Battle.net EU Forum Thread: http://eu.battle.net...opic/7646754631
Reddit: http://www.reddit.co...tic_pt2_powers/
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Edit: It seems that my idea is similar to Gosu's one and probably it inspired mine, so please take a read on his idea as well (it's highly rated and I encorauge you to read it because it's a very interesting read): http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7980249170#1
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Hi again everyone!
Before I start I want to sincerely thank you all for all the positive feedback and critics you gave me and for supporting my ideas!
I also want to thank overneathe and all the Diablofans.com staff!
Thanks guys!
So...
...here's the second and last part of my idea for the mystic artisan (if you missed part 1 you can click here ).
Remember to like if you like also on the Blizzard official forums (links above)!
As always, I want to apologize for my English.
TLDR version at the end of the post.
POWERS - PREMISE
You can skip this part if you want because it doesn't explain anything about my suggestion but it just let you know how I got to this idea.
Some time ago, in the italian forum, we were discussing about how game-changing legendaries could impact the game and why Blizzard decided to only focus on game-changing legendaries instead of focusing also on passive abilities.
Aside from passive abilities (they should be game-changing and fun, much like how Paralysis or Arcane Dynamo work and not simple "+% damage" or "+X resource" - this is IMHO of course) matter I thought that affixes that improves active abilities like "Increases Shock Pulse Damage by X%" could be very interesting.
The sad thing is that if I want to increase the damage of my blizzard for my wizard (sorry for the rime eheh) I can't do it because there is only an affix that improves it and it is "Increases Duration of Blizzard by X Seconds".
These "type of affixes" could have a great potential but all that potential is wasted simply because I cannot decide how to improve my skills... so here's my idea.
POWERS - BASE CONCEPT
Class affixes are "fixed" and the player cannot decide what type of "upgrades" his skills can have (e.g. as I wrote above, the only "upgrade" for the blizzard spell is just an affix: "Increases Duration of Blizzard by X Seconds").
To increase character customization in terms of build diversity I thought of a solution:
change all the affixes like "Increases Duration of Blizzard by X Seconds", "Increases Frenzy Damage by X%" etc. into "+X Magic Power" and "+X Mighty Power" respectively.
The mystic can change that "power" into "anything the player desires".
For example if the player drops an item with the affix "+3 Magic Power" he can go to the mystic to "convert" that affix into another affix that improves any of his wizard skills:
if he decides to "improve" blizzard he can choose the way to "upgrade" it: more damage, more duration or less Arcane Power cost (this is just a hypothetical example - Diablo could maintain the same "upgrades" that there are now on the live game so the blizzard spell will maintain have the only affix it has that is "increase duration" affix).
The number "3" indicates the "potency" of the "upgrade": for example if the player decides to reduce the arcane power cost of the spell he could get a reduction of 5 or 6. If that "potency" was less than "3" the arcane power reduction would have been 3 or 4 with "potency 2" and 1 or 2 with "potency 1".
POWERS - SUBDIVISION
As I've already explained, the powers will replace skill affixes.
Let's see their subdivision then:
Specific Powers
- Wizard: Magic Power Replaces affixes like: "Increases Critical Hit Chance of Energy Twister by X%", "Increases Magic Missile Damage by X%" etc.
- Monk: Spiritual Power Replaces affixes like: "Increases Critical Hit Chance of Wave of Light by X%", "Reduces resource cost of Lashing Tail Kick by X Spirit" etc.
- Barbarian: Mighty Power Replaces affixes like: "Increases Critical Hit Chance of Revenge by X%", "Reduces resource cost of Weapon Throw by X Fury" etc.
- Demon Hunter: Dark Power Replaces affixes like: "Reduces resource cost of Cluster Arrow by X Hatred", "Increases Critical Hit Chance of Multishot by X%" etc.
- Witch Doctor: Tribal Power Replaces affixes like: "Reduces cooldown of Wall of Zombies by Xseconds", "Increases Corpse Spiders Damage by X%" etc.
