Unique items in need of saving

We all know that most unique items are not competitive compared to runewords. Which occasionally leads people to suggest nerfs to Spirit or Enigma (hands off!)
Let's look at it the other way around, how would we change uniques to make them playable?

Let me start with a

Crossbow and a bow (honestly almost all missile uniques are terrible, these two are just examples)

Ichorsting

Increase the poison dmg 6x, to 180 over 3 seconds. will at least compete with a few emeralds at lvl 18. with the piercing attack, attack speed and dex bonus will be a playable niche option

Blood Raven's Charge

Just forget the stats, they are all terrible. Roll these stats instead:

+2-4 zon skills
+3

Exploding Arrow
+200-250% ED
+4 attack rating per clvl
20% ias
5% chance to cast lvl 6

Lower Resist on hit

will it be better than Infinity, Faith or Phoenix on zon or rogue? no. will it be a playable option? yes!

No?matter what will you do there will be 1-2 BiS options for each class . Buffing one weapon will lead to other weapon going down.
Poison overall need to be buffed. Some way. That 3-5 emeralds evaporate everything in early game . But later poison does little to no damage at all.

dionisy_cn wrote: 4 hours ago

No?matter what will you do there will be 1-2 BiS options for each class . Buffing one weapon will lead to other weapon going down.
Poison overall need to be buffed. Some way. That 3-5 emeralds evaporate everything in early game . But later poison does little to no damage at all.

my point is to reduce the spread to these bis options considerably enough to make alternatives viable rather than laughable. it's really a shame that 90% of uniques are just garbage

as for poison, i can speak of the

Plague Javelin build. it's quite okay against 95% of content with good aoe and 8-12k dps, only struggles against the toughest single targets (ubers, t5 heralds,

Baal). and it can be fixed easily by
a) making

Poison Javelin single target high dps (25-30k max) skill
b) buffing

Valkyrie dps considerably, to 10-15k max
then it will be allround good

I strongly second what ganseng says.

Most uniques are quite obsolete in this game as their usefulness is well-nigh zero.
Therefore they do fail to generate even the slightest spark of glee or anticipation when they drop.

At least when you are not absolutely new to the game and know what dropped when you read what base the unique has.
That would be ok for a game like Diablo 3, where they drop like candy left and right, but not in a game where they are rather scarce.

Also, IF done well, new or overworked uniques could well broaden the alternatives in build-craft.
Not just by replacing the BiS-piece of armor or weapon but by giving more choices depending what your focus is on.

For example having a weapon that is almost as good as Grief damage-wise, but not quite as good but also giving a good chunk of faster-run-walk.
That way those who can't afford Enigma would have an alternative that might not be just as strong as the Grief Runeword, but they trade that in for better mobility and the option to socket the weapon with something useful.
If that weapon had a drop-rate like, for example,

Shako it would be something realistic to farm for.

Among maaaany other things i think another patch 2.4 is long overdue. So many interesting builds went from unusable to playable and they don't have to be meta but i would love to see them be pushed into true viability. Same with a lot of uniques and sets, so many are just truly awful and/or head-scratching (how is

The Impaler not indestructible ...)

I also need oskill

Death Mark gloves for other summoning classes please