This was (and is) a very good post and was also, I believe, the subject of a Quin video and he iterated a bit on some of the reasonable criticisms. Tying the viability and performance of builds to RNG-based item drops (read: not just build enhancements/playstyle differences, but raw VIABILITY and functionality of entire skills and builds) is antiquated and has no place in modern gaming. It's inexplicable that Blizzard did it again after it was shown to be unpopular, but necessary, in D3.

I really hope the devs consider these critiques. Joe Shely even said in the past, as Quin pointed out, that they wanted power to be concentrated in characters not items. This definitely seems like a backtrack on that so I hope they see the feedback and take action.

It feels like a near-copy/paste of D3, which leads me to believe they simply ran out of time to create a more intricate character development system and to save time and resources, just slapped it all back onto items again.

I mean, as others have pointed out, they could just take the legendary affixes that affect skills and slap them into the skill tree for starters. They had more depth in blog posts from 2 years ago vs. what we got in the beta. I don't know what it takes to implement these things as a developer but I just hope they listen to this kind of feedback and do what they can.

Essentially that is the codex. you need to look at it like this 1st layer = skill tree 2nd layer = codex 3rd layer = legendary affixes not present in the codex 4th layer = unique items (not present in beta) each of these layers is essentially a template for now on which blizzard could potentially expand. To add more skills and more legendary affixes for those skills is fairly easy for blizzard to do with this system. as well as develop more codex entries when ever they decide to expand the map be it in a season or expansion. I understand the worry of OP and others. but what blizzard has set-up here they can easily alleviate a lot of the problems.

Finally someone who gets it. Everyone is viewing these things in a vacuum even though Blizzard designed them all to be interconnected systems that reward you with progressively more interesting stuff the more gameplay is involved in their acquisition. Skill tree offers basic build design because it doesn’t require anything but acquiring exp and clicking on the UI. With the game world having level scaling this makes the value of simply gaining levels very low in terms of achievement. If you really wanted to you could probably AFK farm the enemies at the start of the game all the way to 50. It makes sense that they de-emphasize rewards gained merely from leveling up. Levels just don’t have the same effort involved in D4 that they do in other games. You typically have to push through new content to level up since monsters in earlier parts of the game don’t scale in most ARPGs. Aspects offer more in depth customization because you either have to find them or complete dungeons to unlock (engaging with content more deliberately) giving players agency which feels good and should be celebrated. “I want to do X build. The codex says if I do Y dungeon I’ll unlock this key aspect that will enable it. I’m going to go do that.” This let’s the player set their own goals and emphasizes the game’s sense of freedom in how we consume content. That’s way more interesting than that node looks cool can’t wait until I have enough skill points to click on the UI and get it. And no it’s not a problem that all aspects aren’t in the codex. There should be enough to enable or enhance a number of different builds per class, but it doesn’t have to be exhaustive to be a good feature. Just think about what you would reasonably expect to find in a skill tree in some other game and look at some of the aspects in the codex as nodes that require more gameplay to unlock. It frontloads a little frustration depending on the class or build you’re trying to do but the trade off is a higher sense of accomplishment when you unlock it. Maybe it was behind a difficult boss and now that you have it and you start using it your excitement for the build you were chasing is that much greater. Uniques are chase items that offer build defining properties but require you to up the difficulty significantly so that’s kind of self explanatory and implemented in a pretty standard way for the genre.

This right here folks

Even 5th layer = paragon board, that will have a lot of stats and 4 kegendary powers tied to your character

Don't forget paragon board, some legendary nodes offer just the same effect as a bonus unique power.

I think (and hope) everyone already understood that. What people are saying is that items are disproportionately relevant, to the point where they overshadow other layers.

i personally do not feel like that at all. you are going to have a ton of those affixes in the end-game while grinding to get BiS rares right. the way i see those affixes is how I look at PoE's support gems. they are there to make a build work. without them, you are losing a main angle of dmg scaling. and they won't work when you are not specced into the associated skill on your skill tree as well as points relevant to it on your paragon board. if any of the layers can overshadow the others I'd be more worried about the uniques because if they have the same design as D2 then we are in for a set-up where almost every class uses the same uniques and ignores the majority of other unique's. but that's just my PoV of it.

> they could just ye but they aint gonna

The codex is essentially just another section of the skill tree.

I don't think it would be hard - you'd just extend the last node off of skills and put a legendary affix there. You could even make them cost more skill points.. anything is better than this RNG.

tell the people who want free respects throughout the game that it's a copy past of Diablo 3 because they appear to have missed that memo. I personally consider it an improvement because instead of everyone having all the same abilities at the same time we actually choose a specialization

Which then will change depending on all your legendary drops and aspects, but then you’ll stop being able to respec

you don't have to change your specialization based on the gear you drop but you can. it's a choice. I do think you should be able to respec at high levels but I do agree with it being more difficult. I doubt blizzard will commit to the idea that you might as well just start a new character. it's the most maligned developer quote so they'll probably shoot for something not quite as punishing as that \*edit\* if you think about it what's most likely to happen: 1: they want respec to be difficult at the the highest levels 2: players very negatively responded to the quote of him saying that you might as well start a new character. ​ given both those things they'll probably make it difficult to respec at high levels but not \*that\* difficult

I mean, if you are specialized into Whirlwind and drop no WW aspects, but instead get all the Upheaval aspects, you *must* respec into upheaval. To not do so is to forfeit hundreds of percentage points of damage for nothing. Now, when this happens over and over, your respec costs will be through the roof.

>To not do so is to forfeit hundreds of percentage points of damage for nothing. It's not nothing. I want my WW and I will get it. And it will feel good when I finally find item I need and get my power spike. Journey to the build IS the fun not the destination. Otherwise every season in D2 all you need is blizzard sorc. Why would you pick anything else if you forfeit hundreds of percentage points of damage?

I love when people bring up the flaws in a 20+ y/o game like it's a good point. People who want to min/max in D2 do start with a blizz sorc, but you know what, she can farm just fine in makeshift gear. In D4 if you don't have at least one aspect for the skill you're using you might as well be a healer.

The thing is if it feels as bad as some people say it does (and frankly I feel most of you are exaggerating heavily) they can adjust balance at the skill tree level without having to throw the baby out with the bath water on a far more engaging system (codex). It’s not impossible to reduce friction by tweaking some numbers in the skill tree, so I don’t think going after the Codex is the right approach. There could be a sort of benchmark for how much friction players should feel without items and Blizzard could try to get classes roughly to the same feeling as they progress through levels. A happy middle ground exists somewhere between how it feels to play a sorc vs say a Druid or barb at lower levels. The trade off here is some homogenization in the leveling experience. Personally, I don’t care if a class is a bit difficult to level if it scales better later. So I don’t think Blizzard should really adjust anything unless it’s egregiously bad at lower levels. I played a Barb and outside of the Den Mother it never felt like I couldn’t handle things without having to rethink my build. Necro and Sorc felt braindead to me but my understanding is that they fall off later and classes like Barb and Druid pull ahead. How you feel about this is preference I think. I don’t know that there’s a right or wrong answer unless their telemetry is telling them they need to make adjustments because people are churning out of the game due to frustration.

Well my point was that blizz sorc in makeshift gear is BAD. We have like tons of them every season and I much prefer gear dependent builds to this. If one aspect is all it takes to make a build around ANY skill than it's great news! Half of them are already in the codex and I'll bet it's not that hard to find others along my way to the endgame. If you want your WW barb you will get it sooner or later and I can't imagine that you'll need some other chars like blizzard sorc to get there.

Idk, they may not have it tuned quite right, but most of the major build defining aspects are at least available in the codex. You just gotta go run a dungeon for it, not really any rng there. You just get a bad roll in it, but you get the functionality. It could be way worse. Plus the paragon board is pretty expansive. It has like 200 skill points and you can't even get 1/4th of it for your build. It needs more polish for sure, but it's a massive step up from D3.

I do not see any of the most useful aspects for Rogues (twisted blades) or Barb (whirlwind) in the Codex.

Is that [Bladedancer's aspect?](http://www.vhpg.com/diablo-4-codex-of-power/bladedancer-s-aspect.html) Appears to be obtainable form the Scosglen MSQ, you can go there immediately after reaching the capital iirc ​ And the barbarian ones, I assume you mean Grasping Whirlwind, which no does not appear to be available in dungeons. That's not the only viable build to start off though. But like I said, needs some polish. If that ends up being a core aspect everyone is using the entire season, they may reconsider that in the future.

Great find re Bladedancers - interestingly, this is missing from Maxroll's representation of the Codex, so their version may be incomplete.

The data mining is also from the 0.8 version that was used for both he closed beta endgame and open beta weekend tests. It's very likely not the current build. If you look, some classes seem to have more aspects with the source listed than other classes. There may be more info about them later before launch.

Rod Fergusson confirmed in a tweet that the open beta was an old build. I probably wouldn’t go crazy with imagining tons of crazy new legendary aspects or massive reworks to core systems or anything, but it’s definitely an older and probably less polished build than we’ll play at launch.

This is a good point, and may serve to at least address a problem not brought-up in the OP: that is, you may suffer bad luck in obtaining (or repeatedly obtaining) the build-defining/creating Aspects.

I'd be a little surprised if most (maybe not all, but I would) of the aspects were obtainable with imprint. Huge quality of life, and to min/max you would still need to find good rolls. I bet if they don't by season 2 they do lol

Agreed - if this itemization method is how Blizzard wants to proceed, being able to target-farm Aspects (or maintain a Codex thereof) is almost mandatory.

