*Currently, items enchant values that are equivalent to the item's level. However, there's a major change coming in the next build, and this thread was the most appropriate to communicate it in given the topic at hand.
In the next Beta patch, Legacy items (or items that drop prior to Patch 2.0.1) will no longer be able to be enchanted. This was a decision we ultimately made because certain Legacy items, when enchanted, became disproportionately strong compared to new items, which isn't the intent.
However, there's an interesting "bug," if you'd like to call it, that will result from this change in the next Beta patch - all items gained up until the patch will no longer be able to be enchanted. This is an artifact of the fix implementation, and we felt it prudent to communicate this as soon as we could for those of you in the Beta. All items that drop in Patch 2.0.1 and forward will be able to be enchanted, so this shouldn't be an issue as we move into the live patch and onward to the expansion launch.
There are many Legacy items that qualify as "disproportionately strong" when enchanted. These include:
- Chantodo's Will (innate APoC and high APS)
- Calamity (high IAS and crit damage)
- Echoing Fury (high APS if all you care about is DPS and not its annoying Fear)
- high-end trifecta or quadfecta jewelry pieces
...etc.
Of course, some level 70 items in the current Closed Beta can beat out enchanted Legacy gear, but that's the problem. Only some of the new items are good enough.
How come no one really uses Lacuni Prowlers in RoS? Because bracers like Warzechian Armguards (+movement speed on destroying object), Ancient Parthan Defenders (boosts damage reduction when stunning enemies), Reaper’s Wraps (replenishes resources through picking up health globes) offer the high base stats and the special powers to beat out generic stat sticks like Lacuni Prowlers, even when enchanted.
How about powerful items like The Witching Hour and Mempo of Twilight? Honestly, it's actually much easier to replace the latter. I personally haven't even used a Mempo my entire time playing the Beta. There are many desirable items that can replace it, especially those that aid in resource management.
But for The Witching Hour, the IAS and CD can be really, really difficult to give up. However, like for Lacuni Prowlers, there are quite a few desirable belts out there that players can see as viable replacements. Belts like Harrington Waistguard (+100% damage for 10 seconds when opening a chest/flipping corpse, etc.) are epic—try snapshotting this effect—and its high base stats can at least trounce the EHP offered from an enchanted Witching Hour. Then there's Razor Strop (deal 100% weapon damage within 20 yards upon picking up a health globe) that can add a ton of eDPS to your farming build when combined with other health globe items such as Ira’s Glass Of Life and Rakoff's Glass of Life (amulet and ring, respectively; enemies killed have a bonus chance to drop globes), Solanium (mace, critical hits have chance to spawn globes)... synergy!
Now, Solanium is a great item and can be used in very interesting ways as previously mentioned. However, it is very, very likely that it can be beaten by an enchanted Legacy weapon simply because it is a mace (low base APS at 1.20), it's Loot 2.0 so it cannot have high bonus weapon%, and it cannot roll crit damage. Let's say it rolled 2100 DPS, 700 main stats, and a socket to be generous. So now let's say the player has a fantastic Legacy Echoing Fury that he enchanted to 2500 base DPS to go with its 1.45 APS, 90% crit damage and socket.
Just comparing the two weapons on my current wizard set up, the enchanted Echoing Fury beats out Solanium by nearly 20% extra sheet DPS. No matter what kind of health globes build you're running, it's going to be really tough to replace the solid base DPS.
This is a weapons issue. When I was playing in the F&F Beta, I ditched my Legacy weapons almost instantly upon hitting level 70. Why? Because the weapons in the F&F Beta reached 3K+ base DPS. If that were the case in the Closed Beta, where enchanted weapons like Chantodo's Will and Calamity can only reach 2500 base DPS, players will have to think twice before picking which weapons to use. Do I go for the 3K base DPS Loot 2.0 weapon with the special power? Or do I pick the old enchanted Chantodo's Will for way less damage, but with better resource management?
Also, in the F&F Beta, main stats (str, dex, int) on Legendary items could reach over 900. Currently, in the Closed Beta, enchanting a Legacy Legendary item got you into the 400ish range. Which would you prefer? The old Legacy Natalya's set (+2 Discipline regen per sec) with 400 dex, little to no vitality (or 400 vit, little to no dex) on four pieces for the Disc regen, 130 dex and 7% crit chance bonuses? Or the Loot 2.0 Natalya's set where you can get 900+ dex and vitality across the board, AR or armor, plus the set bonuses of 250 extra dex, 20 bonus Disc, 7% crit chance, and a special Rain of Vengeance bonus? Yes, you can probably stay in Smokescreen forever in combination with Night Stalker running a Legacy Nat's set, but is it worth it? Perhaps? At least you'd think twice?
