With all the discussion surrounding itemization recently, I thought I'd pop in and share an idea I'd had regarding set bonuses. Imagine if equipping multiple pieces of a set gave you, instead of a single pre-determined set bonus, a choice of maybe 3-5 bonuses (still pre-determined) that you could choose from to be your active set bonus. These could be both general bonuses and bonuses specific to the set's intended class. Let's take the Zuni 2-piece bonus for example:
Zunimassa's Whispers
(2) Set:
+130 Intelligence (the current bonus)
+50 Resistance to All Elements
Poison skills deal 10% more damage
Increases the number of toads summoned by Plague of Toads and increases the radius of Rain of Toads
5% Chance to Fear on Hit
These are obviously just examples to illustrate the point and not necessarily meant to be "balanced" (that's not my job!). Higher bonus tiers could provide increasingly powerful bonuses (something that I feel is lacking from many current sets, where the 2-piece bonus is frequently as good as or better than the higher bonuses), which would help to incentivize players to actually complete sets or make a choice between the potential bonuses and another item, without decentivizing players from equipping a couple pieces of another class's set.
As you can see in my Zuni example, this could also incorporate a variety of interesting skill effects that aren't available anywhere else in the game. This would allow Blizzard to vastly increase build diversity through the item game without having to add a ton of new items or fundamentally change existing items themselves (i.e. the base items of the sets). What if Tal's set had the option to increase the number of active Hydras by 1 on each bonus tier? Would a Hydra-centric build become viable with 4 active at once?
You could change your chosen set bonuses at any time and this would act as another good gold sink. I'd think maybe something around 1mil gold each time; not back-breaking for most players at this point, but significant enough to cause you to consider whether or not you really want to change.
What do you think of the idea? Is there anything you'd add or change? What would be some ideas for cool, unique set bonuses?
It sounds like a nice idea. I surely wouldn't mind this.
However, I think the current set bonus ideas are somewhat okay; no one is forced to use the entire set, it's mostly some class-relevant stuff and really depends on your build (!). It's nice that many different classes combine 2-3 pieces of different sets with other legendaries or rares, and no one is stuck to "omfg I need my class set so bad", like in the early stages of, WoW where it was always about getting the full 8/8 class set. I actually feel that the overall idea of set bonuses is implemented quite successfully. With one exception.
And that exception is the wizard set. What kind of sick joke is this? Just compare the 2 piece bonus of Nat set (freaking 7% crit hit chance, which is like a gazillion DPS more) with the 2 piece bonus of Wizard set (3% fire damage). Every first grade pupil can tell you that 7% crit chance are about five hundred times more awesome than 3% damage increase, and besides that, fire is a school of magic that no one uses (Hydra or Meteor - both skills are probably used by a handful out of the million wizards). Only the four piece set bonus is useful (2 AP regen per second), though it's not mind-blowing. Archon wizards have *absolutely zero use* for any (!) of the set bonuses at all. Before doing any set bonus changes, please make the wizard set bonuses remotely useful. Thanks. (P.S.: Yeah I exaggerated a bit because this is really bugging me.)
It sounds like a nice idea. I surely wouldn't mind this.
However, I think the current set bonus ideas are somewhat okay; no one is forced to use the entire set, it's mostly some class-relevant stuff and really depends on your build (!). It's nice that many different classes combine 2-3 pieces of different sets with other legendaries or rares, and no one is stuck to "omfg I need my class set so bad", like in the early stages of, WoW where it was always about getting the full 8/8 class set. I actually feel that the overall idea of set bonuses is implemented quite successfully.
I don't necessarily disagree, but this idea isn't really about "fixing" sets (as I generally agree that they're in a decent place as they are), but rather about providing build diversity through sets.
I don't consider myself on the cutting edge of D3 trends, but it seems to me that a huge amount of players complete one or two 2-piece bonuses in their gear and from there the number of players putting together sets drops dramatically for each additional piece in the set, because the Legendaries and Rares just provide more value than the higher bonus tiers on sets. Now, I don't think that equipping Legendaries or Rares over Sets is a problem per se, but the fact that there's increasingly less incentive to equip a set piece the more of that set you've already completed obviously comes down to the comparison between the set item and bonus vs. the bonuses on another item and sets right now seem to lose that decision more often than not.
