Tempering is great and a really nice system that you can engage with from the get-go, you feel the power from it in your builds and there’s some really interesting depths to it.
With that said I have a few obeservartions so far:
- The bricking of items just feels bad, this was something I expected but gave the benefit of the doubt till I got my hands on it but now that I’ve bricked 5 wands in a row trying to get Shadow Damage from Elemental Surge (somehow didn’t get it once) I’m starting to feel the pain of the systems. Growing pains hopefully because it’s brilliant besides this one thing.
- The fact that uniques can’t be tempered in theory makes sense but since tempering is so noticable for your build, as mentioned above, means that some uniques that could be fun for your build are just overlocked unless they do something Game-changing. Simply missing out on 2 potential tempers in a slot is too much power to lose in exchange for the majority of uniques.
So here’s some ideas that came to mind that could help alleviate these issues:
- In the case of bricked items the easy solution is just remove the cap but I can also see the point of having it since it gives a reason to keep looking for new gear (it is a loot-driven game after all). So the idea I prefer either involves you having to consume another item of the same type (so if I’m rolling on a wand I gotta find another wand) and refill the tempering charges on another item. This refilling could come in the form of a salvaged material, a material dropped or some other form if you don’t want the pain of people accidentally consuming the wrong item. But some way to refill the charges could be an idea to still give players the incentive to look for items.
- Another idea for reducing bricked items could be some bad-luck protection in the form of not rerolling the Exact value you’ve already rolled. Maybe you have a higher chance to get one of the other options if you’ve already got one. This is an idea that is probably less interesting since people will want to reroll the same affix at times to get a Higher roll. An addition to this idea could be affix locking, so if I’ve gotten the affix I want I can lock it and just reroll the value (up to the tempering limit), that way you can have the bad luck protection without people feeling bad (so someone who’s lucky and gets the correct affix on the first go can have more rerolls for higher values whilst someone who has to reroll for the correct affix will get it but not as many chances for value rerolls).
- When it comes to Uniques I’d like to see them having at least 1 tempering slot, that way you’re not giving up as much power for a unique and all uniques don’t have to be reworked to rival the power of tempering. Alternatively they could have 2 tempering slots but at a higher material price/alternative material (perhaps only aquired by salvaging uniques?). Either way most common uniques could really do with some tempering alternatives, maybe Uber Uniques can’t be tempered since they’re generally already powerful enough, but most others aren’t.
These are just some initial thoughts and as I said I really love the direction Season 4 is going so far, just some growing pains remain that I’m sure will be handled in time!
