Dissapointed on unique items on a design viewpoint.

For me unique items should fit certain criteria's to meet the unique standard.

- It is not the 'best in slot' for majority of builds, but may be 'best in slot' for certain builds.
- It has something unique about it, something normal rares cannot achieve
- It does not necessarily have to be heavily competing with relevant rares that can be found in the same level brackets. What I mean is, it does not need to be extremely useful in all cases.
- Are okay to exist as just flavour items even if it isn't something that would be very much used.

For these reasons, I am happy with items such as Karui Ward Amulet, Fairgraves cap, Atzirir's Mirror, Lioneyes Paw boots and so fourth.

But, I dislike it when an item has something unique about it, but it is decided we must put extreme negatives on the item, even though the item already had important negatives on it to begin with, to the point of it being neither fun or cool to use - and just suicidal in hardcore.

Some items recently which I could not understand:

Starkonja's head

50% reduced damage while your on low life (by the way, this means you deal 50% reduced damage). Not sure why this was included, the cap already has low evasion and no resistances. They added DPS in form of attack speed and some crit chance. But then you added 50% extra evasion on low life at the cost of half your damage. By cutting damage in half, you are prolonging the length monsters live for and you are reducing the amount of damage leeched. The evasion increase does not help vs spells, while your damage is still halved against spells. The 50% increased evasion on low life is to be frank is okay to exist on the item without a huge drawback. If we can have things like "Chaos damage does not bypass ES" or "Cannot miss attacks" like Lioneyes, I think this isn't going to break the bank.

Abyssus, Destroyer Casque

Another DPS helm, but in the form of physical damage. Seems to be complimentary to the Pillar of Caged God's perhaps (though, at the moment, if I recall correctly, the %increase is not really being factored correctly on off-weapon +phys damage, may need to investigate further though).

My main gripe is, this is obviously an end game item (lvl 60 req). It is missing life (can get up to 99, which with passives etc ends up being at least 300, if not 400+), it has no resists (can get up to 45, 30 for chaos) but if it adds DPS, I can see resists and HP being a tradeoff.

Then what do I see, 40-50+% increased physical damage taken? Are you serious?

End game maps getting pretty hectic after lvl 70, with all the curses flying around etc, it is not so easy to keep max resists (I am talking 84 all res) which is pretty important so any missed res on items like helm already hurt on top of the hp loss. But now, not only do you want us to take increased damage from elemental, but this much extra from physical? With all the mods monsters/bosses can get and all the map curses, how is one to justify using this? For most builds it would not even give them a 30% increase in DPS. I am at a loss why this item required such a negative.

Even if this item had no negative values, it still would not be BIS for many builds, so what was the logic GGG?

Again, as stated before, items do not need to be powerful, but when they have huge negative debuffs which affect survivability, it really takes out the fun of the item.

For a comparative view, I think Alpha Wolf Howl was a very good item. It misses out on tri res, hp and not everyone will want the evasion, but it has a good mix of stuff on it to make it cool.

I also think the Tabula Rasa was an excellent idea as were some of the other uniques.

Icetomb lattice (I am actually happy with this one, included it in list for reasons below)

I wanted to use this item as an example of one, which isn't really powerful or desirable, but I am okay with this. The previous examples may make it appear that I am looking for som sort of best in slot gear - but really, I just would prefer it if it did not destroy survivability disproportionally to the benefits.

Darkray Vectors

Why the -75% reduced frenzy duration? 25% Reduced light radius? You can get some dodge and move speed per frenzy charge, but how does this make this item so powerful to the point of requiring this huge drawback?

The boots have low evasion/armour. The boots have no life. The boots have no inherent movespeed and it has only 1 res. The bonus is hardly worth cutting those other buffs so much. Even if this boots had no negatives, I probably wouldn't bother to use them - but I may have. Right now, it is really unappealing.



