I wonder who on the team came up with this brilliant idea. Obviously not the person writing community responses or they would've realized this is SOLELY power creep for power creep's sake and nothing else which is directly what whoever wrote that community response said the team was trying to avoid. I guess "we" in that case meant "everyone, but the chode that gets to decide what's in the game".
Does nobody realize that this is actually a good thing?
Paragon will now be even less important considering the diminishing returns on mainstat...
This is a step in the right direction people!
Exact the first thing I thought.
Same was when they announced Caldesanns...
It's about the grind yeah, but it's Diablo.
I rather search for a primal ancient item than mindlessly farming paragon.
But lets be honest it only diminishes the gap between 24/7 players and players (like me) who are efficiently playing between ~3-8 hours a day.
Players with less playtime or determination will still suffer from this. It's why I can understand the mostly negative feedback.
But in the long run it's a minor improvement to the game, especially if you're mainly playing NS.
phew. i am glad, that there is a distinction between 3-8 hours per day and 24/7. now you can hope against hope that the last needed item drops, is not only ancient but primal ancient AND has the right stats rolled. which REALLY isn't more mindless than paragon grinding..
In many seasons, I didn't hunt for one particular weapon; I just took the first ancient I got and ran the build for that (or tried to fit it into my build). I will just farm and whatever primal ancient weapon I get, that's what I'm gonna do.
This is basically bringing D3 back to where D2 was. 1% chance for primal is still better than the 0.0001% chance for Tyrael's Might and that kind of stuff. And where in D2 you had "lesser" uniques to pave the way while farming, normal/ancient items are the temporary replacement in D3.
What I like is that as soon as you hit level 70 and play on Torment 1, you might find that gg-rolled perfect primal weapon. There's no stupid gating system that prevents you from doing something, but it brings the Diablo-esque grind back to Diablo: farm for more and better loot.
Also, like some people noted, it will further diminish the impact of paragon and augments. I personally hope that it will strengthen LoN builds (since you can just keep whichever primal items you get and make a 13x primal ancients character, as most slots in many LoN builds don't have specific items required). Furthermore, as Wudijoreported on Reddit, weapon damage "only" increased by about 16% which is a bit less than one GR tier; so it's not like not finding a primal weapon will hold you back by several levels (to put it in perspective, the ancient increase is 30%).
Overall, I like this change. The only thing I don't like about it that farming NS now feels pointless to me for the next few weeks. So back to SC2 probably for a while
Does nobody realize that this is actually a good thing?
Paragon will now be even less important considering the diminishing returns on mainstat...
This is a step in the right direction people!
Exact the first thing I thought.
Same was when they announced Caldesanns...
It's about the grind yeah, but it's Diablo.
I rather search for a primal ancient item than mindlessly farming paragon.
But lets be honest it only diminishes the gap between 24/7 players and players (like me) who are efficiently playing between ~3-8 hours a day.
Players with less playtime or determination will still suffer from this. It's why I can understand the mostly negative feedback.
But in the long run it's a minor improvement to the game, especially if you're mainly playing NS.
phew. i am glad, that there is a distinction between 3-8 hours per day and 24/7. now you can hope against hope that the last needed item drops, is not only ancient but primal ancient AND has the right stats rolled. which REALLY isn't more mindless than paragon grinding..
the thing is it doesn't diminish the gap, it makes it wider. The gamers that play 24/7 will get more mats have more play time and have greater odds to get 12-13 primal ancient gear versus you. A casual gamer that is stuck with ancient gear. Now what happens after the primal ancient farming. MORE paragon grinding to level up your legendary gems to augment these primal ancient gear pieces.
Have you not forgot Kanai's cube. ancients have a 10% drop rate by default. Primal, I will guess 5%.
Lets reroll a non ancient and hope to get a primal. First reroll we get an ancient. "Oh this is garbage, i want a PA." 2nd -10th, are all non ancient. 20th reroll, "yes a PA, but it has the worst affix, its worse than the regular anicent." back to rerolling.
I would rather have them re instate mortick bracers or remove that 100% drop rate buff that we all got early into RoS launch.
I for one still look forward to anything they release. I am a fan, critical at at times, but a fan. I continue to enjoy this game and I have enjoyed the franchise so far.
Times have changed. When ancients were released, you could just take the next best ancient weapon you got and had a boost in damage (until you got your best weapon in ancient waaaay later). Now, you have "Skill does a bazillion percent increased damage" affixes. What are 30% (or 16 or whatever) more damage from primals if you lose 200% from the right weapon choice?