I say bring back the Loot 2.0 stats from F&F Beta and allow Legacy items to be enchanted, however, only to the levels they currently enjoy in the Closed Beta. That way, they will never be better than Loot 2.0 level 70 items in terms of raw power. However, you still allow players who want to bring in their old gear the freedom to choose how long they want to hold onto such gear before they inevitably (important: this must be the case) give them up for better items.
Worried about players getting stats that are way too high and tackling higher difficulties too soon? Well, just up the monster HP and boost their damage to balance out the increase in player power. Boost Loot 2.0 level 70 items up, or scale down how well Legacy items can reroll in comparison to the max stats on level 70 items. One or the other.
What would the reaction have been if they buffed all RoS loot (and difficulty) to the point where a rerolled legacy gg WH, quint ring, etc. was complete garbage in comparison? Would it not have been the same?
Ah, but basic human psychology. Buffing/giving hurts less than nerfing/taking away. Humans are generally very loss averse. With "sunk cost," people also tend to "dig in" with losses and continue to try to recoup them, until they reach a psychological breaking point where they feel like "all is lost."
But yes, you are correct. The effective result would have been the same. The psychological hit though is much worse. It's kind of like the F&F beta where the drop rates were super high -- then they nerfed them to super low. People freaked out because it was a nerf, and it hit them right in the psychology.
Another observation regarding enchanting Legacy gear:
Enchanting Legacy gear doesn't necessarily only benefit the currently "GG geared" players. I play with all sorts of players. Elitists, family men and women, the working class, super casuals, players who dedicate 10 hours a day running the game, and players who dedicate 1 hour a week running the game.
When I was running the F&F Beta and the current Closed Beta, even the super casual players were able to "catch up" to me in terms of character "power" because of the ability to enchant Legacy items. They were then able to utilize the enchanted Legacy items to speed up the acquisition of Loot 2.0 Level 70 items and start their progression toward higher difficulty levels. These are players who currently have less than half my characters' DPS and EHP levels. Enchanting evens the playing field a little more, if that's a concern for players right now. If anything, highly geared players gain a little power, lesser geared players gain a ton of power.
Removing the ability to enchant Legacy gear leaves everyone where they are and the high end players still have a leg up on everyone else... again, if that's a concern at all.
For the people who stand by this decision, here's my counter:
I don't think players are concerned about their gear becoming obsolete. That's a given. We know Legacy items aren't meant to be competitive with Loot 2.0 level 70 gear. The recent news about being unable to enchant Legacy items is indeed a solution to ensure that RoS items will be the go-to items in order to make your characters stronger.
However...
This doesn't address the concerns players have about said Loot 2.0 level 70 gear. Most of them are subpar. Some are epic, great. But most are sort of in the, "Eh, I guess that's okay/cool, but not really" category. There are a few issues that have been debated for the last couple of months, especially in the official RoS forum.
So by announcing this recent change, you make Legacy gear obsolete, but you don't address problems with Loot 2.0 gear. If the change had been to address Loot 2.0 gear to make them more attractive and better, you still make Legacy gear obsolete, thereby killing two birds with one stone.
Like many others have said before me, had the previous sentence been true, this conversation wouldn't exist.
So by announcing this recent change, you make Legacy gear obsolete, but you don't address problems with Loot 2.0 gear. If the change had been to address Loot 2.0 gear to make them more attractive and better, you still make Legacy gear obsolete, thereby killing two birds with one stone.
Like many others have said before me, had the previous sentence been true, this conversation wouldn't exist.
I was considering doing exactly this, but as usual your awesomeness beat me to it.
I also believe people need a better, cleaner view of the issue, without all the crap that other thread spawned. Let's see if we can keep this one more focused and with more reasonable arguments.
However...
This doesn't address the concerns players have about said Loot 2.0 level 70 gear. Most of them are subpar. Some are epic, great. But most are sort of in the, "Eh, I guess that's okay/cool, but not really" category. There are a few issues that have been debated for the last couple of months, especially in the official RoS forum.
So by announcing this recent change, you make Legacy gear obsolete, but you don't address problems with Loot 2.0 gear. If the change had been to address Loot 2.0 gear to make them more attractive and better, you still make Legacy gear obsolete, thereby killing two birds with one stone.
Like many others have said before me, had the previous sentence been true, this conversation wouldn't exist.
Also this, so much this ^ much more important than all the drama is the real problem hidden beneath it.
It's much more worrisome that some items, even lvl 70 legendaries, don't ever live up to their alledged power, than anything else. One of the biggest complaints of the playerbase is the lack of gear variety, and instead of focusing 100% on improving that, and making sure we're not all using the same items, they're delivering these mitigating, palliative changes.
