[Suggestion]Turn Charms into Mystic Orbs

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Dark Huntress
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First off, if you are unaware of the issues surrounding charms, marco wrote up a post about them.

With that out of the way, this is my attempt at a semi-elegant fix for the system thrown together in my spare time. It isn't perfect, but it isn't the current system (so it is probably an improvement).



The Core Idea

As the title suggests, the solution I have come up with is to turn the Uber Charms into glorified mystic orbs with the following modified properties (confirmed [edit]largely[/edit] possible by Quirinus in a brief discord question barrage).

1. Only one Uber Orb can be applied to an item
-Using the same Uber Orb rerolls the given stats
-Using a different Uber Orb removes the previous bonus and applies the new one
-Bonus is not doubled on Shrine Crafts/Honorific items

In the event that rerolling the stats from an Uber Orb would reroll the entire item as well (and it is decided that it would make perfect items too easy to acquire)
-Using an Uber Orb prevents further item modification (so find a perfect item, hit the lucky bonus, the get lucky with your uber roll... no problem)

2. Uber Orbs do not increase the required level of the item

3. Terror Difficulty can drop Slightly-Uber Orbs. Same deal, same mods at half values. (for if players are struggling, not strictly part of the plan, but nice for newer players)



Addressing the Problems with Charms

Dependency - Necessity
Not all charms are required anymore! You only have 9-10 usable gear slots, this means you can only have that many Uber Orbs in use at a time. Some people may even use the same orb 10 times further reducing the need for all charms.
This does however hinge on Orbs giving stats that aren't required to survive such as damage reduction or max res and as a result being seen as a requirement for use with all builds (resulting in a shift from needing all charms to 10 of one)

What build can beat all ubers?
if your build can beat all ubers, great. sell the orbs. But the only ubers you really need to be able to beat are the ones for the orbs you desire. Without the need for all charms, it allows for players to make characters dedicated to various orbs or sets of orbs or making a generalist farmer that isn't terribly fast in order to gear up more niche builds that take on the hardest content.

Item Stats
the sheer reduction in available stats means that item stats become more important again. Charms can fill out stats you are lacking, or provide stats that your gear would not otherwise enable.

Unwanted Skill Scaling
If you want +20 to all skills, it might be possible, but you'd be sacrificing all your other potential stats. At this point it is a high risk high reward option given you will not be able to portal cheese ubers anymore.

Unwanted Stat Values
Want to remove your strength and dex requirements from gear? go ahead, but you'll be sacrificing other useful stats.



Example Uber Orbs

Azmodan's Heart
Cube with a piece of Armour to add the following bonuses
All Resists +(11 to 20)%
All Stats +(20 to 30)
Increased Fire Damage +(15 to 20)%


Soul of Kabraxis
cube with an accessory to add the following bonuses
All Skills +(1 to 2)


Hammer of the Taan Judges
cube with a weapon to add the following bonuses
two handed weapons receive double the value

Indestructible
+(15 to 30) minimum damage
+(20 to 40) maximum damage
10% chance to open wounds



Other Considerations

It feels weird to have to say this, but not all ubers need to provide an uber orb?
some zones have a drop bias already, this can be expanded.
items built from uber bits
other cube recipes requiring swirlies from the uber kill
There are also weird bits like the LC1/2/Ennead/BRC that need to be addressed as they do not fit into this system well as of yet, if the challenges can become character specific flags it means that characters actually have to do their challenges (rather than just buying/muling the charms)

basically charms are dumb, they were in vanilla D2 and they are only slightly better in MXL, this is one way to expand the system, but there is a lot of design space to be explored.

+max skills of which there are now 7? on charms would need to either die in a fire (meaning more skill point distribution) or find a new place to live.
in a world where we now level to 125, +1 could be awarded for each level past 120. giving a total of +5.
Alternatively a number of ubers could give it through their recipes (as a character specific stat)

Some charms could continue to exist - get a class charm and buff it throughout the endgame) with +exp gain and +max levels
Edited by Threads 5 years.
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Zalll
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1. Only one Uber Orb can be applied to an item
-Using the same Uber Orb rerolls the given stats
-Using a different Uber Orb removes the previous bonus and applies the new one

This idea seems flawed, because iirc The cube can't just remove stats like that without creating a new item, which dont work because the output would need the same base rolls as the item you originally applied an uber orb to.
What about honorifics and crafted gear ?
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Quirinus
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I thought you wanted to put orbs on a base, like the witch charm. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work like you want it if you put it on wearable items (but someone with more experience could comfirm). It would reroll the item stats if you used a 2nd orb, and we dont want that.

Edit: ninjad
"but if it's simple it's not that hard" - Quirinus 2017
"small things like this are not a big deal" - Quirinus 2017
tranvanhieu
Grubber
310 | 2
Threads wrote:First off, if you are unaware of the issues surrounding charms, marco wrote up a post about them.