Depends on the build. For MH builds there's no "weapon of choice", you can literally use anything that's primal. In S6 or so, I played HT WD and just used my best ancient weapon (a random one with no affix) for the solo GR conquest. Yes, there are some builds that have designated weapons, but if you play the entire game and don't neglect all the other interesting builds, you can just farm and play the build suited for whichever weapon you find.
Also the D2 comparison is off, because D2 had trading. Low droprates make way more sense with trading.
I never traded in D2. It was (and still is) a cheat festival (many items on the market come from botting or duping sources) and just leads to P2W (I regularly see some people asking on Reddit "what's the best D2 MF build, I have some FG and want a quick way to Hell"). Also, "low droprates makes way more sense with trading"... like in D3V, when we had "crit Mempos" and EFs and Skorn and Manticore and so on that were extremely rare and expensive and led to P2W? No, I strongly disagree. Low droprates always make sense, and trading simply doesn't work in this day and age anymore (JW's recent interview provides some nice insights into that). Top items need to be non-tradeable, otherwise you end up having P2W. There's no way around it.
This is grind for numbers. The most boring kind of grind there is. For players who put a lot of hours into this game, it's nothing else but busy work. It's not exciting. It's something to do.
I sort of agree, but what's the alternative? You can make certain items generally rare (like, instead of making a primal Yang's Recurve a 1% drop make the bow generally a 1% drop). But in that case many people will simply never be able to play a certain build. That would only work if the effect on legendaries would be tuned down (instead of making a build 100% better, make it 20-30% better). I'd support that, but it would require nerfing ~350 legendaries and ~25 sets, which is not gonna happen. So for now, primal is the best way to give us some long-term goals.
Note that "number hunting" was exactly what you did in D1 and also at some point in D2, so a grind - no matter how boring - has always been at the core of the genre. But if you consider the differences in how people grind (some barely finish the Journey in 3 months, some do it in 1 day) I think having tiered items is better than locking 99% of people out of ever seeing a particular item. For example, as a self-found player in D2 I have never ever seen an SoJ, a Zod rune, a TM, and got my first Enigma *ever* just last August.
I'm sorry, but how is this a good thing? The state of the game right now, if it's not ancient, and it's already cubed, it's auto-sharded. All this change does is add another pronoun to the current statement "If it's not Ancient, it's garbage."
How does this not give the people who play more than 4 hours a day a bigger advantage? They already have more Grifts, more paragons, and more/better augments. Almost every other change is for the better, but this one just isn't sitting right. Especially when you consider how poorly Ancient items can already roll, nothing like a Manald Heal with RCR, %Life, Int and Vit rolling ancient with 600% damage missing from the affix. Or shoulders with RCR, %Life, RA and mainstat when you NEED Vit/CDR/AreaDMG. RNG is RNG, but it's similar to the WoW Legion Legendary debate. It's not fun getting a super rare item, that's bad, especially when the other option is such a big power boost that it makes getting ANYTHING LESS just depressing.
They could've added trinkets, new item slots, new item sets, anything else. Power creep for the sake of power creep is inherently bad.
If you earned roughly 5% more experience playing with 3 of your friends, that's more than enough. Or maybe with follower tokens +exp modifiers that made solo play viable that you actually want them with you, outside of being a debuff stick, proc modifier, or damage reduction. They could literally do anything with followers, and it would be a good thing.
Does nobody realize that this is actually a good thing?
Paragon will now be even less important considering the diminishing returns on mainstat...
This is a step in the right direction people!
Sry. No, it's not!
Edit:
IMO, this patch, like previous ones, are directed to casual players at most.
There are some usefull changes to everyone, like the bônus cache (thanks a lot for this), or the armory (coming late, but that's ok). But this primal ancient thing is just garbage following recente mobile games trends. You can play any mobile game now and you will see this same direction at itemization. One difference here: there's no PTW in diablo like there was before with HA.
Like others told before, introducing primal items to D3 will only works as a "wow!" moment to most of casual players. And a new boring objective to 24/7 pro-gamers. Any one in midle it will only be mourning that his perfect primal weapon didn't drop yet.... and most importante, no complete set of primals with + 3300 main stats (11 x ~300 main stat improvment from ancients = 3300) will compare to 1500 paragon levels difference between players or more (1500 x 5 main stat = 7500). Best of all, remember that if you play 4h/day, you will have 80% less chance (or worse) to get a good primal than a 24/7 bot farming endless times a day, you will bave less legendary gems to use in it as well, etc...
