I wish Median and its community the very best, I love this mod - been playing it since 2009 or so, and with Sigma 3 on the horizon I've decided to finally make this thread. The main goal of it is to list some (arguably stupid and/or crazy) ideas that I had over the years, some concepts, some redesign propositions and so forth. Needless to say, by definition, I am subjective and biased about things - just like everyone else. Feel free to leave feedback and constructive criticism.
My main stances on game design
» The more variety to builds there is in the game, the better
» The more customization possibilities of your character there is in the game, the better
» Sometimes it's true that "less is more", but only sometimes
» If an item has seen near-zero use in over a year, it should be buffed / reworked / removed to make space for something better & more interesting. Same for skills and character skill trees
» I prefer buffs to many weak/underused things over nerfs to a few strong/overused ones
► On the subject of Game Balance
On the subject of game Balance
Now on the hard subject since people love throwing the word "Balance" around
» Balance in PvE games is.. not very important. Yes, I said it. It's relevant in extreme cases such as when a build outshines all alternatives in its category by a mile - and it feels pointless to play anything other than that version of the build. But even that seemingly justified feeling is a purely psychological thing, we do it to ourselves. We spend a lot of time minmaxing a build, then look at someone elses minmaxed build, see that it kills a big boss 69 seconds faster, an emotional crybaby wakes up in us and goads us to go tell developers their game sucks, spam sarcastic "nice balance" comments and ask them "next patch when"
Or - which is true for many people - they just jump the ship and copycat the more powerful build. And that's how metas are formed btw. People flock to what was proven by top players to be working in endgame. It's all purely psychological. Very often we cannot force ourselves to play and experiment with something less powerful knowing something more powerful exists. Ignorance can indeed be a bliss.
» Games are not about balance. They are about people willing to play them. To challenge themselves, to enjoy their time and to have fun. It's about exploration and experimentation, about the journey. Not about developers trying to numerically match all existing builds for your crybabys' sake in their attempt to tame this mythical beast called "perfect balance".
In fact, if you were to somehow achieve "perfect balance", you've failed as a developer. Yes. Because at this point it's like as if all food tasted the same. It still takes different amount of time and effort to cook different foods, but if they all taste the same you just pick the easiest one to make and never try anything else. Because why would you? It would be the very same thing just with extra effort.
For me, the actual meaning of "good balance" is when meta is diverse, when it's hard to "solve" it quickly, when builds are diverse, when they have strong and weak sides to them. Pros and cons. So that you have reasons to play different types of archers, different types of summoners, of tanks and so on. When you as a player are given many reasons to try many things, the more the better.
Edit for those who understands: Speaking of solved metas, if you see Tofu running around claiming that he reached nirvana, knows everything there is to know - and telling people left and right what works and what doesn't, it's a good time for a patch, it's a good time to shake up the meta. To shake it up hard.
Crafting
I love crafting, I genuinely adore making my own items. In Median I've always preferred custom-made rares/honorifics over preset uniques - if they fit my current build and are competitive with SU alternatives. Correspondingly, I prefer oskill builds over the "normal" ones. There is a big similarity between orthodox skill-tree-based builds and children's coloring books: they already have outlines prepared for you - you just fill in the colors.
I always gravitate towards doing my own thing, straying away from the path of "intended" play. In fact, I often try to isolate myself from reading any balance feedback on the latest patches because I want to explore stuff by myself, without anyone telling me, "Oh hey that thing you're doing, it's not any good right now". I'm fine with trying and failing.
By extension, I don't like playing meta builds because I don't want to be yet another clone in the legion of people doing the same thing. And generally speaking: the more established, solved and rigid the meta is, the faster the new season and hype for the new patch die down.
