Set items in Path of Exile

This is long.

A set item is an item that confers an additional bonus when paired with another item from the same set. Here is an example from Diablo II: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/sets/sets1.shtml#angelic

In this post, Brian Weissman (EP of PoE), reiterates GGG's philosophy that set items constrain build diversity: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/31064/page/3#p1018513

The logic goes something like this: set items must have good bonuses to be useful -> if set items have good bonuses everyone will use them -> if everyone is using the same set items, the game is boring.

I think the issue requires more examination, so consider the following:

Build diversity is created and sustained by providing the player with multiple paths to a given bonus.

An example currently implemented in game is Blood Magic. Blood Magic can be acquired as a keystone on the passive skill tree, or by linking a skill with a gem. Because there are multiple paths to acquire Blood Magic, the player has to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of each path.

The opportunity costs are what make each path an interesting choice. When choosing a keystone, a player has to consider the opportunity costs present in the skill tree. What other passive skills am I losing for choosing this keystone? When choosing a gem link, a player has to consider the opportunity costs of other gems, along with the cost of providing the correct gem link. Should I be using a different support gem that provides more dps? Do I have the money to link my item appropriately?

Set bonuses are the critical mechanic that place set items apart from normal items. That is, combining two items from a set provides me a bonus. The opportunity cost that the player considers when deciding whether or not to take a set bonus are affixes. Should I wear the set belt and give up the prefixes that are on my rare belt?

Comparing affixes to passive skills and gem links is an interesting choice. Were there a set bonus that conferred Blood Magic, it would be interesting to evaluate the opportunity cost of the lost affixes against a few passive skill nodes, or something like an Added Fire Damage support gem.

However, there already exists a way for GGG to force a player to consider lost affixes: unique items. Unique items do not intrinsically constrain build diversity. They can, if the unique bonus is too valuable for the affix opportunity cost. If the unique bonus is a fair trade for the affixes, or a less than fair trade, build diversity is not threatened. Since set bonuses operate in the same design space, it stands to reason that set items do not intrinsically constrain build diversity.

This raises the other critical question for set items: Do set items provide a meaningful addition to the game over just having uniques? If not, there is no reason to add set items.

I believe set items do have benefits over uniques, for the following reasons.

Critically, a rare is limited to six affixes. In this case, the designer can only provide a unique bonus that is in the ballpark of six affixes. However, there are many individual bonuses in the game currently that can be worth many more than six affixes. Something like Chaos Inoculation might be too powerful to be placed on a unique item because Chaos Inoculation is worth more than six affixes, but it might make sense as a 3-piece set bonus because Chaos Inoculation is worth less than eighteen affixes.

This one fact is extremely powerful. Allowing the designers to provide bonuses on items that can range in power above six affixes allows GGG to design for many different types of players.

Providing a big set bonus attracts a certain kind of player to the game. A 4-piece set bonus implicitly has a massive, potential opportunity cost. You could easily provide a massive face value bonus that is not worth losing 10 affixes, but still pleases a large swath of players. Consider something like "4-Piece set bonus: You have Storm Herald". That bonus is probably not worth 15 affixes, but is probably worth more than 6 affixes. The players who use it won't care though, they will just walk around shocking stuff and feeling awesome; a lot MORE awesome than they would feel with the equivalent unique bonus.

In addition to that design space, I think you have the design space of a large swath of more casual goals.

Completionist. It's just fun to collect things: this is why PoE has achievements for collection. Set items are a much more effective way of satisfying the completionist when compared to achievements because a powerful mechanic gets tossed in as a reward. In addition to the achievement-like bonus of collecting all of the set items, I get the completed set bonus mechanics, however good those are.

Lore. PoE is already doing this with items like Shavronne's Pace and Kaom's Primacy. Set items, again, achieve these goals more effectively. Putting, for example, all of Kaom's items into a set signal more clearly to the player that Kaom is a Big Deal. After finding one of the Kaom's items, the player can complete Kaom's story by collecting the other two. When completed, the player can put on Kaom's Battlegear and pretend to be Kaom for a bit. Imagine if the set bonus for having all of the Kaom's items, were, for example, Avatar of Fire.

There's more discussion to be had with set items, but this is getting too long already. To summarize:

Set items allow players to trade affixes for other mechanics, similar to uniques
Unlike uniques, set bonuses allow designers to create bonuses that trade for more than six affixes
Extremely powerful set bonuses are fun for lots of players, and are balanced where uniques are not because set bonuses require more items
Collecting set bonuses is fun
Learning about Wraeclast through set bonuses is fun

Also, I just want to see green stuff drop.