Diablo devs seem to be going to same way as WoW devs were some time ago. But there, WoW devs decided to come back and revamped itemization and drop farming rotes, reworked power level and all about it. I dont know why diablo team seems to keep going this way only improving numbers when they would improve game play at all. We keep having unbalanced builds, some classes keep being off scene every season/patch, paragon farm is the only effective way to push GR levels (they have adjusted a lot this, but not enought, i must say).
There a lot of things i would love to write about now, but its going too far. Sry for my looooong text. ;´)
Honestly, I don't see a difference between primal ancients and paragon, except for the fact that one is RNG and the other is not.
I think it comes down to that: ancients/primal is the same as paragon/augments. One is a constant "time vs reward" scale, one is RNG-based. I prefer RNG-based. If I know "3 hours of playing tonight will yield me 3 more paragon levels" that doesn't motivate me. If I know that "in 3 hours of playing tonight, I might find the gg-rolled primal weapon I've been looking for" that's exciting. That's what always kept me going in D2, and it's why I was farming bounties to re-roll Tal amulets recently.
So in the end, it's a matter of preference and I guess we can agree to disagree because we have different desires and expectations with regard to our gaming sessions
Sad... just sad. I started playing Grim Dawn at the release, and it just proves all the wrongs Blizzard has done to this title... Yeah, they have also about 5 tiers for gear, but it is done right. some low tiers can out perform higher tiers for instance. they are just rare cases.
Oh, and just wait for the Necromancer xpansion to be released when the level cap will probably be raised again and you'll farm it all again in less than a year.
Honestly, I don't see a difference between primal ancients and paragon, except for the fact that one is RNG and the other is not.
I think it comes down to that: ancients/primal is the same as paragon/augments. One is a constant "time vs reward" scale, one is RNG-based. I prefer RNG-based. If I know "3 hours of playing tonight will yield me 3 more paragon levels" that doesn't motivate me. If I know that "in 3 hours of playing tonight, I might find the gg-rolled primal weapon I've been looking for" that's exciting. That's what always kept me going in D2, and it's why I was farming bounties to re-roll Tal amulets recently.
So in the end, it's a matter of preference and I guess we can agree to disagree because we have different desires and expectations with regard to our gaming sessions
I guess maybe we all have different perspectives here, but how did you say the same thing twice and try to make a choice between the two? I mean that truly. RNG is RNG, whether you're grinding paragons, or just generally farming, you'll still find X items. Right? When farming paragons, you're also getting loot drops, usually at break-neck speeds no less. So I guess it's your perspective that it's not farming paragons, but maybe a decent item drop. Paragons serve the purpose that even if you don't get a good drop, at least your 3 hours weren't a complete wash.
I'm not against the grind, or the RNG. What I am against is the creep for the sake of creep. Remember when they were tweaking one or two sets per class per season? Those were good days. Remember when the cube came out and absolutely changed every build out there? Great times. Remember when Ancient items became a thing, and it went from, 'really well rolled items' to 'all ancient items' to 'all well rolled ancient items'? "The more you play the better your chance". GG or gtfo? I liked the idea of LoN builds, I truly did, until I realized in PTR that it required near perfect RNG (or at the very least, hours to farm bounties and souls for rerolls) You have to get both rings, ancient, with decent rolls, else the whole build is weak. Sure, they played to the diversity of Affixes, though 89% of them use a combination of Cindercoat, Magefist, Aquilla Cuirass, Leoric's Crown, and Nemisis Bracers.
I guess the real question is, what does this, on every level, bring to the game that isn't already there? The answer is power creep and more RNG. Basically means people will just spend more time farming DBs and using mats in the cube for their Primal Wand of Woh, kuz Ancient isn't quite good enough anymore... Sad.
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Lol. Higher Multiple Weapons and Armor so we can fight higher multiple health and damage mobs in higher rifts.
It's almost at the point of self-parody.
I wonder who on the team came up with this brilliant idea. Obviously not the person writing community responses or they would've realized this is SOLELY power creep for power creep's sake and nothing else which is directly what whoever wrote that community response said the team was trying to avoid. I guess "we" in that case meant "everyone, but the chode that gets to decide what's in the game".
there at blizzard must be totally gone crazy.
It's the worst thing I could imagine as "improvements" or "new content".
chances I'll come back to the game are going well below the zero.
--- Kev ---
Does nobody realize that this is actually a good thing?
Paragon will now be even less important considering the diminishing returns on mainstat...
This is a step in the right direction people!
Does the secondary "thorns" go up as well?
My D3 armory
My Youtube Channel
I am in two minds about this... its pretty insane. But it does make the RNG even worse
Exact the first thing I thought.
