Powerful uniques should have a tradeoff so that there is a choice to make - worst offender IMO is Herald of the Scurry

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Welcome to the forums.

What concerns me about your idea is that barring a handful of very good uniques that everyone uses, generally uniques are pretty much “Meh”. Of the 260 odd uniques & set items, perhaps 60 are used regularly… the rest are either very niche or ignored due to the fact that they are better on paper than they are in practise.

imho, there are a lot more weak uniques that need dealing with. and thats not even speaking about sets.

There are already items that have negative stats - like boots that reduce your physical resistance by 75% in favour of massive crit multiplier boost - but I dont really like the negativity inherent in designing a build around uniques like this. There are also very specific uniques like the Squirrel ones that are so specific to one build that they cannot be used anywhere else and are pretty hard to find. Adding negative stats to something that is specifically build enabling seems harsh.

Sure there are OP items that will likely need a balance (and dare I say nerf) because they are too good and then there is the counter argument that they should boost poor uniques instead. But then the whole concept of power creep comes into play.

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When I compare early LE (the version of EA release) with today’s version, I see that there’s a lot less tradeoff in skills and items than before. This is my impression. And I like it that way.

Tradeoffs seem to provide more meaningful choices, because you can’t just blindly pick something but have to think about and weigh the consequences. For me this always feels bad. When I find a nice item, it should be a power increase for my toon. I don’t want to choose the lesser evil. I want to progress forward and become more and more powerful without any downsides.

This may seem “boring” for others, but for me it is how I want a game to treat me.

So no to downsides on unique items (and skill nodes!).

:v:

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I think that in principle it is ok that there are chase uniques that are unambiguosly BIS for a particular build (without being mandatory). This gives them a strong identity.
Note that this is distinct from a build-enabling unique. Reign of winter is a cool bow, that enables a cool build, but without it you cannot make the build in the first place.
On the other hand, for BIS uniques, you can still make the build without them, but you also have a clear upgrade path.
Of course, there are degrees to things, Bastion is definitely too good with respect to its alternatives, but good BIS items that dominate in certain archetypes of builds are fine.

Now, onto herald.
I will preface by saying that I have not personally dropped a herald, so this is interpolation from what people are saying.
From my understanding, if you have a wolf build, you always want a herald.
However, by functionality alone, herald is a build-enabling unique.
It’s not like the cinder song wand, which gives a bunch of buffs to fireball, but does not significantly alter the behaviour of the skill itself.
Herald is the only way of making a squirrel build and makes the build very visualy distinct.
If you consider squirrels and wolves to be two distinct builds (Which I think is reasonable), then the problem is not that herald is too strong, but that the build that herald enables is too similar to wolves, while also being much stronger.

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Welcome, welcome!

There’s some food for thought for you - why is Herald the chase helmet for wolf builds? For that matter, what makes a “wolf build”? You’re right, the Herald of the Scurry helm is very powerful for builds that rely on building up bleed, shredding physical resistance, and hitting quickly - but Wolves as a skill have more than those as aspects to them.

For example, wolves have a major conversion on their tree - to Cold Damage - which makes other helms like Call of the Tundra or Artor’s Legacy attractive. And all of these unique helms have the dual-axis chase of “good rolls” and “high LP” - with chances of getting both decreasing rapidly as the initial power of the helm itself is increased. (More powerful Unique effects will reduce the likelyhood of getting LP, and tend to have wider roll ranges by design).

Now, I can see the point that having it be more difficult to obtain a high-powered version of what you’re wearing doesn’t actually increase the chase for other items; but imagine the scenario where you’re wearing a 0 LP Herald, and you craft your 2LP Artor’s with Increased Life, and Level of Summon Wolf - in the real game, you’re much more likely to get a 2 LP Artor’s Legacy than even a well-rolled Herald of the Scurry, so this isn’t that far of a stretch for a hypothetical - you’re given the chase of the unique you have, with better rolls, versus a different unique with better customization.

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An easy solution would be to make the other summons as good as wolves. Very few people want to mix summons. I think every summon should have a (or many) unique items that lets them summon them up to the summon limit. Like Summon Scorpion could be “can summon scorpions up to summon limit. Summon limit is -1”. Could even have one similar to Scurry. “Summon Scorpion becomes Summon Bee, etc.”

People that go bear or raptor (does anyone?) usually go with the one powerful companion nodes. I think there should be more itemization for that too.

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Yes, but that’s also what LP is for. Those weaker uniques are more likely to have higher LP.