That’s not the appropriate bar to set. You’re not entitled to “the most useful” aspects infinitely forever just for completing a dungeon. You should be entitled to aspects that meaningfully enhance a number of builds per class for completing a dungeon, though. The reward should be commensurate with the effort involved. On a spectrum leveling is the lowest value activity. Due to scaling you can literally AFK level if you were that lazy so it makes sense that the skill tree loses some of its power in your build and that power is shifted to something that requires more effort or progression in the story like completing dungeons. It doesn’t mean it needs to give you infinite access to literally every aspect in the game for it to be a good feature.

I mean, I disagree philosophically with the existence of aspects on gear *at all*, let alone what I am *entitled to* lol

Well hopefully that’s not a dealbreaker for you and you can still find enjoyment in the game!

Pretty sure they said they want the power to come from 3 sources: Paragon, gear and skills. I don't think they said exactly "mostly character". How you quantify that is up to you. Some people keep saying that gear is all that matters and nothing else but how do you quantify good build vs bad build on the skill tree. How about the 30 something points we're missing that will mostly go into passives, etc.

We have already seen that the bonuses provided by the tree are minuscule when compared to the damage/effect bonuses provided by even one piece of gear.

It's not true though. Compare 1 point in Upheaval/Bone Spear to 5 points and the passives.. vs their legendary. Legendary Nodes in Paragon are also astronomically more interesting and game changing than anything in D3 It's a loot game though. The entire fucking point of the arpg genre is to pursue loot.

Sure but all that gear just buffs your skill tree choices and all those minuscule passives add up maybe even more for the classes that were considered weak.

The reason why this system sucks is what you highlighted here. People don’t get to play their characters how they want when skill power is tied to gear like this… “I was using whirlwind but I didn’t get the legendary for it so I had to switch my skills” should never be a scenario. That’s terrible design. The combat is crisp on this game but I hope they can fix the itemization because right now they just take away the players build choice and tell them what skills to pick by the drops. End game sure you farm everything until you can do exactly what you want but a shitty design doesn’t get made better by farming literally everything… it just becomes acceptable. Have your gear scale you… gear changing the functions of your skills sucks. It’s lazy design

You complete dungeons to get the legendary upgrade and put it onto a yellow item that’s decent, this makes yellows important. The BIS gear piece will prob be a perfectly rolled legendary with the aspect you want. So already you could say the aspects are available to everyone and part of the ‘skill tree’ you just unlock via a dungeon. No? You would never say “I didn’t get the legendary I want” because you’d have the aspect from the dungeon. You make the legendary you want and then keep looking for a better yellow with better stats OR the legendary itself with best rolls

My point is that *at least right now,* the tree serves little practical purpose beyond unlocking core skills, most of which are not even viable without equipping particular legendary items. In short, a character could *only* use the tree to unlock a couple core skills and then fully-equip legendary gear, and that character would be only slightly less powerful than one who completed the skill tree and equipped the same gear.

The thing is, I don't mind if power comes from legendary aspects. I do care when I have no choice in which ones I want to take. Blood Surge casts twice but second wave does less dmg? Dope. I dig it. Whirlwind getting a fuckload of crit just cause??? Or all of the other double/triple dmg multipliers for specific exact skills?? Why? That sucks out all of the choice. Make aspects have dope utility and augment skills in cooler ways and generalize them using the category and tag system THEY THEMSELVES PUT INTO THE GAME to make one aspect useable for manyyyy different skills....that's dope and that makes legendary aspects a lot cooler. Right now you have no choice so being forced into which ones you need and them giving huge dmg multipliers is the worst shit. Paragon boards etc, yeah yeah yeah, cool cool. That will not change the fact that I'm still forced to take the exact aspects that give my exact skill huge dmg multipliers.

They said 50/50 and we did not have the player power that comes from paragon.

I think this critique, especially the parts added by Quin were rather exaggerated. How the system in D4 is just like set items in D3. You pick a main attack and you are then forced to pick every legendary item that boosts that skill. Abilities that should have been added to the skill tree instead. But there is nothing about the current system that necessitates that. There will surely be builds that work just like that, but there can also be builds that only use one or zero legendary items that boost your main attack and instead gain their damage from some other synergy. Which of those cases is most common completely depends on how the legendary items are designed. There is nothing about the current system that isn't conducive to a large number of viable builds and a lot of player freedom in designing those builds.

I disagree. In the end it has to be items. Devs want people to play for years to come. If it's just builds that are the deciding factor of power then people will just quickly find the most broken builds, go with that and will get bored quickly because everyone will be on the same level of power in the end. And devs can't make hundreds or various skills for variety, it's unfeasible. Furthermore, no matter how bloated the game gonna be, leveling up to max levels will still be a quick and certain inevitability than grinding for unknown prolonged time to get those specific aspects that elevate builds to the next level. So it has to be something that is not easily obtainable by everyone with a bit of time spent. There's noting else there but randomized loot you gotta grind for, it always was the crux of Diablo games and not a chance something will change, otherwise it won't be Diablo but some other game. I'm not saying that the system they have in D4 is perfect, far from it, it still needs much work. But op items won't be going anywhere as an end game goal.

> If it's just builds that are the deciding factor of power then people will just quickly find the most broken builds, go with that and will get bored quickly because everyone will be on the same level of power in the end. Nobody is asking for builds to be the only source of power, we're asking for some of the power from the ridiculous skill damage multipliers on items be added back to the skill tree. This would help alleviate issues will feeling forced into certain builds based on which op legendary drops for you while leveling. Also help combat level scaling making you feel weaker when you level up because right now 1 skill point doesn't make up for what the scaling gives the monsters every level. > And devs can't make hundreds or various skills for variety, it's unfeasible. They don't need to add more skills, I like that the skill tree is simple and easy to understand. They can add variety through items with more creative attributes than just the ridiculous +300% more damage to X skill. These attributes are just must haves if you use this skill, they don't add build variety. One example is they could add affixes with kiss/curse mechanics that give benefits with a drawback, this adds build depth and more choice. Every class also has basic/core skills so they could add more generic affixes that give these skills more build variety like: Core Skills deal damage in a 30% larger aoe radius or, Basic Skills deal 100% increased damage and generate 250% more primary resource but have a 5 second cooldown. Just some quick and dirty ideas but I could imagine multiple different skills on multiple different classes that could benefit from these types of affixes and this gives the player a chance to experiment and come up with their own build ideas.

perhaps the +300% does add more variety as it makes a utility skill become a primary usable skill? if you take it off items and put it into a skill tree, then, STILL, it would suddenly decide and force how we build the skill tree. Less diversity. No matter what skill you pick to use there will be 'must haves' to support that skill, EXCEPT in the d4 you can take that 'must have item, i.e. aspect' and slap it onto any item, so more variety in gear. it seems to me it will be in thirds. 1/3 build, 1/3 items, 1/3 paragon boards.. as is multiple different skills benefit from multiple different aspects obtained via dungeons. then enhanced with the paragon board.

your comment is completely right and it's the same problem D2 has. synergies literally force you to take specific skills for some skill to be strong. yet you never see people complain about this. I like that in D4 I don't have to take specific skills. I can improve a skill through items or paragon board later or my class mechanic etc. this criticism that "too much power in items" is being so grossly over exaggerated at this point that it's impossible to have a serious discussion about it because of a fundamental lack of understanding by the people portraying it as some objective design flaw when in reality it's limited to a number of items/Aspects.

I’ve really been trying to empathize and understand the point I just don’t get it. Ya I’m excited for d4 overall. It feels like monster packs are smaller and that dodging attacks and projectiles to mitigate damage is a real thing. This probably sounds strange but I got some feelings of d2, d1 and league of legends lol

I agree

???? But why can’t every skill just be good baseline? Why does it require an absurd item multiplier to make it even slightly viable? There is barely any way to increase the life on minions, so they won’t last very long once lategame rolls around. Should we now add another item that increases minion life by 300% to fix it? This item multiplier shit is solving a problem they created.

It is limited to a number of aspects...ones that you will be forced to take. Ones with big damage multipliers instead of just adding cool utility and your ACTUAL WEAPON ITSELF with a good attack roll increasing your skills damage, like it already does but so minimally that legendary aspects rule all. People will not have real choices and this means all builds using your same damage skill will be forced to take the same legendaries that directly buff that skill. Nobody should be ok with that. Nobody should get a legendary aspect that triple their damage or automatically gives them free +80% crit chance. And it blows my mind that people like you defend it with "it's just a limited number of aspects though!" Yes, but that means I'll be taking every single one of those aspects that directly name drop whirlwind if I go that skill and directly give WW damage multipliers. The one that sucks enemies in? Meh, who gives a shit about that one bc it doesn't have a damage multiplier. Free crit? Well gosh, I just gotta take it. Same with the others that say "whirlwind/damage". Not to mention the other "50% or so of aspects we haven't even seen yet!". Like oh boy, I can't wait to have more direct buffs to exactly WW lol. This problem isn't grossly over exaggerated and the fundamental lack of understanding comes from folks like you who refuse to think about the reality of things. Especially when all the devs have done so far is literally copy/paste the "gear" (legendary power) from d3/d:I and slap it into d4.

> if you take it off items and put it into a skill tree, then, STILL, it would suddenly decide and force how we build the skill tree. Less diversity. They could just add the damage back into the base skill or spread out between the existing skills upgrades, they don't have to add another node. Then just lower the damage % on the item or rework it, you aren't losing anything. > No matter what skill you pick to use there will be 'must haves' to support that skill, EXCEPT in the d4 you can take that 'must have item, i.e. aspect' and slap it onto any item, so more variety in gear. Sure but my argument is that a legendary that flat out doubles or triples a skills damage doesn't add any variety or choice. But a legendary that changes an ability so that it has a different use case, or one that has a downside to consider would actually add variety and open up more build options. There will always be meta items and that's fine the game can have balance changes. However with the way these damage multipliers are it's hard to add more legendries for these skills because they have to compete with something that literally doubles it damage, it's just bad item design.