Which brings us to the cornerstone of long-term success for any serious ARPG out there:
Variety and Customization
The more of those there is in a game, the more I enjoy playing it - and the more I want to explore new things. And I believe that is objectively true for most people. One of the biggest parts of customization in ARPGs is, well, crafting of course. Crafting in Median has 3 parts to it:
» Shrinecrafting system - allows creation of custom rares, it is very random, but shrines are plentiful and thus you get many-many tries bruteforcing the mods you're looking for
» Mystic Orb system, which btw I see as one of the best systems ever made in any game - it allows you to take a unique that you've been leveling with and prolong its life by 30-60 levels, maybe even push it into endgame. That system allows you to add pricesely the mods that benefit your build the most, that fix your breakpoints, resists etc
» Luck / Lottery / Corruption system - that one is minor compared to the other two, it's random-based, but there are some huge potential highrolls associated with it
► Shrinecrafting
Shrinecrafting
Well, how does it work atm?
It is essentially Chaos orbing from PoE that rolls 4 random mods + 1 guaranteed mod from shrine itself. We take a rare base and reroll it again and again until we hit a combination of mods we like. If we're looking for a particular oskill, we just reroll until we hit it.
Once the combination of mods suits us, we use that item / stash it and procede to craft on new bases trying to do better than our previous best. And that's pretty much it - there's no real skill to shrinecrafting, the only arguably skillful thing you can do is train your eyes to indentify the desired mods - so you can reroll faster.
I would like the process of shrinecrafting to be more deterministic, to remove a considerable chunk of RNG from it. Also, as someone who plays PoE since 2012, I'm used to rares being a much, much bigger part of the game. In Median I would want rares to be more competitive with unique items. Mind you, I don't want them to overshadow uniques, but definitely to be better than they currently are. If overshadowing requires 10 abstract steps, I'm only proposing doing 2-3 in that direction.
Proposed updates to shrinecrafting
» We remove all oskills from the pool of things normal shrines can roll
» We create a new special oskill Shrine - instead of rerolling a crafted item, it adds a random oskill to it (or rerolls the existing oskill if item already has one)
» At this point the droprate of normal shrines can be reduced, since you wouldn't need such enormous amounts of them anymore
By separating oskills into their own crafting category, shrinecrafting would no longer be about mindlessly rerolling an item from one oskill appearance to the next. Every reroll becomes an actual roll to consider.
Also, this way we go from 5 mod crafted rares to 6 mod ones with the ability to (eventually) hand-pick an oskill of our choice. It can be a build-defining skill, a generic damage buff or something providing extra utility that people can add to their builds.
The biggest questions here is, how hard would it be to implement all that - and how hard would it be to keep the item-type oskill restrictions on top of it.
► Lotteries, HP squish and why 2 is a weak number
Lotteries, HP squish and why 2 is a weak number
Humans are peculiar creatures, we are often obsessed with round numbers, numbers that come from events in world history, urban myths and legends, our culture, and those "special" numbers that mean something to us personally. Edit: Oh, and numbers that come from memes, of course
Numbers heavily influence our life and we often make decisions based on minor numerical differences.
When HP squish happened about 2.5 years ago, all HP numbers were reduced by 60%. Numbers on items, charms and so on, everything was cut down proportionally. But I feel like that was kinda lazy approach, some things should have been addressed on a case-by-case basis, depending on how overused or underused they are.
» Example: Not many people were doing armor lottery at the time, trying to nail that 1/33 gamble to get 5% max life. HP squish reduced that bonus to 2% max life and nowadays you don't really see anyone doing it. Most lotteried items are just random finds from Scos boxes.
» Example #2: Yshari Trophy (that has already been buffed back since then) went from 5% to 2% Max Life for a time. It's the only trophy in the game that sometimes rivals Laz Trophy in value, because it takes a lot of time and effort to get. 2% from it felt like an insult.
» Example #3: Dementia is a good endgame belt, but 2% Life on it feels like one of those mods you see on items with a bunch of jewels socketed in them - minor and almost irrelevant
2 in general as a number sounds and looks weak, measly. In 1.8 I've spent half a season lotterying pieces from Psionic set. I don't feel like doing any projects like that nowadays for 2%.
