Yes, this precisely. Thank you @RedeemerX
I am afraid that the more I experiment with this new system, the more I prefer the old system. Sorry if that upsets people, but that’s the trend my opinion is taking.
So, my example above was for tweaking a high level new item, for upgrade. As I don’t get a lot of starting drops to try that I spent last night dedicated to doing something slightly different.
I decided to try to make a new wand for my build using some of the techniques that people have suggested here: using the free add T1’s, being less picky about the starting point, making large use of the chaos rolls.
My aiming point was any Dragonhorn Wand with one of the following prefixes( I will list my most wanted as a and less wanted as b) : Crit Strike Multi (a), Cast Speed (a), Spell Crit Str Chance (b), Spell Damage - that’s 2/13 ideal, 4/13 worst case.
I then wanted the following suffixes: Chance to Shock (a), Increased Stun (a), Chance to Chill (b) - that’s 2/7 ideal, 3/7 worst case.
I wanted a minimum of 2 x T5’s preferably the prefixes, and I would settle for 2 x T4’s on the suffixes after crafting.
I amended my loot filter to make sure I grabbed every magic&rare item that had 2 of my ideals as a starting point, and I already grab every exalted that drops anyway.
So I was trying 2 things: crafting on magics (less chance) and crafting on rares. I was not going to ever use a removal rune, only adding affixes or chaos/hope upgrading existing. For adding, I mixed it up and occasionally tried using Hope with the desired one rather than using the free T1 add.
I didn’t keep a spreadsheet (apologies) as I wanted to just spend the entire night grinding away through Empowered mono’s for bases. My corruption was at 203 and I was in Stolen Lance for added wands probability.
Now, I know that a lot of the opinions expressed here are that this new system “feels better” for making new gear, and I respect their opinions. This was my test for making a new wand that I would take as a minimum new one into Empowered mono’s if this was on a newer build I was making identical to mine. So, not a end of questline item, not a starting monos item, but a starting Empowerd’s item, a T18. As it’s the weapon, I always try for T18 on new builds typically in these circumstances. Under the old system I found it quite easy to make those using the Gambler, or drops as starting points, and then crafting away on them.
With the magics I tried, firstly the chaos rolls just felt incredibly bad. I hate RNG at the best of times, and this seemed like the worst case of RNG. Ok, my Prefixes should have been 4/13 worst case, so I was expecting those to feel a little nasty. They did not disappoint, I hit my 4/13 once all night on magics, so ended up nuking all of the magics after running out of FP. The Suffixes were the ones that hurt the most though. My worst case statistically should have been 3/7 worst case. I only managed 2 in all of my attempts. As I have mentioned previously, I know the RNG gods hate me, which is why I hate RNG but 2? Anyway, in every magic item case I ran out of FP after trying about 3-4 crafts on average. So out of about 60 magics I tried, I ended up with 0 usable items. I can tell you quite honestly, I never had that failure rate on the old system starting with magics that already had 2 affixes I wanted on them to get them to T18.
Rares were not much better. Once again, the Chaos rolls were a complete disaster, they burnt up FP and just seemed to give me everything apart from the pre/suff’s I was looking for. Starting with the “free” T1 therefore simply meant more burning of FP with Chaos only to get everything apart from what I wanted, thus bricking my items. Starting with a “hope” aptly named, and injecting a pre/suff I actually wanted burnt out a large amount of FP on every attempt. I use the word “large” as the amount used as a percentage of the starting FP (normally around 25-36 from what I had drop). Using hope for upgrading from T1 seemed to use less, but by then the damage was done. I can honestly say that the rares were way more frustrating than the magics. They should (according to the posters in here) have been better, but they felt really bad in my experiment. The sample was smaller due to drops, but I still got to try with about 35 of them last night. Once again, every single one either “bricked” or I finished with 0 FP well short of the T18 desired goal. Again, I say hand on heart, I never had this level of failure with the old system.
So, although this is not a scientific experiment, I did not keep a spreadsheet (then I would have had way less time to actually experiment) this is what is fuelling my opinion.
To me, using the chaos as an alternative to removal a random/adding specifics just isn’t anywhere near as viable. Plus, instead of reducing my “feels bad”, it made it feel way worse. I will continue to test tonight and update my unpopular opinion