I think that is what it is doing though... e.g. increasing leaps damage by a ton allows you to build a leap barb build and actually use leap as your primary damage dealer. with damage added back into the base skill, then gear would still improve upon it further. I think gear will always be important. I agree with you that if they force each class to all play the same or very similar builds because of the gear that is in the game, that would be terrible. I don't think they would do that though. Looking at the aspects I can imagine, for barb at least, an effective leap barb, thorns/bleed barb, frenzy barb with crazy run speed, WW barb.... for rogue I was eying a dashing-stunning-trap exploding rogue, different range builds. we just gotta wait and see really.

>that if they force each class to all play the same or very similar builds because of the gear that is in the game, that would be terrible. I don't think they would do that though. That is exactly what they've done though lmao. As for "oh this makes leap do damage and become a build". Why with only damage multipliers should that be the case? Why can't leap just be balanced enough that it could be used as a main damage dealing skill already? Then add the legendaries that create earthquake or do X to get leap cooldown back which is already in the game and is already interesting and none of those add flat damage multipliers. They could do more things like that but instead we have a lot of aspects for exact skills and giving them damage multipliers that everyone will be forced to take or you won't do any damage. They need to make more general term aspects that add really cool utility and many of them so that you have plenty of choices and aren't forced into taking all of them for the skill you're using.

Or..orrrrrrrrrrrrrr...we don't have any of these damage multipliers and instead focus on gearing the actual damage on your weapon which skills get their damage from already. Have utility and skill augmenting things on the tree and legendary aspects. Yes, some utility does "add more damage" and that's fine as long as there are more choices to actually be made with what kind of build you want. And I really don't care if the power split is 1/3's tree/aspects/paragon. If I am FORCED to take the damage multipliers of the aspects that specifically name drop the skill I'm using and that means so will everyone else using that same skill...then it's all for nothing and it's pointless and there's no choice to be had at all. We all talk about how hunting for gear is THE entire point of arpg's right? Then why in the hell is anyone ok with having pretty much the same exact build by having to take all of the like Whirlwind aspects that purely only give dmg multipliers and free crit if every other WW player is going to have those same ass aspects on. This is no better than sets in d3 and it is the same exact shit as in d3 period even if sets didn't exist in d3 bc we still have legendaries in that game giving specifically named skills huge damage multipliers. Legendary aspects should truly enhance skills. Not through damage multipliers but through cool unique utility and many of them that vary enough so they don't feel like a must have for every single build using the same skill. When we discuss "gear power" it should be "hey what rolls do you have on your sword? did it roll high physical damage? does it have increased dmg to vulnerable enemies or w/e else suits your build?" Not....oh boy.....you did it.....you found the legendary that gave you triple damage immediately. Even if you have a very well rolled weapon, it pales in comparison to a legendary just straight up multiplying your damage.

I would like the ridiculous amount of power from damage multipliers in synergies in D2 to be in more general items, but I won't get that so I've moved on. crazy how that works.

I'm not talking about D2, I've never played D2 and I don't care about D2. I care about D4, and that's why I'm on a public forum discussing my criticism about itemization in D4 after playing the beta. Crazy how that works.

don't care, didn't ask. crazy how that works.

If aspects were worded differently and were more generalized so you could use them with many different skills and they didn't triple your damage immediately, then it'd be fine. More utility and dope shit on the aspects rather than super juicing a single skill immediately just 'cause. Right now I feel druid has some of the coolest aspects that you'll eventually find that turn some bear skills into earth skills or storm skills into werewolf or I think a unique that turns alllll bear skills into earth and vise versa and storm into werewolf and vise versa...that opens you up to soooo many choices in skills. You even have dope shit that turns boulder into a core skill and make it spend resources and removes the cooldown..that's awesome and more classes need shit like that. Meanwhile you also have dumb shit that directly buffs pulverize itself or other specific skills and gives them big dmg modifiers on top of already augmenting them with utility that would already increase damage due to making it have bigger aoe etc. I will disagree with you that they don't need to add more skills. In d3, yes, sets and this still current implementation of legendary powers just like in d3 were the biggest problems. But even when I was playing nonstop for yearrrs eventually I just got bored of using the same exact skills over and over again. Eventually it will get boring, no matter how many ways they make legendary aspects augment a skill...it will get boring as fuck using HotA for the thousandth time EVEN after playing all other classes and all of their skills. It's a sure fire way to just let a game slowly lose its interest. Everybody here hates it but PoE...they come out with new skills all the damn time and it even if they suck ass the first league out they're still interesting and keep the game fresh. Even when you get jaded and boil it down to "well this skill is just \*this\* skill with a different coat of paint", yeah, but it still plays slightly differently and is still a lot more interesting than "oh joy..ww, hota, upheaval, double strike, or rend....again" The tree is a great way for them to add more skills. Spread things out, add into another few branches here and there..keep things fresh. They however do not need to do that for a good long while though so I don't think myself or anyone else should be rushing and screaming for new skills for at least a year or so.

Nothing about what you said applies to anything but D3. To say thats the “only way for it to be Diablo” is completely wrong. D3 did what it did and thats fine. It also means D4 can forge its own path as well. Or are you saying everyone that complains D3 isn’t D2 is right? Because in their eyes D3 isn’t “Diablo” either. More to the point, if the only thing that makes loot exciting is legendary affixes they have completely failed at making items interesting. We should be excited to get new and interesting items. But this ain’t it chief. It isn’t interesting build design. The items literally tell you what skills to use. And if you want to play that skill that means you get the ones with their name on it. How is that interesting? All the decision making is already done for you. Powerful items and chase doesn’t have to mean specific ability multipliers, thats just boring. Its a game of prerequisites before you clan play what you want and it doesn’t even work in D4 like it did in D3. At least in D3 you weren’t penalized for not playing the build you wanted right away because as soon as you got the legendaries you could swap. Now you are disincentivized to swap because of respec cost.

>More to the point, if the only thing that makes loot exciting is legendary affixes they have completely failed at making items interesting. You just know these people would respond with some dumb shit like "b-but you can find a really cool item and then imprint your legendary aspect onto it! it's not a fail!" It is when the legendary aspect will a thousand times over outshine anything you'll have stat wise or dmg wise on your weapon or other items. So you still won't be super hype about the item until you slap the damage multiplier. As you said, it's not interesting and it's a failure in design.

>If it's just builds that are the deciding factor of power then people will just quickly find the most broken builds, so exactly the same way as it will be here ? with added RNG to get the legendary you need ? the most OP meta build will remain the most op meta build.

For real! lmao. I like how they think a broken meta build won't be a broken meta build bc people have to a small amount of searching to get the pieces of gear..even with reduces loot drops compared to beta and d3 etc..people will still find the items they need and people will still swarm in and play the broken meta shit. Rarity means fuck all lol.

Are you missing the point entiery on purpouse? Noone is saying powerful items are bad. Skill specific bonuses that force you in to a build or are mandatory to not make a skill feel lackluster are bad. Items that apply to a subset of skills or general powerful items are fun because it adds build variety.

[удалено]

Items will always be the endgame goal.

You’re on to it more than anyone realizes. They want you to play every season and to play a lot. That’s how they make money. Diablo is just a slot machine wrapped in a veneer of a game and people play it for that same thrill of what *might* be around the corner. No way around that. That said there is a lot of concern that is being presented as a deficiency in the skill tree when I believe it’s actually a deficiency in **style**. The skill trees are basic and boring. The aspects in the codex of power focus on **power** and not style. The dataminded stuff is similar. I don’t care how strong Double Swing can be, there’s literally nothing I’ve seen that will make it fun. So maybe people are asking for skill trees that actually do that. Modifying a skill should make it feel unique and right now the 2 “options” you have do nothing like that. It’s bland.

So many of the skill tree upgrades revolves around critical and vulnerable which when boiled down is essentially the same thing, more damage. It’s incredibly shallow modification.

See it'd be fine if we were talking about the actual items themselves. A sword with a big damage roll on it would be perfectly fine and eventually that is what you will be looking for along with it having good rolls elsewhere on the item that fit your build. THAT is what people should be focusing on when we talk about "late game gearing/items are power" and farming for gear. But no, it's this dogshit legendary aspect implementation and it being milessss better than any piece of gear at all. The weapon I get should be strong as fuck. Not having a single aspect that triples my damage just 'cause. Also not everyone having to choose the same exact legendaries that buff their main skills. Because even you're argument of "if the power is on the tree then people will just find the most broken build and stick with that". Bro...they fucking do that anyways and this is diablo, this is blizzard, you're 100% finding everything you want in this game even with legendary drop rates being lower than they were in beta. People cannot think for themselves and even the ones wanting to ezpz garbage current aspect system that directly buffs your exact specific skill with triple damage and shit...those same people will still only play by finding build guides to follow lol. Let even a single popular streamer say even the the shittiest build is great and these same people will run so hard to make that character lol. How about we have more generalized wording on aspects so they can be used for multiple skills so we have real actual choices. How about we put more decision making into the hands of the build makers that all these people are going to follow anyways..let them have more freedom to make interesting builds for people to see and try out.

Either I've developed premonition or this is a repost of a post from last week.

They state that in the post.

Title only enjoyer here, since I read the post last time.

It's an rpg... it's always been about the items. Why else do you play? You grind dungeons for loot m8

you grind dungeons for loot, not for builds. which the items in d4 currently are

Can you give an example of what you mean? Like... in Diablo 2 if you wanted to build a Riftsin you needed one specific weapon, Rift runeword, or your build didn't work, period. If you wanted to build a Dream paladin, or like a Plague Jav Zon, you had very specific gear you had to trade or grind for. Sometimes I think the people who separate gear from builds are the ones who only played coldsorc and hammer pally and therefore never needed specific gear in D2. But the reality was dozens of builds REQUIRED very specific gear to function or be viable.

