Why most of 'Unique' items suck so hard?

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tmaciak wrote:

In my party one of friends is using Tabula Rasa on 87 lvl marauder

You gain like 25% of damage and loose half of your armor, not to mention HPs and resists. Point?

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dima_dunedin wrote:

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tmaciak wrote:

In my party one of friends is using Tabula Rasa on 87 lvl marauder

You gain like 25% of damage and loose half of your armor, not to mention HPs and resists. Point?

Point: tabula rasa is usable (= viable) even at high level content. Of course there are better options, but that´s part of the point.

Also: 6 links are a bit costly and you can switch gems around with tabula rasa as you wish.

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Ola wrote:

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UnderOmerta wrote:

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Ola wrote:

Edit: also, fuck end game! leveling and making tons of weird builds is so much more fun than perfecting that one.

So you spend all your time leveling characters, so of course you'd like the uniques that are decent 'leveling gear.' Players that enjoy endgame find only a handful of usable uniques and almost all of them are horrendously expensive.

GGG´s design ideology behind uniques is that they are not even meant to be "end-game" (as in gear that is not meant to be replaced by a better rare). So if there was a lot of "end-game" uniques, that would be bad. BiS-uniques are bad desing.


And my use of low level uniques is more about me doing builds that benefit from the unique features of the items, even at their "finished" state.

Endgame != BiS. Endgame means that you can at least viably use it without a significant penalty to your efficiency, but you can still potentially find other stuff that works better for you.

Something like Alpha's Howl is what I'd say is a well-designed endgame item. It offers stuff that cannot be found on most other items (reduced mana reservation and cannot be frozen), and it would definitely not look out of place on an endgame setup, but you can probably find a better helm for any given build out there. Shavronne's would be an example of a clear BiS for a particular build (and reasonably the ONLY item in slot for that particular build) and NOT good game design.

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Ola wrote:

Btw is your problem: a) there is not enough end-game uniques b) the end-game uniques don´t drop often enough c) end-game uniques cost too much ?

I don't think the factors are unrelated. There are not enough viable endgame unique options, which means that the few that are are going to be harder to find in comparison, which in turn results in them being more expensive. In high level maps, pretty much any unique can be dropped, but a very small percentage of them are endgame viable.

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Ola wrote:

And my use of low level uniques is more about me doing builds that benefit from the unique features of the items, even at their "finished" state.

Yes, but I think if you take the perspective of "screw endgame maps" and think builds are done by 75, that your definition of a 'finished state' is probably not the same as a lot of players in the game. :P

This is of course not saying that your style of enjoying the game isn't fun, but I do think it's also fair to say that players who don't have endgame unique options for their high level maps have a case as well.

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Ola wrote:

Point: tabula rasa is usable (= viable) even at high level content. Of course there are better options, but that´s part of the point.

Exactly. And he is really viable, it's FP marauder tank.

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Ola wrote:

Point: tabula rasa is usable (= viable) even at high level content.

You can use any 4L crap worth an alch at high level content. The question is why?

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UnderOmerta wrote:

Endgame != BiS. Endgame means that you can at least viably use it without a significant penalty to your efficiency, but you can still potentially find other stuff that works better for you.

Something like Alpha's Howl is what I'd say is a well-designed endgame item. It offers stuff that cannot be found on most other items (reduced mana reservation and cannot be frozen), and it would definitely not look out of place on an endgame setup, but you can probably find a better helm for any given build out there. Shavronne's would be an example of a clear BiS for a particular build (and reasonably the ONLY item in slot for that particular build) and NOT good game design.

Lets look at unique amulets (first in the list): http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Full_Unique_Index#Amulets

There are 13 amulets (excluding demigods). Out of those 13 there are 3 (or 4) that are not "viable" by your standards:
Araku Tiki
The Ignomon
Karui Ward

The rest offer benefits, that cant be found elsewhere at similar values. Need life leech --> 10% from carnage heart. need alot of stats --> 110 to all from astramentis.

So 75% of the unique amulets are "end game".
They certainly are not BiS, but they can be "viably used without a significant penalty to your efficiency, but you can still potentially find other stuff that works better for you."

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There are not enough viable endgame unique options, ...

I´d bet that over 90% of all the uniques can be found in use on a lvl 85+ character.

The amulet example i made, is me saying that for most uniques, there is a build and a situation where they are useful/viable, even in endgame.

If there isn´t an endgame amulet for a spork build (for example), that does not mean most uniques are not endgame viable. They are viable for different builds.

The more uniques we see, more builds get a viable unique.

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dima_dunedin wrote:

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Ola wrote:

Point: tabula rasa is usable (= viable) even at high level content.

You can use any 4L crap worth an alch at high level content. The question is why?

I would more likely try to find a replacement for a shitty 4link chest than for tabula.
Some builds need the 6th link more than +80 life and 20% fire resist.

decent 4 link is easy to make, 6link with right colors is not.

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Ola wrote:

I´d bet that over 90% of all the uniques can be found in use on a lvl 85+ character.

The amulet example i made, is me saying that for most uniques, there is a build and a situation where they are useful/viable, even in endgame.

If there isn´t an endgame amulet for a spork build (for example), that does not mean most uniques are not endgame viable. They are viable for different builds.

The more uniques we see, more builds get a viable unique.

You're right, a lot of 85+ characters would likely have a unique running. That said, a lot of 85+ characters aren't exactly using the best endgame gear either. You can definitely still be quite poor at 85. I got my character to 85 in anarchy in about ten days time. The character certainly works but doesn't have the most endgame of gear yet. I'm sure mine is one of many examples of players that powerlevel their character to endgame maps and lets incremental gear upgrades come after.

It appears you and I have different definitions of 'BiS.' See, I think the 'perfect' version of your build can include a unique without the unique necessarily being "BiS". For example, a CI character is very likely going to have dream fragments in his perfect endgame build, but that doesn't mean I feel dream fragments is a BiS unique because the individual power scaling of the item isn't over the top. Rather it's a unique that has a very powerful function that players are willing to dedicate a slot for it. Best-in-Slot for me has the meaning that the item is unfairly balanced and bad for the game.

There should be MORE uniques out there that perform a rare or potentially powerful function. For example, would Shavronne's be as ridiculously priced as it is now if there was another way to get "chaos damage does not bypass energy shield", even if that item had a significant drawback? I don't think so.

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Ola wrote:

Some builds need the 6th link more than +80 life and 20% fire resist.
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You forgot to add 1500-2000 armor or 600-800 ES and so on. This is the main point of chest

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Ola wrote:

The rest offer benefits, that cant be found elsewhere at similar values. Need life leech --> 10% from carnage heart.

And minus quarter of your life and ES, thank you very much.

Dust collector somewhere in the stash