So by announcing this recent change, you make Legacy gear obsolete, but you don't address problems with Loot 2.0 gear. If the change had been to address Loot 2.0 gear to make them more attractive and better, you still make Legacy gear obsolete, thereby killing two birds with one stone.
Like many others have said before me, had the previous sentence been true, this conversation wouldn't exist.
Couldn't have said it better! Make RoS legendaries more awesome!
That's just how I personally feel, my very own flawed opinion. Bear that in mind.
A lot of people like the current RoS itemization much better than Vanilla. To me, it took 2 steps forward and 1 and a half steps back. Not the 5 steps forward I was expecting
You always hear "items are boring", you never hear suggestions for making them better. The few suggestions you do hear are just ways to make them overpowered.
You always hear "items are boring", you never hear suggestions for making them better. The few suggestions you do hear are just ways to make them overpowered.
Excuse us if we're not game developers.
Constructive criticism is overrated; I don't have to have better ideas to know when something stinks. Just like I don't have to be a great cook to be able to say that a certain dish is bad (I happen to be a relatively good cook, but the point remains).
Just because someone can point out flaws it doesn't mean that he has to be able to come up with solutions. That's why they're the developers and we're the players.
EDIT - Forgot to say: as long as you're not a dick about it, of course.
So much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin.
As for my stance on this however; I agree with not allowing legacy items to be enchanted, for a couple reasons.
1) Blizzard has spent months and months balancing the game, the difficulties, class skills and monster damage and HP. Suddenly putting loot 2.0 back to it's F&F status would throw that all out of whack again, just to let people enchant legacies.
2) Just making these particular items that become overpowered when enchanted un-enchantable would be extremely confusing to anybody who doesn't follow closely with the game, and would still end up causing outrage.
3.) Another option I've heard is just changing those current items that are on live now, such as removing the +APS on EF, ect. I'm willing to bet that would actually piss off people more, because now you're directly screwing with items that people already have. Not a great option.
In the end, just making a blanket rule of all legacy items being unable to be enchanted is the best way to go, in my opinion. Blizzard doesn't have to go back and re-balance parts of the game, they don't have to waste time creating special rules for a select few items, and they don't have to go back and directly manipulate items that people already own.
I hope they stick with this, I think it will result in a healthier game.
I feel as though making 70 items even better is the wrong way to do this... Don't hate me or bash me yet follow me on this.
If they up the power on the newer items to be even more powerful than the current legacy items, then the game has to now accommodate for those new items (i.e Health, resistance, damage on monsters has to increase in proportion with the new stats) This in turn makes the current gear EVEN MORE USELESS. which won't be much of a problem in the long run but it does diminish the ability to farm for newer more powerful items at launch and throughout your playthrough because now those legacy items won't be able to even do T1. I'm in preference of this "band-aid" they've made by not allowing legacy items to be enchanted because it removes them from potentially being much better than the newer items and it allows the game to still be farm-able in its current state. You're not jumping into the game and going from mp10 to master, you're finding a middle ground where it works but barely and there's definitely room to improve. This isn't to say I don't feel like some certain end game items are currently useless/ very underpowered and need to be reworked, I'm talking about making items obsolete vs a massive boost in the general power of all items post-2.0.1 My 2¢ anyway.
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It's like I said in the other thread. They had to course correct for OP legacy items. If they had just upgraded level 70 items they would have taken off full speed down the road of power and stat inflation.
As for my stance on this however; I agree with not allowing legacy items to be enchanted, for a couple reasons.
1) Blizzard has spent months and months balancing the game, the difficulties, class skills and monster damage and HP. Suddenly putting loot 2.0 back to it's F&F status would throw that all out of whack again, just to let people enchant legacies.
2) Just making these particular items that become overpowered when enchanted un-enchantable would be extremely confusing to anybody who doesn't follow closely with the game, and would still end up causing outrage.
3.) Another option I've heard is just changing those current items that are on live now, such as removing the +APS on EF, ect. I'm willing to bet that would actually piss off people more, because now you're directly screwing with items that people already have. Not a great option.
In the end, just making a blanket rule of all legacy items being unable to be enchanted is the best way to go, in my opinion. Blizzard doesn't have to go back and re-balance parts of the game, they don't have to waste time creating special rules for a select few items, and they don't have to go back and directly manipulate items that people already own.
I hope they stick with this, I think it will result in a healthier game.
