Again, about Set items

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1

Hey guys. I read other topic about people looking for a change in the Set system because only a few can feel “powerful” enough to use a complete set, but even considering if they are powerful or not, I read that supposedly they should not be part of the endgame and that place it’s occupied by Exalted and Legendary items.

Even if the Set items can have a way to make them more worthy, like add FP and make them craftable or rework the set bonuses to make them more specials, I have a problem with that.

Using a random example, Ruby Fang Set (2 Set) gives “+1% Melee Poison Chance per 1% uncapped Fire Resistance”. Wouldn’t be better if this mod was in a Unique item instead?
Or Vilatria’s Set with his “+1 Spell Lightning Damage per Intelligence”?

It’s like because of some Set items have that type of bonuses, it’s hard to repeat them on Uniques because you will want to make the Set items “uniques” on his way. And if you add that special bonuses to Uniques, that Set item becomes completely useless. So I feel like they are taking place of new possible Uniques. Even you can expand the Idol system and add some of these bonuses to them, to have more variation of choices. In the current state of the game, It seems not easy to find a complete set, so why even botter trying to get something that doesn’t rival the Endgame items like Legendary and Exalted? That “+1 Spell Lightning Damage per Intelligence” can be for a INT stacker build for example if that Unique exist. Do we have stat stackers here? (Because I didn’t do the maths and I can’t find anything here).

So my feeling is that it’s very difficult to make them work and worthy for chase before endgame, and if you have Set items work like Uniques, you are “stealing” the chance of bring new Uniques. Why not just remove it and make some of them Uniques? I know not much people like I mention this game, but in PoE for example, Set items doesn’t exist and nobody miss them. So the question is: Last Epoch really need Set items?

If the reason behind Set items it’s because it’s a way to have more variations for builds, as I say, just change them for Uniques. With the chance of get LP, will open more Endgame builds.
If the reason is to keep the interaction between 2 or 3 items, add that interaction to another system, like the Idols.
If the reason it’s to have another rarity type besides Normal, Rare, Exalted, Unique and Legendary… If in a future this game expand the crafting system, I think we will have more than enough. (like Exalted item → can be transformed to “X” different rarities, like “Influenced” items in PoE, just an example).

Thoughs?

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Set items are Uniques, that’s true, the devs already said it.
A Set is the combination of two or more cool Uniques. It’s not like a Set in Diablo 3 for example, where the different items are relatively basic when separated.

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And you don’t feel that they’re taking place of Uniques with the potential of become Legendary for more build diversity? Because I don’t see any build using his special bonuses (not an Endgame one at least). I have many of them gathering dust and I think I’ll throw them to a NPC.

Basically, that’s my principal concern: If the Set items exist with “X” Unique bonuses, they’re taking place of true Uniques (with the chance of LP) for Endgame builds. I read that Set items shouldn’t be for Endgame (I’m wrong here maybe?) so that means they can’t be too powerful. Why not change them just to Uniques? I assume it’s because EHG team like the idea of Set items… But I don’t see they’re fitting well in the game.

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Yes.
I was OK with that before the Legendaries were introduced, now I’m waiting to see what EHG will do to rebalance Sets. They said they will do something.

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It they come up with something new that difference them from Uniques (in the part I mention about “taking place”), then I’m ok with that. Hoping for news :slight_smile:

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Set items were bad even before LP was introduced

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7

From a pragmatic point if view I agree with the OP. That said, I love the idea behind set items in that the combination of multiple items in a set introduces interactions that (ostensibly) magnify the power level above that of the individual items.

The problem I’ve always had is that I’ve never found, in any arpg, such interactions that I believed outweighed the opportunity cost of equipping the sets. The interactions may be interesting at times but I have to give up too much across to many item slots to get them.

I would be thrilled to see EHG find a way to make those sets enticing enough to pay the opportunity cost, I just don’t see it right now and, realistically, don’t expect to. That’s unfortunate, as the design space occupied by item sets is something that I find interesting.

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There are a lot of ways to make sets better.

  1. Lower the Level Requirement, so they fall more naturally into “leveling items” and not end game.
  2. Make Set Bonuses better to encourage wearing the whole set.
  3. Allow Set Bonuses to have LP (i.e. you can craft an exalted into a set item, and its modifiers go to the Set Bonus)
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9

This could be one way to fix it but the problem of find the whole set before you get your Endgame items remain. Will be too late.

If EHG really want that we don’t use them for the Endgame, this is not possible at all. BUT I disagree to not being for Endgame, so following this:

I read this on the topic Should set items have legendary potential? and this is the principal way (as my PoV) to make them viable, so they will be like Endgame Uniques. There aren’t much options. But I feel would be better if they “mark” a difference between Uniques and Set items, like:

  • Uniques will work only to boost your character in terms of damage, defense, etc.
  • Set items could exist with only one purpose: Change the entire way a build work. Each Set “create” a new build that can’t be on the skill tree, like some actual Sets try to do, a STAT stacker for example (and as I say before).

So both can have Legendary Potential almost without problem, Set items wouldn’t be for more power, but to vary the amount of builds on the game. What would be the problem? Well, if you manage to get a 4 LP Set item, you could get 8 bonuses. That’s crazy. This part will need a rework.

