In my understanding, Blizzard wants to make cohesive build construction a reality for casual and invested players, from early game (offers free sets very quickly in seasons, and high drop chance) into late game (ancient tier, augs, paragon - with enough main stat from paragon any build is possible). So what I don't understand is the current state of LoN. The issue I see is that the ring set itself provides literally no bonus if the player has no ancients; this is a problem because it makes the ring extremely unrewarding, if picked up too early in the game. As a requirement of the LoN set, and to make it comparable to other build options (sets), you need to outweigh any dmg bonus on the set, before LoN will even be worth considering. Ex: Let's say a given set provides 500% dmg bonus. This means that before LoN can even be considered as a realistic option, you need to have 5 ancient items = 500% dmg bonus. This acts to further delay the use of LoN, which turns it into an end-game set (essentially unusable before end-game).
So my question is this:
Why is LoN bonus restricted to ancients? The set would be far more useful throughout the game if it also gave a bonus for legendaries; obviously, the bonus from ancients should be higher, making ancients more rewarding. I would personally like to see legs give 70% each, and ancients give 100%, this would give the following figures (assuming all 13 gear slots are occupied).
Full Leg:
70 x 13 = 910% dmg bonus
6 Leg + 7 Ancient (roughly 50/50)
70 x 6 = 420
100 x 7 = 700
420 + 700 = 1120% dmg bonus
Full Ancient:
100 x 13 = 1300% dmg bonus
I think this setup would make LoN far more attractive in early game, without restricting playstyle.
Note: Giving a player a specific set for free is restrictive, because no standard legendaries can currently compete against it. Basically, once you have a set that's it, there's no reason to switch it until you get either a better set, or your full ancient LoN set.
I don't have problem with LoN at all, it is fairly easy to find ancient items and with cube reforge ability all you need is dedication to run bounties until you get perfect gear. If we talk about seasons, you get free set that is able to run TX anyways, so you can at least split T7 bounties with it, getting 8 bounty materials in 20 minutes max.
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Season 6 barbarian solo sc EU grift 85 12m 23.199s MotE build
The free set in seasons is the biggest problem though... it makes any non-set build worthless. The closest alternative we have is LoN, which is still a set (albeit much less restrictive - less gear slots required), however since we can't make any use of it until we have a multitude of ancients, we are essentially forced into playing using sets at season start.
I don't see why is free set a problem. If you dislike free set you are given (as I do), just farm another one. Same is with LoN. Just use free set to farm LoN gear, its simple as that.
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Season 6 barbarian solo sc EU grift 85 12m 23.199s MotE build
I agree with your idea to apply a lower bonus to non ancient legendaries. The idea is that : AFAIK LoN is designed for TX content, and we should be able to use it early on, not as an end-game set no ones play because you don't have the gear.
But LoN is also an end-game build for some classes (DH and Cruise at least), so if we change it, we have to make sure it doesn't break that in one way or the other.
Ideally the change would only add a lower tier effect, meanwhile class sets apply the exact same set bonuses, regardless of their tier. At an early point, LoN would be giving 910% dmg bonus, while some class sets (zuni/helltooth/firebirds) can give 1400% - 2400%. Even inna's for monk (long considered an underpowered class) would still be giving 500% (since MA boots are essential to the build) together with a vast range of survivability effects (which cannot otherwise be stacked by a single monk). In other words, since sets are already more powerful than full ancient LoN in many cases, having a lower tier bonus on LoN will not interrupt any existing "balance".
I think it's intended by Blizzard and what if they made even non-ancients count too? All I hear is people whining about the progression being too fast, this would only make this relatively slow "build" even faster. I think they should keep it this way, something to aim for later on in the end game and something that takes a little more effort to gather rather than full 6-p set.
xoxo
Overall, this view seems fine, however it is impractical, as LoN sets are not (for the most part) as diverse at end-game as they should be, if they were to be considered rewarding in end-game. I have played many LoN builds, and felt that my time was wasted by constructing said builds, because they were so drastically under-powered. It is true that some LoN builds DO work at end-game, but we're talking about maybe 4 builds across 6 classes, out of what is supposed to be billions of item/skill combinations per class.
