One of the things that made D2 really good is looking forward to unique drops. Considering how rare it is to get Uniques to drop in this game, the fact they are so weak is laughable.
In most cases rares (which drop way more often) are equally as good to Unique if not better many times. I do a ton of item swaps between my uniques/rares just to see stat differences even at equal levels or when uniques are even 20 levels higher and the rares are on par or in many cases much better than uniques.
One of the funnest aspects of ARPGs is doing item runs, I think this is something that is largely lost in PoE. This game has a ton of potential, but I do hope you guys improve the stat differences and also power of Uniques to make them feel like an amazing drop.
I understand legendary items are where its at currently, but Uniques drop at such a low rate that they should also be extremely pronounced and a much higher tier above rares - and that currently isnât the case.
For instance, on my first run facing lagon I got destroyed with my entire build being made up of uniques and set items (why do uniques offer no resistance?), I did one lagon temple run got a bunch of rares with better stats that dropped instantly (those uniques took me forever to find), I went back and destroyed him, that shouldnât happen, whatâs the point of uniques then?
early endgame uniques (âWoven Fleshâ, âOmnividenceâ)
endgame uniques (Most other MoF Boss drops)
Uniques are often not meant to be slapped on any build and just work, you need to actively build around them to make them work out (especially some of the higher level ones).
I already did say a couple of times, that LE could use some more generic leveling uniques, that would feel very good for players playing normal mode and a shared stash.
But generally i like that you need to build around alot of uniques.
I can understand the frustration, that alot of uniques that players find are not exciting, since they are so specialized, that finding one, that fits your build is very unlikely.
I can understand wanting players to build around a unique item but currently they serve almost no purpose, Iâm just way better served stacking my build with rares. I have one or two uniques right now that are solid and help me, but they can easily be replaced. I just donât really understand the point of them currently, if they drop so rarely but donât significantly improve my character then they seem to be stuck in this middling area.
As I stated in the op, I found plenty of high level uniques and my lower level rares were better.
The feeling of getting excited when a unique drops is gone, and I think youâre underestimating the casual level of just daily loot runs, itâs what gave d2 so much sustainability for years. I understand you want to differentiate, but I think you have to ask yourself currently what purpose Uniques serve, because the difference is so negligible and often times much worse than something that drops on practically every mob.
The thing you are looking for sounds more like exalted items, those are rare items turned to 11.
That is just not true.
I agree there are some very generic uniques ,which donât serve a greater purpose other than being a nice stat stick until you find a rare with better stats.
But there are alot of uniques that you canât repalce with raresâŚat all, because they literally have build enabling effects.
I donât know how many uniques you already found or how experienced you are and i donât want to spoil any potential excitment of yours, when finalyl finding some of those, so i will put spoilers on them:
Just some examples:
Spoiler Alert!
Helmet that enables targeted Elemental Nova without the need of unlocking Fire Nova
Body Armour that allows you to scale mana regen way more than with ordinary mana regen affixes
Gloves that convert all your bleed chance into ignite chance (this also can be used in conunction with Manifest Armour for example)
There are also uniques which donât have âuniqueâ affixes, but have very very high stats, but come with some kind of trade-off: Gloves that disable your leech or a Body Armour which disables your health regen
For the purpose of thise, i would also count set items into this, because they serve a very similar purpose.
There is a set that gives you insane offensive capabilities, but disables the ability to use health potions for healing, but instead makes your health potions turn into some massive offensive buff potion
All of this i just listed in the spoiler are just some examples, i could continue forever.
I strongly disagree. That is true for some of them, but many are build-defining or build-enabling. You have to really think deeply of each affix of the unique and then, you can find how to use it.
Iâll be on the lookout for those, but so far itâs been underwhelming to say the least. I did a dozen or so monolith runs over the last two days got about 10 plus uniques and only one was half decent which Iâve kept.
I can understand some uniques feeling underwhelming, but this also might because of the fact, that you donât have enough knowledge already about the game, to fully judge certain effects.
There are some items which seem meh on the first glance, but once you understand how you can utilize them you have some little revelation^^
FYI there are currently 131 Unique Items and 32 Set Items(spread across 11 sets) in LE.
On average we get like ~10 new uniques which each major patch.
If the total pool of uniques increases, i think some of them will become more exciting because they will become rarer.
To reiterate, Iâm constantly comparing how they effect my character and it wasnât great for my class in particular in any meaningful way, but sure Iâm willing to wait and see and keep trying. Not to appeal to bandwagon, but I also brought this up in the in game general chat and there were many people who said uniques need better scaling⌠so I wasnât alone in feeling this.
And yeah thatâs largely what Iâm saying, they donât drop much and for the amount that they drop itâs not enough for me to get excited over for your last sentence about adding additional uniques.
For some reason alot of people just have very different expectations about what Uniques are supposed to do.
You are definitely not alone with your thoughts on this, but i doubt it will change much.
Maybe i am wrong dunno.
But i want uniques to stay as they are and just expand on the total unique pool, to give every single build multiple unqieus that could potentially appeal to them.
Did you already encountered Exalted Items? Because from what i can tell, those seem to be the thhing you should look out for.
Those are literally straight HUGE upgrades comapared to rares, if you happen to find one with suitable stats
I definitely donât have enough experience in this game, once I reach legendary runs I will have a better feel for where all the items are at, strictly speaking at the current monolith stage Iâm at up to now Iâve felt the scaling/unique pool was poor, so it is a limited experience but worth sharing in feedback.