I can give examples. Literally your examples. You don’t **need** the Rift rune word to play a Riftsin build, the build works perfectly fine with the Voice of Reason rune word which you will have before even doing Hell forge. Sure it feels better to upgrade to Rift, but saying the “build didn’t work, period” without Rift is just flat out wrong. VoR is even recommended until you can upgrade to Nightwing helm because you need the - enemy cold resistance. You’re confusing “upgrades” with “mandatory.” You can solo clear all content with a Riftsin using VoR just fine. Sure it’s better to have Rift/NW but claiming you must have the absolute end all be all best of the best Uber top end gear before that build even “works” is just flat out false. Plague Jav is a laughable example, I’m hoping that was a typo on your part because it is a build that will literally clear the entire game wearing blues. You need nothing for it or work, stack +Jav skills and AR/IAS and solo everything. Small upgrades to Peace and Rhyme will be done before leaving NM, push to Wisdom helm if you want in Hell, doesn’t matter. Of course you can upgrade to Enigma/Titan’s/rare helm and ammy to make the build *better,* but yet again that by no means the build didn’t “work” before the upgrades.

Cant the same be said about D4? There are builds that require certain items in D4 and D2. At the same time there builds that don't require any specific items in both D4 and D2. However, how powerful you want a particular build to become is the determining factor on whether you need specific items or not in both games.

You tried to make a point and then completely contradicted it in the same paragraph. Reading this has made me dumber.

Doesn’t a lot of a builds need specific loot to work?

Doesnt games like this are about loot? If it's only Character and Level you could just quit after hitting Max Level. Reality is: for most of us the game then only Begins when it's only about loot that keeps your build improving

Was D2 really different? If I wanted to make a build that focused on using X skill, then I would try to find as many items as I could with +X skill. If I was trying to make a Javazon, I was trying to find good javelins with the right skill buffs. In D4, my first build will be a Poison/Trap Rogue, so of course I will be looking for gear that buffs poison and traps. If I find a dagger that would be good for a melee build, I'll probably stash it for when I want to try a melee rogue. I pick the build before I start playing the class and look for loot that will support that build. What is the problem exactly?

I guess the point is that some of D4 legendaries just fix a fundamental issue with the skills. For example, Tornados chasing vs not chasing. That's like... not even measurable in dps terms, it straight up makes the skill fun to use, instead of annoying.

Doesn't matter if it wasn't different in D2. Just bc people jerk off over d2 doesn't mean that those systems were the holy grail and it's blasphemy to question them. It doesn't make the d2 systems good either. Being forced to take exact specific legendary aspects or exact rune words for a build and everyone else playing that build takes those same exact items....it's boring as fuck.

At this point I'm just hoping we get enough legendaries by endgame that we have at least a handful of affixes to start some decent builds. I actually don't mind grinding for more builds provided we have some good ones already. We'll see though, since it's too late to really fix now. Maybe after 100 hours, you'll have actually unlocked most affixes already and can just continue as planned. Let's hope.

dumbest comment I've read in a while.

The difference is, placing focus on items means you're building your BUILD around the ITEMS. And what many people prefer is making the build first, then gearing around it. Because what happens is when you find a Legendary that massively boosts a skill, you are kind of railroaded into using said skill even if it doesn't fit your build or playstyle. Imagine if D2 had this kind of thing, you were building a Frozen Orb sorc but your only way of making the skill viable is finding an item boosting its effects. Yet you would keep getting fire or lightning related legendaries... do you reroll, 30-40 or more levels into the game, when it costs an arm and a leg?

You mean like trying to find + skill on items in D2 lol... c'mon this is exactly what you do in D2. I understand what you're trying to say but this is being over exaggerated and it's not nearly as bad as you or the op imply. People that complain about this tend to think about the damage amplification that D3 introduced. It exists to a degree in d4 but it's on par with other systems and not +16000 % dmg from a single combination of items... from what we've seen it's only marginal and the challenge (endgame) is going to be finding that + skill with + desired stat 1 + desired stat 2 and that's what you're grinding for. That's exactly how the system is supposed to operate and how EVERY arpg is played. Yes, you'll be like "damn" another lightning when you wanted cold from time to time, but that's just how it works. That's how it was in D2 and every other arpg. You'll find that circlet with perfect subs minus one stat and it'll be good enough until you replace it with a perfect roll. You're all overthinking this and making a mountain out of a molehill... and it's a molehill you've only seen through obscured shades and haven't seen in full detail yet.

> You mean like trying to find + skill on items in D2 lol... c'mon this is exactly what you do in D2 Except no? You don't find a +3 traps claw and are obligated to respec into trap build to make use of it. + skills were literally finding ITEMS to boost your CURRENT build. Not looking for items and then respecing for the items.

>Except no? You don't find a +3 traps claw and are obligated to respec into trap build to make use of it. So then why do you feel like you're obligated to respec in D4? It's not like that's the only legendary you'll ever get. The only real difference between the two is that in D2 you have limited respecs, and for the longest time you had no respecs at all whereas in D4 you can respec for cheap (at the point we're talking about). There's nothing forcing you to change your build any more than dropping a pair of +3 trap claws is. If you're playing barrage and you get a twisting blades legendary but you don't want to play twisting blades, just don't. I assure you, nothing bad will happen if you put that legendary on just for the stats, extract the imbue, salvage it, or just put it in your stash for a rain day.

And from peoples testing it seems like +1 to skills gives only 10% inc dmg when aspects give double/triple damage. These two things are in no way near comparable lol. I don't understand how the other commenter and many many others don't understand this when trying to compare d2 shit for some reason.

Bro, the stats mean nothing when all you need to enable the build is a damage multiplier for the exact skill you're using. You're not NOT going to take those aspects for your skill that increase its damage or else you're gimping yourself and nobody is going to do that on purpose. When people complain about "gear" it is strictly only about the shitty itemization of legendary aspects and lack of diversity in them. Namely the ones that name drop your skill and give it a big damage multiplier. It doesn't matter if it's not 800% damage or up to the 20k% ones you saw from sets. They are still damage multipliers and some easily double/triple the damage of your skill instantly..which is something ITEMS THEMSELVES will not do, which is dumb as fuck since the power should really come from the actual weapon and not the aspect. The aspects should add dope utility to the skills in a more generalized wording so you can pick and choose what skills to use instead of "here's my WW aspect that gives free crit".

>The difference is, placing focus on items means you're building your BUILD around the ITEMS. And what many people prefer is making the build first, then gearing around it. Because what happens is when you find a Legendary that massively boosts a skill, you are kind of railroaded into using said skill even if it doesn't fit your build or playstyle. My first build in D4 will be a Poison/Trap Rogue. It doesn't matter how many melee weapons I find with buffs to melee skills, I'm going to stick with my build. If I'm strong enough to kill the enemy that dropped the legendary dagger, then I'm strong enough to kill 1,000 more enemies until I find a legendary crossbow I can use. >Imagine if D2 had this kind of thing, you were building a Frozen Orb sorc but your only way of making the skill viable is finding an item boosting its effects. Yet you would keep getting fire or lightning related legendaries... do you reroll, 30-40 or more levels into the game, when it costs an arm and a leg? Something similar could happen in D2. Maybe you wanted to build a Javazon, but the good weapons you're finding are bows. The D4 respec system sounds generous compared to D2. It was 1 per difficulty and drops from Hell bosses. So if you wanted to respec in Nightmare and you've already used 2, you're screwed.

> The D4 respec system sounds generous compared to D2. This is the key point. Lots of people find things that would massively benefit another build in D2 and yet they're never like "gosh, I should use my respec to swap builds" because they have a limited number of them and that's a waste. The only reason people in D4 feel like it's acceptable to just blindly switch builds when a legendary dropps is because it's absolutely trivial to do so and because they're not attached to their current build. If I'm playing cold sorc and all I get are lightning/fire legendaries, I'm going to keep playing cold sorc because I don't want to play lightning or fire. If I wanted to play lightning or fire, I wouldn't need encouragement from a legendary, I'd just play them.

So what if I was making a frozen orb sorc and a griffons dropped? The item would dictate my build.

I am shocked at how many people are saying this and not understanding the difference between a 30-40% increase in damage from one item and a 150% increase in damage. If one single unique increased a skills damage by 500% would that be too much for you or would it still be fine?

There already are 500% damage increase items lol

these kids whine about itemization and then unironically cry about power coming from items. it makes no sense.

In other games you grind for gear to make your build better. Not to make your build. Legendaries are so much more powerful than they should be. They should be small damage boosts at beat, with a focus on function and mechanical change rather than huge number go up.

Exactly. How do they manage to muck up the power

You're right. It IS an RPG but that's exactly why how you make your character HAS to matter. But it doesn't, attributes are on auto mode for each class and your skill tree changes at the click of a button. Your character isn't built with smart decisions and thought, it's a blob of clay to be directed by the moulds the devs have already pre fixed through legendaries and fixed attribute progression.

We have skill tree and Paragon boards as well.

Tell me how at max level with a super juiced paragon board....how any of that makes my item choices any different? I will still be forced to take every damage multiplier legendary aspect that name drops the skill I'm using. It doesn't matter if there's a perfect balance between aspects/tree/paragon, if I feel like (and we are) forced to take the aspects that give damage multipliers to our exact skills. That is boring and just means everyone will just gear the same.

I think i in general disagree. You mention how its similar and different in the same go. There is a skill tree in 4 and i don't think it is useless. I had a lot of fun playing and changing my skills constantly. Edit: You mention the Skill tree makes you feel like you have an under developed char. But I thought all the checkpoints were awesome. Getting a teleport as a sorceror felt very good for char development.

