Unique item's level

[seiya]

Simple question, will uniques ever scale with your level?

I would not mind it taking crafting or just dropping at higher levels as you level.

There are a number of uniques that have dropped that I want to build around, but they are just too weak later to make useful.

The biggest one for me by far is Humming Bee. It made me interested in making a ward based build for spellblade. The ward and percent increase in damage seemed interesting. However, no matter what I have done with leveling Mana Strike and other ward skills, I have not been able to break 3k ward.

I know that is a lot of ward, but I am looking at it from the item’s unique affixes. A 1% increase per 250 ward is extremely weak when taken in with the melee damage it does. Mana Strike (and pretty much all other skills for a spellblade), gets most of its damage from the melee weapon you have equipped. At 3k ward, it only gets a 12% increase in damage and movement. That is not very good for how late you are able to hit those numbers.

Even if it was only its melee damage that increased with level, it would be able to be used at higher levels. As it is, the damage and attack speed bonus is not enough to offset how high that ward requirements are.

I know there are other items that work better later, but I have always had a penchant for wanting to see how fast of an attack speed you can get. This item and mana strike come close to letting me amuse myself with that, but, once again, it just does not let me be amused by it later.

[Sarno]

Frozen Ire scales with level.

We don’t plan to transition to a system where all uniques (and set items and legendaries) scale with level, as that would negatively impact itemization due to there being many more clear-cut cases where builds have single, objectively Best In Slot pieces of equipment.

With regard to Humming Bee, that item was incredibly powerful and it did get toned down in response. It’s possible we hit it a little too hard; if I’m honest, we currently have limited time for balancing and we do receive complaints about balancing the game at all in its current stage of development. I can’t offer an ETA, but we’ll probably look at it again at some point.

[seiya]

@Sarno

We don’t plan to transition to a system where all uniques (and set items and legendaries) scale with leve

I have no problems with that since that is how D3 does things. It works in some ways and not in others. A crafting option might play nicer, but even if that is a post-release option, I would be cool. The game, as I have told friends, has a lot of potential.

All that said, I have found some items that work well for a spellblade. Torch of the Pontifex is an example. Just, I know me and my silly/weird builds I like doing.