With that out of the way, this is my attempt at a semi-elegant fix for the system thrown together in my spare time. It isn't perfect, but it isn't the current system (so it is probably an improvement).



The Core Idea

As the title suggests, the solution I have come up with is to turn the Uber Charms into glorified mystic orbs with the following modified properties (confirmed already possible by Quirinus in a brief discord question barrage).

1. Only one Uber Orb can be applied to an item
-Using the same Uber Orb rerolls the given stats
-Using a different Uber Orb removes the previous bonus and applies the new one

2. Uber Orbs do not increase the required level of the item

3. Terror Difficulty can drop Slightly-Uber Orbs. Same deal, same mods at half values. (for if players are struggling, not strictly part of the plan, but nice for newer players)



.


So, two-handed characters will have 1 less Uber Orb?
And I am still confused how will this be an improvement.
Edited by tranvanhieu 5 years.
dimitrius154
Destroyer
6 | 3
It might be a better idea to turn those "uber" charms into current character bound(can't be transferred via stash) one time use(can't apply to a character more then once) consumables, that would add their stats directly to the char in question, like the resistance scroll one gets from Malah.


Would require code editing, of course.
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Anonymous:
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A. There is a suggestion topic already.
B. So basically every char can get two sets of charms. One in inventory, second on equipment. Or +20 skills. Imagine that for a char that can already do all ubers in T6 gears. A little of the balance, don't you think ?
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Crash
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the power balance would be silly overpowered in the way of casters, since most charms don't benefit WDM chars like giving high amounts of ED or anything. +skills, pierce charms, speed charms. lol
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Dark Huntress
12 | 0
Fixed honorifics/crafts.

If we can't reroll, worst case (and arguably best case) lower the roll variation and lock out further modification. That said, while you say you don't want to reroll the item stats, it wouldn't be so bad as you'd not only be rerolling the base item with orbs, but also be trying to reroll the orb stats, making the perfect item would still be incredibly difficult/slow rolling a crafted item would be even harder.

regarding two handers, if (in order to force diversity in uber orb usage) orbs were locked into certain slots (armor/accessory/weapons) it would be easy to give 2h weapons a buff.

A. the suggestion topic is days long and doesn't facilitate discussion of a single idea
B. wut? you only ever have one active set of charms, if you want to gear swap for other charms... thats fine?

threw in a charm that is balanced around WDM. the way charms are is not intended to be the way charms will be going forwards. In picking and choosing which orbs you use, they can be made incredibly specific.
Edited by Threads 5 years.
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Seekers
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And why is this an improvement over the current system exactly why?
Seems like a lot of work to fix something that isnt broken
If the problem is too many stats on charms, nerf the charms (this has already been done, btw).
If the problem is dependency, all +max charms are on easy/medium ubers, the only big charms ur missing if u skip hard content is Void and maybe Triune (note that triune is easy, but might be frustrating for some people)
All the other hard charms just give +skills.

The idea itself is cool, but it requires a rework of pretty much everything.

Besides, the idea of charms is a reward for beating the uber, your character get stronger for it.
With this system youd only do half the content. And if you do decide to do all anyways, well too bad theres a big part of them that wont actually award anything to you for beating it.
Threads
Dark Huntress
12 | 0
In the current system you get all charms on everyone and all they do is make you generically better. You get to drop all investment in STR/DEX and pump NRG(if building around spells) no need to invest in mana for attack builds, STR requirements are gone on DEX builds, the only build that needs to invest currently is a strength scaling attack based build that actually needs to hit something or wants max block (requiring STR for damage and DEX for AR/Block), reaching 10k life is easy and nobody will ever put a single point into VIT.
This system allows orbs to be made to enable/buff specific play-styles without giving the entire suite of bonuses to every character. If you want to remove your stat requirements, go nuts. If you want to get a lot of poison pen then change the gear you would otherwise use to enable a different SSU, that also works. The core idea behind the change is that you can't have everything.

Yes it is a lot of work, and yes steps have been taken to remove the dependency on charms, but it is still there, and as long as charms exist they way they do now, they will continue to be required for every build regardless of their actual value. Hell, a spell caster will use the Butchers Tooth because it takes a single slot in your inventory and gives +10 all attributes even if the rest of the stats are basically meaningless.

If you want to do all the ubers, you can farm and sell the orbs or use them on different items to increase their value. In single player you have a little less to work with, but worst case you can make gear to enable subsequent characters (not increasing the required level means you can throw it in TUs to powerlevel even faster). Yes, you technically only need to do a small subset of ubers on each character , If they were to get broken up by gear slot, you could force between 3 (Wep/Armour/Accessories) and 9 (every gear slot) different ubers to max out your gear, but each character wants a different selection (assuming the orb balance isn't completely messed up making an obvious best choice for all builds)