Design Philosophy of Affixes

Affixes.

Affixes are a core ARPG mechanic, but it is one mechanic that has remained static through-out the genre's short history. Put simply, the role of affixes is to give items their power and customization factor.

How are affixes treated in PoE?

Affixes in PoE are very similar to the ones in D2. Basically, you have Magic items which have core attributes (increased damage/flat damage, increased armour/flat armour, increased spell damage). Then you have Rare items which have more specialized attributes (crit chance, attack speed, +health, resists).

Wait, did I say specialized? That's not specialized at all!

A good chest armour for example, will always have Life and Resists in addition to armour. What choices are there? There aren't any. These are literally the best affixes for 99% of builds. In other words, rare items have close to no customization factor what-so-ever. It's a pure power increase. And it's not just chest armours.

Best daggers? You need only look at the eternal+exalt dagger threads. The sheer fact that an item can have the "best rolls" on which the community agrees upon is bad. "best rolls" should not apply to 90% of builds that use this item type. It should apply to more like 20%.

Why is this bad?

First off, market saturation. The more builds your item applies to, the easier it is to trade it away, and people would be more likely to buy an item instead of crafting it themselves. A majority of self-found concerns stem from this issue.

Secondly, meaningful choices. Rare items have very little of that since there are either "good" or "bad" rolls.

What do I suggest?

Add more affixes that depend on playstyle, and possibly remove the ones that don't. Not niche playstyles, as that's what uniques are for. Rare items should be the bridge between magic and unique, but currently they just serve as an extension to magic items.

In other words:

Good magic items should have core stats which make up the majority of the item's power and are good for most builds.

Good rare items should have both the core stats, and stats added on which apply to a subset of builds and playstyles.

Good unique items should have less core stats and more wild stats which enable builds and encourage playing around with niche builds.

Let's get down to the nitty gritty!

Here's one of the best chest armours as an example:


Increased Armour is the signature core stat of chest armours. After that, Life is the preferred roll, with Flat Armour coming in third and generic resist rolls to top it off.

What can we do to spice things up and make the affixes more specific?

Instead of "+391 to Armour", what if the player had a choice between "+500 to Armour if standing still" and "+500 to Armour if moving"?

Instead of "+41% to fire resistance", what if the player could roll "+20% to fire resistance for each nearby enemy"?

Instead of "+105 to Maximum Life", what if the player could roll "+60 to maximum life and mana"?

These affixes personalize rare items in a way that reduces their trade value but adds more power depending on playstyle.

The Forgotten Affixes

Some affixes do add customization. Fire Damage on wands is a perfect example of what a rare affix should be, except the affix itself is somewhat weak due to diminishing returns, so it ends up lost and forgotten due to the superior generic affixes (spell damage, crit chance, crit damage, cast speed). Affixes, no matter how personalized, should always be at least somewhat balanced. Choosing to go the narrow path should be rewarded, but not by too little nor too much.

The Community Effort Section

This section contains any proposed affixes I see in this thread. If I don't like your idea or have doubts about it, I'll add it to the list anyway and put my thoughts (or someone elses if a valid argument was raised) in a comment below.

Novalisk: More armour when standing still or moving



Novalisk: More ES cooldown recovery on low ES

Novalisk: More armour and evasion before getting hit (10s cooldown)

Kraynum: Buff Thorns so they're viable for more builds



Veta321: Instead of +HP you might find +10-20‰HP (per mil) regen when out of combat (taking or dealing damage)

Veta321: On gloves you might find +50% increased accuracy after evade

Veta321: On armor you may find +100% increased armor (from the item) when on low life

ScrotieMcB: More armour vs projectiles and traps

ScrotieMcB: More armour vs melee attacks

ScrotieMcB: Enemies have a x% chance to drop an additional item when hit by a Melee Attack.



Veta321: On a weapon, -15% attack speed, +30% increased damage



Veta321: On a weapon, +20% Damage to Chaos Skills, specialized and may encourage a skill switch



Veta321: +100% increased evasion on full life, at first glance a boring pure EV roll but actually an excellent roll for ES/EV hybrids



Veta321: On boots, +20% movespeed on low energy shield, useful for escapist casters



Novalisk: Change Thorns to "Reflect % of attack damage back at enemy"

Novalisk: Change Life Gain on Kill to "Max Life gain on Kill". Meaning, that after you kill an enemy, you gain 10 max life for 10 seconds.

Novalisk: Change Reduced Attribute Requirement to affect slotted gems as well, like Atziri's Foible.

Novalisk: Change Stun Recovery to Status Recovery (meaning it affects freeze and shock as well)

Novalisk: Change Mana Gain on Kill to "Increased Mana Regen on Kill". Meaning, that after you kill an enemy, you get 100% increased mana regeneration for 10 seconds.

Novalisk: To make Light Radius a useful stat, spread some "increased damage to mobs in your light radius" around the skill tree.

Novalisk: More attack speed before taking damage (3s cooldown).

Novalisk: More crit chance when standing for over 3 seconds.

