My complaint regarding Sets and Uniques

[Intolerance]

I don't know that it matters, but I've played D2 off and on since it was released. Looking back at how things have changed, I can honestly say that the glory days were pre-LoD and the major reason was the way items were handled. Back then, almost every character had unique gear consisting primarily of Rares. The occasional Unique was sought after, but by-and-large, Sets and Uniques were not the dominating force that they have become. Since Sets and Uniques have (primarily) preset mods, then many characters are built AROUND them, resulting in realms full of cookie-cutter builds. Without the certainty that your end-game helm would be, as a completely arbitrary example, Arreat's Face, then you could always hope for a Helm upgrade. You'd know what sort of mods you wanted (life, str, resists, etc.) but you'd be open to literally thousands of different possibilities, especially when you could very easily reconfigure your other gear to accommodate mods you couldn't find.

I believe Rare items should be the dominating force on the item market (or at least have the potential to be) and Uniques/Sets should be niche items, designed for specific purposes unattainable through Rares. Goblin Toe boots are a wonderful example- they allow you to get Crushing Blow on Boots, a mod that doesn't appear otherwise. You need to sacrifice all the other amazing mods you could get on a good Rare boots (resists, faster run, str, dex) to get something to make your character "better."

This is just my pipe dream- I don't really know how this could be handled. I'm not a big fan of extremely powerful, extremely rare items to begin with (D2 was easy enough with a good party and vendor quality gear- who really needs godlies?), nor am I a fan of Boss Farming (zzzzz..) or the %toMF mod in general. I'm sure there will be Godly Sets and Uniques and cookie cutter builds around them, but I just always liked the variety that a Rare-dominated item market presented.

[lukefojut]

A market dominated by individual and unique rares is very good, but uniques and sets have always been useful and approachable as they were hard to find, but not impossible to get!

Rare rings and amulets with godly stats have always attracted a premium, Even in LoD, with some going for redonkulous amounts of runes.

Overall I think that sets would be a nice feature to maintain, as they offer good possibilities for themed characters within 'working class' trading budgets....

[Cast_Raider]

I agree. Uniques are okay, but there should be some drawback. Like the missing r/w boost in goblin toes. They shouldn't just be like super-rares.

But even better is negative mods. Like the -30% fire resist in Andariel's Visage, or negative light radius on Veil of Steel. Or come up with some other bizarre mods to keep things genuinely...well, unique.

Specific ideas?

* A weapon with some serious fire damage--but x% of monsters will pop like they're a fire enchanted superunique. Better have good fire resistance.

* How about some mods that only appear on ONE unique? For example, in D2 I would have given Diablo's lightning hose as one, or "ability to re-animate broken minions" as another (hey, the act 2 mummy boss dudes can resurrect theirs over and over...)

* Teleport given to a non-teleport class, ala enigma. Only the cost is taken from life, not mana!

* Super poison damage from some weapon--but if the poisoned creatures touch you, you'll get a dose of it yourself.

And so forth.

[Burst Cancel]

As alluded to by lukefojut, uniques 'standardized' the high-end and leveled the playing field to a more reasonable degree. Do you really want a handful of super-lucky people to have items that you will, in all likelihood, never be able to match? While it might not matter too much in PvM, it will in PvP.

[CombatShrine]

getting decent gear wasnt really that hard in pre-LoD diablo2.

all you had to do was gamble for soj's to eventually get like a 270ish lance w/ leech and an iceblink and you were golden.

i really did like it back then how every char had their own gear, and there was never a positive certainty as to what mods your character would have.

the rare-drop system in diablo2 lod at the moment is just fine. they just need to remove all the useless modifiers (or at the very least, lock-out certain ones when you reach a certain level, to ensure the rares you find are scaling-up in power commensurate with the monsters you kill).

oddly enough, it was much easier to find good rare items in pre-lod because the modifier pool wasn't nearly so diluted. add in the ridiculous power-level uniques and runeword items and you've got a recipe for cookie-cutter madness.

[Kaeros]

I disagree. There's something really special about seeing that golden or green text, and I wouldn't want to water it down in any way.

Here's a compromise I've been running through my head: Remove the hard-ceiling on a Rare's +% attributes. For example, in DII, there's the 'Cruel' prefix that adds between 201-300% to an item's damage. Well, how about changing that to a value anywhere between 201-300+%, with an exponential formula so that the chance for that number to go higher gets exceedingly less likely. So you might ID a rare that is 304% extra damage.. but maybe, MAYBE, the planets aligned and you ID'd a rare that came up as 394% extra damage. Couple this with the other "ceiling-removed" mods on the item, and you have the potential for a devastating piece of equipment. This, of course, would apply to Rares only.