Since we clearly don't have the option for build diversity at high difficulties, it seems more important to offer that diversity earlier on in the game, and this is not happening atm.
I think I just don't like how dmg multipliers seem to have become the focus of gears. It feels uninteresting to me. I would much rather have no dmg multipliers on gear, and instead have purely functional legendary affixes/set bonuses, such as with Carnevil, The Swami, Madstone, Ranslor's Folly and Leonine Bow of Hashir. Uliana's for the 6pc bonus is actually 1 of my favourite things about D3 (prior to being buffed in 2.4.1), as it can synergise so well with gungdo and/or madstone. I feel that giving players the option to equip anything they want, to suit their own personal playstyle, should have been the initial design goal. Ideas like ancients, augmenting and paragon could have been introduced beyond this point, to provide infinite progression.
Damage multipliers (largely from sets) hurt build diversity, and the devs' response was to introduce a set which allows more freedom in item choice (legendaries as opposed to sets), by applying yet another dmg multiplier. This seems like a lazy approach which fails to correct the issue.
LON was introduced to give variety to the players, but in fact it's very limiting.
Most 2pc sets outdamage early LON build now. LON is also very power hungry, you need tonns of great gear to make it work. While even a crappy rolled set can easily compete with a well-rolled LON build. As of 2.4.1 sets were buffed greatly and LON is in obscurity once again
If you wanted to go that way, you could simply apply the LoN effect by default on ancients, as Dark_Sol suggests, and at the same time, have it not affect set items. Not necessarily going to be perfect, just offering that constraints can be enforced if devs wished to do so.
One thing I really miss from D1, D2 and D3 Vanilla was the possibility to find a relly good Rare item (magic on D1) with better stats than legendarie and I think that D2 system was perfect for it. There Blue itens had a bigger limit on some numbers from affixes and suffixes and Yellow itens, while having a lower number on those stats, could get more affixes and suffixes (3 of each if I remeber correctly). But thats offtopic.
In LoN regards, I believe that a possible change is to transfer the bonuses from the set to just one item (ring or amulet) and this item should boost the damage based purely on what type of itens the char is using (all legendaries, yellow or blue, no set bonuses allowed). Upgrading your gear from blue to yellow, from yellow to legendaries and from common legendaries to ancient is already an upgrade. It would lead to some heavy changes of balance but, that way, we could find the LoN item early on and play the way we wanted until the end, just like with class sets.
If you wanted to go that way, you could simply apply the LoN effect by default on ancients, as Dark_Sol suggests, and at the same time, have it not affect set items. Not necessarily going to be perfect, just offering that constraints can be enforced if devs wished to do so.
The biggest problem is, that no matter what set you choose to play, you have to add some 99% required items to work in end-game. Like weapons, off-hands, belts and so on.
As soon as you vary from those required items your build looses effectivity. There are a few cases where you can replace an item with another but in most cases it lowers the overall performance. Example: WD. Try to play HT w/o Sacred Harvester. It does work but you instantly become squishy as hell as you loose 5 stacks of soul harvest (which is 30% dmg reduction). So here is the point where Blizzard has to step in and design viable alternatives. Of course not a 100% duplicate but a weapon which compensates this effect. Or a combination of items to gain even more possibilities.
Looking at LoN I feel it's good as it is. It's meant to be a goal to reach besides playing a set. 2.4.1 brings some buffs to some sets which make LoN less interesting to play (WDs will go HT - again) and that is maybe the wrong approach.
My thought exactly!
