAL. is beyond idiotic. this is gamebreaking
- life/mana/es on block is bonkers. it is pretty f.. bonkers
- 6+ links items are very very Kaom's centric
- mods are very very skewed towards certain playstyles and items like 2h get pure garbo, while fake-dw builds get INSANE offhands
- normal rares are rather irrelevant.. the BiS uniques are still 1c options that are perfectly enough for all content. you just cap resists with rares, make your build with uniques and boost it with shaper/elder items as you can buy them



one fun note - my drop rate of shaper/elder items went down SIGNIFICANTLY to way below 1 per 2 maps - and i run all maps alched. so i think they realised giving out too much is dangerous

May I see your bonkers rares? :P This all looks well on paper, but as I said it doesn't look as well in practice.

There are 870 pDPS rares on Standard. Does it mean the game should be balanced around 870 pDPS rares? Does it mean their existence (or possibility for them to be made) renders the game trivial to average player? Of course not.

The existence physical->elemental merely gives more options. Sure, there are your Glacial Cascades and whatnot, but again, they are hardly as common as some think.

The problem is the design scope of the new mods is very narrow. There are a bunch of builds that barely have any mods that they would find useful. Others will have a very hard time actually utilizing the new mods without spending a billion exalts. So these builds will be played less - even if they were ok-ish during 3.0.

You could find/craft an extra damage stat-stick onehand for fake DW or spellcasting on day 2 of the new league, that was better than anything that was available previously. Meanwhile, you will not be able to show me more than a handful (if even) two handers that are better than Disfavour, for example.

loving my new sunder offhand:


Also will test my newly crafted 5L gloves for leap slam where I can add endurance on melee stun for more survivability:

Yeah, the main problem of Shaped/Elder rares is that their mods are too good for some builds, and those builds already were strong!
Also, their drop is far too low. 1 item per 2 alched maps? Seriously? Why they should be so damn rare?

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

Yeah, the main problem of Shaped/Elder rares is that their mods are too good for some builds, and those builds already were strong!
Also, their drop is far too low. 1 item per 2 alched maps? Seriously? Why they should be so damn rare?

If their drop were higher then they would be truly overpowered.

too few good bases makes it that the most powerful ones are still out of reach for many and you actually need to craft the item yourself if you want the highest rolls on it.

for example, there is only one pair of elder spiked gloves with ilvl 82 and 3 pairs with ilvl 80. prices ranging from 100c to 5ex.

if you want to craft good spiked gloves you need to pay at least 100c for the base (but still you can't roll "Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 20 Faster Attacks" which is ilvl 82 suffix.

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k4n3 wrote:

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

Yeah, the main problem of Shaped/Elder rares is that their mods are too good for some builds, and those builds already were strong!
Also, their drop is far too low. 1 item per 2 alched maps? Seriously? Why they should be so damn rare?

If their drop were higher then they would be truly overpowered.

*facepalm*

because rarity dictates if something's OP or not. /s