The game is still in beta, so I donât expect everything to be ironed out or all the items/kinks to be fully figured out either. Simply sharing my experience on how I felt about these loot drops up to this point and how they impacted my character.
Perhaps when I get more familiarized with particular builds and then fit those Uniques into those skill trees as per your suggestion it will feel more intuitive. I guess that would require some re-speccing to work correctly given you often level things before you find certain uniques.
Yes and thatâs definitely the way most uiques will work out.
If you happen to find a unique that an fit in your build, you usually need to re-evaluate your build and see how the unique can fit in.
But thatâs a very rewarding process IMO.
Also if you play in normal mode with a shared stash, finding a unique, that doesnât fit your current build, but gives you inspiration to create a new character revolvign around that uniques is one of the best things for me personally.
Leveling new characters and creating builds centered around a specific idea (like a unique item in this case) is the majority of content for me currently.
I literally created a build with every single MoF Boss uniques to this date (except like 2 or 3, which i havenât dropped yet)
EDIT:
Also i donât want to devalue any of your feedback. Donât feel discourged to give feedback about how you feel.
I personally just donât know why so many people want unqiues to be stat sticks that are jsut an pure upgrade to rares.
It likely is because it requires some reconditioning given its label is âuniqueâ and most people crossover from other arpgs such as Diablo, so they see games as successors rather than innovating the genre.
Iâll use what you said in mind and rewire how I look at them.
Especially games liek Diablo 3, where thsoe kinda items are called âLegendaryâ, thes usually have a HUGE item budget and are superior to rares PLUS having those unique effects.
In LE itâs very differetn, where they have unique effects, but donât have more Item Budget, so they tend to be âworseâ for lot of builds, when you donât utilize the âUnique Effectâ
I think you are one of the first players that actually said that afer i already had countless of disussions about this very subject.
When you gathered more experience with the game and discovered mroe uniques, feel free to share you feedback again.
Would it perhaps work better if you allowed the player to be able to choose the attribute that fit within their build or would that be considered too convenient/OP? (All the stats remain the same but they can actually pinpoint one of the main attributes to their current build rather than working backwards?) - just thinking outloud here.
it seems a bit confusing to have a new player to the game find a Unique and then try to understand that uniques donât work the way they think they do, you potentially may need to make a new build-rebuild/transition it to a new character to make this Unique work?
It seems discouraging (theoretically) at a high level to find a really amazing Unique only to realize that it serves no purpose for your current build unless you re-work everything to make that unique work (especially if youâre happy with your current build) - or is the idea to promote players to want to try new builds using these uniques (as well) - eg. your shared stash/having fun experimenting reference?
This is exactly how the crafting system for regualr items already work.
You can add any stat you want to an existing normal, magic or rare item.
Even Exalted item. The only thing that is not 100% determinsitic woudl be if you find a decent item that has one undesired stat and you want to remove it, because that will be random.
But thatâs an entire different discussion (Rune of Removal)
I think thatâs the highly subjective part.
I prefer having very unique effects that needs adaptation of your build, instead of having items that are just BIG stat sticks and are in every way superior.
We already have the regular âgear progressionâ with normal â magic â rare â exalted items
Just want to add my 2-cents: played D3 and PoE, and I always looked at Uniques and Sets for their effect rather than their stats (unless they are stat-built items) because they really change how I view the character play style. I had a crusader in D3 with an item that had a hammer-proc effect which filled the entire map with hammers, but other than that the stats were nothing to talk about.
98% of uniques suck, and itâs a pity. Give us uniques that arenât (mostly) just stat sticks, have them modify skills in ways points DO NOT (ie. arrows return, ,etc)
So, if you are using such specific numbers can you please name me the 3 uniques that you think donât suck?
Thatâs funny, because thatâs exactly what LE does⌠yes there are uniques that are more or less only stat sticks, but most of them give stats, that are not availble to that specific slot for example.
Most other uniques that are very bland are very old and with the most recent overhaul of many uniques, alot of the previous bland ones are alot better.
I used to debate @Heavy and others about how uniques donât seem âUniqueâ. Slowly over time I am starting to come around on them. They still arenât overly powerful, and most of them are extremely niche, but they donât all suck. I think the biggest disconnect is the uniques seem generic because people donât see the unique benefit of any given unique item.
I was tinkering around with a Void Knight build the other day and I wanted to make a build that stacked Time Rot and Chill. It became very apparent to me how difficult that would be considering those effects are pretty much locked to weapons and I was using a Unique staff that had no chill on it. I looked around and discovered that there is a unique helmet and a couple unique rings with good amounts of chill on hit on them. Those items, in my mind, were trash uniques until I found an actual unique use for them.
I think the biggest issue with uniques in their current state is that their unique uses arenât apparent, on the surface, to most people.
In a perfect world, people would look at a unique and break down what is unique about it before they criticize it. I fell short in that as well. It isnât a normal thing in games to have to dig into a unique items function beyond a surface level obvious use.
Maybe the devs could make it a little easier to notice though. Maybe they could change the color of the stat/s on a unique item that isnât normal for an item of that type. I donât know how easily that could be done given some unique items are more than just one unique stat. For example; Transient Rest boots have 3 different resists on them. Resists are a normal stat for boots, but you can usually only spec 2. (Although those boots do still seem generically weak given how easy resists are to spec).
My top 3 would be Exsanguinous, Last Step of the Living, and Omnividence. There are definitely others that donât suck though.
