Legendary plans, Caches, and Rift bosses set to change in next ROS Patch

[SnickerSnack]

That was only true in D2C in my opinion. Nothing beat the high-end Runewords. The important thing was that Rares were still viable in the endgame, Uniques weren't required. The difficulty system completely changed in D3 however, so comparing item viability with D2 is near impossible. The new difficulty settings are more gradual and personally I think it's fine to keep the highest difficulty in a system like this for people with absolutely über gear. If D2 would have had something similar to Torment 6, Rares would have been pretty useless there as well.

I think Brother Laz's Median mod proved that people are absolutely fine with using only Unique items in the endgame, provided that they are diverse and interesting. I think D3 is moving in a similar direction. We'll need more interesting endgame challenges and a constant supply of new Legendaries after the release of the expansion.

That's not to say that Rares aren't still useful in D3. Quite a few Legendaries landed in my stash when I played on the PTR, just because they didn't have the stats that supported my Cold Wizard build. True, I didn't have access to Enchanting, but rerolling stats would have benefited my Rares as well.

Well, there are no runewords for rings/ammys/boots/gloves, and the runeword helms do not always beat rare (or even blue) helms. For a light sorceress, a good caster blue circlet is king for pvp. So, I have to somewhat disagree. For weapons, of course, a good roll on a Grief BA is great and no rare will beat it (afaik), but I did say 'some slots.' And even then, a great roll on a rare could still rival good runewords in some cases. There's a rare polearm posted in the D2 SPF that rivals Breath of the Dying. As I recall, it's a rare eth Great Poleaxe with Cruel and other good mods. It then has a Zod and two Ruby Jewels of Alacrity. (I'll try to find it if you'd like to see it.) As I said, I think that rares should have the potential to be the best.

Also, I think saying that rares would be useless in D2 if D2 had some difficulty comparable to Torment 6 is a meaningless argument. If D2 had Torment 6, it'd also have even better rares. Maybe I don't get your point there.

Overall, you're right, I guess, but I think rares (i.e. items with no unique stats) still need to play a significant role in end game items. I think that it adds to overall item diversity. I think one problem was that D3C tried to use legendaries to fill that role, which was a dumb idea, if that's what they were going for.

It is, but it probably is a lost cause.
I kinda think it would be nice if crafted legendaries could carry the torch though.
The role of rares will be stuff to use while looking for something better (which is not entirely useless either).

If your only choice is to use legendaries with various special effects, it feels like an important choice is missing.
You only have the choice of which crazy legendary effect to use, never if you actually want to use a crazy effect at all.
Adding more meaningful choices pretty much always improves a game, so it seems like such a no-brainer.

I don't think it should be a lost cause. It worked just fine in D2, which is kind of my problem with leaning away from it. Adding more options is fine, up to a point, but I don't see why they've removed this perfectly fine item mechanic.

OTOH, if they now see rares as a go-between for the mid-game, well......okay. I don't see why, but okay. I played D2 a lot. I have characters that would fly through /p8 games with nary a scratch using a decent mix of rares, uniques, runewords, and the occasional blue. I liked it that way.

Why do you wanted crafted legendaries to fill that role? We already have crafted items (which used to be orange); why shouldn't those fill that gap? I suppose it doesn't matter too much, but I guess I like to see some color diversity on my paper doll? Maybe I'm still thinking that legendaries are supposed to be like uniques, which somewhat fixed roles whereas rares are more fluid (and more random) to fill in the gaps.

 

[HardRock]

Well, there are no runewords for rings/ammys/boots/gloves, and the runeword helms do not always beat rare (or even blue) helms. For a light sorceress, a good caster blue circlet is king for pvp. So, I have to somewhat disagree. For weapons, of course, a good roll on a Grief BA is great and no rare will beat it (afaik), but I did say 'some slots.' And even then, a great roll on a rare could still rival good runewords in some cases. There's a rare polearm posted in the D2 SPF that rivals Breath of the Dying. As I recall, it's a rare eth Great Poleaxe with Cruel and other good mods. It then has a Zod and two Ruby Jewels of Alacrity. (I'll try to find it if you'd like to see it.) As I said, I think that rares should have the potential to be the best.

Fair enough. I guess I either didn't play enough to find über Rares or gave up too early on them. I'd very much like to see that Poleaxe though, so SPF, here I come.

Also, I think saying that rares would be useless in D2 if D2 had some difficulty comparable to Torment 6 is a meaningless argument. If D2 had Torment 6, it'd also have even better rares. Maybe I don't get your point there.

Nono, you're right. I'm not sure why I said that myself.

 

[Artemis]

There are only 5 Legendaries unique to each Act. Act 5 is an exception, everything can drop there. Strangely enough I can't find a list of these Legendaries, but people with RoS can check them out if they open their Quest Journal in Adventure Mode. I'm sure a few screenshots would be appreciated. I know for a fact that the Gloves of Worship (the one that extends the duration of Shrines) drops in Act 2.

Ok, not quite what I thought it was then. I was hoping for some sort of drop table, like d2.

