I don’t like the concept of plague items at all. The implementation is terrible as it forces a binary situation where you can either spend a ton of currency to get a godly endgame item without any real downside… or don’t use them at all.
Most of the penalties are REALLY harsh. They are not worth the extra affix at all. They don’t even spawn with all affixes rolled. Therefore, plague items are for the most part ignorable.
Then late game arrives and suddenly you have option to ignore their downside completely and in which case you end up with just a power spike. This is not healthy at all.
I’d like to see the downsides to be made more manageable and all options to ignore them completely fixed. I also think they should roll with all affixes filled regardless of level.
Yeah, the kiss/curse balance for these is really not there yet, it’s way too negative for the upside outside rolling for health/focus drain or damage % on focus use ones.
The rest are all immense penalties.
And even the health/focus drain can be unmanageable if you’re not stacking lifesteal+regainable health and focus gain %’s from rings, gems, and affixes.
I got a 6 focus regen gem and it’s still quickly being overtaken in combat by the two focus drain while in combat negatives, if I didn’t have significant focus gain boosts via band of calmness and affixes, I’d have a pretty hard time casting any non-50 focus cost rune.
My friend farms for Indestructible items, then rolls Unrepairable on them. I roll Drains Health in Combat, but infuse a skull gem for regen to counter it.
If you are min/maxing items in their current state you are essentially paying either a gem slot or an item facet for another enchantment, but the enchantments by themselves are not always worth that tradeoff. Even if they are, which is true in some cases, you still spend more time getting the perfect combo to negate the plague drawback.
Honestly, I would like to see the plague drawbacks be a little more severe overall, maybe by adding logic that prevents you from negating them. That would require the benefit being improved as well. I’m not sure how to improve the benefits enough to outweigh the drawbacks, even in the current state.
I originally assumed that the enchantments on plagued items would just be stronger by default. For example, something that usually caps at 10% on a max enchant would be 15% max on plagued enchants. This would be a simple solution to having the built in drawbacks, and actually encourage the tradeoff. In the current state, where plagued enchants are identical to their normal counterparts, it’s better just not getting plagued items at all.
It used to be that in previous patches, but then that made everyone just use plagued, and they wanted to keep magic items as a relevant alternative, so here we are.
I would hate if they made the penalties more severe than they already are. I don’t want anything that turns the game into a binary “blow up enemies or get blown up yourself in seconds”.
Honestly, I’d like to see the kiss/cursed mechanism altogether go and just make a more interesting gear system with enchantments via focusing on gameplay changing affixes.
Stuff like making your lightning procs apply burning, or having fire burst on bar fill shout out a wave of fireballs from the enemy, stuff that actively expands or changes your movesets and spells, interesting fixed number procs, etc.
Something better and more visceral than “you deal % more damage but are significantly squishier”.
I personally have found Plagued downsides like getting a free extra enchant.
Pants: Heavy Roll - I use Blink to evade as mage, don’t care about heavy rolls.
Gloves: Parry Disabled - Don’t Parry as mage
Weapon/Helm/Body: Drain HP in Combat - Lifesteal with some Healing increase pretty much makes this not an issue
The key is simply choosing effects that do not cripple or affect your particular build and play style; same way how you pick plagued effects for the Pestilence debuffs.
If you run MasterWorked gear or slot Enchantment % gems, use the Max HP Reduction runes and play off Low HP Status, etc etc.
Just need to exercise some creativity instead of wanting the game to hand you every advantage with zero work on your part.
That’s basically what I’m talking about when I say the drawbacks and benefits should both be stronger. More severe drawbacks and a better set of bonuses would make Plagued items an actual tradeoff. Rather than just a choice between more enchants or more gems. In the current state, either you plague everything because you don’t care about the drawbacks, or you plague nothing because your build or playstyle doesn’t have room to compensate for the drawbacks, or you just don’t care about the enchants.
I would rather just use gems for stamina or focus gain than get an extra enchant. My gloves are masterwork because of the benefits of several gems being better on gloves, my pants can only have one stamina enchant so I don’t need 4 enchants on the pants, and the only plagued enchant worth anything is the chest one that gives hp regen in combat which counteracts the drawback that drains health in combat. I can just slot a skull for a better benefit in and out of combat but no drawback.
I don’t need 1 extra enchant on any of my gear since most of the enchants I want are limited to 1 of that type on an item anyways, and there is not enough benefit to bother counteracting the drawback. In the choice of an extra enchant or an unfettered gem, I choose a gem.
If the benefits were better, and the drawbacks were more severe, then I would have to choose. Right now it’s not a choice worth fighting over.
This is precisely what i am talking about. You never slot or use most of the plagued items, because if the downside is relevant to your character it is horrible, even build crushing.
As you progress through the game, you get one worthless cursed item after another. Then you finish the game and suddenly cursed items are just an extra free affix and you one shot the echo knight due to power creep…
The point is not that the negative affix needs to handicap you severely. The point is that the build-craft exercise involves you making the choice of which ones affect you the least. Just like choosing which beneficial enchants help your build the most. Being able to creatively streamline your setup is not a bad thing.
The idea is not that you MUST be punished, just that it CAN be punishing if you don’t build well. You employ mastery through your build-craft.
Also, you can use embers to re-roll plagued enchants early on too… not sure why you feel it needs to be build-crushing early on. As you play, your start learning what items have potential for your setup.
Its easy to put it on paper, but then you wont try it.
so i guess there never was a question about being able to manage it.
(correct me if i misinterpreted something!)
A lot of builds have at least one plagued item that is hugely beneficial. The ones that come to mind:
40% barrier gain
20% increased crit chance against burning enemies
40 stamina on stagger
20% lifesteal against bleeding enemies
etc.
Plagued items do share a lot of enchants with magical and at the same maximums, but they both have enchants that are unique to them that are worth while. To be fully stagger resistant you have to avoid the plagued items since it doesn’t appear on any. All the barrier generating enchants are non plagued. There is definitely more to plagued items than just an extra enchant.
