Diablo® III

Dear all

First of all, I love D3. While I may in this rather long post, have a rather negative tone, it's all meant in good faith. My feedback is given with bitter love.

A fair warning though, this is not a 42 thread (aka the answer to everything) D3 has more issues than socketing options. It's been frequently debated by you guys on the forums. Things like lacking story line, unconvincing villains, mainstat/vit/allres/crit duo dominant affixes, hard-to-find sellable items, boring legendaries, lack of customization, etc. The lack of socketing options however, is not something that I've seen debated that often on the forums, so I decided to focus my rather limited time to raise a point regarding that.

Oh, and please forgive the fact that I'm not a native speaker.

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Introduction
The socketing system in D3 is a watered down, streamlined, flat and imbalanced experience. Compared to what we had in D2: LoD, it is sore thorn in the eye of any fan of the prequel. The cautious player may choose to make the reprisal that D2 vanilla didn't have much depth in it's socketing system either, and that it was introduced by the expansion- Wake up, I say. That was over a decade ago.

The point of any sequel, has to be to further develop on working concepts, or - revamp - them. Not to take a step backwards (read: Giant Leap).

Admittedly, Gems in D2 were pretty useless. However, there were still more socketing options than today. A weapon could have an Ohm rune, a 40/15 jewel, a Lo rune or a Zod rune if it was ethereal. Armors could have Ber, Jah, rare 30ed-15% req stat jewel, shael for the next breakpoint, Um or Lo in shields etc.

Where is all that? Or let me rephrase, where is anything close to that?

There's two major problems with the current socketing system (other than the fact that sockets are too important, and that weapons and helms without them, needs an incredible affix roll to be useable or sell at the AH - We'll get to that later)

First, imbalances. Simply put, weighed against one another, the gems hold a vast discrepancy in power when placed into weapons.

Secondly, we have the lack of options. With just four gems available to us, our choice is incredibly limited.

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Weapons
At the moment, there's only one gem worth using for weapons for end-game play - Emerald. Crit chance is readily available on lots of armor, and stacking both crit chance and crit damage, is. without a shadow of a doubt, the best way to enhance your DPS. You cannot stack mainstat with raw + damage, and expect similar results. Coupled with the fact that many skills have bonus effects on crit, you can see why this is a problem. (Hint: Every top player looks the same)

Amethysts have gone out of favor, as people got richer, mobs got nerfed and the need for survivability has gone down. Still, they're not as bad off as their laughable red and yellow cousins.

Rubies and Topaz have one use, and one only - to boost an alt with a high level gem, to speed his farming through normal and nightmare. Compared to their shiny green counterparts, they make a mockery of themselves. High level rubies deal far far too low damage, to even be considered a viable alternative. Yeah Topaz, you might let mobs one-shot themselves in normal if you're a radiant star, but that is all the use you have in a weapon. Not to mention, it's the only gem that is 'reaction to an action', which is just lazy design.

Helmet
Before paragons, rubies were worthless in helmets - now they're not, which is obvious progress. For PVM, all the gems for helmets are somewhat equal - do you want gold, life, experience or magic find? There is no clear answer to that one, however I must point out that every single player will be running around with an Amethyst in their helmet in PVP. Is that good design?

Sollution
No, I'm not going to propose to nerf crit damage. We've all witnessed how that went with ias. Retroactively nerfing peoples items might fix the problem, but it causes lots of grieving as well.

Having just 3 other gems, the task of balancing them against one another is not too far fetched. I puzzled a bit over it, but I realised that when it comes to gems, it's merely a numerical issue. Atleast for rubies and amethysts. Rubies needs a large buff, while amethysts just needs a minor one. Topaz is a lost cause.

I won't list the values of each and every gem level, but feel free to extrapolate:

Ruby - Radiant Star - Adds 100-150 damage to weapons
Amethyst - Radiant Star - Adds 900 Life on Hit
Topaz - I feel that no matter what value the topaz has, it's poorly designed. No one will ever give up 100% crit damage, so that demons get a boo-boo when they slam their fist down your throat. The same reason that no-one who is serious about their monk, uses mantra of retribution. Not unless you buff it to obscene numerical values I can't even begin to fathom.