 

[ShadoutMapes]

Why do you wanted crafted legendaries to fill that role? We already have crafted items (which used to be orange); why shouldn't those fill that gap? I suppose it doesn't matter too much, but I guess I like to see some color diversity on my paper doll? Maybe I'm still thinking that legendaries are supposed to be like uniques, which somewhat fixed roles whereas rares are more fluid (and more random) to fill in the gaps.

Well, I dont necessarily want crafted legendaries to fill that role.
I just want some items to fill that role, since it is just empty space right now.

Since crafted legendaries seems a bit meaningless right now, they are an obvious candidate (and so are rares of course).
I agree that rares are the classic choice, since they should indeed be the broad items while legendaries are the specialized ones.

 

[HardRock]

Ok, not quite what I thought it was then. I was hoping for some sort of drop table, like d2.

We have specific targets for crafted Legendaries at least, although I think their long-term usefulness is in question. I believe they have the same stat ranges as dropped Legendaries, but without the unique affixes. Check out my thread to see where the required materials come from: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?850970-The-RoS-beta-Legendary-crafting-material-challenge

 

[SnickerSnack]

Fair enough. I guess I either didn't play enough to find über Rares or gave up too early on them. I'd very much like to see that Poleaxe though, so SPF, here I come.

You should post in the D2 SPF because I'm sure that someone there has a better memory than me. I'll post there too, asking for someone to dispense their wisdom. I already looked for it via google, but I didn't find it. [Google increasingly disappoints me. The top link when I search is my own post here. Yeah, that post I just made......I guess that posting on the internet is supposed to be masturbation.....]

Nono, you're right. I'm not sure why I said that myself.

So it goes.

Well, I dont necessarily want crafted legendaries to fill that role.
I just want some items to fill that role, since it is just empty space right now.

There's a good starting premise if ever there was one.

Since crafted legendaries seems a bit meaningless right now, they are an obvious candidate (and so are rares of course).
I agree that rares are the classic choice, since they should indeed be the broad items while legendaries are the specialized ones.

Um, I guess so. Here's the distiction that I see:

Crafted legs are good b/c: Once you find that leg pants, you can craft new ones until you get a good one, and you can always craft more to improve.
Crafted legs are bad b/c: You have to find a leg for the slot you need before you can get anything.

Dropping rare plans has the same problems, of course, but dropping rares has the opposite problem.

Maybe blizz should jut do all four: Drop rares, legs, rare plans, leg plans. And also have weak vs. strong rares and plans. At that point it's just a matter of setting the right rates.

 

[Flux]

Gambling is lame now because you only get rares from gambling (currently, they say tiny % should be legs but not now because bug) and you find tons of rares playing. And top end gear is all legendary, so once you\'ve been lvl 70 for a while, no rare is more than a tiny % upgrade, and you really just want legendaries.

 

[Steven Hazani]

From looking at it it seems they copied TL2. Items have x stats, then rare is x1.25 and unique/legendary is x1.5. Well TL2 golds have static stats but you get the idea. It does ensure higher quality items are in fact higher quality, but there's still only a few things anyone wants which severely limits the amount of items people could actually care about.

 

[Waterfiend]

\"No rare is more than a tiny % upgrade, and you really just want legendaries.\"

This is what I mentioned in my beta feedback on the forums. However, Narull pointed out that gambling does produce better-than-average legendaries, and to keep farming Normal for blood shards until I\'m Torment-ready. He said you don\'t even need legendaries if your rares are decent enough. So, good to know.

 

[SnickerSnack]

Fair enough. I guess I either didn't play enough to find über Rares or gave up too early on them. I'd very much like to see that Poleaxe though, so SPF, here I come.

It turns out that I was wrong about that. See this thread: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?851550-Amazing-Eth-Poleaxe

 

[HardRock]

Overall, you were still right though. After your post I looked at quite a few epic Rares (sometimes even Magics) that people found and realized that these items could be much better than I remembered them. It's also very much possible that like I said I gave up on them too easily. That's not to say that I didn't use Rares in D2, but as far as I can remember after building up good supply of low and mid runes I didn't pick them up at all, except for Rings and Amulets. The fact that my inventory was always full of Charms didn't help either. I couldn't be bothered to pick up every Rare and ID them one by one. This is actually the reason I don't like Charms at all, but that's another discussion.

Based on my limited PTR experience though I have to say that I think Rares will have a place in our gear for quite a while in D3 as well, definitely until the lower levels of Torment. Legendaries truly excel only in some stats, like damage and attribute bonuses as far as I saw (so they are the best weapons, hands down). Yes, every stat has a slightly higher range on them (it's usually 1-2%, when it's not a fixed stat), but when you don't care about their unique affixes (which may happen) then a Rare can be the better choice. Especially if you also care about the secondary stats, because Legendary affixes take up a secondary slot.

It's often the case that you have a Rare with all the right stats, but when a Legendary comes around it doesn't. This is simply because the rarity differences. You're much more likely to find a Rare with the stats you want. True, RoS players will be able to reroll stats, but only one and it will get prohibitively expensive after a while, so a good base item is still valuable.

To sum up, yes, an optimally rolled Legendary is straight up better than an optimally rolled Rare, but other than this scenario there's quite a bit of overlap between the two item types when we're not talking about weapons or attribute bonuses. Also, things could still change until release.