OP:
You've a good point. Would be much more fun to roll with a LoN build when hunting for ancients. You could shift the build according to items you find while hunting. Instead those two rings only collect dust in the stash until you've the right items which could take a long time depending on how much you play :/
I think it's intended by Blizzard and what if they made even non-ancients count too? All I hear is people whining about the progression being too fast, this would only make this relatively slow "build" even faster. I think they should keep it this way, something to aim for later on in the end game and something that takes a little more effort to gather rather than full 6-p set.
xoxo
Overall, this view seems fine, however it is impractical, as LoN sets are not (for the most part) as diverse at end-game as they should be, if they were to be considered rewarding in end-game. I have played many LoN builds, and felt that my time was wasted by constructing said builds, because they were so drastically under-powered. It is true that some LoN builds DO work at end-game, but we're talking about maybe 4 builds across 6 classes, out of what is supposed to be billions of item/skill combinations per class.
Since we clearly don't have the option for build diversity at high difficulties, it seems more important to offer that diversity earlier on in the game, and this is not happening atm.
Currently, every class BUT Wizard has at least 3 LoN builds that are good at higher lvl play, even WITH the buffs. LoN is capable of stacking more elemental damage then other sets due to Magefist, Cindercoat, and Andariel's Visage, all 3 of which are only rarely usable by standard sets, which can help to boost LoN above the 1500% damage boost of other sets, providing you use fire damage.
Crusader currently has 6 LoN sets - Bombardment, Blessed Shield, Heaven's Fury, and Phalanx being the 4 main ones, with Sweep Attack and Shield Bash being minor ones that compete with Rolands.
Wizard does not have ANY LoN set, due to Tel'Rasha fulfilling essentially the same purpose, and DMO handling anything Tel'Rasha does not.
DH has LoN Strafe builds, Knives build (Which took the top spot for DH progression in S5), Rapid Fire builds, and lesser builds such as spike trap and chakram.
WD has LoN dot builds, pet builds, and sacrifice builds.
Barb has LoN HoTA builds, Siesmic Slam builds, and the current top barb build next patch seems to be LoN frenzy/thorns build.
idk what monkhaves, but I bet they have at least 1 LoN build.
And, of course, EVERYONE should strive for at least 1 LoN gold-find build in order to get 1bil gold/TX rift.
I do agree though, that LoN could use a bit of an early game boost. Maybe 50% rather then 70% per legendary.
LON was introduced to give variety to the players, but in fact it's very limiting.
Most 2pc sets outdamage early LON build now. LON is also very power hungry, you need tonns of great gear to make it work. While even a crappy rolled set can easily compete with a well-rolled LON build. As of 2.4.1 sets were buffed greatly and LON is in obscurity once again
Like I said, you can't buff LoN as long as there are top tier LoN builds. You have to buff legendaries to improve other builds.
In the end, full ancient LoN is only a 15-20 GRift levels push. So builds have to work in T10 without LoN equipped.
Actually, it's exactly the contrary. Damage multipliers help build diversity. Damage multipliers can be balanced by reducing or increasing those numbers. How would you balance Uliana 2.4? There is nothing quantitative about it except the damage of skills themselves. But if you change skills, you might change some other build that uses those skills as well, with it.
The problem isn't necessarily damage multipliers (as they add a form of progression) it's multipliers that affect multiple skills/runes. LON can't be buffed outright because there are a couple of builds that are really powerful with it because the skills and supporting legendaries work well with each other. The issue is that a blanket x% to all damage, or to a subset of skills gets limited by the strongest skill. This is likely the reason EP was removed from Sunwuko, to allow the other skills to get a higher multiplier, but now it's basically limited by WoL, and thus TR and LTK are less likely to be used.
This is the main reason I dislike the decision to place these multipliers on sets, as they are all either flat damage bonuses (IK, Akkhan, Inna, LoN) or have a subset of skills they affect, because the skills themselves aren't balanced well with one another at the endgame, so there is always a best option. They may be balanced at level 50, when resource management or some other mechanic is still an issue (which is why they don't simply change base damage numbers), but once resource generation is no longer a problem, WoL is basically always better than LTK.