Same was when they announced Caldesanns...
It's about the grind yeah, but it's Diablo.
I rather search for a primal ancient item than mindlessly farming paragon.
But lets be honest it only diminishes the gap between 24/7 players and players (like me) who are efficiently playing between ~3-8 hours a day.
Players with less playtime or determination will still suffer from this. It's why I can understand the mostly negative feedback.
But in the long run it's a minor improvement to the game, especially if you're mainly playing NS.
Am I the only one who likes this?
In many seasons, I didn't hunt for one particular weapon; I just took the first ancient I got and ran the build for that (or tried to fit it into my build). I will just farm and whatever primal ancient weapon I get, that's what I'm gonna do.
This is basically bringing D3 back to where D2 was. 1% chance for primal is still better than the 0.0001% chance for Tyrael's Might and that kind of stuff. And where in D2 you had "lesser" uniques to pave the way while farming, normal/ancient items are the temporary replacement in D3.
What I like is that as soon as you hit level 70 and play on Torment 1, you might find that gg-rolled perfect primal weapon. There's no stupid gating system that prevents you from doing something, but it brings the Diablo-esque grind back to Diablo: farm for more and better loot.
Also, like some people noted, it will further diminish the impact of paragon and augments. I personally hope that it will strengthen LoN builds (since you can just keep whichever primal items you get and make a 13x primal ancients character, as most slots in many LoN builds don't have specific items required). Furthermore, as Wudijo reported on Reddit, weapon damage "only" increased by about 16% which is a bit less than one GR tier; so it's not like not finding a primal weapon will hold you back by several levels (to put it in perspective, the ancient increase is 30%).
Overall, I like this change. The only thing I don't like about it that farming NS now feels pointless to me for the next few weeks. So back to SC2 probably for a while
Have you not forgot Kanai's cube. ancients have a 10% drop rate by default. Primal, I will guess 5%.
Lets reroll a non ancient and hope to get a primal. First reroll we get an ancient. "Oh this is garbage, i want a PA." 2nd -10th, are all non ancient. 20th reroll, "yes a PA, but it has the worst affix, its worse than the regular anicent." back to rerolling.
I would rather have them re instate mortick bracers or remove that 100% drop rate buff that we all got early into RoS launch.
I for one still look forward to anything they release. I am a fan, critical at at times, but a fan. I continue to enjoy this game and I have enjoyed the franchise so far.
Depends on the build. For MH builds there's no "weapon of choice", you can literally use anything that's primal. In S6 or so, I played HT WD and just used my best ancient weapon (a random one with no affix) for the solo GR conquest. Yes, there are some builds that have designated weapons, but if you play the entire game and don't neglect all the other interesting builds, you can just farm and play the build suited for whichever weapon you find.
I never traded in D2. It was (and still is) a cheat festival (many items on the market come from botting or duping sources) and just leads to P2W (I regularly see some people asking on Reddit "what's the best D2 MF build, I have some FG and want a quick way to Hell"). Also, "low droprates makes way more sense with trading"... like in D3V, when we had "crit Mempos" and EFs and Skorn and Manticore and so on that were extremely rare and expensive and led to P2W? No, I strongly disagree. Low droprates always make sense, and trading simply doesn't work in this day and age anymore (JW's recent interview provides some nice insights into that). Top items need to be non-tradeable, otherwise you end up having P2W. There's no way around it.
I sort of agree, but what's the alternative? You can make certain items generally rare (like, instead of making a primal Yang's Recurve a 1% drop make the bow generally a 1% drop). But in that case many people will simply never be able to play a certain build. That would only work if the effect on legendaries would be tuned down (instead of making a build 100% better, make it 20-30% better). I'd support that, but it would require nerfing ~350 legendaries and ~25 sets, which is not gonna happen. So for now, primal is the best way to give us some long-term goals.
Note that "number hunting" was exactly what you did in D1 and also at some point in D2, so a grind - no matter how boring - has always been at the core of the genre. But if you consider the differences in how people grind (some barely finish the Journey in 3 months, some do it in 1 day) I think having tiered items is better than locking 99% of people out of ever seeing a particular item. For example, as a self-found player in D2 I have never ever seen an SoJ, a Zod rune, a TM, and got my first Enigma *ever* just last August.
I dunno, I'm one of those and I like it. I rather farm for primal items than for paragon.
I'm sorry, but how is this a good thing? The state of the game right now, if it's not ancient, and it's already cubed, it's auto-sharded. All this change does is add another pronoun to the current statement "If it's not Ancient, it's garbage."