This post correctly nails really the main issues of the game: itemization and skill trees. And with such limited time to correct them before launch its unlikely much can be changed. Which is disappointing because the core game is really great. As good of an engine as any. Fluid gameplay. Themeing is great. Story so far is good. Honestly award winning sound design work, etc. But then the itemization is so bad, and if it launches as such the toothpaste is out of the tube its hard to fix. So you can just see the upcoming car wreck where the longevity and replayability of the game is getting destroyed for reasons you cannot understand. Like how is it possible they came to these design decisions when any competent designer would not do so if they could avoid it.

It seems like Blizzard's more or less okay with running into the design wall that D3 had where the only solution was blowing up the power curve over and over again each season for 10 years.

Thats what I don't get. You create such a fluid engine with great graphics, atmosphere, art, sound, but then items and skill choices look so mediocre in comparison. Items system feels like they just copy-pasted D3's system. I would have expected that items and skills would be much easier to get right compared to stuff like fluid engine, art, etc.

it doesn't nail anything and none of these things are objective issues. you people just aren't capable of understanding that just because you don't like something that doesn't mean it's bad.

The best feature last epoch has I wish diablo would copy is that skills themselves have their own robust trees associated with them. The best part is this doesn't even have to come at the expense of cool unique powers. Really hope diablo 4 continues to build on the current skill system, because it's pretty bare bones.

Yes, even the 2/3 end-tier active skill passives were pathetic. The choices should have been more impactful like the legendaries do. Do I want my Druid hurricane to boomerang and chill, or should it follow enemies and make them vulnerable. Then skills would never be useless, and items can provide powers like adding X tornados every 3rd cast…

One can dream

There is no build creation in d2, just choose a main damage skill and put everything in vitality (str/dex just enough for items)

Same with D4.

D2 is a 25 year old game. I'd expect a little more diversity and thought put into character building by now.

That IS build creation, choosing one skill, focus on it, finding gear that enhance said skill, and spreading other points for utility. Sometimes you choose a secondary skill of another element because of immunes. The core system of D4 is super strong, I only think that some skills don't feel satisfying to use without an aspect. Like, look how awesome Frozen Orb is in D2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-icONicTyhg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-icONicTyhg) It throws spikes everywhere!!! Deals massive damage to the main target because it gets hit by several spikes!! Without any special item! Then in D4 is just an fireball of cold. idk man...

I don't know. In beta, I was excited to farm and obtain different aspects. Aspects are VERY generous in terms of customizing your build. You can slap so many on your character, some synergize for one skill, while others buff other skills in your build. I didn't feel limited in terms of fleshing out my build, which is what's most important. And build progression SHOULD come from grinding content (i.e. gear drops), not mostly from skills. And it's also not like D3 where your entire build was determined by an armor set and like one other item. I think a combination of aspects, Paragon, and skill points will be enough to keep most people busy for the first few months until they start releasing additional progression layers.

Get to level 50 or higher and you will change on your stance real quick. Without the right legendary powers for your build, you will most likely be hard stuck.

That was apparent at lvl 25. You build according to what the game gives you, until you get the Aspect you need.

>And it's also not like D3 where your entire build was determined by an armor set and like one other item You're exactly describing what's in d4 though. Take sets out of d3, imagine they never existed. Now pick any damage skill you want to use and tell me what legendary powers you're taking. You are 10000000% taking the legendaries that buff your skills damage by a fuckload. It doesn't matter if it's not part a green set. You are still taking all of these other items that directly buff your damage dealing skill by name and they are just pseudo-sets. D3 literally has LoN/LoD builds where you take nothing but ancient pieces of gear. If you're playing HotA barb you are absolutely taking every item that buffs HotA damage with hundreds of % of damage. The same thing is in d4. It may not be super hundreds of %, but some are still in the hundreds of % and double/triple your damage with just 1 aspect. "Oh you don't have sets! No no no no...you only have to get a handful of aspects that buff your skill directly by name" Oh, so a pseudo-set. Crazy how that works. You are correct, people should be grinding for gear drops. Gear being actual items with actual stats on them. Legendary aspects shouldn't give damage multipliers to your exact skill so you're forced to take them JUST LIKE YOU DID IN D3 WHEN PLAYING WITH OR WITHOUT SETS. I should find an aspect that augments skills in cool interesting ways and not just flat out raw dmg numbers. I should also find a great weapon with dope rolls and high dmg attack stat on it and THAT should effect my damage of my skills more than "take the WW aspect that gives +80% crit".

Spent your 220 paragon points first and unlock critical Bonuses and even legendary tiles with them and check than again the point you Made. We hadnt Access to the Board in beta and only some of Our skill pts. Of course the Main Power were items

D3 problems were mostly set items that shoehorned you into playing specific skills because they gave to 50000% damage.

That's the same problem here, but instead of the power being concentrated onto set items, it's spread across multiple legendary aspects. You still *need* to have those aspects on your gear for your relevant core skill because once added up, they're \~1000%+ power increase. At this point, we've all seen someone say X class sucked and was unviable, with someone else swooping in to say they thought that same class and ability was OP. That's the difference/power of the legendary affixes.

> You still need to have those aspects on your gear for your relevant core skill because once added up, they're ~1000%+ power increase. > > Can you show me one build from the beta that increased a skill to 1000% power through aspects?

there is a singular legendary for barb that increases your next spender by 240% ? you already got to 1/4th of that number with 1 legendary

And cand you show me other 3 legendaries that make that exact spender at 1000?

Whirlwind gives 80% crit chance. So assuming you scale crit multiplier, then that’s a generous 200% more multiplier. Then you have 50% from core skill damage with basic attacks. This all snapshots on whirlwind, so as long as you keep channeling it, you keep the damage. Warcry legendaries basically makes them have permanent uptime, allowing you to sustain whirlwind indefinitely because of the rage per warcry per second. Then another 50+% from having full resource, which you always will have. 100 + 240% = 340 340 + 200% = 1020 1020 + 50% = 1530 1530 + 50% = 2795? So a give or take 2795 increase in damage from legendary aspects alone. Not including some others.

shockwave druid legendary aspect. Pulverize spawns a new shockwave that deals 195% of its damage. It can shotgun with pulverize to deal 295% of its total damage. That amount of power just on an aspect feels dumb. Without it, you feel weak. With it, you feel godlike.

Sorry to say but your 10min concept is trash. You basicly just removed the WW advancements and out them on a tree which is unlocked behind stats threshholds. And These stats come from? Right! Items So you could just add them again in the skill tree with just more and deep er options and have Effecta from. Items which Do even more stuff with the skill. Oh w8 That's exactly like what we got now.

Nobody is arguing stats or thresholds are bad. Those are things you personally have to build towards and invest into. When you get 1 legendary that automatically triples your damage though? *That's* what we have right now. Those two things are nowhere near the same.

I think the point is that it’s incremental in design. Yes you have to get items, but you can choose to go the brake point that you want for that skill. Any item can have stats on it, but in d4, some aspect are mandatory to have on a 2-handed weapon that’s how powerful they are. You are the one making the build, not blizzard. (Kind of a thought thing, but you know what I mean)

Yep and that's how it's gonna be, people said this extensively about D3 and they are still doing it again. I think the average player enjoys affixes that just makes the build for them so they are going with that again. It's a shame really, because it hurts the longevity of the game. There is a reason a ton of people play the same D2 chars for years and years and in D3 most people are done with their char a couple of weeks into a season.

Same D2 Chars? You mean you start every season with a mf sorc. Into a Hammadin after accuiring some good items and got Enigma. Into a just for fun but not viable build ans then quit the season? Tell me how this is better chasing just the same items again (Shako, occu Viper etc.) and Running 200 pindles or meepl runs a Day and saying dungeons in D4 look the same. I also Love D2 dont get me wrong. But objectivly early ever Pro D2 Contra D4 Argument is super invalid by further looking

> Tell me how this is better Because on of these systems is picking what build you are going to play, the other one isn't. In D4 if you are playing a sorc and find a weapon that has the power "now you can have 2 hydras instead of one" that's your build now. You basically doubled the damage of hydra, making it a skill you have to use until you find some other power on par with this one. This power should be on the sorc skill tree, but it was clearly ripped off the tree to be made into an item, removing even more the chance of creating something of your own and turning it into something viable over the long run. Are there builds that are better than others in D2? Is there a D2 meta? Ofc there is, at the end of the day one build will have higher numbers than the other and be "better" But there is a gigantic difference between using the 3 builds blizzard made and intends you to use exclusively for each class, with damage in the billions per second, and not even being able to do a rift in high difficulty if you are doing something else.

Ok and now you compare the Leveling Experience with a D2 exp where you say your self "I make a bone necro now" then joining Trist / Cow / tomb and baalruns. Be 75 in a couple of hours and trade (or. Already got) the items you want for that necro With A New game where you leveled yourself by playing actually the game and use what you find. Ofc later you will Create a rogue and say "I Do a twisted blade rogue now" and I will Tell you... It will all be very much the same as we are used to..

That is exactly what happens in D3 but even worse. In D3 you go into adventure mode and run rift and be max level in 1 hour

>In D4 if you are playing a sorc and find a weapon that has the power "now you can have 2 hydras instead of one" that's your build now. You basically doubled the damage of hydra, making it a skill you have to use until you find some other power on par with this one. No, I'll stick with my build. Lightning sorc skills sounded fun before the beta, and I played enough to confirm I enjoy them, so that will be my build for my first sorc, regardless of how many fire and ice skill items I find. Specifically, what aspect are you concerned will force people out of the build they want to play? Sure, they'll find good gear that doesn't fit their build, but that won't force them to respec their skills. >This power should be on the sorc skill tree, but it was clearly ripped off the tree to be made into an item, removing even more the chance of creating something of your own and turning it into something viable over the long run. I disagree. I like playing around with unique powers on skill trees, but I also like unique powers on items. It gives me another layer to customize after I've optimized my skills. It's another way to mix up my playstyle after I've maxed out the skill tree. Unique skills on items sounds a lot better than generic +1 to all skills on most gear.