+1 Agreed and just adding as i saw the streamers playing F&F the game seemed to be insanely fast pacing sense the items with 3k dps and 900 stats was just 2 high stated and you could of done torment 4-5 on the start and it just would take the fun out of the game if you can finish torment 6 within month or so i think blizzard did the right move they can buff a little bit the legenderies but if you want to go torment 6 you need good set of items to make that happen and thats what diablo is all about farming your ass off to be the best! and as casual players you can still enjoy the game around torment 3-4 no problem i think blizzard did the right move here they got some flaws no doubt but it was the right move
Thanks for the informative post Jaetch. I can't really decide whether this was a correct decision by Blizzard but i can certainly see where it comes from. I farmed the shrine exploit endlessly so i pretty much covered most of the non-torment legendaries and to be honest, a lot of them with the right stats (and the ability to enchant) can be very nice and build changing. It's all about what you find once live hits... If you find a good pair of frostburns, then you would probably try to make some sort of a cold build and be on the lookout for other cold build based items like the Magistrate helm for an example, or whatever. So i see this as a good thing because i can see myself playing a lot and building my characters.
I also spent a decent ammount of money on gold in D3V and i feel like i've enjoyed this investment in this thing i consider a hobby of mine. So i don't really care if now it can become totally useless because i already made the best out of it in my opinion.
I don't care if other people want to spend 5k$ and get the best gear because really i am not and will never be competing with those guys, but i do care about the overall state of the game and its economy. I don't think that massive trades on d2jsp are a healthy thing for the game in general... not to talk about 3rd party websites selling items and gold... If the new loot system is good enough, then i don't see the need for buying stuff for real money.
I guess to each his own. But right now, this is what we have and this is how ROS will release so i am embracing it because i want to enjoy the game just as i enjoyed Diablo 3 vanilla with 1-2k hours of playtime.
I prefer your thread to the other whiny baby by a long shot, you raise some decent arguments. However i believe you lost one perspective when coming to conclusion that they should buff new legendary to make up for it. The fact that RoS is most likely not the only Diablo 3 expansion planned. There is a reason why CC, CD and AS had to be reduced on the new gear and remove the possibility for trifeca, the fact that these stats become mendatory unless removed and CAP very quickly, especially CC.
So lets say they bring more CC into lvl 70 items to make them more attractive, currently most everyone has 45-55% crit without talents, make the 70 equivalent on gear of the same rolls and add 3% you are down with everybody in the 70-80% crit range, same next expansion, everyone is on 100% crit range.
Theres only 3 way to fix this bad start of itemisation and 2 of them requires you discard the old gear.
-Turn these thing into ratings, instead of being flat attribute in the style an MMO does, so that as you level up, you require more of the same rating to reach the same % of the attribute so that you never reach 100% crit chance, never cap your attack speed and never reach 1000% cd. Since its a new stats, old stats gear needs to go bye bye.
-Make the number scales in a lower manner so that reaching the cap, becomes harder,.Once again the old over inflated number on the old gear needs to go bye bye. (what they are doing).
-Add cap for the stats, everybody cried last time and it does not fix everything, only makes it so you drop some gear and doesent make the gear that wasent attractive, attractive.
They did what they did for more than just " lvl 60 gear was competitive" the problem is larger than this and more long term. They did it so that they had a fresh start with their new scaling across the board, there is a reason why items can no longer roll 6 primary stats. Keeping the lvl 60 item the same and simply boosting lvl 70 item into the same over inflated model has consequences to more than just RoS its an over reaching arc all the way into possible next expansion(s). If they dont do it now, they will have to do it eventually and its better sooner than later with these kind of things.
Thanks for posting this here as well, Jaetch. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. It seems that you are suggesting that the alternative solution for the current dilemma (i.e., Blizzard being afraid of legacy items still being used in RoS endgame) is to bring back F&F stats to make 60 gear obsolete even when enchanted. In a nutshell, it sounds like the two most crucial points were 1) high weapon DPS of 3k+ and 2) primary stats affix range going up to 900 rather than 500ish.
Did they ever provide a reasoning for why they lowered these? If so, I missed it and would be thankful for any link provided. I can only speculate, but my guess is that they felt that primary stats were blown out of proportion. Right now, when I enchant perfect gloves or rings, getting rid of my primary stat is at least an option. It's unlikely that I'll sacrifice the primary stat, but not impossible. If primary stats would roll up to 900, maxing this stat out would be the one and foremost important thing to look for on every piece of gear. It would defy the idea of a more balanced itemization. How would you balance this? All of the sudden all other stats would need to be buffed, too.
The other point of artificially elevated item affixes to make 60 gear obsolete is that it will backfire even more on those who bring their gear into RoS (quintfecta jewelry, godly WHs). Right now, you *can* use level 60 gear until level 69 (I leveled on Master difficulty and only started replacing my gear on level ~67, and I don't have BiS gear). The problem is not DPS, but EHP that you eventually need, especially once you hit 70 and life steal is gone. But if you find a build that supports less EHP you might still be able to use some level 60 items for a while because in terms of DPS (and only DPS) they're quite viable, see Witching Hour.If stats would now be rolled back to F&F stats, this would not be the case anymore.