Propositions:
» Lottery chance 3% -> 5% for all item types to increase the lost incentive of doing it manually and make the idea of season-long projects of acquiring a perfect lotteried set of items more appealing. Armor lottery 2% -> 3% Max Life
» %Life on some endgame items increased to be more meaningful, Dementia for instance can have a 3-5% roll on it - despite it already being a powerful item. It wouldn't be the end of the world
» Plunderbird can have 5% on it without rolls, that item is already a huge gamble with its other mods
» Luminescence can have 10% easily as a 2-hander. Although who cares about spearzon omegalol... Kappa. I care
» Books of Kalan (lvl 130 Void Charm) currently gives 25 flat life and 50 flat mana after HP and Mana squish cuts happened to it. Don't even ask what I think about that xD
» Demonstone Blood can have a 1-2 or even a 2-3% roll on it, otherwise it will never be used by anyone, including that one guy who'd come up with the fringiest use example just to prove me wrong
And so on and so forth for some other items.
Mystic Orbs and Effigies
► Freedom of Choice - Effigy
Intended primarily for oskill-centered builds to open up more gearing options. But can be very powerful for all builds that scale well with skill levels.
» Some big hits:
+10-11 to Druid/Necro/Soso Skill Levels on staves
up to +15 on Black Ice
up to +8 on Dead Lake's Lady
up to +10 on Bone Scalpel
up to +12 on Fleshstinger
up to +12 on Witch Drum
up to +12 on Elemental Disciple
» 25 to level required might be an overkill for most items and actually not enough for some extreme cases like Elemental Disciple. Ideally it should be "+4 Required Level for each skill level transformed" or something like that. This way it would autobalance itself in a way.
But, from what I know about the transformation effigies, they take immense amount of cube recipe coding already even without such dynamic features.
» Another point I want to make about those 3 extreme cases - those items see no play whatsoever. When a reason to use such an item emerges, I say "good", that's a win in my book - even if the emerged application of the item is above the curve in terms of power level. Would be nice seeing people actually trading and actively hunting highrolled versions of those items.
Corruptions
For now the only thing I'm gonna mention here is making troll mods unrollable on items that do not benefit from those mods in any way (like reduced %requirements on jewelry). And I know, if it was easy to do, that would have been done already. But I'm mentioning it anyway just to create a fake impression that this thread segment is not empty :weirdchamp:
Mastercrafted Items
► 1. Artisans Gloves
• Oskill player's dream. Being one myself, I would be all over those gloves
• Immense Shrine sink - it's not easy to get what you want, especially considering roll ranges
• There's a million ways to make this pair of gloves stronger if you think it's too weak and a couple ways to make it weaker if you think it's too strong. Or a balance of both
• Examples to make it stronger:
○ -(10 to 20) Required Level as an extra orange mod
○ Less non-oskill mods in the pool
○ Always rolls 3 suffixes and 1 prefix
○ Tendency to roll multiple oskills at once
○ Doubled MO effectiveness
• Examples to make it weaker:
○ Only drops in Labs / High Labs / from specific strong bosses
○ Only rolls armor-pool-specific oskills (weapon-specific oskills excluded, another item could be made for those - a Craftsman's Hammer of some sorts)
○ Only has 2-3 suffixes and no prefixes
○ +(10 to 20) Required Level as an extra orange mod
• Alternative names: Smithing Gloves / Griswold's Gloves (would need a smithy looking art for that); Artisan's Trial; or simply Artisans - since that's what people realistically would refer to them as
► 2. Vampires Fangs
• IED throwing knife that has some Life on Striking scaling attached to it. Original idea by magz
• Splitting the attribute scaling is what made this concept interesting for me. It felt like basing both on Dex would be too much of a powerhouse and would require the nukening of LoS mod numbers
• Split scaling gives the player additional reason to loose some damage and move more points from Dex to Vita vs dangerous bosses
• Optional: innate damage could be Magic instead - to synergize with Doom instead of the Cold Way
• A more restrictive version, forcing you to put a lot of base points into Vita to gain access to the IED and MR from Anathema