Another thing, I don’t like 2-Set items if they work like this. I would like they exist only in 3-Set parts, and if you decide to use 2-Parts instead of 3 because you decide to not use the third bonus, it’s your thing. You choose what you keep to make a build viable or not. So using again the example of a INT stacker: 1-Set bonus = Each INT point gives “X” damage, 2-Set gives a boost damage, 3-Set bonus gives “X” interaction for your build, so you choose if the 3-Set would be more beneficial than an Exalted/Legendary (but make this subjectively and not objectively for players would be hard I assume).

And last one, if Set bonus work this way, I think there are some Uniques that will need a rework too to make clear the difference between a Unique and a Set item.

So my though is: If EHG team want the Set items to exist, and to answer the question I ask before of “Last Epoch really need Set items?” they need to show us an important difference between an Unique (like boost your character) and a Set item (like CHANGE the way your character damage the enemies or defend against them).

PS: I try to not make my text too long and boring. Sorry, It’s impossible lol someone get what I’m saying?

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As a matter of fact I just tend to think most sets are useless.

Most exalted/uniques can get more affixes and provide more benefits than sets. They can’t be eternal cached, they can’t be boosted with glyph of despair. End of the day, only a few are good and they are very niche.

The fact that they aren’t considered endgame viable just makes them worthless imo. I usually just sell set items.

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I agree that sets as a whole are pretty bad. There are some good single set items, and maybe 1 or 2 whole sets that are good enough to use. Even those are limited to 2 item sets I think.

I think they should add “runewords”. Have set items drop with 0-2 sockets with 2 sockets being very rare and 1 sockets being like 1LP rarity. The sockets would be filled with “runes” and would create a “runeword” across all of the items of the set. The “runewords” would then add an ability to the Set Bonus section. This would also make sets with more pieces potentially more powerful as longer “runewords” would be much stronger.

I think this would be a good way to bring set items up to par in power level as well as calling back to an old game mechanic favorite.

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They could also expand sets to be a complete set of items that give a specific set bonus available only to that set. Really make them “set” items. Make it everything, they should be even harder to complete than legendaries imo. The fantasy should be that the set is all you need.

If fact, now that I’m thinking about this, I wish set items were just that, a complete set of items from amulet to weapon that when completed unlock a set bonus and as you add to the items they gain in power until the final set provides all you need for a complete item set and then unlocks the set bonus that would be some really powerful thing to compare to the power of legendaries with 4 affixes in terms of scale.

So incredibly hard to complete, but extremely rewarding to finish.

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So you want D3’s sets which make all other items irrelevant. No thanks.

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I mean, they are set items. They’re meant to be complete right? That’s how I view a set. I don’t want them to make all other items irrelevant but they should be a viable alternate for people who want to complete a set fantasy like that. It could be running multiple combo sets or having a set bonus for completing the Bow/Quiver combo then another for completing Boots/Armor/Helmet/Gloves set. Its just boring to have them be mid level items that fall off for the most part.

The current iteration of how set items work are basically like a worse version of exalted/legendary items with less flexibility. Letting us mix and match set items to make new sets that create different set bonuses would be cool too. Having two or three sets combined to make a combo set that gives another bonus up to having all your items be part of sets.

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I agree with @Llama8 , while I understand your idea (and I always like that people express what they have in mind), this will cause other “problems” that will need a solution if were applied like that.

EHG designed the Legendary items to be the top end game items as far as I see. If your build doesn’t fit with any Unique Boots -for example- to combine with an Exalted one, you will use an Exalted Boots with a sealed affix instead and that’s why I will like in a future to expand the crafting system of the Exalted items.

Now, the Set items can’t be on par with Uniques and also can’t be on the top of the Endgame because this create the actual problem: If they’re weak, nobody uses them, if they’re powerful, people will chase them and the Uniques will be worthless. That’s why I suggest above that if they want to keep the Set items needs to be different from the Uniques and the only idea it comes to my mind ATM is to apply bonuses that “create” new builds who are impossible to adquire through the skill tree or individual Uniques.

There may be other good ideas that will work better and that’s why the dev team will keep the Set items, but honestly, If they exist to be used BEFORE the endgame, I’m afraid they will be not worth the chase (because you don’t chase 1 item, you need 2 or 3 of the same Set!) and will be always a “vendor item”.

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Personally I think sets are a bad idea. They’re difficult to balance and will either be BiS (D3) or mostly an irrelevance (LE).

Maybe they should be repurposed to enable builds that would otherwise be impossible? I don’t think they should have more set bonuses but maybe they could have more pieces to give the player more choice in what they use? Either more slots or more set pieces occupying existing set piece slots (ie, just different affixes but the same set bonuses).

shrugs

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I have always liked the idea of complete sets having a unique look for the character wearing them. Like the white werebear. Sets are neat when they come with a sort of MTX.

I also like when sets focus on a certain build and really builds on the synergy of the build. I think that changing skills and having “build around” abilities should be reserved for Uniques.

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18

My Favorite set is the one that turns meteor into a lightning spell. That staff is so good.
Now imagine when you put on the invokers set with the lightning set and it does something else as well as the two set bonuses that interact with each other in a meaningful way.

Uniques could still potentially BE stronger, absolutely, maybe after a season the person who ends HC the highest gets the items turned into a set?

I like the idea of sets, i just hate when they’re done in such a crap way. They feel like they should just be uniques with legendary potential or their own thing entirely for builds, but we’re getting neither.

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That’s my point.

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Ultimate Sets: Voltron, Thundercats :slight_smile:

I definitely think Sets (in any game, not just LE) should move away from stats (even conversions, imho) and move towards unique new skills, or radical skill alterations (more than just lightning conversion, for example).

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