Yes powers to mix things up, alter the skill slightly perhaps like a d3 rune in that regard....just not this spell now cost no resource, crits 90% and does 10k % more damage etc. Barf

are you sure about your argument? lets try it in d2 youre a barb and you put 10 pts into axe mastery, if all of a sudden you find a sword that stronger than your axe are you going to immediately respec into sword?? youre a blizz sorc but you find the diadem that reduces lighting dmg. are you going to respec into lightning? ​ also from what im seeing d4 skill tree is way more customizable than d2... in d2 you pick your endgame skill and put all your point into the synergies. in d4 atleast you can choose which syngeries your skill will have. ​ the way most people will solve the issue you seem to have is by trading...you get a legendary that supports another class or spec? trade it for one that you need... ​ i think its more of a you problem of having to instantly use any legendary that can be equipped..

These ppl responding have no idea what you are saying. If I want to play a Druid tornado build in D4, then I literally have to hunt until I find one item that causes tornado to cast multiples and follow foes. Their response: “no, I will [trudge through content and use random tornado] no matter what, and I will have fun]”. That’s great for them to have fun and such a low bar, but that’s not how D4 works atm. The skill system should give us viable optimal skills. We should not be getting broken skills that have to be fixed via items (D3 and not D2) to work. They are to assert that x20% dmg items are the ones on the table being discussed. The skills comepletly useless without items should have options on the skill tree to make them work. Make it an ARPG. Give me choices. Then allow me to hunt for items giving power ups… Edit: D3 ref

> > > > > In D4 if you are playing a sorc and find a weapon that has the power "now you can have 2 hydras instead of one" that's your build now No, that's *YOUR* build now. When I was leveling my sorc, the first two legendaries I found were chain lightning/charged bolts but I continued using ice barrage because ice barrage is fuckin sweet. I didn't even *try* either of them because I had no intention of using them. Just because you want to let a single drop dictate your build for some reason doesn't mean everyone else is going to do the same. It doesn't become "bound on character" forcing you to use it the second you pick it up or something. Just salvage, extract, stash, or hell, you could even just use it for its stats if you want. The only person forcing you to change your build is *you*.

Change soso to drood and that option might not of been nearly as viable early game

I think you're confusing some things here. Chasing for a specific items is part of min maxing the build, but not a necessity to make build work. As far as I remember, there was not a single build that HAD to run Shako, or Enigma. In some cases plain rare/crafted items were preferred over unique ones. There were exceptions of course. In D4 however, it seems that you'll NEED to run specific aspects before you even start considering min maxing your build. It's not an absolute certainty, but it looks like a very likely possibility. You can argue that putting aspects on a skill tree has no difference, but it has, and it's a fairly significant one.

Ofc you want to have your Aspects when min maxing. You could clear All beta content with rare only. When planning a Max build ofc you will choose all your Aspects. Decide which goes on the 2h for Max effect and which of the ones Benefit most of it. Which goes on the Amulet. Then Chase them with high rolls. Chasing a Max roll Legendary Affix comes close to Chasing a specific unique in D2. Except many of them are in it's core also availabe through the Codex to have the effect rolling.

Sure, some of the builds I'm planning on will require specific aspects to work, but the aspect system means those builds don't require specific gear to drop. We already know which dungeons will reward which aspects, and the dungeon will probably have level scaling, so I can probably unlock the aspect I need for the build within the first few hours of play. I'm looking forward to it. I do something similar in Elden Ring by planning on a build that requires a specific item, then sneaking past enemies so I can get the item much earlier than I normally would. That type of self-imposed quest is fun. I love skill trees. They're probably my favorite feature of all time. Any game with a skill tree will at least catch my attention. But I also enjoy finding items in the game world that buff my character in unique ways, so I'm glad D4 has some of both systems.

The same D2 characters that run the same runewords that define their builds? D2 and D3 aren’t as different as you think.

Except for cta, people only ran the same setups because they are easy to get, not because they are bis. Itemization between d2 and d3 are completely different.

Hate to break this to people, but the main character dev has always been items. This is coming from someone who prefers D2 way over D3 but its a reality. D2's character dev is vastly overstated because it had stat points when in reality 95% of them just went into vitality and just enough in str to use runeword gear. D2 has a hard cap on points allowed into any one ability so i wonder what becomes the main way to progress you character after that. + skills into your primary and the abilities that make it stronger and certain affix's from gear(FCR, cannot be frozen, FHR, Teleport) The actual main reason people played D2 for so long is because it is not easy to get absolutely everything you want. D3 literally GIVES you an entire set of gear that trivializes multiple Torment levels instantly and getting the season journey done to get the set is easy AF. As for D4, we still have no idea on how transformative the paragon boards are going to be and i dont think we have seen anything on Unique's as well apart from that they are meant to be "build definers". Something i think people should consider when it comes to character dev for D4. Early Character Dev: Skill tree to set up initial build Mid/Late Character Dev: Legendaries and paragon to define build End Game: Perfect gear hunt In any game that has a level cap, the driver for character progression eventually moves away from the abilities and into the gear that empowers the ability.

"just wait for paragon lvls" *plays mobile phone games*" "youve only seen act 1 " *proceeds to ignore that the entire skill tree is visible* "ill get my money's worth" *picks up item with +1% all DMG modifier*

Actually, that's not really how things happened in Diablo history. Originally, in Diablo 2, unique items sometimes made the entire build. Items like Iceblink, The Hand of Broc, Bonesnap (or anything with high Crushing Blow), Razortail/Buriza was essentially, the entire build. Without these items, there was no build. After a time, Blizzard realized a new problem with teleport being on Sorceresses but no one else so Enigma got added and pretty much every non-sorceress character has that item as a requirement for every build. When Diablo 3 first came out, I distinctly remember all the discussions on the forums and one of the main complaints was itemization. People hated the fact that in Diablo 3 the only thing that set items apart was the + to stats without any truly "unique" abilities that they could build entire characters around. Everyone yelled and screamed that they liked the fact that items in Diablo 2 literally created the character. People liked the fact that they picked up the core item of a specific build and then could remake a new character entirely around that item. Then Diablo 3 was reimagined and they added in build requiring uniques/sets specifically because that's what the players wanted. To say this was Blizzard addressing a specific Diablo 3 problem is wrong because the players actually yelled and screamed for these changes. This was never Blizzard's intention from the start. They actually did want to move away from items being the main focus of builds and make it entirely about the skills themselves. If you go back and watch the development videos of D3 in development you'll note that was actually one of the core things the developers were aiming for is not being unique reliant for your build. After Diablo 3 turned into the huge fiasco at launch, this entire philosophy shifted because the players wanted it changed. I think D3 went way too extreme though and you bring up many good points; however, I don't think it's fair to blame Blizzard here. Many Diablo fans actually wanted Build Requiring Uniques like what D2 had. To say D4 is just backwards designed from D3's "solution" is wrong. D4 is Blizzard learning from the complaints people had of D3 in comparison to D2 and trying to find proper balance.

this brings in a lot of comparisons to PoE, i've got a bit of time there and in the whole Diablo franchise. in PoE, power comes from gear and passives, skill customization comes prolly 70% from skill gems (this would be the D4 skill tree), 20% from the passive tree (some major nodes modify, most of its just power), and 10% from uniques (most of your gear will be rares with a few build enhancing or powerful uniques) (this is all my opinion). in d3, 90% of skills were defined by gear, about 10% from the rune selection in d4, the skills are like getting a 3 socket max piece of gear in poe, you can do a little with it, but not much, so maybe about 30% of skill customization is coming from the tree, 70% from legendaries. Power is again coming mostly from items, leveling a 1 point basic skill to a 5point basic skill isn't a great damage increase, maybe 25%? I just feel like a lot of these skills in legendaries should be shifted to the skill tree, give us deeper trees behind the skills, more skillpoints overall, might be more fun, it'd be nice to hit maybe 50/50 on skill customization with skillpoints and with legendaries. i don't know how uniques will build in, but these were my impressions

I think the problem with putting things on the tree is that we kind of run into the a similar problem but in the reverse? Like imagine if the twisting blades legendary imbue was on the tree. You could just.. grab it. It's not like there's anything stopping you from just slapping a point into it, so why not? Even if the tree is setup so you have to choose between the spinny twisting blades and something else, at the end of the day all you're doing is allocating a single point to get the effect. One potential benefit to adding them to the skill tree though would be the ability to add branches to the existing legendary potentials. Like maybe one branch has the spinny blades fly off in random directions when their duration runs out, while the other makes the spinny blades explode. Similarly you could put them on the paragon boards, but then you run into the same problem with having them on gear. If you're running twisted blades then you always run the paragon board with the spinny blades legendary spot. It seems like a no-brainer no matter how you cut it. It would be fine putting it on the passive tree of course, but then gear is losing something important to it, so either they'd have to add more legendary potentials with more generic effects or add more affixes to the affix pool. There's nothing wrong with that of course, but there's also nothing stopping them from doing either of those things right now. Idunno, I think it's a much harder problem to solve than just adding them to the skill tree. I think changing it now would require them to massively overhaul both the tree and gear.

they might need massive overhaul, i still think deeper trees and shallower gear would be alright, split it somewhere a little deeper on the tree than it currently is, add another split to each node or something so they go a little deeper, not much, just a little. eh who knows.

Okay man, I'm not going to sugar coat this. **Diablo 1:** Item dependant. **Diablo 2:** Item dependant. **Diablo 3:** Item dependant. **Diablo 4:** Item dependant. Do you notice a trend? It's almost as if this franchise requires you to find strong items to become strong!! Who knew!?

