Seriously. Can someone please explain to me, why they can apply stat changes to set items in patches retroactively, but can’t do the same to primal ancient items, where legendary stats and qualities are maxed out anyway?
As a casual player, I am so annoyed that having usually waited for so long to get these few actually useful primals, I have to throw them in the trash every patch or two for no apparent reason, because stat change again!
Look at at it this way : You get to play the game again and hunt for those perfect items.
For example, I have a Primal “Flavor of Time” amulet that does not have the “Pylon Effect last twice as long modifier”, and also a Primal “Etched Sigil” that still uses the old effect of casting an equipped arcane spender every second.
This holds true for many of those Primal items I have kept. I usually toss them then anyway if I don’t have an immediate use for it…
That I have to search for them again with the updated modified effects is reason enough for me to play the game over. If it all get update automatically, then we’d very quickly run out of items to find.
The bonuses from sets are based on how many of the set you’re wearing, i.e. the bonus is completely separate from the items themselves. Therefore they can amend the set bonus multipliers without needing to change the individual items in the set you’re wearing.
Individual legendaries have their powers directly attributed to them. Let’s use the Blade of the Tribes as an example of an item changed in Patch 2.6.10…
The old one had 200% bonus to Earthquake which was not part of the legendary power.
The new one has 740% bonus to Earthquake and Avalanche as a legendary power.
Now, my old one is a primal, so you might argue that if they’d done a retro-active retooling it should now have 800% to the new version of the power. Okay, but what about non-primals? What if my pre 2.6.10 blade was an ancient with 175% to Earthquake? What would the updated value be?
It’s tough every time this sort of thing happens, rendering existing items pretty much worthless, especially when they’re primals, but that’s just how Blizzard does things. You need to farm new versions of the items to get the new powers.
There is excitement in starting fresh, that’s true. Seasons basically work due to this excitement. And yet, with set item stats updated practically every major patch, we do not run out of set items to find, do we? At least I don’t see too many ppl on non-seasonal leaderboards with all set pieces primal.
I wouldn’t really care, but some updates are so drastic (such as doubling the DMG modifier) that they render old versions practically useless, or leave you 5-10-20 GR lvls behind. And for a casual player, specific primals are a hard find - grinding bounties is virtually the only way.
Why you can’t update non-primals is absolutely clear to me. Items are just entries in the server database. You’d have to recursively run all those non-primals in all user accounts through an RNG to update them to new stats. Many players, many items, huge load.
But again, my point is that you don’t have to deal with this mess with primals. Their stats are at maximum possible value. And you don’t even have to deal with affixes or prefixes, which can vary from item to item. You just replace an old fixed legendary power value with a new fixed legendary power value on a group of database entries.
What I am saying is that I just can’t believe that in programming terms, it is impossible or even hard to batch update recursively even a large number of database entries with parameters known beforehand.
You do have a point Seth and your post made me think about it. I think there is a logic to it that changes are not retroactive, not even on primals. When there are drastic changes to legendary powers even an ordinary ancient or non ancient version of the item can be far better than your old primal item. So just by farming a new version you can be much stronger than with the old one.
I understand the frustration of course if one has spent thousands of bounty mats to get a primal only to se it almost wasted with a new patch.
That’s an interesting suggestion. I remember 2 seasons ago where ring of emptiness got changed they did so retroactively , you kept your multiplier and they just changed the sentence that said by both locust swarm and haunt and they made it by either one of them so an old ring was still useful because it was changed. But on the other hand items that had a similar logic and they were reworked without adding a multiplier (like echoing fury, stone of jordan) they did it the other way with no retroactive changes. So it doesn’t make any sense in most cases. I think it is also reasonable to say that if an item gets a triple multiplier now then your multiplier should be increased by three times too. I don’t know how hard it is for devs to implement these changes now but in theory it sounds pretty reasonable. So maybe there is some kind o technicality here that we are missing but in any case I agree some items are a pain to farm with all the desired affixes plus a high multiplier
Thank you! That is exactly the example I knew I had somewhere in the back of my mind when writing my post, but just couldn’t remember at the time.
I don’t agree. Its like going from school to university, getting a 1st class degree, then having it taken away and having to go to school again
The Ring of Emptiness doesn’t really count as a retroactive change since the item itself remains completely untouched. Only conditions of when the legendary power procs were changed and those are determined outside the item.
