New Currency Item - To Copy & Transfer Modifiers

Summary of Proposed Currency Item:
-Can copy the modifiers of Magic or Rare items and place them onto White items.
-Scours or clears (or destroys) the original item upon copying its modifiers, making it White (or void).
-Cannot place copied modifiers from a piece of armor onto a weapon or vice versa.
-Can only place weapon modifiers onto other weapons and armor modifiers onto other armors.
-The destination item cannot obtain modifiers that cannot spawn naturally on it.
-Incompatible modifiers for the destination item either randomly or systematically convert into equivalent compatible modifiers to the original source modifiers. (+Evasion Rating into +Armor, for example)
-Essentially allows Exiles to change the base type of Magic or Rare items.
-The inherent properties of items, like critical strike chance and physical damage, are not affected.

Elaboration:
Ok, first off, my main character is a Bow Ranger. Through my journeys in Wraeclast I have found many melee weapons with modifiers that I would love to have on bow weapons but no way to move the modifiers from said melee weapons onto bow weapons. These melee items are effectively useless to me, but they still taunt me from my Stash (the ones I haven't grown the courage to vendor yet). They are like "Lol, I know you like me, but you can't use me." So, my idea is for a new currency item that allows Exiles to copy the modifiers of a Magic or Rare weapon or piece of armor and place those modifiers onto a White weapon or piece of armor that is more appropriate for their attribute-focus/build. There would be limitations of course. For example, one should not be able to copy modifiers from one item onto another, if the new or target item has an 'itemlevel' that is not capable of spawning one or more of the modifiers on the original or source item. Also, to avoid OP-ness, the original or source item would be Scoured into a White item (or completely destroyed) upon copying its modifiers. There is also the issue of Evasion versus ES versus Armor, on armor pieces, among other item-specific modifiers. One Exile recommended to me that, if you are trying to transfer the modifiers, for example, from an intelligence/ES based piece of armor onto a dexterity/Evasion based piece of armor, any ES modifier should simply change to an equivalent Evasion modifier for the target item. In other words, the target item would lose any ES modifier and gain an equivalent Evasion modifier in its place. I like this Exiles idea. I realize that this could be a fairly complex 'under-the-hood' currency item, but it could also be extremely useful (especially for self-finders).

Here is a visual example:
Any and all relevant comments are welcome!

Come on guys, help me out here. I know that you have found an item that has modifiers that you like but a base type that is inappropriate for your build. So the options then become: vendor it, try to trade it, make a new character that can use it, modify your current character to be able to use it, let it eat Stash space, or destroy it. There is no option to convert the item into a form usable for your current build. Would it not be nice to able to do so, particularly if you are a self-found player?

Current Situation:
"Oh kool, these gloves have great modifiers! They are exactly what I have been looking for! Too bad they are Intelligence gloves and not Dexterity gloves.. My Evasion Rating will take too big of a dive if I use them. I guess I will just vendor them.. It is a real shame though. The modifiers are so nice.."

Potential Future Situation:
"Oh kool, these gloves have great modifiers! They are exactly what I have been looking for!
It kind of stinks that they are Intelligence gloves and not Dexterity gloves, but they are totally worth converting. It's a good thing that I held on to these white Slink Gloves. I'll just clone the modifiers onto the Slink Gloves so I can have some amazing Dexterity gloves! What an unexpected upgrade!"

Oof, a nice suggestion but it kinda opens a pandora's box.
Let's deal with problems one by one:

* problem
- elaboration
+ solution

* Low-cost upgrade (the most glaring one)
- If you could do that what's stopping you to transfer good mods on a similar item of higher level eliminating the need to seek upgrades any other way.
+ We could be limited by item level req, 'you can't transfer onto an item with higher level requirement', problem solved.

* Defense mods
- Defense mods on armor state 'xx% increased armor, xx% increased armor and eva and so on'. It was probably done that way so uniques could have only one of them boosted, for example a str-int gear that has a big boost in armor and a small one or even a penalty in ES.
+ make mods on regular gear '% increased defense', uniques could still use specific mods if needed.

* Different mod pools
- Mod pools on some gear is vastly different, daggers and staves can have mana, regen and spell boosts too, same goes for caster and hybrid shields.
+ Relatively simple, the recipe would not work if the target item is not capable of having one of the transferred mods (this recipe would be awfully good for making specialized melee or caster daggers, scepters and staves which are notoriously difficult to roll, wander gear is even worse).

I'm sure there are other problems I'm yet to think of, but this is a start.

raics, you are totally correct in that this idea could open a kind of Pandora's box. I am just very disappointed in the fact that I find so many irrelevant items that have good mods, but I can't make them useful. Not only can I not make them useful, but I can't conveniently trade them in-game for currency. Vendor shards, woo.

There would obviously have to be some major limitations on this type of currency. The currency would have to have a very specific, very narrow focus. I am not a developer, so I probably shouldn't slave over the details; it just isn't worth it.

One problem that you pointed out that could be fixed easily:

"

raics wrote:

* Low-cost upgrade (the most glaring one)

The currency item could be quite rare to make it a valuable piece of currency.
It isn't a low cost upgrade if the currency item itself is worth a lot.