Thoughts?

GGG's decision to not include sets is a conscious one. They believe anything that would work as a set, without undermining their rare-centric item philosophy, is better suited as synergistic uniques - not secondary bonus modifiers of set items.

I, like you OP, would love sets. They are an interesting facet of itemization and need not displace the best items or be used in tangent. They add a dynamic itemization choice that means better in one slot isn't necessarily better for the other slot. Diablo 2 had this in the form of breakpoints and set items - and people liked it. I readily admit I agree with GGG's rare centric approach but I imagine sets could fit in nicely.

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Veta321 wrote:

I, like you OP, would love sets. They are an interesting facet of itemization and need not displace the best items or be used in tangent. They add a dynamic itemization choice that means better in one slot isn't necessarily better for the other slot. Diablo 2 had this in the form of breakpoints and set items - and people liked it. I readily admit I agree with GGG's rare centric approach but I imagine sets could fit in nicely.

I like GGG's approach and wish they would complete existing sets. We already have
Kaom's Heart + Kaom's Primacy + Kaom's Sign x 2 (we need a Kaom's Face, Kaom's Steps, etc.)

Lioneye's Glare + Lioneye's Paws + Lioneye's Remorse...kinda

Shavronne's Wrappings + Shavronne's Revelation (unfortunately legacy now...) + Shavronne's Pace

Perandus Blazon + Perandus Signet

granted they don't synergize a lot of the time but it still feels cool to wear them all at the same time.

This is a really well thought out OP, and I'm impressed with the quality of responses too! Thanks for taking the time to help further outline GGG's philosophy, Mark! :)

Synergistic uniques are the way to work-around set items, though, and in particular, you could make unique items which say 'if you are wearing blah and blah, then you get some bonus'). Uniques like this already exist. For example, pendarus signet gives you a bonus for each unique item you have equipped.

Here are some more examples of unique mods which would help create the feel of set items, without limiting your upgrade potential:

1) 10% more life regeneration for each item you have equipped which grants flat life regeneration.
2) (using the CI example): if your helmet, boots, chest armour, gloves (and shield if you are wearing one) grant both ES and evasion, then you have CI.
3) If you are wearing two different rare base items with the same name, each rare enemy you kill has a 1% chance to drop an item that also has that name.

etc... etc...

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Take your example of three items that together grant CI - that's three item slots which together give you CI. You now can never find an item that will be an upgrade for any of those slots, because replacing any of those items would mean you loose CI, and you've established that CI is worth more than any one item can provide - thus, no potential replacement item will give you as much as you've lost. That's three item slots you will never upgrade, and given the limited number of slots on the character, that's a decent part of the game gone, because finding upgrades is the game to a large extent.

I do agree with your assessment in this case, Mark. But what about a different case where players can accumulate a "set" of rare items with complimenting properties? For example, when I am gearing a new character for mapping I don't upgrade gear one piece at a time. Instead I find nice pieces and try to complete a "set" of rares with max resistance before switching all of my gear at once. Upgrading one piece at a time would require looking for specific rolls instead of getting the most 'bang for my buck'. I find this approach is especially beneficial in hardcore where there is often a risk of dying before completely gearing a character.

In OP's example, using a powerful set might rule out the possibility of finding a single item that improves his character but it does not rule out the possibility of finding a "set", or group, of rare items that would improve his character. Diablo 2 had a lot of sets like that. Diablo 2 also had Breakpoints, which encouraged a similar form of progression but in other stats besides resistance and outside of hardcore. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me properly implemented sets have great upside and little downside. I do agree we don't want overpowered "class sets" or 4-6 piece sets, rares should rule supreme. (Link above is Kripparian video on the subject.)

What would be equally interesting is sets with "dysergy", as in set malus as opposed to set bonus. The idea there would be powerful items that have greater drawbacks when used in tandem. There is an entire layer of unexplored itemization potential with sets.

What about making the Sets Versatile? For example the sets should have 3 Fix stats and 3-4 Stats that can be rerolled with Chaos/Divines/Exalted

Set items can't be Mirrored.

And the sets shuold be only ilvl 72+.

Let's say a Max Life/Life Regen Based set will be formed by 6 Pieces :

Helmet, Body Armor, Gloves, Boots, Ring/Ring.

Helmet should have 3 fix stats (for example) :

+100 Max HP
+8 HP Regen
+40% Cold Ressistance

And it can have 3-4 more stats that can be rolled with chaos/exalt/divines

Gloves :

+100 Max HP
+8 HP Regen
+2% Life Leech

Body Armor :

+100 Max HP
+300 Armor
+20% All Elemental Ressists.