In other words: I don't see how this alternative solution is beneficial for anyone. Players with mediocre gear have to replace their gear mid-60 anyways, and players with BiS items can use some of them for quite a while in RoS if they compensate for the lack of EHP on other slots. In the end, we all agree that level 60 gear should be replaced by level 70 gear - everyone made this point pretty clear, especially looking at the other thread ("60 items < 70 items").
So in the end, level 60 items will be replaced. What we are discussing here is at what pace they will be replaced, and this is obviously determined by the gap between level 60 and level 70 items. Blizzard says: level 60 items are level 60 items and should stay level 60 items with level 60 affixes. You're saying that level 60 items should be allowed to have one affix buffed to level 70 quality, and in return all level 70 items across the board should be buffed to higher damage (weapons) or main stat (all slots). In my opinion, this makes the transition from 60 to 70 even worse, and I don't see how this is any better than to prevent enchanting of legacy items altogether.
(Note: Jaetch, you mentioned in another thread that you were shocked about the release date being so early and you were afraid that Blizzard doesn't have enough time to fix all bugs and get the balancing right. I totally agree and think this might be one of the reasons why they made this decision rather than looking for an alternative solution. If release of RoS wouldn't have been announced already, I'm sure this would've been communicated a bit different. But it is what it is...)
(...) and as a result of Loot 2.0 being subpar (...)
Maybe that's the real problem?
As I've said before man... "Maka stop being such a negative Nancy." I never see any non whiny or non complaint posts from you anymore. I feel like you've been poisoned by the butt hurt Diablo 2 crowd.
When RoS comes out, your Vanilla gear must be crap, because that is the whole point of the expansion: to get people into the item hunt again.
Well, that paradigm only really started with WoW. When LoD came out, many items from D3C continued being good, and the same can be said for other xpacs in other (A)RPG's, like TQ, for example. It's a (the) fatal flaw with the "xpac means higher level" paradigm.
The fact that his expansion - other than LoD and Hellfire - comes with a gear reset has nothing to do with WoW. It simply became a necessity because 1) itemization in D3V was flawed, as we discussed in a million threads already and 2) the auction house lead to an over-saturated and very much segregated community with insane gaps that made it impossible to design an expansion for all these people at the same time (those who have perfect BiS gear as well as those who played without the AH in D3V).
We can only speculate if the gear reset would've happened if itemization wasn't that flawed to begin with. That being said, this is a completely different topic - it would be nice if we could bring this back to Jaetch's original post and leave the off-topic talk to a different thread. You say that all level 70 loot is subpar, which is "the real problem" according to your post. Can you be more specific? Jaetch proposed that level 70 loot should be buffed to the old F&F stats, which I argue would break the affix balance completely. Is that what you mean? Otherwise you might want to create a new topic about more fundamental topics (i.e., we don't have a topic discussing the "4/2 problem" on this forum yet, but since I don't agree with that opinion I don't see the need to open it. You could be the one!)
So this whole "Legacy items can no longer be enchanted" news got plenty of players riled up, understandably.
For the people who managed to miss everything:
Originally Posted by Nevalistis (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
In the next Beta patch, Legacy items (or items that drop prior to Patch 2.0.1) will no longer be able to be enchanted. This was a decision we ultimately made because certain Legacy items, when enchanted, became disproportionately strong compared to new items, which isn't the intent.
However, there's an interesting "bug," if you'd like to call it, that will result from this change in the next Beta patch - all items gained up until the patch will no longer be able to be enchanted. This is an artifact of the fix implementation, and we felt it prudent to communicate this as soon as we could for those of you in the Beta. All items that drop in Patch 2.0.1 and forward will be able to be enchanted, so this shouldn't be an issue as we move into the live patch and onward to the expansion launch.
There are many Legacy items that qualify as "disproportionately strong" when enchanted. These include:
- Chantodo's Will (innate APoC and high APS)
- Calamity (high IAS and crit damage)
- Echoing Fury (high APS if all you care about is DPS and not its annoying Fear)
- high-end trifecta or quadfecta jewelry pieces
...etc.
Of course, some level 70 items in the current Closed Beta can beat out enchanted Legacy gear, but that's the problem. Only some of the new items are good enough.
How come no one really uses Lacuni Prowlers in RoS? Because bracers like Warzechian Armguards (+movement speed on destroying object), Ancient Parthan Defenders (boosts damage reduction when stunning enemies), Reaper’s Wraps (replenishes resources through picking up health globes) offer the high base stats and the special powers to beat out generic stat sticks like Lacuni Prowlers, even when enchanted.