• Personally I prefer the first version, it's cleaner and leaves you more freedom in attribute allocation + gives you a reason to stack %all attribute mods instead of pure dex ones. LoS scaling can always be adjusted if it turns out too stronk
► 3. Scorching Girdle
• Aura grants elemental thorns to you and your minions that deals fire damage. Could have some base damage to add another balancing factor
• Intended mainly for Summoner Paladin and Unsummonzon, very synergetic with their kits. To a lesser extent usable on summoner Necro, can spec into Jinns for fire pierce on minions
• Belt slot chosen because summoners usually go for a crafted belt, it's neutral and doesn't compete for a gear slot with stuff like Redeemer, Vision of the Furies or Dux Infernum
• Would help with clearspeed, might be okay vs some bosses. Numbers are arguably on the low side, currently ~2.5-3k fire thorns is realistic when you take fire pierce of Fire Eles and Servants of Valor into account
• Auras in D2 have very buggy behavior, devs avoid using them unless absolutely necessary. I'm listing this belt concept either way in case those technical issues get resolved one day
Unique Items and special mods
«Let's not kid ourselves, ARPGs in a nutshell are just Barbie doll dress-up games for grown men» © me
I love top-down designs. Top-down design is when you start with an overall concept, some defining idea - and work your way down, eventually filling in the details. Something as simple as a clever item name can be a catalyst for a top-down design. Those are much more interesting to both make and build around than endgame statsticks. Statsticks simply increase your numbers, endgame statsticks increase your numbers by a lot - that is their purpose. I don't mind them, in fact I think their existence is absolutely mandatory in RPGs, but you won't see me designing many of those. I prefer making items that either actively modify what you do and how you do it - or make you puzzle over how to build a character around this thing :hmm:
Or last - but not least - items that are just fun to use, with potential to create some memorable, hilarious gameplay experiences.
Needless to say, the numbers on the items are provisional and are up for debate.
► 1. Last Resort - SSU Short War Bow
Core concept: Bow with On Melee Attack proc for newly reworked Queen of Blades shenanigans
» Originated as a meme concept during 2.9 beta, but it can be totally viable depending on the procs you put on it and QoB cd numbers
» Orange mod is a disguised "You may Only use Melee, Summon and Support Skills", reworded for flavor reasons. Thus, you cannot shoot arrows / use ranged skills with this bow
» I don't think we have any melee attack oskills that are usable with bows, such a skill would be a good fit for this
» Life leech was originally Life on Melee Attack, but sadly it turned out to not work with QoB
» QoB cd reduction number can be slightly higher, but need to be careful with it - currently Assas can get their QoB cd to 0.8s I believe, -0.4 from the mod would result in 0.4s cd = 2.5 attacks per second. -0.5 would result in 3.333 attacks per second, -0.6 would result in 5
► 2. End of Trust - SSSU Mask
Core concept: That thing that is usually not allowed
» Hostility only works on Hell - to avoid people griefing others during leveling on Normal and Nightmare. Morph still works there - so you can be a friendly Phoboss helping people.
» Arguably, hostility should only work in labs... Arguably, it should not even be on the item Sure, you could remove it and turn the Mask into a pure Phoboss Cosplay PvE item. But it's just too much potential fun.
» Imagine putting it on mid lab run, trying to gank your friends and failing miserably, randomly dying to their ability spam. That's what I mean by memorable gameplay experiences. If that's not fun, then I don't know what fun is
» Phoboss morph attack frames should be pretty terrible - about 12 frames, so 2 attacks per second.
» Phoboss Arena (ongoing novas of Ice Bolts with a safe zone in the middle) from the item should only last for ~3 seconds - unlike the actual skill Phoboss uses. The duration and 17% proc chance on Arena is balanced around 2 attacks per second - you have to be attacking constantly to keep it up most of the time.
» Phoboss Spiral does huge damage, but has a low proc chance. At 2 attacks / second and 3% to proc you need to be attacking continuesly for 15-16 seconds to proc once. Can be brought up to ~4-5% for consistency at the cost of damage.