This is why I'd rather see legendaries like Madstone, and have sets with 2/4pc bonuses that are thematic and too powerful for a single slot, but not super OP, and then introduce some other system (charms, ability to invest in a skill for a multiplier, whatever) to handle the multiplier and thus the progression.
But more on topic, at the very least, the multipier on LoN needs differ by class, so that it has a chance at being competitive with sets in some form. As it stands right now, if there isn't a legendary or 2 that enhance a skill, even LoN can't save it, and most of the skills that do have leg support are already attached to a set.
First of all I want to say that I personally like the idea of LoN and I don't think it should be changed . It makes so much legendaries actually usable and so many new builds possible - not just the 4 set builds +- 1 or 2 skills/runes changed. People can actually use their imagination and if they have the time to farm the ancients they can make their own build capable of farming TX . Not as fast as the "cookie-cutter" builds, but hey - it's my own unique build and I am farming TX with it - isn't that awesome.
Second: @PsykStrike I think that you are too much focused on the set bonus you get from the rings and I personally don't agree with your comparison between normal sets and LoN (the 500% dmg example). Why? Simply because you are not taking into consideration the fact that the legendaries have a legendary affix. A thing that the set items don't have and that boost some skills quite significant. So, even if a lot of your gear is just non-ancient legendaries - if you have the "right" legendaries for your build - it should work quite well. Of course turning them into ancient legendaries shows the real power of the LoN build, but you just can't underestimate those awesome orange affixes.
Honestly, I think LoN is fine as it is. If you buffed LoN in early game with non-legendary bonuses, you would progress way too fast and the game would just immediately become about meaningless grinding. It would mess up the entire economy of the game, because you have to remember: There's a LOT more that goes into game design than just making the players happy with short term rewards.
Let's say, the LoN set gives 50% damage increase per non-ancient legendary you have on. All you would need to do is get a legendary for each item slot and you would have +650% damage for all your abilities, PLUS the affixes for every legendary item you have that add multipliers to your build.
Now let's assume you have the bare minimum of 650% damage. You would be able to power level yourself up to paragon 250, and then join pub TX games and level up a few more hundred levels, within only the span of a day or two if you're a hardcore gamer. And then the game just becomes about grinding exp once you've acquired the meta build sets, which isn't that hard in T10 farming games.
Part of game design is about creating incentives and rewards for players to play; a lot of psychology goes into the development of new game features. If you were to buff LoN early game, you would essentially eliminate early game because people would just farm until they have the LoN rings and then power level themselves out of the early stages of the game. And if that happened, the players have no incentive to keep playing since the majority of players can't compete with the top leaderboards players. When you get to end-game, the game no longer is about loot-hunting, it's about farming exp. Since this would not be as rewarding, blizzard and diablo 3 would lose a HUGE chunk of their players- and have to answer to corporate. Since the video game industry is primarily about money, every update they do is a huge gamble that could potentially backfire in their face horribly.
So I think the Original Poster had some good points about LoN being too "end-game", but that's part of the incentive and reward system they try to maintain in end-game. It is incredibly difficult to make every demographic that plays their game happy (both casual and hardcore players), but I think LoN is a good end-game goal to farm for because it keeps you loot-hunting.
Also, these ideas are just my biased opinion. I'm going to school for video game design so I'm sure some of my ideas could be challenged because I don't have the experience the blizz devs do
LoN is a good idea i really liked it. not anymore though. It gave soo many oportunities, to make your own build viable. However its not the situation.
It does not make every build viable, however its not the problem if the ring though. Every set was buffed, LoN doesnt, so i feel, not sure, but it fall behind. Maybe 1 or max 2 class can use it.