ETC,
and when you have more pieces of the Set, you should get some Bonuses, like

2 Set pieces = +100 Max HP
3 Set Pieces = +20% All Elemental Ressists
4 Set Pieces = +10% Atk Speed and 10% Movement Speed
5 Set Pieces = +15% Max HP
6 Set Pieces = 30% Reduced Damage received from critical hits


endless shits to be done, but why would you bother thinking that far when u can just nerf everything.

Thanks for the reply Mark, and thanks to the other posters for adding to the discussion!

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Take your example of three items that together grant CI - that's three item slots which together give you CI. You now can never find an item that will be an upgrade for any of those slots, because replacing any of those items would mean you loose CI, and you've established that CI is worth more than any one item can provide - thus, no potential replacement item will give you as much as you've lost. That's three item slots you will never upgrade, and given the limited number of slots on the character, that's a decent part of the game gone, because finding upgrades is the game to a large extent.

The central points about redundancy in my OP directly counter this. To reiterate, the possibility of acquiring a bonus through multiple paths is critical to achieving build diversity.

Of course you can find a way to upgrade one of the three items that gives you CI. You can do so if the item upgrade provides you more bonuses than the passive skills you need to spec into CI. If, for example, you found an item that provided 1000 energy shield, you better believe you would respec some of your passive skills to take on CI, so you could break the set bonus and equip that awesome item.

Let me give another concrete example that I use very often: Life Leech from Physical Damage. There is a node in the lower left portion of the Passive Tree, Blood Drinker, that provides 2% Life Leech from Physical Damage. In addition, you can get life leech from prefixes. The tradeoffs when building a physical damage based character when considering Life Leech are very interesting.

It is not the case that, if I am getting life leech from a Remora's ring, I simply cannot upgrade my item. Because I can also get life leech from the passive tree, at all times, I have to be evaluating the opportunity costs in wearing my Remora's ring against the number of passive skill allocations required to get Blood Drinker. If I get a rare ring that provides 80 life, 60 resists, a flat physical damage bonus, and no life leech, that's several nodes I can now justify in my passive tree to take Blood Drinker.

The critical point here is that items are not the only way for me to improve my character. Because, in Path of Exile, I can use several different paths to acquire a bonus, the decisions remain interesting. I can substitute passive skills for item affixes. I can substitute linked gems for passive skills. And the responsibility is on me as a player to continually evaluate the tradeoffs if my character is to be effective.

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This game, at it's heart, is about items, and finding better ones. People play to find better gear to upgrade their character. Set Items work against that goal.

In a larger sense, this is the central point that does not hold in the Path of Exile system. Path of Exile is also about allocating nodes in the Passive Tree. Path of Exile is also about linking gems appropriately. Path of Exile is also about managing your health and mana pools as resources to use your skills. Because the system is so wonderfully redundant, you can trade passive nodes for gem links for just about anything else in the game. Those are incredibly interesting decisions.

(And it follows from my OP that set items enhance and deepen those decisions, although I won't reiterate those arguments here)

Addendum:

"

If we wanted a unique with CI*, and judged, as you have, that CI was far more powerful than a single item could provide, I'd argue the solution is not to make 3 items that together give CI, thus locking you into not upgrading those items, but to put it on a unique and add a drawback that balances it, so that the item as a whole still isn't better than the best possible rares - that way you can get the effect on an item, but it can still be upgraded unless the property it gives is so important to the build that you can't go without it, in which case you've only lost one slot to potential future upgrades, which is better than three.

I think this is a distinct way of adding more powerful bonuses to a single item: drawbacks. I agree those are interesting decisions.

However, I think it is important to recognize that there is a type of player that does not respond well to drawbacks. This is the type of player I talked about in my OP. Compare the following:

You have Storm Herald. You take 50 damage per second.

vs.

You have Storm Herald. You must equip these three specific items.

The second option is much more fun for a lot of players, even though the drawbacks of requiring three items OR taking 50 damage per second might be equivalent. That is, the implicit drawback of equipping specific items is much more appealing to a large swath of players because they really don't even see it as a drawback.

It's completely within GGG's rights to not do it, but id like to say that this suggestion would add so much fun to the game for me.

It would be nice to have more than just:
Unique with interesting mods, but with drawbacks,
or
Yellow with boring mods, but has larger numbers so counts as an upgrade, even tho it doesn't really feel very special.

Sets would allow me to sacrifice item slots for those interesting mods, and i like having choices in my character planning.