- Wizard, Monk, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor: Nephalem Power
POWERS - ENCHANTMENT
As I wrote above, if the player wants to use the powers of an item he has to ask the help of the mystic who will enchant that item with a skill-affix chose by the player.
Let's have a look on the first image:
The player will now place the item into the slot:
As you can see from the tooltip the wand has the affix "+3 Magic Power".
This will allow the player to enchant the wand with affixes that improves the wizard's spells.
Let's see other images to explain how that "+3" works:
Notice how the different affixes requires different "quantities" of Magic Power and how the different affixes have also different ranges of damage.
In the last image you can see that there can be rare and legendary enchantments.
Enchanted items can be traded to a condition (more on this later) but I would like the recipes couldn't, at least legendary ones.
This is because I'd like the game to less be "AH-dependant" and more focused on the real gameplay.
However I can accept that every recipe can be traded but as I've just written I'd like not.
So let's have a look on the last two enchantments (Monk's ones):
In this last image don't look at numbers (they're just an example) but look at that "Limit: Unique".
What does that mean?
It means that even if the player can enchant an infinite number of items with that affix he can only equip one item with that affix!
This is to avoid an abuse of legendary enchantments (this limit may be found also on non-legendary enchantments and that limit may be superior to 1 - for example there might be an item with "Limit: 2" which means that the player can equip two items with that affix.)
Note n°1: in these images I divided the affixes in the following way (only demonstrative):
- intensified: it means that this affix will increase the damage of the skill
- virtuous: it means that this affix will decrease the resource cost of the skill
- rapid: it means that this affix will decrease the cooldown of the skill
- focused: it means that this affix will inecrease the critical strike chance of the skill
"Minor, "normal" (without anything), Superior" is refered to the "power" of the affix based on the "quantity of potency" needed to enchant that affix on the item.
Note n°2: I thought that the maximum "potency" a player could find on an item was "3" and that he could use the Power only once per item without considering the quantity of potency used by the enchantment.
However I think that it would be nice to also have the possibility to enchant different affixes that requires different quantity of potency:
for example the player could enchant "Minor Intesified Ray of Frost" (requires 1 potency) and "Virtuous Blizzard" (requires 2 potency) on an item with "+3 Magic Power" because the sum of both potencies is 3.
However this doesn't allow the player to enchant a "same-family" affix multiple times: for example the player cannot enchant "Minor Intensified Ray of Frost" three times or "Minor Intensified Ray of Frost" and "Intensified Ray of Frost" on a same item but if he wants he can enchant "Minor Intensified Ray of Frost", "Minor Virtuous Ray of Frost" and "Minor Focused Ray of Frost" on a same item.
The player has decided to enchant the wand with "Superior Intensified Ray of Frost" and:
POWERS - SET ENCHANTMENT
Have you ever wondered why the fourth set bonus of Inna's Grandeur reduces the spirit cost of Sweeping Wind and not another ability?
What if I don't use Sweeping Wind and I've got the full set?
Have I a set bonus "wasted"?
Personally I wondered this many times.
Why did they put such limit to the player's customization? Why didn't they give a way to let the player decide which bonus to have?
Well.. my idea solves this problem:
Set-bonus-enchantment recipes are different from the others:
they have only one level (minor and superior are gone) of potency and a fixed value: in this last image you can see that Intensified Lashing Tail Kick has only one "potency level" and that the damage is a fixed numer (20%) and not a range of values.
This is to avoid having different values on different pieces of the set.
Note
Option n°1: enchanted set-bonuses on the different pieces of the set can be different from each other but they will activate only if those enchants are the same: for example the player needs 4 pieces of Inna's set with all 4 of them with the affix "Increases Lashing Tail Kick damage by X%" to activate the bonus. If only one of those pieces has another affix the bonus won't activate.
Option n°2: enchanted set-bonuses on the different pieces of the set can activate even if the various affixes are different from each other: the player can enchant "Intensified Lashing Tail Kick" on the Inna's chest, on the other three pieces he can enchant whatever he wants and the fourth bonus set will activate anyway (in this case, the enchanted-bonus values must be lower than the ones of Option n°1).
