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Well that certainly explained why my inbox suddenly blew up in a few short hours! Thanks again Overneath.

I didn't touch on the item drop changes affecting the AH or even crafting, but I'm glad Blizzard did. Any change they make will have far reaching implications that need to be balanced and it really makes sense why these are changes we won't see till down the road. I'm glad they are considering this seriously.

EDIT: I'm not so sure about the prominent thing, but I'll take it

-post deleted-

If they reduce rare item drops with 75% then they should just reduce crafting material requirements by the same amount. Just that thing alone would make rare items more attractive.

Is there any reason why youtube videos posted here can never go full screen? I find it rather annoying I always have to go off this site to youtube to view fullscreen : /

Quote from Freezard

If they reduce rare item drops with 75% then they should just reduce crafting material requirements by the same amount. Just that thing alone would make rare items more attractive.

Trouble with that is that it would encourage massive stockpiling now. They should leave it as-is and make salvaging create 4x the amount.

I've been a subscriber and regular viewer of Kagekaze's channel on YouTube since he started posting vidoes during the D3 beta. He is by far one of my favorite people to listen to during "Let's Play" videos and his commentary/analysis is generally spot on. Its too bad he doesn't have near the subscriber numbers he deserves for the high quality videos he posts. Hopefully this will be a good way to spread the word.

(Kagekaze: love your D3 Witch Doctor and PoE Shadow let's play series, keep'em coming!)

I'm failing to see how reducing drop rates is gonna fix any problem. Currently the problem with items is that you need to find literally 10.000 of same particular item to get a shot at it being good. I've played for almost 1500 hours on my toons now. I've found 3 trifecta items, 2 of them I just found this year and they all were super low crappy ones. Most I sold an item for was 100mil, rest were just 10-50mil and not even that many of them. If they reduced the drop chance they make the game even worse, unless they buff the chances to roll a trifecta, high main stat, 6 properties etc by like 50%+. Else I can't see it being a success in the future, it would kill the reason to farm gear cause you would need thousands of hours played just to have a chance to find 1 good item, and perhaps that item is gonna be worst trifecta ever, like my first trifecta item, 3% cc, 5ias and 23cd ~40dex ring, yeah crap.

Quote from Cranica

Quote from Freezard

If they reduce rare item drops with 75% then they should just reduce crafting material requirements by the same amount. Just that thing alone would make rare items more attractive.

Trouble with that is that it would encourage massive stockpiling now. They should leave it as-is and make salvaging create 4x the amount.

Well it's not the first time that would have happened, stockpiling was already beneficial pre-1.07 because of the new crafting recipes. Fiery Brimstones and Iridescent Tears became way more expensive, even the Tomes of Secrets tripled in price or so. I'm stockpiling on materials right now cause they're so damn cheap anyway. I might lose on it, I might win on it, time will tell.

Quote from krypplingur

I'm failing to see how reducing drop rates is gonna fix any problem. Currently the problem with items is that you need to find literally 10.000 of same particular item to get a shot at it being good. I've played for almost 1500 hours on my toons now. I've found 3 trifecta items, 2 of them I just found this year and they all were super low crappy ones. Most I sold an item for was 100mil, rest were just 10-50mil and not even that many of them. If they reduced the drop chance they make the game even worse, unless they buff the chances to roll a trifecta, high main stat, 6 properties etc by like 50%+. Else I can't see it being a success in the future, it would kill the reason to farm gear cause you would need thousands of hours played just to have a chance to find 1 good item, and perhaps that item is gonna be worst trifecta ever, like my first trifecta item, 3% cc, 5ias and 23cd ~40dex ring, yeah crap.

From your post it does seem like you see how they are going to do it. They will be boosting the chances to roll good items in at least two ways:
1) Increasing the average value of individual stat rolls in the rares that do drop. For a single stat item this would mean instead of rolling 1-100 int and dropping, say 4 / 100 times, you roll 75-100 int and drop 1 / 100 of the time. This seems kind of like its not doing much than decreasing clutter, but say you have 6 stats. Now instead of each of those 6 stats rolling in a 1-100 range, they all roll in a 75-100 range. In the old way your probabilty of getting such an item was 0.25^6 or 2.4%. Now it will be 100%. Say they drop drop rate to 25% of current values...you still have 100 / 2.4 x 0.25 = 10x the probability of finding a good rare than before!!! (Actual values subject to change, but I'm using Travis Day's example as a basis).

2) Although not mentioned in the developer blog (its in Travis Day's very long response to Gosu's post) they are also looking at increasing the number of viable stat types as well: i.e. instead of only attack speed, CD, CC being effective, other stats will be effective for dps too. Say there is a pool of 25 stats now, of which 6 are considered viable for a good item (Str/Dex/Int, Vit, AR, AS, CD, CC). That means your 6 stat rare has a 1 in 177100 chance (maybe higher, have to remember my second year stats class) of getting all of these on the same item. If the pool is increased to say 20/25 desirable stats, then all of a sudden your probabilty becomes 1 in 5, or 35400x the current probability of finding a good rare.

Now likely the changes aren't going to be that drastic, but with two simple changes: higher/narrower stat roll ranges, and increased number of stats which are desirable, they can very greatly increase the probability of good rares dropping. With the changes above with numbers in tact, they could decrease the drop rate by 10x and you'd still find way more good rare items.

it may sound scary at first "less items will hit the ground"
but when the items on the ground are inherently of better quality, its a much better quality of life in game all around.

its a much needed change for the game to continue to survive (imho) because the economy is so bad from everyone thinking every orange item they find, or mediocre rare is worth millions, when in fact they should take any offer they get for them.