» You do inherit the iconic Phoboss Aura while morphed as a hidden mod (aura gives max cold res reduction to enemies, -20 enemy max block, -60 dodge (only dodge, not avoid or evade), +15s to their teleport cds). Without the hostility feature on the Mask the aura would loose some of its flavor, but it would still be super nice vs things like Necrobots and bosses that teleport a lot.
» Hostility turns on when you equip the mask (or join the game while wearing it), notifying other players via the usual "hostile" sound from vanilla. To turn it off you need to unequip the mask and rejoin the game.
» Hostility probably shouldn't work on Hardcore... probably
► 3. Fangless Count - SSU Chain Gloves
Core concept: Item that "transforms" a life sustain mechanic that doesn't work for elemental-based attackers into one that works for them.
» With the removal of old Solitudes life sustain of IED (and flat elemental) characters went from over 9000 to pretty low. Melee toons can at least stack Life on Melee Attack, while ranged ones currently have to rely mainly on the regen abilities from their skill trees.
» This pair of gloves has no defense partially as a joke. Kudos to you if you can figure it out )
► 4. Paradoxica - SSU Scimitar
Core concept: IED weapon that forces you to build IED character in an unorthodox way.
» For all "normal" IED characters you stack one stat as high as possible. With this sword you'd want one of your stats to be as low as possible while keeping the other 3 more or less on the same level.
» You need to increase the gap between your 2 lowest attributes if you want more damage. Essentially it means you have to raise all 3 of your higher attributes without affecting the 4th one.
» Paradoxica is a sword in PoE. Don't really like the sword, but love the name.
► 5. Equilibrium - a mod-enabling mechanic
» I'm using Auriel's Robe just as a model to showcase the Equilibrium mod. Auriel itself needs some kind of rework either way, whatever it might be. I don't care for this version at all, just using it as an example.
» Greyed out mods only work while the condition of all your attributes being equal is met. This condition can actually be pretty harsh for some characters, would require you to constantly keep track and rebalance your attributes while changing gear and charms.
» Another cost of using items with this mod is being forced to put stat points into attributes that you don't really want. Putting all extra points into vita is not an option.
» Due to this condition, you can make the greyed-out mods pretty powerful
» There can be some small leeway to it - let's say 5 points - to cover for the rounding and make it slightly easier to pick stuff like Fool's Gold
Fool's Gold
Moo moo moo Moooo! Moo!
Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(0 to 38) to Strength
+(0 to 38) to Dexterity
+(0 to 38) to Vitality
+(0 to 38) to Energy
(11 to 15)% Bonus to Defense
-10% Gold Find
(16 to 20)% Magic Find
andCold Fusion Schematics
Cold Fusion Schematics
Required Level: 125
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
1% Chance to cast level 10 Time Strike on Striking
+(11 to 30) to Strength
+(11 to 30) to Dexterity
+(11 to 30) to Vitality
+(11 to 30) to Energy
for your character
» Personally, I don't find this mechanic too interesting or pleasurable to build around. But I had it as an idea and, well, here it is as a concept )
My previous thread with custom unique items (might rework Divinity at a later date since I was pretty clueless about Ice Lances current state when I designed an item for it)
► Meme items
Memes
» Flav's iconic weapon. He smacks you with it a couple of times and then bans you for posting gifs
» If you die in one of those boss arenas while wearing this, a wild Ben- appears laughing and diagnoses you with "skill issues"
» Runewordmaster works same as Runemaster, but scales with the number of runewords you're wearing. Also boosts chance to find runes by 33%
Updates to existing Skills
► Resurrect
Resurrect
Problems:
» One of the weakest "ultimate" skills in the game. As someone who experimented with a bunch of reanimates over the years (+new Pandemonium season ones on a well-geared summoner), I must say there are almost no reanimates that do much. You could argue that it's a beastiary problem that can solve itself over time as new monsters are added and old ones are rebalanced. But even so, this skill is more of a meme than an ultimate in its current state.