Lots of people have suggested changing the thorns with IAS. The idea is definitely solid, and this would be my suggestion as well. However, I decided to reserve that for one of the runes below, which is the next thing we're going to discuss.

Honestly? I can't find the ideal candicate for the topaz. Perhaps a solid amount of reduced level requirement, would make it a worthy investment for those people that would like to use their echoing fury at level 45. That, or crit chance (loss of dps compared to emeralds, but more activation of skills synergizing with crit) It's my best ideas at the moment, feel free to chime in.

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Runes
Runes? Well yes, the above suggestion only fixes problem 2, which is lack of balance. But it doesn't fix the lack of options available to us.

Before moving onto that, one thing needs to be said: The more socketing options you add, the more emphasis you place on items having sockets. Already, sockets are highly sought after, and with good reason. In order for this idea to be truly fruitful, Blizzard has to introduce new affixes that are able to compete with the value of sockets. That, or add the option to socket your gear for a considerable gold fee. I cannot stress that enough. Otherwise, the gap between socketed items and non-socketed items will simply widen even further

In order to incorporate runes into D3, we need to analyze all of them, and realize that not all of them are going to make the cut. Mostly because they're mechanics do not fit into the D3 universe, or are rendered obsolete. Also note that I do not suggest adding runewords at this time, just single runes.

The following runes are the ones imported from D2, that could very well fit into the D3 universe. With tweaks, of course.

Shael
Um
Ber
Amn
Pul
Ith

This system, which you can read about below, has runes ranked at equal quality. In D2, a Ber rune was much more rare (and better) than, say, an amn rune, yet this could never work for D3 (no runewords making low tier runes useless etc), and for this reason the rarity of these runes has to be equal. My ideal droprate for runes, is approximately that of finding a legendary (not set, just regular). I justify this by the fact that unlike legendaries, runes always have a good quality. When you see one, you know you've got jackpot. Do I have a sollution for a gold-sink for runes? At the moment, no, but I value good gameplay higher than marked balance.

Note that the numbers are completely fictional, and open to suggestion. I simply did some quick math and asked myself "Which value would be high enough for me to consider this rune an alternative to an emerald in a weapon, an amethyst in a helm and a radiant star into everything else"?

Each individual rune represents a theme, or a specific playstyle to either reduce a weakness, or improve on strengths. Most importantly, some of them could open up new builds. As a rule of thumb, they add offensive bonus when socketed into a weapon, and defensive when placed in armor.

Likewise, some runes, in certain slots are pvp runes, while others are only for pvm. That's somewhat intentional.

Let's start from the top:

Shael - Momentum

Weapons: Increases attackspeed by 15%
Helm: Increases dodge rate by 15% (multiplicative, as always)
Everything else: Reduces cooldowns by 3%

- The entire idea around shael, is to create momentum in one way or another. Also, manipulation our cooldowns outside of passives is something I've personally been craving for ages.

Um - Withering

Weapons: Each attack or spell deals 10% of your highest resistance, as physical damage, over 1 second. Does not stack, cannot crit, but is refreshable.
Helm: Adds 90 resistance to your highest resist
Everything else: Adds 25 to all resistance

- While the armor effect is pretty straight forward, the weapon effect might need a bit more clarification: For example, if you have 850 cold resistance (which is also your highest) Every spell or attack, creates a bleed effect dealing 85% weapon damage over 1 second. To compare it, Barbs "Rend" ability deals 140% weapon damage each second. It's a weaker version unless you have a huge amount of resists, but being a socket that makes sense. However, it is a terrific way to add extra damage on your tank char, without investing into crit gear. The helm socket has great synergy with the weapon one (monks will especially love it).

Ber - Elites

Weapons: 50% chance of attacks or spells inflicting crushing blow, dealing 7% of an enemies current hp.
Helm: CC duration reduced by 30%
Everything else: Reduces damage taken from elites by 4%

- This rune is specifically tailored to deal with elites. A weaker version of the original D2 version, it's still a viable choice for the weapon, especially as a tank that has a lot of IAS to build up ressource to spam skills as much as possible. The helm helps to deal with frozen, jailer and nightmarish, while the armor sockets is just a straight forward reduction to elites damage.

