As I managed to accomplish the bulk of my goals for Season 11, I’m only logging in when I have the energy. I did get a chance to play on Friday night and a bit on Saturday with some generous luck from the RNG deities. So I wanted to talk about the last leg of my journey with my Crackling Energy Sorcerer and some general thoughts about the current state of the game and maybe look a little at the expansion.
Probably, the biggest win for me was acquiring my first Mythic Sigil. I believe I found one off a world boss. Essentially, you will encounter a guaranteed Mythic Prankster who drops five Mythic items and a bag containing a spark and two runes. I ended up receiving two Heir of Perditions, two Melted Heart of Seligs and a Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander (aka an auto spark). I decided two save the two Seligs and try to Sanctify the Heir of Perdition helmets. In the end, I managed to craft a Aspect of Singed Extremities aspect onto one of them, which I am using. Afterwards, I started converting runes for Bac so that I could use my remaining sparks to generate another Shroud of False Death. For that item, I crafted a Aspect of the Protector, which actually isn’t bad because it synergizes reasonably well with the Conceited aspect I have on my weapon. Also, because I often forget to run a potion to invoke Frost Armor, having a semi-passive aspect that adds a barrier is a huge win. Not to mention, if I ever decide to play other classes, virtually all builds can make use of it.
A few other major things happened including crafting an Andariel’s Visage power onto my Galvanic Azurite (which isn’t an ancestral) and a Shako onto my Focus. In addition, I crafted another Ring of the Starless Skies and added a Vehement Brawler’s Aspect, which makes that ring useful across many other builds. So beyond maybe a Grandfather or secondary Ring of the Starless Skies power, my Sorcerer is in an excellent state. The Andariel’s Visage probably does little for my Sorcerer as this build is lightning focused but the poison aoe power just is fun since it effectively adds a powerful dot that is more like a cherry on top of everything else.
I have thought about trying a different build like another Paladin. But at this stage, I’m not sure what might be fun. They did fix the Judgment bug but I don’t know if I’d want to run that build at this time. I think the Auradin build is incredibly strong so everything else might be a letdown. Of course, I could just continue to push the Auradin and attempt to find more gear but outside of Pit/Tower pushing, there’s little other incentive to continue for me. I could refurbish some of my other characters like my Rogue or Druid but most Rogue builds just look awkward to me while only the Raven Companion Druid might be worth giving a second shot.
A few other things at the moment though is that I guess the recent patch re-enabled the meteor damage from one of the boss fight negative effects as I have been seeing more of that. Also, the Executioner affix had been disabled as they’re currently changing that up. Not being chased by that stupid sword has been a blessing but I’m not confident that the rework might be any good. One thought I had about the Executioner affix was to simply reduce the player’s health by either 50% up to 75%. So instead of an instant one shot, you induce a panic that the player needs to respond to either by invoking a defensive cooldown or utilizing a potion. Part of the problem is that the proposed revamped version of the Executioner affix sounds as though the tracking part might get eliminated and that there won’t be a delay once it reaches a player. While the number of these swords are going to be reduced and a cooldown will be added to compensate, the real question is how much damage will result. If it’s instant death, then HC players will complain because it’s not really a fair affix. But I think a percentage based health reduction is far more effective.
But that situation has made me evaluate the way these new affixes are implemented. Executioner was probably the most noticeable one just because you’d see people get one shot if they didn’t move. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never been slain by these things. The other one that is pretty bad is the molten explosion affect. Because the area is so wide and often near overlapping, if you have a build that lacks a get-out-jail card type of cooldown, you’re pretty much dead. And a lot of builds these days have removed defensives because of uniques or other passive skills, which make the situation more glass cannon. I’ve seen a lot of people just perish because they don’t pay attention and get decimated standing in the explosion. For that effect, I think that the damage should allow for some mitigation whether it’s a red gem in your jewelry or making the damage percentage based using the blast radius to cause diminishing percentages. Like if you were right in the middle, you should die. Or if these effects actually overlapped, you should receive a combined amount of damage.
Other than those two, the rest are almost unnoticeable or unmemorable. Part of it just could be me where I do my best to avoid things and push forward all the time (except when Executioner was available and I mostly kited backwards until they disappeared). Like my mentality in most of these situations is to not stick around and find out what these things do. In some cases, you’re somewhat forced to trigger the effect like those annoying exploder guys (which are treated like some monster in a few critical cases like Undercity in determining mob count). But the pacing of the game disallows you to really appreciate or react in any other way beyond either straight avoidance or rushing to kill your enemy.
As far as the supposed improvement in AI as you elevate in difficulty, I found the only really improvement is in the celerity in which the enemy chases you. There’s not really any strategy that I can see such as an elite with some knockback effect that would attempt to push you into an exploding area or even a frozen zone. If you had a scenario like that, then you would be forced to react with a defensive cooldown. But the bulk of the game is still just kill as fast as you can or avoid aoe effects.