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Dont really agree in all cases, for me the weakest uniques dont bring anything “unique” to the party and just mashing them with more affixes doesnt really do much more than just make them exalted items in disguise. Sure the resultant item is arguably more powerful - sometimes off a low base, but it didnt change the fact that its a poor unique that doesnt inspire something.

Or maybe I am being too demanding.

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I personally feel a good mix is appropriate, downsides are fine as long as the upsides are worth it

I think Herald was in a fairly unique scenario, I think EHG was fairly accommodating with Ziz’s design due to being a popular content creator and being one of the first major uniques designed

This is probably my favorite PoE unique which has build enabling criteria and decent drawbacks: The Iron Fortress - Path of Exile Wiki

You stack Strength which gives 50 str per 1% attack block, makes your Spell Block unlucky (you need to roll it twice to block), gives a lot of STR and reduces movement speed. Increases your strength bonus to melee then you convert STRs bonus to spell damage and use a Warcry/unique helmet to convert Spell damage back to ‘generic’ attack damage

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They are ?

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I haven’t seen any mention of the fact that “weak” uniques are fine. There is a place for leveling uniques, and I like the fact that there are good leveling uniques in the game.

There are however uniques that appear to be completely useless, but that’s probably just my perception due to my lack of imagination.

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I dont think its you. There are uniques that look fantastic but end up being generally poor when actually used. Sometimes the uniques are just crap. Other times, its specifically because someone was able to work out an imaginative use of NORMAL gear that blows the unique away when you look at a build in its entirety - e.g. a 2h unique that is tailor made for a specific skill fails miserably against a normal 1h/shield setup that creates a more well rounded capable build.

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They are! Why do you think some uniques drop with LP far more frequently than others?

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There are a few uniques that even with 4LP end up still being worse than normal non-lp gear, see Keeper’s Gloves.

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Correct - but that’s not always going to be the case; in the case of the Keeper’s Gloves, a whole host of new bee-themed items are coming (see Andrew Tilley’s teasers posts) that will help keep them interacting with their unique mechanic more regularly.

As for loot in general - there has to be some bad loot in order to feel good about picking out the good stuff. PoE took this too far in the other extreme direction, where you get millions of pieces of loot for a few good pieces - LE is focusing on a more balanced approach, but still needs some of that bad loot.

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I used to think blizzard’s drop rates were awful, but in this - OMG. Worse, unlikely my character will ever have truly good gear and stop feeling like a barely fit for purpose peasant :slight_smile:

Re uniques - I already find them punishing enough - even the ones with no overt -ve attributes. Just the loss of the essential; headlines stats (armor + whatever) on chosen rares can be a near devastating loss to your defences once that happen over more than a one to two slots.

While combining later can mitigate that a bit, I was kind of disappointed that the headline stats do not combine. I actually think they should even for LP0. Armor 80+ → Armor 5 or so over a few slots is painful enough already.

As it is, I see many unique that could be slotted into many builds for a small utility even if their full potential cannot be realized due to not being the ideal build to exploit them, but as it is, the loss of headline stats and combine with those having -ve effect affixes just makes them ignorable unless near mandatory instead of interesting to experiment with via an LP0 combination if such were possible.

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I assume you mean implicits?

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Maybe :slight_smile:

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To each his own opinion,

To me a successful unique is something that is impossible to obtain otherwise, new mechanics, or are build enabling. There’s a very important aspect of equipping an unique: you lose all the possible affixes, and the possible item base with its implicits in that slot. That on itself is a detriment for any unique.

Let me talk about one item that has been brought to the conversation: Suloron’s Step.

Suloron’s Step, looks promising, that’s a huge crit multiplier, can have decent movement speed due to that big movement affix that could match even be a tiny bit better than boots+ movement suffix, but the -75% physical just kills the item, because:

This is a tank game, and we cannot afford not only losing the inhered flexibility you lose using a unique, losing the possibility of a good base with a good implicit (fire/cold res), plus losing three affixes that usually are hybrid health, vitality and some resistance or percent dodge. You have to already to cover for that, then add two T5 phys res affixes in other places to cover for the phys res loss.

Also, any crit build has his ways to get crit multi from other sources, not only items, and any final crit build usually have about 400% crit multi already, and ways to be sure you crit always, at least when it matters.

So, you win: Up to 105% crit multi (worth 4x T5 crit multi in relic), some minor movement speed with a good roll (3-5%?).