With this option the problem of "having different values on different pieces of the set" won't exist anymore so the enchantments could maintain their "potency level" (minor, normal, superior) and their value range.
Set enchantment could be spread to all other sets as well:
for example the Tal Rasha fourth bonus set could have Magic Power, Zunimassa could have Tribal Power etc.
Let's see the final effect:
POWERS - DISENCHANTMENT
With the disenchantment the player can remove enchants on items and on set bonuses.
This operation allows the player to:
1 - sell and trade previously-enchanted items (an item must be disenchanted to be sellable/tradable)
2 - reroll the enchanted affixes if their values don't satisfy the player
What do we obtain with this operation?
We will have a great gold sink because if the player decides to sell or trade his enchanted items he has first to disenchant them by paying the mystic.
In addition the player can reroll the affix values until he is satisfied and this operation helps to remove gold and materials from the game (maybe the "reroll operation" cost could increase every time the player decides to do it).
Another thing that we obtain is the fact that the player will not be "boosted" by other players. Why?
Because if a player decides to have a certain type on enchantment on an item but he doesn't have the recipe he cannot buy that recipe in the Auction House and he must farm for it.
This will happen only in the case of non-tradable enchantment recipes (I wrote about this earlier).
Here's the UI for the disenchantment:
POWERS - NEPHALEM POWER
The Nephalem Power is the affix that gives the player the most freedom in choosing what enchants he wants to do on an item.
I think that a good solution for the "+X Nephalem Power" affix is to make it able to roll only on legendary items but I must admit that giving that possibility to rare items as well would be cool too.
POWERS - ADDITIONAL SUBDIVISIONS
I believe that many of you think that with this suggestion it's going to be too easy to have what the player desires so I thought of additional power subdivisions:
Class Specific Powers
- Abilities
- Wizard
- Primary Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's primary skills
- Secondary Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's secondary skills
- Defensive Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's defensive skills
- Forced Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's force skills
- Conjured Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's conjuration skills
- Mastered Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's mastery skills
- Magic Power: it can enchant all wizard's skills
- Monk
- Primary Spiritual Power: it can enchant only monk's primary skills
- Secondary Spiritual Power: it can enchant only monk's secondary skills
- Defensive Spiritual Power: it can enchant only monk's defensive skills
- Technical Spiritual Power: it can enchant only monk's techniques skills
- ... and so on ...
- Runes
- Wizard
- Runic Primary Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's primary skill runes
- Runic Secondary Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's secondary skill runes
- Runic Defensive Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's defensive skill runes
- Runic Forced Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's force skill runes
- Runic Conjured Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's conjuration skill runes
- Runic Mastered Magic Power: it can enchant only wizard's mastery skill runes
- Runic Magic Power: it can enchant all wizard's runes
- Monk
- Runic Primary Spiritual Power: it can enchant only monk's primary skill runes
- Runic Secondary Spiritual Power: it can enchant only monk's secondary skill runes
- Runic Defensive Spiritual Power: it can enchant only monk's defensive skill runes
- Runic Technical Spiritual Power: it can enchant only monk's techniques skill runes
- ... and so on ...
- Abilities
- Wizard, Monk, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor
- Soothed Nephalem Power: it can enchant every class' skills
- Runes
- Wizard, Monk, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor
- Runic Nephalem Power: it can enchant every class' runes
- Abilities and Runes
- Wizard, Monk, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor
- Nephalem Power: it can enchant every class' skills and runes
Q&A
Let's pretend that the devs won't add any new "skill-upgrade-affix" and that they will maintain only the current ones like you wrote earlier. In this case your idea will just make the life easier for a player to get the "perfect" item.
For example currently in the game if the player wants to increase Cleave damage he has to look for items that have that affix and that affix is rolled among many others of the same "type" like "increases Frenzy damage", "reduces fury cost of Rend" etc. instead with your suggestion the player would have just to look for items with "+X Mighty Power" or "+X Nephalem Power" and this will make just the life easier and it won't help customization. What do you think?