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In my understanding, Blizzard wants to make cohesive build construction a reality for casual and invested players, from early game (offers free sets very quickly in seasons, and high drop chance) into late game (ancient tier, augs, paragon - with enough main stat from paragon any build is possible). So what I don't understand is the current state of LoN. The issue I see is that the ring set itself provides literally no bonus if the player has no ancients; this is a problem because it makes the ring extremely unrewarding, if picked up too early in the game. As a requirement of the LoN set, and to make it comparable to other build options (sets), you need to outweigh any dmg bonus on the set, before LoN will even be worth considering. Ex: Let's say a given set provides 500% dmg bonus. This means that before LoN can even be considered as a realistic option, you need to have 5 ancient items = 500% dmg bonus. This acts to further delay the use of LoN, which turns it into an end-game set (essentially unusable before end-game).
So my question is this:
Why is LoN bonus restricted to ancients? The set would be far more useful throughout the game if it also gave a bonus for legendaries; obviously, the bonus from ancients should be higher, making ancients more rewarding. I would personally like to see legs give 70% each, and ancients give 100%, this would give the following figures (assuming all 13 gear slots are occupied).
Full Leg:
70 x 13 = 910% dmg bonus
6 Leg + 7 Ancient (roughly 50/50)
70 x 6 = 420
100 x 7 = 700
420 + 700 = 1120% dmg bonus
Full Ancient:
100 x 13 = 1300% dmg bonus
I think this setup would make LoN far more attractive in early game, without restricting playstyle.
Note: Giving a player a specific set for free is restrictive, because no standard legendaries can currently compete against it. Basically, once you have a set that's it, there's no reason to switch it until you get either a better set, or your full ancient LoN set.
I don't have problem with LoN at all, it is fairly easy to find ancient items and with cube reforge ability all you need is dedication to run bounties until you get perfect gear. If we talk about seasons, you get free set that is able to run TX anyways, so you can at least split T7 bounties with it, getting 8 bounty materials in 20 minutes max.
Season 6 barbarian solo sc EU grift 85 12m 23.199s MotE build
The free set in seasons is the biggest problem though... it makes any non-set build worthless. The closest alternative we have is LoN, which is still a set (albeit much less restrictive - less gear slots required), however since we can't make any use of it until we have a multitude of ancients, we are essentially forced into playing using sets at season start.
I don't see why is free set a problem. If you dislike free set you are given (as I do), just farm another one. Same is with LoN. Just use free set to farm LoN gear, its simple as that.
Season 6 barbarian solo sc EU grift 85 12m 23.199s MotE build
Since we clearly don't have the option for build diversity at high difficulties, it seems more important to offer that diversity earlier on in the game, and this is not happening atm.
I think I just don't like how dmg multipliers seem to have become the focus of gears. It feels uninteresting to me. I would much rather have no dmg multipliers on gear, and instead have purely functional legendary affixes/set bonuses, such as with Carnevil, The Swami, Madstone, Ranslor's Folly and Leonine Bow of Hashir. Uliana's for the 6pc bonus is actually 1 of my favourite things about D3 (prior to being buffed in 2.4.1), as it can synergise so well with gungdo and/or madstone. I feel that giving players the option to equip anything they want, to suit their own personal playstyle, should have been the initial design goal. Ideas like ancients, augmenting and paragon could have been introduced beyond this point, to provide infinite progression.
Damage multipliers (largely from sets) hurt build diversity, and the devs' response was to introduce a set which allows more freedom in item choice (legendaries as opposed to sets), by applying yet another dmg multiplier. This seems like a lazy approach which fails to correct the issue.
OP is pretty much correct.
LON was introduced to give variety to the players, but in fact it's very limiting.
Most 2pc sets outdamage early LON build now. LON is also very power hungry, you need tonns of great gear to make it work. While even a crappy rolled set can easily compete with a well-rolled LON build. As of 2.4.1 sets were buffed greatly and LON is in obscurity once again
http://www.angryroleplayer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/c/angryroleplayer
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105329-2-6-7-rend-bleed-whirlwind-gr130
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105301-2-6-7-fist-of-the-heavens-aegis-of-valor-gr110
personally, it's kind of dumb to have a 2pc SET that is being buffed by legendaries. And the set is actually RINGS = most precious slots ever.