» From my experience, there is only 1 reanimate in the game that survives in endgame labs - Corpulents (elite version ideally from Lord of Lies domain). Simply because they have built-in regen. All other reanimates will die to the first Corrupted hero you meet in labs. Corrupted Barb / Assa / Goat will just evaporate them. And those who miraculously survive will be at low HP and won't last much longer in that lab.
» After your reanimates die in labs / other lockdown areas, there's no way to resummon them. You'd need to leave the area and go on yet another pilgrimage to find the monsters you want
» Thematic problem - as a Paladin you get locked into picking Resurrect by putting points into Nephalem tree, which is dedicated to close-range physical/magic spell damage playstyle. It has nothing minion-related in it practically or thematically
Proposed changes:
» +3% HP regen per second for Reanimates as a built-in feature of the skill
» Number of reanimates starts at 3 and increases by 1 every 5 base levels - for a total of 6 max on Pala. Other classes that acquire Resurrect via relic or by other means are still capped at 3 (but they do get the passive regen)
» Increased phys and spell damage numbers
» (Highly experimental, likely uncodeable) + 2 secondary skills:
» skill #1 targets corpses to "snapshot" that monster type
» skill #2 creates corpses on the ground of the snapshotted type. Snapshot is bound to your character save file and thus stays in-between gaming sessions - kinda like your iron golem and merc do
You know that huge update Summoners got in PoE 3-4 years ago? Spectres (≈ Resurrects) stay after you relog into the game. + there's a skill that creates corpses on the ground for you to resurrect - and your chosen spectre type will be among those corpses.
Would be nice to have at least a small fraction of that functionality for Ressurect. I still Remember Body of the Savior oskill from 1.8 that summoned a corpse of Akarat (technically it summoned Akarat and then brutally killed him for you to resurrect)
Other thoughts:
» Maybe make Resurrect a normal skill and move it to the bottom of the Aspects tab so that summoner skills are together. + Make a different ultimate for Neutraldin that synergizes with Vessels and Absolution.
► Faerie Fire
Faerie Fire
Problems:
» Outclassed by 2 other Druid ultimate abilities - Survival Instinct is the skill of choice for most casters, while physical builds usually go for Vine Companion because of the physical pierce (+ %max life aura synergizes very well with all that flat life you gain from Barkskin)
» Faerie Fire only gets used for the passive avoid chance, not for the actual trail you leave on the ground
Proposed changes:
» Improve Faerie Fire so that there are more reasons to build and play around the Spark Trail itself
» Increase the AoE of the Spark Trail by ~150-200%. Current AoE is so small enemies need to be literally on top of you to get hit by it. More so, in most situations enemies can hit you in melee without actually entering that AoE. That can also happen when you yourself approach an enemy - your melee swings will outrange the trail's AoE unless you literally hug them
» Make Spark Trail duration slightly scaleable via some means - skill levels / points into other skills / character levels / stamina (to synergize with Dudus Blood of Creation) / whatever else. Maybe add a small stamina / MS buff to it as well
Gameplay applications:
» You can kill bosses by running circles around them. Gimmicky, yes, but that's basically a build of its own that players can go for
» AoE increase would actually make the damage of the trail a thing to consider for melee attackers. Damage contribution ofc depends on the numbers
» If we were to see a return / rise of on-striking procs (which I personally would love), one could make a proc-based build around Faerie Fire. Current AoE and duration simply wouldn't cut it
New oskills
► 1. Reverberating Effigy
Reverberating Effigy - Create an effigy that sends out a shockwave when you strike it
Core concept: skill that creates an enemy with "when struck" proc attached to it
» Effigy is basically a target dummy reskin - it has immense HP pool and regen - you can hit it as much as you want without killing it
» Effigy has 100% Chance to Cast lvl x Shockwave when struck, that proc has ~3 second base cooldown time that goes down with skill levels
» Despite it being "hostile", ideally it should teleport with you (if that's possible)
» Only 1 Reverberating Effigy can be out at a time
Application #1: I always wanted an option to make bouncing (chaining) skills at least semi-viable versus bosses. Many bosses are alone in their arenas, there's nothing to bounce to and using those skills is generally pointless. Effigy is meant to fix that - or at least try.