Amn - Sustenance

Weapons: Adds 9% life steal
Helm: Adds 5000 life after each kill
Everything else: Regenerates 300 life per second

- Lifesteal in weapons. We have LOH from amethysts, but certain high DPS players (even with the loss of emeralds) Might find it appealing to get some lifesteal instead. The helm is specifically designed to keep you refreshed against trash mobs, and the armor sockets can potentially be stacked with other items that already has life regen, to create a hero that excels at ignoring dots, and getting in-and-out of combat.

Pul - Defense

Weapons - Increases all your damage by 0.15% of your total armor rating
Shield: Adds 3% block and 500-750 block damage
Helm: Adds 750 armor
Everything else: Adds 250 armor

- The weapon might need some explanation: If you have 10k armor, your entire damage is multiplied by 15%. Yet, in order to achieve a high % of damage increments (such as 20k armor), it's difficult not to sacrifice DPS to do so. Just like with the Um rune, this one gives dedicated tanks "a fighting chance" compared to their much more popular DPS counterparts, and may help to close the gap. Also, the only rune that has a specific shield slot - simply because it made sense.

Ith - Ressource

Weapons - Increases all active and passive ressource generation by 25%
Helm - Whenever you take a hit doing over 10% of your total hp or more, you restore 5% ressource
Everything else - Reduce ressource cost of all skills by 3%

- Feeling ressource starved? Or do you simply feel like it's an acceptable tradeoff to lose mainstats or life% to be able to spam more skills? If so, this rune might be perfect for you. The weapon makes a monks "way of the hundred fists" and barbs "bash" go from 8 to 10 ressource generated, and dh/wiz/dh simply regenerate their respective ressources 25% faster. The helm works like this: If you take a single hit, doing 10% or more of your total hp, 5% of your ressource is restored. Due to the nature of this ability, and the difference between the classes, this one is favored towards the two melee classes, but that's in my opinion, okay, since the weapon socket is weighed against the ranged classes.

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Conclusion
And there you have it. My idea in a nutshell. What I cannot fathom, is that more socketing options were not added from the get-go. Too much time was spent making cinematics and working on the auctionhouse that corners were cut where corners should not have been cut, to meet a deadline. An unfortunate step in the wrong direction, based on unfortunate management calls.(speculative) I truly had great hopes for D3. I still do, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't waste my time writing this.

More to the point, I hope that Blizzard realizes the severity of the situation, and introduces something similar to this system before the expansion is due. And if not, I hope that they have learned a valuable lesson for next time. Does this fix the lacking story-line, boring (yes, even after 1.04, the majority still is) and -far too scarce- legendaries, rares needing perfect affixrolls to sell on AH, wrong mainstats on class specific items, mainstat/vit/allres on all armors, "TERROAAAR and MORE HIDDEN FOOTPRINTS" ??

No. But like Jay likes to say, it's a "step in the right direction". Jay, listen, 1.04 was indeed one such. Paragon is cool and all. But you have a tough year ahead of you, if you want D3 to be a worthy successor of it's prequel. You guys still got tons of important issues to fix (such as mentioned in the paragraph above) but here's a direct, well intentioned, suggestion from a player who used to breathe D1-D2 over a decade.

Happy farming everyone.

/CD

really do hate to see this post go to page 3 already.

Nobody?

If they do any kind of major additional content, its gonna be in an xpac (its the new blizzard..they just want more money now)

Sounds like a great plan to create a much more diverse game with a ton of itemization but lets be real, this is going to require a lot of effort and tbh, RMAH will be the most important thing blizz will focus on , especially after PvP is released. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

42
its !@#$ing 42

very nice idea, I would prefer runewords but with the current system they'd have to remake the whole thing, but individual runes seems like a cool idea, and good for build diversity.
I still believe skill points is above all the most important for build diversity however.

I think it would be awesome to see runes re-introduced. Personally I was super mad when I heard Jay talking about how balancing the runes versus the legendaries became too much and eventually the runes just got cut. I too think that we at least need more standalone gems if they aren't going to put runes into the game again.

sounds good to me. this dovetails in with the "bring back sapphires and skulls" threads I see all the time.

Yup, they definetely got lazy and tired of working and said: Let's get rid of the runes, people don't need diversity, thyey only need higher stat points.