It appears that I am requesting that no negatives exist on items altogether. But it isn't exactly the case. I want the negatives to be appropriated to the benefits of the item. We have had items with far more powerful mods without drawbacks (which still aren't always best in slot), then we have some new unique items which have some cool new twist to them, but are made unusable due to severe penalties.

I just see it as removing the fun out of uniques personally.

/equipt flame shield.

Edit: There are some people confused by the post.

To sum up, there are items which have something unique about them. However, these items to have this, already have drawbacks such as low ES/armour/evasion, no life, no res or stats. These items should have been released like this at the very least - and even if they were never used, you may have used it on some occasions.

Instead, these items, which were not even viable to begin with in majority of cases, where provided a huge penalty (for speculative balance reasons) which just don't make sense - to the point of making it completely unviable. My issue itself is why they could not see that the item already wasn't that good - and felt they needed to make a poor item even more poor. But instead of just having a bad item, we now have an item which decreases survivability - which is worrying. Look at Icetomb lattice, I will probably never use it or have a build for it, but should I put it on, I won't be provided with ill penalties.

Imagine if Icetomb lattice made you get -50 res to all other elementals, it is somewhat akin to what has happened to some of the other uniques. It would be adding a penalty to an item who no one would probably use - and should they use it, it would have been an uncalled for penalty.

So because your build does not revolve around 1 or all of these uniques, they suck. Right?

"

Joshmans90 wrote:

So because your build does not revolve around 1 or all of these uniques, they suck. Right?

Karui ward revolves around none of my builds and I have no problem with it. Neither do most uniques and I have no problem with them.

Thanks for letting the thread whoosh over your head.

"

iMbaQ wrote:

For me unique items should fit certain criteria's to meet the unique standard.

- It is not the 'best in slot' for majority of builds, but may be 'best in slot' for certain builds.
- It has something unique about it, something normal rares cannot achieve
- It does not necessarily have to be heavily competing with relevant rares that can be found in the same level brackets. What I mean is, it does not need to be extremely useful in all cases.
- Are okay to exist as just flavour items even if it isn't something that would be very much used.

For these reasons, I am happy with items such as Karui Ward Amulet, Fairgraves cap, Atzirir's Mirror, Lioneyes Paw boots and so fourth.

But, I dislike it when an item has something unique about it, but it is decided we must put extreme negatives on the item, even though the item already had important negatives on it to begin with, to the point of it being neither fun or cool to use - and just suicidal in hardcore.

Some items recently which I could not understand:

Starkonja's head

50% reduced damage while your on low life (by the way, this means you deal 50% reduced damage). Not sure why this was included, the cap already has low evasion and no resistances. They added DPS in form of attack speed and some crit chance. But then you added 50% extra evasion on low life at the cost of half your damage. By cutting damage in half, you are prolonging the length monsters live for and you are reducing the amount of damage leeched. The evasion increase does not help vs spells, while your damage is still halved against spells. The 50% increased evasion on low life is to be frank is okay to exist on the item without a huge drawback. If we can have things like "Chaos damage does not bypass ES" or "Cannot miss attacks" like Lioneyes, I think this isn't going to break the bank.

Abyssus, Destroyer Casque

Another DPS helm, but in the form of physical damage. Seems to be complimentary to the Pillar of Caged God's perhaps (though, at the moment, if I recall correctly, the %increase is not really being factored correctly on off-weapon +phys damage, may need to investigate further though).

My main gripe is, this is obviously an end game item (lvl 60 req). It is missing life (can get up to 99, which with passives etc ends up being at least 300, if not 400+), it has no resists (can get up to 45, 30 for chaos) but if it adds DPS, I can see resists and HP being a tradeoff.

Then what do I see, 40-50+% increased physical damage taken? Are you serious?

End game maps getting pretty hectic after lvl 70, with all the curses flying around etc, it is not so easy to keep max resists (I am talking 84 all res) which is pretty important so any missed res on items like helm already hurt on top of the hp loss. But now, not only do you want us to take increased damage from elemental, but this much extra from physical? With all the mods monsters/bosses can get and all the map curses, how is one to justify using this? For most builds it would not even give them a 30% increase in DPS. I am at a loss why this item required such a negative.