» Being able to create an additional "enemy" at will would give potential to skills like Parasite - projectiles would bounce between the boss and effigy and the damage would scale with the number of bounces divided by 2.
» As a Parasite-using character, you can just summon and attack the Effigy instead of chasing the boss around - as long as they are close enough to each other.
Application #2: Min-maxing the shockwaves to make it into a reliable clearing skill. By stacking +All Skills on your gear you can reduce the cooldown between shockwave procs and increase their damage. You can take a build that has good single target damage but bad clear and integrate the Effigy into it to speed up farming.
» Process of proccing Shockwaves can be semi-automated by using skills like Queen of Blades and other recurring weapon-based effects.
This oskill has infinite amount of things that can be changed about it. At the baseline I wanted to design something that empowers bouncy skills, that's the core of the idea. Instead of damaging novas, Effigy could:
◦ Curse nearby enemies with -pdr or some other debuff when struck
◦ Have some permanent debuffing aura of that sort - or an aura buffing you
◦ Can actually be made killable (no regen) - with some value scaling higher as the HP of the effigy is getting lower (i.e. strength of that aura ^)
◦ Can deal damage to enemies in radius based on some % of damage it takes (probably uncodeable, think Spectre's passive from Dota)
► 2. Recoil
Recoil - Release a lightning bolt that jumps between enemies, but can also jump back to YOU
Core concept: skill that sends out a lightning bolt from your character to the nearest enemy that starts ricocheting between units. Skill treats you as a legal target for the bounces, and it WILL damage you if it jumps to you. You gain X% lightning absorb for 2 seconds after casting Recoil.
» Number of bounces scales with skill level. Meant to reach 30ish bounces with very high investment. Bounce range: ~1/3 of the screen.
» Starts at 10% Lightning absorb, increases with skill levels up to 25% - temporary buff to mitigate the damage you receive from bolts bouncing off you.
» Griffon's Eye would be a BiS helmet for this skill since you aim to raise your lightning absorb to the 40% absorb cap - to become almost immune to Recoil's self-damage.
» This skill is meant to have a decent (mid tier 2-ish) clear when min-maxed. It would shine vs singular bosses with lightning chaining between you and the boss - as long as you can stay close and tank the recoiling damage.
» You cannot realistically use minions or Merc while playing a Recoil build because they would eat up the bounces and die all the time. Unless there's a way to exclude them from the "legal bounce target" list without excluding you.
Optional: Fires extra 1/2 bolts at extra targets in range after reaching certain skill level breakpoints (or from relic/unique orange mod). Shouldn't do anything for bossing, but would improve the clearspeed.
► 3. Orb of Eradication
Orb of Eradication - Creates a stationary orb that zaps nearby enemies
Core concept: concentrated version of Orb of Annihilation intended for single-target
» Damage of OoE is based on damage of your OoA (similarly to how damage of Askari Lightning is based on damage of Stormcall). % damage ratio scales with skill levels.
» Unlike OoA, OoE only damages enemies that are on top of it / right next to it. Has higher zap frequency than OoA.
» Has similar enormous mana cost. Probably can even cost 9000 mana like the pre-mana-squish OoA. In that case %damage scaling can be set really high.
» Optional: disables OoA for the duration - just an idea. Most likely not necessary because both skills are superlimited by your manapool in their usage.
» If someone can come up with a synonym for Annihilation that starts with B and has similarly powerful sound to it, let me know. Originally I wanted it to be OoA and OoB... You get the joke )
► 4. Sacrificial Altar
This is one of my ideas from years ago. While writing this I realized that Sacrifices were recoded since then, tested it and learned that current version doesn't proc on-deathblow effects / Life on Kill / Reanimates. This design is based on the old version of Sacrifices that did proc those.Sacrificial Altar - Create an invulnerable altar. While near the altar your Sacrifices cooldown is zero but casting them costs you x% of max life
Core concept: oskill that creates its own on-Deathblow playstyle. You can spam Sacrifices to your heart's content while standing near the altar. You need large amounts of Life on Kill to balance out the health cost.