Terrible explanation, I'm sorry, but does that make sense? It'd give Rares a definite possible advantage over Uniques; however, Uniques and Set Items would still typically be the kings of the hill.

[Kaeros]

I agree. Uniques are okay, but there should be some drawback. Like the missing r/w boost in goblin toes. They shouldn't just be like super-rares.

But even better is negative mods. Like the -30% fire resist in Andariel's Visage, or negative light radius on Veil of Steel. Or come up with some other bizarre mods to keep things genuinely...well, unique.

Specific ideas?

* A weapon with some serious fire damage--but x% of monsters will pop like they're a fire enchanted superunique. Better have good fire resistance.

* How about some mods that only appear on ONE unique? For example, in D2 I would have given Diablo's lightning hose as one, or "ability to re-animate broken minions" as another (hey, the act 2 mummy boss dudes can resurrect theirs over and over...)

* Teleport given to a non-teleport class, ala enigma. Only the cost is taken from life, not mana!

* Super poison damage from some weapon--but if the poisoned creatures touch you, you'll get a dose of it yourself.

And so forth.

It's a solution, but that doesn't sound fun to me at all. Who wants to be punished in a game? No item should give you one fun/helpful trait but at the expense of something else -- It's just not good game design.

It's fine with one or two niche items for the sake of variety and character, but if that was a regular practice I think it'd totally blow.

[Arakhine]

Burst Cancel: It should not matter much, as long as there's no duping. If there's ONE guy who finds the d3-equivalent of the Blue Bow, he's still just one guy. You'll recognize him when he shows up, you might fear him, the game will be just that bit more personal. And most importantly, he'll not be the same guy as the one who found that incredible armor/helm/whatever, so his other equipment will be "mortal", and you will have a decent chance. (Admittedly you'll be at a disadvantage, but if that bothers you so much, then I suggest you really look into GuildWars, where everyone has perfect pvp gear, and does not need to become super rich first.)
This gets nasty only if and as soon as is dupes/mfbots are introduced, since those make a small elite (those with access to/willing to use the cheats) become truly overpowered.

In my opinion, uniques, sets and runewords should be either "novelty" items (like Goblin Toe, Goldwrap) or "leveling gear", meaning something easily attainable even if your random drops happen to produce nothing useful (like Rhyme, or Spirit weapons for sorc/nec). These should NEVER be endgame items, but at most allow you to -barely- survive in endgame areas.

The current runeword/uniqe -dominated equipment situation is really the worst of both worlds: you can't simply start PvPing right away, because you need a bunch of HRs first. And even tho you're forced to play PvE to find the wealth required for PvP, you then won't be wearing any nice self-found, personal equipment in PvP, but the same runewords/"uniques" as everyone else.

[Burst Cancel]

Burst Cancel: It should not matter much, as long as there's no duping. If there's ONE guy who finds the d3-equivalent of the Blue Bow, he's still just one guy. You'll recognize him when he shows up, you might fear him, the game will be just that bit more personal. And most importantly, he'll not be the same guy as the one who found that incredible armor/helm/whatever, so his other equipment will be "mortal", and you will have a decent chance. (Admittedly you'll be at a disadvantage, but if that bothers you so much, then I suggest you really look into GuildWars, where everyone has perfect pvp gear, and does not need to become super rich first.)
This gets nasty only if and as soon as is dupes/mfbots are introduced, since those make a small elite (those with access to/willing to use the cheats) become truly overpowered.

In my opinion, uniques, sets and runewords should be either "novelty" items (like Goblin Toe, Goldwrap) or "leveling gear", meaning something easily attainable even if your random drops happen to produce nothing useful (like Rhyme, or Spirit weapons for sorc/nec). These should NEVER be endgame items, but at most allow you to -barely- survive in endgame areas.

The current runeword/uniqe -dominated equipment situation is really the worst of both worlds: you can't simply start PvPing right away, because you need a bunch of HRs first. And even tho you're forced to play PvE to find the wealth required for PvP, you then won't be wearing any nice self-found, personal equipment in PvP, but the same runewords/"uniques" as everyone else.

I've played GW since release, and yes, I greatly enjoy and admire their PvP system. Uniques serve a similar balancing purpose for D2, which is why I advocate keeping them. It's particularly important for organized dueling that gear be standardized within a certain degree. At the really high-end, you want it to be about aptitude, not equipment, and uniques give you this standardization without sacrificing raw power.

The alternative is to do what many did in D2 - move to Open B.net and widely dupe the best equipment so everyone has access to it. Frankly, I'd prefer not to have to resort to this sort of thing, and would even welcome a dedicated PvP server (although I don't think Blizzard has ever had enough PvP-focus in Diablo for this to happen).