How about powerful items like The Witching Hour and Mempo of Twilight? Honestly, it's actually much easier to replace the latter. I personally haven't even used a Mempo my entire time playing the Beta. There are many desirable items that can replace it, especially those that aid in resource management.
But for The Witching Hour, the IAS and CD can be really, really difficult to give up. However, like for Lacuni Prowlers, there are quite a few desirable belts out there that players can see as viable replacements. Belts like Harrington Waistguard (+100% damage for 10 seconds when opening a chest/flipping corpse, etc.) are epic—try snapshotting this effect—and its high base stats can at least trounce the EHP offered from an enchanted Witching Hour. Then there's Razor Strop (deal 100% weapon damage within 20 yards upon picking up a health globe) that can add a ton of eDPS to your farming build when combined with other health globe items such as Ira’s Glass Of Life and Rakoff's Glass of Life (amulet and ring, respectively; enemies killed have a bonus chance to drop globes), Solanium (mace, critical hits have chance to spawn globes)... synergy!
Now, Solanium is a great item and can be used in very interesting ways as previously mentioned. However, it is very, very likely that it can be beaten by an enchanted Legacy weapon simply because it is a mace (low base APS at 1.20), it's Loot 2.0 so it cannot have high bonus weapon%, and it cannot roll crit damage. Let's say it rolled 2100 DPS, 700 main stats, and a socket to be generous. So now let's say the player has a fantastic Legacy Echoing Fury that he enchanted to 2500 base DPS to go with its 1.45 APS, 90% crit damage and socket.
Just comparing the two weapons on my current wizard set up, the enchanted Echoing Fury beats out Solanium by nearly 20% extra sheet DPS. No matter what kind of health globes build you're running, it's going to be really tough to replace the solid base DPS.
This is a weapons issue. When I was playing in the F&F Beta, I ditched my Legacy weapons almost instantly upon hitting level 70. Why? Because the weapons in the F&F Beta reached 3K+ base DPS. If that were the case in the Closed Beta, where enchanted weapons like Chantodo's Will and Calamity can only reach 2500 base DPS, players will have to think twice before picking which weapons to use. Do I go for the 3K base DPS Loot 2.0 weapon with the special power? Or do I pick the old enchanted Chantodo's Will for way less damage, but with better resource management?
Also, in the F&F Beta, main stats (str, dex, int) on Legendary items could reach over 900. Currently, in the Closed Beta, enchanting a Legacy Legendary item got you into the 400ish range. Which would you prefer? The old Legacy Natalya's set (+2 Discipline regen per sec) with 400 dex, little to no vitality (or 400 vit, little to no dex) on four pieces for the Disc regen, 130 dex and 7% crit chance bonuses? Or the Loot 2.0 Natalya's set where you can get 900+ dex and vitality across the board, AR or armor, plus the set bonuses of 250 extra dex, 20 bonus Disc, 7% crit chance, and a special Rain of Vengeance bonus? Yes, you can probably stay in Smokescreen forever in combination with Night Stalker running a Legacy Nat's set, but is it worth it? Perhaps? At least you'd think twice?
I say bring back the Loot 2.0 stats from F&F Beta and allow Legacy items to be enchanted, however, only to the levels they currently enjoy in the Closed Beta. That way, they will never be better than Loot 2.0 level 70 items in terms of raw power. However, you still allow players who want to bring in their old gear the freedom to choose how long they want to hold onto such gear before they inevitably (important: this must be the case) give them up for better items.
Worried about players getting stats that are way too high and tackling higher difficulties too soon? Well, just up the monster HP and boost their damage to balance out the increase in player power. Boost Loot 2.0 level 70 items up, or scale down how well Legacy items can reroll in comparison to the max stats on level 70 items. One or the other.
From my beloved wizard community:
Another observation regarding enchanting Legacy gear:
Enchanting Legacy gear doesn't necessarily only benefit the currently "GG geared" players. I play with all sorts of players. Elitists, family men and women, the working class, super casuals, players who dedicate 10 hours a day running the game, and players who dedicate 1 hour a week running the game.
When I was running the F&F Beta and the current Closed Beta, even the super casual players were able to "catch up" to me in terms of character "power" because of the ability to enchant Legacy items. They were then able to utilize the enchanted Legacy items to speed up the acquisition of Loot 2.0 Level 70 items and start their progression toward higher difficulty levels. These are players who currently have less than half my characters' DPS and EHP levels. Enchanting evens the playing field a little more, if that's a concern for players right now. If anything, highly geared players gain a little power, lesser geared players gain a ton of power.