Even if this item had no negative values, it still would not be BIS for many builds, so what was the logic GGG?

Again, as stated before, items do not need to be powerful, but when they have huge negative debuffs which affect survivability, it really takes out the fun of the item.

For a comparative view, I think Alpha Wolf Howl was a very good item. It misses out on tri res, hp and not everyone will want the evasion, but it has a good mix of stuff on it to make it cool.

I also think the Tabula Rasa was an excellent idea as were some of the other uniques.

Icetomb lattice (I am actually happy with this one, included it in list for reasons below)

I wanted to use this item as an example of one, which isn't really powerful or desirable, but I am okay with this. The previous examples may make it appear that I am looking for som sort of best in slot gear - but really, I just would prefer it if it did not destroy survivability disproportionally to the benefits.

Darkray Vectors

Why the -75% reduced frenzy duration? 25% Reduced light radius? You can get some dodge and move speed per frenzy charge, but how does this make this item so powerful to the point of requiring this huge drawback?

The boots have low evasion/armour. The boots have no life. The boots have no inherent movespeed and it has only 1 res. The bonus is hardly worth cutting those other buffs so much. Even if this boots had no negatives, I probably wouldn't bother to use them - but I may have. Right now, it is really unappealing.



It appears that I am requesting that no negatives exist on items altogether. But it isn't exactly the case. I want the negatives to be appropriated to the benefits of the item. We have had items with far more powerful mods without drawbacks (which still aren't always best in slot), then we have some new unique items which have some cool new twist to them, but are made unusable due to severe penalties.

I just see it as removing the fun out of uniques personally.

/equipt flame shield.

you make some conflicting points.. like uniques should be unique and not something for every class.. then whine about uniques not having life because its required for all classes.

personally I wish this game was designed so that +life on an item doesn't make the difference of a 5exalt item and a vendor trash item.

You misunderstood, I was mentioning as a certain item doesn't have life, that the bonus that item has already has given away something to gain that (life/res for example) - so I couldn't see the reason to have additional penalties attached.

I do not want life to be on all gear - Alpha Howl is a good example of what I deem to be designed well.

"

iMbaQ wrote:

You misunderstood, I was mentioning as a certain item doesn't have life, that the bonus that item has already has given away something to gain that (life/res for example) - so I couldn't see the reason to have additional penalties attached.

I do not want life to be on all gear - Alpha Howl is a good example of what I deem to be designed well.

okay I see what you meant now. I agree

He is basically saying, that most uniques aren't even worth using except for very niche situations. The negatives on some items are questionable considering they have no health/resists or high armor/ev values.

The new destroyer casque is a really good example, you get better offense, but take more damage. What do you sacrifice though for more damage? You take 50% more phy damage and on top of that you don't get health or resists. I see absolutely no reason why the % phy dmg was put on the helm. You are already sacrificing a lot to gain offense.

The dodge chance from Darkray Vectors is potentially awesome, with the right build. It can mean 29,63% less attacks suffered (acrobatics, 8 charges), not counting the benefits of an additional max charge and of (alot of) movement speed.

Starkonja also fills a role, no doubt. Life, some dps, and survivability on low life. Fleeing on low life is certainly not a rare behavior.

Not all uniques have to be viable for hardcore, although I would certainly agree the downside of Abyssus seems sligthly too steep. Especially with the way armour works against physical damage, it's more than 43% (40%?) increased («more» in most cases) damage taken. 140% increased crit multiplier is alot though.

Essentially what you just said was is that these unqiues don't compare to top tier rare items. This is exactly how uniques should work... I am fine with them. There is some build that utilize them and I am cool with that.

"

Repeats wrote:

Essentially what you just said was is that these unqiues don't compare to top tier rare items.

No, read the thread again.