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: 7 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

It's not just uniques. Most runewords and sets are also basically useless

Many items need a rebalance, yes, but not all of them, since some are just meant for an early stage of the game like

Ichorsting, which does not need to be buffed, imo.

Apart from buffing some items that definitely need a buff (

Tyrael's, Grandfather, some endgame sets like IK etc.), it would be best to nerf some op runewords and/or to drive up the rune cost: Enigma, Grief, Spirit, Lore, Stealth, Smoke, CtA, Infi, Forti, CoH, ALL of them are too strong.

If runewords were less attractive, uniques and sets would become automatically more attractive.

There isn’t any easy way around this issue. The issue is that we (and bots) have all been playing for a while and collected all the BiS gear. There are some players that haven’t, but they are relatively “poor”, and the ratio is not enough to support a healthy market for non BiS items, even for a currency available to and valued by both the poor and rich, like pgems.

Basically - we are all old , the game is old, and there is rarely new content.

New content, skills, and difficulty levels is the only thing that truly solves this. And so as an example, early on in RoTW, it WAS exciting to see a unique or set drop as it could be one of the new items, which were selling for decent prices since everyone wanted the new stuff.

I mean the BiS balance could be shifted between runewords and uniques, but the core issue is if you’ve been playing a while, most drops aren’t going to significantly improve your character or Wealth remainsz

varangium wrote: 1 hour ago

There isn’t any easy way around this issue. The issue is that we (and bots) have all been playing for a while and collected all the BiS gear. There are some players that haven’t, but they are relatively “poor”, and the ratio is not enough to support a healthy market for non BiS items, even for a currency available to and valued by both the poor and rich, like pgems.

I just wanted to comment that this not the case for ladder players ^^ Also, 20 years old here

Tho i generally agree. But i think bringing more uniques to bis level would be cool too

Agree, and I do think a few more BiS uniques would be nice. RoTW actually did a good job with the new uniques, all 3 Ars Books are BiS for the associated build, and Hellwardens is competitive with BiS gear on some builds.

Dreadfang may have some use also, but not as familiar with it though to know if it is BiS for anything.

mikelessar wrote: 1 hour ago

Many items need a rebalance, yes, but not all of them, since some are just meant for an early stage of the game like

Ichorsting, which does not need to be buffed, imo.

Apart from buffing some items that definitely need a buff (

Tyrael's, Grandfather, some endgame sets like IK etc.), it would be best to nerf some op runewords and/or to drive up the rune cost: Enigma, Grief, Spirit, Lore, Stealth, Smoke, CtA, Infi, Forti, CoH, ALL of them are too strong.

If runewords were less attractive, uniques and sets would become automatically more attractive.

let's just agree to disagree about nerfing Enigma & Spirit ...
but about some uniques like

Ichorsting being good for leveling - sorry no, have to contradict. Because i have all the uniqe bows & xbows on my mules, and every time I level a zon or a new char with rogue I check the uniques and realize that bis bows are

till lvl 12 - 5 normal bow sockets with 20 poison dmg jewels
lvl 12-15 - 4+ sockets with normal rubies
lvl 15-18 - 4+ sockets with flawless rubes
lvl 18-30 - 6 sockets with perfect rubies

That's it. No unique comes close to it. Only

Skystrike, and

Kuko Shakaku, and

Lysander's aim are decent at 30+, but even they lose to Insight solidly

how is it okay??