Lackluster Uniques

I feel like the uniques/ sets in this game are not very exciting or useful. Uniques should be something you are excited about and more often then not, getting an item and crafting it is best in slot for most classes. This should change.

One of the things I loved about D2 Itemization was the universal aspect of items. So many items could be used by so many different classes. It made finding a unique awesome because you know it could serve you in so many ways. Right now, many of the uniques are so specific that you would have to make a character specifically to use that item. You would have to pick the right specialization and skills for that item to be worth it at all. So many of the uniques I find just sit in my stash unused because I have not made a specific build that can potentially utilize then. But to be honest, I could probably craft an item that would be better anyways.

The bottom line is that uniques/sets need help. They need to be exciting to find and to be designed in such a way that they can be used in multiple ways.

Please…please…make this a priority. The item hunt is such a fun aspect of fun ARPG’s and right now, there are almost no items worth hunting for.

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The point of this game is crafting items…and hunting down the affixes you need to make a crafted item better…Uniques so far are just filler for the leveling process…and they do a damn good job at that…there are some uniques that are extremely hard to give up until a very powerfully crafted item is made…

…and sorry, but the whole D2 this and D2 that…needs to stop …game is old…game itemization was absolutely horribly convoluted and half the affixes didn’t even work for the class you played. D2 did not do everything the best…all it did was start the ideas.

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D2 or not. Id still like to be able to actually use the uniques I find instead of just let them sit in my stash. Ive made 4 characters above lvl 60 and I think I might be using a total of like 3 or 4 uniques across all 4 characters. I suppose its possible this was intended. But personally. I hope not.

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I’m agree too that unique need to take a better place. Crafting is cool etc… because you can tweak them as you wish but we also want more Epic Loot.

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D2 required using Stamina to run rather than walk and had such a limited inventory space, can we have those back too? And you had a limited capacity for gold. And there wasn’t any crafting (ignoring runewords).

LE’s uniques are supposed to fit a niche requirement & ideally have some unique affix that you can’t get anywhere else (& I think that needs to be mproved & expanded upon).

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That’s one thing i really like, getting build ideas from certain items.

While i understand that it might feel bad to drop a “unique item” that turns out to be useless for your build. LE really tries to bring the whole itemisation to slightly other direction that most other aRPG’s.
Unqiues are not supposed to be super strong, there are very specific and situational an i personally like that. Build enabling or game-changing uniques more often than not are not usefull for a wide variety of builds, that’s just how it is.

I could agree on adding more unqiues, especially “low-level” ones that might be a bit more universal and maybe have a slightly higher drop chance, so especially new player will get a few of those to “feel” a little bit excited to get items they actually can use.

But i also want EHG to contine with what the already doing with most uniques currently present in the game. Keep on adding uniques that are not BiS by a big margin.

TL:DR: I would agree add “low-level” uniques that are universal, to get especially new player exiting about awesome loot, but the “higher-level” uniques should be overall the same vein than most currently present, build-defining(if you build around it), but not BiS in all cases.

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I think it would be bad if uniques become just general items with better stats. That way finding magic items and crafting is gone.
I think uniques should actually have something… unique. That way indeed not every drop is useful, far from that. But it inspires me to create a build around it. For example the bee generating gloves: not useful for a lot of builds, surely not the strongest stats, but it offers a unique minion generating on gloves.

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Not sure if i expressed myself not very clearly.

That’s the exact thing i tried to bring across. Unqiues not just being stat sticks and have “uniques affixes”, build defining, build-enabling, that sort of stuff.

My suggestion for the “universal” uniques was purly for low level ranges, as a suggestion for the OP, that said that it is not very exciting to find uniques that are useless for your build.

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Not just you…

We need more uniques that affect more skills/builds.

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100% agree, very excited for every patch that brigns new uniques.

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I don’t think uniques are lack luster. I do however think certain uniques drop way to much. Three in particular that are so dam common on unique drops, they might as well remove the tag of unique. And I’m sure everyone can guess which sword, off-hand, and polearm I’m talking about.

Lol are you referring to humming bee, ignivar’s head, and draalsting respectively? I swear to god those are the only uniques I’m getting these days

Am pretty happy with the uniques so far, just think the game needs more time to mature them. I love that they enable different builds instead of just having slightly better stats like in some ARPGs and that you don’t have to be fully decked out in them for end-game and can also focus on solid, regular items and crafting.

It feels like they are very class/build specific at the moment though, which could maybe be reserved more for set items.

Uniques should be for more broad use with general abilities like “extra projectile to thrown”, “chance to summon a raven on hit”, “elemental effects have a chance to apply all other elemental effects” kinda thing. Something that gives builds a little edge or allow for new builds without them making the item feel too class specific.

Why not combine the ‘special’ feeling (and related worth) of unique items with the focus of customization through crafting?
Having uniques htat have abilities not seen on other items is great, but I agree that since they’re ‘specialized’, most will be useless to any build, apart from the one utilizing that specialty. Which evokes the feeling of impending disappointment, when finding uniques :wink:
At the same time, not making the D3 mistake of having uniques completely displace non-unique items is nice. Overall though, I couldn’t care less if the item base has a unique name and art, but I do care for items I helped shape (by crafting) and improve.
There is so much unexplored territory here, by any of the recent ARPGs I’ve played. All this is based on the assumption of replacement instead of improvement, which means you discard old items and get new ones instead.
For example: almost no games have the ability to craft items based on combining other items, it is always reduction of items to some primary elements which can be used to augment other items. Why not have a mechanic where you can magically merge two or more copies of the same unique to improve its stats? Or an ability to salvage your favorite item, by merging it with another of the same type, if your favorite item has shattered to ‘unshatter it’ (this would solve the rng problem with crafting, discussed in another topic), with the result depending on the value of the ‘sacrifieced’ item. Heck, even a possibility to create new unique items, by (semi-randomly) merging other uniques you don’t want to use. The possibilities are endless, once you look past the old tropes.

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Love this. I’ve been reading the other posts and people are coming from lots of different aspects of this. Im not suggesting we make crafting irrelevant, im just suggesting we make some changes so that people are exciting about finding uniques and that there are most of them that are useful. As mentioned before, ive made 4 or 5 lvl 65-80 characters and almost none of the gear they are using are uniques or sets. Im not exciting to get on and hunt for an item that I know is out there that can be a sweet upgrade, but I want to be. I love a good item hunt. Knowing that there are awesome uniques or sets out there that can take me to the next lvl.

Also a better item prioritisation i’m sick og getting the same unique or rare items over and over… maybe give us an arena key or trade in for an arena key

The problem with uniques is that we have set affixes in LE. Using a unique means you will have 1 less slot to craft the set affixes. There’s not that many uniques that justify using them instead of just using a crafted item with set affixes.

Going forward, ideally there will be uniques that have a really unique stats (e.g. Orian’s Eye) or uniques that have built in set affixes.

I usually use uniques for leveling which is fine. I do like that some are a addition to a build, but I do agree uniques could be more then they are now.

Except on weapons. I think weapon uniques are the one place a truly build enabling aspect could arise because the benefits of the t5 crafted ‘gotta have’ affixes are almost never on weapons.

EDIT: and to a lesser degree shields/catalysts.

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I agree. We should have build defining unique weapons like Cospri’s or Ngamahu’s from PoE. It’s quite boring to have a weapon that’s simply have the highest DPS.

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