I’ll be giving feedback on the new affix, base types, crafting, and the COF item hunt. This will be from the perspective of some who has played a Forge Guard up through endgame.
Affixes
Overall I feel the new affixes and armor base types were great additions to the game. While I will miss minion melee damage, hybrid penetration seems to have filled the hole well enough. It works out great on forge guard as you get to scale both the summoner and the summons this way. Minion base damage also seems good for other minion specs. Forge guard have tons of minion flat so not as useful there, but this was never for them. Forged minions already have Shred armor % and minion damage over time to compete with anyway for suffixes.
Critical mitigation was also a very nice affix to have in abundance, and I love that you paired it with flat armor. I was able to do my entire early mono grind without using a woven flesh and it felt like a breathe of fresh air.
Parry on the other hand is odd. I know the mechanic is brand new and was stated to be lacking support, but even as a bare bones mechanic I worry it is headed in the wrong direction. The main reason is that it takes up a prefix slot and not only that it takes up a prefix slot only on weapons.
Prefix slots already have Base Crit Chance, Melee Attack Speed, or Base Damage as their must have slots for weapon. Every weapon you make should have atleast one of these, then depending on your build you go for % damage of your type, crit multi, % dot damage etc. There is simply no room for Parry here. Parry would have a much easier time competing with other utility / defensive effects as a suffix.
Also why Parry? Is this going to be Sentinels answer to dodge/glancing blow? Was the design space for block to congested, or is parry going to be synonymous with some type of weird % based offensive proc system? IE… 25% chance to parry, if you have parried recently your next attack deals 200% increased damage etc. All in all I know it will be fleshed out, it just seems weird when we already have armor + block chance.
Armor Base Types
I love all the new armor not only the implicits they offer, but also the new models. The team really knocked it out of the park here. Critical damage reduction is even better than the old critical avoidance bases and much easier to cap with. Damage over time mitigation from armor paired with the huge armor gains from the new bases also feels like a really solid defensive layer now. For the first time ever I wasn’t instantly phased when I walked through a T4 Julra beam. The new base types have made me feel like I have defenses, and that they matter through all stages of the game.
Crafting
Crafting is still as good as ever. I would add one small thing though. I would like some way to convert my unused runes and glyphs into other runes and glyphs. Chaos Glyphs and Runes of Discovery quickly lose their value late game. In fact rune of discovery is so random I never use it. I would much rather convert my unused materials into runes of removal, shattering, glyphs of hope etc.
I would also ask that rune of creation be allowed to duplicate a legendary item. With the current forging system I know this probably won’t work, but some way to duplicate legendaries would be awesome.
COF Item Hunt
I really like the Circle of Fortune. The atmosphere and city back drop were an excellent touch. Probably one of the most beautiful scenes in the game. Mechanically I find the prophesy system serviceable. The rewards are certainly powerful and the system itself is intuitive. That being said I really haven’t been hit by the wow factor. As systems are built up, prophesies should provide good bones to work off of, but right now it is just OK.
What I don’t like about the current system are the prophesies that have specific kill quests that are randomized. The biggest offender is kill an arena champion of a specific name. You can run arena all day and not fight the champion you need to kill. I would know I’ve done it. The same can be said for kill giant scorpions, siege golems etc. These type of missions are spread out in to many locations with far to much RNG between me and the thing I want.
An example of a good prophesy would be kill an amber element. I always know where amber elementals spawn so I can get what I want when I want. The same goes for Boss kills, Mage kills, etc. I much prefer generic quests like 'kill X rares" or “kill named thing that always spawns here” then random encounters that may waste my time.
For this reason I would ask named prophesies without static spawns be removed. It would also be nice it we could get an extra lens slot just for removing content we don’t want to do that day, but it wouldn’t be a hill I die on.
Conclusion
Affixes and armor base types have really impressed me so far. I’ve found them super useful outside of parry, and look forward to utilizing them on more characters in the future. Crafting is great but I would like to convert unused materials into other materials I use far more often. Lastly the COF item hunt is decent, but could use some tweaking prophesy wise.