How does this not give the people who play more than 4 hours a day a bigger advantage? They already have more Grifts, more paragons, and more/better augments. Almost every other change is for the better, but this one just isn't sitting right. Especially when you consider how poorly Ancient items can already roll, nothing like a Manald Heal with RCR, %Life, Int and Vit rolling ancient with 600% damage missing from the affix. Or shoulders with RCR, %Life, RA and mainstat when you NEED Vit/CDR/AreaDMG. RNG is RNG, but it's similar to the WoW Legion Legendary debate. It's not fun getting a super rare item, that's bad, especially when the other option is such a big power boost that it makes getting ANYTHING LESS just depressing.
They could've added trinkets, new item slots, new item sets, anything else. Power creep for the sake of power creep is inherently bad.
If you earned roughly 5% more experience playing with 3 of your friends, that's more than enough. Or maybe with follower tokens +exp modifiers that made solo play viable that you actually want them with you, outside of being a debuff stick, proc modifier, or damage reduction. They could literally do anything with followers, and it would be a good thing.
Instead we get Primal Ancients? What a joke.
Sry. No, it's not!
Edit:
IMO, this patch, like previous ones, are directed to casual players at most.
There are some usefull changes to everyone, like the bônus cache (thanks a lot for this), or the armory (coming late, but that's ok). But this primal ancient thing is just garbage following recente mobile games trends. You can play any mobile game now and you will see this same direction at itemization. One difference here: there's no PTW in diablo like there was before with HA.
Like others told before, introducing primal items to D3 will only works as a "wow!" moment to most of casual players. And a new boring objective to 24/7 pro-gamers. Any one in midle it will only be mourning that his perfect primal weapon didn't drop yet.... and most importante, no complete set of primals with + 3300 main stats (11 x ~300 main stat improvment from ancients = 3300) will compare to 1500 paragon levels difference between players or more (1500 x 5 main stat = 7500). Best of all, remember that if you play 4h/day, you will have 80% less chance (or worse) to get a good primal than a 24/7 bot farming endless times a day, you will bave less legendary gems to use in it as well, etc...
Diablo devs seem to be going to same way as WoW devs were some time ago. But there, WoW devs decided to come back and revamped itemization and drop farming rotes, reworked power level and all about it. I dont know why diablo team seems to keep going this way only improving numbers when they would improve game play at all. We keep having unbalanced builds, some classes keep being off scene every season/patch, paragon farm is the only effective way to push GR levels (they have adjusted a lot this, but not enought, i must say).
There a lot of things i would love to write about now, but its going too far. Sry for my looooong text. ;´)
Devs be like...
I think it comes down to that: ancients/primal is the same as paragon/augments. One is a constant "time vs reward" scale, one is RNG-based. I prefer RNG-based. If I know "3 hours of playing tonight will yield me 3 more paragon levels" that doesn't motivate me. If I know that "in 3 hours of playing tonight, I might find the gg-rolled primal weapon I've been looking for" that's exciting. That's what always kept me going in D2, and it's why I was farming bounties to re-roll Tal amulets recently.

So in the end, it's a matter of preference and I guess we can agree to disagree because we have different desires and expectations with regard to our gaming sessions
Sad... just sad. I started playing Grim Dawn at the release, and it just proves all the wrongs Blizzard has done to this title... Yeah, they have also about 5 tiers for gear, but it is done right. some low tiers can out perform higher tiers for instance. they are just rare cases.
Oh, and just wait for the Necromancer xpansion to be released when the level cap will probably be raised again and you'll farm it all again in less than a year.
I'm not against the grind, or the RNG. What I am against is the creep for the sake of creep. Remember when they were tweaking one or two sets per class per season? Those were good days. Remember when the cube came out and absolutely changed every build out there? Great times. Remember when Ancient items became a thing, and it went from, 'really well rolled items' to 'all ancient items' to 'all well rolled ancient items'? "The more you play the better your chance". GG or gtfo? I liked the idea of LoN builds, I truly did, until I realized in PTR that it required near perfect RNG (or at the very least, hours to farm bounties and souls for rerolls) You have to get both rings, ancient, with decent rolls, else the whole build is weak. Sure, they played to the diversity of Affixes, though 89% of them use a combination of Cindercoat, Magefist, Aquilla Cuirass, Leoric's Crown, and Nemisis Bracers.
I guess the real question is, what does this, on every level, bring to the game that isn't already there? The answer is power creep and more RNG. Basically means people will just spend more time farming DBs and using mats in the cube for their Primal Wand of Woh, kuz Ancient isn't quite good enough anymore... Sad.