09/17/2012 11:33 AMPosted by TurdGolem

they definetely got lazy and tired of working

^

I'm for the reintroduction of runes, but without a special trait attached to them (ie. creating runewords), they are pretty much just different looking gems, which is more or less pointless.

Runes need to make runewords if reintroduced, bar none.

I wouldn't mind if they were left in the dust, but then gems need to be expanded and jewels need to be introduced. Actually, jewels need to happen regardless of the fate of runes.

I'm for the reintroduction of runes, but without a special trait attached to them (ie. creating runewords), they are pretty much just different looking gems, which is more or less pointless.

Runes need to make runewords if reintroduced, bar none.

I wouldn't mind if they were left in the dust, but then gems need to be expanded and jewels need to be introduced. Actually, jewels need to happen regardless of the fate of runes.

Well, sure. If people want to rename said runes Saphire, Skull, Opal, Agate, Garnet and Obsidian, then that's fine by me. The real reason that I chose them as runes, is that most of the effects are sort of non-basic, i.e they serve a multilayer purpose (for the most part) that differenciates them from their gemstone counterparts.

But do we really need runewords? I like them sure, it's sort of "assemble your own item" and makes it especially fun when you can create items with thats, that said items do not usually have (i.e fortitude armor, phoenix shield) but I don't think that the time is right. For the xpac? Sure.

I like your ideas. Good read.

Couple points tho:
Pul - Shields needs to be like 10% chance to absorb 1k to be good imo.
Ber - Weapon would be ridiculous! A barb with any gear could hit like 10 times in 5 seconds. That would be 10*.5 * 7 = 35% of a champions health, that's cwaazyyzyness. Maybe 35% chance, cap the damage for an elite to maybe 1% the monsters health. I think that would be much more balanced.

I like your ideas. Good read.

Couple points tho:
Pul - Shields needs to be like 10% chance to absorb 1k to be good imo.
Ber - Weapon would be ridiculous! A barb with any gear could hit like 10 times in 5 seconds. That would be 10*.5 * 7 = 35% of a champions health, that's cwaazyyzyness. Maybe 35% chance, cap the damage for an elite to maybe 1% the monsters health. I think that would be much more balanced.

Thanks for the feedback, though this thread isn't really about discussing numbers (that's for blizzard to work out) i'd like to point out something about Ber:

Ideally, the 50% chance is liable to coefficients just like anything else in this game. If i'm not mistaking, both sprint and ww have rather low coefficients, so it wouldn't be a huge problem.

I actually though the old D2 rune system was rather interesting.

It was an item hunt for the runes to create some combination for a legendary.

Too bad this game doesn't have anything interesting like that.

these are all great ideas.... why havent Blizz hinted on enhacement to loot in a loot game is beyond me.

yes they added "cool" legendaries, but i'm not going to see them....

right now, the only other thing to look out for on the ground is tome of secrets and flawless square gems (and most people dont even pick those up anymore)

why cant we find higher-tier gems on our own?

why are there no charms, runes, and additional gems?

why are there only max three sockets when in D2 we could have up to 5 (or was it 6)?

why are there less shrines than in D2?

WHY IS THERE LESS OF EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME? sequels should bring more to the table, not less...

just look at TL2 and how much MORE they are bringing in comparison to TL1

http://vgmmdi.com/torchlight-1-vs-torchlight-2-by-the-numbers

Just a thought on the crushing blow. To be completely honest, 50% chance is EXTREMELY high. I'd use that over a crit rune any day. Imagine using that against ubers. As a whirlwinder, CM build... Ect.

Really like these ideas, +1.

I actually though the old D2 rune system was rather interesting.

It was an item hunt for the runes to create some combination for a legendary.

Too bad this game doesn't have anything interesting like that.

Agreed. It was flawed though, and the only reason it was applicable was due to the massive duping that made high-end runewords available, though.

09/20/2012 09:21 AMPosted by ISmkPotatoes

Just a thought on the crushing blow. To be completely honest, 50% chance is EXTREMELY high. I'd use that over a crit rune any day. Imagine using that against ubers. As a whirlwinder, CM build... Ect.

True, but like I said, CB is applicable to coefficient reduction, just like LOH or crit procs, which is why i chose this number.

Still, numbers are just numbers and not really important..