The new 3.16 item base defense stat and Sacred orb opinion

I was fine with the items having a variable base stat. I was even excited for it. I heard it was meant to increase the excitement of drops and to bring a slight variation to items, and I felt that. But adding the Sacred Orbs kinda changed that. Now it feels something to min max. Something to craft. I can't properly express it, but somehow this new currency item made something that is supposed to be enjoyable as a drop feature to another craft layer to cater the top players only. I do not feel the excitement for it any more. It feels heavy or something.

the entire thing is a craft feature, because now items you craft are always on the 20% base and 95% of rare drops are not. so the entire thing basically attacks dropped rares and makes crafted gear even more of a perceived necessity than it already was.


the idea that this made drops exciting is missing that it just makes finding a base to craft on exciting and makes actual rare drops even more the second class citizen.

this change is only good for drops in a world where we have already written off rare item drops and are just focused on crafting being how we get rare items. only when you already see item drops merely as crafting bases does this make item drops more interesting.




even within that, say you find an influence base body armour now, how likely is it to be maxed out? well you can add that influence to a perfect white base with a conqueror exalt. so you dont pick up rare items in the game right now, after this why even pick up influenced items on those bases if its not 20% maxed? how likely is it the one influenced item you find is 20%? it would be so rare and rather than that being now unbelievably expensive it will be capped by the fact you can manufacture the perfect base from an existing 20% white base + the corresponding influence exalt.


so dont loot rares, dont even bother looting influnced items on these sort of slots either, just loot whites and then turn to orbs for everything else you want your item to be from influence to mods to sockets, and dont use this sacred orb, its 3x rarer than an exalt its stupid to gamble using this thing on some random divine odds. loot the 20% white base and just craft everything else about your item.

thats how its gonna play out. i get the idea of it making drops more exciting, i see the intention there, but thats not how this is actually going to work in practice same way influenced rares didnt make finding rares better, it just made finding a crafting base better, and we can see that. virtually no one is finding good influenced rares, its all crafted on the base.

Yeah now that you mention it drops do not feel exciting as a gear piece to use, but as a crafting base.

I think the exciting things are from promises of some certainty. For example I often feel excited about corrupted items dropping, as they have a promise of high socket link numbers and a high number of affixes. And the possibility for a higher base defense stat is a promise of a craft base possibly worth looking up for. Influenced items were exciting drops at first, until you realized their promised influenced mod seems to always roll at a crap tier. Fractured items were exciting to check if they had locked some high tier mod to craft with, but it always seems to be some crap tier mod as well.

I'm now side railing the topic a bit, but would it kill the economy to have promises of a single mod being from the highest tiers rolled in rare and magic drops? I mean that one of the rolled affixes is promised to be of the highest tiers it can roll on the dropped item. This would include the influenced mod on influenced items, and the fractured modifier on a fractured item. And combining this with the chance of base item stat being slightly higher, would certainly make me to check the items on the ground more thorougly.