Old uniques are becoming obsolete

more and more obsolete with each patch :(

Obsolete in what way? Offering something unique? Sure, some of them are, some of them aren't. They made some uniques more unique last league, and I'm sure they're working on others.

Now, they are pretty firm in their stance that uniques are not supposed to be better than a good rare. If that's your problem, then I don't know.

Me? I like there to be a few chase uniques, and we arguable have too few. Maybe. It's a difficult design issue, because you don't want PoE to end up like other ARGPs, where all archetypes chase the same, unique sets/items.

Still never had your boots drop.

"

Phrazz wrote:

Obsolete in what way? Offering something unique? Sure, some of them are, some of them aren't. They made some uniques more unique last league, and I'm sure they're working on others.

Now, they are pretty firm in their stance that uniques are not supposed to be better than a good rare. If that's your problem, then I don't know.

Me? I like there to be a few chase uniques, and we arguable have too few. Maybe. It's a difficult design issue, because you don't want PoE to end up like other ARGPs, where all archetypes chase the same, unique sets/items.

Obsolete as in worthless probably.

A "good rare" is limited to what mods it can spawn while uniques can have "unique" mods or combination of mods that change a dynamic. That's also why the actual "good" rares tend to be influenced items.

The reality is that most uniques aren't worth bothering with at all. If I wasn't keen on holding onto perfect or near perfect uniques I wouldn't bother identifying most.

I finally got my first headhunter, and considering how much I gambled between chances, scours, ancients and juiced burials it really wasn't worth the chase at all. Definitely need more.

I lost count of the uniques I vendored in Delirium. A few were actually sellable but as the players left it became a matter of space vs the barely moving inventory.

Some of the stuff I kept for standard was quite nice, but others were just for the sake of it - like a near perfect voidhome that will never see actual use.

"

Skyforth wrote:

more and more obsolete with each patch :(

becoming?

there are many a handful of uniques that are useful
the rest are just alc scraps to me

I mean, they've updated a bunch of them just this patch. And some of them are actually good now. For instance, Bitterdream - yes, that sceptre that's the subject of so many memes and complaints - is now awesome for leveling. It combines great with Arcanist Brand and Freezing Pulse or Ice Nova. So much so that you can even completely skip on needing to buy a Tabula!

"

SeCKSEgai wrote:

The reality is that most uniques aren't worth bothering with at all.

I strongly disagree. You sound like a player that makes only one character each league (which is totally OK). But I ALWAYS save up a lot of "selected" uniques for my rerolls. And I think that's where unique item shine: On your way to the top. I very much see their point of view when it comes to uniques notbeing (close to) BiS.

That said, some chase uniques (like your HH) are valuable to the game. We don't have many, but HH, Farrul's, Ryslatha's, Inpulsa's (for some builds) and Shavronne's (and a few jewels'n stuff). Maybe we need more? But for some uniques to "fall behind" is just natural in a progressive game like this. They can't update several hundred uniques each league, but they do update some here and there, focusing on making them unique rather than BiS.

It's just another symptom of the out of control power creep we are burdened with.

Uniques used to offer a build enabling feature that wasn't available anywhere else. You would typically need to sacrifice something or overcome a detriment to use it, but it would allow you to create a build that wasn't otherwise possible.

These days however, what they offer you is a drop in the ocean compared to the plethora of other options now available to a character. The detriment is now too great, not because it is particularly bad but because the opportunity cost of not using a rare is now too great.

We now have the ability to merge rare item types and craft unbelievably powerful combinations of affixes. There are more than 280 notables to be crafted onto Jewels, many of which would match or exceed the one thing a unique might have been good for.

Unfortunately, GGG are kinda stuck in a tough spot because a lot of uniques were created as a result of early supporter funding and there's a legacy there that shouldn't be lost. From a design standpoint though, you could remove 95% of uniques and people probably wouldn't care less. It appears there are currently 1,105 uniques in the game as at 3.11.

There was a good point made about the usefulness for levelling and perhaps that's an area that could be looked at. Due to drops, most characters won't encounter a levelling unique when they could genuinely use it. I recall some of the old races you would get to choose your starting gear, including some uniques. So why not revise some of the NPC rewards to include a range of useful levelling uniques?

Let's face it, they're worth nothing more than an Alc at best so they aren't going to damage the economy but they would be a welcome addition after say beating the Vaal Contruct and being able to choose from 5 different uniques.

"

Skyforth wrote:

more and more obsolete with each patch :(

Agreed. Power creep in each new league has destroyed itemization.

I glanced through some of your post history. It really is crazy how much power has been added to this game. Even just the ilvl needed to drop a skyforth is easy in standard mapping now.

From a dozens of exalt item to handful of chaos now.