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Wyatt on Large Skill Bonuses

After replying to a tweet yesterday about the new large skill bonuses on items, lead developer Wyatt Cheng explained with more detail on Reddit why the devs think that the change has more pros than cons. See his reasoning below.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Reddit)

I understand Quin's critique and totally get where he's coming from. Putting large skill bonuses means you can't cube the item and reconfigure them around as much.

Design is about tradeoffs, and we wouldn't do it if we there aren't upsides as well.

Furycrab correctly identified some of the issue here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/3vh11v/quin69_diablo_3_itemisation_rant_24/cxnu16u

What we've done is sacrifice some illusion of choice for real choice. While this is a bad trade-off for some (particularly cutting edge explorers), it is a win for many others.

If we were to increase the damage of base skills and lower legendary item +%s it gets the number where it needs to be for that configuration, but also affects every other configuration. Let's use Fury of the Vanished Peak as an example. Maybe it's at a certain spot in IK builds. Yes, we could shift some numbers out of the item and into the base skill, but how does that affect Might of the Earth builds? Legacy of Nightmares builds (for which there are innumerable configurations)? Pushed far enough what if it was a huge buff to Raekor builds? Now don't get me wrong - having lots of toys to play around with and configure in different ways is GREAT. We love that. But what will inevitably happen is if any one of those builds is 10% better than the others you don't get an increase the variety, you end up with a decrease in variety due to there being a "right answer". There are innumerable ripple effects and if any one of those ripples ends up disrupting the status quo then it becomes the new standard by which every other class/build is judged.

Another downside of simply buffing base skills rather than pushing the power into legendaries is the effect it has on the level up game. How does the game play in all yellow items during the 1-70 experience - new players are entering the Diablo community every day. (and some of them post here in /r/Diablo to talk about what a great time they're having!). We can't have Wave of Light doing 3x as much damage as every other skill during that period.

The reality is that sometimes a +% on a skill is the only way to get a skill where it needs to be competitive at the upper tiers of play without disrupting the existing ecosystem. The choice for us becomes use a +% skill on an item or allow to skill to simply go completely unused for end game players.

Patch 2.4 is looking to have more viable builds than any patch to date. The team is really excited about this and we hope all of you are too.

Yeah, I don't really see why so many people are up in arms about this. There's pretty solid design decisions behind adding %skill damage to legendary items, and of all the trade offs, killing build diversity isn't one of them.
One of the actual issues that I'd like to see (eventually, of course) addressed is that having huge %skill damage as a non-orange affix makes %skill damage on other pieces of equipment essentially a junk affix. An extra 15% damage when you already have 100% isn't nearly as valuable as, say, vit, armor, or AR x

Yes - this is definitely a downside as well. I had included that in my original response but trimmed it out to keep the length of my post down. I don't like the effect the large +% skill affixes has on the valuation of the random +[10-15]% skill affixes

Kanai's Cube Indicator

Nevalistis previewed that a few quality of life changes will be coming to the Kanai's Cube in a future PTR patch, including improvements to the indicator of cubed affixes. Read below.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Anyway, this is for those people that has a memory of a goldfish, like myself.

Blizzard, would it be possible for you guys to have some sort of indicator as to whether you have the power cubed or not? Like an icon or something? Anything indicating that I have cubed or extracted its power from the item, that way I won't have to check the cube more often than not.

Thanks!

They need to change it so that if you have not cubed it then it stays the normal orange diamond. If you have it cubed, you get the cube icon. I have posted that feedback several times on the PTR forums but I have no clue if they will fix it or not.

This is definitely something we've talked about, and the next PTR patch should have a few visual quality-of-life changes we've been working on (including adjustments to the cubed/not cubed indicator). I don't have an ETA for when that patch will arrive, but we certainly hope you take a look once it's available and let us know if the readability has improved!

More Set Dungeon Guides

With the new Set Dungeons in Patch 2.4 and their mechanics, having to discover them first then clear while completing specific objectives, quite a few content creators started making guides for these.

We have featured some of these in the past, and would like to highlight today the guides from Thang N - they are very clean and to the point. His Set Dungeon Guide playlist is a quick reference that will definitely be very useful once Patch 2.4 hits. See the sample below, and definitely check his other videos!