Novalisk: More crit chance against frozen/burning/shocked/stunned targets.

Novalisk: More evasion for each nearby enemy.

Novalisk: More armour after taking a critical hit.

ShacoFinder: +1% attack speed for every 2% health missing (does not apply to totems, rolls on dagger, sword, claw, or axe).

ShacoFinder: +1% cast speed for every 2% health missing (does not apply to totems, rolls on wands and ES shields).

ShacoFinder: If you take more than 60% of your HP from a single hit, reduce damage by 30-50% (likely for unique, maybe an evasion one)



ShacoFinder: Frenzy charges reserve 3-7% of your health (haven't decided). This health is added to weapon and spell damage as bonus chaos (Again, probably unique, prob helm or gloves).



Veta321: +.75-1 Life Per Character Level

Veta321: +.75-1 Mana Per Character Level

Veta321: +.25-.50 ES Per Character Level

Veta321: +.25-.50 Life and Mana Per Character Level

I love your idea. I perfectly agree that right now it's easy to define the "best" overall armor because simply how the game is designed.

Given how necessary resists and secondary defenses are (Armor/ES) you basically need to have these on your gear be be suboptimal.

I'd rather that the affixes be more "specialized" in order to achieve a situation where all affixes are RELATIVE to your BUILD.

Even Thorns should be good on some situations.

This would truly create customization, right now it's the quest for (flat def roll + percentage roll + hp + tri res) which I find very stale.

Yes, I agree 100%. Item progression should consist of more than finding items with properties identical to yours but larger numbers. This topic has been mentioned in other threads but absolutely deserves it own. I have an idea that goes a bit farther than more diverse properties, although that is of the utmost import, but I must think on it more. Diverse, non-redundant properties are a must for an item hunt game.

To start the thread off:
Instead of +HP you might find +10-20‰HP regen when out of combat (thats per mil not per cent)
On gloves you might find +50% increased accuracy after evade
On armor you may find +100% increased armor (from the item) when on low life

This is exceptionally good feedback.

Agreed 100% with this suggestion.

"

Novalisk wrote:

What can we do to spice things up and make the affixes more specific?

- Instead of "+391 to Armour", what if the player had a choice between "+500 to Armour if standing still" and "+500 to Armour if moving"?

- Instead of "+41% to fire resistance", what if the player could roll "+20% to fire resistance for each nearby target"?

- Instead of "+105 to Maximum Life", what if the player could roll "+60 to maximum life and mana"?

These affixes personalize rare items in a way that reduces their trade value but adds more power depending on playstyle.

i think your idea are way to complex for rare items - unique items already fill the roll of personalization and therefore making "unique" builds!



i have to agree that the current situation isn't optimal tough
- elemental damage mods on weapons for example could be buffed, since they really got worthless in the current meta



also i think we the stat balance between base stats and prefixes + suffixes isnt ideal!

what do i mean in detail? getting the top roll is too important to get a good weapon instead of just getting the right rolls on a highlevel weapon (same goes with energy shield armors for example)
imo weapon base damage needs to be nerfed and the %increase roll needs to be lowered, so its easier to find a endgame weapon but we still have room for perfection!
e.g. atm its hard to find 300 dps, but its even possible to craft one with almost twice the dps

"

Novalisk wrote:

What can we do to spice things up and make the affixes more specific?

- Instead of "+391 to Armour", what if the player had a choice between "+500 to Armour if standing still" and "+500 to Armour if moving"?

- Instead of "+41% to fire resistance", what if the player could roll "+20% to fire resistance for each nearby target"?

- Instead of "+105 to Maximum Life", what if the player could roll "+60 to maximum life and mana"?

These affixes personalize rare items in a way that reduces their trade value but adds more power depending on playstyle.

i think your idea are way to complex for rare items - unique items already fill the roll of personalization and therefore making "unique" builds!



i have to agree that the current situation isn't optimal tough
- elemental damage mods on weapons for example could be buffed, since they really got worthless in the current meta


also i think we the stat balance between base stats and prefixes + suffixes isnt ideal!

what do i mean in detail? getting the top roll is too important to get a good weapon instead of just getting the right rolls on a highlevel weapon (same goes with energy shield armors for example)
imo weapon base damage needs to be nerfed and the %increase roll needs to be lowered, so its easier to find a endgame weapon but we still have room for perfection!
e.g. atm its hard to find 300 dps, but its even possible to craft one with almost twice the dps
[/quote]

"

Schnupfndrache7 wrote:

i think your idea are way to complex for rare items - unique items already fill the roll of personalization and therefore making "unique" builds!

What makes you say that? Uniques fill the role of promoting niche builds and very specific playstyles.

"+armour while moving" doesn't promote a niche build nor a very specific playstyle. After all, you're either moving or standing.

A niche affix would be "+armour after dealing spell fire damage", and that stuff belongs on uniques.

Indeed, uniques have few and powerful mods, often with downsides. OP is discussing different equally potent rare mods.

If I were to draw an analogy between items and the passive tree - magics would be ordinary nodes, rares would be notables and uniques would be keystones.