Removing the ability to enchant Legacy gear leaves everyone where they are and the high end players still have a leg up on everyone else... again, if that's a concern at all.
For the people who stand by this decision, here's my counter:
I don't think players are concerned about their gear becoming obsolete. That's a given. We know Legacy items aren't meant to be competitive with Loot 2.0 level 70 gear. The recent news about being unable to enchant Legacy items is indeed a solution to ensure that RoS items will be the go-to items in order to make your characters stronger.
However...
This doesn't address the concerns players have about said Loot 2.0 level 70 gear. Most of them are subpar. Some are epic, great. But most are sort of in the, "Eh, I guess that's okay/cool, but not really" category. There are a few issues that have been debated for the last couple of months, especially in the official RoS forum.
So by announcing this recent change, you make Legacy gear obsolete, but you don't address problems with Loot 2.0 gear. If the change had been to address Loot 2.0 gear to make them more attractive and better, you still make Legacy gear obsolete, thereby killing two birds with one stone.
Like many others have said before me, had the previous sentence been true, this conversation wouldn't exist.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
I was considering doing exactly this, but as usual your awesomeness beat me to it.
I also believe people need a better, cleaner view of the issue, without all the crap that other thread spawned. Let's see if we can keep this one more focused and with more reasonable arguments.
It's much more worrisome that some items, even lvl 70 legendaries, don't ever live up to their alledged power, than anything else. One of the biggest complaints of the playerbase is the lack of gear variety, and instead of focusing 100% on improving that, and making sure we're not all using the same items, they're delivering these mitigating, palliative changes.
Couldn't have said it better! Make RoS legendaries more awesome!
A lot of people like the current RoS itemization much better than Vanilla. To me, it took 2 steps forward and 1 and a half steps back. Not the 5 steps forward I was expecting
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
As for my stance on this however; I agree with not allowing legacy items to be enchanted, for a couple reasons.
1) Blizzard has spent months and months balancing the game, the difficulties, class skills and monster damage and HP. Suddenly putting loot 2.0 back to it's F&F status would throw that all out of whack again, just to let people enchant legacies.
2) Just making these particular items that become overpowered when enchanted un-enchantable would be extremely confusing to anybody who doesn't follow closely with the game, and would still end up causing outrage.
3.) Another option I've heard is just changing those current items that are on live now, such as removing the +APS on EF, ect. I'm willing to bet that would actually piss off people more, because now you're directly screwing with items that people already have. Not a great option.
In the end, just making a blanket rule of all legacy items being unable to be enchanted is the best way to go, in my opinion. Blizzard doesn't have to go back and re-balance parts of the game, they don't have to waste time creating special rules for a select few items, and they don't have to go back and directly manipulate items that people already own.
I hope they stick with this, I think it will result in a healthier game.
If they up the power on the newer items to be even more powerful than the current legacy items, then the game has to now accommodate for those new items (i.e Health, resistance, damage on monsters has to increase in proportion with the new stats) This in turn makes the current gear EVEN MORE USELESS. which won't be much of a problem in the long run but it does diminish the ability to farm for newer more powerful items at launch and throughout your playthrough because now those legacy items won't be able to even do T1. I'm in preference of this "band-aid" they've made by not allowing legacy items to be enchanted because it removes them from potentially being much better than the newer items and it allows the game to still be farm-able in its current state. You're not jumping into the game and going from mp10 to master, you're finding a middle ground where it works but barely and there's definitely room to improve. This isn't to say I don't feel like some certain end game items are currently useless/ very underpowered and need to be reworked, I'm talking about making items obsolete vs a massive boost in the general power of all items post-2.0.1 My 2¢ anyway.
Thanks for the informative post Jaetch. I can't really decide whether this was a correct decision by Blizzard but i can certainly see where it comes from. I farmed the shrine exploit endlessly so i pretty much covered most of the non-torment legendaries and to be honest, a lot of them with the right stats (and the ability to enchant) can be very nice and build changing. It's all about what you find once live hits... If you find a good pair of frostburns, then you would probably try to make some sort of a cold build and be on the lookout for other cold build based items like the Magistrate helm for an example, or whatever. So i see this as a good thing because i can see myself playing a lot and building my characters.
I also spent a decent ammount of money on gold in D3V and i feel like i've enjoyed this investment in this thing i consider a hobby of mine. So i don't really care if now it can become totally useless because i already made the best out of it in my opinion.
I don't care if other people want to spend 5k$ and get the best gear because really i am not and will never be competing with those guys, but i do care about the overall state of the game and its economy. I don't think that massive trades on d2jsp are a healthy thing for the game in general... not to talk about 3rd party websites selling items and gold... If the new loot system is good enough, then i don't see the need for buying stuff for real money.
