Disclaimer: This is a personal opinion. Take it with a little bit grain of salt
I would like to take back my previous statement and first after patch feeling. It took me some time before I deeply dive into the new mechanics and enchantment system. As a day 1 player I was used to a previous enchantment system so I hope you can understand my first feeling and frustration when new patch dropped. Don’t get me wrong, I like rune spam builds as I find it interesting, satisfying and fun. It’s only my humble opinion and I totally understand, there are players who finds it boring and overpowered. I like the idea, that endgame builds are now locked behind certain legendary/unique items (..ehm one specific unique ring), so you have to work hard first to be able to achieve this as your endgame goal. However …
Now I have spent about 300 hours in a total in the game and I have some points I would like to mention.
I still have do have a feeling that new enchantment system isn’t in a good shape. There are so many conditional affixes, which I wouldn’t choose over others especially when you have better overall in-game knowledge. After some time you will discover, there are enchants, which are superior and those simply disable the option to be able to choose from other alternatives. At certain point, you exactly know which enchants are useful (increased healing, % damage taken decreased based on durability, etc etc) and the rest is so heavy conditional that you know you need to get rid of them.
Which leads to another problem I have found regarding re-rolling enchantment affixes. From my observation there are enchants which have higher % chance to roll than others. The necessity to consume aprox. 80 Fallen Ambers to get 1 right affix you need - % Rune damage increase / elemental damage infusions on weapons is ridiculous. I have seen repeating enchants appearing 5x, 10x, 20x before hitting what you are looking for. Make the rolls even or give the player the option “Ok, you need this specific enchant? Bring me 20 Fallen Ambers and I give you exactly you are looking for within it’s proc range”.
Unique weapons seems to be still very weak. Restriction to 3 affixes and no possibility to adjust their runes as you want makes it a hard skip for most of them. Since they do not have higher base damage or they lack true unique feeling, going for magic/plague weapon is almost always a better choice.
Stamina Runes - Wonderful Idea. I would love to see more stamina runes for each melee weapon type. Which leads me to an idea if Focus could be reworked in the same way. A resource which is regenerating over-time as a stamina does and could be enhanced via enchants/infused gems . This way you could divide “magic” builds and “melee” builds. Focus being used for magic attacks, Stamina used for martial/melee attacks. (No Ring of Determination anymore )
After introducing stamina kicks, melee builds now can wait few seconds to be able to use their rune attack again, when Focus based builds needs to work hard (find a target, make couple of normal attack swings) to be able to use their rune again.
Re-enchanting items. Since there are so many weapons and armors in the loot table, it’s usually very hard to find multiple copies of the same item. When I finally find an item I would like to enchant (for it’s appearance or it’s just my weapon of choice), it can take me about 10 attempts to make that item plagued. I have plenty of gold nowhere else to spend it I will pay for it, if you will let me.
Equipment blueprints. It would be nice to have every single item in the game craftable. There are blueprints, which you can buy from vendors, farm resources and craft them immediately, then there are items locked behind recipes with ultra-low drop rate. Even after 300 hours in game I own only 1/3 of the craftable weapons and armors? And maybe there are items which you can’t craft at all. I do not know. Would it make sense to buy whatever recipe players like from a vendor directly?
The merchant’s merchandise could be changed more frequently than once per day.
Transmogrifications within the same armor/weapon class? Hello it’s me - Cerim. Senior Fashion specialist.
But overall I very much enjoyed every single minute playing No Rest For the Wicked. I can’t wait to see next zones and the storyline. You did a fantastic job. My very positive steam review is well deserved. So Thank you very much <3
After the patch, I was actually surprised by the new affixes.
It seems they were more understandable and useful on the early access release. Although I could have already forgotten and messed up. But nevertheless.
I don’t understand why all these temporary boosts after performing complex actions?
That’s how they once laughed at Diablo 4 - 3% for a 1% chance to get a 5% chance at dawn, standing with your back to the left side to get the opportunity not to trip.
Of course, this is not the case here, but still, 80% of affixes are simply ignored by me personally.
I’d rather take a permanent 15% to damage than a temporary and difficult to achieve 30%. And this mostly doesn’t work in boss fights.
And my main goal in the game is to beat bosses. Simple mobs are just a small, insignificant obstacle.
Agree with all. And I would like to add one more thing.
Weapon Base Attack problem
Weapons have different base attack value. Thats normaly absolutly ok, cause its tied with the weapon speed for normal and charged attacks. However this system breaks appart when runes come into play. For example you have twohanded weapon with huge base attack and its really slow. You add focus or stamina rune and than the animation of that rune attack is much more faster than any other normal attack of that weapon(On slower weapons that animation is bit slower, but not as much to balance the damage difference). So you end up running around with high base attack weapon and spamming stamina kick qutie fast with huge damage.
Main problem in my opinion is that rune damage scales from base attack.
Solution for this could be 2 damage numbers on weapons. One for normal attack and another for rune attacks. both balanced accordingly. I found it wierd that some high base twohand weapon would out damage some dedicated caster weapon with rune spamming.
I don’t understand why people are so fixated on getting these plagues gear when masterworks item can be just as good, if not better in some cases.
The optimal plague gear has 3 useful affixes since 2 gets cancelled out in the form of Indestructible and Unrepairable. And with the gem you get 4. If you have the right gems, you can make a an excellent set.
Backstab affixes are dead on water, as are fatality ones.
I haven’t been able to get a backstab on my staff wielding character in ages, and since enemies patrol faster than you move while sneaking, while often being in groups, backstabs feel very niche to certain melee weapons.
Same for fatality. Why would I want focus or health on fatality when I can get it on a regular kill that doesn’t require a rune attack landing a killing blow to give the benefit?
hmm, i am backstabing bosses all the time, combo with stagger increase dmg + stagger decreased threshold and the bosses melt. I will keep my stabby stabby enchants
Choice and variety. Why have purple items if they are the same as blue ones, because 2 affixes are taken by default?
Trivially blue weapons can have Attack Speed increased by 3%-10% based on Durability
Whereas purple Attack Speed increased by 7%-15% based on Durability
Basically, you only need to take “based on Durability” and that’s it. What else?
Yes, take the white thing, 4 stones, it won’t be bad, but still lower in percentage
Take Indestructible and Unrepairable, and other affixes are not needed because they are temporary and hard to achieve. And in boss fights they are useless.
Simply just because there are certain affixes you can’t get anywhere else.
EDIT: Plagued items has 5 affixes and 1 negative, Indestructible/Unrepairable combo leaves you with 4 of them, not 3.
And also after obtaining Ring of Determination you are skipping Unrepairable negative for “Lose focus when hit, Stamina dodge increase, parry disabled, etc” for example, since you are paying rune costs with your health, you don’t need to dodge because you are simply unkillable at this point. Lifesteal meta.
An optimized plagued item will always be Indestructible/Unrepairable.
You’re talking some none sense with there with RoD. If your playstyle consists of eating food and spamming spells with RoD as if it won’t get nerfed soon, then so be it. That’s just garbage gameplay, but to each their own.
A optimized plagued item will always have 4 useful affixes, same as masterworks. The only items that matter are weapons if you’re going for an elemental infusion. In every other case a properly slotted masterworks is on par with optimized plagued gear if not better.
