unique items *no longer updated*

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Erik wrote:

Lioneye's paws needs "cannot be stunned" for the theme to work.

This should work if it is "Cannot be stunned while on low life". The item already has a nasty penalty for being on low life so this would be an interesting addition. Great bonuses come with nasty penalties.

We discussed Malachai's Simula the other day with a friend when I found one. We felt the 100% increased mana cost is a too hefty price to pay for anyone to ever use the item. Offering Blood Magic in item form for dex characters is an interesting idea but that mana cost penalty really kills it, considering you get nothing like this if you pick Blood Magic from the tree. I understand the mana cost increase is needed for the support gem because with that you can pick the best of both worlds. For the item the penalty could be removed or make it similar to some other uniques that it only applies to skills socketed into the item.

Some quite useless uniques in my opinion:

The Peregrine: Never seen anyone use it, not a terrible item but the mods are not that unique

Silverbranch: This item is horrible and only useful for 5 minutes to a fresh character but totally useless after that. The 10 mana for kills is an interesting mod but the item is too bad for anyone to make a build around it.

Broadstroke: Again never seen anyone use this except for 5 first mins for new character.

Lioneye's Remorse: This one is very underwhelming for a lvl 70 item, especially when Titucus Span has very similar mods for anti projectile.

Also Blackheart and Araku Tiki feel very weak but this is more of a problem with Iron Rings and Coral Amulets in general, the mods on those items are fine (bonuses could be a little larger on Blackheart).

-Ropetus

As an overall comment, one of the main reasons a lot of uniques seem worthless is because, despite their potential benefit to a build, the low damage or defense stats automatically make them useless. Take for example Doedre's. Its intent seems to be offering casters a way to reduce their cast speed while keeping their DPS approximately equal; great for Crit-based builds, especially Fire ones. But the biggest penalty isn't the cast speed reduction; it's being forced to use a 20 ES glove item.

It's be great if it were somehow possible to upgrade these lower level uniques into higher level uniques. Not to make them best-in-slot gear for endgame, but to at least make them more viable. Doedre's doesn't need to get 300 ES, but a decent 100-150 would go a long way.

The Peregrine: as ropetus said its "ok" but not anything unique. the flavor text makes me think there should be some benefit while moving.

blackheart: flee mod is fine, the rest is kind of lacking. the chaos damage is nice and unique though.

broadstroke: seems like a coin toss; on one side its fine due to stun, on other hand it doesn't hold much for people to honestly use it.

worm's molt: similar case of broad stroke and blackheart. mana leech and stat boost are notable but feels like just has random things on it.

silverbranch: higher mana gain on kill but remove attack speed boost, the two mods do not go hand in hand and players barely get a lasting use out of 10 mp/kill. damage is embarrassing even with high % boost but thats a lowest lv bow for you.

kaltenhalt: looks great but the cold reflect could be more noticeable. never seen anyone actually use it (or try to sell it) though.



off topic, i would love to see a unique that causes/treats foes as having less stun/block recovery.

Blackheart: seems useless, i think having it convert 10% or 5% damage into chaos damage would make it useful.

Voll's Protector: it does not need -50% mana, that i think is to much, maybe that stat should not be on there.

Ondar's flight: just make it 10%, really, people like round numbers. Also why not have it make you immune to slow effects? such as chilled and temporal chains.

Crown of thorns: how about making it have a 100% chance to bleed foes while on low life as well? or maybe puncture?

Springleaf: to make its purpose more clear/make the item more useful: gain 30% of your foes life on kill wile on low life.

Silverbranch: to make it more useful at higher levels: 50% of max mana added as physical damage. Gain 300% of the mana used on the the skill that killed the foe.

Also maybe a 10% chance on death to resurrect?

claysoldier, those suggestions are outright overpowered =/

In D2, one could upgrade the base item of uniques, making lower level uniques with high +% values scale extremely well, especially when found early on. I have noticed quite a few lower level unique items with huge +% values. Being unable to reverse this upgrade also meant it was somewhat of a gamble, because a higher tier base item with the lowest base rolls would be worse than the lower tier with the highest base rolls. I'm not sure what kind of possible drawback could be added to balance it out in PoE, but it's worth putting some thought into.
An example would be upgrading a Herald of Zakarum (HoZ, shield) from a Gilded Shield into a Zakarum Shield could end up reducing the defense on it instead of increasing it.
I think this would be a VERY good mechanic to adopt, as the item system in D2 still has yet to be outdone (well... most of the item system)

Imo it would be good to use "+X based on character level" mods on those low / mid level unique armors. Balance wise it could get to the same defence level as white item with the item level equal to your current level.
So imagine having low level unique gloves - if mods are sexy enough like on maligaro's virtuosity than its awsome but if not like on some other gloves than you won't like to use it late game cause of low defense. But with modes like +ES/Armor/Evasion based on character level you could get it to some decent values - Obviously you could still get Rare with %ES/armor/Evasion mode and make yourself 1k Es chest etc. but it won't have the unique mods. Its nothing new, it was in D2 and seemed to work

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Erik wrote:

In preparation for open beta we will go over existing unique items and fix any problems with balance, theme and flavour. Is any unique completely useless? Is any unique overpowered, making any other item in that slot obsolete? Is there places where the addition of a mod or tweaking of the flavour text would strengthen the theme greatly? Here's a few examples of my own notes on things that will be considered:

Lioneye's paws needs "cannot be stunned" for the theme to work.

Fix Hyrris Ire removing energy shield and Hyrris Mark to giving energy shield.

Fix Volls Armour to give charges on crit and maul to remove crits, probably by renaming one of them.

Wake of destruction too easy to get cc lock?


Any feedback on similar problems or any other needed changes on the existing uniques is greatly appreciated!

Voidhome Dreadmaul is 100% useless. A game that's based around ladders, cannot support an item that reduces your experience gained by such a large margin.

Not to mention the fact that it's dps is 326 at 20 quality, which is quite a bit worse than most endgame mauls.

I love the flavor text and look of this item. If they changed the exp loss to quality and quantity loss. It would still give a huge penalty while making the item usable by players.

Agree on Voidhome. At best mediocre (for a 40 hours char, for a 1000 hours it'd probably be laughable) damage and nothing that really makes it awesome, unique or even just provides a hook for building a build around it. And then it has one substantial and one huge drawback.

A scale or update mechanism would be great. There's a bunch of somewhat interesting low-level uniques that you can not use in high/endgame, let alone combine two of for a truly unique build.

I haven't come close to finding or using Hyrri's Ire but I wonder about the Acrobatics part of it. It's a pure dex item and only interesting for an evasion char, so Shadow/Ranger/Dualist, which are reasonably close to the keystone anyway. With the upcoming (warranted) boost to the nodes behind Acrobatics to make it more attractive, where does that leave Hyrri's Ire? Is Acrobatics without the added nodes behind it and Phase Acrobatics really working? Would using Hyrri's Ire without them (and thus only having Acrobatics) be worth it? Or is it attractive "just" for the evasion, and is Acrobatics just an added bonus? Just something that irked me...

Also, nobody mentioned Rigvald's Charge yet, which really has nothing going for it at all. 10% movement speed is cute but not actually beneficial to any build to warrant the lower damage output. Even having it on weapon swap just for faster movement is a very limited use for it. It could do with something special.