Similar cases are Bone Ringer and Shield of Fury nerfs. Their originally unlimited stacks were capped with a script, the items again remain completely untouched.
Thank you. I think I know the answer to my question now. Correct me if I’m wrong: set attributes (not item prefixes or affixes, obviously) actually are not item attributes - they are determined “outside the items” as well, whereas legendary item attributes (mostly, such as skill DMG modifiers) actually are item attributes, just as prefixes or affixes, and every time “changes” are made to those via a patch, it is not the old database entry for an item that is appended, but an item with a new id is created, just having the same “in game” name as the old one.
You know, I did say that yesterday…
In essence the item contains only references to certain attributes and their RNG variables. This applies to all affixes, normal and legendary.
What does that mean? I’ll try to explain.
Item X dropped before a major change contain a reference to a legendary power A and its RNG variable.
Item X dropped after a major change contains a reference to a legendary power B and its RNG variable.
Now if you keep reforging the item dropped before the change, it still keeps referencing the power A and not power B. Reforging can’t change the reference within the item. Neither can a normal game patching procedure do that.
Set bonuses are always retroactively changed because the bonuses are not tied to the specific individual items, they are indeed “outside” the items themselves.
Now there are a couple exceptions like Captain Crimson. This change wasn’t retroactive because the entire set got replaced by a completely new one. The old crafting plan was disabled and a new one was added.
other games make new stuff every season. blizzard just changes items to keep you playing. fun right?
Yeah, true, Kirottu just put it in a different way, which somehow made my mind “click” . Or maybe I was feeling so frustrated yesterday, particularly about loosing my primal Belt of the Trove, that I did not pay enough attention to detail in your post, sorry.
Good info guys.
Although the issue still remains. Well, it depends on your perspective, it may not be an issue for many people depending on how much you want to invest in the game or how much satisfaction you get by finding an ideal item again and again, but for me it sucked a lot last season when 2 seasons before I had to dedicate almost my entire season and materials trying to find the perfect holy point shot (I think this is what it’s called, the impaler quiver) only to see it becoming worthless a few months later. I am pretty sure every build has one or more similar examples.
By the way, which build were you using this on?
Full invoker or A6I2 uses this in the Cube, not equipped, and the Cube’s power automatically updated to include the new multiplier, albeit that you needed to re-select it. I looked at your heroes, and couldn’t spot one with the belt equipped (either the old primal or a new-power one).
I had similar with Karlei’s Point. I got a primal of the dagger prior to a patch in which it got an impale damage multiplier. Re-farmed a new one after the patch. Had similar “enjoyment” with Holy Point Shot quivers. I spent months’ worth of materials trying to get a cold-based primal, and never saw a better one than the lightning-based ancient I had at the time. Then along came the patch which added an impale multiplier to it and the first ancient with cold on it replaced it.
This is just the way it is. It’s a loot-hunting game. It’s a journey, not a destination.
I had a good ol’ Akkhan build, without the Captain Crimson’s, just sitting there non-seasonal. Not that I did ever care too much about it or played it often per se, it was just nice to have a useful primal on a quite capable, even though old, build.
As said, I’m a casual player, don’t have a lot of really useful primals (a dozen maybe 
) and usually just don’t care enough to go farm/grind me some more.
Your primal Aquila Cuirass and primal Dawn are just as good as they’ve always been. (One of the best Crusader builds of the new patch will be thorns bombardment with a mix of Capt. Crimson, Akkhan, Invoker and Norvalds and Trove in the cube… as mentioned by Meteor).
Finding Primals is hard I know. But best successes so far have been mostly from Nephalem and Greater Rifts.
Very rarely (if ever) do I find a Primal at Kadala or through reforging…
They are indeed. But so was my Yang once, or my Karlei’s (this one has always been so much easier to get, though), before this whole insanity of power creep ever began and they’ve started adding +gazillion% dmg to this and +bazillion% defense to that, left and right.
Now, I don’t see how can I be sure the two primal Aquilas I have are not up for trashing next? 
As far as I have been able to deduct, there is simply no reliable way of getting a particular primal other than the Law of Kulle reforge.