Maybe this part will change for the expansion where War Plans make a difference with the addition of modifiers to increase the interactions between mob types. So possibly the current batch of new modifiers will somehow works their way more meaningfully once the expansion is released. Then if the current group of new modifiers are just the testing of their efficacy before being fully released, I’m fine with how they’re operating because we have yet to see how this situation changes once War Plans make their debut.
That said, I have been watching Torchlight Infinite recently on Twitch. I was quite impressed by the various systems they’ve implemented including some of the quality of life parts. One thing I noticed was the auto crafting mechanic where you could set thresholds before a craft can be considered completed. While I generally hate RNG crafting (because it still just feels pointless), this mechanic would solve issues like Tempering, Enchanting and Masterworking in their current formats; heck, if the situation is just about the estimated cost of materials, why not create some sort of estimated cost that just hikes up what one would expect to spend for these things rather than having a flat cost? Because if the intent of this is player retainership, then it’s better if the goal is to have the player farm the mats rather than sit around clicking all day long to obtain the correct itemization.
On top of that, I really liked how Torchlight Infinite allows you to craft different elements into slots. This goes back to my comment in a previous blog on how there should be specialized slots for affixes rather than four flat ones that we see that just have random values. There is no real value to having the enchanter only provide a single reroll outside of wasting time and cost. Instead, I think there should just be a flat cost and a limited number of affixes people can craft onto an affix type of slot. Here’s how I would handle something like this. First, if we go by the current available gear slots (boots, pants, etc.), you could have a structure that resembles something like this:
- Helmet- Main Stat, Defensive x2, Skill/Utility
- Chest – Main Stat, Defensive x2, Skill/Utility
- Gloves – Main Stat, Offensive x2, Skill/Utility
- Pants – Main Stat, Defensive x2, Skill/Utility
- Boots – Main Stat, Movement, Skill/Utility, Defensive
- Amulet – Main Stat, Movement, Defensive, Skill/Utility
- Ring – Main Stat, Defensive, Skill/Utility x2
- Weapon – Main Stat, Offensive x3
- Shield – Main Stat, Offensive, Defensive, Skill/Utility
- 2H Weapon – Main Stat, Offensive x3, Skill/Utility (added one to compensate for one handed weapons getting 4 affixes)
So you can see that each item has a type of category that follows similarly to the aspect group they allow. If we want to retain the idea of only allowing a single reroll craft by the Enchanter, it should be the category. By what goes onto the craftable space itself ought to be statically chosen. My idea here would be the drops you’d find in the wild provide a base with starting affixes. You can have a “purge” currency (or repurpose Scrolls of Restoration) that wipes out the affixes or maybe one that removes the current affix to be replaced by a more desirable one. Ancestrals might receive the Greater Affix on the slot itself or have a currency that upgrades a slot into a Greater Affix. Maybe items can have larger item power too depending on how many affixes can get upgraded.
The “base” items still shouldn’t be discarded as completely worthless but the idea would be to give a semi-decent base that has a better opportunity cost to improve more economically. That way there’s a balance between items and currency in terms of overall value. Also, maybe relegate certain affixes to minor ones. For instance, Life on Kill doesn’t have as much of a value at higher difficulties but it might be a useful minor stat. So beyond the four main affixes, you could tack on a few minor ones. I would dump lesser used ones or even add a few D3 favorites like Gold Pickup Radius (because orbs and gold are annoying!!!)
Another thing I spotted was how Torchlight Infinite’s map system allows a craftable modded scaling thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Diablo 4’s War Plans end up using a similar mechanic. I don’t mind if the crafting has some RNG in this part used in conjunction with materials. But it does point to how players want to have more agency in the way the game sets up difficulty. Because the “one size fits all” approach really doesn’t work well when you have a build heavy game like Diablo 4. For instance, I tend to favor boss killer type of builds just because the best loot is behind them. A build like Blood Surge generally had been a poor performer against bosses. But possibly with craftable mods you can compensate by how certain mods could change the base build like +30% boss damage, which would be easier to implement for a “one size fits all” system rather than correct underlying problems in a skill like Blood Surge.
Finally, I was pretty impressed that they have a trade system. I don’t know the details but it does seem like they have their own auction house. At some point, I think the Diablo 4 developers just need to give into the idea of implementing a proper in game trading mechanism. It would be cool if you could trade items you have customized. That would create a true economy in the game as opposed to handing out flat items. Either way, at least for me, having 10bil in gold with no trading at my state in Season 11 feels bad just because I have nothing to really spend it on.
Overall, I’m really pulling for the devs to get pushing. The game really is lagging behind a lot of other games just to have what seems like common sense basic features. I feel like the insistence on esports, PVP, group play and RNG are going to be the death of this brand. Most people who want to play in this genre I feel are those that don’t care about balance and want to have continuous ways to upgrade, push their powers and find interesting loot. If you give them that, they’ll be happy.
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