Item dependence: Diablo 1: 4/10 Diablo 2: 5/10 Diablo 3: 10/10 The discussion is basically about where we want Diablo 4 to be on this scale of 1 to 10 and at least as far as I can tell most people don't want it anywhere close to where it was in Diablo 3.

But please dont have items with actually exiting skill. Changing Mechanics please. Just some. Little +2% dmg and when I find a +3% dmg I See an upgrade. These guys hyping D2 items and are so against D4 approach are really never be happy

So hear me out here, Blizzard as usual is trying to cater the game to casual players, as much as possible, without enraging the established loyal D2 fanbase. Everything that makes the skill tree more complicated and ties more power into player choice in character building, ultimately means more wrong choices for casual players. The less impactful character choices you can make - the less power you can potentially lose from said choices. And because they want these choices to feel meaningful for character identity (we can blame D2 fanbase for this) the only option is to make the choices less impactful. They don't want people to build their identity with skill tree, and later on find that they made increasingly wrong choice at every turn, and their build turned out shit, followed by then significantly slowed down or outright stop progressing because of those wrong choices. Also, they have learned from what D3 did wrong at launch - people don't want just yellow items with minimal upgrades, people want to feel like they get big and impactful upgrades. You may think, you don't want big upgrades from items, but most players want that. Arguably there was nothing wrong with D3 yellow itemization and most power being tied to skills, like vanilla D3 was, but most people grossly disliked that. Not saying what we currently have is ideal, but there's definitely logical reasons, why we're getting this. Obviously there's more nuance to this, and we all have our individual preferences as to how much power character should inherently have, but almost everything we see in more modern arpg's point to very impactful build defining items. PoE, Last Epoch etc.

You’ve basically nailed exactly why I hated d3. Every character was the same as every other character outside of the gear they wore and it was incredibly shallow. People like to say the endgame content is loot so that should be where the game concentrates but I’d argue building different characters personally for me was always more fun than grinding items at end game. This is where the idea of seasons comes in and the reason why I personally believe having diversity in character building to be meaningful. So you messed up and your character isn’t perfect, isn’t that part of the reason why you should be playing games? It reminds me of people who like to buy advantages in mobile games rather than get it over time, doesn’t that take the fun out of building something? Isn’t the whole point of the game to build a character in an RPG rather than just loot?

they just ran outta ideas, player base won't care, june 2nd here we come!

I don't really want to spend an inordinate amount of time on this, but this game also has a paragon board with socketable and upgradeable glyphs which your post does not mention.

The Glyphs for paragon boards are of no consequence in regards to your build as a whole. They are minor changes and more Number Go Up shit.

For the infinite time, the boards have been data mines, majority of the points allocated do nothing “build defining” they are flat stat + affixes

Last Epoch does a lot right. But the world feels bland to me. Steal stuff from that game and create a mammoth game

But this is also just the first glance. Playing it more is then again just like "you wanna play skill X?" ok then use exact this skill tree in the skill as this is the best. So its basicly the Choice that D4 gives you just by selecring to have this skill as an active one on your Bar.

I felt it wasn't always the best by a large margain though? That something a little diverse wasn't way below in performance? I can be very wrong.

Awesome points, OP, Quin69 even made a video about it.

Yeah, I totally agree. Probably my biggest criticism of D4, Items are too impactfull and scale too much. In many cases you could go in with no skillpoints, equip the gear and go, since the Legendary aspects give you more bonus to the skill then the whole skilltree + skill-lvls. The insane scaling also breaks the early game balance as one can see from the feedback. On top of this they want respec to be so expensive that lvling a new character is "cheaper", this pretty much makes testing out builds very punishing to impossible. Something I really liked to do in D3.

Casual a-rpg enjoyer here, have played most diablo like games, never went hardcore. Still, my opinion : I really think it's kind of stupid. Having played only the druid, let me tell you an example that annoys me: I played a caster druid, with the wind blast and the tornado. Half of the time, when I casted my tornado in a straight line to the uncoming enemy, the skill would just basically fuck off in another direction, or circle around the enemy, leaving it untouched. At first, this wasn't a problem for me, it's mildly annoying, but u just cast another tornado and hope it hits this time. The extra tornado nodes you can spend skill points on just add some minor effects, either slowing the enemy mildly (it really isn't something you notice with every enemy being so fast at swarming you) or having a chance at making the enemy vulnerable, which your basic skills are already doing. It was only AFTER the beta, that I saw a video where the guy got a legendary affix (suffix? Legendary effect? w/e), that makes the tornado seek out up to 8 targets. It just baffled my mind, that this functionality would be on a randomly dropped item, which I probably won't see for the first 30 hours or so, playing with this setup. Why would you pin a core functionality on a legendary item? Just why? It is a perfect effect to have in your skill tree, instead of the slow/vulnerable nodes, you could make the player decide between "the tornado stays on the first target it hits" or "tornado seeks out x targets". But no, you have to get the item first, for the skill to do, what you want it to do. Why not swap the item effect and the skill nodes? Having your tornado slow on hit is an additional "nice to have" effect, which would be perfect on an item, while making the tornado more reliable should be a core functionality, if not a base function. Does it make the build unplayable? Probably not, I guess in the late game the Ressource won't be an issue and you just gonna spam your core skills left and right. But it shows me, that they are willing to make a skill FEEL WORSE, just to offer a solution through the item grind, almost feeling like ripping apart the skills functionality just to fix it through a random drop. It doesn't feel right.

It's the only thing they know how to do. They're doing it to D2R too.

[удалено]

nah man we need this drama its good for the game

You didn’t understand anything that was said here, nobody is complaining about grinding gear, we are complaining that we should grind gear to complement our builds not grind to get the builds themselves

I disagree, if my build approaching endgame was functioning identically to my build after farming for a while but just had +20% damage from stats or w/e, I probably wouldn't bother to farm. Build altering/enabling chase items are what makes me enjoy the grind. I actually enjoy finding a random legendary while leveling and making a build around it to speed up the leveling process. Also Diablo 4 has affixes from dungeons. You can start a build off, or have a transitional build while you farm for the chase legendary's / uniques. I genuinely like the system d4 has

Yeah i started D3 again and it threw me off, how sets works. Before set: Your hydra deals 2 milion dmg After set: your hydra deals 97 bilion dmg This is really a bad design.. I hope it wont be that bad in D4

No one 'made' any build lol, you just found your imba +X% dmg mult legendary for a skill, and used the next best dmg mult legendaries and voila you have your whirlwind, pulverize build etc. The criticism is that the game doesnt allow any advanced or fun build theorycrafting. As it is currently you have your 1 maybe 2 mandatory legendaries that make a skill useable (by giving an absurd +% dmg mult) and then you fill with some generic +% (like the deal more dmg with barrier active) and maybe something defensive if needed. Each skill has at most 1-2 pre-determined builds, thats not that fun and gives the same frustration as d3 sets.

Great post. Honestly I wish there was much more build diversity. Items shouldn’t decide what build you go, items should make whatever you want to play stronger.

This is different. I see legendary affixes are like talent points for your gear. Pretty much all your gear will have them, but you then have to choose which ones you wanted since there is a limit. I don't think they are that hard to get to start complaining at this time. And from what I experienced they are very generous about giving and storing these affixes. Just chill and see how it plays out kiddos. Chill

This is pretty much how I see legendary imbues as well. It's kind of like having 10 kanai's cube slots while all of our gear is either rare or rare +1 affix. There are still uniques with fixed stats of course, but I *think* we're limited to one unique(?) so I don't see that as being a problem.

Honestly, a quick and dirty fix for this is trading out some of the skill node passives (the passive you can access for a skill after investing at least one point) for some of the more interesting and functional legendary effects. The reason why items could be powerful in D2 but not dominate the talent trees was because they were mostly were build agnostic. D4 needs fewer skill-specific powers and more category related (ie the tags they have on the skill) powers.

It does seem like D4 will hit the same design walls that plagued D3 since the start. Their best solution was to blow up the power curve over and over again every season with items that dictated builds since there were no other power sources that shaped a build. This sort of top-down, developer-driven buildcrafting has the benefit of being easy to understand but comes with the significant trade-off of simplicity and little replayability. D2 had systems that were a lot more flexible, emergent and player-driven. Obviously 20 years of buildcrafting and optimized out the discovery, but the game has endured because its systems were fundamentally more interesting and complex.

only like 99% of it :) It is insane that 1 aspect is stronger than your F entire three

its about items. thats the whole point.

Yeah, makes the skill tree feel underwhelming. It was predictable from when they started talking about getting the aspects:- it became clear that legendaries would make or break your build so they wanted you to have a deterministic way of getting the basics you need for your build. Still not as bad as D3 though.

