The current socket color mechanics are frustrating and unnecessary.

Currently, armor pieces with only one base stat have a 90% chance to roll the color pertaining to that stat. Or at least that's what I read on the wiki.

This makes it extremely difficult to do some builds without sinking tons of currency into rerolling socket colors.

For example, I'm currently playing on a pure evasion melee Shadow, which means I only use armor with evasion on it. If it was a pure evasion ranged Shadow then socket colors would be easy because I'd need mostly green, but as physical melee, red gems are pretty much required. I've used probably 200 chromatics trying to get a GRRR piece of armor. This build isn't going to be possible with GGRR because I need to use a socket for Life Leech/LGOH and to do so I'd have to sacrifice either Multistrike (a necessity for this build) or Melee Physical Damage (a TON of DPS).

In a game that's supposed to encourage build diversity and trying new things with different characters and play styles, I think the current mechanic is extremely limiting. If I had known that trying to make a pure evasion physical melee character would be so difficult, only because of socket colors, I wouldn't have tried it in the first place.

I just think the chances should be looked at a little bit. 90% seems really high and consistently rolling the wrong colors can be very limiting.

I'm not going to comment, just a practical advice : as an evasion melee better use hybrid AR/EVA chests. They can roll high eva, armor in addition and you'll have no problems with socket colors.

inb4 flame

I'm with you that the system as it is now is somehow unnecessary.

change the way socket colors work so that base item type does not have as much of an influence and people complain that they can't get green sockets on an eva item.

Base armor type is supposed to be a guide into which armor type you should use, and if you're melee you should definitely have some armor. So use dex/str armor. If you refuse to do so, then that's your fault.

Equal chance of each color no matter the base item would be ok most likely. Everyone having to use 20 chromes instead of some needing to use 2000 and others using 1 would probably be more balanced.

It's certainly an issue.

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intin wrote:

Equal chance of each color no matter the base item would be ok most likely. Everyone having to use 20 chromes instead of some needing to use 2000 and others using 1 would probably be more balanced.

It's certainly an issue.

So you guys complain about RNG in crafting and now you want more RNG in crafting?

ok.

So if there were no more "difficult" combinations what would you do about chromes? At the moment they have some sort of value (despite being one of the most common orbs) because people like the OP who want to roll some unusually colored sockets need tons of them.

If there are no more unlikely combinations chromes will lose a lot of their value unless they recipe gets changed as well.

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Septile wrote:

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intin wrote:

Equal chance of each color no matter the base item would be ok most likely. Everyone having to use 20 chromes instead of some needing to use 2000 and others using 1 would probably be more balanced.

It's certainly an issue.

So you guys complain about RNG in crafting and now you want more RNG in crafting?

ok.

You could argue my suggestion would actually lower RNG. If people using 1 chrome now used 20 and people using 2000 chromes now used 20 it would in essence lower RNG.

On the other hand your suggestion that all melee chars must have armor is a little weird and seems to go against the customization of characters that PoE affords. CI dagger shadows, for instance, generally want a chest with huge ES and GRRRBB sockets. That's really tough to get and can cost thousands of chromes (and an agonizing amount of clicking) to accomplish.

Would you be better with just having off colors be slightly easier to get?

I find that evaders not only get screwed on defense (evasion = one-shots waiting to happen), but get screwed on sockets as well. I mean, if you want to do any damage, red and blue is where it's at. So evasion users waste countless chromes to roll a majority of off-color sockets on their 5-6L chest.

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Thalandor wrote:

I find that evaders users not only get screwed on defense (evasion = one-shots waiting to happen), but get screwed on sockets as well. I mean, if you want to do any damage, red and blue is where it's at. So evasion users waste countless chromes to roll a majority of off-color sockets on their 5-6L chest.

Not just that, but plain and simple Dexterity (green) sucks compared to Strength and Intelligence.

But that's a discussion that's been talked to death and no change in sight.