Why not make a default feature that each ancient legendary buffs ALL DAMAGE by %??? So much easier.
http://www.angryroleplayer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/c/angryroleplayer
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105329-2-6-7-rend-bleed-whirlwind-gr130
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105301-2-6-7-fist-of-the-heavens-aegis-of-valor-gr110
If you wanted to go that way, you could simply apply the LoN effect by default on ancients, as Dark_Sol suggests, and at the same time, have it not affect set items. Not necessarily going to be perfect, just offering that constraints can be enforced if devs wished to do so.
One thing I really miss from D1, D2 and D3 Vanilla was the possibility to find a relly good Rare item (magic on D1) with better stats than legendarie and I think that D2 system was perfect for it. There Blue itens had a bigger limit on some numbers from affixes and suffixes and Yellow itens, while having a lower number on those stats, could get more affixes and suffixes (3 of each if I remeber correctly). But thats offtopic.
In LoN regards, I believe that a possible change is to transfer the bonuses from the set to just one item (ring or amulet) and this item should boost the damage based purely on what type of itens the char is using (all legendaries, yellow or blue, no set bonuses allowed). Upgrading your gear from blue to yellow, from yellow to legendaries and from common legendaries to ancient is already an upgrade. It would lead to some heavy changes of balance but, that way, we could find the LoN item early on and play the way we wanted until the end, just like with class sets.
http://www.angryroleplayer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/c/angryroleplayer
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105329-2-6-7-rend-bleed-whirlwind-gr130
https://www.diablofans.com/builds/105301-2-6-7-fist-of-the-heavens-aegis-of-valor-gr110
OP:
You've a good point. Would be much more fun to roll with a LoN build when hunting for ancients. You could shift the build according to items you find while hunting. Instead those two rings only collect dust in the stash until you've the right items which could take a long time depending on how much you play :/
Crusader currently has 6 LoN sets - Bombardment, Blessed Shield, Heaven's Fury, and Phalanx being the 4 main ones, with Sweep Attack and Shield Bash being minor ones that compete with Rolands.
Wizard does not have ANY LoN set, due to Tel'Rasha fulfilling essentially the same purpose, and DMO handling anything Tel'Rasha does not.
DH has LoN Strafe builds, Knives build (Which took the top spot for DH progression in S5), Rapid Fire builds, and lesser builds such as spike trap and chakram.
WD has LoN dot builds, pet builds, and sacrifice builds.
Barb has LoN HoTA builds, Siesmic Slam builds, and the current top barb build next patch seems to be LoN frenzy/thorns build.
idk what monkhaves, but I bet they have at least 1 LoN build.
And, of course, EVERYONE should strive for at least 1 LoN gold-find build in order to get 1bil gold/TX rift.
I do agree though, that LoN could use a bit of an early game boost. Maybe 50% rather then 70% per legendary.
The problem isn't necessarily damage multipliers (as they add a form of progression) it's multipliers that affect multiple skills/runes. LON can't be buffed outright because there are a couple of builds that are really powerful with it because the skills and supporting legendaries work well with each other. The issue is that a blanket x% to all damage, or to a subset of skills gets limited by the strongest skill. This is likely the reason EP was removed from Sunwuko, to allow the other skills to get a higher multiplier, but now it's basically limited by WoL, and thus TR and LTK are less likely to be used.
This is the main reason I dislike the decision to place these multipliers on sets, as they are all either flat damage bonuses (IK, Akkhan, Inna, LoN) or have a subset of skills they affect, because the skills themselves aren't balanced well with one another at the endgame, so there is always a best option. They may be balanced at level 50, when resource management or some other mechanic is still an issue (which is why they don't simply change base damage numbers), but once resource generation is no longer a problem, WoL is basically always better than LTK.