We could put AS/CHC/CHD on every set item and then Witching Hour, Lacunis, and Mempos wouldn't be BiS for practically everybody like they are now, but that isn't an interesting solution and doesn't address the issue of build diversity. That's what this idea is attempting to accomplish. I don't think sets should be the only choice (like they were in WoW), but they should be a viable choice 100% of the time, should you choose to use them, and they should provide the opportunity to expand build diversity.
Set bonuses are unique in D3 in that they're pretty much the only (IMO) thing that could be subject to a huge overhaul like this without dramatically affecting the fundamental item game as it stands now.
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Zunimassa's Whispers
(2) Set:
These are obviously just examples to illustrate the point and not necessarily meant to be "balanced" (that's not my job!). Higher bonus tiers could provide increasingly powerful bonuses (something that I feel is lacking from many current sets, where the 2-piece bonus is frequently as good as or better than the higher bonuses), which would help to incentivize players to actually complete sets or make a choice between the potential bonuses and another item, without decentivizing players from equipping a couple pieces of another class's set.
As you can see in my Zuni example, this could also incorporate a variety of interesting skill effects that aren't available anywhere else in the game. This would allow Blizzard to vastly increase build diversity through the item game without having to add a ton of new items or fundamentally change existing items themselves (i.e. the base items of the sets). What if Tal's set had the option to increase the number of active Hydras by 1 on each bonus tier? Would a Hydra-centric build become viable with 4 active at once?
You could change your chosen set bonuses at any time and this would act as another good gold sink. I'd think maybe something around 1mil gold each time; not back-breaking for most players at this point, but significant enough to cause you to consider whether or not you really want to change.
What do you think of the idea? Is there anything you'd add or change? What would be some ideas for cool, unique set bonuses?
My Barb.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/CantStopThee-1527/hero/24114744
However, I think the current set bonus ideas are somewhat okay; no one is forced to use the entire set, it's mostly some class-relevant stuff and really depends on your build (!). It's nice that many different classes combine 2-3 pieces of different sets with other legendaries or rares, and no one is stuck to "omfg I need my class set so bad", like in the early stages of, WoW where it was always about getting the full 8/8 class set. I actually feel that the overall idea of set bonuses is implemented quite successfully. With one exception.
And that exception is the wizard set. What kind of sick joke is this? Just compare the 2 piece bonus of Nat set (freaking 7% crit hit chance, which is like a gazillion DPS more) with the 2 piece bonus of Wizard set (3% fire damage). Every first grade pupil can tell you that 7% crit chance are about five hundred times more awesome than 3% damage increase, and besides that, fire is a school of magic that no one uses (Hydra or Meteor - both skills are probably used by a handful out of the million wizards). Only the four piece set bonus is useful (2 AP regen per second), though it's not mind-blowing. Archon wizards have *absolutely zero use* for any (!) of the set bonuses at all. Before doing any set bonus changes, please make the wizard set bonuses remotely useful. Thanks. (P.S.: Yeah I exaggerated a bit because this is really bugging me.)
I don't necessarily disagree, but this idea isn't really about "fixing" sets (as I generally agree that they're in a decent place as they are), but rather about providing build diversity through sets.
I don't consider myself on the cutting edge of D3 trends, but it seems to me that a huge amount of players complete one or two 2-piece bonuses in their gear and from there the number of players putting together sets drops dramatically for each additional piece in the set, because the Legendaries and Rares just provide more value than the higher bonus tiers on sets. Now, I don't think that equipping Legendaries or Rares over Sets is a problem per se, but the fact that there's increasingly less incentive to equip a set piece the more of that set you've already completed obviously comes down to the comparison between the set item and bonus vs. the bonuses on another item and sets right now seem to lose that decision more often than not.
We could put AS/CHC/CHD on every set item and then Witching Hour, Lacunis, and Mempos wouldn't be BiS for practically everybody like they are now, but that isn't an interesting solution and doesn't address the issue of build diversity. That's what this idea is attempting to accomplish. I don't think sets should be the only choice (like they were in WoW), but they should be a viable choice 100% of the time, should you choose to use them, and they should provide the opportunity to expand build diversity.
Set bonuses are unique in D3 in that they're pretty much the only (IMO) thing that could be subject to a huge overhaul like this without dramatically affecting the fundamental item game as it stands now.