» Sacrifices is a skill available on Gallowlaugh
Gallowlaugh
Amulet
Required Level: 110
Item Level: 110
+1 to All Skills
+50% Bonus to Poison Skill Duration
-(20 to 30)% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+1 to Sacrifices
Poison Length Reduced by 50%
,Armor of the Old Religion
Armor of the Old Religion
Ceremonial Armor (Sacred)
Defense: (8437 - 9306) to (10452 - 11529)
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 722
Item Level: 105
+(4 to 5) to Sorceress Skill Levels
+200 Spell Focus
50% Hit Recovery
+(35 to 50)% to Fire Spell Damage
+(35 to 50)% to Lightning Spell Damage
+(35 to 50)% to Cold Spell Damage
+(9 to 12) to Sacrifices
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
Elemental Resists +25%
10% Chance to Avoid Damage
+(101 to 150) Life after each Kill
Socketed (6)
+ it can be gained from the relic. Necromancers have it on their skill tree.
» Build would incentivize you to:
- use items like Black Hand Sigil
Black Hand Sigil
Ring
Required Level: 100
Item Level: 120
4% Chance to cast level 50 Shuriken Flurry on Death Blow
4% Chance to cast level 50 Drakemaw on Death Blow
4% Chance to cast level 50 Doom on Death Blow
Elemental Resists -25%
&Eternal Vigil
Eternal Vigil
War Sword (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 46 to 50
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 1162
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 53 Glacial Nova on Death Blow
4% Chance to cast level 53 Supernova on Death Blow
+(3 to 4) to All Skills
+200 Spell Focus
+(31 to 40)% to Spell Damage
-(28 to 35)% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
+(200 to 250) to Mana
Requirements +100%
Socketed (3)
to trigger their procs while spamming Sacrifices
- use items with X% Reanimate as: Random Monster
- stack as much Life on Kill as you can, eventually overpowering the health cost to get all the extra LoK above that as healing
» You can probably aim to somewhat limit your max life gains from gear and passives (within reason) to reduce the health cost thus turning more of LoK into actual healing
QoL things
Vessel for Signets of Learning + syphon functionality for them
- Greater Signet of Learning + Oil of Craft -> Vessel
- Right-clicking the vessel syphons all singular, Large and Greater Signets of Learning from your inventory, cube and stash.
- Vessel probably shouldn't syphon Custom signets of learning to reduce the number of cube recipes needed.
- Cubing the vessel by itself takes out a Greater Signet (x25) if vessel has enough signets in it. If not, it takes out a Large Signet (x5) if vessel has enough signets in it. If not, it takes out a singular Signet of Learning.
Increased maximum gold carried and stashed gold cap at higher levels
- Although it can be argued that current gold caps contribute to the realm economy - making people trade for gold from time to time - those trades are still pretty rare (mostly related to Scosglen charm completion) and their influence is minimal.
- Stashed Gold cap could be rebalanced to keep scaling up until the max character level - to something like 3.5 mil (compared to 2.5 mil cap we currently have)
- Carried Gold cap scaling could be slightly increased (to reach ~2.5 mil carried at level 150) - to decrease the frequency at which you need to stash/spend it (currently you have to do it after every ~3 lab runs / 2 Fauzt clears)
Big Boss Portals
- It would be nice to get a permanent red portal to Deimoss's Antechamber once you reach it at the end of lab 10. Such portals would be a nice standard for all endgame bosses that future holds for us.
Gamble filter reset button
- A secondary button near the filter one to clear all the selections. Very minor and super low priority, but I saw someone ask for it on Discord and decided to write it down
To-do list
» Shrinecrafting and rares in general - updates to the pool of mods
» UMOs and effigies
» Some redesigns for the existing unique items
» Thoughts on how to prolong season longevity so that they don't die as fast
» Special Orbs from Endgame Bosses
» More custom uniques, oskills and QoL ideas
» Better formatting for better readability
This thread is going to be updated over time, I will be adding more things to it when I can