"

raics wrote:

- If you could do that what's stopping you to transfer good mods on a similar item of higher level eliminating the need to seek upgrades any other way.

One trade-off would be that you would have to spend a nice piece of currency to get your upgrade. Is it worth it? Or should you just wait until you find a better item? Also, the original item would be Scoured or destroyed; another negative effect. And heck, if you have an item with nice modifiers, why not be able to boost those modifiers onto a higher level base item? This would be a very convenient way to upgrade.

"

raics wrote:

+ We could be limited by item level req, 'you can't transfer onto an item with higher level requirement', problem solved.

I really really would not like this rule. So I can't place the modifiers from a Lvl 63 weapon onto a different Lvl 64 weapon? This rule would be way too restrictive, imo.

"

raics wrote:

* Defense mods

Honestly, this is something the devs would have to address. It might be the case that only the 'additional' modifiers on defensive items could be transferable. Either that, or the [% Evasion and ES] modifier on a intelligence/dexterity armor piece would have to adapt to the new target item. For example if the new target item is a strength item, the new modifier could be an equivalent [% Armor] modifier. However, this is kind of weird territory..

"

raics wrote:

* Different mod pools

I partly addressed this in my OP. I'm glad you have elaborated on it further. Obviously, no one should be able to place a modifier on a base item that can never spawn the modifier to begin with. All modifiers of the source item would have to be compatible with the 'itemlevel' and the 'modifier pools' of the target item.

What people fail to realize when making suggestions like these is that the proposed currency would be a superior version of Mirror of Kalandra; copy a near-perfect, best-in-server item's affixes onto another, but with less drawbacks and limitations. As such, the suggested currency would, in practice, never be used on low-level items for progression reasons as intended. It would be like blowing an Eternal Orb on your Cutlass while leveling Cruel to ensure you don't "break" it trying to craft imrpovements; absolutely no one would do this.

By the way, back when Eternal Orb was just a suggestion (called Schematics), the suggestion creator was trying to fill the exact same niche you are, and I opposed his suggestion because I knew it wouldn't work like he wanted, ever. I guess Eternal Orb has done some nice things for high-level Exalt crafting and thus was still an okay idea if applied to a wildly different aspect of the game, but I'm unsure how a super-mirror would really improve things.

ScrotieMcB, I appreciate your input. I have sense realized that this currency item would probably have to remove all of the modifiers from the source item that it is applied to, so that the source item becomes a (likely) useless White item. You clear (or Scour, essentially) the original item for the benefit of placing its modifiers onto a new item that you can use. This way there is an interesting trade-off involved. I definitely would not want this piece of currency to be a super Mirror of Kalandra of any sort, but rather a piece of currency that gives players the option to make something useless useful, whether it is early in the game or late in the game.

I have intentionally left aspects of my idea vague because it is not really my place to design an entire currency item. Besides, I don't have the kind of information available that GGG does to make educated choices about the design of new currency. I might just be wasting my time all together.

One thing that would probably be essential to a piece of currency like this: only allow Magic and Rare items to have their modifiers copied, and only allow White items to have modifiers placed on them. The idea is to take an item of the wrong type and make it an item of the right type, nothing more, nothing less.

"

Perfect_Black wrote:

ScrotieMcB, I appreciate your input. I have sense realized that this currency item would probably have to remove all of the modifiers from the source item that it is applied to, so that the source item becomes a (likely) useless White item.

I'd go one further and have it destroy the source item completely.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'd go one further and have it destroy the source item completely.

I thought about this too (this was actually what I thought of before the Scouring thought), but what if the base item is a 5L or 6L? Is it really fair to have to destroy it completely? One would still have to spend some currency in order to make the White item useful again.

"

Perfect_Black wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'd go one further and have it destroy the source item completely.

I thought about this too (this was actually what I thought of before the Scouring thought), but what if the base item is a 5L or 6L? Is it really fair to have to destroy it completely? One would still have to spend some currency in order to make the White item useful again.

Of course, in fact we were talking about transferring the mods the whole time, god forbid anyone even thought of copying. So it would do just that, transfer the mods, nothing more, nothing less.

About rarity, I'd say blessed-class rarity should be fine, not really one-in-a-month's-worth of playing like exalted nor one-per-act like chaos drops.

If it doesn't destroy the item completely, one of the primary uses for the orb would be the easy transfer of mods from an old 5L to a new 6L. This would be a very powerful use, and would essentially require the orb to be worth at least the value of a 5L in the first place, else an infinite trade regress would occur (trade 5L away for currency, use currency to buy Black's Orb and have some change left over, make another 5L into a 6L, and so on). Considering a white 5L Vaal Regalia is worth more than an Exalt on its own, this suggested Orb would have to be rarer than an Exalt... if it didn't destroy the source.

I think a better idea than this suggestion would be just to have an orb that gives you a random base item type within the same category (for example, possibly Copper Sword -> Corsair Sword) within the limits of itemlevel. This wouldn't allow trasnferring of bow mods to swords, but that might be a good thing; imagine people trying to give swords projectile speed, or chest armour IIQ (even if it was blocked, they'd try). What it would do is allow you to turn that rare Elegant Sword of level 60 affixes, which you find while mapping, into something usable, either directly by you or by someone else through trade.