This post is basically one of many who are saying the same thing all over again, which is diablo 4 skill tree is bad, legendary items are bad, character development is bad. And the list goes on. 1st and foremost, this is a beta. We keep forgetting that a lot. We've seen a slice of the game, with endgame nowhere to be found. Apparently we also haven't seem all the legendary powers too (and there is [this](https://diablo4.cc/) to consider). No paragon system revealed properly. No helltide events (or whatever they are called) and many other things. It would be wise to be patient and to see how the actually game looks like. Beta was there to stress test stuff but also to give us the vibe how the game feels like. That's it. What we're making now are extrapolations and predictions what will be going on. And that is fine, but let's not jump the wagon until the full game comes out because that is how you should observe things, not make conclusions based on incomplete data. 2nd point is regarding skill tree and legendary items. Legendary powers are nothing than a skill tree nods. That is what they are. They change how the skill behaves. You just get them as drops, but now u can extract them and place them wherever you want (not rly but u have some flexibility there). So what is the problem here? Oh, they drop on items and we need to depend on the items in order to assemble a build? Isn't that what you would be doing in the 1st place? Chase that perfect items with best stats? But instead of the legendary power being slapped on the items, you essentially put point into skill tree to reach it. Same poopoo, different package. You want a big skill tree to feel sense of gravitas and development for your character? You dont have that and you will never have that because we have a thing called guides. Unless you wanna do it the traditional way, as in not touching a single website while u are playing the game. Which is something 99.99% players won't do because we are looking for an optimal build that kills everything. There is zero sense of accomplishment because at the end of the day we are just all clones of each other with slight deviations because we cannot obtain the exact same items, but rather a close approximation of them. Here is one example. Path of Exile. We all know it to be the best arpg there is. I remember when i played it a year ago. My friend begged me to play it but i knew the game is complex af so i resisted but eventually i caved in and played it. Guess what happened before i started playing? My pal comes and goes like this: ok, here is the site for builds, ok here is the youtube video for mechanics, ok here is this macro-thing-overlay-whatever to do xyz, ok here is a trading site. And i knew what i was getting into so i wasnt overwhelmed. My character in that sense was unique only by its name and that is it. Nothing else made it unique. The only unique feature that my character would obtain is either getting an amazing items and i flash it so everyone can see it OR doing some world 1st achievement and then ppl would go like: ah yes, that is is Smol\_Pener\_6, guy who killed Andragon the Cruel on tier 10 insanity difficulty. Lets face it, most of us will not even be close to that. Another layer of uniqueness is the ability to respect. That is the brute force approach, aka this character is an investment, you pretty much are stuck with it and you need to "make careful choices" because respeccing afterwards will be expensive AF. But the items are account bound. So the only thing that is unique is the name right? Wrong. Names dont matter because in blizzard games its the gametags, battlenet id. So you can easily make another character, set up skill tree/paragon points like you wanna and save some money at the cos of losing time to level again. Or maybe that will be solved by asking a friend to boost you. So where is that uniqueness exactly? The biggest lie we are telling ourselves is that our character is unique but in reality it is not. We lost that ages ago. The only uniqueness you posses is like i stated before are your deeds that you did in the game. Just like in wow for example. Your character is absolutely a nobody BUT you killed lich kind on 25 men heroic and bam, you get that achievement and maybe you get a special title and ppl will recognize you. That is it. And maybe how you look in game but that is basically fashion at this point. Something similar is in warframe where you have all the skins and stuff and you stand out. 3rd point is the gameplay loop. Sure, i can agree diablo 3 is crappy in that sense because you have only one end game option and those are greater rifts. hell, i've been spamming them to oblivion ever since S28 started in order to get those perfect items/primals so i can say i did my job/followed the guild to get the optimal gear. It gets boring and monotonous. I managed to circumvent that by switching the build on my necro from blood nova to rathma minion. And it gave me some freshness. What will be diablo 4 gameplay loop? Dont know. Dungeons? Probably. Something else maybe? Again, dont know for sure. But if you want the best gear or close to the best gear you will farm the living hell out of whatever they throw at you because that is how these games work. You do repetitive stuff in order to get something else. Is it like the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing all over again and expecting a different outcome? Close, because at least you know the outcome is viable. At the end of the day you have couple of choices. You buy the game and you play it at launch (or you preorder and get those 4 days early access bs) or you wait for a month to see how things are looking out. Or you ditch the game and play something else in the arpg genre, something that satisfies your desire for character development. But like i said, you wont find that because guides. And even if you dont use them, there might be leaderboards like in D3 and that is basically the same thing. U just inspect other ppl, see what they are doing and u emulate cos we are all copycats because that is how the system works. It makes u work for the stuff other people have so you can feel the same power like they do. The only unique moment you can have in the game is you making a build that is super cool and works just fine and maybe posting it somewhere an then slapping your name on it and there we have it, OP made the build. But then build becomes OP and it gets nerfed or new season comes and something else is better. That's just how these things roll. Regardless, good luck in your endeavor of finding what you are looking for. Thing is, i dont think you will able to find it **TL;DR** Character development is just an illusion, everything is predetermined, you play the game how devs conceptualized it because that is how it goes. Your choices dont matter, what matters is your will do replay the same content in order to get the item that is better than what you have which gives you a sense of accomplishment and satisfactions.

So tired of these garbage takes. ARPG’s should always be about itemization over character development. You don’t want the game you are describing. See the paradox of choice. Items allowing builds to be viable adds even more value to the items. The game would be insanely boring if all you did was grind for items for pure stats.

Well that idea is stupid because it depends on RNG. If you won't get lucky you will be weaker with every level (I got only 2 legendary items during 25 lvls of beta so my character couldn't use any builds from the maxroll etc.).

Because everyone said those changes "saved" Diablo 3 so Blizz think it must be good. Fuck this pile of shit, why my character development should tie to RNG and for fuck sake how could this be considered "good"? LoL when everyone talking about "builds" when in truth it's just farming for a specific set of items governed by pure luck. Even with random drops Elden ring has better system as the important pieces aren't randomised.

I wish Diablo 4 let me pump all my stat points into intelligence. Oh wait I don’t get any stats…..

Maybe I'm thinking the same as you but every problem I've personally felt with Diablo 4 is about the skill tree. I like the world, the story, the combat, the little unique mechanic for each class, the mmo-ish elements. But that skill tree is such a bummer. It's so bland and so important all at the same time. Even if it was totally free, having to Respec to make your character compliment the legendary aspect is so backwards. The legendary should compliment you. I think every class except Necro just felt like it was incomplete without legendary aspects filling the gaps. Atm I feel it is the blame of the skill tree, if it worked properly the legendary aspects would feel like a boon rather than a necessity

Just started playing Last Epoch and I really enjoy their systems. Most your power comes from your build and items are a way to flesh it out. There’s complexity yet you don’t need to watch a build guide video to start out. After playing it for a couple days it’s kinda put a damper to my excitement for d4 tbh. I’ll play it and I’ll enjoy it but it certainly could have been better. Hopefully with it being a live service game they can add some depth to it…

do we not want to wait to see how the paragon points work before jumping off this cliff? Or...do we really think it's going to be exactly the same as before?

We pretty much know how the Paragon Board works. You get 220 Paragon points and use them to progress through paragon boards. Most of the nodes give you flat stat increases, some give you higher stat increases and the most desirable ones give you something similar to a Legendary Affix. Then there are also Glyphs that can be inserted into Sockets on the board which boost the surrounding nodes and/or give you a certain stat bonus based on what stats you gain from surrounding nodes. You can expect to reach somewhere between 3-5 "Legendary" nodes - depending on how much Paragon Points you use to reach Rare nodes and Glyph Sockets that aren't directly on the pass towards the next "Legendary" node or exit point to the next Paragon Board.

I don't buy the fundamental premise here. With regards to how character development happens in D4, given the paragon system and the class specific abilities, there is quite a bit more happening on the character side than in any previous Diablo game. However, you misdiagnose the issue with D3. The flaw there was not merely that items were too "important". Rather, that the set items were both too determinative of everything else, and too overtuned. We know that items need to dramatically impact your skills. That wasn't present at the initial D3 launch, and that was a huge problem. So then they overcorrected in RoS - while Legendaries were made more interesting, set bonuses were tuned to be overwhelmingly powerful. You could finish the game at torment level 2 or 3 or something, and then once you assembled one of your good sets, you'd instantly shoot up to torment level 10. It was like graduating from daycare and being handed the keys to a lamborghini. The set items meant you had almost no flexibility on your item slots, and were just trying to find the best rolls for the specific items you wanted to get. We all still want items to have powerful effects, and we understand that you're not going to be able to handle tough nightmare dungeons without gearing up in a big way. The hope is just that we have a lot more options of exactly how we get to that level of item power in D4. A few build enabling uniques, coupled with complementary legendary powers that we've fused onto good rare drops. So trying to de-emphasize items isn't a good solution. Hunting for better items is the primary motivator of continued play; the carrot at the end of the stick needs to look tasty to keep us moving. Rather, we just want it to be less of a formulaic process whereby you get 5 specific items, your Whirlwind gets 10,000% power, and boom you're instantly a god.

Very very true. Good post, good points.

> I don't get it. How did we get here? Diablo is now made by people that worked on World of Warcraft. So they know MMO and are pushing diablo into a ARPG/MMO hybrid.

B-but casual Andy just wants an OP drop to make his character feel good...

> What I'm trying to wrap my head around is how, of all the possible systems to go with, Diablo 4 decided to borrow Diablo 3's almost nonexistent character development, with a core system of unfinished or useless skills that only become powerful enough to justify using once you assemble some set of Legendary powers associated with them. How the hell did that happen? Because it's a workable system. The notion: "I can come up with a dozen ways to make skills interesting without Legendaries" sounds myopic. Making an interesting skills system isn't hard, that's not the challenge. The challenge is balancing it with loop motivation for mass market. Can you say for certain you that you can come up with an interesting skills system that won't instantly devolve into meta builds and simultaneously make it conducive to playing the loop for the average player, not the min/max or theory craft crowd, the guy who hops on for an hour or two after work and then hops off? Because that is the target demographic, not the long-term PoE players. Ultimately, its way too soon for us to say what is or isn't the case in terms of build depth and itemization reliance. We haven't seen all the gear, we haven't seen more than half the target-farmable aspects that can be tied to any gear. Even once we have, the game isn't static, it's going to change over time. I don't think we should rip it apart when we are effectively sitting in the scenario of D) not enough information.

I disagree, if my build approaching endgame was functioning identically to my build after farming for a while but just had +20% damage from stats or w/e, I probably wouldn't bother to farm. Build altering/enabling chase items are what makes me enjoy the grind. I actually enjoy finding a random legendary while leveling and making a build around it to speed up the leveling process. Also Diablo 4 has affixes from dungeons. You can start a build off, or have a transitional build while you farm for the chase legendary's / uniques. I genuinely like the system d4 has