I guess to each his own. But right now, this is what we have and this is how ROS will release so i am embracing it because i want to enjoy the game just as i enjoyed Diablo 3 vanilla with 1-2k hours of playtime.
So lets say they bring more CC into lvl 70 items to make them more attractive, currently most everyone has 45-55% crit without talents, make the 70 equivalent on gear of the same rolls and add 3% you are down with everybody in the 70-80% crit range, same next expansion, everyone is on 100% crit range.
Theres only 3 way to fix this bad start of itemisation and 2 of them requires you discard the old gear.
-Turn these thing into ratings, instead of being flat attribute in the style an MMO does, so that as you level up, you require more of the same rating to reach the same % of the attribute so that you never reach 100% crit chance, never cap your attack speed and never reach 1000% cd. Since its a new stats, old stats gear needs to go bye bye.
-Make the number scales in a lower manner so that reaching the cap, becomes harder,.Once again the old over inflated number on the old gear needs to go bye bye. (what they are doing).
-Add cap for the stats, everybody cried last time and it does not fix everything, only makes it so you drop some gear and doesent make the gear that wasent attractive, attractive.
They did what they did for more than just " lvl 60 gear was competitive" the problem is larger than this and more long term. They did it so that they had a fresh start with their new scaling across the board, there is a reason why items can no longer roll 6 primary stats. Keeping the lvl 60 item the same and simply boosting lvl 70 item into the same over inflated model has consequences to more than just RoS its an over reaching arc all the way into possible next expansion(s). If they dont do it now, they will have to do it eventually and its better sooner than later with these kind of things.
Did they ever provide a reasoning for why they lowered these? If so, I missed it and would be thankful for any link provided. I can only speculate, but my guess is that they felt that primary stats were blown out of proportion. Right now, when I enchant perfect gloves or rings, getting rid of my primary stat is at least an option. It's unlikely that I'll sacrifice the primary stat, but not impossible. If primary stats would roll up to 900, maxing this stat out would be the one and foremost important thing to look for on every piece of gear. It would defy the idea of a more balanced itemization. How would you balance this? All of the sudden all other stats would need to be buffed, too.
The other point of artificially elevated item affixes to make 60 gear obsolete is that it will backfire even more on those who bring their gear into RoS (quintfecta jewelry, godly WHs). Right now, you *can* use level 60 gear until level 69 (I leveled on Master difficulty and only started replacing my gear on level ~67, and I don't have BiS gear). The problem is not DPS, but EHP that you eventually need, especially once you hit 70 and life steal is gone. But if you find a build that supports less EHP you might still be able to use some level 60 items for a while because in terms of DPS (and only DPS) they're quite viable, see Witching Hour.If stats would now be rolled back to F&F stats, this would not be the case anymore.
In other words: I don't see how this alternative solution is beneficial for anyone. Players with mediocre gear have to replace their gear mid-60 anyways, and players with BiS items can use some of them for quite a while in RoS if they compensate for the lack of EHP on other slots. In the end, we all agree that level 60 gear should be replaced by level 70 gear - everyone made this point pretty clear, especially looking at the other thread ("60 items < 70 items").
So in the end, level 60 items will be replaced. What we are discussing here is at what pace they will be replaced, and this is obviously determined by the gap between level 60 and level 70 items. Blizzard says: level 60 items are level 60 items and should stay level 60 items with level 60 affixes. You're saying that level 60 items should be allowed to have one affix buffed to level 70 quality, and in return all level 70 items across the board should be buffed to higher damage (weapons) or main stat (all slots). In my opinion, this makes the transition from 60 to 70 even worse, and I don't see how this is any better than to prevent enchanting of legacy items altogether.
(Note: Jaetch, you mentioned in another thread that you were shocked about the release date being so early and you were afraid that Blizzard doesn't have enough time to fix all bugs and get the balancing right. I totally agree and think this might be one of the reasons why they made this decision rather than looking for an alternative solution. If release of RoS wouldn't have been announced already, I'm sure this would've been communicated a bit different. But it is what it is...)
We can only speculate if the gear reset would've happened if itemization wasn't that flawed to begin with. That being said, this is a completely different topic - it would be nice if we could bring this back to Jaetch's original post and leave the off-topic talk to a different thread. You say that all level 70 loot is subpar, which is "the real problem" according to your post. Can you be more specific? Jaetch proposed that level 70 loot should be buffed to the old F&F stats, which I argue would break the affix balance completely. Is that what you mean? Otherwise you might want to create a new topic about more fundamental topics (i.e., we don't have a topic discussing the "4/2 problem" on this forum yet, but since I don't agree with that opinion I don't see the need to open it. You could be the one!)