You lose: Boots Implicit (could be a T5 res), Up to 8 vitality, up to 65 health and 5% health, one T5 suffix for anything, two T5 phys res suffixes in other places.

So, is a bad designed item, because is not aware of the tank meta, how you already have tons of crit multi, and you lose more value that you win (arguably you trade off 4x T5 offense with 5x T5 flexible value/defense + boots Implicit)

If you remove the -75% phys res, would be, all things considered, just trading defensive value and flexibility for offense value, and would be a great item to have around if you are going crit and you can afford the loss of flexibility.

Then we can consider exalted affixes and LP, but for me those shouldn’t fix an item usability. I consider those more of an endgame min-max and win-more mechanics. The item becomes useable from a pure value perspective if you have a good 2LP one.

By this metric of potential value loss and lack of flexibility, half of the designed uniques are just not worth the slot unless you get LP (and sometimes only 3-4LP make the item worth the effort to slot it in).

Uniques should be something worth considering when building your character without LP, when all their properties are useful for your build, is just not the case.

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All opinions are fine, but sometimes some perspective can help:

Suloron’s Step is exactly the “win more” option for a melee boots slot - Only Lessons of the Metropolis and Foot of the Mountain have a lower effective level for LP, so getting a 2-3 LP version is the chase.

Without Suloron’s Step, you cannot get Critical Multiplier on a boots slot, so your Exalted Boots with good Implicits, Move Speed, Hybrid Health, and Resist are the base that you’re upgrading. Finding a 2-3 LP Suloron’s means adding a significant Critical Multiplier stat to those boots. It’s not a unique item in the way that it’s required for a build, or enables a change in playstyle - it’s there to be an upgrade path for someone with good boots already.

That’s where I disagree, and that’s okay! Items don’t always have to need a “+1 this affix” type of upgrade path in order to continue making improvements. Having some uniques “require” LP in order to be an upgrade is still an upgrade - you don’t need Suloron’s Step in order to play your melee crit build - you need other defensive layers already in place, and then are on the hunt for a high-multi mid-high LP Suloron’s in order to upgrade that slot.

If you try to think of Suloron’s Step (and other Uniques that are basically generic - possibly with slot-dependent affix swaps like Suloron’s) as a crafting material, used to upgrade a generic exalted item for that slot, you’ll be a lot happier with them. It’s also worth noting that this reduces the cost-basis for upgrading via legendary potential to only “I lost the implicits, and have to deal with any negative modifier’s I’m adding” - a much simpler problem in terms of gearing.

I always recommend that players use as few uniques as possible - they’re not supposed to be the best-in-slot items in this game, unlike D3 - until they hit this stage of their gearing/crafting journey. And it’s one of those things you tend to learn organically.

An argumentative aside here: I don’t think you need to worry about the -75% physical resist affix as much as you think you do. Other defensive layers (armor/endurance/glancing blow) can make up for that pretty solidly, and if you happen to cover that resist, even better.

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29

I’m not arguing Suloron’s Step are not unique enough, I agree getting that huge crit multi on boots is unique by itself. Also the fact that is melee only crit multi.

I strongly disagree, getting 2LP is hard by itself, getting 2LP in Suloron’s is quite hard as it has 70 level for LP and are rare boots, can happen you once or none in two hundred hours of farming monos. And they can roll with low values.

You seem to see LP uniques as a bandage aid to the many horrible uniques we have in this game. Shouldn’t be the case, the uniques should be valuable without LP, again I see LP and Exalted affixes as a min-max and win-more, if the unique fails to give enough value without LP, is a bad unique. LP should only enhance already decent uniques, not enabling their use.

Gearing in this game is like a tetris game, you fit your pieces to meet certain goals (crit avoidance capped, distributed resistances, certain prefixes, health/vit as much as you can, while covering the rest…), that’s why i don’t see this uniques in isolation, but as a value aggregate to the rest of your gear/idols/passives. This is not longer the case if the effect is truly special, but for Suloron’s it fully applies.

I agree partially that resistances are not that important, you can live with less than the 75% cap, but as you min-max, again, you want your resists as close to 75% as possible. Physical resistance is the most important resistance in the game, due to the abundance of sources of physical damage.

As you play more and more, and you push corruption, you discover how this game scales and is a tank game. My min-maxing always involves in the end getting more defensive value, not more offense. I don’t understand how you came to that conclusion, maybe you play ranged most of the time (BTW Suloron’s are for melee).