Well.. it's true.
But at least the player would have the chance to change a skill-affix into another one without the need to change any piece of gear.
I don't know if I'm wrong but don't you think that this will help customization by giving the player more freedom for "build-experimentation"?
Doesn't this idea make the game even harder to balance? Mostly if they will decide to introduce new "skill-affixes".
This is also true.
While this suggestion is focused to give the devs also (and not only) a base inspiration for the introduction of new "skill-affixes", I'm not against the non-implementation of them but first of all I think that the game must be balanced and then my idea could help the implementation of new skill-affixes.
What about using a similar idea for Crowd Control effects such as "fear on hit", "blind on hit" etc?
For example the devs could replace those affixes with an unique affix "Control Power" that will allow the player to enchant the item with whatever he wants ("similar" effects like stun/freeze should be revised of course because they do almost the same thing)
This could be a great idea but I don't want to expose myself too much
I'd like to see what the community has to say about this.
If I have the possibility to replace a specific value of a legendary item it would make a dropped legendary with that value capped useless.
In fact at the moment if I find a Visage of Giyua with the following magic properties: "Reduces cooldown of Summon Zombie Dogs by 9 seconds. (Witch Doctor Only)" (and maybe also 6% chance to critical hit) I would be rich.
With your idea I could find that legendary with just "tribal power" and I could just reroll the value over and over again until I'm satisfied with it.
These type of without-risk operations give too much power to the player at the expense of only a bunch of gold (gold sink) and this would destroy the "market" that "works" around the items randomization.
Nice statement. This is actually true.
A solution could be this:
a rolled valued of an affix on the first enchantment is maintained and "saved" into the item, so even if the player disenchants and then re-enchants the same affix the value will remain the same of the previous enchant.
Example:
if the player enchants "superior intensified ray of frost" and the value rolls at "27%", that value will remain "27%" even if he decides to disenchant the item and re-enchant "superior intensified ray of frost" because let's say that that value is "bound" to the item and to the account.
This will allow to maintain a high level of customization while also maintain the randomization that characterizes Diablo 3.
Once the player decides to disenchant the item there could a message (like the one that you get when you want to salvage a legendary item) that warns the player that if he decides to re-enchant the same enchant that was previously enchanted he will get the same value as before.
Lastly if the player decides to sell or trade that item and the buyer decides to enchant "superior intensified ray of frost" too the item will roll a value that might differ from "27%" because it lost the "bound" to the previous owner which didn't allow it to roll a different value.
I think you should remove the 'disenchant' option as there needs to be a 'top tier gear sink' which is currently lacking in D3.
I think that if you decide to keep the item and enchant it, it become BOA and can only be salvaged/vendored after that.
Imagine if you find a BIS legendary item and then it also has +3 Nephalem Power - it would be worth soooo much. but as soon as the first person chooses to enchant it it becomes BOA and is taken out of the economy. What do you think?
It's a nice idea to make the items Bind on Account (I'm not against BoA items) but I know that many people doesn't like them and that's why I prefered to not go into that direction.
That's all guys!
I hope my english didn't make you want to crash your monitor ahah
TLDR version just down here.
TLDR VERSION
Replace all affixes like "increase Frenzy damage", "increase Fist of Thunder damage", "reduce the arcane power cost of Disintegrate", "reduce the cooldown of wall of zombies" etc. with:
- Magic Power (for wizards)
- Mighty Power (for barbarians)
- Spiritual Power (for monks)
- Dark Power (for demon hunters)
- Tribal Power (for witch doctors)
- Nephalem Power (for everyone)
Those powers can be replaced with new affixes that improves the skills but if the player wants to do it he needs the help of the mystic that can enchant those affixes into an item by removing the "powers".
Every power can have a different amount of "potency" and that potency determines the "power" of the enchanted affix. Potency can be 3 at max.
If the player wants to sell/trade the enchanted item he has to disenchant it first and this operation will also allow the player to "re-enchant" the item with the same or a different affix.
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