This is why I'd rather see legendaries like Madstone, and have sets with 2/4pc bonuses that are thematic and too powerful for a single slot, but not super OP, and then introduce some other system (charms, ability to invest in a skill for a multiplier, whatever) to handle the multiplier and thus the progression.
But more on topic, at the very least, the multipier on LoN needs differ by class, so that it has a chance at being competitive with sets in some form. As it stands right now, if there isn't a legendary or 2 that enhance a skill, even LoN can't save it, and most of the skills that do have leg support are already attached to a set.
The wizard sets give so high % dmg bonus that LON isnt worth considering... ever. Kinda sad imo.
First of all I want to say that I personally like the idea of LoN and I don't think it should be changed . It makes so much legendaries actually usable and so many new builds possible - not just the 4 set builds +- 1 or 2 skills/runes changed. People can actually use their imagination and if they have the time to farm the ancients they can make their own build capable of farming TX . Not as fast as the "cookie-cutter" builds, but hey - it's my own unique build and I am farming TX with it - isn't that awesome.
Second: @PsykStrike I think that you are too much focused on the set bonus you get from the rings and I personally don't agree with your comparison between normal sets and LoN (the 500% dmg example). Why? Simply because you are not taking into consideration the fact that the legendaries have a legendary affix. A thing that the set items don't have and that boost some skills quite significant. So, even if a lot of your gear is just non-ancient legendaries - if you have the "right" legendaries for your build - it should work quite well. Of course turning them into ancient legendaries shows the real power of the LoN build, but you just can't underestimate those awesome orange affixes.
Basically, this thread tells me that the frog knows what's going on with game design. Read his posts and get insight, folks. Can't add much more.
Honestly, I think LoN is fine as it is. If you buffed LoN in early game with non-legendary bonuses, you would progress way too fast and the game would just immediately become about meaningless grinding. It would mess up the entire economy of the game, because you have to remember: There's a LOT more that goes into game design than just making the players happy with short term rewards.
Let's say, the LoN set gives 50% damage increase per non-ancient legendary you have on. All you would need to do is get a legendary for each item slot and you would have +650% damage for all your abilities, PLUS the affixes for every legendary item you have that add multipliers to your build.
Now let's assume you have the bare minimum of 650% damage. You would be able to power level yourself up to paragon 250, and then join pub TX games and level up a few more hundred levels, within only the span of a day or two if you're a hardcore gamer. And then the game just becomes about grinding exp once you've acquired the meta build sets, which isn't that hard in T10 farming games.
Part of game design is about creating incentives and rewards for players to play; a lot of psychology goes into the development of new game features. If you were to buff LoN early game, you would essentially eliminate early game because people would just farm until they have the LoN rings and then power level themselves out of the early stages of the game. And if that happened, the players have no incentive to keep playing since the majority of players can't compete with the top leaderboards players. When you get to end-game, the game no longer is about loot-hunting, it's about farming exp. Since this would not be as rewarding, blizzard and diablo 3 would lose a HUGE chunk of their players- and have to answer to corporate. Since the video game industry is primarily about money, every update they do is a huge gamble that could potentially backfire in their face horribly.
So I think the Original Poster had some good points about LoN being too "end-game", but that's part of the incentive and reward system they try to maintain in end-game. It is incredibly difficult to make every demographic that plays their game happy (both casual and hardcore players), but I think LoN is a good end-game goal to farm for because it keeps you loot-hunting.
Also, these ideas are just my biased opinion. I'm going to school for video game design so I'm sure some of my ideas could be challenged because I don't have the experience the blizz devs do
LoN is a good idea i really liked it. not anymore though. It gave soo many oportunities, to make your own build viable. However its not the situation.
It does not make every build viable, however its not the problem if the ring though. Every set was buffed, LoN doesnt, so i feel, not sure, but it fall behind. Maybe 1 or max 2 class can use it.